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USA: No Matter Who Wins, Americans Lose

Read th... More -- BBV NEWS: For Americans fed up with both major parties and their presidential candidates there is something smart, patriotic and courageous to do. [But is it this?]

STUDY: Should we supplement elections with some re... More -- BBV NEWS: Study indicates that inserting randomly chosen persons into the mix of elected leaders improved responsiveness to social needs.

WISCONSIN: Here's the straight scoop on this:

1... More -- ISSUE: You may have heard that a Wisconsin voting machine vendor, Command Central, is offering to swap two DRE voting machines for one optical scan machine.

CALIFORNIA: The write-in ban appears to violate Ca... More -- BBV NEWS - In a move that restricts public right to choose their own representation, the California legislature has passed a bill that bans write-in votes.

WEST VIRGINIA: The current sheriff is pleading gui... More -- BBV NEWS: Two different cases, believe it or not.

Time is of the essence because the State of the Un... More -- The following is a simple idea that doesn't require new laws, new devices or more importantly more time.

Some of us have been having conversations with our... More -- Question for Bev or Nancy Tobi:

I do take exception to your rude remarks about Jam... More -- O'Keefe Reporting on NH dead people votes: Some of your reporting is correct.

This is utter nonsense.

Poll workers have a lis... More -- Your 'James False' article concludes that "The only way to do a match is with Social Security number.."

Recently I saw a post from you discussing various ... More -- As you know we're all working hard against tyranny and privatized elections.

Dear Bev, Thank you for your continuing effort in ... More -- Question: Couldn't constitutional provisions to count ballots in open meeting be used in lawsuits to require hand counts?

Question: how many days after the election does NH... More -- In Illinois we allow 14 days to get ALL absentee ballots in and get them counted by Big Bertha. What about NH?

(From a reader): Looking ahead, can you think of a... More -- I know this won't make any difference for the upcoming election, but ...

Where to watch in Iowa? Well everywhere, and also ... More -- Watch list counties: Dallas, Dubuque, Johnson, Polk, Scott, Sioux, Story, Woodbury

Take pics or video of results on cell phone, but w... More -- The trend toward greater public participation in authenticating the accounting in elections (and caucuses) is encouraging.
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) 1/12 - INTERNET VOTING COMPANY HIRING IT INSIDERS FROM CRAIG'S LIST - by Bev Harris

Fact: You cannot "secure" a computer from its own admin.

Fact: Internet voting company Everyone Counts, has large governmental accounts like Chicago and the State of Oregon.

Not that it matters, because the public has a right to see and authenticate its own elections, and we should never have to depend on any insider to do it for us ... but now, how about any random person found off of Craig's List?

Black Box Voting found this ad on Craig's List:

Everyone Counts, the world's leader in digital elections, is seeking an experienced IT computer support superstar.

You will work on-site and must be comfortable providing support to end-users in person and via email and phone to globally traveling staff. You will be responsible for maintaining and growing internal systems and processes, while providing support to users. The ideal candidate is focused on delivering excellence with top-notch problem solving skills and a professional customer service orientated attitude.

Minimum Requirements:

- Expert level Windows desktop support with minimal service impact
- Experience with Windows Server system administration
- Experience maintaining Content Management System (CMS) based websites.

Pluses:

- Linux and Mac OS X System Administration
- Experience creating and managing Virtual Machines (VMWare)
- Experience build and maintaining Joomla-based website
- Graphic design (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign)
- Encoding video for web

We offer a casual work environment competitive pay and excellent benefits including Stock options, Medical, Dental, and 401k.

Please send resume and cover letter (in text or PDF format ) to techcareers@everyonecounts.com. Please put "Computer Support Expert" in the title of the email.

About Everyone Counts:

At Everyone Counts we've perfected digital voting, to deliver clear and trusted elections worldwide so you can be confident that every vote will be counted. With over 10 years' experience delivering thousands of elections in over 165 countries--all with 100% uncontested results.

Everyone Counts® has demystified the digital voting landscape, making it accessible, reliable, and open to possibility.

With secure, transparent, and universally accessible election systems, Everyone Counts believes that efficient, affordable, and trusted elections should be available to voters, election officials, and poll workers everywhere.

Since 1997, millions of voters on all seven continents have exercised their voting rights with the help of Everyone Counts' secure, transparent technology and election expertise.

• Location: UTC / La Jolla
• Compensation: TBD
•Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
•Please, no phone calls about this job!
•Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

http://sandiego.craigslist.org/csd/tch/2814376451.html

[]

PERMISSION TO EXCERPT OR REPRINT GRANTED, WITH LINK TO http://www.blackboxvoting.org More

(OR) 1/12 - DEPLOYMENT OF I-PAD VOTING A BACKDOOR TO INTERNET VOTING? - By Bev Harris

Have you noticed we have to keep reading between the lines when insisting on our right to public controls over public elections?

I was concerned when I read a short little article about Oregon testing iPad voting. (Read it here: http://kdrv.com/page/236262 )

Not to worry, the iPad voting is for the disabled, for now, and it prints out to paper ballots, for now. At the very end of the article, was this curious quote:

"The Secretary of State says the iPad application could eventually extend to all voters, but something like that is still a ways off ... she says she wants to see the results of how it's used in the District 1 election."

What does this mean "it could be used for all voters"?

I called the Oregon Secretary of State's office to learn more about this. Sec. State Communications Director Andrea Cantu-Schomus was assigned to answer my questions.

The vendor is San Diego-based Everyone Counts. (You can view an interview with CEO Lori J. Steele here: http://toppopularvideos.com/component/content/article/119632 ). Everyone Counts, I notice, was also just chosen by that most trustworthy of election locations, Chicago, to handle its military voting, and just hooked up with Runbeck Election Services which will provide "automated ballot remaking of voter-verified paper ballots" (huh?) Everyone Counts has also announced that it is counting votes for the Academy Awards this year. How glitzy, but then again, Brad Pitt --whatever the vote -- is not in a contest for control of the free world, and the American public does not own the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But we do own our government.

This concept, "self-governance", is apparently difficult for companies like Everyone Counts to understand. As you'll see in the video interview linked above, its CEO never addresses loss of public right to see and authenticate the accounting, diverting our attention instead to assurances of "security." Except that "security" is not related to public right to see and authenticate.

It's not about "security" which simply transfers control to a group of insiders. It is about PUBLIC right to see and authenticate the essential accounting in our public elections.

Now back to Oregon: Deployment of iPad voting for accessibility purposes is, I believe, going to turn into a back-door effort to move Oregonians toward Internet voting.

I asked the Oregon Sec. State's office many questions about that business of how iPad voting can be expanded to all voters.

The current deployment, I was told, is for accessibility purposes. It works like this: The disabled voter calls the elections office; a worker brings an iPad, which is preloaded with Everyone Counts software, to the voter. The voter complete the ballot and prints it out, and it is put in the secrecy envelope, and the voter then has the option of giving it to the election worker or mailing it in.

So far, so good, but how could this possibly translate to all of Oregon's voters? What, they buy 2.8 million iPads and run around the state with them?

Obviously not.

I kept asking what they had in mind. After a rather lengthy dance of the follow-up questions, the answer turned out to be that they tested several mechanisms.

The Everyone Counts software can be deployed on iPad, laptop PC, touchscreen tablet PC, Android device.

So I asked whether they would have everyone printing a ballot from their cell phone, laptop, what have you, or just vote by Internet.

Well, those answers went like this:

They are testing it for disability, for now.

And they are sticking with paper ballots, for now.

Because the secretary of state likes paper ballots, for now.

Oregonians, I know you love your absentee voting system. You might want to keep an eye on it, because others are. Hungrily.

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(SC) 1/12 - 100% OF SOUTH CAROLINA VOTES GO THROUGH SCYTL - By Bev Harris

The genius of democracy is dispersed public control.

As we saw in Iowa when alert public citizens captured evidence of the actual vote count BEFORE it was reported by a centralized state committee, the state Republican Party and the news media initially claimed victory for the wrong winner. They only corrected this mis-call two weeks later, buying the favored candidate half a month of fund raising prowess and prestige.

In South Carolina, 100% of election results will be redirected through a private Barcelona, Spain-owned company, Scytl/SOE Software, before being reported to the public.

There is only one way to immediately find out whether Scytl/SOE reported the right results*, and that is for members of the public to capture evidence of reported precinct results when polls close tonight. Think of it as a giant neighborhood watch.

Precinct results should be posted at each polling site. In addition, during poll closing the public has a right to be in the polling place watching and videotaping what goes on.

Here is a four-minute video showing exactly what to do:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3_xFb1sWKU

By the way, the results will be published here:
http://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/36831/63425/en/select-county.html

Compare photos of what you capture at polling places to the results reported at the above link.

For computer buffs, there's another thing you can do. (The above steps are easy and can be done by anyone.) But for tech buffs, you can download multiple times during the evening, and there are even Web snapshot tools to expedite this. It is not uncommon to see results change or disappear midstream.

In Broward County FL, the results reported by Scytl-owned SOE Software in 2008 showed an entire candidate, who was winning, disappear into vapor in the middle of the count, and in Hillsborough County FL and Dallas County TX, votes that had been reported began to disappear.

The way to see this is to download "time slices" -- snapshots at various points in time, and compare them. More information for those of you who like technical stuff is available in the Black Box Voting Tool Kit - http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.pdf

Follow Black Box Voting for further developments.

* Well, you have to put an asterisk alongside "the right results" because in South Carolinia you get a two-fer. Results could be incorrect at either end of the pipeline -- from the ES&S iVotronic paperless touchscreen voting machines, which have a history of incorrect totals, or from the private results reporting firm Scytl/SOE Software, which has centralized control over what gets reported. More

(USA) 1/12 - THE TRAGIC TALE OF EDWARD TRUE AND JAMES FALSE - Permission to excerpt granted, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org
By Bev Harris

The actual Iowa winner may "never be known", and one of the "dead" voters in New Hampshire has now shown up -- alive.

It matters, and it's called journalistic malpractice. TV networks announced that Romney won Iowa, and newspapers pronounced his 1-2 "wins" as "historic." Candidates dropped out, donors dried up or rushed to send cash to the reported "winner".

Now we are being told that the Iowa results "don't matter." They matter, regardless of any rent-an-expert who shows up in the press. Misreported results manipulated the candidate field from which the rest of America can choose.

The Des Moines Register is now reporting an even greater malfeasance: that the final, certified Iowa result may "never be known." There were several typos, they say. Some precincts will never be reported, they claim.

That we got a heads up at all about bogus media results was due to an alert Iowa citizen, Edward True, who captured evidence of the 20-vote misreport in his Appanoose County precinct. That people like Edward True were stationed all over Iowa capturing results before they hit the state Republican Committee tabulation was due to Black Box Voting, where the need to do this was explained, and to radio hosts and sites like Bradblog and Facebook, where the word went out.

Mainstream media then began its next act of theatre: They started spinning the false result that THEY THEMSELVES announced as -- instead of their own foolishness -- "making Iowa look foolish".

But if we're looking for truth, here's what we will find: The mistakes saw light of day because the Iowa caucus was conducted in open public meeting allowing citizens to watch ballots as they were hand counted.

At least it WAS an open system, until the Republican State Committee pitched the bizarre idea that some precincts might never be reported in the final certified result, and the media failed to bay like bloodhounds tracking the truth.

But there is some good news in this: It's great that public citizens are starting to understand their role in the "neighborhood watch" component of election integrity.

AND NOW FOR JAMES FALSE, OF THE ANTONYM ORGANIZATION "PROJECT VERITAS"

In New Hampshire, media hammertime revolved around James O'Keefe and his "Project Veritas", who reported that dead people were allowed to vote, "proving" it by sending people around the state to impersonate the dead. He's basically getting fat grants from fat cats who don't want so many (real, live) people to vote. He admits to receiving $50,000 for the New Hampshire piece. They are busy manufacturing evidence to manipulate public opinion in favor of voter ID legislation.

Problem is, another alert citizen -- who they were reporting as dead -- called them on their malfeasance. Robert William Beaulieu is on the video as a successfully impersonated dead voter. Embarrasingly for Project Veritas, Robert William Beaulieu is very much alive.

It seems that Project Falsum Project Veritas did not even bother to check birthdates to match names to dead persons. They mistook a 23-year old for an 80-year old.

Now, we recently saw an article coming out of South Carolina alleging that 900 dead persons voted, and that should immediately call into question how the match was made. By name only? Name and birthdate? Or Social Security number?

Matching by name only doesn't pass the sniff test, and it turns out that matching by name and birthdate is trickier than you might think. I found 130 people named Mary Williams in a Shelby County (TN) database. Two had the same birthdate. In fact, any time you have a common name, with 100 or more instances, you will find the same birthdate as often as 1 in 3 sets. In a statewide database like South Carolina, it would not be surprising to see 900 name/birthdate matches.

The only way to do a match is with Social Security number, and this is not available to public interest groups.

* * * * *

Des Moines Register article: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20120117/NEWS09/301170041/1007/NEWS05

New Hampshire dead man not dead: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/946761-196/message-from-the-dead-nashua-man-23.html

Questionable spin on South Carolina dead people: http://www2.wspa.com/news/2012/jan/12/900-dead-voters-sc-fraud-or-clerical-errors-ar-3034169/

Frequency of name/birthdate matches in voter registration databases: Seeing Double: An extension of the Birthday Problem, by Michael McDonald and Justin Leavitt: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=997888

* * * * *

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(USA) 1/12 - GLOBAL INTERNET VOTING FIRM BUYS U.S. ELECTION RESULTS REPORTING FIRM - By Bev Harris
Permission to reprint granted, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org

In a major step towards global centralization of election processes, the world's dominant Internet voting company has purchased the USA's dominant election results reporting company.

When you view your local or state election results on the Internet, on portals which often appear to be owned by the county elections division, in over 525 US jurisdictions you are actually redirected to a private corporate site controlled by SOE software, which operates under the name ClarityElections.com.

The good news is that this firm promptly reports precinct-level detail in downloadable spreadsheet format. As reported by BlackBoxVoting.org in 2008, the bad news is that this centralizes one middleman access point for over 525 jurisdictions in AL, AZ, CA, CO, DC, FL, KY, MI, KS, IL, IN, NC, NM, MN, NY, SC, TX, UT, WA. And growing.

As local election results funnel through SOE's servers (typically before they reach the public elsewhere), those who run the computer servers for SOE essentially get "first look" at results and the ability to immediately and privately examine vote details throughout the USA.

In 2004, many Americans were justifiably concerned when, days before the presidential election, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell redirected Ohio election night results through the Tennessee-based server for several national Republican Party operations.

This is worse: This redirects results reporting to a centralized privately held server which is not just for Ohio, but national; not just USA-based, but global.

A mitigation against fraud by SOE insiders has been the separation of voting machine systems from the SOE results reports. Because most US jurisdictions require posting evidence of results from each voting machine at the precinct, public citizens can organize to examine these results to compare with SOE results. Black Box Voting spearheaded a national citizen action to videotape / photograph these poll tapes in 2008.

With the merger of SOE and SCYTL, that won't work (if SCYTL's voting system is used). When there are two truly independent sources of information, the public can perform its own "audit" by matching one number against the other.

These two independent sources, however, will now be merged into one single source: an Internet voting system controlled by SCYTL, with a results reporting system also controlled by SCYTL.

With SCYTL internet voting, there will be no ballots. No physical evidence. No chain of custody. No way for the public to authenticate who actually cast the votes, chain of custody, or the count.

SCYTL is moving into or already running elections in: the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, India and Australia.

SCYTL is based in Barcelona; its funding comes from international venture capital funds including Nauta Capital, Balderton Capital and Spinnaker.

Here is the link to the press release regarding SYCTL's acquisition of SOE:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/scytl-acquires-soe-software-becoming-the-leadin g-election-software-provider-2012-01-11

quote:"In 2007...the top 250 companies in the world had sales in excess of $14.7 trillion...an amount exceeding the GDP [Gross Domestic Product] of the United States or the European Union, $13.2 trillion and $13.7 trillion, respectively...combined sales of the top five (Wal-Mart, Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and General Motors) was nearly $1.5 trillion -- larger than the GDP of all but seven countries." -- Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making, by David Rothkopf

* * * * *

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(USA) - 1/12 - WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON IN IA, NH, AND SC - by Bev Harris

Despite what you see about who "won" Iowa and who "won" New Hampshire and who "won" South Carolina, that's not the main function of these very early contests. What they are really about is culling down the field, promptly, and this is not really based on who wins.

New Hampshire, and to a lesser extent Iowa and South Carolina, play a disproportionate role in removing your choice of candidates in the primary. While you watch the horse race in these three states, understand that if you live in any other state, you are going to have fewer candidate choices, or no chance to vote on the candidate of your choice at all.

IT'S ABOUT EXPECTATIONS, NOT WINNING

If a candidate "exceeds expectations" built by TV punditry and whichever poll is being quoted at the time, three things happen:

1. TV pundits start the drumbeat, building public expectations about "inevitability" of the candidate who did "better than expected";

2. Donor money reroutes itself, pouring dollars into the newly inevitable candidate;

3. Media then reports on the candidate's prowess in fund raising, citing this newly found skill as reason to believe the candidate is even more inevitable.

The reverse (fewer votes than "expected") creates an even more definitive result:

1. Media speculates repetitively on when the candidate will drop out;

2. Donor funds for the candidate dry up;

3. Media cites weaker donations as evidence that the candidate cannot win;

4. The party begins pushing the candidate to get out of the way;

5. Articles begin focusing on the cost of primaries in states where people have not yet had an opportunity to vote (underlying message: why do these primaries?);

6. Pundits begin the new drumbeat: "The longer it takes for candidates to get out of the way, the more damage to the party's prospects of winning the general election in November."

This is why Iowa and New Hampshire are not really about winning. They are about pushing candidates out of the way citing failure to meet expectations, or surprise in exceeding them.

South Carolina, usually the third state to hold a primary contest, serves as the clean-up round, so that by Super Tuesday (when lots of big states have primaries) only a few candidate choices remain. Non-frontrunners still in the game get so strapped financially that they can't muster a fight.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH "BLACK BOX VOTING"?

The Iowa Republican caucus turned out to be impressively transparent, though of course TV pundits did exploit Iowa to tell people what to think for the next round.

NEW HAMPSHIRE IS ANOTHER STORY

New Hampshire uses Black Box Voting for over 90% of its votes (Black Box Voting = concealed vote-counting machines. This violates New Hampshire's own constitution which states that the votes must be counted "in public meeting").

I will publish a detailed, point-by-point description of several quite bad choke-points in New Hampshire election integrity tomorrow. Here's the short version, and a preview:

- All New Hampshire voting machines are programmed by a Massachusetts-based sole source no-bid contractor with a convicted narcotics trafficker at its helm;

- A crafty change in NH law now makes it illegal for the public to examine the real ballots under right to know law;

- A change in NH law in 2008 now makes most recounts impossible;

- New Hampshire does not follow its own legally required vote-stuffing safeguards.

SOUTH CAROLINA

New Hampshire will produce an anointed candidate who will "do better than expected" to become "inevitable." Some of the other frontrunners will be hammered down firmly with "worse than expected"; all week long before South Carolina we will get treated to a persuasive TV pundit parade telling us what we should think.

It's only gotten worse since 1988, when author Joan Didion wrote: "...those inside the process had congealed into a permanent political class, the defining characteristic of which was its readiness to abandon those not inside the process." (Political Fictions)

In South Carolina (where, as you may recall, the paperless ES&S iVotronic touchscreens gave us Alvin Greene in the 2010 Democratic primary), the counting process is not only entirely concealed, but the original record -- the voters own verified ballot -- is unrecoverable, and chain of custody on the count is unascertainable. By the way, it also violate the South Carolina constitution to conceal the vote counting process from the public.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

I know, I know. People will write me and say "What should we do?" I always hear that just days before the election, when it's too late.

What you can do that might make a difference is this:

1) Think for yourself and ignore the pundits. Stop letting yourself get persuaded by a politicized media machine. Give your money to the candidate of your choice and vote for the candidate of your choice, and do not let any wonk who was invited onto a TV s... More

(USA) 1/12 - TRAP DOORS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE ELECTIONS AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT - By Bev Harris
Permission to excerpt or reprint granted, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org

See below for details in this article:

SIX TRAP DOORS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE ELECTION PROCESS

1. Removed safeguards for its same-day registration system.
2. Ignores the law on ballot-stuffing safeguards
3. Breaks the chain of custody
4. Conceals vote-counting from the public, in violation of Article 32 of its own Constitution
5. Removed candidate recount rights (2009)
6. Made it illegal for public citizens or members of the press to examine the ballots after the election is over (2003)

TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO

1. Get involved with Protect the Count NH
2. Monitor the trap doors

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT NEW HAMPSHIRE'S FIRST-IN-NATION PRIMARY?

Like the Iowa caucus system, it forces candidates to answer real questions from actual people. Political strategists like their candidates to plan their media (setting up media ops that are nothing short of laughable; placing their candidates in cornfields, in tanks, on factory assembly lines, donning catcher's mitts and plaid shirts and baseball caps.) Unscripted moments are forced on candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, where locals won't vote-ya if you hide behind photo ops.

WHAT'S BAD ABOUT NEW HAMPSHIRE'S FIRST-IN-NATION PRIMARY?

Unlike the impressively transparent public process in Iowa this year (where the public could spot errors or malfeasance so well that mistakes actually saw the light of day), New Hampshire is currently the Decepticon of transparent elections. For each transparent election procedure, they've built a trap door.

ELECTION CONTROLS

If you control who or what gets on the ballot, you control the outcome. This is the arena for ballot access fights. If you dominate public persuasion, you can (usually) control the outcome. This is the arena where campaign finance is fought. If you draw your own playing field, you control regional outcomes. This is the arena where redistricting take place. All this happens before the election. Now we move to control points for the voting process itself:

1. WHO CAN VOTE: Where voter list stuffing and purging play out;
2. WHO DID VOTE: The ringside seat for ballot-stuffing;
3. CHAIN OF CUSTODY: Magician's territory: When real ballots leave public view, substitutes may appear;
4. THE COUNT: Voting machine program and the tally process.

HERE ARE NEW HAMPSHIRE'S TRAP DOORS:

TRAP DOOR #1 - (WHO CAN VOTE): Democrats have been clamoring for same-day registration, and we saw Republicans take advantage of it in Iowa's 2012 Caucus. A keen idea, but not when you remove its safeguards.

The safeguard for same-day registration is the ability for any person to see and authenticate same-day registration applications. New Hampshire allows same-day registration, but excludes the registration applications from public inspection. What you're left with is a checklist (New Hampshire's name for a poll list) which contains a list of names appended to it by a poll worker.

In 2008, the presidential primary checklist for a northern New Hampshire town called Woodstock was spotted on the floor of a white cargo van by an alert citizen. This van was speeding around southern New Hampshire, driven by file clerks Peter "Hoppy" Falzone and Butch Dubois. Ballot pickup schedules showed that they hadn't been to Woodstock. Appended to the Woodstock checklist were a motley list of hand-written names, lacking addresses, purporting to be same day registrants.

Susan Pynchon, the citizen who spotted the checklist and later examined it, asked to examine the Election Day registration forms that must accompany same-day registrants. But in New Hampshire, that's against the law.

No member of the public or the media can examine any of the documents which authenticate same-day registrants. No one knows if the names appended to the checklist are real or copied from a phone book during lulls in voting.

TRAP DOOR #2 - (WHO DID VOTE): A telltale sign for ballot box stuffing is when votes exceed voters. Here are voter/vote totals from Swanzey in New Hampshire's 2008 presidential primary:

1,591 votes - 1,333 voters = 258 impossible Democratic votes
1,092 votes - 951 voters = 141 impossible Republican votes

Documentation: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/157/Swanzey-72828.pdf

The total number of impossible votes in Swanzey alone were 258 + 141 = 399

The "Swanzey Stuffing" does have a positive side: At least Swanzey reported their impossible numbers promptly to the Secretary of State. A citizen caught it, and (one would hope), the secretary of state had an opportunity to investigate the incident. But they didn't.

In 2010, though it is required by law to report to the secretary of state the number of votes and voters, towns did not report it. An alert public citizen, Deborah Sumner, noticed the absence of this required ballot-stuffing safeguard and brought it to the attention of the secretary of state, the... More

(USA) 1/12 - IOWA: ISSUES OF INTEGRITY FOR THE IOWA REPUBLICAN CAUCUS - By Bev Harris - (Links to all referenced pieces at end; a concise list of HOW TO PROTECT THE IOWA CAUCUS is at the end of this article.)

Brad Friedman at Bradblog.com reports on some key procedures in the 2012 Iowa Republican caucus. At issue is just how transparent and public the process is, and whether there are any holes in the cheese. Fewer holes than 2008, it seems. A bit of diligence on the part of caucus participants will be needed (see end of this article for what to do).

There is also some consternation from concerned citizens about a recent Politico.com story, which reports that the Iowa statewide caucus counting will be moved to an undisclosed location, its author chiding those who question the transparency behind such a move as "conspiracy minded types." To be clear about this, insisting on transparency is a necessary and patriotic element of running any public election, and ridiculing public citizens who examine transparency is kind of embarrassing. For the reporter. Not the citizens.

The truth is, the counting process, even if it is moved to a secret location, will not destroy transparency if the process I outline at the end of this article is followed.

In order to protect any election, we need to boil the process down to its simplest components, refuse to take our eye off them, and understand the difference between a public election, which is democratic in nature, and a non-public election, which is simply a bit of theatre.

ARITHMETIC AND ACCOUNTING

You can't get away from it. Elections are composed of two crucial things that lots of Americans don't love too much: (1) Arithmetic; and (2) Accounting

The ARITHMETIC needs to add up. The ACCOUNTING needs to be available to the public, and the numbers have to match up. I'll show you exactly how to do that below, in the section called WHAT TO DO IN IOWA.

Never forget that to have an election process that is truly democratic, the key word is not "election", but "PUBLIC." If the accounting is concealed from the public, under no circumstances can the election be described as public.

Arithmetic = 1+1+1+1 (etc) = ____ (final tally)

Accounting =
(1) Who can vote (voter list)
(2) Who did vote (poll list)
(3) Chain of custody
(4) the count

Components (1), (2), and (4) each generate a number, which must match up, and must be something the public can see and authenticate. Component (3), Chain of Custody, helps make sure the numbers in the other components are the real thing, not a substitute.

The numbers have to match up, like this:

[a] - You can't have fewer people who CAN vote than people who DID vote. (500 people who CAN vote … 800 people who DID vote = IMPOSSIBLE)

[b] - You can't have more votes COUNTED than people who DID VOTE. (1,500 votes COUNTED … 900 people who DID vote = IMPOSSIBLE)

HERE'S WHY THE IOWA CAUCUS WILL PROBABLY MEET REQUIREMENTS FOR A TRULY "PUBLIC" PROCESS:

As reported by Bradblog.com, the key elements in the Iowa Caucus accounting will be public. We think. This will enable caucus-goers and the general public to see and authenticate the essential accounting. We hope.

Keep in mind that if you successfully manipulate any ONE of the four crucial accounting areas (who can vote, who did vote, chain of custody, the count), you can take the whole election.

For this reason, I will caution you to beware of any election process that concentrates control into a funnel at any stage of the contest. In the past, the Iowa Republican caucus was a funnel; this year, we think, it will not be. But just in case, let's examine what an election funnel looks like, so you will recognize it if you see it.

ELECTION FUNNELS ( = A BAD THING )

You can set up something that looks very welcoming, very public, very transparent, which I call the wide end of the funnel. You can choke off public scrutiny by creating a funnel later in the process, fooling most of the people who thought their participation at the wide end meant it was a public process.

A good example of an election funnel is AmericansElect.org, which seduces the public into believing they control the process because the front end feels very open, very public. However, the Internet voting process at the end closes off public ability to see and authenticate who actually voted, chain of custody, or the count.

If you narrow the process into a funnel, removing public ability to see part of the accounting, you can completely alter an election outcome. Therefore, all four crucial components need to remain wide-open all through the process.

In any election, watch for any situation that narrows public ability to see. The election is most at risk, and is likely to be stolen, at that narrow point.

PAST PROBLEM AREA: CHAIN OF CUSTODY - This area has been my beef with the Iowa Republican caucus in the past. In Iowa, the funnel has traditionally appeared at chain of custody.

At the wide end of the funnel, we have warm bodies in the caucus r... More

(USA) 10/11 - 15,000 VOTERS LEFT OFF 2008 VOTER LIST IN SHELBY COUNTY TENNESSEE - PERMISSION TO REPRINT OR EXCERPT GRANTED, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org

20% of All 18-year Olds Omitted -- Data Entry Failure for Last-Minute Registration Forms to Blame

By Bev Harris: Part 2A of a 5-part series on voter list data

There is still time to correct these problems by 2012. This story is not just about Shelby County, Tennessee, where I believe the elections commission is competently addressing these problems for 2012. Last-minute dumps of new voter registration forms was a national problem in 2008, and across America voters reported that when they showed up to vote, their name was missing from the list.

The 2008 presidential election brought millions of new voters to the polls, with enthusiasm especially high among youth and minority voters. Yet in Shelby County (the home of the great city of Memphis), over 15,000 voters, disproportionately young or Black voters, were omitted from the list of valid voters at the time of early voting; by Election Day, the names finally made it to the list.

These omissions correlate with an influx of last-minute voter registration forms. This study highlights the importance of third-party registration groups promptly submitting new registration forms. In some states, 48-hour submission is now a legal requirement, with somewhat draconian fines for failure to comply. Regardless of whether prompt submission is the law, it is important to emphasize the need to educate voter registration groups to promptly submit new registration forms. Like taking checks to the bank for your employer; like an insurance agent who must promptly submit forms for those he insures; like a real estate agent who has to submit bids immediately, voter registration groups have a fiduciary-like duty to the voter, who has every reason to believe they will be registered timely after signing forms and entrusting them to a responsible person.

In Memphis, approximately 30,000 new registration forms flowed in during the last five weeks before the 2008 presidential election. Only half of these made it onto the voter list by the start of early voting. Apparently, the number of new forms being submitted was greater than they could enter into the database on time.

OMISSION OF VALID VOTERS FROM "WHO CAN VOTE" LISTS

In 2008, Actor Tim Robbins showed up to vote in New York, and was told he was not on the list. After asserting his right to vote, his registration was eventually located and he was allowed to vote a normal ballot.(1)

Reports flowing in to Black Box Voting indicate that the "Tim Robbins" problem happened all over America. In fact, it happened right next to me. When I went to vote, the woman beside me was told she was not on the voter list. She was deaf, and the poll worker made no attempt to explain anything comprehensible to her, so I assisted. Instead of telling her to vote a provisional ballot, the poll worker told her to register and come back next year. After I asserted her right to vote a provisional ballot, the poll worker found her registration after all and she was allowed to vote a normal ballot.

*Registered voters who are told they are not on the voter list may vote a "provisional ballot", an important right, but provisionals are second-class ballots. Provisional ballots are examined after the election and if deemed legitimate, are counted. Unfortunately, poll worker errors sometimes cause these ballots to be rejected; also, poll workers sometimes fail to inform voters of their right to provisional ballots; and provisional ballots are not factored in to Election Night winner projections.

We have not been able to learn much about how these errors take place, or quantify how many people were left off the lists. Until now. I obtained 87 Shelby County voter lists from 2006 through 2010. Examining these lists reveals a staggering scope of voter list omissions. Two and a half percent -- 15,199 total voters -- were left off the early voting list. Of these, 9,080 weren't submitted until the last day of registration.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTING IN ELECTIONS

As a self-governing people, we have the right to authenticate the basic accounting in our own elections. The most essential parts of this accounting are:
1. Who can vote (the voter list)
2. Who did vote (the participating voter list)
3. Chain of custody
4. The count

Obstructions or inaccuracies in any of these four areas can create an unfair election. Inaccuracies in the voter list will certainly affect the count if valid voters cannot vote, and may affect the count if invalid voters can vote (I will quantify invalid votes for 2008 in Part B of this report).

WHY WERE VOTERS LEFT OFF THE LIST?

Voter lists show a "Registration Date." In Shelby County, the last day to register to vote for the 2008 presidential election was Oct. 6, 2008. The later the voter registration forms were submitted, the fewer voters made it on to the voter list at early voting:

Date form Submit... More

(USA) - 10/11: AMERICANSELECT.ORG = TROJAN HORSE, EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS - There is a rather frightening trojan horse making its way into American elections, called AmericansElect.org, or as I think of it, AmericanSelect.org, because they have positioned themselves to secretly choose presidential candidates for us. What is really insidious about this is that NO ONE is calling them on their unaccountable, undemocratic, unwatchable, and completely nonpublic and unauthenticatable methodology.

Now, this may be mainly well-intentioned but naive folks trying to address a problem, but if this catches hold without critics, we'll see it in more mainstream elections, and that will be the end for any semblance of a democratic system.

Americans Elect is using Internet voting, controlled entirely by whatever insider runs the server, to do their thing. (Why don't we stop throwing democracy in the toilet with pretend-democratic ideas that actually concentrate power and remove all ultimate control from the people?)

The candidates selected by the public will only be reported if those with control of the server choose to let that be so, and that is a pseudo-democratic system, a magic show, a sham.

When I reminded one of the listserves about this, I was asked, "then how do we make the system more accessible to minor parties without resources?" To that I wrote:

You present a false framework, the implication being that the necessity of some system for parties without resources outweighs the right to self-government itself. The primary right is the public right to self-govern. It does take resources to mount what is essentially a national advertising campaign, or at least, very good planning and execution using alternatives like social media.

But for elections to be democratic, the public must be able to retain control over the process. If any of the four essential parts of information are not something the public can see and authenticate, you've just thrown the whole form of government out the window.

People need to see this more clearly. In the Soviet Union, they had elections, but the deal was that the government would tell you who won. Those were elections, but not PUBLIC elections. The defining term for what constitutes a democratic system is the word PUBLIC, not the word "election". Any election which is constructed such that a government or other insider can just come out and tell us who won, without our being able to authenticate, is on its face undemocratic.

No, a "receipt" does not suffice or do much of anything at all. Imagine that your accountant gives you a paper that states your profit and loss and what's in the bank, but says you can only verify one receipt. The only valid authentication process must enable public authentication of the whole pool at once (rather than one at a time, which creates a moving target).

The four things the public must be able to see and authenticate are:

1) Who can vote (the voter list)-- how the heck are they dealing with THIS at Americans Elect?
2) Who did vote
3) Chain of custody
4) The count

Internet voting, with or without "receipt", makes ALL FOUR key areas impossible for the public to authenticate.

The best way is still to vote privately in a public setting (polling place) and to count publicly before the votes are moved out of public view, with public posting of the list of who is eligible to vote before the election (the whole list, not a one-by-one look yourself up method), and a public posting of who did vote within 24 hours of poll closing, with a permanent, voter-verified record of the pollbook (ie, voter signature at polls, on paper not etch-a-sketch).

I am sorry if this makes it challenging for minor parties, but the solution is not to discard the democratic system itself in search of easier access to the ballot. 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

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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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