Vote: Election Education and Fraud
'It's Not the People Who Vote that Count;
It's the People Who Count the Votes'
Historians are great at telling linear stories and written narratives that have a specific point of view, and an agenda. Historians try to make define a moment in time with a certain set of facts while they leave out others. Now with the advent of web 2.0 pictures might prove to be history's next frontier. The Internet uses pictures to show off the natural social process that history actually is.
Learn about The Art of Story Telling:
History, The Oral Tradition, Folktales In the Classroom and The Media
2008 Election Timeline
Timeline and related material about presidential debates, primaries, and caucuses for the 2008 presidential election. Also includes news stories and a list of presidential candidates with links to websites.
Who Contributed to their Campaigns?
Did you send in some money to someone's presidential campaign? Did your neighbor? How much and to who? Type in your address and see who your neighbors have donated money to. Or type in someone's name to see who they contributed to.
Links to individual state campaign finance disclosure agencies
Open Secrets Federal Level Dat
NewsMeat - tracks celebraties, ceo's everyone you want to know about.
FEC Filings From Prospective 2008 Presidential Campaigns
Official records of Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings for the 2008 presidential election, including Statement of Organization and Statement of Candidacy forms. "This list includes campaigns who have raised or spent $50,000 or more (the threshold for mandatory electronic filing) from sources or to payees other than the candidate him or herself." Additional forms filed are listed under the candidate's committee, including quarterly reports of receipts and disbursements.
Report Election Problems
California voting systems code review now released 8/2007 - Matt Blaze
GAO Presentation that evote problems are very real. Randolph C. Hite at (202) 512-3439 or by e-mail at hiter@gao.gov.
Call 1-866-687-8683
866ourvote to report election problems
Most vote machines lose test to hackers July 28, 2007
State-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California's voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems' electronic functions, according to a University of California study released Friday. The researchers "were able to bypass physical and software security in every machine they tested,'' said Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who authorized the "top to bottom review" of every voting system certified by the state.
City loses voters' vital information 1/24/07
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/222892,CST-NWS-data22.article
About 100 computer discs with 1.3 million Chicago voters' Social Security numbers have been distributed to aldermen and ward committeemen, and the whereabouts of at least an additional six CDs with the same information are unknown, according to the Chicago Board of Elections. This follows another security lapse in October 2006, when voters' Social
Security numbers were available through the board's Web site. But unlike the Web site flaw, which was fixed in a few minutes, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the Board of Elections to retrieve sensitive data physically scattered on more than 100 discs throughout the area.
Nationwide Election Protection Hotline will detect where you are calling from and transfer you to a volunteer in your area. Hot line volunteers will listen to your problem and tell their commanders who can dispatch another volunteer to the polling place where you are having the problem. I asked and was told the volunteers are lawyers but not affiliated party people.
"The cryptographer David Chaum, through discussion with top cryptographers such as Ron Rivest, has designed a secure and verifiable voting system. One of the goals of his design is that anyone can verify that votes were tabulated correctly. It's good to see real security/crypto people working on this problem. They also have a press release."
Voting Machine Fiasco:
Hacking Democracy - HBO Search times
This cautionary documentary exposes the vulnerability of computers - which count approximately 80% of America's votes in county, state and federal elections - suggesting that if our votes aren't safe, then our democracy isn't safe either. Don't allow vendors hack the vote. Don't allow states to privatize elections demand open software.
Black Box Voting - Eliminate Secrecy Consumer Protection for Elections
Paper ballots are the 'Currency of Democracy'. They've been helping to curb election fraud since 139 BCE!
A computer programmer reveals how he was asked to provide the GOP with some special software that would allow rigging the 2004 election without being detected. Ohio Presidential Election was hacked. A computer programmer reveals how he was asked to provide the GOP with some special software that would allow rigging the 2004 election without being detected. (English, with Italian subtitles).
Remember 'It's Not the People Who Vote that Count; It's the People Who Count the Votes'
Princeton Scientists say Diebold Ballot Boxes Will Be 100% Hackable research paper. Learn how to Hack a Diebold machine Near You.
The 2 Princton Kids who did the paper and Ed Felton on Fox News. The diebold machine was corrupted (rigged) before anyone started to vote - there is no trail showing that it had been tampered with and there is no paper trail that shows what really happened.
"Diebold put a picture of the key that opens their voting machines online. Yes, the key--one key opens all of their machines. Result? Someone was able to copy it using the photo on the website." ~
MEDIA
We are always concerned with "trusted" sources of information. We want to believe that journalism is honest and that we get honest reporting from print, television, and online sources. We need to understand these relationships.
Fox News has once again identified a Republican as a Democrat and vice-versa.
October 4th 2006 Fox News labeled disgraced Republican Mark Foley as a Democrat multiple times in one night and they've done it again today, reversing the party affiliation of Sheldon Whitehouse and Lincoln Chafee in the Rhode Island Senate race.
WATCH - OUTFOXED : Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism Bravenew Films 1 hr 17 min 41 sec Sep 14, 2004 Outfoxed examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, have been running a "race to the bottom" in television news. This film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public's right to know. Watch the first 10 minutes of it.
Voting Machine Fraud
Computer Voting Is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say By John Schwartz http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/technology/24VOTE.html
The software that runs many high-tech voting machines contains serious flaws that would allow voters to cast extra votes and permit poll workers to alter ballots without being detected, computer security researchers said yesterday. "We found some stunning, stunning flaws," said Aviel D. Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, who led a team that examined the software from Diebold Election Systems, which has about 33,000 voting machines operating in the United States read the paper at http://avirubin.com/vote.pdf
Diebold knew of legal risks <http://www.oaklandtribune.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,82%257E1865%257E2095811,00.html> Oakland Tribune By Ian Hoffman 4/04 Diebold knew of legal risks Attorneys warned firm that use of uncertified vote-counting software violated state law.
2006 "Diebold says"glitch-free," just don't touch those touchscreens" Apparently Diebold has gotten the machines to work relatively well together, but only when using a mouse. If the touchscreen is tapped, the machine loses contact with its peers. Diebold is touting this mouse thing as a fix, and is offering to provide 5,500 mice for their e-poll books if state officials in Maryland give the go-ahead. Unfortunately, during a recent mock election, a poll-worker tapped the touchscreen despite repeated warnings to the contrary, and screwed up the system, requiring a reboot which took 30 seconds.
Happy Voting
"The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine — the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus — can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet. [snip]
"Chris’s key was left over from a previous job, maybe fifteen years ago. He said the key had opened either a file cabinet or the access panel on an old VAX computer."
"How to steal an election by hacking the vote"
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ars
Diebold demands that HBO cancel documentary on voting machines. Film saying they can be manipulated 'inaccurate' 2006
Diebold Inc. insisted that cable network HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair.
Diebold Election System President David Byrd said in a letter to HBO President and Chief Executive Chris Albrecht posted on Diebold's Web site. Short of pulling the film, Monday's letter asks for disclaimers to be aired and for HBO to post Diebold's response on its Web site.
"We stand by the film," said Jeff Cusson, a spokesman for HBO, which is a unit of Time Warner Inc. "We have no intention of withdrawing it from our schedule. It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing."
The HBO documentary is based on the work of Bev Harris, the Renton woman who founded BlackBoxVoting.org, which monitors election accuracy. In 2004 the attorney general of California took up a whistle-blower claim filed by Harris against Diebold and settled with the company for $2.6 million in December.
20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA voting fraud election fraud voting machines Diebold ES&S voting verifiability exit polls Sequoia Voting Systems McCarthy Help America Vote Act
Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold
2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
Disputed - see .eac.gov
3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886
5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html
6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php
7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html
8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html
10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm
11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm
12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States. http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf
14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf
15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html
16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it!
(See the movie here: http://www.bbvdocs.org/videos/baxterVPR.mov.) http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190
17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
18. All -- not some -- but ALL the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htmhttp://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm
19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10544-2004Oct29.html
20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html
http://uscountvotes.org/
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 03:14:39 -0400
From: "Rebecca Mercuri"
Subject: Florida Primary 2002: Back to the Future Well, Florida's done it again.
Tuesday's Florida primary election marked its first large-scale roll-out of tens of thousands of brand-new voting machines that were promised to resolve the problems of the 2000 Presidential election. Instead, from the very moment the polls were supposed to open, problems emerged throughout the state, especially in counties that had spent millions of dollars to purchase touchscreen electronic balloting devices.
Florida voters, including Gubernatorial candidate Janet Reno, experienced delays (ranging from minutes to hours) due to touchscreen machines not working properly or at all. Reno, and others (including Duval County officials) reportedly sought court orders requesting additional time for the day's voting session. Governor Jeb Bush granted a two hour extension, but some of the polling places did not receive notice and shut down their machines at 7PM, only to discover that restart was impossible because of the way the machines had been designed.
In addition to polls and machines that opened late, many precincts reported problems with some electronic cards voters used to activate their ballots. A few machines in Miami-Dade County reset themselves while voters were trying to vote. Even the mark-sense ballots proved troublesome -- in Orange County many votes will have to be hand-counted because defects made them unreadable by the optical scanners.
Lest readers think that Florida is alone with these election problems, other states, including Georgia and Maryland, have also reported similar difficulties with touchscreens. Problems in MD led 4 counties there to commission a report from UMD, which revealed serious reliability concerns, due to "catastrophic failure," "malfunction," and "unusability" of one of the two machines they were given for testing. The Association of Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI) offered to perform similar evaluations on Palm Beach's new voting equipment, urged by U.S. Representative Robert Wexler, but the offer was declined by the County's Board of Elections.
Florida was forewarned about problems with some of their new machines when, in local municipal elections held back in March 2002, anomalies surfaced in Palm Beach County. Some voters submitted sworn affidavits to the state's 15th Circuit Court, attesting to problems ranging from a lack of privacy at the voting booth, to machines "freezing up" until rebooted or reset, and voter cards being rejected.
During this past summer, as part of an investigation into Emil Danciu's contest (one of two lawsuits for the March Palm Beach County election), the court permitted me to perform a "walk through inspection" of the County's Board of Election warehouse where the machines were being stored and prepared for this Fall's primary. To my amazement, I learned that the devices would not be tested to see whether they would register a vote for each candidate that appeared on the ballot face. Rather, the tallying system was checked by transferring data between cartridges, (circumventing the ballot face on each machine) and only one vote, for the first candidate in each race, was cast using the touchscreen. This essentially meant that most of the new machines would get their first real use only at the actual election. (Not only does this testing lack rigour, but it only marginally complies with Florida election law.)
The Palm Beach County machines were running new software too, since the firmware on each of their 3400 machines was reprogrammed just weeks before the Fall primary. (Such firmware reprogrammability represents a major security and auditability risk.) A thorough inspection of the machines, requested by Danciu's legal team, was denied by the court, on the grounds that the purchase contract with Election Supervisor Teresa LaPore made it a felony violation (for her) of the vendor's trade secret clause if any devices were provided (Danciu had even offered to pay for one) for an internal examination. This trade secrecy also apparently prevents disclosure of the program code files and testing reports maintained by the state of Florida as part of their certification process.
But there's more. Further problems may begin to surface after the tabulation results are analyzed. Although if any candidate wishes to seek a recount, the only one they will get from the touchscreen machines is a printout of the same electronic data residing inside of the machines -- not an independent tally from human-readable ballots that were examined by the voters who cast them on election day. Even Brazil, where 400,000 fully-electronic voting machines were first deployed nation-wide in their 2000 election, deemed it appropriate to retrofit their machines to produce recountable voter-verifiable paper ballots, and they will begin to institute this by modifying some 3% of their machines for their next election.
Sadly, many US communities seem to feel that it is necessary to rush ahead with voting equipment procurements, while reliable systems, appropriate testing, usability, security, and auditability procedures, and other safeguards, are years away. Florida 2000 woke us up to what many already knew -- our voting systems and laws were flawed. Florida 2002 lets us know that expensive computers can not and will not provide the answer to our election troubles.
For the short run, communities that have purchased malfunctioning equipment should return it to the manufacturers and request refunds. There should be an immediate moratorium throughout the United States (and world) on the procurement of electronic voting systems that do not provide voter-verifiable paper ballots. In other words, if your community is thinking of buying touchscreen or other fully-computerized voting equipment, don't let them do it! Candidates and voters who believe they may have evidence of ballots being lost or foul-play with voting systems, should contact me, as soon as possible, at mercuri at acm.org in order to learn how data could be secured before it may be deleted. Those seeking additional information on voting systems can refer to the numerous articles linked on Peter Neumann's website and on mine (at www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html).
Please let your voice and concerns be heard. Democracy is at stake.
The Real Scandal [... "DREs are even worse," says Rebecca Mercuri, a computer scientist at Bryn Mawr who’s studied computerized elections for more than 10 years and recently finished her doctoral dissertation on that exact topic at the University of Pennsylvania. DREs leave no "audit trail" (paper trail) whatsoever, she points out. Votes are recorded directly onto a memory cartridge. There is absolutely nothing to ensure that the vote that registers on the screen is the vote that gets recorded on the cartridge, or that the vote that is recorded on the cartridge is the vote that prints out on paper. "Unless the voter sees that paper trail, how do they know?" she says. "I could teach a 12-year-old to write a program that shows one thing on the screen and another thing on the printout." While some newer election computing companies say they’ve figured out how to create a foolproof electronic audit trail, Mercuri dismisses such claims as "preposterous." There’s no way to make sure that software is 100 percent pure. "If we could do that in computer science, we’d have the virus problem solved," she says. ...] [1]
Redistricting
TEXAS: How much do you know about Redistricting? It has always been the definition of corruption When Power uses Power to Protect Power.
Warning foul language used in video
Most States Now Offering Campaign Data Online
The US Public Policy Committee of the ACM has released a study on statewide voter registration databases. We looked at accurancy, privacy, usability, security, and reliability issues of such databases.
The home page for the study is http://www.acm.org/usacm/VRD/ ; it contains the committee membership, executive study, and (of course) a link to the full study.
Center for Governmental Studies
Public Citizen founded by Ralph Nader
Douglas Jones University of Iowa associate professor
of computer science has become a leading expert on voting security in the United States and heads the Iowa State Board of Voting Machines and launched a National Science Foundation project called ACCURATE, or A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections. Jones said hand-marked paper ballots that can be counted by local machines are probably the best ballot choice.
Project Vote Smart http://www.vote-smart.org
A national library of factual information on 40,000 candidates for public office including President of the United States to state legislature to local elected officials. We cover them in five basic areas: backgrounds, issue positions, voting records, campaign finances and performance evaluations made by over 100 liberal to conservative special interest groups.
In addition we interview presidential, congressional, gubernatorial and state legislative candidates and provide special services on issues for journalists, teachers and students. All information and services can be obtained in the following ways:
http://www.vote-smart.org/services.phtml
* The Voter's Research Hotline 1-800-622-SMART
* The Voter's Self-Denfense Manual
Information available through the above sources:
- Biographical and Political Backgrounds
- Addresses and Phone Numbers
- Voting Records
- Campaign Finance Data
Dylan It's All Right, Ma: 1965 - Lyrics
HIPPIES DIDN'T JUST GIVE YOU
SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK AND ROLL
HIPPIES GAVE YOU THE INTERNET!
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.
Literacy
- August 6, 1965: Voting Rights Act
- 2006 TEXAS Why weren't you taught how to read?
- Can't Read? Then you can't vote.
- If Literacy Stats - why the low turn out.
- Learn the Presidents Song
1940 article from Popular Science about "modern" vote counting. Thought people might get a kick out of it in
the context of the present voting machine discussions.
Tar and Feather all Electronic Voting Machine Vendors and Election Officials who tamper with our vote.
