homework assignment for volunteers - find some quotations

[garybeck]

In order for people to be convinced of something (i.e., there is a problem with our election system) they need to hear it from several sources. It helps if these sources are well known and respected people with credentials. This concept is akin to advertising and why companies pay millions of dollars to have famous and/or credentialed people endorse their products.

We all are trying to convince the public of the problems with our election system and such material is at our disposal but it is not put together (yet) in a convenient and usable format.

I'm working on a document that is a collection of quotations relating to the 2004 election and electronic voting.

Here are a couple examples:

Robert Wexler, US Congressman, Florida
"I think if most people understood that their vote is in jeopardy, they'd be angry as can be"
video, Electile Dysfunction movie

Professor David Dill
Stanford University Computer Science Professor
"If you go to one of these voting machines and vote for candidate A and the vote gets changed to a candidate B, you will never know."
video, Electile Dysfunction movie

I would like to ask for help on this. Quotations like this are readily available in the myriad of articles that have been written, and in particular in the election documentaries (Votergate, Invisible Ballots, Electile Dysfunction).

Another good source is the recent "Democracy At Risk" report which we all know falls short in identifying the real problems but does include some quotations that would be good.

If you are willing to help, please find a few minutes to locate some more quotations like the two. Please send tme to me (gary-at-solarbus.org), or put them on this thread. pLease include the name of the person who said it as well as the source (document, article, movie, etc)

this document with the list of quotations will hopefully be distributed widely.

thanks for your help.

gary

------------------------------------
the solar bus
ELECTION JUSTICE CENTER
your home for updated information on the fight for democracy in America
http://election.solarbus.org
------------------------------------

[GuvWurld]

1. "The Consent of the Governed is not being sought"

"The Consent of the Governed is not being sought"
Voter Confidence Resolution
http://guvwurld.blogspot.com/2005/04/voter-confidence-resolution.html

[wli]

2. poorly worded

This is too blatant to be put to paper. Though it may reflect their true biases or otherwise be a Freudian slip, the intention was probably to reflect the status quo as opposed to proclaiming it the nature of the "reform". The passage that quote was taken from was very poorly worded in addition to being ambiguous. This is not to say their intentions are truly honorable.

[GuvWurld]

28. Actually,...

It is very carefully worded to challenge the legitimacy of the government's claim to power. The legitimacy derives from our Consent. This Consent is not being sought (click HERE for multiple proofs). It should not be assumed that such Consent is given and it is long past time we make clear that it is not.

[garybeck]

3. Keep it simple,... here's another

"Current DRE (electronic) voting systems, ... are vulnerable to fraud. Existing standards ... are insufficient to provide security for existing DRE systems"
Democracy at Risk, report by the Democratic National Committee


remember, the audience is newbies. people who need a little more convincing. like the bazillions of democrats who are still buying the crap from the corporate media. and the DFA-ers who are letting election issues fall through the cracks while they focus on social security and bolton nominations.

[Kip Humphrey]

4. Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips at the EAH uder oath

Dr. Phillips’ closing remark was notable:

“It is my professional opinion, having exhaustively examined the available evidence, that the 2004 presidential election was stolen.”

Election Assessment Hearing, June 29th 2005, Houston Texas

[garybeck]

6. good one, thanks! n/t

[starmaker]

5. couple of sites

2001 mit/cal tech study has good recs
Hand counted paper ballots most accurate method
Also chuck Herrin has good info on sight
His presentation to nc leg committee
I'm working on somewhat the same thing
Any simple explaination of unauditability of system?

[Time for change]

7. Steven Freeman: 1-20-05

Beyond these and other conventional transgressions that have been widely documented in many states, the United States has introduced a new system of potentially undetectable mass-vote manipulation: electronic voting machines that produce no confirmation that votes are recorded as cast..... It's absurd that we should ever have to trust such a system, but consider, moreover, that the men behind the curtain of our voting machines included executives highly involved in the president's re-election campaign and a senior programmer convicted of 23 counts of felony theft involving software systems. Recently, a programmer has filed an affidavit that he designed and built a vote reiggin software program at the behest of a Florida congressman.

[garybeck]

10. excellent, was that at a hearing?

please indicate the source,
thanks

[Time for change]

11. Sorry, it was from Fritakis' book

page 248. It's from an article by Steven Freeman called "Stolen or Lost?" Other than that, it says Alternet under Freeman's name, but that's all I know.

[garybeck]

13. that's cool, I can just site Fitrakis' book

[Time for change]

12. Rev. Jesse Jackson, at a speech in Ohio

Reported in FreePress.org by Bob Fitrakis, Nov. 29, 2004.

According to the sworn testimony, a systematic denial of voting machines to inner city precincts resulted in waits of three, five, and even eleven hours for thousands of voters, many of whom left in frustration without casting their ballots. Charges of intimidation, misinformation, faulty registration lists and denial of provisional ballots are listed. So are serious questions about the integrity of touch screen machines, many of which were widely reported to have turned Kerry votes into Bush votes. In Warren County, Homeland Security was inexplicably invoked to bar independent observers and the media, leaving the vote count under control of Republicans. In the Franklin County precinct of Gahanna, 4358 votes were registered for Bush where only 628 people voted. In another county, a GOP election official took voting results to his private home for final, unsupervised reporting........



But this is definitely a quote from Jackson: "You can't have public elections on privately owned machines, especially where on of the owners has vowed to deliver the state for George Bush."

[Land Shark]

8. Arguments based on "potential" are inherently disadvantaged

even though real and need to be made.

Arguments based on present reality are more powerful and either undeniable or less deniable, like:

1. Every electronic voter actually votes his ballot blind. (roughly similar idea first written by a texas journalist named Harmon)

2. Those who fought for the right to vote, did not intend future generations to hand the ballot back to the government unvoted, with only electronic instructions on how to vote it, for the purpose of having the ballot filled out by a "precise" governmentally owned and maintained voting machine, and thereafter counted in secret.

3. "The crime against democracy that occurs when electronic voting replaces paper ballots is this: The government and/or their election equipment seller gives itself the power to fill out the final form of every voter's ballot in secret, it gives itself the power to count all of votes in secret, and it exercises the power to terminate the right of the public to direct and complete observation of the integrity of all aspects of elections. As such, the government and the election equipment vendors have committed and continue to commit a profound crime against democracy and the rights of the public. Now consider in that context the fact that the government's power and tax money both rise and fall with those same elections. The public doesn't need to prove a single miscast vote to prove a crime against democracy." ---Paul Lehto

4. "Our democracy was formed when elections were a show of hands, where everyone could count and see for themselves, and only the necessity of the secret ballot to protect voters from retaliation has been added to that otherwise completely transparent democratic tradition." ---Paul Lehto

[Bill Bored]

9. Here:

Dr. Robert A. Pastor.
Director, Center for Democracy and Election Management,
American University
"With regard to the administration of elections, the U.S. election system is one of the worst of 118 democracies in the world."
Counting The Vote
60 Minutes
Nov. 3, 2004


DeForst Soaries
First Chairman of the Election Assistance Commission
Resigned April, 2005
"All four of us had to work without staff, without offices, without
resources. I don't think our sense of personal obligation has been
matched by a corresponding sense of commitment to real reform from
the federal government."
Chairman of Voting Reform Panel Resigns
AP
Apr. 22, 2005


U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA)
"The bottom line is we can't trust the machines, and we can't trust the results being told to the American people,"
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/06/con05218.html

[garybeck]

14. great! exactly what I'm looking for! n/t

[Bill Bored]

16. De nada. nt

[Angry Girl]

15. Lots of quotes in here... need help going through them....

http://nightweed.com/angrygirlelectionfraudnews.html

has a long list of salient election fraud articles as well as links to even more articles. I'm sorry but I just don't have the time right now to go through them....

[garybeck]

17. thanks AG; time is my problem too, that's why I made it an assignment

to dig up the quotes. I have articles coming out my ears....

thanks
gary

------------------------------------
the solar bus
ELECTION JUSTICE CENTER
your home for updated information on the fight for democracy in America
http://election.solarbus.org
------------------------------------

[Angry Girl]

19. DOH! Sorry, wasn't thinking!

I'll do what I can this week.... even if I do think it's kind of a lost cause.... *sigh*

[Amaryllis]

18. see this thread on what Carter said about US elections:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x383728

[garybeck]

23. thanks but that was paraphrasing, got the direct quote?

peace

[Amaryllis]

25. No, but you could ask the person who posted it.

[starmaker]

20. try these

Allow all the governed
an equal voice
in the government,
and that,
and only that,
is self government.
Abraham Lincoln


Who counts your vote?
The truth is, there is no way for you to know.
In fact, you are not allowed to know.
votescam

[garybeck]

22. thanks, primarily looking for

contemporary quotes that are directly related to our current situation, either the 2004 election or electronic voting.

t,
gb

[Angry Girl]

21. here's some to start

Quotes taken from different webpages are separated by a dashed line like this:
---------------


"The computer voting system in this country is a veritable can of worms, so open to tampering that if there is no organized election fraud going on, the criminals are falling down on the job. Computer vote fraud is not only feasible but, by its very nature, undetectable. It is hard to conceive of an organized criminal enterprise with such a favorable combination of high profit potential and low risk."
-- Relevance Magazine editor Dr. Phillip M. O Halloran
#
"In fact, all the evidence suggests that computer voting will make election fraud possible with an ease and scale heretofore impossible to achieve."
-- Dr. Charles E. Corry, Ph. D.
http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting-3.htm
#
"When it comes to computerized elections, there are no safeguards. It's not a door without locks, it's a house without doors."
-- Howard Strauss, Director of Advanced Computer Applications at Princeton University and a nationally renowned expert in the field of computer voting. Source: Relevance Magazine
#
"As Mr. Jones points out, nowhere in the system today from the manufacturer to the independent testing authority to the logic and accuracy testing done by the state is security testing part of that procedure."
"We're flying blind in terms of an industry that doesn't have to build to any standards, independent testing authorities, which by the way are paid strictly by the vendors to test and make sure it functions properly, but not to do the security testing."
-- Michael Wertheimer, Director, RABA Innovative Solutions Cell, NPR's Talk Of The Nation Interview, 2-6-04
#
"The most stunning thing in our work was that hand-counted paper ballots were better than anything else."
-- Stephen Ansolabeher, project director of The Voting Technology Project, comparing the reliability of voting systems used nationwide from 1988 to 2000
http://americanfreepress.net/08_25_03/Concerns_Over/concerns_over.html

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

"We in Information Security have been protesting the use of the poorly designed voting machines from Diebold and others, and as a result of their poor implementation and widespread use, our election remains in question and our country remains bitterly divided. Many people feel that their votes didn’t count, and for good reason. THESE SYSTEMS ARE NOT WORTHY OF OUR TRUST!"
- Chuck Herrin, CISSP, CISA, MCSE, CEH
Professional IT Auditor
http://www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevotedemo.htm
--------------

“As the computer scientists at Johns Hopkins recently reported, these new machines are vulnerable to massive fraud,” Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) said. “Unless Congress acts to pass legislation that would make sure that all computer voting machines have a paper record that voters can verify when they cast their ballots, voters and election officials will have no way of knowing whether the computers are counting votes properly.”
Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.)
http://americanfreepress.net/08_25_03/Concerns_Over/concerns_over.html

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

“There is a sense that in the past were part of the black box crowd and conspiracy theorists. No one is saying that now.”
Kay Albowicz
Representative
National Association of Secretaries of State
http://americanfreepress.net/08_25_03/Concerns_Over/concerns_over.html
-------------
"In the absence of any significant audit trails, you have no knowledge whatsoever as to what goes on inside the systems."
Peter Neumann
Stanford Research Institute

"They claim they keep everything secure, but this shows the lax nature of their procedures. This just blatantly flies in the face of good security."
Rebecca Mercuri
Professor of Computer Science
Bryn Mawr College

"Within the first half-hour of analysis, we found some immediate red flags. The more we examined it, the more we concluded this thing should not be used in elections."
Yoshi Kohno
Researcher
Information Security Institute
Johns Hopkins University

"You can't take something that's that broken and turn it into something secure. I am against electronic voting because I think voting is too important and computers are too difficult to secure."
Aviel D. Rubin
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Johns Hopkins University
Technical Director, Information Security Institute
Johns Hopkins University

"I don't think anybody has the capability to develop a whole new system from scratch in a year and I don't think Diebold had any incentive to do so, because none of this news broke until recently."
Aviel D. Rubin
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Johns Hopkins University
Technical Director, Information Security Institute
Johns Hopkins University

"We looked at the software, and it was poorly written.... all machines had the same password hardwired into the code. Computer Security 101 would tell you that's the first thing not to do."
Aviel D. Rubin
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Johns Hopkins University
Technical Director, Information Security Institute
Johns Hopkins University

* * *
Howard A. Denis, a Montgomery County council member, was "so shaken by the Hopkins report that he is considering asking for a waiver to stop using electronic machines," The Washington Post reported. " 'The more I look into this, the more serious I think it is,' " said Denis.

"I don't want to have this thing whitewashed and have a lot of happy talk, and have people trying to mollify us and blow off these charges," Denis told the Post . "The integrity of our democracy is really at stake here.

"The electronic machines were forced down our throats by the state," he said. "We were used as guinea pigs for this, and on top of it we had to pay for it."

* * *
Jones, as an Iowa state elections official, examined the flawed computer code five years earlier and pointed out the security problems to the system's developers and to government officials. "They promised it would be fixed," he said. "The Hopkins group found clear evidence that it wasn't. Yet for five years, I had been under the impression that it was fixed."

Jones said he was shocked to discover the flaws had not been corrected.

"There are more shenanigans. The hole had not been patched," Jones told AFP. "They can use the excuse of incompetence, but there are hints of deliberation . . . The Diebold machine should be decertified. Incompetence alone should be justification for de-certification. They were told and they didn't fix it."

* * *
"Unfortunately, he's wrong. The report is generally valid," said David L. Dill, computer scientist at Stanford University and member of the California Secretary of State's Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force. "It's been obvious that can be hacked, and Aviel shows that they can be hacked. They've blown up all the arguments that the present machines are OK.

"If the Virginia State Board of elections were really worried about being burned in effigy, it would have been prudent to seek a broader range of advice," he said.

"If a programmer employed by an election machine manufacturer introduces malicious code into the system that can change votes, even the most competent local election officials will not be able to stop it or detect it," Dill said.



http://wesavedemocracy.org/congress_electronic_voting.html
---------

"It seems the nation's election officials aren't open to input from anyone but the industries that are wining and dining them to buy their equipment."
Rebecca Mercuri
Professor of Computer Science
Bryn Mawr College

http://wesavedemocracy.org/voting_problems_corry.html
----------
Excerpts from the Diebold Memos:

"For a demonstration I suggest you fake it. Progam them both so they look the same, and then just do the upload fro the AV. That is what we did in the last AT/AV demo."
http://scdc.sccs.swarthmore.edu/diebold/lists/support.w3archive/199903/msg00098.html

"I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here 'looking dumb'."
http://scdc.sccs.swarthmore.edu/diebold/lists/support.w3archive/200101/msg00068.html

"Johnson County, KS will be doing Central Count for their mail in ballots. They will also be processing these ballots in advance of the closing of polls on election day. They would like to log into the Audit Log an entry for Previewing any Election Total Reports. They need this, to prove to the media, as well as, any candidates & lawyers, that they did not view or print any Election Results before the Polls closed. However, if there is a way that we can disable the reporting functionality, that would be even better."
http://scdc.sccs.swarthmore.edu/diebold/lists/rcr.w3archive/200202/msg00051.html

"4K Smart cards which had never been previously programmed are being recognized by the Card Manager as manager cards. When a virgin card from CardLogix is inserted into a Spyrus (have tried CM-0-2-9 and CM-1-1-1) the prompt 'Upgrade Mgr Card?' is displayed. Pressing the ENTER key creates a valid manager card. This happens in Admin mode and Election mode."
http://scdc.sccs.swarthmore.edu/diebold/lists/bugtrack.w3archive/200201/msg00025.html

[garybeck]

24. you friggin rock!

AG AG AG

[garybeck]

30. about those diebold memos

is that the same as this:

http://www.solarbus.org/election/articles/diebold_internalmemos.pdf

[Zan_of_Texas]

31. more

"I've come up with a new ice cream flavor: Fudged Election Confection," quips Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
CBS Aug 7 2004
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml

"We can live with winning and losing. We cannot live with fraud and stealing," Jesse Jackson said Sunday, November 28, 2004 at Mount Hermon Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio.
"We cannot be the home of the thief and the land of the slave."

"People complain about hanging chads," said Aviel D. Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and a co-author of the first study that found security flaws in the Diebold machines. "But if an electronic machine has malicious code in it, it's possible that all of the chads are hanging - and then you have to question every vote." -- NYT
2-28-04 article by John Schwartz


Paul Lehto: In effect the counting of electronic ballots takes place in electronic “rooms” where the public is never allowed to observe, even though most state statutes grant observers the right to observe all aspects of the vote counting process.

Paul Lehto: If elections are non-verifiable (or lack meaningful remedies for irregularities) then the government has broken free of the fundamental tether to the people set up by the Constitution and the Founders.

(Paul wrote these in emails. You can get verification by IMing Landshark here at DU)

[Cookie wookie]

26. In case you haven't passed your deadline:

“. . . VVPR are necessary because fully electronic voting machines are inherently vulnerable to undetectable rigging . . . . The audit trail compensates for inherent insecurity in the machines, making the election process (but not the machines) more secure.” Aviel D. Rubin, Ph.D. Professor of Computer Science and Technical Director of the Information Security Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Testimony before the U. S. Election Assistance Commission, New York City, June 30, 2005. http://avirubin.com/vote/(pdf under EAC hearings)

“A central requirement of voting systems in the larger sense that encompasses both the technology of elections and its human context, is that the entire process be observable.”
Douglas W. Jones, Ph.D., The University of Iowa, Department of Computer Science, “Voting System Transparency and Security: the Need for Standard Models, submitted to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Gaithersburg, Maryland, Sept. 20, 2004. http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/nist2004.shtml

“A further problem with touchscreen system is that a meaningful logic and accuracy (L&A) test is all but impossible to conduct. Thus, other security measures must be substituted for L&A testing, to ensure accuracy. These additional security measures absolutely must be provided. The only such security measure is to record the voter’s votes on a piece of paper or other durable object, and allow the voter to verify their votes by examining this object. This is often referred to as ”voter-verifiable paper trail.” Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), Statement for U.S. Election Assistance Commission News Conference, May 5, 2004. http://www.cpsr.org/issues/vote/eacmay04

[GuvWurld]

27. Banning hand re-counts of e-voting...

(Banning hand re-counts of e-voting) is worse than willingly walking into a mine field. This is being "brave" enough to play Russian Roulette with a bullet in every chamber.
--GuvWurld Blog, 4/3/04 commenting on a FL state Senate bill.

[Time for change]

29. I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but this appeared in the

NY Times -- by Ford Fessenden:

"A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows." ....

"county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio - primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods - new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas." ....

"These numbers are similar across Ohio. The Times examined registration from Jan. 1 to July 31 in a sample of counties ... In rock-ribbed Republican areas ... 35,000 new voters have registered, a substantial increase over the 28,000 that registered in those areas in the first seven months of 2000.... But in heavily Democratic areas - 60 ZIP codes mostly in the core of big cities like Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus and Youngstown .... new registrations have more than tripled over 2000, to 63,000 from 17,000.

The reason that this may be important is that this report of massive new voter registration is inconsistent with the official voter registration figures being released by Blackwell's Office. My hunch is that Blackwell may be aware that accurate figures on voter registration could be used to show that a Bush victory in Ohio in 2004 was highly implausable, if not impossible -- so he altered the figures accordingly.

I have more details on this if you wish.