NOVEMBER 2005
DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINES continued from October Issue
The BRAD BLOG
Here are just a few of the latest positive signs in the continuing fight for a free, fair, verifiable and transparent democracy that many would prefer we simply didn't even discuss. We will continue to do so nonetheless. The burden is well worth carrying. The rewards for doing so are well worth the effort.
Debra LoGuercio, editor of Winters Express and columnist in Daily Republic and elsewhere, makes it a hat trick with her third column in as many weeks on our tenuous Electoral System. She was haunted by the siren sounded by our full article on the Diebold insider we dubbed Dieb-throat, (also in Handstand October issue.JosB)who alerted us to the Dept. of Homeland Security website where a Cyber alert was issued last year prior to the election about the vulnerability to hackers in Diebold's central tabulator software. That vulnerability has, by Diebold's own admission, never been addressed.
In her latest column titled "E-voting fraud is an American issue" LoGuercio joins the ranks of those of us who continue to be stunned at the remarkable indifference by the Mainstream Corporate Media to what DIEB-THROAT refered to as "one of the greatest threats democracy has ever known":
So many topics, so little column space. And yet soooooo much e-mail. In the media, we talk of a story having ”legs,“ meaning that it just keeps running. It seems the topic of electronic voting fraud is a centipede.
I've accumulated a mountain of studies and reports on Diebold's electronic voting machines since I wrote the Dieb-Throat columns, all pointing to the same conclusion: The software can be hacked - undetected - relatively easily by someone with the technology skills.
...
Why isn't the national media all over this topic like stink on a monkey? Why are we hearing about Brad and Angelina rather than a story that may shatter the foundation of American democracy if it's true? Maybe it's just not sexy enough. Maybe it won't move enough Viagra. Or maybe the grotesquely wealthy owners of the national media don't want this issue to come to light.
...
Maybe that's why people are frantically encouraging me to keep pushing the issue, as if they're pinning their hopes on me. If that's the case, we're in big trouble. In the media world, I'm not even a small fish in a small pond. I'll keep on splashing, but it's hard for a guppy in a mud puddle to make waves.
However, it brings to mind a children's story about Swimmy, a little fish that encouraged all the other little fish to swim together in the formation of one large fish. Working together, they survived the perilous waters among the sharks. That's what all us little fish must do - swim together.
Again, read her full column to find out about her response from AP and NBC affiliates when she contacted them about all of this, and see if you can find a way to help swim together with her efforts. It's well worth it, and the support means the world to folks like us who go out on a limb on these matters...even when doing so may be neither popular nor the easiest thing to do.
In the meantime, there are signs that more and more folks are taking notice of what is going on and walking out on that limb as well. C-NET's News.com ran an article yesterday by Declan McCullah headlined "E-voting hobbled by security concerns".
The first couple of grafs:
It's been nearly five years since Americans received a painful education on the perils of traditional voting machines in Florida and almost one year since the 2004 election revealed perplexing irregularities in Ohio's vote tabulation methods.
Yet no uniform security standards exist for electronic voting machines. Even though they were used to tabulate a third of the votes in last year's presidential run, nearly all electronic voting machines in use today remain black boxes without external methods of verifying that the results have not been altered or sabotaged.
The article covers both the ongoing concerns, and the internal debates -- even amongst election reformers -- about how and when to produce and count paper ballots...or "receipts" as they are regrettably becoming known in many circles.
On the point of the difference between reformers on these issues, I hope to produce a one-page "Declaration of Democracy" in the next couple of weeks, a page on which we worked diligently at the Portland Election Reform summit. I believe we can bridge the differences between reformers on these matters to get everyone on the same page. I've been working hard on that effort personally behind the scenes, and hope to have something to show for it in the next couple of weeks. Just by way of a heads-up...So that perhaps we may be able to "swim together" on these issues.
A second article from News.com published yesterday over at ZDNet covers a similar discussion on the problems with E-Voting vulnerability and the need to open the software for inspection:
Overlooked bugs and malicious code pose a plausible threat to software on electronic voting machines, a panel of election experts said Friday.
And finally, there it was yesterday...smack dab in the middle of The New York Times: a full-page ad that asks the the too-obvious questions, "Would you trust a bank that refused to issue ATM receipts? Will you trust your democracy to voting machines without them?"
The ad calls for support of Rep. Rush Holt's (D-NJ) H.R. 550 "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005" which we generally support as a good first step towards accountability.
Here is another News Bulletin on further ramifications of this affair:
Further pointing out the absurdity of it all, in a media release published earlier at VoteTrustUSA, Ellen Theisen, Executive Director of VotersUnite.Org says, "It's ironic that when we take vote-counting to Iraq, we take it in the form of paper ballots deposited into clear plastic ballot boxes, but in our own country, vote-counting is in the form of electronic ballots and secret software controlled by a man our government has declared ineligible to set foot in the country."
SMARTMATIC AND THE SEQUOIA VOTING SYSTEM
John Gideon of VotersUnite.org}
The CEO of Smartmatic Inc., Antonio Mujica, has been
denied a tourist visa by the US embassy and will not be
allowed to return to the United States according to a
recent report in VCRISIS, a Venezuelan news source.
Smartmatic Inc. is the Florida-registered,
Venezuelan-owned parent corporation of Sequoia Voting Systems, one of the leading voting
machine companies in the US. Its ownership hasbeen tied
to shadowy multi-national organizations.
No reason is given for denying renewal of Mujica's visa
in the VCRISIS article which describes an agitated
confrontation with US Embassy officials. According to the
story, Mujica "argued that he was
legal, that he had an important company in the USA and
that he had to travel with urgency to that country."
Sequoia Voting Systems was recently purchased by
Smartmatic from a UK firm for $16 million. The
surprisingly small sale price has brought into question
the stability of Sequoia Voting Systems, which would
seemingly stand ready to make millions of dollars in
sales of voting systems around the United States as money
from the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) continues
to pour out to counties and states. However, the
company's ability to provide technical support to their
customers has now come into question as this blogger was
recently told by a high level official at a competing
American-owned voting machine company.
Sequoia is also involved in a lawsuit filed by attorney
Paul Lehto in Snohomish County, Washington. The suit
calls for the county's contract to be voided with the
company due to the proprietary "trade secret"
software used by the company. Lehto has published a
report detailing a number of disturbing irregularities
found in Snohomish's general election last November.
The Smartmatic company slogan is "All Things
Connected". Setting aside whether all things being
connected in an election system is a good thing (it
isn't), their website has the following text on the front
page:
“Smartmatic is the device networking company. We
envision a world where everything will be connected. And
we're making it happen... here and now.”
The irony here...and now...of course, is that the entire
situation demonstrates how utterly dysfunctional the
election administration in America has become. While US
law allows a Venezuelan man to control the secret
counting of America's votes, the US State Department
doesn't consider him fit to enter the country, even
temporarily.
Further pointing out the absurdity of it all, Ellen
Theisen, Executive Director of VotersUnite.Org says, "It's ironic that
when we take vote-counting to Iraq, we take it in the
form of paper ballots deposited into clear plastic ballot
boxes, but in our own country, vote-counting is in the
form of electronic ballots and secret software controlled
by a man our government has declared ineligible to set
foot in the country."
Just another day in the decline of American democracy...
Blogged by John Gideon