Black Box Voting - America's Elections Watchdog Group

blackboxvoting.org - Watch election videos: Caught on tape!

It's hard for me to let it go when I know there's ... More -- I'm frustrated.

I went into polling location 073 - Harbour Place @... More -- Hi,

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 -

When I called my local county elections office, sh... More -- On the WA state Sec of State website I was checking voter records and found several "double" entries for "General Elections". For example: "General Election of 2008" was listed twice. Since there can only be one vote per general election, does this indicate tampering to sneak more ballots into the system? (Obviously from the inside.)

... More -- Can I openly videotape in public buildings such as the DMV and Auditor's office, or do I need to hide the camera to avoid problems?

... More -- Is the 2008 tool kit going to be updated to show 2012 or can we just get it, use it, and ignore all references to 2012. So much has happened in Michigan that affects voters rights...redistricting (snakelike) designs, voter ID laws, Election Fraud with McCotter this year, a totally New Right controlled state in which Snyder claims we don't have enough $$ for the GE and polling stations being forced to close. Any help or info would be greatly appreciated Thank You!!

In Florida you can not be inside the polling place... More -- Dear Bev, Vote watchers:

I called the Pima Voting Office the day it was rec... More -- I am concerned about my new voter registration card received with the perforated seal opened as if it had been read. There was no damage whatsoever to the paper to indicate it might have occurred in transit. This is the first time this has happened to me either in AZ or in any other state in which I've lived.

First time posting here so please bare with me.
... More -- Hi,

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

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

Black Box Voting (.ORG) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501c(3) organization funded by tax deductible citizen donations.

Past 24 hours

How to find stuff

(Canada) 11/2012 - CANADA MAY SOON LEAD THE WAY IN RECKLESS ELECTIONS - Reporter Jamie Hall of the Edmonton Journal wrote in a recent article titled "Other jurisdictions eyeing Edmonton’s potential foray into Internet voting" (Nov. 25, 2012), that a 17-person focus group voted in favor of Internet voting. Hall did not ask the right questions, and apparently neither did City Clerk Alayne Sinclair, who said she will make a recommendation to council to proceed with Internet voting.

Sinclair, Hall reports, said "While the test showed the technology to be secure, she wanted more public input before advising council of the next steps."

What test? Internet voting is not secure, and can't be made secure, because you can't secure it from the insiders who have physical custody of the server. And even if you could, security isn't the question. The real question is, "Can Internet voting ever be TRANSPARENT?"

Nowhere in the article is any explanation of how the public can authenticate anything about an Internet voting election. If reporter Hall didn't think to ask about transparency, and City Clerk Sinclair didn't bring it up, one wonders if a single "expert" brought in front of the focus group thought to mention it.

"Essentially, these people, who knew nothing about Internet voting three days ago, took time out of their lives to be a part of this and make a contribution to their community," Hall quotes City Clerk Sinclair as saying.

So a recommendation will be made to do Internet voting based on a focus group who knew nothing about it, with no one asking the ultimate question: Can the public ever verify anything in an Internet election?

The main argument made for Internet voting is a claim that it increases participation. But if, in order to increase participation you remove public right to know, a good question to ask is whether that trade-off is wise, democratic, or even constitutional.

Self-governance, which is the foundation for democratic government, is the test for whether a system meets democratic criteria -- not participation percent and not popularity.

An important question to ask is whether a focus group, regardless of how many people are on it, or how enthusiastically they vote for something, can vote away other people's rights.

The essential parts of the election are: (1) Who can vote [voter list]; (2) Who did vote [poll list] (3) Counting of the vote; and (4) Chain of custody.

Hall reports increases in voter participation with Internet voting, but the truth is that no one but insiders really know how many people actually voted. No warm body accompanies any vote, so the public can't see who is inserting votes into the pool.

Instead of a sign-in sheet at the polling place, in full view of witnesses and signed by election workers, you are instead provided with a report created by inside parties without any public verification that the voters in it put their own votes in the pool, or that it contains all votes cast into the system.

Hall quotes a source as saying Internet voting "is a hit" but never shows any way that the public can see that the count is real.

Hall never mentions how chain of custody changes, from public view to private hands, with Internet voting. A computer can only do what its administrator tells it to do, and with Internet voting, the public transfers its ability to see the chain of custody to a small set of persons with inside access.

Let's hope next time the right questions will be asked, lest Canada lead the way not just in Internet voting, but in reckless elections.

In fact, let's not just hope. Next time Internet voting rears its centralized, opaque, non-democratic head near you -- and it will, and soon -- ask these questions yourself and make sure local reporters do too.

Here's the story Jamie Hall wrote in the Edmonton Journal:
"Other jurisdictions eyeing Edmonton's potential foray into Internet voting"
By Jamie Hall, Edmonton Journal November 25, 2012
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Other+jurisdictions+eyeing+Edmonton+potential+foray+into/7606326/story.html More

(MI) 11/2012 - LAST MINUTE "UPGRADE" ADDED WIRELESS TO ES&S VOTING SYSTEM IN MICHIGAN; NEW ES&S OWNERS OBAMA-FRIENDLY? - UPDATE: In May 2011, the World Herald sold its interest in Election Systems & Software to the McCarthy Group, according to a World-Herald Article dated May 5, 2011, titled "W-H sells interest in election-services company."

This would appear to remove the relationship of current World Herald owner Warren Buffett from the voting machine company. Except for this: A separate company operating as the Investment arm of the World Herald, World Investments, has reported that it is an owner of McCarthy Group. So unless the World Herald has also divested itself of The McCarthy Group, we still have a problem.

Now about that patch: According to a press release from Election Systems & Software, the much talked-about last minute patch which was the subject of litigation in Ohio was not the only last-minute upgrade. In Michigan, ES&S outfitted its M100 optical scanners and tabulation system with a last minute adjustment enabling wireless communications.

According to the company press release, ES&S writes that "ES&S offered a secure cellular solution for the M100 optical scan tabulator."

"Secure" is a relative term, since you can't really secure the system from its own programmers and administrators, who have configuration details and passwords. "Secure" from outsiders, but certainly not from insiders, and definitely not transparent at all. Public transparency, not security, is the real litmus test for what is or is not a democratic election.

It is unclear whether the term "tabulator" refers to the optical scan voting machine or to the central tabulator which aggregates the votes from the optical scan machines, or both.

At least one county used the new wireless system; the ES&S press release says the new wireless capability was approved by the state.

"The wireless solution utilized by Oakland County was tested by a federally accredited Voting System Test Laboratory and subsequently tested and approved by the State of Michigan for a pilot usage in the November Presidential Election. In total over 600 tabulators were upgraded," Oakland County Election Administrator Joe Rozell is quoted as saying. Rozell states that Oakland County acquired and had wireless cellular modems installed into the voting system.

Here's the ES&S press release:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/11/prweb10157050.htm

Like Hart Intercivic, the voting machine company acquired by H.I.G. Capital, a Bain & Company spinoff, ES&S appears to have changed ownership also in 2011.

The Hart acquisition has been criticized for appearance of impropriety due to close ties with the Romney family, but the ES&S acquisition, with its more subtle ownership chain, is equally interesting and had the capability to control a lot more votes. Two Obama advisors, Warren Buffett and Chuck Hagel, appear to be associated with ES&S, with Buffett's acqusition of parent company Omaha World Herald in 2011.

[See Updated information at top of this article. The World Herald sold its direct ownership of ES&S in May 2011, prior to the Buffett acquisition; still to be determined is whether the World Herald's investment arm sold its ownership in McCarthy Group.]

Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is reported by the World Herald to be "run by World-Herald executives"; an earlier news report referenced on Wikipedia indicates that Buffet made a bid in 2011 to acquire the World Herald, formerly owned by associates of Peter Kiewit companies. A secondary parent company of ES&S, the McCarthy Group, is also owned in part by the World Herald.

According to earlier World Herald reports, Senator Chuck Hagel had been the Chairman of the Board for ES&S (then called AIS) beginning in 1992; he was interim CEO of the voting machine company in 1994, and stepped down in 1995 as he prepared to run for the US Senate, winning both the primary and the general election in upset results, with approximately 80% of his votes counted on the ES&S machines. As of 2002, Hagel continued to own stock in ES&S, which he had failed to properly disclose on his personal financial disclosure documents. Hagel was at one time a Republican friendly with the George H.W. Bush administration; by 2008, he was politically ambidextrous and supporting Barack Obama.

Wireless capability for reporting voting machine results is controversial, in that it adds middleman possibilities for adjusting results on-the-fly. Particularly for technicians who work for the voting machine company and who have administrative configuration details and passwords, potential capture or alteration of results at the end of day transmission stage is a concern.

The root cause of public concerns with computerized vote counting, whether or not wireless is deployed, is that the public can't see and authenticate the counting of the vote. Wireless adds another layer of complexity and opacity to an already concealed process. More

(National) HERE IT COMES: HAVA'S BABY - NO WARM BODY NEEDS TO ACCOMPANY THE VOTE - Paperless touchscreen voting, electronic "direct recording electronic" votes, were pushed in through HAVA, 2002 federal legislation called the "Help America Vote Act" which provided cash incentives and deadlines for states to purchase new voting equipment.

HAVA's baby on its way. Tapping into Obama's address on Election Night, when he referenced the long lines and said "we've got to fix that" -- new federal legislation has been hastily proposed and will probably be rammed through with bipartisan success.

It's already on the table, HAVA Junior, and it will provide cash incentives to states to steamline their voting operations.

Like HAVA, the Son of HAVA bills have some good stuff and some bad stuff in them. Good stuff includes a push for more early voting, which actually does help prevent lines. (Something that also helps is getting rid of DRE voting, but no one is mentioning that.)

But expanding absentee voting and loosening its controls is a way to divorce the warm body from the ballot. States that make it easier for NO WARM BODY to accompany the vote will qualify for cash prizes. Voter ID battles? A thing of the past. Why have any actual human accompany the ballot at all?

Instead of a real human coming to the polling place, in plain public view, easily authenticatable, we will be left with software-driven after-the-fact reports generated by insiders containing names of alleged voters, if we even get that. We will have no way to know, even if the voters are real, whether the ballots cast in their name were real.

The Conduct of Elections bill, S 3635 was read twice and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration this week. "This bill provides incentives for states to invest in practices and technology that are designed to expedite voting at the polls and to simplify voter registration."

Conduct of Elections bill HR 6590 was referred to House Judiciary. This bill provides incentives for states to invest in practices and technology that are designed to expedite voting at the polls and to simplify voter registration."

The devil in the details here is exactly what is meant by "practices and technology."

To qualify for the cash prize, "practices and technology" will involve not expediting, but ELIMINATING voting at the polls.

A USA Today reporter named Martha Moore quoted her experts this weekend as lamenting the dispersal of power, indicating that centralized federal control would be better; and suggesting that expanding absentee voting will be a solution.

Groups eager to provide solutions to voting problems
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2012/11/18/voting-problem-answers/1712117/

"The solutions, say voters-rights groups [she cites Common Cause and the ACLU in the article], are for states to expand early voting, especially over the weekend before Election Day, to avoid a crush of people trying to vote in one day. States should streamline voter registration and allow voters to receive absentee ballots without restrictions, called "no excuse" absentee voting.

Expanding Early Voting is a real solution. Expanding absentee voting is very different, because it separates the human being from the ballot, breaking chain of custody.

"The ACLU wants federal legislation to create uniform standards." [ACLU] ... "The decentralized authority over voting is one of the reasons things get confused at the polling place," says Goodman. [Common Cause]

Centralized control is tidy.
Despotism is tidy.

There are reasons for dispersal of power, which we find built into the fabric of our nation not only through state-based elections, but in the home rule laws that apply to over 80,000 US cities and municipalities. Centralizing control over the election process destabilizes the system, putting far fewer hands at the controls -- controls which can then be adjusted at any time. That's why it wasn't set up this way.

And let's take a look, for a moment, at the brilliant solutions which have already taken place using local control and home rule -- Humboldt County Calif., where the public can now examine every ballot cast, Lyndeborough New Hampshire, where using home rule a warrant was passed requiring that the public be able to see and authenticate all essential steps in the election.

INTERNET VOTING

Do not be surprised to see Internet voting trying to shoehorn its way into the HAVA Junior cash. After all, it expedites polling place voting (by eliminating it).

King County, Washington -- the largest county in the state, recently bragged that it is renewing its contract with Spanish-owned Internet voting firm Scytl for an upcoming local election.

"King CD has again retained election supervisor Election Trust LLC (Bellevue) and Scytl USA (Baltimore, MD) to manage and conduct the 2012 election process." http://www.maplevalleyreporter.com/community/140739413.html

Election Trust LLC is another Internet voting firm.

Deployment of Ipad voting in Oregon
http:... More

(National)11/2012 - OF DIVERSIONS, FABRICATIONS, AND RED HERRINGS - My e-mail seems to have two recurring themes lately, each from the opposite side of the political spectrum. It goes like this:

"Hey, have you seen this? Anonymous claims to have hacked Karl Rove's intended election manipulation."

And this:

"Are you doing anything about the rampant voter fraud that put Obama in office?"

1. The alleged "hack" by Anonymous may or may not have been real, but if it was, a careful reading indicates that it was not a hack of voting machines, but more akin to the odious phone-jamming scheme used by a Republican operative in New Hampshire some years back.

Whether you wear a blue or red political shirt, this kind of attack is nothing to brag about. It involves interfering with get out the vote efforts, and regardless of which side is working on get out the vote, obstructing such efforts is uncool.

There is no credible proof that this Anonymous hack even happened. If it did, it violated the principle of encouraging political participation. We have to be careful about stories such as this, because they can divert important work on election transparency into chasing phantoms.

2. The "rampant voter fraud" claim diverts attention from where wholesale tampering actually takes place. If you plan to rig an election, you do it as an inside job, not with alleged busloads of people casting multiple votes, and not with herds of voter impersonators fooling election judges.

You do it with absentees, you do it by manipulating who can vote, you do it by altering the voting machine counts, you do it by thwarting chain of custody. In other words, it's not the outsiders -- the voters -- where the focus needs to be. Let's keep our eye on the ball. Who handled the ballots? Who watched? Who programmed the machines? Was the list loaded into electronic pollbooks the real one? Was the count interrupted for some reason? Did any ballots disappear? Were people prevented from voting? How do we know that the ballots said to have been mailed in are the same ones that were counted, and how do we know they were put into the pool by real voters rather than an elections worker?

We need to step away from our favorite political candidates to deal with the underlying structural problem. Until we fix transparency problems, actual tampering -- considerably more damaging than anything Anonymous claimed to have done -- will happen over and over.

The real problem that we have to wrap our heads around, educate others about, and solve, is public right to see and authenticate the count.

Germany ruled that the public must be able to see and authenticate every essential step of the election, without need for special expertise, and that no after the fact procedure can be substituted for the right to authenticate the original count.

That is exactly the model we here in the USA need to work towards, but first, we have to help the public understand that public controls over our own elections are the very essence of self-government, and self-government is the basis for all democratic systems.

There are four things the public must be able to see and authenticate:
1) Who can vote (voter list)
2) Who did vote (poll list)
3) Counting of the vote
4) Chain of custody

These are the fundamental issues, and we will restore these to the American public, once we properly identify them and demand these things, with no compromise and no wasting time on side issues, half-measures, or capitulation.

You may ask what you can do to help. I love that question. It's so much better than the passive "what is being done?"

Each major civil rights movement has several stages. We are now moving from the focus group stage, where we have been learning to craft the most accurate description of the problem to be solved, in the most persuasive terms, and into the distribution stage, where we are passing the message -- quite literally -- from person to person to build momentum to help tip the scales in legal and legislative efforts.

So that's what you can do: Learn to discuss election transparency in terms of basic right to self-govern, which is the principle that is the foundation for all democratic systems. To have self-governance, you have to have real, tangible, meaningful transparency.

Specifically, "The public must be able to see and authenticate each essential step of the election, without need for special expertise, and no after-the-fact procedure can be substituted for the right to authenticate the original. More

(National) 11/7/2012 - AMERICA'S CLAIRVOYANT ELECTION SYSTEM - Perhaps one of the oddest moments of all during last night's live election coverage was what happened to Karl Rove on Fox Network News.

With Florida still too close to call and hundreds of thousands of votes still out in Ohio (including a large hunk of votes in Romney strongholds), and with a spread of about 100,000 votes separating the candidates in Ohio, Fox called Ohio for Obama. Karl Rove arranged to come on the Fox network to voice his rebuttal.

Now, whatever you think of Rove, I think most of us agree that he's a numbers guy. His numbers didn't support the calling of the state of Ohio at that point in time. When he explained his reasoning, the Fox anchor quickly shut him down. "It's a science" he was told.

Based not on actual votes, but on projections from a single private entity, the National Election Pool (NEP), we were all told what the election results were going to be. When Rove pulled out his notes and calculations, he was basically told "Shut up, this is a science."

But is that what your vote really is? A science project, to be viewed only by experts inside a nesting set of black boxes, completely out of public view?

If we are to have real self-governance, we need to be able to authenticate each essential step in our own elections -- without need for special expertise to explain to us what the result is. What more centralized, privatized form of declaring a result is there than to commission the NEP to provide a single set of statistics to ALL of the TV networks for a declaration of results without human eyes ever looking at a single ballot.

The media called the election in Tennessee just 11 minutes after the polls closed and by the way, exit polls had already been cancelled in Tennessee because, it was explained, everyone already knew who the winner was going to be so why bother with the expense. Even the voting machines, opaque and controlled by whatever their programmers put into them, had not yet issued results printouts. Is this the new, NEW method for pretending at democracy?

Washington State, where I live, is a forced absentee state, where 100% of the votes are now absentee ballots, which must be postmarked on Election Day. I placed my ballot in the post office at 2 pm. There are no exit polls, because there are no polling places. Apparently a few phone calls now substitute for actual exit polling (to people with land lines? That's an increasingly elderly demographic). Perhaps 40% of all ballots in Washington have not even been counted yet, but we've been told the results.

In California, typically 25% of the votes are counted after Election Day, yet results have been announced. That's a million uncounted ballots in Los Angeles alone. We have no clue what is on those ballots but we've been told not to worry about it. The stats guys have issued their verdict.

Forget voting machines, programmed by insiders to do whatever they do. Let's just skip counting the votes altogether and use statistics.

Creepy little way to run an election, if you ask me. More

(CO) 11/2012 - COLORADO SETS THE STAGE FOR A BOGUS ELECTION - Colorado election integrity and transparency is now officially out the window, with a series of corruption protection rules and new laws.

1. Let's begin with the unflappable Donetta Davidson, who collaborated with convicted embezzler Jeffrey Dean(1) to remove voter privacy, through a contract specification that required him to redo his absentee mail software in order to embed a method to tie voted ballots to the voters. This shifty business, which now includes all absentee ballots cast on Hart eSlate machines, has led to a blockade on ALL Colorado election accounting records (see #4, below).

2. Next, in a move that has most of us scratching our heads, Colorado Sec. State Gessler proposed new rules in December 2011 to remove requirements for continuous video surveillance.(2) Though billed as "cost saving," note that most video surveillance nowadays is simply piped into digital files stored on a Web site. Since cameras are already installed, there is no significant cost savings in allowing non-continuous surveillance.

3. Sec. State Gessler also decided to reduce the number of seals on voting machines,(2) to the chagrin of election integrity groups like Voter Action, whose investigations and litigation demonstrated vulnerabilities requiring the seals in the first place. The "cost savings" in this measure can be counted in pennies.

4. A number of protective accounting measures crucial for evaluating election tampering have been taken off the table though a new law to block election-related public records examination.

Donetta Davidson led the lobbying for this law. Davidson had become a commissioner of the U.S. Election Assistence Commission, then took a step down to take over the Colorado Clerks Association. In this capacity she led a fight to block the media and citizens from examining the ballots. And no wonder: She knew that due to changes made under her administration, private companies had marks embedded on the ballots enabling them to harvest data tying votes to voters.

Thanks to a lawsuit by Colorado citizen Marilyn Marks, of The Citizen Center, sponsored and assisted by Black Box Voting, the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed right to examine ballots. Marks was shocked when she discovered that identifying marks on the ballots allowed her to immediately associate every voted ballot with the voter who cast it. Marks, The Citizen Center, (and Black Box Voting) are now involved in litigation to permanently prohibit this harvesting of personal political information. In the interim, Sec. State Gessler has required that the identifiers be removed for November 2012 only.

With ballot examination affirmed to be in the public domain, Davidson's next move was to block ballot examination until after all remedies had expired. Using her clout, she lobbied successfully for the removal of ballots -- AND OTHER CRUCIAL ELECTION RECORDS, SUCH AS POLL LISTS -- from any access by election watchdogs until 45 days after the election.(3)

One telltale sign of election tampering is when thousands more votes than voters show up. But in Colorado, neither the media nor the public will be allowed to examine the poll lists or the list of names for voters said to have voted absentee, until too late to do anything about discrepancies.

5. And then there is the matter of alleged Romney ties to the second-biggest voting machine manufacturer in America. These connections are being minimized by Internet outlets like Snopes, but the straight truth is that Hart Intercivic, the firm that supplies two-thirds of Colorado counties with their voting machines, is now owned by a spin-off of Bain & Company (H.I.G. Capital).(4)

A majority of Hart's directors are now H.I.G. guys, and the directors of H.I.G. are Romney bundlers and donors who don't hedge their bets by donating to any other presidential candidate.

This isn't the first time Romney has had his buddies in charge of crucial election processes this year. Some weeks after the misreported figures in the Iowa caucus, which incorrectly cited Romney as the winner, Black Box Voting uncovered that Romney staffers had been brought in to run the Iowa Caucus, and the Nevada Caucus too. Besides heading Romney campaign functions, these guys were associated with an odious Colorado political firm which narrowly escaped prosecution for maliciously misleading political ads.(5)

And the Romney affiliation with Hart Intercivic doesn't rule out his buddies -- or Obama's buddies -- or George Soros -- or the Chinese, for that matter -- owning the other companies. Election Systems & Software (ES&S) does not reveal who its owners are, and we don't know who owns Dominion either. ES&S directly handles voting machines in three Colorado counties; it co-produces elections on the old Diebold equipment with Dominion, with ES&S supplying technicians in some U.S. locations and Dominion in others. Dominion owns Sequoia Voting Systems (or does it? No one seems to be quite sure...), used in large... More

(MA) 10/12 - VOTER FRAUD BY POLITICIAN PRO GETS SLAP ON THE WRIST - What happens when a politician personally engages in election fraud? Not much.

Former Marlborough (MA) city councilor Mark Evangelous has been sentenced to community service, with platitudes from the judge assuring us that it was "not malicious." The professional politician supposedly didn't know he wasn't supposed to forge the signature of his dead relative on an absentee ballot application.

"Voter fraud" does happen, but not by busloads of alcoholic Mexican noncitizens impersonating legit voters at the polling place, as the urban election legend goes. It's the pros, like political professionals and elections workers that do it. The impersonation takes place with absentee ballots, not polling place votes, and this is a problem that the whole voter ID controversy fails to address. "Identity theft" and "forgery" better describe the real problem.

In the Mark Evangelous case, it was onesie-twosie style fraud, just a few ballots. But with no-fault and especially automatic absentee ballot mailouts, this kind of fraud can easily become wholesale, big-ticket fraud conducted by insiders who either exploit the voter IDs of people who have not voted to insert ballots into the pool (as happened in a Louisiana association election, http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/02/another_former_official_from_h.html ), or ditch ballots they don't want (as happened in Cudahy, California elections: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/132/82162.html ).

Insiders rarely get investigated, and hardly ever get prosecuted, but when they do they get off lightly.

Here are the details on the Evangelous case:

The MetroWest Daily News - Oct. 5, 2012, by Kendall Hatch

http://www.wickedlocal.com/marlborough/news/police_and_fire/x21085671/Former-Marlborough-councilor-gets-community-service-in-voter-fraud-case#axzz28Y2 aU1X2

Former Marlborough councilor gets community service in voter fraud case.

A Middlesex Superior Court judge on Thursday continued without a finding for a year the case of a former Marlborough City Council candidate accused of forging the signature of a dead woman on a voting form.

Mark Evangelous, who lost his bid for a city councilor at large seat in the 2011 municipal election, will be on probation for a year and will have to complete 200 hours of community service. If he does not get into any trouble, the forgery and uttering charges against him will be dismissed.

Evangelous, 52, admitted to sufficient facts in Middlesex Superior Court on Thursday.

Superior Court Judge S. Jane Haggerty allowed defense attorney Anthony Cardinale’s request for the finding.

Evangelous was originally indicted in January on charges of forgery, uttering a false document and violating absentee voting laws. Haggerty in July dismissed the violation of absentee voting laws charge, as she ruled that the actions Evangelous took did not necessarily rise to an actual attempt to violate the voting laws.

Evangelous was accused of submitting an absentee ballot application to the city clerk's office on Oct. 28, 2011, days before the election. The ballot, police said, was filled out and signed in the name of Anita Kasaras.

A city clerk employee checked the name against the city voter rolls and found out that not only was Kasaras not on the list, but that she had died in February 2011. The employee notified police, who conducted a preliminary investigation before passing the matter along to the Middlesex District Attorney’s office.

According to police, officers confronted Evangelous the same day he dropped off the application and he said that Kasaras was still alive. He later told police that he had made a "name mistake" and meant to sign it as her sister-in-law, Alice Kasaras. Alice Kasaras was still alive, but was living at a rehabilitation center in West Boylston. Police said Alice Kasaras had never been a registered voter in Marlborough.

Evangelous told police he had gotten permission to sign the application from Alice Kasaras' son, Jay Kasaras - a distant relative of Evangelous - who told him he had power of attorney over his mother.

Assistant District Attorney Christopher Tarrant requested yesterday that Haggerty find Evangelous guilty and impose a sentence of five years probation along with the 200 hours of community service. The request for the longer probation period was not granted. Tarrant said the punishment was warranted because of the "fraudulent nature of the case and the perceived breach of public trust by somebody running for public office."

Cardinale said Evangelous made a mistake and genuinely believed that Jay Kasaras' assertion that he had power of attorney over his mother meant he could legally sign the application.

"He believed mistakenly that he had authority from his friend and distant cousin," Cardinale said. Cardinale said that while that wasn't an excuse, Evangelous' actions were not malicious. More

(National) - 10/12 - EXIT POLL DATA TO BE CANCELLED IN 19 STATES - The theatre that TV Election Night news coverage has become takes one more step into the absurd with cancellation of exit poll data in 19 states. The states that will be excluded from detailed exit poll coverage are: Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

The reason, ostensibly, is that these states are not in play. Many of them ARE in play, however, particularly for important battles for control of the U.S. House and Senate, and for important gubernatorial races. By removing crucial components of the exit poll data in these locations, researchers will be blocked from detailed after-the-fact analyses.

"Voters in the excluded states will still be interviewed as part of a national exit poll, but state-level estimates of the partisan, age or racial makeups of electorates won't be available as they have been since 1992. The lack of data may hamper election night analyses in some states, and it will almost certainly limit post-election research for years to come," write Washington Post bloggers Jon Cohen and Scott Clement (see below).

If you think the debates have turned into a rehearsed performing act, in which "zingers" and how a candidate positions his fingers are treated with greater gravity than substance, then also please notice that network election night coverage has become "theatre" as well.

In every major election we watch network and national cable TV pundits pretend that they are competing with other TV outlets, as they refer to "our" numbers and introduce viewers to "our analysts." In fact, they all use identical numbers and analysts, from a single central source now called the National Election Pool.

I say theatre because TV pundits "call" the race announcing winners, instead of using the more accurate term "PROJECTED winner."

And I say theatre because the single source upon which they rely, the National Election Pool, fudges the numbers midstream by entering "adjusted totals" usually accompanied by a trend change.

In addition to the numbers flowing in from National Election Pool, the AP pays state lobbying organizations and local town clerks to call them with numbers read off of the voting machine tapes. The AP makes contributions to state election official organizations in exchange for these phone calls. Sometimes, clerks call in the wrong numbers, which are entered into the fray for announcing winners. For example, in New Hampshire's 2008 primary, two town clerks called in zero votes for Ron Paul even though he had dozens of votes. Later, when caught, they just said 'oops.'

I say "theatre" because based on these projected numbers, candidates concede prematurely, as we saw in 2000 when Gore conceded privately to Bush, and was on his way to make a public concession. The 2000 network projections were flawed by a known wrong total of minus 16,000 votes in Volusia County, Florida and another 4,000-vote mistake in Brevard County.

Here's a news article with additional details on the removal of 19 states from the exit poll data:

Washington Post Blogs - Oct. 4, 2012, by Jon Cohen and Scott Clement

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/10/04/networks-ap-cancel-exit-polls-in-19-states/

Networks, AP cancel exit polls in 19 states

Breaking from two decades of tradition, this year's election exit poll is set to include surveys of voters in 31 states, not all 50 as it has for the past five presidential elections, according to multiple people involved in the planning.

Dan Merkle, director of elections for ABC News, and a member of the consortium that runs the exit poll, confirmed the shift Wednesday. The aim, he said, "is to still deliver a quality product in the most important states," in the face of mounting survey costs.

The decision by the National Election Pool -- a joint venture of the major television networks and The Associated Press — is sure to cause some pain to election watchers across the country. (For a full list of the states that won't have exit polls scroll to the bottom of this post.)

Voters in the excluded states will still be interviewed as part of a national exit poll, but state-level estimates of the partisan, age or racial makeups of electorates won't be available as they have been since 1992. The lack of data may hamper election night analyses in some states, and it will almost certainly limit post-election research for years to come.

A growing number of voters casting early ballots has added to the complexity of carrying out surveys in 50 states, the District of Columbia and nationally. In more and more states it has become crucial to supplement in-person precinct polling with relatively costly telephone interviews in order to achieve representative samples.

In 2008, only 18 states included interviews with early voters, with notable abs... More

(GA) 7/12 - ANOTHER CITY FIGHTS TO BLOCK FREEDOM OF INFORMATION - The city of Cumming, Georgia is litigating against public right to videotape open meetings. Videotaping in a freedom of information context is a crucial part of transparent elections because it lets citizens capture durable evidence in the election. Election processes are (or should be) subject to public observation, yet sometimes public officials try to block this.

Thus, if the city of Cumming were to prevail in its anti-freedom of information lawsuit, it will set the stage for all municipalities in Georgia to refuse public videotaping of election processes like poll closing and vote counting.

What triggered this lawsuit is this: The state of Georgia passed legislation this year explicitly upholding citizen right to videotape public meetings. When a Cumming citizen tried to videotape a meeting, the mayor and the police stopped her. The Georgia AG has stepped in to fight the city of Cumming.

Now this is quite relevant to elections, not just throughout Georgia but across the USA, for this reason:

I've been tracking freedom of information issues nationwide, and have noticed that municipalities are now taking the lead in fighting sunshine laws. The city of Aspen litigated against right to examine ballots (they lost), claiming that home rule exempted them from following state open records law. This is the same argument now being used in Cumming. Representatives from the association of Washington State municipalities testified against providing copies of public records in 2012 legislative hearings, claiming that it is unduly burdensome.

IN THE HOW-IT-WORKS DEPARTMENT: Our tax monies are being expended by public officials not just to carry out day to day tasks, but for expensive junkets to high priced hotels to attend association meetings for a host of quasi-governmental organizations. One such organization is the national League of Municipalities.

These quasi-governmental organizations -- I call them the quazies -- make their money in two ways: (1) They rake in our tax money, though they claim their business is private and in many states do not allow the public to attend any meetings or obtain any records; (2) They also receive money from private corporate vendors, who ply public officials with drink and persuasion in drink-up hospitality suites.

Now add to the mix the paid policy-recommenders. One such high profile entity is ALEC; there are many more, and they offer their "services" to examine public policy issues and provide advice. They even draft suggested legislation, issue policy guidelines, and offer talking points.

There's nothing wrong with public officials getting together for ongoing education and training, but they don't need to do it in resorts and they don't need to meet with vendors and lobbyists to further their professional training. These meetings provide a concentration of targets for off-the-record palm-to-palm procurement fraud with vendors, and also a target-rich environment for policy-steering entities and lobbyists.

If you wonder why cookie-cutter messaging shows up in 20 states at once, or why the same legal argument is used to fight sunshine laws in state after state, it's time to take a closer look at what's happening with the quazies.

Which vendors and policy steering groups attend League of Municipality conferences? I'm guessing that this municipality-led fight against sunshine law has some help in the wings.

The Cumming fight over the mayor blocking a local citizen from videotaping a public meeting has implications, and I'm glad to see the state Attorney General has taken it up. If Cumming wins, it will not bode well for Georgia election transparency; and if Cumming wins, we can surely expect to see copycat anti-rights litigation in other locations around the USA.

Daily Report - July 30, 2012, By Kathleen Baydala Joyner

http://www.dailyreportonline.com/PubArticleDRO.jsp?id=1202564750940&Cumming_challenges_new_sunshine_laws&slreturn=20120630095055

Cumming challenges new sunshine laws

The city of Cumming is challenging the constitutionality of the state's new sunshine laws in response to an open meetings suit by state Attorney General Sam Olens against its mayor.

Olens' suit, the first under the state's new Open Meetings and Open Records acts, alleged that Cumming Mayor Ford Gravitt and police officials barred Nydia Tisdale from videotaping a city council meeting.

House Bill 397, which went into effect April 17 — the day of the alleged incident — provides for visual and sound recordings of public meetings and authorizes the attorney general to bring civil suits against violators.

The AG's complaint cites two counts and asks the court to impose the maximum civil penalties allowed under the new laws, $1,000 for the first violation and $2,500 for each subsequent one. (Tisdale filed a separate civil rights suit in federal court in mid-June

The city responded to the AG's suit on July 19, arguing that Gravitt was presiding over the me... More

(TN) 7/12 - HOW REDISTRICTING MISMANAGEMENT DESTROYS VOTING RIGHTS - Shelby County is currently enduring yet another botched election -- perhaps the worst one yet. Under Election Administrator Richard Holden's misleadership, this time thousands of voters are being disenfranchised by giving them the wrong ballot, a result of administrative foot-dragging on redistricting-related database updates.

Based on tips I have been receiving from several US locations, precinct boundary changes caused by redistricting will be bollixed in multiple jurisdictions across the USA in November. Some -- like Shelby County -- will be of strategic importance.

ENTER THE LATEST SHELBY COUNTY SNAFU

[]
PIC: RICHARD HOLDEN

Administrator Richard Holden gummed up the redistricting process, which was belatedly finalized. Database and mapping updates needed to be expedited to get final changes safely into databases and poll lists in time for the August election. By expedited, I mean Holden needed to make certain this was well under way by March, and completed by May.

He didn't.

Holden's molasses-like management has put at least 6,000 voters at immediate risk for disenfranchisement. About 3,000 of these are already toast, having participated in Early Voting in the August election, where they were given the wrong ballot. Local campaigns and election consultants have been tracking this carefully.

As of this writing, 3,000 voters' rights can still be salvaged, with prompt action, because Election Day voting will not take place until next week. About half of all votes in Shelby County are typically cast on Election Day at the polls.

Shelby County needs to provide an option for all voters to cast legitimate votes on the right ballot on Election Day next week.

Candidates are also being treated unfairly. Many campaigns still don't have wards or precincts. School board candidates are still asking for information and can't identify their own voters for campaigning.

GOTTA BE REPLACED

And as I've said several times now, Holden needs to be replaced, and quickly. By my book, he is one of the worst election administrators in the nation.

It will take several weeks for a replacement to get up to speed in time for the November election. If Holden isn't replaced within the next two weeks, he's going to find that he himself is the story in Shelby County.

And after he is replaced, we'll need to sit on a Holden watch, to see where he turns up next. Election admins who are run out of town usually end up running an even bigger jurisdiction; King County's controversial Dean Logan now runs Los Angeles County elections; Cuyahoga County's Michael Vu now runs San Diego; San Bernardino County's Michael Trout now is Elections Director for the state of Oregon, and San Bernardino's other stinker, Scott Konopasek, ended up in Salt Lake County.

Sometimes, like convicted felon John Elder, head of ballot printing for Diebold, these election guys can't land another position. In that case, they become election consultants (like Riverside County's Mischelle Townsend, and Florida's Paul Craft).

One really has to wonder what topic they are consulting on.

HERE'S HOW REDISTRICTING MISMANAGEMENT ENDS UP DISENFRANCHISING VOTERS:

- Redistricting decisions, some bizarre, discriminatory, or overly complicated, are haggled over. For some locations, final decisions aren't made until the last minute, as one political party proposes new boundaries deemed unfair to the other; some fight it out in court; others hit resistance from the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

And by bizarre, I mean this: Sometimes you see elaborate proposals for districts that snake around voters in tortured paths, or even finger out in all four directions at once. Sometimes, as in Osceola County (FL), you even get districts carved into polka dots. It can get very odd, and sometimes illegal.

- With these changed districts, thousands of voters' precincts change, as does their polling place. Two things must happen before any election takes place.

(1) Voters need to be notified of their changed precinct and polling place

EVEN MORE IMPORTANT:

(2) The voter registration database must be updated, along with street mapping and pollbooks, to make sure every voter is put into the adjusted precinct.

Each district has a different ballot. If you live in District 9, you can't vote on District 8 representatives, and vice versa. Therefore, if voters are not correctly programmed into the newly redistricted system, their ballot will offer the wrong ballot choices, giving candidates ineligible votes and failing to allow the voter to choose the correct candidate of his choice.

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

* * * * *

Here's local coverage of the latest election scandal unfolding in Shelby County:

The Commercial Appeal - July 27, 2012, by Richard Locker

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/jul/27/no-headline---state_audit/?CID=happeningnow

State of Tennessee investigates Shelby Co... 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

View larger video screen

Protect the Count:
Absentee & Central Count

View larger video screen

Protect the Count:
New England / New Hampshire

View larger video screen

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

Need List Of Registered voters
I found SQlite consortium agreement. More
(US) 'HACKING DEMOCRACY' on DVD
This Emmy-nominated film, produced by Russell Michaels, Simo... More
Prison records - Jeffrey Dean
Elections programmer Jeffrey Dean was convicted on 23 counts... More
dark blue ink causes ballot not to read
This experience in New Bedford, Mass. may help someone somed... More
ES&S M100 ballot rejection issue troubleshooting report
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/show.cgi?tpc=9707&po... More
(MD) 4/08 - Cost Analysis of MD Voting System
Voting machines astonishingly expensive than anyone anticipa... More
Professional IT auditing standards -- food for thought
Some of us are in states where audits have been mandated or ... More
Locating ballot specs and bids
This is a website that appears to permit one week's free usa... More
(NH) Chain of Custody Check: Butch & Hoppy Chase
Green Jeep mystery: If you think you can decipher some of th... More
(CA) Pollworker Training Guidelines document
From CA SOS, this 2006 document may be California focused, b... More
NH: Recount Report from We the People
Extensive document that may provide useful insight into the ... More
CT Absentee Ballot Procedures
ROVAC, the Registrars of Voters' Association of CT, posts ce... More
CT HAVA pollworkers guide
Here is the guide for CT pollworkers related to the voting m... More
E-mails and memos - Jeffrey Dean
Memos, reports and e-mails between Jeffrey Dean and King Cou... More
CT Moderators' Security Procedures
Link from UCONN websiteto this moderators' handbook info on ... More
CT CONTRACT WITH DIEBOLD/LHS ASSOCIATES
If you would like to see what a state contract looks like wi... More
NASS surveys on post election audits, cast ballots as public record
NASS spreadsheets on two topics of interest: which states do... More
RECOUNT PROCEDURE MANUAL - MINNESOTA
While watching the NH recount unfold, I started looking at N... More
CT: UCONN Pre-Election Audit of Memory Cards Report
Dr. Alex Schvartsman's report on Connecticut's pre-election ... More
2007 CTElection Audit Observation Report
http://www.ctelectionaudit.org/

This link should take you... More