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IDEA FOR TRANSPARENCY: My idea is a huge board on ... More -- MESSAGE FOR BEV: Hello to the Great and Wonderful Bev Harris I'm the lady who spoke with you on the phone -

KENTUCKY: I'm every bit as concerned as you about ... More -- Hi Bev, I live in Marshall County KY.

http://www.dailypaul.com/221831/pre-determined-ill... More -- what do you make of this?

the first thought I had was to contact you, and se... More -- Dear Mrs. Harris, I have been following your work for years, although probably not as diligently as I should, but, today, I ran across an article in our local newspaper, I though I should bring to your attention. Since this is the Republican Primary around here, I didn't think I'd see too much in the way of shenanigans, but I was wrong...ES & S is the equipment used, and technicians are violating rules, and accessing readers while voting is still in progress. I don't propose I know all the tricks and illegalities that go on in our elections, but I'm pretty sure the enclosed article will provide enough information for your perusal, to enlighten me as to what to do.

Considering all of the information that is availab... More -- USA: Have any of the experts here seen this and is there anything to it?

BBV NEWS - Black Box Voting recently obtained a se... More -- ELECTION SYSTEMS & SOFTWARE - This is transparency? ES&S; voting machine log provided in Chinese. Translated, the end of the file says it is a report that "smells fishy."

BBV NEWS: This compelling video shows plain-as-day... More -- GEORGIA: "Nay" votes recorded as "Yea" votes

FROM THE MAILBAG: I am concerned about Rahm Emanue... More -- CHICAGO - received via e-mail from J.L. - Closing schools will affect were people go to vote. Most people vote at public schools. Most of the school closings are going to be in minority neighborhoods. So, the people living there will have to go across the "railroad" tracks to a part of town they might not be welcomed at to vote.

BBV NEWS: The ePollbooks are themselves not withou... More -- OHIO: Butler County, Ohio received new ePollbooks as part of a settlement in an earlier lawsuit about faulty voting system software.

BBV NEWS: The article below shows us three things:... More -- NEW HAMPSHIRE: Public citizens don't have a billions dollars in their back pockets to run statewide TV ads or send mailers or hire lobbyists to haunt the halls of the legislature, so it's not surprising that good bills, proposed in the public interest, can die a quiet little death. The first time.

BBV NEWS: White was convicted of lying about where... More -- INDIANA: Republican Governor will appoint replacement for Republican Secretary of State Charlie White; Democrats want him to appoint Democrat Vop Osili, whom he defeated in his election.

BBV NEWS: Americans Elect is trying to circumvent ... More -- MAINE: "Americans Elect" was just awarded a ballot slot in the US presidential race in Maine. As of my last count, they were on the ballot in 15 states and breathing down the ballot's neck in at least 10 more.

BBV NEWS: So if you read Terrell's article, linked... More -- NEW MEXICO: The reporter below from The New Mexican has not yet looked into the thornier issues, like nondisclosure and director right to throw out member's choices, and opaque unverifiable method for choosing.

BBV NEWS: It seems that, in the all-important stra... More -- TEXAS: If I were a Texas voter, excited about exercising my right to weigh in on the candidate of my choice, especially if that candidate were from -- oh, say, TEXAS? -- I might be feeling a bit frustrated right now about the interminable delay game being played in Texas elections.

BBV NEWS: Connecticut has appointed a new state el... More -- CONNECTICUT: When you put it all together, the combined information in the two articles that follow means this: Just one or two alert citizens can make a meaningful difference by taking actions that seem appropriate to them.
Let's put the People back into We the People!

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

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(TN) 4/12 - SHELBY COUNTY PERFORMED UNAUTHORIZED ALTERATIONS IN ITS (NOW UNCERTIFIED!) VOTING SYSTEM - By Bev Harris

SUMMARY: Details on Shelby County, Tennessee alteration of its Diebold voting system. They inserted a completely different program (not from Diebold at all) which alters the way the system works. Documents show that fully half of White suburbs are now processing information in a different way than the rest of the county, and that this selective and unusual processing has been taking place for at least four years. The alterations made to the system are illegal almost everywhere in the USA and automatically render their $600,000 voting system decertified, although they will claim that they don't need to use a certified system. One man, who does not work for Shelby County, has been given almost unprecedented access to the system. The alterations allow them to customize how party affiliation is coded, creating different party identifiers in White, Black, and mixed counties. I have posted a few documents, like the work order, in the article and will post several more, including a little bit of related source code, this weekend.

SHELBY COUNTY'S VOTING SYSTEM ALTERATIONS MAKE IT UNCERTIFIED AND UNAUTHORIZED UNDER ANY FEDERAL STANDARDS

In May 2007, Shelby County executed a work order to alter the way Shelby County's voting system works.

Computerized voting systems are tested and examined to (supposedly) show that they function to record and count votes correctly. Federal approval for these systems is based on all the working parts. You can't change anything and still call it a certified system. The whole certification thing is pretty bogus to begin with, but at least it means that SOMEONE has, at least theoretically, examined the voting system.

According to systems developer John Washburn, "Both NASED and the EAC consider the voting system to be the specific constellation of software and hardware. There is a system number which is a particular constellation of hardware and software at specific revision levels. If you make a change or take a piece out or put a piece in that system is no longer certified."

This was not a minor modification. Shelby County not only altered its voting system in a major way, but documents I have obtained reveal that it processes information differently in some precincts than others, and this is almost certainly related to the change they made in how their system works.

Fully 50% of White suburban precincts are affected.

WHEN IS THERE EVER AN ELECTION WHERE THE SAME POLITICAL PARTIES WOULD NEED TO HAVE DIFFERENT PARTY IDS IN DIFFERENT PRECINCTS?

The alteration to Shelby County's voting system is especially troubling because it enables precinct-specific political party codes. Let me explain, and I'm sure you will see how inappropriate this is:

The Diebold/ES&S/Dominion "GEMS" system assigns a number to each political party. For example, Democrat = "1", Republican = "2", Nonpartisan = "3". The system then knows that a ballot or candidate tagged "1" will be a Democrat, "2" a Republican, and so forth. Imagine, then, the fun you could have if you could tell the system, "but in THIS precinct, let's switch those numbers so "1" is Republican and "2" is Democrat.

These party ID numbers are never seen by the voter or by any poll worker. They are internal ID numbers which tell the computer how to identify each political party.

In the Diebold GEMS system, the county IT guy sets this ID number just once. It is a global value, and is automatically the same for every precinct in the county. In fact, let me just show you what the party ID table looks like for the whole county:

Democrat - 1
Republican - 2
Nonpartisan - 3

See how simple this is? Imagine now, that you take a completely separate program that didn't even come with the Diebold system, and was written by someone else, and instead had it do this:

Precinct 1 - Democrat = (assign your own number)
Precinct 1 - Republican = (assign your own number)
Precinct 1 - Nonpartisan = (assign your own number)
Precinct 2 - Democrat = (assign your own number)
Precinct 2 - Republican = (assign your own number)
Precinct 2 - Nonpartisan = (assign your own number)

That's what Shelby County has done.

Why would there ever be an election where you use a different identifier for Democrats in one precinct than another within the same county and in the same election? Shelby County has hundreds of precincts, and has altered their system to allow each precinct and sub-precinct (called "splits") to assign party identifiers that can vary by precinct. But more to the point, it doesn't matter why they say they did it.

"All really good pieces of malware do what they claim they're going to do, ... eventually."

FUN WITH PRECINCT DEMOGRAPHICS

Shelby County has especially racially-charged precinct demographics. Many precincts are almost all Black. Some precincts are almost all White. A handful of precincts are racially balanced.

This alteration in Shelby County's voting system allows party identifie... More

USA - 4/12 - WATCH FOR NEW VOTING SYSTEM SOURCE CODE HERE THIS WEEK - You may have noticed have been quiet here of late. Have been studying an interesting anomaly in election/vote records, and have obtained related source code which shows alteration from the originally intended functioning of the voting system.

It is a small amount of source code and an MS Access table that it interacts with. I'm writing up my concerns on this matter and providing context for it.

It's written in SQL. It will be posted this week. Pass it along to any SQL programmers you may know. I will also post other computer data related to this issue. Check back for updates by April 20.

-- Bev Harris More

(WA) 2/12 - REBUTTALS TO CANNED TALKING POINTS ABOUT VOTING MACHINES - An outstanding public citizen requested some answers from the Washington Secretary of State about the concealed counting going on inside our computerized vote-counting system. Predictably, she received a set of canned talking points.

Below the talking points is a point-by-point rebuttal from Black Box Voting. At the end of this post I have provided a PDF file of the talking points and rebuttal. You may find this useful even if you do not live in Washington. The same points are used all over the place.

REBUTTALS TO WASHINGTON STATE'S TALKING POINTS ABOUT VOTING MACHINES

TALKING POINT: We have a state law that requires every electronic voting machine to have a paper backup, referred to as a Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail.

THE TRUTH: The public is not allowed to examine the paper trail.

TALKING POINT: After each election, each county randomly chooses up to 4% of their electronic voting machines for an audit, where they compare the electronic votes to the paper audit trail for three races to verify that they match.

THE TRUTH: This is not an audit, it is a spot check, and it is controlled by the same people who program the system and control chain of custody for absentee ballots.

TALKING POINT: All paper trails can withstand multiple recounts or audits, and the image will last up to seven years.

THE TRUTH: That's nice, but the public is not permitted to examine these ballots, ever, even after the election and all recount and contest periods have expired.

TALKING POINT: Our state has very good recount laws to ensure the accuracy of a count in close elections.

THE TRUTH:
a) A recount is only performed after chain of custody breaks. No "after the fact" recount authenticates the original count.

b) In Washington State, no recount is mandated unless the candidates are within less than 1/4% of the total votes cast for both candidates, and also less than 1,000 votes.

c) Ballots need not be hand counted, even in a recount. In Feb. 2012, a court ruled that election officials "have no clear, legal duty to recount the ballots in the manner requested."

Almost no candidate can get a public hand recount in Washington. All they do is run the ballots through the computer again.

This is not a "recount" but is more accurately described as a "reprint."

TALKING POINT: Our elections are run by county auditors using certified voting systems.

THE TRUTH: What this is saying is "Trust us. We will verify the election for you."

That is not the same as allowing the public to see the essential accounting itself. The right to authenticate our own elections is an inalienable right, derived from the right to self government.

According to the US Constitution, our representatives are to be chosen by the people. The People cannot transfer this right to the government. Any election run by the government must also ensure that the public can see and authenticate all essential steps.

The government cannot be in control of choosing itself.

TALKING POINT: The voting systems have been tested by independent test laboratories and when installed, cannot be changed.

THE TRUTH:
a) Testing labs are paid by the vendors. They keep their reports secret from the public.

b) These labs test only what the vendor tells them to test. They have also been caught omitting key tests.

c) Saying "the installations cannot be changed" does not mean "the votes cannot be altered."

d) Votes and vote totals can be altered whether or not electronic vote counting software is an approved version. A computer can only do what it is told to do.

e) The mitigation for vote tampering is not pretesting a software specimen. The mitigation is public ability to see the actual vote counting.

TALKING POINT: The machines are certified at the national level, tested and certified by our state and tested by the county.

THE TRUTH: This refers to basic usability tests which have nothing to do with deliberate alteration of vote totals. Basically, they take a prepared set of known ballots, run them through the machine, see that the buttons work. But this has no relation to what happens to the votes in any given election.

Imagine this: You work as a teller at a bank. They decide to remove the video camera that shows you counting the cash. Instead, they give you a pretest to "detect whether you might tamper at some point in the future." Pretests can help detect incompetence in the election setup, but there is no pretest anywhere that can predict alteration of the count at a later date and time.

There IS a way to detect vote tampering, and it is transparency. The public must be allowed to check whether actual voted ballots match electronically reported counts.

TALKING POINT: The machines are then locked and sealed until put into use.

THE TRUTH: Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. We always hear this statement and we also regularly see that some machines weren't sealed; that they were accessed by technicians or... More

(ME) 2/12 - DEAR MAINE GOP: 1+1+1 DOES NOT = 4. OFFICIAL RESULTS WRONG. Two super alert citizens, Frank Pearson and John Washburn, each hit me with spreadsheets about the same time, proving that Maine's caucus results don't even add up. As the precise John Washburn says, "their spreadsheet lacks internal integrity."

Because of the relatively open, public process, we've all been treated to a public display on lack of election integrity. I'm hearing whimpers of "bring in the voting machines" from news outlets like The AP, but we all need to remember that with the machines, the public can't see the counting process and wrong totals cannot be detected by the public.

You've probably already heard they decided to just not count Washington County, with 6,876 registered Republican voters, and that the "winning" result announced by the GOP for Romney was only 194 more than Ron Paul.

Registered voters in each Maine County by party as of Feb. 13, 2012: http://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/2012/21312r-e-active.txt

You've probably also heard that they reported "zero" for all the Waldo County locations that voted, even though the results were called in timely.

You've probably even heard that the state GOP ordered caucus locations to keep the count secret, but that Belfast took a vote to NOT hide the count and instead to announce it out loud, and that the actual Belfast votes were not at all what the state GOP reported for Belfast.

But you may not yet have heard that even for the counties they DID list votes for, their own numbers don't even add up!

FOR EXAMPLE:

In Penobscot County, City of Bangor, the GOP results which you can see here:
http://www.mainegop.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/me_gop_caucus_results.pdf

they have these numbers:
Mitt Romney: 26
Ron Paul: 36
Rick Santorum: 9
Newt Gingrich: 4
Other: 2
Total: 0
Add 'em up yourself. The total is 77.

In Penobscot County, town of Alton, they added 2 votes for Ron Paul and 1 vote for other (no other candidates show any votes), and came up with a total of zero.

In Cumberland County, town of Gorham, you be the teacher and the GOP can be your third grade student. The numbers are:
Romney 24
Paul 23
Santorum 8
Gingrich 4
Other 0
The state GOP added these up and came up with 56. I think all third grade teachers will agree that the total is not 56, but 59.

CUMBERLAND COUNTY, SOUTH PORTLAND:
Romney 29
Paul 28
Santorum 19
Gingrich 9
Other 0
The GOP adds these five number to achieve a sum of 81. Washburn and Pearson came up with 85, and so do the rest of us.

KENNEBEC COUNTY, CITY OF AUGUSTA:
Romney 18
Paul 17
Santorum 3
Ginrich 0
Other 0
The state GOP reports these 38 votes as "40".

KNOX COUNTY, TOWN OF CAMDEN:
Romney 19
Paul 6
Santorum 2
Gingrich 5
Other 0
The Maine Republican state math guru reports "28" as the total for what is actually 32.

KNOX COUNTY, TOWN OF FRIENDSHIP:
Romney 2
Paul 2
Santorum 3
Gingrich 1
Other 0
They get "7", I get "8", don't you?

PENOBSCOT COUNTY, TOWN OF DIXMONT:
Romney 1
Paul 0
Santorum 1
Gingrich 0
Other 1
According to the Maine Republican Party, 1+1+1=4

PENOBSCOT COUNTY, NEWPORT:
Romney 9
Paul 6
Santorum 6
Gingrich 1
Other 0
They report "21" when we can all see this adds to 22.

SOMERSET COUNTY, CAMBRIDGE:
Romney 0
Paul 0
Santorum 5
Gingrich 3
Other 1
Maine GOP math sums these nine votes up as "8"

YORK COUNTY TOWN OF ELIOT
Romney 20
Paul 12
Santorum 3
Gingrich 6
Other 2
They add this up to "44" but it is only 43.

All in all, the erroneous addition adds up to exactly the nice round number of 100 votes.

Given the fact that any spreadsheet has a nifty "sum" function, either the sum was correct and the numbers were fudged with after the fact, or they don't know how to calculate, and check, a simple row of five numbers.

But hey, why sweat the details? Even after all this, here's what's still on their official Web site:

[] More

(USA) 2/12 - CITIZENS SUE TO FORCE GOVERNMENT TO STOP LINKING VOTES TO VOTER - Public officials now admit they can see how you voted and link it to your name. This issue affects Colorado, almost all of Washington State, as well as some locations in California, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia and likely other states as well.

If you vote by mail or at combined-precinct "vote centers" your vote may be viewable by public officials and/or vendors.

In Colorado, election officials have been trying to cover up this inconvenient (and unconstitutional) issue, by preventing the public or the media from being able to examine ballots -- ever, even after elections are over. The Hart brand ballot scanner, widely used in CO, WA, and TX, affixes a unique identifier bar code to each ballot. With absentee or mail-in ballots, this produces a mechanism for the government or its vendors to download how you voted into a database.

The Citizen Center lawsuit in Colorado seeks a federal court ruling prohibiting the government from placing marks on the ballots, or otherwise using mechanisms to identify your vote choices. This requires no new law; these practices were put into place in violation of the Colorado Constitution, which already bans such tactics.

Note that there are two ways to remove ballot privacy:

1) By implanting a unique number or bar code on each ballot, creating a mechanism through which the government and vendors can decode 100% of the votes for mail-in voters, potentially compromising ballot privacy for millions of voters at a time;

2) By creating a large number of small voter subsets; then, simply comparing results for each subset to identify all small sets with homogenous votes. Many small subsets are created with certain mail-in voting and vote-center practices.

Please also see the article about Indiana voter privacy theft, at the end of this article. This uses a third mechanism, implanted by the vendors into voting machines at the behest of the state.

Black Box Voting first reported on this problem in 2007: "Two voting products combine to steal your political privacy " http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/47220.html
Also see the important video here:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/video.html - scroll down to "CONSTRUCTION WORKERS DISCOVER THEIR SECRET BALLOT INVADED" (keep watching, the first few seconds is blank); This video shows two Washington state citizens who found identifiers on their ballots.

If officials admit this now in Colorado and Indiana, and citizens found this in Washington state, one wonders how pervasive this is and why this functionality has been kept secret from the public.

GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS IN COLORADO HAVE NOW ADMITTED THEY CAN SEE HOW YOU VOTED

During the course of important litigation to examine ballots after the election was over, several Colorado public officials admitted that they can see how people voted.

A new nonprofit organization, called the Citizen Center, is now litigating to stop the government and its vendors from collecting data on how citizens are voting.

Portions of the Citizen Center press release are reprinted below.

But first, be aware that this issue is going to grow much bigger than Colorado. The core of the Colorado Clerk's arguments revolves around an abhorrent belief that the government has the right to see how you voted. The Citizen Center lawsuit correctly argues that under the Colorado Constitution NO ONE has that right.

PRESS RELEASE
Citizen Center

http://www.thecitizencenter.org/blog/2012/2/12/supplemental-press-materials-21312-press-conference.html

Citizen Center Sues Secretary of State to Stop Unconstitutional Elections
Citizen Center Founded For the People's Right to Know

Posted on Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 11:00PM

Fundamental Civil Rights, the Basis of This Litigation

quote:Our democracy depends on the freedom of expression, the freedom of association, the right to due process, and the right of voter privacy. These rights cannot be freely exercised without our absolute right to vote by secret ballot. A secret (anonymous) ballot means that nobody can learn a voter’s votes. Yet many Colorado election officials have unilaterally adopted unconstitutional election practices that violate this fundamental right.

These practices can permit election workers and party bosses to collect and maintain information on how we vote, on the reckless assurance that such information could never be abused or shared. Officials then use the existence of this private data to block authorized watchers and the public from verifying election procedures and results. The lawsuit brought in federal court today seeks immediate corrective action to protect the 2012 elections and the voters’ secret ballots.

— Marilyn Marks, Citizen Center

quote:In November, Colorado's election will be in the national spotlight. Recently exposed violations of both the Colorado Constitution and the U.S. Constitution suggest that partisan legal a... More

(USA) 2/12 - "DIRTIEST POLITICIAN" HIRED FOR NEVADA CAUCUS? - By Bev Harris
BLACK BOX VOTING EXCLUSIVE

You may be hearing lately that the problem with Iowa caucuses (reported the wrong result, "lost" results) and Nevada (more votes than voters, took stupidly long to count a one-race ballot) were due to "amateurs." But have you heard that Nevada and Iowa hired professionals to run the the caucus?

You might just raise one eyebrow with that; you might just say, "Sheesh. Won't hire those guys again." But then comes conflict of interest. It turns out that at least three of the top guns listed below had been involved in the campaign of a single top candidate, and then went on to run the (botched, but beneficially so) caucuses.

"Two former Executive Directors of the Republican Party of Iowa, Gentry Collins and Jim Anderson, were hired by the Nevada GOP to oversee its 2012 caucus operations. The Nevada GOP contracted CAP Public Affairs, a firm led by Collins, Anderson, and Alan Philp, because Collins and Anderson had overseen the caucus process in Iowa," writes The Iowa Republican:

http://theiowarepublican.com/2012/nevada%E2%80%99s-incompetence-makes-things-worse-for-iowa/

"The state Republican party is going pro. Chair Amy Tarkanian has tapped ... Alan Philp and Gentry Collins (ex-RNC guys) on board. Plus Cory Drumright..." Writes the Nevada News Bureau.

http://www.nevadanewsbureau.com/2011/09/02/in-case-you-missed-it-the-week-in-nevada-politics/

"Pro" indeed. The problem is, all three of the above-mentioned "pros" have been part of the campaign of one of the contestants in their caucus. But if both your eyebrows aren't raised yet, take a look at this:

"Why do I consider Alan Philp as one of the dirtiest politicians in Colorado? ... Just look at his documented track record," a horrified blogger who tags himself "what goes around" wrote in 2008.

http://www.coloradopols.com/diary/5731/

At issue: As TV legal pundit Jeralyn Merritt described them, "Willie Horton-style" deceptive ads, which created an uproar against Alan Philp's Trailhead Group, and very nearly landed him in jail.

http://www.5280.com/blogs/2006/09/24/willie-horton-ad-against-ritter

"Trailhead may face criminal charges," warned reporter Jason Bane in the Colorado Independent.

http://coloradoindependent.com/804/trailhead-director-may-face-criminal-charges

But while everyone agreed the operative's ads were thoroughly odious, he was not arrested. "Alan Philp not going to the pokey," reads the headline, unfortunately with no further details.

http://coloradolib.blogspot.com/2007/01/alan-philp-not-heady-to-pokey.html

And then came the finances of Philp's Trailhead organization. Money was pouring in from elites like the Coors Family at $50,000 a pop, and going out to other groups, who claim they never got it, according to documents published at Daily Kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/09/15/246885/-EXCLUSIVE:-Colorado-GOP-527-Cooking-the-Books-or-Sloppy-Chefs-

A string of problematic financial transactions are alleged for organizations while Philp was in charge.

http://coloradoindependent.com/639/updated-new-complaint-filed-against-trailhead-alleging-money-laundering

"We made a mistake based on an errant reading of the state statutes, and we're taking steps to remedy the problem," said Alan Philp, executive director of the Colorado Republican Party." While Philp was its director, the Colorado Republican Committee failed to file notices of large contributions, as required by law, despite receiving 65 such contributions between Oct. 10 and 23.

http://www.fishnette.net/creds/gopcash.htm

But according to Philp's bio on his own Web site, he was "Regional Political Director for a nine-state region for the Republican National Committee." And he didn't know the rules?

http://cappublicaffairs.com/

"Oy vey. Here comes Alan Philp again," writes Cara DeGette of the Colorado Springs Independent. "Oh, yeah, oh yeah. The down 'n dirty, hardball Republican 527 committee that two years ago tracked a bloody path of slash-'em politics all over the state? ...It was run by an operative named Alan Philp, who was flogged for broadcasts and campaign fliers" which were ... well... bald-faced lies.

http://www.csindy.com/colorado/whos-running-the-show/Content?oid=1142486

"I am excited to announce the addition of these seasoned and well respected political operatives to the Nevada Republican Party," enthused Amy Tarkanian, Chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, in a press release.

http://www.nevadagop.org/nevada-republican-party-announces-big-additions-to-2012-team/

"Cory Drumright will serve as the Nevada Republican Party Caucus Director overseeing the day to day operations for the 2012 Nevada Republican Presidential Caucus," she announced.

But here's the problem. Black Box Voting does not support or deride any candidate, but we do attack bad policy. And it's bad policy to have three guys in charge of a caucus, all of whom had recently worked for one of ... More

(ME) 2/12 - VIDEOTAPED VOTE ALTERATION SHOWS IMPORTANCE OF CAPTURING THE COUNT ON FILM - An incident in Maine follows the important alert by Iowa citizen Edward True. In Iowa, Edward True noticed the wrong vote total being reported in his precinct, altering the winner of the presidential race. He blew the whistle on it.

An investigation in Maine is proceeding after Jeannine Oren, a former news anchor for WMTB-8 in Portland, noticed that her own vote had been changed in a public meeting on a budget issue. She caught the vote alteration on videotape.

Read this detailed article on videotaped vote alteration in Casco, Maine here in The Independent: http://www.independentpub.com/story.asp?pubId=wi&artId=1328282849

While reading the Casco article, those who are emotionally invested in the Republican presidential primary might also want to ponder this: Several Nevada caucus locations prohibited media observation, and in Clark County where it WAS allowed, a reporter from the Los Angeles Times was kicked out. She was called a "spy" when she attempted to witness the caucus.
READ FULL ARTICLE ON THE "SPY": http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-shes-a-spy-reporter-banned-from-nevada-caucus-20120204,0,6946417.story

While caucus activities are generally more transparent than standard elections -- at least participants can witness the count -- paranoia about allowing the media (or anyone else) to watch the counting does facilitate results reporting fraud.

Let's go back to that town meeting in Maine, where Oren was surprised to see her own vote altered in results reports:

According to The Independent, when Oren saw incorrect vote tallies in a local newspaper, she called the reporter's attention to the discrepancy. The Finance Committee had changed vote totals to a false unanimous result on a land deal. Then Oren, and Jennifer Murray, whose vote was also altered, each wrote to the Finance Committee hoping to see the problem addressed.

Here's why it is so crucial to get video: As is typical in these situations, Dave Morton, the town manager in Casco, dismissed their concerns and said that the correct vote tally would be presented to the public when the relevant article came up for discussion at the town meeting. As you may recall, the Appanoose County Republican Chair had a similar reaction when Edward True pointed out an incorrect results report.

Vigilant citizens made enough noise about the incorrect Iowa tally that the Republican chair had to back down, and further investigation into incorrect results in Iowa revealed many more discrepancies. The winner was reversed, in Iowa, and the Republican state chairman resigned.

The stink in Casco, unfortunately, did not ricochet around the blogosphere and no one seemed to pay attention (except Oren and Murray) when at the Casco town meeting, the Finance Committee again reported the wrong vote total.

The Independent reports, Oren said, "I knew for a fact I'd voted against it, because I argued for like 20 minutes ... It's unbelievable -- what are the odds that you would actually capture vote tampering on a videotape? Nobody in here -- no lawyers, not the people accused -- nobody is denying the facts of what happened."

The "odds of actually capturing vote tampering on a videotape" are vastly improved when people actually take a video, as they did in Casco.

The Independent article reports that the vote tampering evidence was submitted to the Maine Attorney General's investigative division.

There's a tendency to blame transparent procedures for the embarrassment created when someone gets caught altering results, so we should keep in mind that transparency is the CURE for electoral error and fraud, not its cause. Let's not choose to bury the toxic waste in elections just to make democracy look prettier.

Hats off to Jeannine Oren in Casco, Maine, for disinfecting one such mess by exposing it to sunlight.

* * * * *

Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over the instruments of government we have created.

Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501c(3) elections watchdog group funded entirely by citizen donations.

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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

[]

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(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

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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