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Three startling events occurred in the month of September 2006 that received little attention in the mainstream media yet have huge implications for the survival of our democracy as we’ve been brought up to believe in it.
Earlier this month, computer scientists at Princeton University acquired a Diebold Accuvote electronic voting machine and demonstrated the ability to hack the memory of the machine and install a malicious program capable of altering results, spreading itself to other linked machines and then destroying itself, leaving no trace of itself. This is disturbing enough but the fact that it was not reported in any meaningful way is a direct assault on our voting rights by the corporate mainstream media.
Let’s understand several things. States were rushed into acquiring electronic machines as an answer to the Help America Vote Act without adequate investigation or certification. Two brothers, both Republican supporters, are or have been major officers in two of the four companies producing these machines. Bob Urosevich had been president of Diebold up to mid 2004 and brother Todd is Vice President of AfterMarketing of E S & S. Given that the computer code in all electronic voting machines is secret and proprietary, it would not surprise me that code in both these companies would be similar and thus both susceptible to the Princeton hack. St Johns County uses E S & S.
Ion Sancho, Supervisor of Elections in Leon County, had the courage to invite hacker Harri Hurst to his county to attempt to invade one of the Diebold machines he was rushed into buying. Hurst was successful in minutes, in front of witnesses, to hack into the machine and alter the results of a staged election. For his courage Ion Sancho was vilified by the state of Florida and placed in the position of being shut out by voting machine companies while attempting to comply with HAVA.
Let’s also understand that electronic voting machines are mandated to fulfill the requirement that voting be accessible to disabled individuals. The only disabled individuals these machines serve are the visually impaired by providing audio choices and Braille buttons. It’s hard to imagine with the ingenuity in our country that current touchscreens, which the visually impaired can’t even see, is the only solution. It’s hard not to imagine that another agenda was at work in pushing these machines on voters in the first place.
Secondly, on September 13, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, held a press briefing at the National Press Club. The presentation was titled “Cast Out” Voter Suppression in 2006 and outlined methods by which our votes have been and could continue to be suppressed all over this country. The research was exact and exhaustive, citing reports from state officials, Civil Rights Commissions, the NAACP and others and compiling statistics from census data and precinct reporting.
The presentation discusses the problems of statewide databases that were mandated by January 2006 that use different official databases to make “matches” in individual records, like social security numbers, driver’s licenses, felon convictions and death records to verify voters.
Remembering the felon purge of 2000 in Florida, a sloppy, quick bid giveaway to Choicepoint, notorious for losing individuals’ privacy records, points are made that even with the best of intentions and care, many mistakes are made in creating large databases, causing some records not to “match” and throwing eligible voters off the rolls. In some states protocols are in place to notify the voter, in others, not so much. The voter will only realize this when arriving at the polls to vote, too late to do anything but vote a “provisional” ballot. There is no guarantee that a provisional ballot will even be counted.
The presentation goes on to discuss in general terms the lack of security of electronic voting. When voters distrust a technology, they will not use it. In St Johns County, only touchscreen voting was available for early voting. How many people did not vote early and then subsequently were not able to vote on election day for various reasons? This is voter suppression in a subtle but real way.
Finally, on September 20, the House voted along party lines to pass HR 4844, the Federal Election Integrity Act, a bill proposed back in MARCH by Rep Henry Hyde, to require official photo ID at the polls by 2008 nationwide and proof of citizenship at the polls by 2010. This bill was rushed to the floor for a vote to take advantage of the illegal immigration hysteria about voter fraud. Currently the only form in the US that meets the 2010 requirement is a US passport, available for $97.00 and requiring a birth certificate. Millions would be disenfranchised by this law: Katrina and Rita victims, displaced and lacking documents, the poor, elderly citizens, native Americans, and people not born in hospitals. The Brennan Center study and others have exposed that the frequency of voter “fraud” equates to about 0.0009%, about the likelihood of an American being struck by lightning.
A Georgia judge just struck down the photo ID requirement with the words: “This cannot be”.
States across the country are now scrambling to head off the electronic train wreck that will be the mid term elections. Governor Erlich in Maryland is talking about paper ballots. In Florida, recounts have become next to impossible as in 2005, a law was passed prohibiting the manual counting of ballots if they have been already counted by machine. Guess Florida won’t have to worry about being a laughingstock on recounts since they just outlawed them. How did we miss that one?
WHAT TO DO?
Make sure you are on the voter rolls in your county. If there is a problem, fix it before the books close on October 10.
Use the optiscan to vote if you can. If you are visually impaired, you can have a family member or friend help; just not your boss or union rep.
Report intimidation, challenges based on caging lists or racial profiling, ANY impediments to entering the polls. There is a website: Election Incident Reporting Center www.voteprotect.org to enter reports.
MAKE NOISE. Write letters, articles and emails to your senators and representatives about these issues.
Be a pollworker or pollwatcher.
Find out what form HR4844 will take in the US senate and make sure your views are known to your senators.
VOTE.
"It behooves our citizens to be on their guard, to be firm in their principles, and full of confidence in themselves. We are able to preserve our self-government if we will but think so." --Thomas Jefferson, 1800
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