Showing posts with label Electronic Voting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Electronic Voting. Show all posts
Monday, October 29, 2012
Vote counting company tied to Romney
Vote counting company tied to Romney
Gerry Bello & Bob Fitrakis
September 27, 2012
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4725
Several Tanker trucks full of political ink have been spilled on Mitt Romney's tenure as a vulture capitalist at Bain Capital. A more important story, however, is the fact that Bain alumni, now raising big money as Romney bundlers are also in the electronic voting machine business. This appears to be a repeat of the the infamous former CEO of Diebold Wally O’Dell, who raised money for Bush while his company supplied voting machines and election management software in the 2004 election.
In all 234 counties of Texas, the entire states of Hawaii and Oklahoma, half of Washington and Colorado, and certain counties in swing state Ohio, votes will be cast on eSlate and ePollbook machines made by Hart Intercivic. Hart Intercivic machines have famously failed in Tarrant County (Ft. Worth), adding 10,000 non-existant votes. The EVEREST study, commissioned by the Ohio secretary of state in 2007, found serious security flaws with Hart Intercivic products.
Looking beyond the well-documented Google choking laundry list of apparent fraud, failure and seeming corruption that is associated with Hart Intercivic, an ongoing Free Press investigation turned its attention to the key question of who owns the voting machine companies. The majority of the directors of Hart come from the private equity firm H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. has been heavily invested in Hart Intercivic since July 2011, just in time for the current presidential election cycle. But who is H.I.G Capital?
Out of 49 partners and directors, 48 are men, and 47 are white. Eleven of these men, including H.I.G. Founder Tony Tamer, were formerly employed at Bain and Company, and two of those men, John P. Bolduc, Douglas Berman, are Romney bundlers along with former Bain and H.I.G. manager Brian Shortsleeve.
Additionally, four of these men were formerly employed at Booz Allen Hamilton. Booz Allen, now owned by the Bush family friendly Carlyle group, also made voting machines for the United States military. Booz Allen was also the key subcontractor for the controversial PioneerGroundbreaker program, an NSA data mining operation that gathered information on American citizens until it was shut down and replaced with even more invasive successor programs like MATRIX and Total Information Awareness.
H.I.G. Capital employees have given $338,000 to Mitt Romney's campaign. That amounts to over $1500 per employee. Bain Capital, Mitt's former company, by comparison, only gave him $268,000. H.I.G. is the 11th largest donor to the Romney Campaign. Clearly they are working really hard for their man. It appears that they will work even harder on election night. Although not boisterously promising to deliver states where their machines are to Romney as Wally O'Dell of Diebold did for Bush in 2004, they can launder hundreds of thousands of votes and swing the vote in the crucial swing state Ohio.
Will Mitt's cronies steal our democracy the way they stole our jobs? Time will tell, but they have certainly positioned themselves to do so if they choose.
In our first investigative article Who owns Scytl? George Soros isn’t in the voting machines, but the intelligence community is.
the Free Press revealed that Scytl, a Spanish-based company now contracted to count 25% of the U.S. presidential vote, has ties to Booz Allen. Scytl's start up funding comes from three European Venture Capital Firms, Balderton Capital, Nauta Capital, and Spinnaker SCR. The director of Nauta's American operations is Dominic Endicott, who went from Cluster Consulting to Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) where he oversaw wireless practice. He then rejoined his former colleagues from Cluster Consulting at Nauta. In his capacity as a Nauta partner Endicott also sits on the board of CarrierIQ.
Scytl has emerged as the most mysterious election counting company in this presidential election. Scytl claims to have a Scytl USA division located in Glen Allen, Virginia. The following is a photo of the Scytl USA national corporate offices at 6012 Glen Allen Drive. The land deed records show that the ownership of the property at that address is Hugh Gallagher, now listed as the managing director of Scytl USA. The deed, which was prepared in Ohio by a relocation firm in 2002, pre-dates the creation of Scytl USA. A Scytl USA sales office is located in Baltimore, Maryland, and appears to be a Rent-an-Office, often referred to as a “virtual” office with a shared secretary that serves as a mail drop.
The ties of Hart Intercivic to Romney fund-raisers and Bain alumni should cause concern in the Obama re-election campaign. So, should the mysterious Spanish owned company, Scytl, with a U.S operation that seems to be an illusion.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Democrats silent on possible ballot tampering in South Carolina primaries
http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/scar-j15.shtml
Democrats silent on possible ballot tampering in South Carolina primaries
By Jeff Lassahn
15 June 2010
Many questions have emerged about the bizarre results of a June 8 Democratic primary election for one of South Carolina’s US Senate seats. The expected winner was Vic Rawl, an establishment Democratic Party figure who has served as a South Carolina congressman and judge. Instead, 59 percent of the vote went to Alvin Greene, an unemployed military veteran who ran a minimal campaign.
The controversy surrounding the election results has focused heavily on the peculiarities of Greene as a candidate. Little mention, however, has been made of the voting process itself, which involved the use electronic ballot machines that leave no paper trail and have been outlawed in other states because they are vulnerable to hacking and manipulation.
While Democratic Party officials have charged Greene is a Republican “plant,” they have avoided any suggestions that the results were fabricated. To do so would call into question other controversial results, including the 2004 presidential race, and the legitimacy of the US election system as a whole.
Alvin Greene lives in the small town of Manning, South Carolina, and after graduating with a degree in political science of the University of South Carolina, he served in the Air Force and Army National Guard. He has been unemployed since an involuntary honorable discharge from the military in 2009 and has no record of a public political position.
In the context of widespread hostility to the Democratic and Republican parties, their failure to address unemployment, the Gulf oil spill, and continuing wars in the Middle East, it is not implausible that Greene’s lack of affiliation with the political system could bring him popular support. Yet his candidacy was quite a mystery. After the election, the media scrambled to even find out who he was. He had no campaign website, TV or radio ads, lawn signs, or published speeches.
In interviews after his primary win, Greene also stated that he never held any official campaign events or even a fundraiser, nor did he attend any Democratic events or rallies. Pressed repeatedly about how he even reached people, he stated it was “simple, old fashioned campaigning” of going door-to-door all across the state. In total, he spent “less than $2,000” on campaigning for the primary election.
In contrast, Walter Ludwig, the campaign manager of defeated candidate Vic Rawl, noted that the Rawl campaign applied the typical techniques of a multimillion-dollar American election campaign, using a quarter-million robocalls, sending 300,000 e-mails, and driving nearly 17,000 miles to campaign events statewide.
Along with the mysterious campaign, Alvin Greene has provided very little information on his own political views. Responding to accusations that he is a Republican plant, he stated he is “a lifelong Democrat.” Otherwise, Greene has provided only generic comments on issues, and so far has no campaign literature or website to confirm these views.
The media treatment of Greene has ranged from frustrated to offensive. Anchors from Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC all became visibly annoyed when interviewing Greene over his simple answers and simple explanations of how he beat a well-funded candidate. Greene himself seems curiously hesitant and restrained in interviews, to which CNN’s Don Lemon contemptuously asked, “You’re mentally sound, physically sound, you’re not impaired by anything at this moment?”
Despite this, in the primary Greene gathered 100,000 votes statewide compared to 70,000 for Vic Rawl. Among the fairly implausible explanations for his victory are by being number one on the ballot he gathered more votes, his name was associated with popular soul singer Al Green, or that “Greene,” as a popular African-American surname, gave him a boost in name recognition.
So far, the only investigation of voting irregularities has been conducted by volunteer analysts on behalf of Vic Rawl. His campaign manager Walter Ludwig reports that in Spartanburg County, there are 25 precincts where Greene obtained more votes than cast, and another 50 where votes are missing from the final tally. In Lancaster County, Rawl won 84 percent of absentee ballots, but Greene obtained 67 percent of the votes on Election Day. Of 46 counties in the state, 10 have a disparity greater than 10 percentage points between Election Day and absentee ballots. In one seventh of precincts statewide, Greene won 75 percent or more of the votes, which is higher than many incumbents achieve.
The primary reportedly used paperless Election Systems & Software voting machines. Technology and public policy blog Techdirt provides this summary of ES&S machine problems: “ES&S machines have lost votes in Florida. The company gave California machines that were not certified. In one election ES&S gave the vote tallies to a totally different election. People using ES&S machines have found that they voted for the wrong candidate.
“It’s also quite easy for anyone to recalibrate certain ES&S machines, so that it’s easier for people to make mistakes while voting. In South Dakota, ES&S machines added thousands of phantom votes. And then there’s Kentucky, where officials were recently arrested for using the confusing interface of ES&S e-voting machines to get people to leave the polling place before submitting their votes, so those officials could change their votes.”
On Monday, Rawl filed a formal protest challenging the results, saying he has heard from numerous voters and poll workers who reported “extremely unusual incidents” during the June 8 election. “These range from voters who repeatedly pushed the screen for me only to have the other candidates’ names appear, to poll workers who had to change program cards multiple times to at least one voter in the Republican primary who had the Democrat US Senate race appear on her ballot.”
He added, “It is worth noting that these machines were purchased surplus from Louisiana after that state outlawed them. These are touch-screen computer-operated voter machines. There is no independent paper back up for any of them.”
In general, however, the Democratic Party has avoided any mention of the damning record of voting machines and the possibility that the election was rigged. Instead, state Democrats have seized on news that Greene faces a felony obscenity charge for showing a pornographic image to a University of South Carolina student, and asked him to resign, while refraining from commenting on the voting results.
Democratic South Carolina Representative Clyburn suggested Greene was a plant. There is no question the Republicans stand to benefit from a discredited Democratic candidate. It is also unclear whether Greene, who holds a degree in political science and worked for military intelligence, is deliberately misrepresenting himself.
On Sunday, senior White House advisor David Axelrod stated casually that “how [Greene] won the primary is a big mystery, and until you resolve that I don’t think he can claim to be a strong, credible candidate.” Axelrod made no clear demand for an investigation into voting irregularities, despite the upcoming national elections in November.
How Greene obtained such a large margin of victory is unresolved, but the reported vote totals from the ES&S electronic voting machines warrant an independent investigation. If they were tampered with or malfunctioned, it would only be the most recent example of voting irregularities in the United States. In case after case, from the theft of 2000 elections to the disputed results in Ohio and other states that returned Bush to the White House, the Democratic Party has opposed any serious fight against the trampling on voting rights.
Democrats silent on possible ballot tampering in South Carolina primaries
By Jeff Lassahn
15 June 2010
Many questions have emerged about the bizarre results of a June 8 Democratic primary election for one of South Carolina’s US Senate seats. The expected winner was Vic Rawl, an establishment Democratic Party figure who has served as a South Carolina congressman and judge. Instead, 59 percent of the vote went to Alvin Greene, an unemployed military veteran who ran a minimal campaign.
The controversy surrounding the election results has focused heavily on the peculiarities of Greene as a candidate. Little mention, however, has been made of the voting process itself, which involved the use electronic ballot machines that leave no paper trail and have been outlawed in other states because they are vulnerable to hacking and manipulation.
While Democratic Party officials have charged Greene is a Republican “plant,” they have avoided any suggestions that the results were fabricated. To do so would call into question other controversial results, including the 2004 presidential race, and the legitimacy of the US election system as a whole.
Alvin Greene lives in the small town of Manning, South Carolina, and after graduating with a degree in political science of the University of South Carolina, he served in the Air Force and Army National Guard. He has been unemployed since an involuntary honorable discharge from the military in 2009 and has no record of a public political position.
In the context of widespread hostility to the Democratic and Republican parties, their failure to address unemployment, the Gulf oil spill, and continuing wars in the Middle East, it is not implausible that Greene’s lack of affiliation with the political system could bring him popular support. Yet his candidacy was quite a mystery. After the election, the media scrambled to even find out who he was. He had no campaign website, TV or radio ads, lawn signs, or published speeches.
In interviews after his primary win, Greene also stated that he never held any official campaign events or even a fundraiser, nor did he attend any Democratic events or rallies. Pressed repeatedly about how he even reached people, he stated it was “simple, old fashioned campaigning” of going door-to-door all across the state. In total, he spent “less than $2,000” on campaigning for the primary election.
In contrast, Walter Ludwig, the campaign manager of defeated candidate Vic Rawl, noted that the Rawl campaign applied the typical techniques of a multimillion-dollar American election campaign, using a quarter-million robocalls, sending 300,000 e-mails, and driving nearly 17,000 miles to campaign events statewide.
Along with the mysterious campaign, Alvin Greene has provided very little information on his own political views. Responding to accusations that he is a Republican plant, he stated he is “a lifelong Democrat.” Otherwise, Greene has provided only generic comments on issues, and so far has no campaign literature or website to confirm these views.
The media treatment of Greene has ranged from frustrated to offensive. Anchors from Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC all became visibly annoyed when interviewing Greene over his simple answers and simple explanations of how he beat a well-funded candidate. Greene himself seems curiously hesitant and restrained in interviews, to which CNN’s Don Lemon contemptuously asked, “You’re mentally sound, physically sound, you’re not impaired by anything at this moment?”
Despite this, in the primary Greene gathered 100,000 votes statewide compared to 70,000 for Vic Rawl. Among the fairly implausible explanations for his victory are by being number one on the ballot he gathered more votes, his name was associated with popular soul singer Al Green, or that “Greene,” as a popular African-American surname, gave him a boost in name recognition.
So far, the only investigation of voting irregularities has been conducted by volunteer analysts on behalf of Vic Rawl. His campaign manager Walter Ludwig reports that in Spartanburg County, there are 25 precincts where Greene obtained more votes than cast, and another 50 where votes are missing from the final tally. In Lancaster County, Rawl won 84 percent of absentee ballots, but Greene obtained 67 percent of the votes on Election Day. Of 46 counties in the state, 10 have a disparity greater than 10 percentage points between Election Day and absentee ballots. In one seventh of precincts statewide, Greene won 75 percent or more of the votes, which is higher than many incumbents achieve.
The primary reportedly used paperless Election Systems & Software voting machines. Technology and public policy blog Techdirt provides this summary of ES&S machine problems: “ES&S machines have lost votes in Florida. The company gave California machines that were not certified. In one election ES&S gave the vote tallies to a totally different election. People using ES&S machines have found that they voted for the wrong candidate.
“It’s also quite easy for anyone to recalibrate certain ES&S machines, so that it’s easier for people to make mistakes while voting. In South Dakota, ES&S machines added thousands of phantom votes. And then there’s Kentucky, where officials were recently arrested for using the confusing interface of ES&S e-voting machines to get people to leave the polling place before submitting their votes, so those officials could change their votes.”
On Monday, Rawl filed a formal protest challenging the results, saying he has heard from numerous voters and poll workers who reported “extremely unusual incidents” during the June 8 election. “These range from voters who repeatedly pushed the screen for me only to have the other candidates’ names appear, to poll workers who had to change program cards multiple times to at least one voter in the Republican primary who had the Democrat US Senate race appear on her ballot.”
He added, “It is worth noting that these machines were purchased surplus from Louisiana after that state outlawed them. These are touch-screen computer-operated voter machines. There is no independent paper back up for any of them.”
In general, however, the Democratic Party has avoided any mention of the damning record of voting machines and the possibility that the election was rigged. Instead, state Democrats have seized on news that Greene faces a felony obscenity charge for showing a pornographic image to a University of South Carolina student, and asked him to resign, while refraining from commenting on the voting results.
Democratic South Carolina Representative Clyburn suggested Greene was a plant. There is no question the Republicans stand to benefit from a discredited Democratic candidate. It is also unclear whether Greene, who holds a degree in political science and worked for military intelligence, is deliberately misrepresenting himself.
On Sunday, senior White House advisor David Axelrod stated casually that “how [Greene] won the primary is a big mystery, and until you resolve that I don’t think he can claim to be a strong, credible candidate.” Axelrod made no clear demand for an investigation into voting irregularities, despite the upcoming national elections in November.
How Greene obtained such a large margin of victory is unresolved, but the reported vote totals from the ES&S electronic voting machines warrant an independent investigation. If they were tampered with or malfunctioned, it would only be the most recent example of voting irregularities in the United States. In case after case, from the theft of 2000 elections to the disputed results in Ohio and other states that returned Bush to the White House, the Democratic Party has opposed any serious fight against the trampling on voting rights.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Lisa Pease on Voting Laws
Dear Voting Activists,
I wanted to bring a couple of important items to your attention—one good, and one horrific.
First, Holt’s bill is better than ever, in the latest version. Clear language expressly forbids the use of DRE (direct recording electronic) voting machines. Paperless machines have to be replaced by 2010, if the bill passes, and machines that currently produce a paper record have to be replaced by 2014. But again, that’s assuming the bill PASSES in time. You can read the latest version of the Holt bill via the link at the end of this message.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that, separately, there’s a very concerted effort afoot to enable Internet voting in this country. Internet voting presents a completely insecure system that has no paper trail and no way to be audited by hand.
Just as the disabled community was the excuse for bringing us unauditable DRE machines, Internet voting is being put forward as a way of helping the troops.
So our efforts have reached a crossroads. If we fail to see Holt’s bill through the door this time around, we won’t get another chance. Internet voting will be ushered in, and our power to ‘vote out’ the people who don’t want to help us will be seriously compromised, if not gone altogether. That’s an unthinkable option, for me, and I hope for all of you as well. Please understand the push for Internet voting is a very serious effort with a real chance of succeeding if we do not act promptly.
The only bill already written, vetted, familiar to the membership, and ready to be passed is Holt’s bill. It doesn’t have a number yet, and won’t until it’s introduced.
And that’s where you come in.
Rep. Holt wants to get as many co-sponsors as possible before the bill is introduced.
Will you please call your Congressperson in the next few days and find out where they stand re Holt’s latest bill? If they are already a co-sponsor, thank them mightily for their political will and courage. If they are not yet a co-sponsor, please encourage them, with all the passion you feel about this issue, to support this last firewall against truly unaccountable, unauditable voting.
Time is of the essence. If we want this bill to be in effect for the 2010 election, we’d need to get this bill on the House floor for a vote by the end of July.
Here are some key points you can mention:
Holt’s bill will require mandatory voter-marked paper records and a mandatory audit of those records, while still providing for accessible options for the disabled.
Holt’s bill has already been vetted by the House Administration committee and is essentially ready to go, with very few changes from the last session, but with the key change of banning DREs by requiring that the paper ballot must be marked by the voter before it is counted.
By requiring both machine and hand counts (via manual audits), we dramatically reduce the possibility of a rigged vote. It’s easier to rig a fully hand-counted vote or a fully machine-counted vote than it is to rig a vote that is counted by two entirely separate systems.
Holt’s bill will implicitly ban Internet voting before it gets off the ground because it requires a paper record marked by the voter, something which would be impossible to do using the Internet alone.
I don’t want to sound alarmist. But truly, we are at the end of the line. Each time the bill fails to come to a vote, the DRE and Internet voting vendors (one and the same) grow bolder. We need to completely cut them off at this pass before Internet voting becomes a reality. If that happens, our only recourse will be in the streets. And that’s a battle I hope none of us have to fight, because that one will be much more costly to all of us.
Although some states have been moving to paper-based elections, seven states still have fully paperless, unauditable elections. Many other states have numerous counties still using paperless voting systems. How many more jurisdictions will succumb to aggressive efforts to implement Internet voting? Many people still don’t get it. Most people are decent enough and innocent enough to believe Internet voting would be both convenient and safe. After all, they bank online, right? That’s why the burden falls on those few of us who really do understand the dangers to do all we can while we still have a chance to make a difference.
While I’m thrilled Obama is our president, the fact that he got elected made a lot of activists complacent, feeling that our vote really isn’t at risk. But it is, and more than ever before.
Please. Call your Representative and Senators this week and ask if they are supporting Rush Holt’s bill banning paperless voting. (Ask your Senator to support Sen. Bill Nelson’s clone of Holt’s bill when it is introduced.) Talk to their staff and make the strongest case you can. Ask for an answer. Try not to just pass a comment along. Get your Congressperson on the record regarding their support, or opposition, to this bill.
If you don’t know who your Representative is, you can find out at www.house.gov/writerep. By entering your address and ZIP, you can find out who represents you in Washington.
Please share this message with your friends who are politically aware. We all need to help push this one over the top. No legislation passes without a groundswell of grassroots activity behind it. The other side is working overtime to stop this legislation. It’s up to us to counter their efforts.
Thank you, as always, for being such a good patriot and supporting an honest, accountable vote. I’m grateful for all you continue to do.
Lisa Pease
Author and activist
Resources
The latest version of Holt’s bill:
http://voteraction.org/files/HOLT_VOTERCONFIDENCE_FINAL4-14-09xml%20(2).pdf
Voter Action’s strong endorsement of Holt’s bill:
http://www.voteraction.org/news-article/2009/voter-action-statement-support-holt-voter-confidence-and-increased-accessibility-a
List of Internet voting bills being proposed:
http://voteraction.org/news-article/2009/track-internet-voting-legislation-your-state
One of the arguments has been that Internet voting would increase participation. That’s the opposite of what happened in Hawaii with their recent Internet voting experiment. Voting participation dropped 83%:
http://www.kitv.com/news/19573770/detail.html
List of various systems used by various states (seven have fully paperless systems, with key congressional and senate seats being determined):
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/
If you get pushback re allowing the military to vote, point them to Holt’s separate bill providing express mail services for soldiers to mail paper ballots back, at taxpayer expense. The text of this short bill is here:
http://voteraction.org/news-article/2009/track-internet-voting-legislation-your-state
I wanted to bring a couple of important items to your attention—one good, and one horrific.
First, Holt’s bill is better than ever, in the latest version. Clear language expressly forbids the use of DRE (direct recording electronic) voting machines. Paperless machines have to be replaced by 2010, if the bill passes, and machines that currently produce a paper record have to be replaced by 2014. But again, that’s assuming the bill PASSES in time. You can read the latest version of the Holt bill via the link at the end of this message.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that, separately, there’s a very concerted effort afoot to enable Internet voting in this country. Internet voting presents a completely insecure system that has no paper trail and no way to be audited by hand.
Just as the disabled community was the excuse for bringing us unauditable DRE machines, Internet voting is being put forward as a way of helping the troops.
So our efforts have reached a crossroads. If we fail to see Holt’s bill through the door this time around, we won’t get another chance. Internet voting will be ushered in, and our power to ‘vote out’ the people who don’t want to help us will be seriously compromised, if not gone altogether. That’s an unthinkable option, for me, and I hope for all of you as well. Please understand the push for Internet voting is a very serious effort with a real chance of succeeding if we do not act promptly.
The only bill already written, vetted, familiar to the membership, and ready to be passed is Holt’s bill. It doesn’t have a number yet, and won’t until it’s introduced.
And that’s where you come in.
Rep. Holt wants to get as many co-sponsors as possible before the bill is introduced.
Will you please call your Congressperson in the next few days and find out where they stand re Holt’s latest bill? If they are already a co-sponsor, thank them mightily for their political will and courage. If they are not yet a co-sponsor, please encourage them, with all the passion you feel about this issue, to support this last firewall against truly unaccountable, unauditable voting.
Time is of the essence. If we want this bill to be in effect for the 2010 election, we’d need to get this bill on the House floor for a vote by the end of July.
Here are some key points you can mention:
Holt’s bill will require mandatory voter-marked paper records and a mandatory audit of those records, while still providing for accessible options for the disabled.
Holt’s bill has already been vetted by the House Administration committee and is essentially ready to go, with very few changes from the last session, but with the key change of banning DREs by requiring that the paper ballot must be marked by the voter before it is counted.
By requiring both machine and hand counts (via manual audits), we dramatically reduce the possibility of a rigged vote. It’s easier to rig a fully hand-counted vote or a fully machine-counted vote than it is to rig a vote that is counted by two entirely separate systems.
Holt’s bill will implicitly ban Internet voting before it gets off the ground because it requires a paper record marked by the voter, something which would be impossible to do using the Internet alone.
I don’t want to sound alarmist. But truly, we are at the end of the line. Each time the bill fails to come to a vote, the DRE and Internet voting vendors (one and the same) grow bolder. We need to completely cut them off at this pass before Internet voting becomes a reality. If that happens, our only recourse will be in the streets. And that’s a battle I hope none of us have to fight, because that one will be much more costly to all of us.
Although some states have been moving to paper-based elections, seven states still have fully paperless, unauditable elections. Many other states have numerous counties still using paperless voting systems. How many more jurisdictions will succumb to aggressive efforts to implement Internet voting? Many people still don’t get it. Most people are decent enough and innocent enough to believe Internet voting would be both convenient and safe. After all, they bank online, right? That’s why the burden falls on those few of us who really do understand the dangers to do all we can while we still have a chance to make a difference.
While I’m thrilled Obama is our president, the fact that he got elected made a lot of activists complacent, feeling that our vote really isn’t at risk. But it is, and more than ever before.
Please. Call your Representative and Senators this week and ask if they are supporting Rush Holt’s bill banning paperless voting. (Ask your Senator to support Sen. Bill Nelson’s clone of Holt’s bill when it is introduced.) Talk to their staff and make the strongest case you can. Ask for an answer. Try not to just pass a comment along. Get your Congressperson on the record regarding their support, or opposition, to this bill.
If you don’t know who your Representative is, you can find out at www.house.gov/writerep. By entering your address and ZIP, you can find out who represents you in Washington.
Please share this message with your friends who are politically aware. We all need to help push this one over the top. No legislation passes without a groundswell of grassroots activity behind it. The other side is working overtime to stop this legislation. It’s up to us to counter their efforts.
Thank you, as always, for being such a good patriot and supporting an honest, accountable vote. I’m grateful for all you continue to do.
Lisa Pease
Author and activist
Resources
The latest version of Holt’s bill:
http://voteraction.org/files/HOLT_VOTERCONFIDENCE_FINAL4-14-09xml%20(2).pdf
Voter Action’s strong endorsement of Holt’s bill:
http://www.voteraction.org/news-article/2009/voter-action-statement-support-holt-voter-confidence-and-increased-accessibility-a
List of Internet voting bills being proposed:
http://voteraction.org/news-article/2009/track-internet-voting-legislation-your-state
One of the arguments has been that Internet voting would increase participation. That’s the opposite of what happened in Hawaii with their recent Internet voting experiment. Voting participation dropped 83%:
http://www.kitv.com/news/19573770/detail.html
List of various systems used by various states (seven have fully paperless systems, with key congressional and senate seats being determined):
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/
If you get pushback re allowing the military to vote, point them to Holt’s separate bill providing express mail services for soldiers to mail paper ballots back, at taxpayer expense. The text of this short bill is here:
http://voteraction.org/news-article/2009/track-internet-voting-legislation-your-state
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Electronic Voting Bill Update November 2007
Dear Voting Activists,
As most of you know, one of the main objections to Rush Holt’s bill was that it still allowed for DRE – Direct Recording Electronic – machines to be used to count our votes. The danger of these is that, even if a paper record is produced, people may not sufficiently check their own vote, so an audit of those would be meaningless.
Today, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), along with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), introduced a bill that closely mirrors Rush Holt’s bill in terms of the audit provisions, but makes an outright ban against using DRE machines after 2012.
As soon as I have a bill number, I’ll forward so we can contact Boxer and Feinstein re this. Feinstein put forward her own bill, which is dreadful – allows election officials to count votes in secret, does not require paper records, ‘nuff said.
Thanks for all you do. Stay tuned!
Lisa Pease
lpease@gte.net
Blog: http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/
Site: http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/
Book: The Assassinations
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day." - Thomas Jefferson
As most of you know, one of the main objections to Rush Holt’s bill was that it still allowed for DRE – Direct Recording Electronic – machines to be used to count our votes. The danger of these is that, even if a paper record is produced, people may not sufficiently check their own vote, so an audit of those would be meaningless.
Today, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), along with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), introduced a bill that closely mirrors Rush Holt’s bill in terms of the audit provisions, but makes an outright ban against using DRE machines after 2012.
As soon as I have a bill number, I’ll forward so we can contact Boxer and Feinstein re this. Feinstein put forward her own bill, which is dreadful – allows election officials to count votes in secret, does not require paper records, ‘nuff said.
Thanks for all you do. Stay tuned!
Lisa Pease
lpease@gte.net
Blog: http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/
Site: http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/
Book: The Assassinations
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day." - Thomas Jefferson
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
California Restricts Voting Machines
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Voting-Machines.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
August 4, 2007
California Restricts Voting Machines
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- California's secretary of state placed rigorous security conditions on voting equipment used in dozens of counties and limited the use of two of the most widely used machines statewide.
Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced the measures minutes before midnight Friday night -- making good on a promise to tell counties if their voting equipment would be decertified at least six months before California's Feb. 5 presidential primary.
The announcement leaves the most affected counties with little time to find alternate equipment in time for the primary. The decision follows an eight-week security review of voting systems used in all but a few of California's 58 counties.
University of California computer experts found that voting machines sold by three companies -- Diebold Election Systems, Hart InterCivic and Sequoia Voting Systems -- were vulnerable to hackers and that voting results could be altered.
Bowen said she had decertified the machines for use and then recertified them on the condition they meet her new security standards. When asked what would happen if the companies failed to do so, Bowen responded, ''I think they will.''
She also limited the Diebold and Sequoia machines to one per polling place. That will force some counties to find replacement equipment on a tight schedule.
Bowen ordered the review, which was released last week, to ensure that California would not face the same doubts about the accuracy of its voting systems that hit Florida after the 2000 election and Ohio in 2004.
The additional security requirements she imposed included banning all modum or wireless connections to the machines to prevent them from being linked to an outside computer or the Internet. Each machine that must be recertified also has a lengthy list of additional conditions it must meet, many of them highly technical.
She also required a full manual count of all votes cast on Diebold or Sequoia machines to ensure accuracy.
Bowen said the study revealed some vulnerabilities that would allow hackers to manipulate the systems ''with little chance of detection and with dire consequences.'' Her review also found that the machines posed problems for disabled voters.
Steve Weir, president of the state association of registrars, warned that the companies would have to get federal approval if Bowen's conditions for recertification require any more than minimal changes to a machine's software and hardware. That process could take up to eight months -- well past California's presidential primary.
Company officials have downplayed the results of Bowen's review, saying they reflected unrealistic, worst-case scenarios that would be counteracted by security measures taken by the companies and local election officials.
The companies also complained that the examiners had access to computer coding, manuals and other information that is not available to the public.
Officials with Sequoia said they were disappointed with Bowen's withdrawal of the company's certification but would make necessary improvements. They defended their equipment as accurate and secure.
''Electronic voting systems have never been successfully tampered with in an actual election,'' the company said in a statement. ''That same statement cannot be made about lever machines and paper-based voting systems throughout our nation's history.''
Messages left with Diebold and Hart InterCivic early Saturday morning were not immediately returned.
Machines made by a fourth company, Election Systems & Software, were not included in the review because it was late providing information the secretary of state's office needed, said Nicole Winger, a spokeswoman for Bowen.
The secretary of state launched a separate review of that company's Inkavote Plus system, which is used only in Los Angeles County. On Friday, Bowen said she had decertified that equipment but would review and reconsider it.
A message left for a company spokesman early Saturday morning was not immediately returned.
August 4, 2007
California Restricts Voting Machines
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- California's secretary of state placed rigorous security conditions on voting equipment used in dozens of counties and limited the use of two of the most widely used machines statewide.
Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced the measures minutes before midnight Friday night -- making good on a promise to tell counties if their voting equipment would be decertified at least six months before California's Feb. 5 presidential primary.
The announcement leaves the most affected counties with little time to find alternate equipment in time for the primary. The decision follows an eight-week security review of voting systems used in all but a few of California's 58 counties.
University of California computer experts found that voting machines sold by three companies -- Diebold Election Systems, Hart InterCivic and Sequoia Voting Systems -- were vulnerable to hackers and that voting results could be altered.
Bowen said she had decertified the machines for use and then recertified them on the condition they meet her new security standards. When asked what would happen if the companies failed to do so, Bowen responded, ''I think they will.''
She also limited the Diebold and Sequoia machines to one per polling place. That will force some counties to find replacement equipment on a tight schedule.
Bowen ordered the review, which was released last week, to ensure that California would not face the same doubts about the accuracy of its voting systems that hit Florida after the 2000 election and Ohio in 2004.
The additional security requirements she imposed included banning all modum or wireless connections to the machines to prevent them from being linked to an outside computer or the Internet. Each machine that must be recertified also has a lengthy list of additional conditions it must meet, many of them highly technical.
She also required a full manual count of all votes cast on Diebold or Sequoia machines to ensure accuracy.
Bowen said the study revealed some vulnerabilities that would allow hackers to manipulate the systems ''with little chance of detection and with dire consequences.'' Her review also found that the machines posed problems for disabled voters.
Steve Weir, president of the state association of registrars, warned that the companies would have to get federal approval if Bowen's conditions for recertification require any more than minimal changes to a machine's software and hardware. That process could take up to eight months -- well past California's presidential primary.
Company officials have downplayed the results of Bowen's review, saying they reflected unrealistic, worst-case scenarios that would be counteracted by security measures taken by the companies and local election officials.
The companies also complained that the examiners had access to computer coding, manuals and other information that is not available to the public.
Officials with Sequoia said they were disappointed with Bowen's withdrawal of the company's certification but would make necessary improvements. They defended their equipment as accurate and secure.
''Electronic voting systems have never been successfully tampered with in an actual election,'' the company said in a statement. ''That same statement cannot be made about lever machines and paper-based voting systems throughout our nation's history.''
Messages left with Diebold and Hart InterCivic early Saturday morning were not immediately returned.
Machines made by a fourth company, Election Systems & Software, were not included in the review because it was late providing information the secretary of state's office needed, said Nicole Winger, a spokeswoman for Bowen.
The secretary of state launched a separate review of that company's Inkavote Plus system, which is used only in Los Angeles County. On Friday, Bowen said she had decertified that equipment but would review and reconsider it.
A message left for a company spokesman early Saturday morning was not immediately returned.
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