20 Facts about Voting in the U.S.A.

ChuckHerrin.com

"So now we have someone who's admitted that he's been blackmailed over killing someone, who pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement, who is given the position of senior programmer of the (Diebold) GEMS central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 percent of the votes in the (Bush-Kerry) election, in 30 states, both paper ballot and touch screen,"

Rise4News.com

In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and
a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry,
but 4,433 voted for Bush.

Anyway, 20 things you may or may not know about the U.S. voting system:


1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

OnlineJournal.com
Wikipedia.org


2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

CommonDreams.org
OnlineJournal.com


3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

AmericanFreePress.net
OnlineJournal.com


4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

CBSNews.com
WishTV.com


5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

MotherJones.com
OnlineJournal.com


6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

HillNews.com
OnLisaReinsRadar.com


7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

BusinessWeek.com


8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

ESSVote.com
OnlineJournal.com


9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

CommonDreams.org
ITWorld.com


10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

CommonDreams.org
Diebold.com


11. Diebold is based in Ohio.

Diebold.com


12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.

Wired.com
Portland.IndyMedia.org


13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.

Scoop.co
ChuckHerrin.com
BlackBoxVoting.org(Riht down the bottom)


14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.

ChuckHerrin.com
BlackBoxVoting.org


15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.

GlobalExchange.org
Enquirer.com


16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie here: bbvdocs.org

Wired.com
MSNBC.msn
ATS thread: Hacking computer voting machines


17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.

CBSNews.com


18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.

Wired.com
YuricaReport.com
Rise4News.net
Scoop.co


19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.

Tallahassee.com
WashingtonPost.com


20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.

YuricaReport.com
ComputerWorld.com
AmericanFreePress.net
CommonDreams.org
ConsortiumNews.com
USCountVotes.org



Info reprinted here from Shoutwire and Nightweed.com with permission. I got rid of a few links and changed a few others. If some still dont work, tough!

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

Diebold is an Ohio company, so the CEO of Diebold would most likely live there and want one candidate to win over the other.

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

This statement is completely false. I have used the diebold machines and they do have a paper trail. It comes on a print out on the right hand of the machine which you are able to see and verify at the end of your vote.

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

Please refer to my answer for number 9

11. Diebold is based in Ohio.

Whats the big deal? Now if they were based in California and the votes went to Bush overwhelmingly, then there maybe a concern. Ohio has been a known swing state for many years.


In summary, most of the points you make are wrong and moot. I will agree with you on some points of the voting system.

1. Machines should be more secure
   although hacking one of these machine during the vote process would not be an easy task
   
2. There should be government oversite on the development and use of these machines
   

Points I have made? Hey, I just posted a rather interesting little list I found on the web, which you would have worked out had you read the bottom. Contact the original author if you wish to debate points, please.

build319, it says the NEW MACHINES. The old ones may have, but the new ones don't.

ALso, they have VIDEO OF A CHIMP HACKING A DIEBOLD MACHINE! SO don't say it is hard to do when a Chimpanzee can do it!

Also, I like how you go after what, 15% of the points.

"Oh well if the company promiosed to rig the vote in Ohio then Ohio voted for Bush it means nothing!"

Sure, and yet you don't even read the parts about how ALL the Voting errors were in Bush's favor. Not some, !!!ALL!!! Coincidence I think not.

A video of a chip hacking a Diebold machine? I would love to see that!

I voted in Ohio last year and every one of the new machines had a paper trail to it. Actually at the Auto Show this year in Ohio they had the machines on display which did have a paper trail and they were brand spankin' new.

The reason why I've gone through 15% of the points if because those are the ones that I would like to dispute. I have no knowledge and cannot comment on the others.

Now you are saying just because that the CEO of Diebold has told you that he is Republican and wants to help out his party in Ohio for the election, that he rigged all of his machines to lean toward Republican candidates. That’s about as ludicrous as the claim Republicans made about George Soros possibly undervaluing the dollar to steer the election towards Kerry.

Now, hacking machines in the middle of a room surrounded by people would not be easy. You would also have to break the case of the machine which would immediately show evidence of tampering. If the poll workers were to do it, they would all have to be in on the scam. I just simply do not believe its possible since most poll workings are over 60+ years of age.

You seem to be getting aggressive towards me that I was pointing out some very key items that were just factually wrong. I'm not taking up an argument here, I am just stating the facts from a person who has actually voted in Ohio and who also knows more than five poll workers here.

There are some things I agreed with.

I think there should be more people investigating and observing the elections. The more eyes that you have on something the more likely it is to be legit.

I also still think that the machines should be more secure because of how vital it is. I trust a computer way more than I do a little piece of cardboard paper but I think these machines should have a group of professional security specialists tackle these problems and also examine the code for the possibility of these machines being exploited.

Originally posted by watch_the_rocks
Points I have made? Hey, I just posted a rather interesting little list I found on the web, which you would have worked out had you read the bottom. Contact the original author if you wish to debate points, please.

That's a pretty flimsy excuse I'm afraid. You brought that content to ATS, you obviously endorse it, so whether or not you originated it, it is your contention in this thread, and either you can back it up or you can't. You aren't obligated to back it up, but not being able to, much less trying to pass the buck, is, to put it mildly, not likely to inspire a great deal of respect.

Please, you two, I don't endorse the info at all. I just posted it here to see what members of ATS thought about it, whether some points had a bit of truth in them or not. I have absolutely no idea about what it is like to vote in the U.S., and I thank you build319 for bringing your experience to thsi thread. I'm sure there are others as well that have voted in Ohio. With that in mind, when a voter goes to vote, are the machines enclosed in a separate room/area, or are they just sitting on a table in the middle of the room so everyone can see who you voted for?

And The Vagabond, I would very much prefer it if you did not jump to conclusions and presume that I believe or agree with every point made here, because I don't. I know that is the way things generally go, but I copied this from a site (once again, with permission), because that way it's much easier for people to read. As I said before, I want to se what a people that are a bit more educated in the area have to say, and ATS/PTS would definitely be the best place for that.

Points 18, 16, 14, 12 and 3 I find to be very interesting.

btw I'll see if I can find a link to that chimp movie. I didnt realize it did not work.

edit: found one: Google Video. Yeah, not that intresting.

[edit on 18/8/2006 by watch_the_rocks]

Very interesting, very interesting indeed.

I don't trust electronic voting machines, one of the few things
I don't think should be digitalized is voting.

I've heard alot about this by watching Lou Dobbs, and was
wondering when I'd see a thread about it/them.


Vagabond, dude ease up on him/her, like s/he said, s/he's only
posting the info from another site, and does'nt know everything
there is to know about voting machines.

Originally posted by build319
A video of a chip hacking a Diebold machine? I would love to see that!

I voted in Ohio last year and every one of the new machines had a paper trail to it. Actually at the Auto Show this year in Ohio they had the machines on display which did have a paper trail and they were brand spankin' new.

Then you should know about our Governer canadate who supported these machines and purchased them for all Ohio voters, when it turned out he was a rather large investor in the company and that he knew full well they where not efficient and could be hacked easily.

All this fuss could be avoided if only the U.S did a referendum every time they wanted to change the voting system. The fact they haven’t even done a public consultation, is the thing I find most suspicious.
Personally I don't see how the electronics saves enough money to justify the political fuss behind it. Rightfully or wrongly the way the government has handled this "regime counting change" has done nothing but to undermine trust in both them and the system (arguably two very good things).

I don't generally trust sources that aren't from say a Congressional hearing or report. Those are hard-core verified. Your current sources are mostly online businesses seeking money.

Apparently, it's not that difficult to rig election computers, at least according to what our own govt agency found. The GAO (General Accounting Office), our last govt agency that seems to have any ethics or honesty left, was asked to look into the 2004 election. They were asked by Congress to investigate and concluded that the 2004 election was fraudulent and the machines were hacked.
Here is an article about it:

www.huffingtonpost.com...

Here is the actual GAO report itself:
www.gao.gov...

If you Google "GAO + 2004 election fraud" you'll get all kinds of references to it.

So at least some of the points listed must be legitimate. Ken Blackman (I think that's his last name), the gov candidate who was responsible at the time for running the elections, did his very best to block every request Congress made to him to account for the election results. He promised to deliver the election to Bush, not that he hoped Bush would win - BIG difference.