America’s Votes: Still At Risk
America’s Votes: Still At Risk
After the 2000 and 2004 elections, voters and monitors nationwide reported problems with electronic voting machines.
These allegations of impropriety came amongst assurances by electronic voting machine manufacturers, such as Diebold, that the machines were fine (9/23/04):
But a Diebold spokesman insisted that the system is secure despite “incessant” criticism from organizations such as Black Box Voting…Even if the system could be hacked, he said, it could only be done by a person with “unfettered access to the system.”… “Quite honestly it’s somewhat insulting to elections officials and volunteers,” he said.
Diebold’s assurances weren’t true then and aren’t true now. A new GAO report finds significant problems with electronic voting machines:
While electronic voting systems hold promise for improving the election process, numerous entities have raised concerns about their security and reliability, citing instances of weak security controls, system design flaws, inadequate system version control, inadequate security testing, incorrect system configuration, poor security management, and vague or incomplete voting system standards.
Some highlights from the report:
Weak Security System Controls: “Two reports documented how it might be possible to alter the ballot definition files on one model of DRE so that the votes shown on the touch screen for one candidate would actually be recorded and counted for a different candidate. In addition, one of these reports found that it was possible to gain full control of a regional vote tabulation computer—including the ability to modify the voting software—via a modem connection.”
Paper Trail Flaws: “If voting system mechanisms for protecting the paper audit trail were inadequate, an insider could associate voters with their individual paper ballots and votes, particularly if the system stored voter-verified ballots sequentially on a continuous roll of paper.”
Incorrect System Configuration: “For instance, a county in California presented some voters with an incorrect electronic ballot in the March 2004 primary. As a result, these voters were unable to vote on certain races.”
Poor Implementation of Security Procedures: “Reports from Maryland found that a regional vote tabulation computer was connected to the Internet, and that local officials had not updated it with several security patches, thus exposing the system to general security threats.”
Inadequate Security Management Programs: “[S]everal reports indicated that some state and local jurisdictions did not always have procedures in place to address problems with their electronic voting systems. For instance, one county in Pennsylvania reported that neither its election staff nor its technical division knew how to deal witih several problems that occurred on election day.”
Check out American Progress’s report with recommendations to reform our election system.
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Jesus, 200+ old and we still haven’t mastered this voting stuff… ridiculous…
October 25th, 2005 at 4:57 pmI guess Y’all will wait ’till after the Repugnicans steal another election before this issue get it’s due.
October 25th, 2005 at 5:00 pmVery sad!
This is what I’ve been pointing out for months. The reality is that the last election was stolen, because most americans didn’t realize that Diebold and other machines had already been hijacked by republican officials in key states and key districts.
Not every state is at risk (only 10 states don’t use these machines or tabulators), but of the 40 states that did use the machines, they showed a CONSISTENT misalignment with exit polls. In the 10 states where only older machines were present – the exit polls were all with ~1 percent of final tallies – not only an expected but a historic norm for america and the international community. Every state that had the susceptible machines showed as much as 14% deviation and ALWAYS in the direction of bush. This isn’t merely a coincidence – it’s election FRAUD! Pure and simple!
It’s nice to see there are at least a few noble people left in congress in both parties who are at least willing to ‘discuss’ this. Unfortunately when it comes time to actually do something about it, you can be assured the republicans will fail!
October 25th, 2005 at 5:03 pm..bring me your old diebold machines, and I will gladly smash them. They are a hackers dream. Breaking, Target letters sent out today..raw story.
October 25th, 2005 at 5:11 pmWhen the Diebold head PROMISES to deliver Ohio for Bush, you can pretty much be sure of what he means. Look it up. It was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Vote for Resident Bush
The Missing P Project
http://www.geocities.com/themissingPproject
October 25th, 2005 at 5:11 pmPeople don’t realize that when the Diebold company decided to “help” in the election, it stole every person’s vote in America. My vote became worthless. I would like to see a class action suit against Diebold but is that possible?
October 25th, 2005 at 5:21 pmBiggest reasons that our democracy is dead:
1. The electronic voting machines, voter fraud, who counts the votes.
1a. The media is completely corrupt.
Amanda, thank you for posting this story. Please stay on it, it is SO VERY CRITICAL!!!!
October 25th, 2005 at 5:25 pmLook ma, no trolls! I guess they haven’t gotten the TPs yet for this issue. So many battles on so many fronts to fight!
October 25th, 2005 at 5:51 pmI am doing absentee ballots only now, it may not be any less stealable (after all, it’s the counting that matters), but it makes me feel a bit better.
Why can’t we have a civil suit? What a great idea! Should be pretty easy to prove the crime.
Just wondering….How much do you think it would cost to get Diebold to skew an election? Really. How many figures do you think it took (see – past tense)?
October 25th, 2005 at 6:07 pmAbout a month ago on the BRADBLOG there was a report by an ex employee of Die-bold that a third party could vote secretly by ‘REMOTE’ control. I haven’t heard of any movement by Congress to investigate these possible crimes.
October 25th, 2005 at 6:08 pmHonestly, whats wrong with voting with bits of paper like the rest of the world? Are bits of paper too expensive? Or is it that the results cant be manipulated and therefore its in the interest of people in power to use dodgy electronic ways?
Why does the self proclaimed greatest democracy in the world allow such a mish mash of voting methods to undermine its process?
October 25th, 2005 at 6:16 pmIn #3, Ryan brings up a lot of circumstantial evidence to substantiate the case for voter fraud. People don’t want to believe it and it is hard to prove, but the statistics, the discrepancy between exit polls and the final results, the slow elimination of a paper trail, and the boasting claim by the main manufacturer that he would do everything he could to elect Bush are just too much to simply dismiss. All of us need to keep pressure on the politicians that we want honest and secure voting machines. Just their word is insufficient; we want guaranteed proof. If it means that counting ballots takes two days, so be it — as long as it is true.
October 25th, 2005 at 6:39 pm“Ryan brings up a lot of circumstantial evidence to substantiate the case for voter fraud. ”
Marie, any discrepency beyond 3% in exit polls is considered voter fraud by international voting standards. There was a larger disrepency during 2004 in the US election, than there was in the Ukrainian election! Election polls have historically been accurate in this country, in particular in national elections. The 2004 is the largest ‘nationwide’ discrepency in our history.
Statisticians consider the point beyond 3% to be more than circumstantial, and in fact SUBSTANTIAL proof of election fraud. It’s in fact codified in how the pentagon declares international elections as fraudulent or not!
October 25th, 2005 at 6:49 pmthe leon county, florida, election supervisor can attest to just how vulnerable diebold’s machines are…
http://takeitpersonally.blogspot.com/2005/10/diebolds-voting-machines-far-from-hack.html
http://www.clevescene.com/Issues/2005-10-19/news/news.html
October 25th, 2005 at 6:56 pm#13, Ryan, I may have come across incorrectly. I agree with your conclusions, but I don’t understand how they are provable. I see a lot of evidence to make the case of voter fraud, but I am afraid we can’t prove it sufficiently to overhaul the entire voting process. I fear that even in the aftermath of the crumbling of the Bush administration and the exposure of its rampant corruption, their party will steal the next election out from under us, just as they have done in the past.
October 25th, 2005 at 7:12 pmIts the only reason why Bush won the last election.
October 25th, 2005 at 8:02 pmPerhaps this has been fixed, but I remember watching a woman with the California Secretary of State’s office on CNBC go into the directory system of a Diebold machine and easily change the results.
It looked like even I could do it.
What in the name of Richard Nixon is going on here?
New on EWM, ready for Bush version 2.2?: White House Sets Job Fair
October 25th, 2005 at 9:03 pmIt’s such a smoke screen to blame security leeks on voter personnel. If anyone has worked a precinct, as I have, you would see how vulnerable the systems are to hacking. Voting day is chaotic and managed mostly by volunteers. Those machines are WAY vulnerable by any skilled technician. Plus, the hacking is probably done as an algorythim in the final tabulation, anyway.
If you know who Kevin Mitnik is, he once showed his most lucrative hacks were done, not with on offsite hack, but by just walking in and pretending he belonged at the machine. Only takes a few minutes to one who is knowledgeable.
Why create a scenario vulnerable to manipulation, when a simple paper trail could cure it? Why, indeed?
October 25th, 2005 at 9:10 pmThe voting machines have NO GD paper trail. Would you use an ATM machine without receiving a receipt?
October 25th, 2005 at 10:08 pmMy understanding is that there was at least one presinct in Ohio that had a significant discrepancy in the tallying of votes (in 2004). If computerized machines are utilized in America’s elections, they ought: 1) To be used nationwide, 2) To be monitored by an outside regulatory group. The moment Diebold’s CEO showed his political slant, those machines should have been banned from the election.
October 25th, 2005 at 10:12 pmHi. As long as our elections are run with electronic computerized voting machines and counted with electronic computerized tabulated machines, Republican hackers, cheaters and thugs will be stealing our elections. For democracy, we need to return to the use of hand-counted paper ballots. They work just fine in Canada, Australia and many other countries. The bush/gop thugs flipped about 8,000,000 Kerry votes into bush votes in the November 2004 Presidential election. See my letter published in the Berkeley Daily Planet in November, 2004.
October 25th, 2005 at 11:01 pmCheers, James K. Sayre.
What the hell is all of this talk about the systems being ’secure’? It’s bullshit! They can be made as ’secure’ as hell. ‘Securing’ every candidate of their choice a fvcking victory.
October 26th, 2005 at 9:47 amYou don’t need to be able to ‘hack’ into the system for it to spit out pre-programmed results. Hell, you give me half a day with the right tutorial and even I could write a program that would for instance show one result, and yet tally every third vote for whoever I wanted. ANYTIME you vote into an electronic device you might as well kiss your vote goodbye.
We vote by mail in my state, and I’m sure that there is still the opportunity for fraud when it comes to counting the votes. However, if I showed up to vote and was expected to use a computer program, I would raise HELL. They would have to arrest me for disorderly conduct or whatever.
Ryan Neat has it down pat. Go to Black Box Voting for further proof.
Pleasee recall that right after the 2004 election the puke party started a campaign to let the country know that exit polls were worthless. This is not the case. The Exit Polls were correct in Ohio.
The machines can be jiggled. A Diebold engineer has made affadavits to that effect that still lay dormant in a Florida court. His affadavit also contains the information that he sold the program to Rep. Feeney, a puke from Fla. back in 1999.
Kerry won one county in Ohio by 36K votes. When the vote was certified by Sec of State Blackwell, head of the puke machine in Ohio, Bush was won by 36K votes. This is in the courts of Ohio now. Will anything be done about it, not in your lifetime.
The exit polls were correct in Ohio and Florida. The Diebold machines were programed to give Bush a 51-49 edge no matter what the exit polls said, or what the actual vote was. What was the Bush margin of victory you might ask. Well, it was 51-49.
October 26th, 2005 at 10:52 amI believe this sums it all up:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/vote_fraud
October 26th, 2005 at 11:42 amWe have a paper ballot which we shade an arrow with a pencil for the candidate we want. Then we put it in a machine that tallies our vote. This seem to work pretty good.
October 26th, 2005 at 12:02 pmThere’s nothing wrong with the voting machines. They work fine. We win you lose. All your ass are belong to us. Heh. If you don’t like it pick up a gun or leave the country. Either way, we win.
October 26th, 2005 at 2:06 pmMizzWrong,
There you go again living in your fantasy world. The bi-partisan GAO committee disagrees with you. But then again, it’s clear you don’t live in the real world, so that kind of ‘fact’ must be disconcerting to a thief and an immoral mental midget like you.
October 26th, 2005 at 5:37 pmMizzWrong,
Trying to ‘incite a revolution’ is treason, even if you tell the other side to do it. You’re a traitor once again to america and american values. But then, your subconscious already knows that, it’s why you’re such a self loathing and hateful fool. That and the fact that you’re a pedophile…
October 26th, 2005 at 5:39 pmListen to the Diebold-Insider:
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001838.htm
October 27th, 2005 at 7:17 amPre-Nazi Germany operated along democratic lines: Hitler was “voted” in (though there seems to be question as to whether the vote was fixed). I believe that Hitler also ‘won’ by a narrow margin. The similarities are just too scary. (actually if you’re rigging an election and the race seems close, you don’t want to win by a landfall – that would be obvious)
October 27th, 2005 at 8:00 amDiebold should lose the contract, and electronic voting dropped. You CANNOT secure any computer transaction, nor ensure that there is no tampering. It is not possible, and if the computer accesses the Net or even communicates via an internal network the security risk increases incredibly. The Diebold machines are unstable and unreliable — unless you don’t want a fair vote… another measure of the neofascistright’s hypocracy: “We are bringing democracy to the rest of the world (while we destroy the democracy at home). Seig heil.”
You CANNOT secure any computer transaction, nor ensure that there is no tampering. It is not possible,
Comment by mysticagent
Well, then computer voting should be right up your alley. Democrats have been fixing elections for years. Kennedy (JFK) and Johnson (LBJ) comes to mind. Democrats are so widely known to be cheats that it’s become a joke. But personally I think it should be done on paper with the old machines, dumbass democrats need to be taught how to use them and every SOB that wants to vote ought to be able to prove he’s a citizen and that he’s only voted once…oh…and that he’s alive.
October 27th, 2005 at 11:29 amWell, first off, don’t call me a Democrat. I am not. I don’t belong to nor follow any political party. I believe the political parties are counterproductive to a free and honest democracy. But why the tone? On this issue we agree – it should remain all paper ballots, and simply refine the process to eliminate cheating (by any greasy politician of any flavor). And absolutely no dead people should vote and no one should vote more than once (with harsher penatlies for doing so). Don’t be deluded – both parties have fixed elections throughout the years, so don’t get high and mighty about the Republicans. Diebold needs to go… and you have already agreed. You do know, though, that your party REALLY wants the computer voting to happen. You’re breaking the party line.
October 27th, 2005 at 12:52 pmDiebold needs to go… and you have already agreed. You do know, though, that your party REALLY wants the computer voting to happen. You’re breaking the party line.
Comment by mysticagent
I don’t have a party, I AM A PARTY. It looks to me like what voting system to use is up to the individual state so your complaint that the issue is following along Republican party lines is invalid. By the way, I don’t see any Democrat big shots complaining about the machines either.
October 27th, 2005 at 2:10 pmI do not really know what individual politician’s positions are on the machines. I do know, however, that it is mainly the Republicans who voice SUPPORT for the machines (particularly strongly immediately after the last election). Again, though, I agree that, as far as I have heard, there is no major Democrat call for revision of the system. Both parties should be concerned, though, because of the lack of security. And the states probably should not have the decision on how a presidential election vote is taken: it should be uniform, but for all internal state votes they should remain at their own decision. But again, it IS the Republican party who is pressing to make electronic voting the standard. And if you are not of the Republican party, why do you so earnestly defend them on EVERY issue? I don’t recall you at any point voicing a clear and persistent dissent against any Republican policy or decision, and conversely you NEVER (that I have seen) support any Democratic decision or policy. Your loyalty seems to be pretty clear in that issue. I certainly lean left, but there are some conservative issues I agree with. A big one is gun control, for many reasons, all relating to the Constitution and the reason our forefathers put that in the constitution. No one is going to take my (legally owned) weapons away. My party? The United States of America and our Constitution, Declaration of Independence, AND Bill of Rights. But, as you Will: party on, party of one. I (unlike the neo-cons) support your right to have AND VOICE your opinion. And I (or anyone else listening) can disagree. That is freedom and freedom of speech. To tell anyone who is voicing their political opinion, “STFU”, is un-American, anti-freedom, fascist tyranny.
October 27th, 2005 at 3:04 pmTo tell anyone who is voicing their political opinion, “STFUâ€, is un-American, anti-freedom, fascist tyranny.
Comment by mysticagent
I’m just taking a page out of their playbook. It’s one thing to say something like that here though, and another to do it in public at a public meeting in front of cameras. The Filthy Left does it all the time and often violence is involved. I think you get the point. The fact is and I think I can make a good case for it…there is no issue on this site worthy of an American once the underlying delusion and agenda is exposed.
For example, the voting machines. You don’t really think this would be an issue if they hadn’t already claimed that Bush “stole” the election and they can use these so-called flaws and other properties of electronic voting to “prove” themselves in the right? Ha. Not a chance. The Leftist scumbags invented computer hacking. If it were possible to rig that last election Kerry would have won.
October 28th, 2005 at 8:38 am#35 “there is no issue on this site worthy of an American once the underlying delusion and agenda is exposed. ”
October 28th, 2005 at 11:35 amWhat delusion and what agenda? The issue of the electronic voting machines came up as a problem the moment it was presented, NOT simply after the elections. You are arguing against yourself, though, as above you say that the machines should go – that paper ballots have and can continue to work fine. Then you say “these so-called flaws and other properties of electronic voting”: you are stating that the claims of flaws are not valid (”so-called flaws”). The agenda? Transparency in government (you cannot argue that this administration has been even remotely transparent – in fact, they have been deliberately obstructive and secretive, with numerous secret meetings to discuss and plan their secret agenda. At this particular moment the current Democrats are not the majority in power). Any political party of any flavor having secret meetings on a secret agenda are immediately suspect. You can not defend the need for secret party meetings (I’m not referring to national security issues, which are secret).
“The Filthy Left” is a vague term. Specify who you mean, or do you mean (like most modern right wingers, which, for reasons already stated (and not refuted), I still must assume you are) that anyone who does not share your political views is “on the Left”? I can recall pictures of Republican lackeys stirring up trouble during the last election, and physically so, though under the pretense of being Democrats (it was an attemt at deception to disrupt the voting, perpetrated by Republican stooges). Democrats involved in ‘dirty politics’? Yep. Though not to the degree that Republicans tend to go. ‘Dirty politics’ should not be acceptable to any one on any political ’side’ as being ‘politics as usual’. There is no ‘criminalization of politics’, except as the crimes are committed by the politicians. Every politician involved in such activities should be immediately removed from office and replaced. Gee, that might mean we have to get rid of most of our politicians, but when the politicians serve themselves, their friends, or a small sample of the populace then they are not doing their job: that being a public servant – serving the interests of ALL Americans, not just the idealogues from any political point of view. You, like many these days, seem to prefer the “us and them” approach. It is always “those damn lefties screwing everything up”. How about, it is the corrupt politicians and those who blindly support them (on either side) who are ruining our country (in myriad ways). To categorically claim that it is the “lefties” (or even “the righties”) alone who are making a mess of our country is to ignore the reality of the world around you. And you cannot defend any argument that all our problems these days are the fault of “the lefties”, because I’m still fairly certain that the “lefties” have very little political power these last 5 years. Oh, and I don’t like Kerry, either (he’s another freemason, skull and bones, corporate – though to vilify his war experience is spitting on our troops – all of them, dead and alive. He served during a war, one which he did not agree with (and that is the case for a large number of the soldiers in Iraq right now), but completed his term and got out, and then protested. Just like an awful lot of other Vietnam Veterans. THAT was patriotism. Going AWOL during a war is treasonous).
Damn girl, ever hear of a paragraph? I’ll address your complaint when I have more time.
October 28th, 2005 at 11:54 amYep. Know what a paragraph is. Actually there are a couple up there, but I did not indent (which DOES defeat the purpose of a paragraph). Never said I was perfect. I’ll try to remember to check back for your reply. I don’t post over the weekend, so you have a few days.
October 28th, 2005 at 1:08 pmMystic- this is a blog, not a white paper. Please keep your responses to an agreable length and relax a little, you’re going to have a coronary.
Turk has spoken, he is master of the blogosphere(in his own twisted mind)
November 1st, 2005 at 3:31 pm