EAC Initiates Formal Investigation Into ES&S Optical Scanners

[Wilms]

EAC Initiates Formal Investigation Into ES&S Unity 3.2.0.0 Voting System

Posted on March 3, 2011

From the pdf at the link -

Scope of Investigation

The focus of the Investigation shall be the ES&S DS200 Precinct Count Optical Scanner (Firmware Version 1.3.10.0) contained in the ES&S Unity 3.2.0.0 EAC certified voting system. Specifically, the investigation will focus on the following possible non-conformities with the VVSG:

1. Issue: Freeze/shutdown. The DS200 initiates the shutdown process whereupon it will complete approximately 90% of the shutdown process and then freeze. The screen saver will initiate after the appropriate time has elapsed. The DS200 Unit will not accept ballots in the frozen state.

2. Issue: Failure to log. Cuyahoga County election officials provided EAC the logs from their May 4 and August 8, 2010 elections. The May 4 election used over 1,000 DS200’s; the August 8 election was smaller, providing logs from only 12 machines. Review of these records identified an additional issue. The freeze/shutdown issue does not result in any record of its occurrence in the system logs.

3. Issue: Ballot Skew. When a 17” ballot is inserted incorrectly into the unit the lower left and right hand corners of the ballot are not accurately read.

4. Issue: Vote miscount. The DS200 accepts a voted ballot but does not record that ballot on its internal counter.

http://www.eac.gov/eac_initiates_formal_investigation_into_ess_unity_3.2.0.0_voting_system/

[tabatha]

1. Good! Please follow Debra Bowen's example.

[BeFree]

2. Thanks, Wilms

EAC - Electoral Assistance Commission - right? Been a long time....

That issue number 4 looks to be a root problem = not logging on internal counter.

Anywho, the question is are they just fine-tuning/tweaking, or is this a real investigation?
And when might details be available?

[Wilms]

4. The EAC might only be doing this to look like they're doing something.

There's an effort to revert to the old system of having the NASS deal with it. Unacceptable.

But NIST says you can't rely on software to run the elections or audit them. Period. So it really doesn't matter. You have to count enough paper by hand to have sufficient confidence in outcomes. And NOBODY is doing that enough to have a sufficient degree of confidence in close elections.

I don't know when they'll reach a conclusion, but something tells me this issue effects ALL ES&S products.

[robinlynne]

18. Something tells me they are the fox watching the hen house. they are Bush appointees.

One of them came form the infmaous Election Center itself! (where most of the corrupt election officials are trained by the right and ES&S.)

[Melissa G]

3. 'Bout Blankety Blank #&^$*!!## Time!

I wonder how long this inquiry will take and how many elections will pass before any impact (or if any impact at all) is felt. :grr:
Of course, then there are all the other black box voting machines that won't be looked at all until their exact problems are found and duly noted into the beginnings of a who know how long process. :eyes:

More elections miscounted in the interim...:argh:

[Bill Bored]

5. kick nt

[robinlynne]

6. Isn't the EAC still stacked with voting companies? the exact same people Bush

put there? Remember the director quit because he couldn't handle the corruption? So ES&S tests itself and says it is doing just fine.

[Wilms]

7. No. Well, ok. No. And, no.

Can't defend the EAC, but I don't think what you wrote is accurate.

There are industry reps on the TGDC arm of the EAC. Depending on influence, that's not unreasonable. And I really couldn't call it "stacked".

Two of the four commissioners were Bush's (he was president* for eight years), two seats are vacant.

The first director quit, but if it was because of "corruption", I'll need an update.

And, no, the EAC, not ES&S, will be doing the review.

Formerly, all this was handled by NASED. In fact, some want a return to that. I'm not an EAC fan, but the current arrangement beats the last, if by a nose.

[robinlynne]

8. NASED. read about NASED. read who they are. they are not the people you want in charge of your

elections. the EAC are presidential appointees. they should have all been removed within hours of taking over the presidency. automatically.

read up on the resignation.
You think it is reasonable for industry reps to oversee and determine the viability of their own products? That is the same as BP scientists analyzing the oil damage instead of independent scientists. or govt scientists. the ones who were not allowed in to check, remember?

[Wilms]

9. I already said NASED is worse.

And it's the alternative to the EAC should Congress defund the latter, which some want to see done.

I don't think it's "reasonable for industry reps to oversee and determine the viability of their own products", nor did I say they did. You have. And it's not accurate.

Read up on the EAC. There's plenty to dislike without resorting to hyperbole. http://www.eac.gov/about_the_eac/

If you have a link about the resignation, you can post it.

[robinlynne]

10. the resignation was many years ago; I dont even remember his name.

if you do, we can google it.

[robinlynne]

11. interesting: 2 seats are vacant on the EAC. the other 2 are Bush appointees.

Looks like more people quit perhaps. So Obama has not placed one single person on the EAC. I will check political affiliation for the two now seated.

[robinlynne]

12. ok. the chiar of the EAC was the chair of NASED and came from the Election Center, fully funded

by ES&S and the other 2 private voting companies. I rest my case. A person trained by Diebold (at the Election Center)is in charge of regulating ES&S.
HAVA itself, is a Bush act designed to push electronic voting. the EAC is responsible for implementing HAVA.
there is little info about the other member of the EAC, only that Bush appointed her 2 months before Obama took office.

now, Obama can and should replace them. He did not. just like the Bush prosecutors. He left many of them in place. Why?

[Wilms]

14. I pointed to the inaccuracies of your previous post. And you've not posted a single link to refute.

I will not, and can not, defend the EAC, and certainly not NASED. But I'm willing to call BS when I see it, because BS, and illogical conclusions, and hyperbole, all hurts our efforts.

So, who is this commissioner who you say was "trained by Diebold (at the Election Center)"? Please be specific about your assertion that they were "trained". And make that with a link.

And where do you find evidence that "the Election Center, (is) fully funded by ES&S and the other 2 private voting companies"? Please include a link with that too.

At minimum, Obama should re-appoint anyone who's term is up. So I don't know what he has in mind (other than the fact that there are two vacant seats already). But you won't find me defending many of his (Bush-like) policies.

Again, there's plenty to not like. Why don't you study and make your case instead of mis-informing your fellow members. That, or "rest your case". Please.

[robinlynne]

16. use the google. both are true. google eac for link to the first. google the leciton center for

link to the second. I'm not going to do the work for you. I jsut goggled EAC and read. her information is there. She comes from both the ELEciton Center and was the head of NASED. It is on the EAC website. the Election Center was fully funded by the three computerize voting corporations (who have many ties with the far right christians) Many epop;le ahve done the work, myself included. just look it up.

[Wilms]

21. WTF are you talking about..."I'm not going to do the work for you."

I've been cleaning up the mess you deposited here.

So you googled, read a link, and won't paste it here? Nice.

Put up the link about "fully funded" instead typoing assertions.

[OnTheOtherHand]

25. umm

Apparently Donetta Davidson was on the board of directors of the Election Center as of 2004, according to a document I found on freepress.org, certainly not on the EAC website. That doesn't really make her "from" the Election Center, or "trained by Diebold"; it presumably means that she attended board meetings, and beyond that, who knows?

the Election Center was fully funded by the three computerize voting corporations (who have many ties with the far right christians) Many epop;le ahve done the work, myself included. just look it up.

OK, I tried that, and here is something I found:

In 2002, the Houston-based Election Center operated on a $462,000 budget. Executive Director Doug Lewis said Election Center's budget comes mostly from membership dues and training fees.

But he acknowledges accepting up to $10,000 a year in donations from voting-equipment manufacturers like Sequoia Voting Systems and Election Systems & Software.

http://www.wheresthepaper.org/MercuryNews05_30ElectionOfficialsRelyOnPrivateFirms.htm
(referencing) http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/8797832.htm

I looked at the Election Center's 2009 Form 990. It reported about $1.24 million in revenues, of which $183,000 came from "contributions and grants," and almost all the rest came from program service revenues.

Really annoyed that I care more about the accuracy of your statements than you do. I'm guessing you think that you were close enough, but I hope you'll surprise me.

[robinlynne]

28. It was created and funded in 1980.

[OnTheOtherHand]

48. and your point is?

Have you provided evidence that, in 1980, it was fully funded by the voting companies? Have you provided evidence that Donetta Davidson was trained by Diebold?

[robinlynne]

17. no inaccuracies. no inaccurate conclusions. Just because you dont read doesn't mean it isnt so....

Did you try google? It works. the info is all publicly available. You are too rude to deserve my time. Do it yourself. Then base your calls on facts.

[Wilms]

22. Your behavior is what's rude.

Some of us in the EI community take issue with that sort of thing.

[robinlynne]

27. You are in the EI community?

[Wilms]

31. Yeah.

The reality-based one.

[robinlynne]

33. then you have friends who can tell you about the election center and who funded it.

and its history.

[Wilms]

34. I'm sufficently aware

to realize your assertions are incorrect.

I've repeatedly said I do not, and will not defend any of these entities. But I will defend the truth.

The whole situation with the nation's voting systems is truly desperate. You're not helping.

[robinlynne]

38. The EAC as it is right now, with 2 Bush appointees, at least one comong from the Election Cneter,

will NOT work to improve the situation. If on the other hand, Obama were to choose 4 good people, or at least 2 good people, and two reasonable people, and put them in the EAC, we might have a chance at some sort of regulation. I think people need ot be aware. leading DUers to believe that the EAC will actually regulate ES&S is not positive. It is either naive or purposefully wrong.

Do you think an ex Goldman Sachs person is the person to regulate Goldman Sachs?
or that the BP scientist should be the only scientists allowed to check what is going on in the gulf?
that is exactly what you have with the EAC.

If you actaully WANT some change and a little tiny hint of regulation of ES&S, you need to get people in the EAC who will do that. Right now ES&S' trainees are regulating ES&S. That is why ES&S and the others created the Election Center. It is not by coincidence. The Kathy Nicklaus's and Blackwells (Ohio) did not come out of thin air. They are not coincidental. They were trained to do a job. not for the citizens.

[Wilms]

40. More assertions.

Enjoy them.

And add Obama to the list of people I'm too often unable to defend.

But now that you brought it up, I thought this whole thing was a RIGHT-wing scam.

And BTW, I'll bet most of the slugs you mentioned do in fact come out of thin-air. No Manchurians needed, there are plenty willing to do it for politics, religion, and money.

[robinlynne]

42. what whole thing? the EAC testing ES&S? then we agree.

[Wilms]

44. We easily agree on a range of issues.

And I'm pointing out inaccuracies in your understanding.

It's not a big deal, except the genre of the inaccuracies I find to be counter-productive.

That the DS200 is getting ANY attention is a good thing. It wouldn't surprise if we'd have greater access to the report info than if the cert labs did the testing.

[robinlynne]

45. Look at this: election center task report on the 2004 eleciton, fascinaitng reading.

it seems that now WE are funding them through HAVA. (whihc does not change who set them up and funded them to begin with; it just makes it worse.)

Read how they see elections:

http://electioncenter.org/electionresources.html#helpful

"Very few issues were reported relating to problems with voting machines. the problems were created by people, not machines, and any reform of substance..."

"the consensus of the group was to send an unambigous message that the nation's electoral process was not broken, while simultaneously recognizing that modernization and change are needed."

I'm going to read the rest.
that's just from page one. we NEED electronic voting. We NEED privatization.
(also we need more absentee voting, because it is easy to privatize, and fraud is really really easy. In my county, ES&S processes all absentee voting, sends the ballots to the voters, ES&S machines decide if a voter's signature is or is not the voter's, and that machine has high, medium, and low settings, and then scanners count those ballots." ES&S also owns the voter database. I repeat OWNS the voter registration database. The software is proprietary and belongs to ES&S. It used to be created by the County for the County. But an election center Registrar fixed that.

[robinlynne]

20. so simple; Here's a link it took 2 seconds; #2 the election center funded by evoting vendors:

When challenged by the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Election Center's executive director R. Doug Lewis confirmed that the center had taken donations from the following makers of electronic voting machines <8>:

* Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. of Oakland, CA
* Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) of Omaha, Neb.
* 'probably' (in Lewis's words) Diebold Election Systems





If you check any of the corrupt election official's backgrounds, you will find that they come from the election center, as does the current head of the EAC. same people. NASED too.
in other words the training of the current head of the EAC was paid for by the e-voting companies. They are trained and selected. Do you believe she will find problems with ES&S systems? the entire EAC was CREATED by Bush to approve electronic voting systems. HAVA makes it mandatory. our tax dollars pay for it. That is, unfortunately, the TRUTH in this country.


http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Election_Center

[Wilms]

23. Indeed, that seems correct...and not what you continue to assert.

So how do you get from "taken donations" to "fully funded"?

[robinlynne]

26. just read. It was fully funded by the voting companies. Who else funded it?

maybe a right wing Christian or two, but they will have connections to the voting companies. Do you get that our elections were privatized after 2000? On purpose. by right wing corporations? Do youg et that ES&S now counts more than 80% of American votes.

Why do you think soucewatch says "He had to admit" that he was funded by ES&S, Diebold, and the third company. Because the elciton center calls itself a non-profit working for "democracy". it isn't.

[Wilms]

30. You've actually read the SourceWatch bit and STILL post "fully funded"?

Meanwhile, OTOH linked it five minutes ago upthread. You could have spared us another embarrassingly inaccurate post, had you read it.

[robinlynne]

13. ok, goggled the two EAc commissioners. both Bush appointees. One is republican.

the other couldn't find her party but her only interviews are on fox news. The other 2 seats are...empty. So basically there is no citizen voice there. not even a Democratic Party voice, or else, the pArty doe snot care about elections. Why would they let the exact same corrupt system Bush put in place continue without even a changing of the guard? I mean these seats are presidential appointees. We still have Bush's people in office. only.
which says to me that the D party likes the Bush status quo vis-a-vis elections. why would that be?

[Wilms]

15. Cool! Google is back up.

[OnTheOtherHand]

19. EAC 101

The way the EAC is set up, it is supposed to have two Democrats and two Republicans at all times -- serving staggered four-year terms. The basic mechanism for achieving that bipartisan balance is to allow the partisan leaders of each house of Congress to recommend candidates, and to require Senate confirmation. At the outset, there were indeed two Democrats and two Republicans, notwithstanding that all four commissioners were "Bush appointees."

So, what went wrong? Long story short: Senate Republicans have blocked attempts to confirm replacements. Now, with only two commissioners, the EAC is mostly disabled, because a quorum is three.

The problem isn't that Obama refuses to get rid of Bush's commissioners -- it isn't as if he can unilaterally shorten their terms. Instead of asking why "the D party likes the Bush status quo," it might make more sense to ask why the R party likes the EAC dead in the water.

[Wilms]

24. Why do you hate torches and pitch-forks? n/t

[robinlynne]

29. The preisdent chooses the commissioners not congress. They need senate approval. I don't

think congress is part of the process. There is no need for them to complete their terms. They are presidential appointees, all 4, . Normally when a president comes in from another party the presidential appointees are replaced, just like in the justice department. The two dems and two republicans is true. But I believe Obama can choose all 4, from both parties. I'm not 100% sure.

[robinlynne]

32. here, from the EAc website: The four EAC commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed

The four EAC commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. EAC is required to submit an annual report to Congress as well as testify periodically about HAVA progress and related issues. The commission also holds public meetings and hearings to inform the public about its progress and activities.

[Wilms]

35. And...

[robinlynne]

36. the poster said congress chooses EAc commissioners. It is the president.

like judges. President chooses, senate approves. It is not stuck in congress. Congress isn't in the equation. There is no reason for Bush's appointees to be there. they do not have to serve full terms. It is up to the president. with senate approval. They are presidential appointees.

[Wilms]

37. Eye-yi-yi.

(a) Membership.--
(1) In <<NOTE: President.>> general.--The Commission shall
have four members appointed by the President, by and with the
advice and consent of the Senate.

(2) Recommendations.--Before the initial appointment of the
members of the Commission and before the appointment of any
individual to fill a vacancy on the Commission, the Majority
Leader of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of
Representatives, the Minority Leader of the Senate, and the
Minority Leader of the House of Representatives shall each
submit to the President a candidate recommendation with respect
to each vacancy on the Commission affiliated with the political
party of the Member of Congress involved.

...

(b) Term of Service.--
(1) In general.--Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and
(3), members shall serve for a term of 4 years and may be
reappointed for not more than one additional term.



http://www.fec.gov/hava/law_ext.txt

[robinlynne]

39. and? still Obama's call. Are the two womne in palce right now Dems? I dont know the answer to that.

I do know that Dem or Repug we dont want anyone from the Election Center regulating elections or ES&S.

[Wilms]

41. Good luck with that.

Lot's of people have had one thing or another to do with the Election Center. Not that they are FROM there as you claim.

[robinlynne]

43. It is a training center. It trains election officials. to have specific goals for elections.

such as privatizing and computerizing said elections. really.

[Wilms]

46. I think who they are and what they do is self-evident within the realm of industry associations.

These are not "watch-dogs". They're in their own world and they defend it and cover up for it. They don't rely on the manufacturers as sole income sources, at the same time.

Meanwhile, the conspiracy that is computer voting is the same conspiracy that brought us any other technological evolution. Doesn't make it OK. But it's as much a dark force as the one that brought TV into the home.

So you can be sure they deserve your scrutiny, and even outrage, and most certainly, your informed response.

[robinlynne]

47. so you think electronic voting is ok then? that it is just like the introduction of tv?

Then we disagree on the very basics of elections. Have you seen Clint Curtis' testimony in the Congressional hearing?

in Ohio, right after the 2004 election. he is a NASA computer programmer, and he testified that there is NO way to verify the accuracy of an electronic vote. he can easily create a virus which would change vote totals, then eat itself so it is not detectable by checking the software. period. he also testified that he was hired to do that in the Florida 2000 election.

you can not have a safe electronic election. one person in one second can make a program run on any one computer. As they are all connected to the central tabulator, the tabulation is easily changeable. There aren't any more Ei people who believe that electronic voting is safe, as far as I know. There was the open voting consortium, saying that open source code can be checked, therefor it is safe. but that was blown out of the water by CLint Curtis and others like him. Are you a computer guy?

[OnTheOtherHand]

50. wow, where have you been for the last five years?

You're asking Wilms if he thinks "electronic voting is ok... just like the introduction of tv"?

:banghead:

[robinlynne]

51. he, Wilms, compared electronic voting to television. I am strongly against it. It is not verifiable.

[Bill Bored]

62. How about this?

[OnTheOtherHand]

49. if you had read my post, you would know the answer to that

Are you having a bad day? I don't remember your posts being so, frankly, off the wall.

[robinlynne]

52. i'm not following you. I have been responding to Wilms. If as he says, electronic

voting is inevitable, and simply "the future", then we disagree on the very basics. I think no private corporations should be involved in managing elections. I also think paper ballots are the safest way to vote. Based on those ideas, I am against the election center, what it does, and stands for and do not want Election Center trained persons in charge of regulating elections!
I assumed, since Wilms said he/she is an election integrity person, that he/she feels the same way regarding the basics of democracy. i.e. If you can't see the vote counting it is not public. if you cannot verify the vote counting it is not acceptable. whether it is behind a closed door or in a computer. same thing.

[OnTheOtherHand]

53. Wilms said no such thing about "the future"

If you won't take the time to read and think about people's posts, please don't take the time to reply.

Edit: It belatedly occurred to me that you might think I was saying that Wilms didn't say he was an election integrity person. Actually, I don't remember if he said that, but he certainly is.

While I'm here: who said they wanted Election Center trained people in charge of regulating elections? We're trying to get facts straight.

[robinlynne]

54. Here are his words:

Meanwhile, the conspiracy that is computer voting is the same conspiracy that brought us any other technological evolution. Doesn't make it OK. But it's as much a dark force as the one that brought TV into the home. The "force" that brought tv into the home was technological evolution. The "force" that brought electronic voting to the US, and now plans to sell it all around the world IS a very dark one.
It is not inevitable, simply a modernization. What is going on here is much much more than that. conspiracy, ok. not the word I would use, but an adequate word to describe the events of the past 20 years vis a vis elections. It was quite well thought and out and executed. And even when our side is in power, goes unquestioned.

The thing is that elections are how we exercise democracy. They are supposed to represent the people's voice. Our votes are counted, scanned, and tabulated by ES&S. with a federal mandate created by Bush. and oversight....... with oversight provided by people trained by ES&S. The Election Center is not a bipartisan non profit striving for democracy. The ELEction Center's interests are in privatizing elections, and making them more and more electronic, which makes them less and less verifiable, and easier and easier to steal.
I stand by that. firmly.

[OnTheOtherHand]

55. who said "inevitable"?

Technological evolution doesn't Just Happen, and the terms on which new technology is adopted don't just happen, either. That was true for television as well.

However, you do seem to think that electronic voting is -- not to put too fine a point on it -- a Republican (dominionist?) plot. That's a stretch. If Republicans or dominionists or whoever had carefully thought out and executed a plan to steal elections through electronic voting, I like to think that they would have gone to some effort to plug security holes that anyone can exploit. The Hursti hack is nonpartisan. All the other known hacks -- and there are oodles -- are nonpartisan as well. There may be additional, partisan hacks, but I see no reason to assume it.

It's tendentious to say that "Bush" created the EAC; as far as I can tell, it's tendentious to say that Davidson was trained by ES&S or by Diebold, and you don't seem interested in learning any more about that. In this thread, you're basically functioning as a loose cannon.

As far as I can tell, you have no idea whether the Election Center is bipartisan and no clue how to figure it out. But it's irrelevant. No one here is invested in saying nice things about the Election Center. And you don't appear really to know much about the Election Center except that you're agin it, so it doesn't matter much what you stand by, firmly. It can be useful to take sides, but it doesn't add much substance.

[robinlynne]

56. This will be my last post. Bush created HAVA. HAVA created the EAC. So why is it

far fetched to say that the EAC comes from Bush? The two commissioners are Bush appointees. Do you trust them to regulate ES&S? Or don't you think they might legitimize the process even further?
What do you think of HAVA? It is all one thing, one group. one idea, one notion. HAVA, the Election Center. Florida 2000. These are not isolated coincidences. And it is working very well for the far right and election corporations.
They won. They are in charge of "democracy". They regulate themselves. The structure they built up is strong. Do you get that one private corporation is counting 85% of the votes in our country? And inserting itself into all the other aspects of elections, from absentee voting to maintaining voter data to creating the ballots? The woman who created the "butterfly ballot in FLorida 2000....is from the Election Center."

Do you believe Obama only won by 51%? really? for a second?

Both parties are pushing absentee strongly. It is all privatized. It is the easiest thing in the world to change those votes when you do not have public accountability. For goodness' sakes, a Diebold machine determines which voters' signatures to accept or reject! (faster than a human.....)
And when there is a recount, as in wisconsin, the ballots in wide open bags were included in the count!!! Computer tapes dated one week before the election were included and counted.
As far as I know, noone even checked the jurisdiction with the 14,000 extra votes to see if the voters listed in the roster books really voted. There are no voters' signatures in the rosters to cross check.
When in 2004, there were 13 congressional races contested, congress decided NOT to investigate. (a Dem Congress, and all 13 were Dems who contested the results. Only one of those elections was investigated because of the public outrage.)

I'm glad you don't defend the election center.
Anyway, this is tiring. whatever you want is fine with me.

[OnTheOtherHand]

57. presidents do not create laws

Like it or not, HAVA was bipartisan legislation passed by huge margins in both houses of Congress, not an executive order or even one of Bush's legislative priorities.

As I've pointed out, the two commissioners can't "regulate ES&S," because they don't have a quorum. So it doesn't really matter whether I trust them or not. It also doesn't really matter that they are "Bush appointees," per se, for reasons I also pointed out, as did Wilms. (They are, in fact, the Republican commissioners -- unlike the Democratic commissioners who were "Bush appointees" -- but apparently that distinction is somehow too subtle for your purposes.)

As far as I can tell, Teresa LePore is even less "from the Election Center" than Donetta Davidson is. But, hey, whatever.

Do you believe Obama only won by 51%? really? for a second?

Oh, FFS. In the official popular vote figures, Obama won by about 7.3%: 52.9% to 45.6%. It would hardly have taken you any more time to get this right than to get it wrong.

Anyway, this is tiring. whatever you want is fine with me.

Evidently not, because what I would like is for you to care enough about what you write to do some basic fact-checking. More generally, I want people who talk about election integrity issues to convey that they do everything they can to get the facts right, so that their advocacy is as informed and as credible as possible.

[Bill Bored]

59. I would argue that committee members, and esp. chairs, create laws.

The rest of the legislature just goes along for the ride. They don't have time to study the issues.

So I believe HAVA was mostly the creation of Chris Dodd and Bob Ney. The rest of Congress had no idea what they were doing, nor did Chris, since he has sponsored bills to have even MORE electronic voting post-HAVA, even though his own state went with paper ballots.

[Bill Bored]

60. More on Butterfly Ballot Creator Theresa LePore

Theresa LePore
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Theresa LePore is a former Supervisor of Elections for Palm Beach County, Florida. She is most notable as the person who designed the infamous "butterfly ballot", used in the 2000 presidential election.<1> This would lead the press to nickname her "Madame Butterfly." Following the controversial results of the 2000 election, she lost her re-election bid in September 2004 and left office in January 2005.

Education

LePore grew up in Palm Beach County, attending Cardinal Newman High School in West Palm Beach, Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth and Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

She started her career in the Supervisor of Elections Office in 1971 as a file clerk. She quickly rose through the ranks and achieved the position of Chief Deputy Supervisor in the late 1970's. During the 1980s she also moonlighted as a ramp clerk at Palm Beach International Airport.

LePore was a registered Democrat.<2><3> After the 2000 election, she switched her party registration to No Party Affiliation.

LePore is (or was) a member of the following organizations:

* American Society of Public Administration
* The Election Center
* Kiwanis of Flagler Sunrise
* League of Women Voters
* International Association of Clerks, Recorders, Election Officials and Treasurers
* Women's Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches
* Florida State Association of Supervisors of Election. Theresa served terms as Secretary, Vice-President, and President of FSASE.
* Executive Women of the Palm Beaches
* The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of PBC
* Hispanic Human Resources Council
* Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresa_LePore

[Bill Bored]

58. High DRE failure rates could have a VERY partisan effect. EAC did nothing to improve that standard.

If voters can't vote because the machines are down and there is no backup method, that could be made to be partisan by deploying unreliable machines in (Dem) party strongholds, such as urban areas (as in FL, PA, elsewhere?).

A lawsuit had to be filed against PA in federal court just to get backup paper ballots in case of DRE failures. That should not have been necessary, esp. since PA is supposed to be a blue state. They had a Dem Governor and SoS.

Dems = own worst enemies!

FL had to have a CD-13 debacle before they dumped their DREs. PA still has theirs.

On edit, and back to the OP:
And now the EAC is going after ballot scanners that failed tests in...Ohio...of all places! We'll see how far they actually do go.

[Bill Bored]

61. "I like to think that they (Repubs) would...plug security holes that anyone can exploit."

Well, maybe, but those holes first became public when source code was left unattended on the Internet by Diebold (which was another security hole!).

Only later did insiders such as election officials arrange for their own hacking tests, and many still have not done so, despite their claims to the contrary.

The EAC, for their part:
- has not approved proposals for hacking tests in their standards,
- has not required voting systems to be software independent, and
- AFAIK, has not required any improvements to voting system reliability.

Possible explanations for this include:
- maximizing vendor profits, since these changes would cost money,
- saving taxpayers money, since our money is what's being spent on this crap, and
- continuing to make it easy to rig elections.

Also, the notion of privatization of government seems to be associated mostly with Republicans. So it's kind of understandable that DUers might think Repubs are behind the privatization of elections. They sure ain't done much to stop it, but neither have the Dems.

[OnTheOtherHand]

63. well, that "quotation" kind of misses the point

Can we agree that posting crappy source code on an insecure FTP server isn't a great step in a "carefully thought out and executed... plan to steal elections through electronic voting"?

Yes, "insiders" -- including the EAC -- have mostly done a lousy job on security.

[Bill Bored]

64. I don't disagree, but AFAIK, the code was not disclosed intentionally. nt