Black Box Voting - America's Elections Watchdog Group

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We are a non-partisan group, and our most immediat... More -- Wisconsin Citizens for Election Protection is a newly-formed group working to protect election integrity and to restore confidence in Wisconsin’s elections.

A House Committee has just passed a bill [H1000] o... More -- WA SoS Reed has planted legislation in the State House providing internet voting for members of armed forces overseas. He is said to favor internet voting for all, eventually.

I know you're reluctant to investigate election ha... More -- WISCONSIN: Subject - Wakesha, Wisconsin, Election (from the mailbag)

I am interested in election reform. Some years ago... More -- From E.M.: Hi there -- I am looking for a book about election fraud written by a man or brothers

The concept is to allow each citizen to audit his ... More -- I had an idea and I found several others who independently came up with the same idea. However, I haven't been able to find any organizations or websites promoting this idea.

"L-1 Identity Solutions" was brought into NV DMV u... More -- NEVADA - concerns about real ID vendor

Dear Black Box Voting, Will someone explain to me ... More -- Subject: What's wrong with identity cards?

USA: Good evening Mrs. Harris, Recently you posted... More -- SUBJECT: Internet voting, Black Box Voting has it wrong

TEXAS: The Texas Legislature is in session until t... More -- Subject: DRE Machines - Texas bill requests paper trail & Source (comments?)

UNION ELECTIONS: Upcoming union election to be ser... More -- Subject: Can anyone shed any light on election firm "Elect Tech" [or Electech?]

[Manipulated official ballot]
[Voter's absentee b... More -- Voter's ballot was changed by an election official with access to the ballots. Voter's ballot was a one of a kind in the database. Official had to change it back because I had the right to see and photograph the ballots under Michigan's FOIA law.

I would think that the percentage of Democrats to ... More -- This year seems so unusual in that almost every race seems too close to call. Is it possible to have such a high proportion of races be THIS TIGHT?

SUBJECT: ILLEGAL VOTING PRACTICE

Submitted by: ... More -- I believe that my neighbor has been illegally voting in both Maryland and Virginia during previous elections, and will do so again on November 2nd. What can I do about it?

Hi Bev, In our county, an election board consistin... More -- SUBJECT: A grave breach of protocol and security - what reports/tests/etc could be run to detect evidence of vote tampering?

Subject: Nevada
Hello Bev, Just listed to you on ... More -- From D.R.
Let's put the People back into We the People!

Let's put the People back into We the People!

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(USA) 9/11 - COURT AFFIRMS CITIZEN RIGHT TO INSPECT VOTED BALLOTS - A Colorado court has knocked down an anti-democratic effort by Colorado election clerks who have been trying to block the public from inspecting ballots in Saguache County, ruling that citizens indeed DO have the right to examine voted ballots (which are, by the way, anonymous).

Public examination of ballots doesn't entirely guarantee that the count was correct, but this IS a key component of the public right to self-governance.

Public right to validate its own elections lives at the very core of our constitutional right to self-govern. It is our tax money that pays for our government; we own it. If government workers are allowed to be in position to install themselves and choose representatives for us, we do not have true control over selecting our representation. If we lack the ability to see and authenticate our own choosing process, we actually are choosing our representation only if those holding certain positions inside government want to allow it. In a word: Unconstitutional.

Secrecy is antithetical to democratic systems, but if secrecy is allowed in the choosing process itself, it crushes the bedrock on which the democratic system sits. The public can never cede the choosing process over to government insiders, based on "trust", because to do so actually removes the democratic system, quietly replacing it with a pseudo, a con, a wish, a pretender.

The public must be able to see and authenticate four things in public elections:
1. Who can vote (voter list)
2. Who did vote (participating voter list)
3. Chain of custody
4. The count

Several states have enacted what I think we should call "corruption protection laws" to prohibit the public from exercising its right to validate its own elections. In Colorado, ballots are a public record but certain election clerks have refused to comply with the Colorado Open Records Act, denying public requests to inspect ballots and copies of ballots.

New Hampshire, in an act of legislative subterfuge (key records on who did what now missing from New Hampshire state archives), quietly passed a law in 2003 containing an obscure paragraph which excludes ballots from right to know law. (more: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/81673.html )

The public used to be able to look at ballots in Washington State, but Washington recently changed the definition of "ballot" in its election statutes, and is now using this changed definition clause to block citizens from examining ballots.

Colorado clerks have tried (and in Aspen, have so far succeeded) blocking the public from examining ballots to compare with election results. An exception: El Paso County, whose clerk allowed the public to inspect ballots there. Black Box Voting is assisting with sponsorship of litigation on the Aspen issue. (more: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/81647.html and http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/133/80769.html )

A quasi-governmental organization called the Colorado Clerks Association (paid for with taxpayer funds, but claiming it is not subject to open records laws or sunshine requirements for its meetings) has aggressively fought the public over right to examine ballots. (more: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/81647.html ) The court decision in the Saguache County case is a crucial step to enforce public rights and controls.

Examining ballots after they have been taken out of public view does not suffice to validate the count, because #3, chain of custody, is missing. The same government workers who have access to altering vote counts control the chain of custody.

The best way to use ballot examination to validate the count is at polling places on Election Night. Any method that allows the public to see and authenticate the count, before ballots leave public view, is better than what we are doing now. For example: If using voting machine ballot scanning, add a FREE procedure, (takes only 20 minutes for 1200 ballots), like this: Deal ballots out like a deck of cards and let public videotape each ballot face, front and back; or -- best, when properly administered -- hand count at the polling place in public view on Election Night with public allowed to videotape the details (costs only one-fifth of machine count, and locations which hand count frequently beat machine count locations in speed of results on Election Night). Absentee voting conceals who actually cast the ballots and facilitates vote-stuffing and voter identity theft, and should be limited to need-only. But these are separate issues.

First, the public must be ALLOWED to examine ballots. This essential public voting right is currently thwarted in New Hampshire, Washington, Kansas, Utah and several other states.

The Colorado decision validates public right to examine ballots in Colorado. Florida routinely allows ballot examinations by the public. Michigan citizens recently examined and videotaped voted ballots. As excerpt from the Denver Post below points out, th... More

(USA) 8/11 - NEW REPORT ON KEY PUBLIC SAFEGUARDS: "WHO CAN VOTE" - "WHO DID VOTE" I've been absent from the public eye for nearly four months, involved one of the most comprehensive examinations of voting information since 2005. I analyzed a sequential set of 80 voter history lists, 1,000 electronic poll book reports, a dozen master electronic poll book records, 50 participating voter lists, internal worksheets on purges, transaction logs for updates and changes in voter lists, user guides, correspondence and staff training materials. The findings will help citizens oversee the 2012 election. My five-part report for citizen oversight of WHO CAN VOTE / WHO DID VOTE will be released at http://www.blackboxvoting.org, one major report per week, throughout the month of September 2011.

Four things the public must be able to see and authenticate:
1. Who can vote (the voter list)
2. Who did vote (participating voter list)
3. Chain of custody
4. The count

In what I believe is a truly pioneering evaluation, I'm going to take the public inside crucial parts of the voter list system -- the lists that dictate who can vote, and the lists that report who did vote (the crucial check and balance which MUST MATCH the number of votes cast.)

In 2008, actor Tim Robbins went to vote in the presidential election and was told he was not registered. Only after repeated and firm assertion that he had registered to vote, and a considerable delay, was he allowed to vote. What happened? I have uncovered data that shows exactly how this situation can happen, and why it is likely to happen again in the 2012 presidential election unless simple steps are taken to resolve a widespread issue.

In Wisconsin, citizens who checked their voter records found them to be inaccurate. The histories reported that they had not voted in elections when they had; that they had voted absentee when they had not. (But who cares?) Your voter history is used to determine whether to keep or purge you from the rolls. Your vote method history (absentee, early, at polls) needs to MATCH the election results record. In other words, the number of absentee votes must MATCH the number of people in the voter history who voted absentee. Inaccurate voter histories will produce wrongful purging. Participating voter lists that don't match number of votes violate one of the most crucial safeguards against vote count tampering.

Voter lists have to be updated, with changed addresses and so forth; how do such actions put you at risk for wrongful purging? I have located specific areas where procedural protections need to be added in order to prevent voter updates from producing wrongful purges. And what about "rightful purging"? The Help America Vote Act required cleansing of voter lists, which became a controversial political talking point. I'll show you just how cluttered with duplicates the voter lists had become, and the immense job it was to clean them up.

Demographics are often cited to support or negate election results. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 contains provisions for tracking racial demographics in locations with a history of problems. These "Voting Rights" locations, by federal law, track the number of Black voters (and sometimes Hispanic, Asian or other minority groups). But are the reported demographics accurate? I found that these demographics are becoming increasingly inaccurate in at least one racially polarized county. Yet the demographics are frequently cited to tell the public the electronic count must be accurate because it "matches the demographics." (What does that statement mean if the demographics are inaccurate?)

When then-US Representative Cynthia McKinney (later 2008 Green Party candidate for president) requested to examine the list of who voted in her 2006 congressional election, she was never given a thing. They used electronic poll books and no one seemed to know exactly what the poll list would look like. I have obtained approximately one thousand electronic poll logs, along with their accompanying master files. I will show you exactly what they look like, what to ask for, how to examine them, what safeguards are crucial to reduce risk with electronic poll books, now widely used in the USA.

Are there any problems with the software design in the ES&S/Diebold ExpressPoll system? (You betcha.) As they say, humans err but a computer can REALLY mess things up.

How does the voter list interact with the vote counting process, and could it be used to tamper? It's not surprising that the voter list would supply a number of voters per precinct to be used with election results, to track turnout percentage. I WAS surprised, however, to see a more intimate relationship; one that could be used like a middleman, using the voter list software to actually tamper with the vote count itself.

In absentee voting locations -- and over 25 states now have no-fault absentee voting -- inaccurate "who voted" lists offer a direct connection to vote stuffing for insiders willing to exploit the lists.

I will also be po... More

(NH) 4/11 - "THE INVISIBLE HAND" - A CASE STUDY IN STRIPPING AMERICAN CITIZENS OF THEIR RIGHTS - New questions on election transparency have surfaced in New Hampshire, where the powerful First-In-The-Nation presidential primary will take place in 2012. If New Hampshire is to have its thumb on the scale in presidential politics, transparency needs to be an absolute requirement. In a bizarre chain of events, nontransparency was entered surreptitiously into a New Hampshire statute in 2003.

NEW HAMPSHIRE IS GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN

Ballots are an open record under Colorado law though clerks are fighting the public on this. Marilyn Marks, supported by Black Box Voting, is litigating over wrongful denial of public right to inspect Colorado ballots. This is currently in the Colo. Supreme Court now (Looking good so far ... more on that below).

In Wisconsin where a hot political recount is taking place, the public can opt to examine ballots with or without a recount. In Michigan, the public can even take pictures of ballots. In Florida, a consortium of news organizations examined ALL the ballots from the 2000 presidential election. In California, two counties (Humboldt and Yolo) make photocopies of all the ballots available to the public for examination.

But in 2003, New Hampshire ballots were ever-so-quietly EXCLUDED from public right to know. How could this happen?

THE INVESTIGATION INTO NEW HAMPSHIRE'S REMOVAL OF BALLOTS FROM RIGHT-TO-KNOW LAW

Black Box Voting director Bev Harris, board member Nancy Tobi, and an extraordinary New Hampshire citizen named Deborah Sumner conducted an investigation this month into New Hampshire's action to exempt ballots from its Right-to-Know law. What we found was shocking.

From: Deborah Sumner
Subject: The mystery of why ballots are exempted from NH Right to Know Law

"Still trying to track down more info on why ballots were exempted from NH right to know law. It seems to me, if there was any discussion, it was removed from the official record or took place behind closed doors."

Sumner learned that in 2003 the New Hampshire State Senate sneaked an extraneous amendment into an unrelated bill, HB 627, pertaining to defining domicile to comply with a Help America Vote requirement.

In other words, in a bill about residency requirements for voter registration, suddenly, magically, and out of thin air, an amendment appeared to exclude ballots from New Hampshire right to know law.

"No evidence the amendment had a public hearing," Sumner writes. "Original bill did in the House."

TO PASS A LAW IN NEW HAMPSHIRE:

Both the New Hampshire House and Senate must pass the bill, and it must be identical in form.

In the case of 2003 House Bill 627, the house passed a bill which had nothing to do with excluding ballots from public right to know.

The senate got the bill, went into committee, had a hearing and obtained a detailed opinion from the attorney general, all pertaining to a bill that had NO LANGUAGE WHATSOEVER about removing ballots from public oversight.

TIMELINE FOR THE MYSTERY AMENDMENT

I traveled to New Hampshire and examined the file on this bill, requesting all notes, minutes, committee actions and testimony. Here is the curious timeline:

MARCH 2003: The House Elections Committee had a hearing and invited several officials to discuss the bill, which had NO LANGUAGE about excluding ballots from right to know law.

MARCH 2003: The House passed the bill, which included NO LANGUAGE about excluding ballots from right to know law.

APRIL 30, 2003: The Senate Internal Affairs Committee had a hearing on HB 627. At this time there was NO LANGUAGE about excluding ballots from right to know law.

APRIL 30, 2003: Bud Fitch from the Attorney General's office provided a legal analysis on the bill which contained NO LANGUAGE about excluding ballots from right to know law.

MAY 9, 2003: Suddenly, magically, and with no notes, testimony, hearing, legal analysis, or any visible explanation or discussion, an amendment appeared in the Senate bill to exclude ballots from right to know. This amendment was passed by the Senate.

JUNE 2003: The House saw what the Senate did to the bill. They REFUSED TO AUTHORIZE the version of the bill containing an exclusion of ballots from right to know law.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE HOUSE AND SENATE CANNOT AGREE?

JUNE 2003: When the House refuses to concur with the Senate, a "Committee of Conference" is called to see if they can get together on the language. The Committee of Conference REMOVED the offending language about excluding ballots from public right to know.

JUNE 24, 2003: The bill, with the offensive language removed, was then passed by both House and Senate.

SO HOW WERE PUBLIC RIGHTS ULTIMATELY VIOLATED?

JUNE 30, 2003 a murky little amendment posing as a "technical amendment" was passed. This amendment is both improperly vague in its wording and illegal in its implementation.

TECHNICALITIES ONLY: THE "ENROLLED BILLS" COMMITTEE"

After both houses pass a bill, it is sent to the "Enr... More

(CO) 4/11 - COLO. ELECTION CLERKS AT WAR WITH THE PUBLIC - Colorado has some of the most shocking local election administrators in the nation. This long-standing problem is reaching broader public awareness through an unseemly situation in tiny Saguache County.

COLORADO CLERKS ASSOCIATION

The Colorado Clerks Association (supported by taxpayer dollars) has come out publicly AGAINST the most basic principles of democratic self-governance, claiming that they, and they alone have the right to examine ballots. They have now attempted to rebuff even the Secretary of State from a ballot examination.

Unlike other states (California, for example), the Colorado Clerks argue that their clerks association is private. They hold secret meetings and correspond secretly, claiming that the public does not have the right to attend or review what they do.

* * * * quote * * * *
"The Colorado County Clerks Association is a secret private group that circumvents Colorado's Sunshine Laws, uses paid lobbyists, refuses public observers at their meetings, may be diverting public resources to their own needs, and develops government policy behind closed doors with no opportunity for public debate,"
* * * * *
writes Al Kolwicz of the Colorado Voters Group. More:
http://www.coloradostatesman.com/content/992704-trust-verify-%3F-county-clerks-a ssociation-please-take-note

THE PUBLIC HAS AN ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO INSPECT THE BALLOTS

For self-governance to work, the public must be able to see and authenticate four things:
- Who can vote (the voter list)
- Who did vote
- Chain of custody
- The count

Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler has now come out with a strong statement against concealing ballots from the public:

* * * * quote * * * *
"Is election integrity better served through open, public scrutiny that holds election officials accountable? Or are we better served when local officials deny the public access to election materials?

"As Secretary of State, last month I held a Saguache town hall meeting to discuss the 2010 election for country commissioner and clerk and recorder. My office had planned to publicly review the ballots...unfortunately, the Saguache clerk and recorder denied my access to the ballots, thus triggering a lawsuit under the Colorado election code...

"The public will be invited to watch every step. Unfortunately, my plans have provoked fierce opposition from election administrators. I'm both surprised and disappointed.

"First, the surprise. Clerk Myers publicly promised to make ballots available for public review -- if my office approved. But once I took her at her word, she quickly backtracked, denying public review and also obstructing my statutory authority to review the election.
* * * * *

This isn't just about the rights of a Secretary of State to review. This is about PUBLIC rights, as the Secretary of State notes:

* * * * quote * * * *
"Both Myers and others [ie, the head of the Colorado Clerks Association] claim that my review will cause public harm, create confusion, and erode voter privacy. This is silly. Ballots are anonymous, and we can easily deal with the rare ballot that has someone's name on it. Don't just take my word for it. Last year, El Paso County invited members of the public to review voted ballots -- just like others throughout the country. And it worked. There was no loss of secrecy, no confusion, and no harm.

"Bluntly stated, there is no 'high priesthood of ballot guardianship.' Just like the secretary of state, clerks are elected officials who must operate under rules of public accountability and public scrutiny."
* * * * *

PUBLIC BALLOT INSPECTIONS WILL NOT REVEAL HOW YOU VOTED

Scott Doyle, clerk and recorder in Larimer County and president of the Colorado County Clerks Association, implies that public ballot inspections will violate voter privacy:

* * * * quote * * * *
"Ballots are votes, and Colorado has decades of precedent to ensure votes are counted correctly and voters' privacy is secure," he writes, in opposition to allowing public inspection of the ballots.
* * * * *
More:
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_17694150

As an election official, Doyle knows that the Colorado Constitution requires ballots to be anonymous. Public examinations of anonymous ballots does nothing whatever to violate voter privacy.

UNIQUE BAR CODES ON MAIL-IN BALLOTS DO COMPROMISE PRIVACY TO INSIDERS (BUT DO NOT AFFECT PRIVACY WITH PUBLIC INSPECTIONS)

Perhaps Colorado clerks and one of their favored vendors, Hart Intercivic, know that if the public examines the Hart ballots we'll see that Hart's mail-ballot system is violating voter privacy.

Citizens who have received Hart ballots in the mail have shown that Hart is placing unique bar codes on each voter's ballot. This compromises voter privacy for mail-in ballots, enabling insiders to build databases that show the ballot choices for each mail-in voter. Perhaps THAT is why the Colorado Clerks are so skittish about letting the public se... More

(WI) 4/11 - JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM: WISCONSIN VOTE SPREAD 29,207? OR 7,500? Or 6,744? I've been buried in e-mails, phone calls and urgent cries for help regarding the strange saga of the Wisconsin Spring 2011 Supreme Court race. Early results separated David T. Prosser Jr. from Joanne Kloppenburg by just a hair, in a controversial high profile race characterized by polarized commentary on both right and left. Then the surprise late entry of 14,326 Brookfield votes tipped the race to Prosser and out of reach of a recount. Barely.

If the late Brookfield votes just coincidentally blocked a state-paid recount, scrutiny is appropriate. I wanted to know the exact number of votes needed for that magic recount number.

I downloaded the detailed election results spreadsheet from the state of Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board (GAB) Website. The spreadsheet is time-stamped Friday, April 08, 2011 4:11:14 PM, nearly 24 hours after the Brookfield votes came in.

http://gab.wi.gov/sites/default/files/page/contests_by_reporting_unit_for_all_reported_counti_22616.xls

WISCONSIN'S WANDERING TALLIES

The latest state spreadsheet as of this writing doesn't show the candidates separated by a dead heat. It doesn't show them separated by a smidgen over the 7,500 votes reported to be needed to block a recount. And it doesn't show the magic recount number as 7,500 votes.

The Friday Wisconsin results, still unofficial because the election hasn't been certified yet, show a total of 1,103,826 votes, with 566,130 for Prosser and 536,923 for Kloppenburg (and 773 random scattered votes).

In this spreadsheet, which contains detailed results by municipality and includes the late-breaking Brookfield votes, the spread is 29,207 for Prosser and the magic number for a recount would be only 5,519.

That's because AFTER Brookfield came into the state, there were (and are, as of this writing) still 400,000 votes missing from the state data.

WHEN DID BROOKFIELD COMMIT TO THE DATA?

When the story about Brookfield first broke, my very first question was: What about the municipal results? Do you mean to tell me those candidates were so incurious that they never asked for their results? Of course, it turns out, those results HAD been posted in Brookfield, as had the Brookfield supreme court race results, just after midnight on Election Night.

There was no variance between the results posted at the municipality of Brookfield and the late-reported results.

Could the late-reported results have been a ploy? In other words, was someone waiting to see what they needed, so they could tack a few hundred on to Brookfield votes to hit the magic block-a-recount number?

There was no variance between the results committed to on Election Night and the late results sent to the state.

DID THE WAUKESHA COUNTY CLERK MAKE UP THE NUMBERS?

But maybe the county clerk had her way with the results on that murky uncertified private computer she was using?

Poll workers in Wisconsin do reconciliations. You can't have thousands of ballots appear out of thin air on a county computer without those same ballot quantities being signed off on by poll workers days earlier at, in the case of Brookfield, 24 different locations all featuring different personnel.

I recommended to the locals to get copies of the poll worker reconciliations for Brookfield's 24 wards, along with copies of the voting machine tapes.

The Kloppenburg campaign already did just that. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, "Saturday, Kloppenburg campaign volunteers combed through Waukesha County voting records made available by Nickolaus. By 5 p.m. they had completed the process of comparing data from poll books to tape from voting machines."

The article doesn't say if there are discrepancies; if so, those will surface. I don't expect fireworks.

DOES THIS SOG DOWN THE BLOGS?

Not necessarily.

Here's the next twist: The Journal-Sentinel reports in a story posted Sunday April 10 at 1:00 a.m., "Prosser ahead by 6,744 votes out of nearly 1.5 million cast."

The newspaper is reporting roughly 400,000 more votes than the state has posted, and this is AFTER the Brookfield votes were posted. So what's missing on the state spreadsheet? By 4:14 p.m. Friday the state had not reported about 30 wards from the city of Madison, much of Fon du Lac, and several Oshkosh wards.

Here's a copy of the spreadsheet:

contests_by_reporting_unit_for_all_reported_counti_22616.xls (474.1 k)

WISCONSIN AND FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

Several questions remain, but access to the original source documents will produce most of it. Wisconsin conceals the vote-counting and chain of custody from the public, using electronic machines with no way for the public to compare input to output. By the time any recount would be done, ballots have been moved out of public view, toasting the chain of custody.

But Wisconsin does have many good procedures and good public records practices. In fact, Wisconsin had the first Freedom of Information law in America, pas... More

(PA) 4/11 - LANCASTER: COUNTY WANTS TO BLOCK MEDIA FROM WATCHING VOTE COUNT - Lancaster County, Pennsylvania plans to bar not only the public from its own (supposed-to-be) public vote counting process, but the media as well.

To be more clear, the public and the media is already unable to see the vote counting, because it is performed electronically and without any procedure enabling the public to compare input to output, forcing the public to simply take government officials' word as to what the result is.

But now, Lancaster County wants to eliminate even the present charade by preventing the media (and the public) from watching the computers whir away. This also means the media (and the public) will not be able to see who goes in and out of the room where the computer is counting the votes.

Freedom of Information laws are buttressed in part by the First Amendment, as a necessary component to a free press. An even more fundamental underpinning for freedom of information rights is the principle that the people cannot effectively exercise their right to self-governance without right to know. Self-governance is a cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution, and freedom itself.

"[A] popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives," wrote James Madison in a letter to W.T. Barry (August 4, 1822, found in The Writing of James Madison (Gailard Hunt ed. 1910)

"We have a strange 'but it's the law' syndrome, writes Jane Anne Morris in Help! I've Been Colonized and Can't Get Up. "That is, we work around the defining laws that are the groundwork for a rigged system. We're looking for favors, lucky breaks. We don't even dream of control, yet we call this a democracy.

"This is being colonized."

The Associated Press writes, in this April 7, 2011 article:
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/a0394641fcab44f8a59887b56029d426/PA-Electi on-Night-Media/
that the Lancaster County PA election board proposes moving the press across the street during the vote tally. Media groups are opposed.

Reporters will be barred from the building where election night ballots are tabulated, citing the reason that the county wants to store election supplies there so there won't be room.

The media objects, saying the process should be open and public. Just how public the process was before is open to question; in addition to concealing the actual counting of the vote inside a computer, with no means to compare actual ballots to the computer's translation (which is controlled by the computer's administrator) the article says, "The media previously was allowed to sit at a table in a corner of the warehouse, though it could not access the office in the warehouse where votes were counted."

Candidates and party officials will still be allowed to see the tabulator.

The media will be cozy, if not allowed to exercise their own right to Freedom of Information.

"So we're moving the media across the street to a lounge that is very nice. It has a very strong Wi-Fi signal, it has electrical outlets, comfortable chairs," Mary Stehman, the county's chief elections clerk said. "There's even a gas fireplace."

According to Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, the move by Lancaster County may be unconstitutional.

"As far as the First Amendment goes, we are talking about a process that it supposed to be open," she said. "The press is being completely barred from viewing that process." More

(NM) 4/11 - SEC STATE REFUSES TO DISCLOSE NON-CITIZEN NAMES - Let's walk through the rights issues on the following story.

The public has to be able to see and authenticate four key components of an election. If the government conceals any one of these components, the election can be hijacked by an insider. These components are: Who can vote, who did vote, chain of custody, and the count.

In New Mexico, the Secretary of State alleges that 117 non-citizens registered to vote, and at least 37 of them may have voted. When asked under Right to Know laws to disclose the documentation on this, the Secretary of State refused to disclose either the documents or the names, which may appear to violate of right to know.

A more careful reading, however, indicates another possible explanation: The secretary of state's news release characterized it as "possible" voter fraud and at the end of this article, indicates that the matter is still under investigation.

A legitimate exemption to right to know, but only temporarily, is information on current criminal investigations. Until the investigation is closed, records do not need to be released because it can compromise the investigation. After the case is closed, the records must be released but anyone not shown to be criminally liable will have their name and identifying documents redacted from the record. Thus, the records and names will need to be released when the investigation is closed, but only for those who are implicated when the investigation has run its course.

Santa Fe New Mexican - 4/7/2011, by Steve Terrell

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/local%20news/Duran-won-t-release-forms-in-probe -of-voter-fraud

Duran won't release forms in probe of voter fraud

Secretary of State Dianna Duran made a startling announcement last month during a legislative hearing on whether voters should be required to show photo identification at the polls.

Duran said in cross-checking voter registrations with a state Motor Vehicle Division database, her office had found 117 foreign nationals who had registered to vote. All listed Social Security numbers on their voter registrations that didn't match up with their names. What's more, Duran said, at least 37 of those people had actually voted in state elections.

So who are these people who might have committed voter fraud?

The secretary of state won't say.

The day after that meeting, I submitted a request to Duran's office under the state Inspection of Public Records Act for copies of the 117 voter registrations, plus any records she had that indicated 37 of those people had voted.

After the 15-day response deadline allowed under the law, I was notified last week that my request was denied.

Citing state and federal privacy laws relating to MVD records, Secretary of State's Office records custodian Christiana Sanchez wrote, "Based upon advisement of our legal counsel, the records are prohibited from release.

"Moreover, the Secretary of State's Office does not maintain the original voter registration forms for registered voters," the denial letter stated. "The original forms are maintained by the county clerks in each county. There are approximately 1.16 million registered voters in the state of New Mexico. Therefore, while we anticipate a future comprehensive review of voter registration forms, we cannot provide copies of any voter registration forms that meet your requested criteria at this time."

Of course I hadn't asked to see all 1.16 million forms, just the 117 she talked about at the legislative hearing. And I would have settled for only those for the 37 apparently illicit voters.

Out of the FOG: As I often do in such situations, I sought advice from the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government. Executive Director Sarah Welsh told me, "The SOS may not maintain the original voter registration forms, but if they received copies of forms (or the same nformation in some other format) from the county clerks, those records would now be SOS records subject to IPRA."

As Welsh explained it, the Inspection of Public Records Act defines "public records" as materials that are "used, created, received, maintained or held by or on behalf of any public body and relate to public business."

Therefore, Welsh said, if Duran's office received and is holding voter-registration forms, and the forms aren't subject to other confidentiality provisions, the documents should be released.

I asked the secretary of state about that but hadn't gotten a response as of Wednesday evening.

I'm not the Lone Ranger: I'm not the only one who requested documents pertaining to Duran's voter-fraud allegations. The American Civil Liberties Union made a far more sweeping request for documents from both the Secretary of State's Office and the Governor's Office the same day I made my request.

But according to the Clearly New Mexico blog — which is a project of the left-leaning Center for Civic Policy — the ACLU didn't get much more than I did.

ACLU Executive Director ... More

(USA) 3/11 - TOWARD MORE EFFECTIVE APPROACHES (AND WHY HACKING DEMOs ARE NOW INSANITY) by Bev Harris

About once a week, I am asked to bring in a team somewhere and demonstrate the hacking of a voting system. I don't, because I've concluded this is a form of insanity, tracking the old adage that insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over again and expecting a different result.

If you want to see a demonstration of hacking voting machines, just click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hNxBa6KENE to watch the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy."

That was a groundbreaking effort, by the Black Box Voting organization and two exceptional British filmmakers (Russell Michaels and Simon Ardizzone). But in the end it changed nothing, and new hacking demonstrations never will.

That's because they focus public attention on security, diverting attention from the real issue: Our right to self-government, and how current election systems have stripped away necessary public controls.

The crucial concept here is not "security" -- because as it turns out, you can NEVER secure a system against its own administrator -- but rather, the right to self-government. It is smack dab front page in the US Constitution that representatives shall be chosen "by the people", and what has happened with our election system is that the choosing system for our governance has been usurped by the government itself, removing it from the public. And if you doubt that we have an inalienable right to self government, take a close look at the Declaration of Independence, and for added academia read the diagrams carefully in the eminent Laurence H. Tribe's book "The Invisible Constitution," where self-governance is a cornerstone.

Back to hacking: You cannot secure a computer from its own administrator. Its administrator is an insider in a government office, and/or the vendors he selects.

WHY WON'T HACKING MORE SYSTEMS PROVE OUR POINT?

It was a good start, to help the public with conceptual issues about computerized vote counting. But:

1. Nothing meaningful has changed, and some elections jurisdictions actually went right out and purchased the exact specifications they saw in the demonstrations, for in-house use.

2. Further thought on this reveals an incontrovertible truth: Any concealed, computerized system can be subverted by its own administrator.

3. Focus on computer security gave birth to an ivory tower and rather greedy little sub-industry, self proclaimed "security" experts who promise to make a system that we could trust. Upon further review, what they mean is that we should trust THEM to tell us that the system "has been verified."

If you doubt this, try asking any one of these consultants if they mean "the public can see and authenticate" or "it will be verified for the public to trust." Inevitably, (after professing not to understand your question and sometimes, attempting to divert you to some altogether different topic), they come down to this: "It will be verified [by us] for you."

This simply shifts trust from the government to an academic elite, and makes the system not a whit more accountable to the public.

SO WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE

Black Box Voting recently helped sponsor an event called The Democracy School in New Hampshire. The Daniel Pennock Democracy Schools are a key piece of community organizing by The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

Those running the Democracy School are focused on environmental issues. But the lessons they bring to the table about what works to take back public controls are illuminating.

They are faced with exactly the same obstacles we encounter when fighting for the restoration of public elections -- corporate takeovers of the public commons, nonresponsive legislators, structurally problematic systems which block self-governance, and the CATTLE CHUTE.

The Cattle Chute is their term for that pervasive tactic whereby public problems are redefined into microscopic single issues; then public complainers are funneled to a hearing, over a nonessential micro-issue like "should version 1.54 be certified?"

The public is taught that the cattle chute is democracy, while what it is really doing is diverting from the core issue.

Only after years of being funneled down the cattle chutes do many of us see that this does not take us nearer to our goal.

The core problem in elections is concealment of the essential processes, removing public ability to see and authenticate the crucial steps (who can vote, who did vote, chain of custody and the count).

Engaging in these issues on human rights grounds is amazing. People understand it in 10 minutes. Then we get to the real issue: "Do you believe in self-government or not?"

I find that many of the USA scientists who have become part of the elections industry admit they do not believe the public has a right to authenticate. Rather, they contend, the public should accept having the elections "verified" on their behalf, again using insiders and concealed sys... More

(USA) 1/11 - TOWARDS A MORE EFFECTIVE APPROACH TO FIGHTING INTERNET VOTING - by BEV HARRIS
Permission to reprint or excerpt granted

Internet voting is creeping its way into America, opening the door to pseudo-elections and digital dictatorship. Below is a concise look at what's wrong with it and suggestions for how to argue more effectively against it.

Internet voting proposals reemerge every year, no matter how devastating the research against the concept. Formidable research showing that it cannot be made secure has been published over and over by academics who examine Internet voting through a lens of technological security. That's slowing down Internet voting's relentless march, but in the end this approach won't stop it.

WHY TECHNOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS FAIL TO HALT INTERNET VOTING

Fighting Internet voting on technological grounds will lose because these studies omit any mention of why Internet voting violates basic principles of freedom.

A few Americans care a little bit about how secure something is. But all Americans care a lot about whether they live in a free country.

A handful of people understand cryptography, telecommunications and computer programming. But everyone understands that if people inside the government are allowed to secretly choose themselves to represent us, we lose our liberty.

As long as arcane discussions about what is and is not "secure" are the primary framework for fighting Internet voting, new business models will keep popping up and new Internet voting legislation will keep being proposed, because when you are talking about how secure a system is, there are compromises to be made. Arguments can be made that it is easier to vote, even if it is arguably less secure.

IT'S EASY FOR EVERYONE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT'S WRONG WITH INTERNET VOTING WHEN VIEWED THROUGH THE HUMAN RIGHTS LENS

Internet voting centralizes and makes secret the process of choosing public representation, thereby removing public sovereignty over government.

Those who control the implementation of any Internet voting system ultimately control who runs our government. While it's true that they MIGHT be benevolent and let the people choose, they also might not, and there's not a thing we can do about that, nor can we even know whether someone else decided to choose for us. Such a system can appear to be a democracy but upon closer inspection, it's easy to see that it is false freedom because it has removed public controls.

HOW INTERNET VOTING VIOLATES HUMAN RIGHTS

Internet voting violates your inalienable right to freedom by concealing all four essential steps of the election from the public (thus removing public sovereignty over government by conducting the choosing process in secret); in addition, it removes political privacy, creating mechanisms for the harvesting of vast databases showing insiders how everyone voted.

The four essential processes concealed from the public by Internet voting:

1. Who can vote (the eligible voter list as seen by the Internet voting system, which need not be the real voter list.)
2. Who did vote
3. Chain of Custody
4. Counting of the Vote

Now add to this the removal of your political privacy. I should clarify that with automated harvesting of connectors that can attach votes to voters, we are not just looking at retail snooping. It's not just a problem of how YOU voted. Data harvesting that connects vast blocs of votes to voters can then be overlaid with maps, and can be used to create manipulatable and false voter demographics, a statistical funhouse mirror for pollsters and the media.

Internet voting is a direct threat to freedom because it removes public ability to see and authenticate nearly every aspect of our own elections, replacing it with control by insiders and a requirement that we trust and have confidence in a subset of experts to tell us whether things are okay.

WHY WE NEED TO MOVE ACADEMIA TOWARDS THE HUMAN RIGHTS MODEL

Here's just one of the many security-oriented studies on Internet Voting: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/downloads/InternetVotingStatement.pdf -- This study begins with the statement: "Election results must be verifiably accurate."

What is missing from that statement are the words "BY THE PUBLIC." I have spoken to several computer scientists who are fighting Internet voting. There's a reason they omit the words "by the public." They don't place a priority on that right.

For many academics fighting Internet voting, it's quite fine conceptually for THEM to tell the public the election "has been verified." One of the academics admitted to me that even HE does not understand the statistical model he is recommending for "risk limiting audits."

Let me recap a conversation I had recently with one of the guys from ACCURATE:

Academic: "With this plan, the public can be told the election has been verified."

Me: "You mean the public can verify it for themselves?"

Academic: "They can have confidence it has been verified."

Me: "But the public must be able to authentica... More

(National) 1/11 - NEW BBV "ELECTION ARCHEOLOGY" FORUM HAS GONE LIVE - Black Box Voting has three major projects going in 2011. Here begins one of these, our 2011 "ELECTION ARCHEOLOGY" project, a public, open format to examine and discuss real election data. This project harkens back to the original days of Black Box Voting, when we were unearthing and setting free important election data on almost a daily basis.

"SHOW YOUR WORK"

If we have public elections, the public has a right to know what's going on. We have a right to see and authenticate the essential processes, which include who can vote, who did vote, chain of custody, and the count.

The first 2011 ELECTION ARCHEOLOGY project focuses on "who can vote, who did vote", setting free the concealed inner workings on the Premier (Diebold, now serviced by ES&S) ExpressPoll electronic pollbooks. These are used statewide in Georgia, and quite widely throughout the USA.

SUBSCRIBE: You techies can sign up to get automatic emails of posts in this rather nerd-friendly forum by going to the "edit profile" link in left column of the forums at BlackBoxVoting.org, and choosing automatic notifications for this forum. (You must be a registered user to post; if you are new here, you can register by choosing the "register" link in the left column of these forums).

Direct Link for new ELECTION ARCHEOLOGY forum:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/81484/81487.html

Let's start by having a look at these electronic pollbook data files, which are in SQLite format. First, commentary on making the SQLite data format more accessible to more users is welcome, ie, crib notes to help others convert the data to their preferred database tools.

These files are from Shelby County, Tennessee, which uses the Premiere (was Diebold, now serviced by ES&S) ExpressPoll electronic pollbooks.

This is a public project to identify the information contained in the files, and identify what is different from file to file.

Example: "This file contains what appears to be voter ID number, time/date stamp, what appears to be epollbook ID#..."

OVERVIEW:

1. There is a statewide database, per HAVA. The Shelby County database interfaces with this statewide voter database. I'll post some files related to that database as a different phase of this project in a different thread.

2. There is a voter history list, a master list which contains voter name, address, Voter ID, and voting history. That's not part of this thread (yet).

3. A portion of the voter history list is used to load data for who can vote into each epollbook. The master file for each election, in this case, is called "polldata.db3"

4. Each pollbook uses a Compact Flash card (CF card) to store the data. When voters sign in they find the voter in the electronic pollbook, based on data on the CF card. The CF card will record who has voted. That data will then be transferred back to the master voter history file, and will be used to generate the "Participating Voter List".

HUMAN RIGHTS AND AMERICAN ELECTIONS
In terms of high-level public policy issues, the human rights portion of this project relates to the following: For an election to be public, the public must be able to see and authenticate each essential step. The essential steps are: (1) Who can vote; (2) Who did vote (3) Chain of custody (4) the count. This project relates to #s 1 and 2, who can vote and who did vote.

It should be noted that who can vote and who did vote in Shelby County in August 2010 was the basis for a 10-candidate lawsuit, currently heading for appeal, and that the records provided by the county conflict with each other (ie, more votes than voters in some locations; voters told they had already voted when they had not, and mismatched data).

This is a public, open source examination of hitherto unavailable and unreleased electronic pollbook data, which controls who can vote and reports its version of who did vote.

SAMPLE DATA FILES

Here is a file provided by court order, in SQlite format, called test.db3:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/TN/Shelby/test.db3
(56 kb)

MORE FILES:

http://www.bbvdocs.org/TN/Shelby/016459_Log.db3
(140 KB)
(This file was modified on Election Day, Thursday, August 05, 2010, 4:28:40 PM)

http://www.bbvdocs.org/TN/Shelby/013098_Log.db3
(53 KB)
(This file is for the May 4 2010 election. It was modified on Monday, May 10, 2010, 6:01:18 AM)

These files come off of the Shelby County epollbook server, and it would make sense that they would upload the CF cards back into the main server after the election to capture the list of participating voters after the polls close.

http://www.bbvdocs.org/TN/Shelby/016975_Log.db3
(98 KB)
(This file also shows modification on Election Day, Thursday, August 05, 2010, 4:00:44 PM)

If these files are uploaded to capture the list of participating voters, the timing of this one, and the first one in this post, is interesting. This would indicate that they were uploading the files while the polls were still open.

h... More

4-22-09: Arizona A.G. releases results ... questions linger
by Jim March, with addendum by Bev Harris

Arizona AG Releases Official RTA Results:
Election A Clean Bill Of Health, Pima County Elections...Not So Much...

THE OFFICIAL BOTTOM LINE

At a press conference today in Tucson, AZ Attorney General Terry Goddard released the results of the 2006 Pima County RTA election handcount. His office says that most ballots are present and accounted for save for less than 100, and the hand count totals match the machine count of 2006 to within .01% - variances of 300 to 500 votes between the two questions, in an election with over 120,000 votes cast.

This seems to be an end to the RTA controversy...but not quite.

WHAT ABOUT THE MISSING BALLOTS?

Former NSA computer guru Mickey Dunahoe went over the high-resolution video of the handcount this week, and managed to do his own accurate-to-the-ballot count of a precinct box. This precinct contained around 1,500 ballots – filling the 12” tall box to the brim without overstuffing. The count we had managed to perform during the election was of a box of mail-in votes, counting about 1,240 or so before box-bulging began.

This would indicate that mail-in votes were literally thicker cardstock than the precinct votes. By basing our count estimates on thicker mail-in votes, our estimates on the precinct vote were off by up to 300 votes a box (with 55 precinct boxes).

When asked about the difference, the AG's office admitted not even noticing a possible difference in paper stock for the ballots.

We'll be getting the full paper trail from this "investigation" soon, and will try to revisit this and other issues.

OTHER PROBLEMS WITH THE HAND COUNT

The AG's office made three mistakes with the handcount process.

* They didn't try and do a tally of counted precinct votes against either the original statement of votes cast (SOVC) report or against the polltapes and/or pollworker “end of day report” (also known as “the yellow sheet” in Arizona). IF the paper record was manipulated, it would be easier to fake the numbers for vote totals rather than try and get fake paper ballots lined up in the correct ballot boxes. Auditing to a precinct detail level is a barrier against paper swap or alteration frauds.

* They didn't attempt to confirm paper ballot authenticity with spot-checks under a microscope or ink age analysis, or even an informal look at why the same ballot boxes hold more precinct ballots than absentee ballots.

EASY MICROSCOPE EXAM: The newest “bal... More

VIDEO: Protect the Count (Part 1)
VIDEO: Protect the Count (Part 2)
VIDEO: Protect the Count (Part 3)
VIDEO: Protect the Count (Part 4)
VIDEO - Election Reality TV - Face to Face with the recount guys
VIDEO - Election Reality TV - 9 Minutes on the Road w. Butch & Hoppy
VIDEO - Election Reality TV - The Jeannie Dean Video
VIDEO - Election Reality TV - Butch & Hoppy II - Pack o' Lies
VIDEO - Election Reality TV - Butch & Hoppy Ia: Chase begins
VIDEO - Election Reality TV - Butch & Hoppy Ib: Chase begins

Click here to read older stories

artwork contributed by art101.com

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Protect the Count:
Most of America

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Protect the Count:
Absentee & Central Count

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Protect the Count:
New England / New Hampshire

View larger video screen

Black Box Voting Book
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
d - Appendix
Footnotes
Index

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