Controlling the Voting Machines
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Controlling the Voting Machines |
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December 17, 2003 Convicted felons worked for electronic voting companies November 9, 2003 10/24/2003 Subject: HR 2239, Paper Trails for Voting...dying in Congress. Here is the actual bill, HR 2239, which requires a
paper trail for all electronic voting. Thus far, the support is weak from
all sides, yet it is the only hope for American voters to have fair and
honest elections. Please call, fax and write to your congress-critters
and demand support for this bill. Write letters to the editors of your
local papers and demand action by Congress on this bill. "IF YOU WANT TO WIN AN ELECTION, JUST CONTROL THE VOTING MACHINES" By Thom Hartmann CommonDreams.org Friday, January 31, 2003 Maybe Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel honestly won two US Senate elections. Maybe it's true that the citizens of Georgia simply decided that incumbent Democratic Senator Max Cleland, a wildly popular war veteran who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was, as his successful Republican challenger suggested in his campaign ads, too unpatriotic to remain in the Senate. Maybe George W. Bush, Alabama's new Republican governor Bob Riley, and a small but congressionally decisive handful of other long-shot Republican candidates really did win those states where conventional wisdom and straw polls showed them losing in the last few election cycles. Perhaps, after a half-century of fine-tuning exit polling to such a science that it's now sometimes used to verify how clean elections are in Third World countries, it really did suddenly become inaccurate in the United States in the past six years and just won't work here anymore. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that the sudden rise of inaccurate exit polls happened around the same time corporate-programmed, computer-controlled, modem-capable voting machines began recording and tabulating ballots. But if any of this is true, there's not much of a paper trail from the voters' hand to prove it. You'd think in an open democracy that the government -- answerable to all its citizens rather than a handful of corporate officers and stockholders -- would program, repair, and control the voting machines. You'd think the computers that handle our cherished ballots would be open and their software and programming available for public scrutiny. You'd think there would be a paper trail of the vote, which could be followed and audited if a there was evidence of voting fraud or if exit polls disagreed with computerized vote counts. You'd be wrong. The respected Washington, DC publication The Hill http://www.thehill.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx has confirmed that former conservative radio talk-show host and now Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel was the head of, and continues to own part interest in, the company that owns the company that installed, programmed, and largely ran the voting machines that were used by most of the citizens of Nebraska. Back when Hagel first ran there for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his company's computer-controlled voting machines showed he'd won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the general election. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska. Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. As his hagel.senate.gov website says, Hagel "was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska." What Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that company. "This is a big story, bigger than Watergate ever was," said Hagel's Democratic opponent in the 2002 Senate race, Charlie Matulka http://www.lancastercountydemocrats.org/matulka.htm. "They say Hagel shocked the world, but he didn't shock me." Is Matulka the sore loser the Hagel campaign paints him as, or is he democracy's proverbial canary in the mineshaft? In Georgia, Democratic incumbent and war-hero Max Cleland was defeated by Saxby Chambliss, who'd avoided service in Vietnam with a "medical deferment" but ran his campaign on the theme that he was more patriotic than Cleland. While many in Georgia expected a big win by Cleland, the computerized voting machines said that Chambliss had won. The BBC summed up Georgia voters' reaction in a 6 November 2002 headline: "GEORGIA UPSET STUNS DEMOCRATS." The BBC echoed the confusion of many Georgia voters when they wrote, "Mr. Cleland -- an army veteran who lost three limbs in a grenade explosion during the Vietnam War -- had long been considered 'untouchable' on questions of defense and national security." Between them, Hagel and Chambliss' victories sealed Republican control of the Senate. Odds are both won fair and square, the American way, using huge piles of corporate money to carpet-bomb voters with television advertising. But either the appearance or the possibility of impropriety in an election casts a shadow over American democracy. "The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected," wrote Thomas Paine over 200 years ago. "To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery." That slavery, according to Hagel's last opponent Charlie Matulka, is at our doorstep. "They can take over our country without firing a shot," Matulka said, "just by taking over our election systems." Taking over our election systems? Is that really possible in the USA? Bev Harris of http://www.talion.com and http://www.blackboxvoting.com has looked into the situation in depth and thinks Matulka may be on to something. The company tied to Hagel even threatened her with legal action when she went public about his company having built the machines that counted his landslide votes. (Her response was to put the law firm's threat letter on her website and send a press release to 4000 editors, inviting them to check it out: http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=11 "I suspect they're getting ready to do this all across all the states," Matulka said in a January 30, 2003 interview. "God help us if Bush gets his touch screens all across the country," he added, "because they leave no paper trail. These corporations are taking over America, and they just about have control of our voting machines." In the meantime, exit-polling organizations have quietly gone out of business, and the news arms of the huge multinational corporations that own our networks are suggesting the days of exit polls are over. Virtually none were reported in 2002, creating an odd and unsettling silence that caused unease for the many American voters who had come to view exit polls as proof of the integrity of their election systems. As all this comes to light, many citizens and even a few politicians are wondering if it's a good idea for corporations to be so involved in the guts of our voting systems. The whole idea of a democratic republic was to create a common institution (the government itself) owned by its citizens, answerable to its citizens, and authorized to exist and continue existing solely "by the consent of the governed." Prior to 1886 -- when, law schools incorrectly tell law students, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations are "persons" with equal protection and other "human rights" -- it was illegal in most states for corporations to involve themselves in politics at all, much less to service the core mechanism of politics. And during the era of Teddy Roosevelt, who said, "There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains," numerous additional laws were passed to restrain corporations from involvement in politics. Wisconsin, for example, had a law that explicitly stated: "No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political office." The penalty for violating that law was dissolution of the corporation, and "any officer, employee, agent or attorney or other representative of any corporation, acting for and in behalf of such corporation" would be subject to "imprisonment in the state prison for a period of not less than one nor more than five years" and a substantial fine. However, the recent political trend has moved us in the opposite direction, with governments answerable to "We, The People" turning over administration of our commons to corporations answerable only to CEOs, boards, and stockholders. The result is the enrichment of corporations and the appearance that democracy in America has started to resemble its parody in banana republics. But if America still is a democratic republic, then We, The People still own our government. And the way our ownership and management of our common government (and its assets) is asserted is through the vote. On most levels, privatization is only a "small sin" against democracy. Turning a nation's or community's water, septic, roadway, prisons, airwaves, or health care commons over to private corporations has so far demonstrably degraded the quality of life for average citizens and enriched a few of the most powerful campaign contributors. But it hasn't been the end of democracy (although some wonder about what the FCC is preparing to do -- but that's a separate story). Many citizens believe, however, that turning the programming and maintenance of voting over to private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their owners, officers, and stockholders, puts democracy itself at peril. And, argues Charlie Matulka, for a former officer of one of those corporations to then place himself into an election without disclosing such an apparent conflict of interest is to create a parody of democracy. Perhaps Matulka's been reading too many conspiracy theory tracts. Or maybe he's on to something. We won't know until a truly independent government agency looks into the matter. When Bev Harris and The Hill's Alexander Bolton pressed the Chief Counsel and Director of the Senate Ethics Committee, the man responsible for ensuring that FEC disclosures are complete, asking him why he'd not questioned Hagel's 1995, 1996, and 2001 failures to disclose the details of his ownership in the company that owned the voting machine company when he ran for the Senate, the Director reportedly met with Hagel's office on Friday, January 25, 2003 and Monday, January 27, 2003. After the second meeting, on the afternoon of January 27th, the Director of the Senate Ethics Committee resigned his job. Meanwhile, back in Nebraska, Charlie Matulka had requested a hand count of the vote in the election he lost to Hagel. He just learned his request was denied because, he said, Nebraska has a just-passed law that prohibits government-employee election workers from looking at the ballots, even in a recount. The only machines permitted to count votes in Nebraska, he said, are those made and programmed by the corporation formerly run by Hagel. Matulka shared his news with me, then sighed loud and long on the phone, as if he were watching his children's future evaporate. "If you want to win the election," he finally said, "just control the machines." Thom Hartmann is the author of "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights." http://www.unequalprotection.com This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann see also: The Theft of Your Vote Is Just a Chip Away at http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16474 From Xymphora Tuesday, August 26, 2003I recently mentioned the fact that SAIC had been engaged by the State of Maryland to do an independent audit of the Diebold voting machines. It now turns out that one of the authors of a Johns Hopkins University study (see it here, Diebold's comments, and a rebuttal to Diebold's comments) which was highly critical of the security of the Diebold voting terminals, Avi Rubin, actually had an interest in a potential voting machine competitor of Diebold, VoteHere. He has apologized backwards and forwards for what he claims was a technical oversight, and has terminated his connection with the competitor, but his conflict, however inadvertent, was i-n-c-r-e-d-i-b-l-y stupid. It will damage this computer scientist's credibility on any subject for the rest of his life, and is already being used to criticize the study in order to support the continued use of the questionable machines in Georgia. Rubin has allowed Diebold to characterize the criticism of their system as motivated by a financial conflict of interest in a competitor, and has handed them a golden weapon in the propaganda war. But SAIC appears to have its own serious conflict of interest problems. The Chairman of the Board for VoteHere is Admiral Bill Owens (or here), a former President, Chief Operating Officer, and Vice Chairman of SAIC. Another former SAIC board member, ex-CIA director Robert Gates, is also on the board of VoteHere. It appears you can't throw a dead cat around the world of voting machines without hitting a conflict of interest. You have to wonder why Diebold made such a fuss about Rubin's connections to VoteHere, but doesn't seem to care about the potential conflicts between its competitor VoteHere, and the company that is going to audit its voting machines, SAIC. If we delve deeper, we can see the outlines of the game that SAIC and Diebold are playing here. It turns out that there is a lobbying group called the Enterprise Solutions Division of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA). This group is currently proposing that it be hired to spin the PR to advocate the adoption of these questionable voting machines. On the board of directors of the Enterprise Solutions Division of ITAA is Ronald J. Knecht, a Senior Vice President of SAIC, and SAIC is listed as a 'member' of the Division! So the company providing an independent audit of the security of Diebold's voting machines is connected to a lobby group that wants to be hired to convince the public and politicians that electronic voting is the greatest thing since sliced bread. There may also be mysterious connections to a nonprofit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization called "The Election Center" (on the main page, click on the link 'About Election Center'), whose members are government employees whose profession is to serve in voter registration and elections administration, and which, amongst other things, selects the certifiers of voting machines (all this excellent sleuthing is by Bev Harris of the most important website in the United States, Black Box Voting; in particular, read the comment on the first page of the site called 'Secret Meetings of the Black Box Yakuza'). Obviously, the main impediment to the rosy view of electronic voting is the Johns Hopkins report and the perception that there are security flaws in the Diebold system, and thus problems in any such voting system. How can SAIC be trusted to audit Diebold's system when SAIC is tied to a group which intends to lobby for just this kind of system to be used in the voting of the future? Diebold's selective concern about conflict of interest betrays the fact that SAIC and Diebold are on exactly the same side of this issue. This isn't just a technical issue: the use of these systems is how Bush intends to get reelected so he can continue to destroy the United States and much of the rest of the world. If these crooked machines are used, he will be reelected, along with a Republican Congress. There is only one way to stop this: paper ballots, counted by hand.
CALLING COMPUTER SECURITY EXPERTS & SUPPORTERS OF DEMOCRACY EVERYWHERE
As can be seen in the stories at the above website. There appears to have
been very little scrutiny of the source code for this particular
electronic voting system. WHAT WE WANT YOU TO DO
Firstly. We want people who are able to do so to CREATE MIRROR
COPIES of this data source. We especially want mirrors to be created in
non-U.S. jurisdictions in order to enable this inquiry to remain ongoing.
http://www.liberalisnotadirtyword.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi
Secondly We want people who are able to do so to EXAMINE THESE FILES AND
DISCOVER WHAT THEY CONTAIN. Amongst the four gigs of files here are source
code, data and documentation related to the Diebold accuvote electronic
voting system, and the testing thereof.
Democracy in America: a multi-level fraud.
http://911-strike.com/strike.htm
ON ELECTION DAY 2004, HOW WILL YOU
KNOW IF YOUR VOTE IS PROPERLY COUNTED? ANSWER: YOU WON'T--Rep. Rush Holt
Introduces Legislation to Require All Voting Machines To Produce A
Voter-Verified Paper Trail
Analysis of an Electronic Voting System This unique opportunity for independent scientific analysis of voting system source code demonstrates the fallacy of the closed-source argument for such a critical system. Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We highlight several issues including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. For example, common voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal. Furthermore, we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered without the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable. We conclude that, as a society, we must carefully consider the risks inherent in electronic voting, as it places our very democracy at risk.
HR 2239, Paper Trails for Voting...dying in Congress. http://www.acm.org/usacm/PDF/HR2239_Holt_Bill.pdf
Please call, fax and write to your congress-critters and demand support
for this bill. Write letters to the editors of your local papers and
demand action by Congress on this bill. See
ACTION
NOW!
VOTING MACHINE CEO committed to helping Ohio deliver
votes to Bush
August
28, 2003
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