I was responding to a story by a reporter:
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/10726274.htmand expressing my continued frustration about the portrayal of the anti-BBV crowd as "cranks". I then jotted down ten things that we had dug up by ourself and how if a single reporter had done this he would be dancing on Pulitizers. (which sounds like a Kevin Costner movie, "Dances on Pulitzers").
Here's my list, which I will post on blackboxvoting.com. Please feel free to suggest stuff I may have missed. I prefer hard fact to conjecture.
As much as everyone wants to dismiss anti-BBV activists as "cranks", the movement has a pretty impressive track record for digging up the truth. Activists, not the media and not government bodies responsible for the agencies in question have:
1) Exposed Diebold's voting machine software as poorly written and
highly vulnerable to tampering.
2) Exposed Diebold's internal email proving they knew how poor their
software was and that they conspired to lie to the public and election
officials about the problems. We also pointed to sections in the email
where Diebold conspires to conceal problems from the "Independent"
Testings Authority.
3) Exposed vulnerabilities in Sequoia's software.
4) Exposed the use of uncertified equipment in California and Georgia.
5) Exposed a secret phone conference where the voting machine companies hired a lobbyist to try and gloss over the problems.
6) Exposed the fact that money to lobby the government to pass HAVA
came from the companies such as Lockheed-Martin, General Dynamics and
Grumman, which begs the question, "Why are defense contractors pushing
for electronic voting?"
7) Pointed out that machines which were shown to have almost ZERO
security and high failure rates PASSED the ITA's certifcation program.
8) Exposed the fact that the ITAs will not discuss how they certify
votings machines and refer all questions to The Election Center. The
Election Center (not a government agency) is responsible for certifying who certifies voting machines and is secretly takes money from the voting machine companies.
9) Cultivated insiders who provided valuable information about how
security and reliability concerns are routinely dismissed by management in voting machine companies.
10) Warned Sandra Page in Gaston county that trusting Diebold could cost her job and warned Gary Bartlett that DREs could compromise the integrity of elections in NC and law suits over who actually won a race.