Florida 13 Machines were flawed, and Sarasota knew it!

[Sancho]

FL-13: Company Warned of Touch-Screen Voting System Defect, But Sarasota Declined to Fix Machines or Caution Voters
FULL LETTER POSTED: ES&S Urged State, Local Officials to Take Corrective Measures Three Months Prior to Contested Jennings/Buchanan Race Last November

-snip-

Sarasota, FL's Election Supervisor, Kathy Dent, decided against both having their machines patched to take care of the defect and posting a warning notice for voters as advised by ES&S. "No one in the State of Florida updated," their machines after receiving the letter, Dent told Henneberger. "That's because it was too close to the election. It was a state decision that it was too late to make changes."

-snip-

The ES&S letter, as Henneberger noted, was only seen recently by Jennings' attorneys since "it was not provided to them by election officials as it should have been under discovery motions in the case," according to one of her attorneys.

The BRAD BLOG: http://www.bradblog.com

[peacetalksforall]

1. Justice UNDONE by Kathy Dent. What powe!. She controls

votes in Washtington. AMAZING!

[Peace Patriot]

2. We need to see the postmark on that letter. It has a Leon County date stamp.

Is there a copy with a Sarasota County date stamp, and is it authentic? And what about a postmark, or other proof that it was sent and received?

My first suspicion was that, we've seen this kind of "public" official before, who advocates for the rightwing Bushite electronic voting corporation, and not for the voters--and so, is Dent covering for ES&S--i.e. "taking the fall" for ES&S?

(And, really, what are these rightwing Bushite corporations doing to our public officials, breaking their kneecaps or what? This is so-o-o-o-o-o bad! What is a corporation that got its initial funding from rightwing 'christian' nutjob billionaire Howard Ahmanson DOING in our election system?! Do you know what ES&S said, when they were sued on this, and Jennings' lawyers asked to see their source code? They said the public has NO RIGHT to see it, not even in a skunk-smell election like this one, because it violates ES&S's RIGHT TO PROFIT from our election system!!!!!!!! And the first judge it went before AGREED! We might as well have the Mafia running our elections--and our courts.)

Secondly, barring a back-dated letter--with the public official (Dent) covering for the Mafia that is running our elections, a possibility that arises from the vast corruption that e-voting has fostered in our election system, and which needs to be ruled out*--IF it is true that ES&S wrote this letter and that Dent received it, then a number of other questions scream at us:

IS the 'unresponsive" screen responsible for the huge undervote in this Democratic area? Would a mere sign telling voters about the "flaw" have prevented this huge undervote? Why did the "unresponsive" screen affect only the Congressional election? Why did this "flaw" only affect votes in a Democratic area? Is there any instance on record, anywhere, of "flaws" in ES&S (or Diebold) touchscreens negatively affecting a Republican candidate?

Why is August to November insufficient time to correct this machine "flaw"? And if the election referred to was sooner (the letter gives a Sept 5 election date)(??), why wasn't the letter sent EARLIER?

How is it that the difference between 18,000 votes for Congress being counted, or not being counted, is a LETTER?! Are there no other "checks and balances" against such a huge fuckup--than the private technical doings of a private corporation back at their headquarters in Omaha (as described in the letter)? How the hell can this BE--that we don't know WHAT the hell kind of machine we're voting on, or what it's doing with our votes, until a private, rightwing Bushite corporation TELLS us about it, in a LETTER?

Why did this "flaw" exist in the first place? What kind of crapass machinery is ES&S selling to election officials? And what is wrong with our elections officials? Stupidity? Corruption? How could they buy into this non-transparent corporate shit?

Why is our voting system so vulnerable that inattention to a LETTER from a PRIVATE vendor could result in such an enormous "mistake"?

Is this like Katrina and Iraq--Bushite crime disguised as Bushite "incompetence"?

The letter reveals that "somebody" at ES&S inserted the code that resulted in the "unresponsive" screens WITHOUT TELLING ANYBODY, and in some screens and not in others, and that it causes the delayed screen reaction in some instances and not in others. It says they "discovered" the problem after voters complained. And NOW they are going to get this fucked up code "certified" by the state of Florida (which, the letter points out, is just one of many ES&S suckers worldwide). So we have some ES&S employee back at corporate "headquarters" messing with these machines, and deciding that they need a "filter" for some reason, and causing 18,000 votes to disappear down the line, and ES&S is only catching up with this "flaw" after the fact (no date given for insertion of the code, no names, no facts, to pin down who did it and when), apparently failed to discover it with quality controls in the manufacturing process, and INTENDS to get it "certified" before the election, but JUST IN CASE this causes some big fuckup at the polls (it DOESN'T get "certified"??), they "recommend" that poll workers be trained and voters be warned to expect fucked up machines--which Dent apparently didn't do.

There are enough holes in the security of this process to drive a truckload of Halliburton cash through!

What the hell is this?! What the hell are we doing here, with a private corporation in Omaha, with operations "worldwide"--a corporation with far rightwing connections--messing with us in this way? Messing with our most sacred and fundamental democratic right--our right to vote!

How can this sloppiness be tolerated? How can this ANONYMITY be tolerated? And is it not true that SECRECY and ANONYMITY combined with SLOPPINESS and "INCOMPETENCE" are PRIME CONDITIONS for the cover up of FRAUD? Is this not what happened in Katrina? Is this not what happened in Iraq? Is this not the SIGNATURE of the Bush Junta?

AND WHERE THE HELL ARE THE **BALLOTS** by which we could RECOUNT this election? What a scam this is! What a CRIME this is--that ES&S and brethren took our legislators and election officials on lavish lobbying junkets to PREVENT a "paper trail" requirement in the "Help America Vote for Bush Act"!!

We are looking at a CRIME, or rather, multiple crimes. We don't have to find any "smoking gun." The "smoking gun" is pointed at our heads! This is a FRAUDULENT election SYSTEM. Fraudulent from the get-go. Inherently fraudulent. And this is how this rightwing fascist cabal is working us. They operate in secrecy--and they pull our very voting system behind a veil of corporate secrecy--then they dare us to try to PROVE that a crime has been committed. We don't get to know who inserted this code, or why, or when. We aren't allowed to ever SEE the code. We are dependent on THEM to tell us that something is wrong, in their own good time, in their own way. We are dependent on THEM to submit THEIR code to a privatized, secret "certification" process, and if that doesn't happen, well, 'put a sign up to warn voters.' That's supposed to cover their asses. And if that doesn't cover their asses, then the election officials, whom they bribed or bullied, will cover their asses by saying they ignored their goddamned letter. And behind this story, and behind the opaque words of this letter, is a hidden world, where anything can be done to these machines, and we wouldn't have a clue. Prove it! Prove that 18,000 Democratic votes for Congress were deliberately 'disappeared.' It's the Dick Cheney defense. No habeas corpus. No evidence. No crime. But what of the crime of there BEING no evidence in a public process as critically important as voting? And what of the crime of all the money that has changed hands to insure that there is no evidence? Billions and billions of taxpayer dollars, and lobbying dollars, aimed at one thing: "trade secret," proprietary vote counting. Removing the evidence.

-----------------------------------------

Throw Diebold, ES&S and all election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW! It's time.

[Peace Patriot]

3. *(Footnote: If the story of the letter is not true, or only partly true--

and Dent is covering up for ES&S--then the conspiracy might involve the election group (that claims that it was trying to bring this letter to the attention of election officials), which doesn't seem likely, although the corruption and crime involved in destroying our election system is so pervasive and insidious that I'm sure that there ARE some election groups and others parading as public interest groups, who have helped these SOBs take over our election system, and are covering up for them now. These include handicap advocacy groups (who provided the excuse for this Bushite invasion of our voting system, and whom I suspect are bought and paid for, by the electronic voting industry), Common Cause and the Democratic Party. The latter two--which completely ignored this fraudulent election system as it was put into place during the 2002 to 2004 period--are now advocating the Corporate fallback position that touchscreens (no paper trail) are bad, and optiscans are okay--and nobody mentions the central tabulators (also run on "trade secret" code). Optiscans have a paper ballot backup, but that backup is mostly ignored. There is ZERO audit of it (automatic recount) in many states, and only 1% in the best states. Thus 99% to 100% of the ballots are never counted. The Dems are now proposing a 2% audit--of voting machines run on 'trade secret,' proprietary code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations. That is ridiculous. And what is even more ridiculous--and criminal!--is that no audit was required in the first place, when a 100% audit was plainly and obviously needed for these extremely insecure and insider hackable voting machines.

The stink of the fraud involved in destroying our election system is so great that my first suspicion about this ES&S letter was that it was backdated, and is being used to exonerate ES&S. This is not likely, as I mentioned above--since other counties apparently received it, and an election group was trying to get it noticed. However, another scenario could be that Dent was in collusion with ES&S, to steal this seat from the Democrats, and it was her job to ignore the letter. And letter or no letter, bad code or no bad code, the context of the 'disappearance' of 18,000 Democratic votes for Congress is that, a) there are no ballots to recount, b) ES&S claims a proprietary right to profit from our elections that trumps the right of the voters to know how their votes were counted, even in a highly smelly election; and c) Dent (and others) agreed to these fraudulent, non-transparent voting conditions. They put their duty to protect the voters aside, and bought these crapass, corporate-controlled voting machines. Dent (and others) therefore have a MOTIVE to collude with, and cover up for, the private corporation.)