BadGimp

Ghost in the Machine: a collection of e-voting facts

Ghost in the Machine: a collection of e-voting facts

by LITBMueller - FROM dAILYkOS.COM

Thu Mar 17th, 2005 at 07:20:54 PST

Why should more people be scratching their heads when looking at electronic voting? Well, let's put it this way... If it was found that Wawa's (an East cost convenience store) touch screen kiosks were misreporting the sandwiches and hoagies people ordered or were completely failing at levels between 5-15%, wouldn't Wawa get upset and stop using them? Also, if ATM machines misreported the amount of money in accounts, made in withdrawals and deposits, or were completely failing at a rate of 5-15%, would they still be in use today?
I think not.

Below is a collection of facts about e-voting companies and voting irregularities that are attributed to e-voting. Is this evidence of a conspiracy? Of course not, but it does at least raise eyebrows.

More below the fold (and this is only the tip of the iceberg - there's a ton out there on the net)...

Diaries :: LITBMueller's diary ::

To sum up, in a general sense, why carefully looking into e-voting in this country is important, let us keep in mind the words of Josef Stalin who said "Voters decide nothing; people who count votes decide everything." And also let us remember that it was Congressman Peter King (R-NY) who said: "It's already over. The election's over. We won. It's all over but the counting and we'll take care of the counting." (The video of King making this remark can be seen at www.velvetrevolution.us)

Diebold and Electronic Systems & Softway (ES&S)

ES&S and Diebold count 80% of all votes in America. (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0503/S00127.htm)

Diebold also makes ATM machines. Their ATM machines, unlike their electronic voting machines during the 2004 election, provide paper receipts. (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-03-15-advanced-atms_x.htm)

ES&S managed many aspects of the 2004 election, including voter registration, printing of ballots, the programming of their voting machines, tabulation of votes (often with armed guards keeping the media and members of the public who wished to witness the count at bay) and the first reporting of the results -- for 60 million voters in 47 states. Actual counting of votes by citizens is very rare in the U.S., except for a few counties in Montana and other states, where paper ballots are still hand-counted. (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)

The largest investors in ES&S, Sequoia (another voting machine company), and Diebold are government defense contractors Northrup-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin, Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Accenture. Diebold hired Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) of San Diego to develop the software security in their voting machines. A majority of officials on SAIC's board are former members of either the Pentagon or the CIA including (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5517):

- Army Gen. Wayne Downing, formerly of the NSC
- Bobby Ray Inman; former CIA Director
- Retired Adm. William Owens, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
- Robert Gates, another former director of the CIA.

The U.S.'s largest voting machine company, ES&S, is owned by The Omaha World Herald. (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0503/S00127.htm)

Diebold has its corporate headquarters in Ohio. (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5359)

Diebold chairman, president, and C.E.O., Walden O'Dell, is a prominent Bush supporter and fund-raiser who proclaimed in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." (See "Hack the Vote," by Michael Shnayerson, Vanity Fair, April 2004.) (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5359)

The vice president of E.S.&S. and the president of Diebold are brothers. (http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html)

Diebold and ES&S's other major "competitor", Sequoia, is owned by a partner member of the Carlyle Group, which has substantial ties to the Bush family and friends. (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of AIS, which later became ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines in Nebraska in what was a major upset. (http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html)

Senator Hagel, who was on the short-list of G.W. Bush's VP candidates, was caught concealing information about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee, even though he was officially absolved of improperly hiding information. (http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx and http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm)

One of the longest-serving Diebold directors is W.R. "Tim" Timken. Since 1991 the Timken Company and members of the Timken family have contributed more than a million dollars to the Republican Party and to GOP presidential candidates such as George W. Bush. Between 2000 and 2002 alone, Timken's Canton-based bearing and steel company gave more than $350,000 to Republican causes, while Timken himself gave more than $120,000. In 2004, he was one of George W. Bush's campaign Pioneers, and pulled in more than $350,000 for the president's reelection bid. (http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html)

In 2003, a cadre of computer scientists showed that the software running Diebold's new machines can be hacked with relative ease. (http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html)

On a CNBC cable TV program, Black Box Voting (which opposes electronic voting) executive Bev Harris showed guest host Howard Dean how to alter vote totals within 90 seconds by entering a two-digit code in a hidden program on Diebold's election software. "This is not a bug or accidental oversight," Harris said. "It is there on purpose." (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)

Managers of a subsidiary of Diebold once included a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records. The programmer, Jeffrey Dean, wrote and maintained proprietary code used to count hundreds of thousands of votes as senior vice president of Global Election Systems, or GES. Diebold purchased GES in January 2002. According to a public court document released before GES hired him, Dean served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that "involved a high degree of sophistication and planning." He left when Diebold acquired GES. (http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html)

Voting irregularities in Maryland:

According to a report to the Montgomery County Election Board, dated December 13, 2004, there were two broad levels of problems with Diebold machines. 7% of units (189) failed. This included failure to boot up, screen freezes and a variety of other problems. Screen freezes, which occurred on 106 voting units were "the most serious of errors" because many "froze when the voter pressed the Cast Ballot button." As a result "election judges are unable to provide substantial confirmation that the vote was in fact counted." In addition there were "122 suspect units (5%) were identified because the unit had few votes captured compared to other voting units in the polling place. (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0503/S00147.htm)

Also in Montgomery Co., computer memory cards where vote totals are stored inside each voting machine were unreadable in multiple counties. (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0503/S00147.htm)

Voting irregularities in Ohio

More than 35 Ohio counties used electronic voting machines made by Diebold and up to 50,000 Diebold touch-screen machines and 20,000 scanners of paper ballots were used in 38 states during the November 2004 election. (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)

In Butler County, a Democrat running for the State Supreme Court chief justice received 61,559 votes. The Kerry-Edwards ticket drew about 5,000 fewer votes, at 56,243. This judicial candidate also outpolled the Kerry-Edwards ticket in 11 other counties. (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5359)

In Cuyahoga County, which includes the city of Cleveland, two largely black precincts on the East Side voted like this: In Precinct 4F: Kerry, 290; Bush, 21; Peroutka, 215. In Precinct 4N: Kerry, 318; Bush, 11; Badnarik, 163. Mr. Peroutka and Mr. Badnarik are, respectively, the presidential candidates of the Constitution and Libertarian Parties. By way of contrast, in 2000, Ralph Nader's best year, the total vote received in Precinct 4F by all third-party candidates combined was eight. (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5359)

In Montgomery County, two precincts recorded a combined undervote of almost 6,000. An "undervote" means the voter made selections for lesser offices, but did not vote for President. In these two precincts alone, that number represents an undervote of 25%, in a county where undervoting averages out at just 2%. Democratic precincts had 75% more undervotes than Republican ones. (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5359)

In Precinct lB of Gahanna, in Franklin County, a computerized voting machine recorded a total of 4,258 votes for Bush and 260 votes for Kerry. In that precinct, however, there are only 800 registered voters, of whom 638 showed up. (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5359)

In Miami County, the Concord Southwest and Concord South precincts boasted incredibly high 98.5% and 94.27% turnouts, respectively, both of them registering overwhelming majorities for Bush. Miami County also managed to report 19,000 additional votes for Bush after 100% of the precincts had reported on Election Day. (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5359)

In Mahoning County, Washington Post reporters found that many people had been victims of "vote hopping," i.e., voting machines highlighted a choice of one candidate after the voter had recorded a preference for another. (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5359)

Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican, arranged for ample voting booths in GOP areas and a shortage in liberal college towns and minority precincts. Despite the huge increase in new voter registration (91% of which was Democratic), Blackwell provided fewer total voting machines than were used in 2000. (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)

Christopher Hitchens: "In practically every case [in Ohio] where lines were too long or machines too few the foul-up was in a Democratic county or precinct, and in practically every case where machines produced impossible or improbable outcomes it was the challenger who suffered and the actual or potential Democratic voters who were shortchanged, discouraged, or held up to ridicule as chronic undervoters or as sudden converts to fringe-party losers." (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5359)

At least of 40 of 798 ES&S machines that were personally monitored in Ohio shut down and flashed a message that repair was needed during the 2004 election. These machines could not be made to report a final printed vote tally. (http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html)

Voting irregularities in Florida

In the 2000 election, in Volusia County, Florida, a Diebold-made central ballot-counting computer showed a Socialist Party candidate receiving more than 9,000 votes and Vice President Al Gore getting minus 19,000. Another 4,000 votes poured into the plus column for Bush that didn't belong there. (http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html)

ES&S voting machines in Florida may have awarded George W. Bush up to 260,000 more votes than he should have received, according to a statistical analysis conducted by University of California, Berkeley graduate students and a professor. The total number of excessive votes ranged between 130,000 and 260,000, depending on what kind of problem caused the excess votes. The counties most affected by the anomaly were heavily Democratic. A sociology professor said the chance for such a discrepancy to occur was less than 1 in 1,000. (http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html)

While the approximated Florida discrepancy would not overcome a reported 350,000 vote Bush lead, no meaningful recount can ever be carried out because Diebold machines do not leave a paper trail of any sort. (http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65563,00.html)

Kathy Dopp examined the State of Florida's county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered by party affiliation in the days immediately following the election. Tthe numbers Dopp looked at showed widespread election anomalies in 47 of the state's 67 counties. The discrepancies did not occur so much in the touch-screen counties, where public scrutiny would naturally be focused, but in counties where optically screened paper ballots were fed into a central tabulator PC, which is highly vulnerable to hacking. Colin Shea of Zogby International analyzed and double-checked Dopp's figures and confirmed that optical-scan counties gave Bush 16% more votes than he should have gotten. "This 16% would not be strange if it were spread across counties more or less evenly," Shea explains, but it is not. In 11 different counties, the "actual" Bush tallies were 50-100% higher than expected. In one county, where 88% of voters are registered Democrats, Bush got nearly two-thirds of the vote -- three times more than predicted by Shea's statistical model. "In 21 counties, more than 50% of Democrats would have to have defected to Bush to account for the results," Shea says. "In four counties at least 70% [defection] would have been required. These results are absurdly unlikely." (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)

In 47 Florida counties, initial vote tallies showed that the total number of presidential votes exceeded the total number of voters who showed up at the polls. Palm Beach County recorded 90,774 more votes than voters and Miami Dade had 51,979 more, while relatively honest Orange County had only 1,648 more votes than voters. Overall, Florida reported 237,522 more presidential votes (7.59 million) than citizens who turned out to cast ballots (7.35 million). These anomalies evaporated, without explanation, when Florida issued its last set of poll numbers. (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)

In Broward Country, the central tabulating machine was incorrectly programmed to expect only 32,000 votes from each precinct; when more votes were received, the machine started counting backwards. The problem existed in the 2002 elections in Broward County but was never fixed. Throughout Florida, as in most tossup states, poll monitors saw prospective voters leaving because of long lines. There were numerous reports of sub-par facilities and faulty equipment in minority neighborhoods. (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)

Several dozen voters in six states -- particularly Democrats in Florida -- said the wrong candidate appeared on their touch-screen machine's checkout screen (i.e. they voted one way and the result which appeared was the opposite). (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)

Keith Olbermann demonstrated on MSNBC's Countdown program that many Florida counties where Democrats allegedly "crossed over" were voting Republican for the first time. He also poked another hole in the theory that these voters were "Dixiecrats" when he noted, "On the same Florida Democratic ballots where Bush scored big, people supported highly Democratic measures -- such as raising the state minimum wage $1 above the federal level. This indicates that only the presidential voting was rigged." (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)

Moreover, the 18 switchover Florida counties were not in the panhandle or near the Georgia border, but were scattered throughout the state. For instance, voters in Glades County (Everglades region) registered 64.8% Republican but cast 38.3% more votes for Bush than for Kerry. Hardee County (between Bradenton and Sebring) registered 63.8% Democratic but officially gave Bush 135% more votes than Kerry. (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)

The discrepancies between exit polls and vote tabulations where electronic voting was used:
- Concerning the discrepancies between exit polls and the final vote tally in 2004, Dr. Steven F. Freeman, faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania determined that the likelihood of Kerry receiving only 47.1% in Florida, given that the exit polls indicated 49.7% is less than 3 in 1,000. Although Kerry did carry Pennsylvania, the likelihood of his receiving only 50.8% given that the exit polls indicated 54.1% is less than 2 in 1,000. Similarly the likelihood of Kerry receiving only 48.5% in Ohio, given the exit polls indicated 52.1% is less than 1 in 1,000 (.0008). Freeman says, "The likelihood of any two of these statistical anomalies occurring together is on the order of one-in-a-million. The odds against all three occurring together are 250 million to 1. As much as we can say in social science that something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states could have been due to chance or random error." (http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm)
- In 10 states where there were verifiable paper trails -- or no electronic machines -- the final results hardly differed from initial exit polls. Exit polls and final counts in Missouri, Louisiana, Maine and Utah, for instance, varied by 1% or less. In non-paper-trail states, however, there were significant differences. Florida saw a shift from Kerry +1% in the exit polls to Bush +5% at evening's end. In Ohio, Kerry went from +3% to -3%. Other big discrepancies in key states were: Minnesota (from +10% to +4%), New Mexico (+4 to -1), Nevada (+1 to -3), Wisconsin (+7 to +0.4), Colorado (-2 to -5), North Carolina (-4 to -13), Iowa (+1 to -1), New Hampshire (+14 to +1) and Pennsylvania (+8 to +2). Exit polls also had Kerry winning the national popular vote by 3%. (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)

Miscellaneous:

- On November 10, 2004, Keith Olbermann reported that computerized balloting in North Carolina was so thoroughly messed up that all statewide voting may have to be recounted. A Craven County, N.C. district recorded 11,283 more votes than there were voters, overturning the results of a regional race. (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)

posted by BadGimp @ 8:07 PM