Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News WEDNESDAY, 09/07/05

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Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News WEDNESDAY, 09/07/05

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1. OH: Blackwell Signs Petition Abolishing His Office by Vote of People

Payback is, well, very difficult. Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell was forced to certify the petition for a major ballot initiative in Ohio’s next election. Disgusted by Blackwell’s stunning incompetence, Ohio voters put forth an initiative which, among other things, takes supervision of elections away from the Secretary of State! Blackwell’s position. He did it. He was the worst and the people responded…and he had to sign the petition abolishing his own office. :rofl:

Blackwell certifies election issues for ballot

http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/news/state/12574858.htm

Associated Press Posted on Tue, Sep. 06, 2005

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Four ballot issues that would dramatically change how Ohio decides elections must clear only a court challenge to make the Nov. 8 ballot.

<snip>

One of the proposals would replace the Apportionment Board, which draws state legislative districts, with a board headed by a judge.

<snip>

A second amendment would limit individual contributions to state political campaigns, now $10,000, to $2,000 for statewide candidates and $1,000 for legislative candidates. Under a third, a nine-member, bipartisan board would oversee elections in Ohio. The Ohio Ballot Board, which decides what the proposals' language will be, separated another part of the package into a fourth issue: allowing Ohioans to vote early by mail without giving a reason.

Ohio First, a group organized by former Senate President Richard Finan, has sued Blackwell, claiming signatures collected by petition circulators from outside Ohio should be thrown out. Finan, a Republican….

CLICK HERE to get quick access to Election Results and Discussion Forum on your “Latest” page.

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2. CA: Berkley Paper Rails Against Electronic Voting--Demands Paper

This editorial from Berkley’s Daily Planet (the real one) is a primer on why machine voting is totally unacceptable.

Berkeley Daily Planet

Commentary: A Corrupt Track Record

Karla Bean
Edition Date: Tuesday, September 6, 2005

http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=09-06-05&storyID=22250

Regardless of the performance of Diebold’s electronic voting machines, we are putting our whole election system in jeopardy by placing it into the hands of private corporations who refuse to allow anyone to analyze the programming code unless they sign a non-disclosure agreement.

When Ion Sancho, the registrar of Leon County in Florida, invited Black Box Voting to examine his Diebold optical scan voting system, computer expert Harri Hursti found an executable program written into the code of each memory card. There is no justifiable reason to have such a program on these cards, except to facilitate manipulation of the vote count, and the voting system won’t work unless it is present. Harri Hursti was able to manipulate the vote count using this program in three different ways without leaving any trace of evidence behind. The votes can be switched and still equal the number of votes casts. The paper audit tape will agree with the changed vote totals and show no evidence of the program run. To see Hursti’s technical report, go to www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVreport.pdf.

To receive federal certification, electronic voting machine vendors use labs they hire themselves. These labs merely test that components of the system will operate in the way they say they will; there is no security testing done on these machines.

There are countless reported incidents, such as what occurred in the Alameda 2004 primary, where Diebold technicians applied “patches” at the last minute to their touch screen machines before the election without having them certified or examined. Poll workers saw unfamiliar Windows screens, frozen screens, strange error messages and login boxes—none of which they’d been trained to expect. A report released by Diebold showed 186 of 763 voter-card encoders failed because of hardware or software problems or both, but they offered no explanation of how and why they delivered faulty voting equipment to Alameda and San Diego counties—its two largest West Coast customers—on the eve of the 2004 presidential primary.

After the Oct. 7 recall election, when Diebold’s vote-tabulating software wrongly awarded 9,000 Democratic absentee votes to a Southern California Socialist, Diebold decided its computer was overwhelmed and replaced it.

In San Diego County, Diebold’s software misreported almost 3,000 votes. In the worst case, it switched 2,747 Democratic presidential primary votes for U.S. Sen. John Kerry to U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, who had dropped out of the race. In the recent San Diego mayoral race, Diebold technicians were observed actually replacing the central tabulation machines with unknown devices to count the votes. Was it a remarkable happenstance that the percentages of votes per candidate stayed even throughout the night as the precinct results were fed into the tabulators?

Former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley decertified Diebold after he found they had fraudulently delivered machines running uncertified versions of software to California counties. He also mandated paper trails for machines by 2006, but current Secretary of State McPherson says he doubts these paper ballot copies could be used in a recount, the only way to verify an election.

So please forgive us, Mr. Byrd, if we have skepticism and disdain for Diebold and other electronic voting machine vendors, but it based on your company’s past history of deception, contract breaches, questionable contributions, insecure practices and use of executable programs on your memory cards that facilitate vote manipulation, illegal application of uncertified “patches” on the machines that count our votes, and the countless incidents of miscounted, uncounted and switched votes and voter disenfranchisements that seem to accompany your machines.

Until we go back to hand-counted paper ballots, we will never truly be able to trust the results of our elections.


CLICK HERE to get quick access to Election Results and Discussion Forum on your “Latest” page.

[knowbody0]

3. nice post

i miss TIA
good to hear from you too

[philly_bob]

9. Missing TIA

Me too.

Anybody know where TIA is posting these days?

Bob=

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4. HA: State to Buy Voting Machines, No Time for Public Input

Hawaii seeks bits for new voting machines. Guess what, the schedule for bidding and acceptance is so quick there won’t be time to seek public input. Priceless. We work for them right: they pay our salaries: they pay our business expenses: and benefits. :sarcasm: This is as it should be.

State plans to seek early bids for new voting machines

http://www.kpua.net/news.php?id=6182

Posted: Monday, September 5th, 2005 10:21 AM HST

By Associated Press

HONOLULU (AP) _ State elections officials plan to seek bids early next year for new electronic voting machines they want to use in the 2006 primary and general elections.

The machines would generate a paper record that voters can inspect before leaving the voting booth.

Officials will use the printouts to audit the electronic results.

This feature is designed to address election observer fears that electronic voting machines wouldn't allow monitors to check whether the vote cast matched the one recorded by the machine.

But some election officials feel next year is too soon to introduce new machines.

Bill Eger is from Keaau on the Big Island. He served as an election observer last year.

He says election officials won't have enough time to seek public input. He says the schedule is crazy.



CLICK HERE to get quick access to Election Results and Discussion Forum on your “Latest” page.

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5. Azerbaijan: Getting Rid of Exit Polls, "Reluctant Responders" Fear Death

Some people worry that our balance of trade deficit is growing. In a major move to export surplus intellectual property, the “reluctant Bush responder” theory, has been exported to the central Asian Azerbaijan Republic. This theory designed to explain how Kerry won the National Exit Polls yet lost the 2004 election, claimed that Bush responders to exit poll questions were “reluctant” to state their preference for Bush. Proof of this never materialized and may not ever since many of these “reluctant” ones would be from the Northeast, not a quiet section of the country. Now Radio Free Europe is peddling this theory in Azerbaijan. The seed to discredit exit polls as a means of catching fraud is outlined below. Rural villagers may be reluctant to tell exit pollsters the truth for fear of “the wrath of the opposition.” What an accomplishment! We’re enabling election fraud overseas in the same way we enable it here. Let’s hear it for Condi Rice and the entire Bush administration. The “messengers of democracy and deluge.”

Azerbaijan: From Showmanship to Brinkmanship

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/09/BC0CC2D5-0E73-45DD-9C5D-A4314EE66ED8.html

By Liz Fuller
Friday, 02 September 2005

On 11 May, President Ilham Aliyev issued a decree outlining measures to improve the conduct of elections. The preamble to that decree admitted that contrary to the "political will" of the Azerbaijani authorities, previous elections were marred by "illegalities," but it blamed those irregularities on the "lack of professionalism" and "post-Soviet mentality" of individual local officials and election commission members. (No effort has been made over the past two years to identify the individuals responsible for those "irregularities" and bring them to justice.)

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A third provision of President Aliyev's decree, ostensibly intended to contribute to the fairness of the election process, is the provision for the conduct of exit polls. Paradoxically, however, this provision could have the opposite effect if voters in rural areas, fearful of the wrath of the local authorities, claim to have voted for the YAP candidate when in fact they cast their votes for a member of the opposition. A glaring discrepancy between the actual division of ballots cast and the exit-poll results could impel local election commission members to bring the "official" tally into line with the inaccurate exit-poll data.


CLICK HERE to get quick access to Election Results and Discussion Forum on your “Latest” page.

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6. Egypt: Elections, Yes! International Observers, No!

Talk about longevity. I remember Mubarak’s ascension after the tragic assassination of Anwar Sadat. Mubarak was forced into a “democratic” gesture in a society not used to democracy. His response is to hold elections but make sure international observers are not allowed at the polling places or anywhere near the election. On edit: and neither did we in 2004. Hmmm.... Another attempt to balance the trade deficit through exporting surplus intellectual property.

New Mubarak means same old problems, say opponents. Egypt's 77-year-old president faces his first competitive election today - but the result is in little doubt

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1563992,00.html?gusrc=rss

Brian Whitaker in Cairo
Wednesday September 7, 2005
The Guardian

Old habits die hard, especially in Egypt. When President Hosni Mubarak launched his election campaign, the party faithfully declared their support in traditional fashion. "With our souls, with our blood, we will sacrifice for you," they chanted, but the president was not pleased and asked them to stop.

Those are the words that Arab crowds have parroted for decades, pledging eternal loyalty to Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat among others, but in the new world of Egyptian politics they are seriously off-message - the equivalent of singing The Red Flag at a Labour rally in Britain.

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Calls for international monitoring have been rejected on grounds of national sovereignty. The government argues that supervision by Egyptian judges, plus the presence of international media, will be enough to ensure transparency.

The judges, who were highly critical of a referendum last May which they said was marred by abuses and irregularities, had been threatening a boycott but have now agreed to go ahead with their supervision, while calling for more steps to ensure a fair vote and threatening to expose any foul play.

So far, the government has largely ignored their demands and has been manoeuvring to shift the more independent-minded judges away from main polling stations.

Many of the judges remain defiant, however, and their tussle with the government could turn out to be the most important contest on polling day.



CLICK HERE to get quick access to Election Results and Discussion Forum on your “Latest” page.

[Wilms]

7. Commentary: Diebold Delivers Untrustworthy Results

Berkeley Daily Planet
Edition Date: Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Commentary: Diebold Delivers Untrustworthy Results

By RICHARD STEINFELD

I’m following up on Peter Teichner’s insightful Aug. 16 piece, “How Many Diebolds to Screw Up an Election.”
Diebold’s receipt-printing behavior reminds me of Arafat’s shlemeil act: a strange seeming incompetence and shrugging, while election officials just stand around and watch helplessly. The shenanigans have been curious and telling.

Some people in politics, when they get to a certain degree of power, enter a strange realm of arrogance or power-drunkenness within which it no longer seems to matter to them that their appearance of wrongdoing has become visible to the electorate. They don’t bother to cover their tracks any more. And here, we see Schwarzenegger’s shameless money steamroller, Cheney’s glaring Haliburton conflict and Scalia’s chumming with him right before an important court vote about him (electric with impropriety), and Bush’s appointed regulators standing around and watching while his buddy Ken Lay rapes California’s electricity consumers (Democrats have given goodies to their chums, too, but the GOP has taken the corruption to new, dizzying heights). And then there’s the rather transparent boast that Diebold would deliver Ohio to the neocons: our topic of the moment. How numb have we become in the face of so much corruption, conflict, and connivance, that this hasn’t been more of a hot-button?

When it comes to Diebold and the receipts, you’re going to prove the lie to yourself! The next time you go to the ATM, take a good, hard look at the logo on that ATM machine. Spell it out. What does it say? (If it doesn’t say D-I-E-B-O-L-D, go look at a few more ATMs.)

I submit that not only can Diebold print receipts, but that Diebold has refined receipt printing to flawless excellence. They are experts at reliable receipt printing. Diebold prints receipts day after day with complete accuracy. Have you ever checked your Diebold-printed ATM receipt and found that it disagreed with either your transaction or with your monthly bank statement? Has the Diebold ATM machine screwed up the transaction in those rare cases in which it didn’t print a receipt for you? And would their customer financial institutions put up with the same behavior that Diebold has exhibited when it comes to their voting machines? I smell a rat. And I think we’ve been fed some bad electoral pizza with rat topping.

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http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=09-06-05&storyID=22249

[Wilms]

8. UK.gov ditches 'Big Brother'-style e-voting

UK.gov ditches 'Big Brother'-style e-voting

By Tim Richardson

Published Tuesday 6th September 2005 15:38 GMT

The Government has ditched plans for electronic voting at next year's local elections, it emerged today.

The news was slipped out in a written answer during the summer recess prompting the Tories to describe plans for "widespread electronic voting and an 'e-enabled general election' by next year" as "a shambles".

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"Restoring public confidence in our electoral system is more important than spending taxpayers' money on 'Big Brother' text messaging gimmicks.

"This lack of an adequate audit trail is extremely worrying in the light of the risk of fraud already exposed with all-postal voting," he said.

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/06/govt_voting

Thanks to Cyberpj for the discussion:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x392725