The Diebold Factor

Hoping for printers on your voting machine, well, keep on hoping, in Broward County, its going to be 'years'....

Source
Broward voters won't be able to double-check ballot with printout
By Buddy Nevins
Political Writer
A printer that can be attached to Broward County voting machines and provide a "paper trail" has been invented and built and is ready to be installed, but it will be months, possibly years, before the state allows voters to use it.
Almost from the moment the computerized machines were introduced in Florida in 2002, many voters have been skeptical of their reliability and security. U. S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, has sued in federal court stating that the inability of the touch screen machines in 15 counties to provide a printed record violates the equal protection clause of the U. S. Constitution, because 52 other Florida counties have optical scanners that use paper that can be manually recounted....
The certification process of the Sequoia device has been under way most of this year. If there are no problems, the Sequoia printer could be certified next year.

Another Law Suit... I wonder what 52 counties he is speficly reffering to, it would be interesting to compare their 2002 election results to the counties which did not have a way to recount manually. I wonder if one of those 52 counties was where the Post Office truck filled with Democrat Ballots was found. What county was this famous 'riot' staged in? One of the 52 Counties that were going to manually recount their votes, you can bet on it.

Source
The picture below is what stopped the ballot recounts in Florida shortly after it seemed that Legitimate President Gore had a lead. The "citizens" started what was later called "the preppy riot". Screaming, yelling, pounding on the walls, these "outraged citizens" intimidated the polling officials to halt the recount. A closer look reveals who they really were. They were bussed and flown in at Republican lawmakers expense. Some even flew in on Tom Delay's private plane.

Source
Corwin said it would take a rewrite of state law for the printer to be allowed in election recounts. Broward and Snipes are requesting that the 2006 Legislature make that change.

Their reasons for not putting thr printers on the machines? They say because Blind People can't read them or the recounts, and the Prohibitive costs of the printers which according to them would amount to "Each printer would cost approximately $1,000, or a total price tag of $6.8 million, Klenet said."
I can go to Wallyworld and get a printer for 80 bucks folks. The costs of these printers is a red herring to buy them time until they shuffle us through the next election and figure another way around this accountibility.
A written record of your vote would require a rewriting of State Law eh? I suggest they get a legal dictionary and look up the word Ballot.


Yet another State Laws Violated to implement these voting machines...

Source
NM Machine Purchase May Violate State Law
Monday, 19 December 2005, 5:26 pm
Press Release: United Voters of New Mexico

For IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DECEMBER 16, 2005
United Voters of New Mexico Further Investigation Reveals
Machine Purchase May Violate State Law
Sequoia Edge Voting Machines Do Not Meet New Federal Standards

Albuquerque – December 16 - Secretary of State Vigil-Giron is set to purchase hundreds of electronic machines that meet 15-year-old standards, but not the current 2002 standards. The machines proposed for purchase, furthermore, don’t produce a paper record of votes as required by state law. Stephen Fettig, a citizen involved in voting issues, says, “Last winter many citizens worked with many legislators to get the state law as it is written. We are asking that the secretary of state purchase only machines that comply with both state and federal law.”

The National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) is the organization that determines when voting machines meeting federal standards. The 17-page list of these machines, dated November 18, 2005 doesn’t list any Sequoia Edge machines as meeting current standards. By “current,” the NASED means standards set in 2002. The list does identify some Sequoia software and firmware that meets the current standards, but no complete Sequoia machines meet the 2002 standards....

A week ago, citizen groups from around the state asked Bernalillo County Clerk Mary Herrera and Santa Fe County Clerk Valerie Espanoza to select the AutoMark voting system which is currently certified at both the state and federal levels. Instead, they asked Secretary of State Vigil-Giron to buy some 800 Sequoia Edge machines that are not certified to current federal standards and are in potential violation of state law because they don’t produce a paper record of votes.

What’s driving this seemingly unwise and potentially unlawful action by the Secretary of State - an action that could waste millions of dollars of taxpayers money? We don't know.

[edit on 20-12-2005 by twitchy]

Diebold pulls out of NC, and good riddance. Of course that only leaves ES&S to choose from now, and if you have been following this thread, they are just as abysmal an option as Diebold. Check out the quote below I put in bold letters, what a thing for a company selling voting machines to say eh?

Source
December 22. 2005 6:55PM

Diebold withdraws as N.C. voting equipment vendor; only one left

By GARY D. ROBERTSON
Associated Press Writer

The effort to upgrade voting equipment in North Carolina by next spring took a hit when an approved vendor pulled out of the running, saying it couldn't follow a new law that required it to share its software coding with the state.

Diebold Election Systems told the State Board of Elections it would be impossible to meet a Thursday deadline to account for all software used by the company for machines certified to be sold in all 100 counties.

The decision means that only one vendor currently is cleared to sell equipment, raising more questions about whether counties will have enough time to buy machines that meet the state's technical and security standards.

"We've said that we can't comply with the black letter of the law," said Chuck Owen, a Diebold attorney in Texas who alerted the board of its decision late Wednesday. "And we don't believe any vendor can comply with the black letter of the law."

A spokeswoman for Election Systems & Software, the lone vendor remaining, said the company will comply with all voting system requirements. Another firm that was certified, Sequoia Voting Systems, withdraw earlier this month.

Well, if you can't comply with election laws, what the hell are you doing making voting machines then you weasels?!?
I hardly doubt that Election Systems & Software is going to offer up source codes for what they have previously called "Third Party Software", they can't because they don't own or write that code, Microsoft and other companies do. While they may have offered us a peek into the machine itself in order to get this certification, that just isn't going to cut it. Demand Transparency, and Demand Accountibility in our election system folks, or we are going to loose it completely.

Tell me this doesn't sound fishy. Diebold backs out of North Carolina because NC wants the source codes and the Diebold Machines independently certified. Ah, but in California Diebold is all too happy to share the source codes with "FEDERAL Independent Testing Athorities".

Source
State refuses to approve Diebold voting machines
By Edwin Garcia
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau
SACRAMENTO - Suggesting the ``security and integrity'' of electronic voting could be at risk, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson on Tuesday refused to approve the use of thousands of electronic voting machines pending a federal evaluation.
The touch-screen and optical-scan machines, made by Diebold Election Systems and used in 17 counties, including Alameda, were found to have ``unresolved significant security concerns'' with a memory card that stores votes in each machine, McPherson's elections chief, Caren Daniels-Meade, said in a letter to the company's vice president, David Byrd.
At issue is whether the removable cards, which are used to program and configure the machines, will keep data secure.
The Secretary of State's office is asking Diebold to submit the machine's source code for review by the federal Independent Testing Authorities before resubmitting the company's application for certification in California.
Byrd, Diebold's vice president of business operations, is eager to comply.
``Diebold Election Systems is always willing to participate in responsible testing to show that our voting systems are up to the task of giving more Californians an accessible and reliable way to vote,'' Byrd said. ``This has always been our goal: to provide a more accurate, secure and accessible voting process for all Californians.''

Mmmmm Hmmmm... So Diebold is 'always willing to comply' just as long as the testing is done by Federal Inspectors.
The same company who only yesterday said...
"We've said that we can't comply with the black letter of the law," said Chuck Owen, a Diebold attorney in Texas who alerted the board of its decision late Wednesday. "And we don't believe any vendor can comply with the black letter of the law."

You smell something?

[edit on 23-12-2005 by twitchy]
Also thought I'd add this in, remeber all the hacking tests in Florida? Well, as it turns out they can be hacked 'easily'a nd the hacked results transfer to the tabulator depsite Diebold's contentions that they have software in place which prevents this. Sounds terrible right? Well get a load of Diebold's public reaction to these tests...

Source
TALLAHASSEE - Tests show some Diebold voting machines used in Florida and elsewhere around the nation can be hacked by election office insiders to change results, Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho charged Thursday.
Sancho said the tests on optical machines that scan paper ballots, conducted for his office and a monitoring group, also indicated they can be manipulated without leaving any evidence of tampering.
"This is not supposed to be possible," Sancho said.
Diebold spokesman David Bear discounted the tests as unrealistic because they bypassed normal security procedures.
"If I gave you the keys to my house and I turned off the alarm and told you when I wasn't going to be home, I don't doubt you can get into my house," Bear said. "But is that going to have any effect on the election? Absolutely not."

What a dolt. Isn't hacking all about bypassing 'normal security proceedures'? And this little slice of the controversy is apparently over the optical scan systems, which I bet you thought were safe eh?

Source
Bear said the tests were unrealistic because polling places and vote-counting centers are filled with observers, including representatives of both major political parties, who are watching for such tampering. Sancho said the system could be hacked by an elections staffer or technician beforehand to produce faulty results.
The tests involved optical-scan machines that use paper ballots voters mark with pencils. The ballots are fed into scanners that record the results onto the memory cards, which are then tabulated by a central computer. Some critics prefer the machines because any discrepancies can be checked by recounting the paper ballots.
Most of the debate over voting machines in Florida has focused on touch-screen computer systems because the state doesn't require that they also spit out paper records that can be counted by hand if needed.
That makes Sancho's tests somewhat ironic, Bear said.

[edit on 23-12-2005 by twitchy]

Diebold Hack Hints at Wider Flaws: To test the machines, Thompson and Hursti conducted a mock election on systems loaded with a rigged memory card. The election consisted of eight ballots asking voters to decide, yes or no, if the Diebold optical-scan machine could be hacked. ...Six people voted "no" and two voted "yes." But after scanning the ballots, the total showed one "no" vote and seven "yes" votes.


Hmmm. The plot thickens.

Hell apparently they can just install 'new' software on these things at will as well...

"trusted election officials" yeah... Funny but they aren't made privy to source codes either, nice try Diebold...

Source
Not long after Jones says to the camera: “I’m not gonna see it on the Internet or anything like that, right?”, Mississippi Secretary of State, Eric Clark declares incredibly: “I think this is the best machine that’s available in the country. That’s what I think. And that’s based on a lot of folks who have studied it. And I think it was already secure without the voter-verifiable paper trail. But I think it is so secure now, it is the most secure thing outside of a Wells-Fargo truck!”

Funny Demo Video

Instead of fixing anything, this new 'glitch' is being called the worst security flaw EVER... What like worse than being hacked? yup...
Experts see new Diebold flaw: They call it worst security glitch to date in state's voting machines

How Georgia's Secretary of State stole our voting rights

a feature was found that could allow someone to load unauthorized software on the machines.

DIEBOLD DISASTERS CONTINUE: Company Ships Uncertified Machines, Software to 5 Florida Counties!

US: Scientists Call Diebold Security Flaw 'Worst Ever'

And voting fraud isn't their only forte...
SEC Probes How Diebold Reports Revenue

Diebold Investigated for Manipulating Data

And Voila, the Payoff for two elections was...
Diebold opens office dedicated to government security

I just can't believe we sat back and let this go...

[edit on 16-5-2006 by twitchy]

You might want to check the interview with Greg Palast I posted on this thread detailing how the fix is in for '08.

Keep spreading the word...

one of the things I discovered is the Republican Party has something called “caging lists,” ... through a false website we were able to capture Republican Party internal missives, through georgebush.org.

And so, what happened was is that they sent us ... lists of literally tens of thousands of names of voters and addresses. We were wondering what the heck this was. It turns out these were almost all African American voters, who they were prepared to challenge in 2004, and they did, to say that these people shouldn't vote, because their addresses are suspect. And you'll see in the book that in the lists of thousands of black voters that they were challenging over their address were thousands of black soldiers who were sent to Iraq; go to Baghdad, and the Republican Party challenges your vote.

And the next thing that they’re going after is the Hispanic vote. So when we saw 2m votes cast/not counted in 2000, nearly 4 votes cast/not counted in 2004, you're going see that number massively increase in 2008.

Just out of curiosity, how many other countries have similar electronic voting systems in place? I know Mexico does because they just went through the same frustration of questionable results and the refusal of a recount. Just how widespread is this practice globally?

Proof of stolen elections..... twice

PBS accidently proves elections are stolen

PBS accidently proves elections are stolen
By Jane Stillwater

I can't believe it! Frontline, the PBS news show, just explained to us on national television just exactly how Karl Rove managed to jimmy the election vote both in 2000 AND in 2004! And Frontline exposed Rove purely by accident too. They didn't MEAN to give away Rove's trade secret. But after they got done quoting our Karl, even Barney the Purple Dinosaur could have put two and two together and figured this one out.

According to political commentator John Machado, "On a recent Frontline segment featuring the grand accomplishments of Karl -- the architect -- Rove, the bottom line reason that Rove's vote goal was reached in November of 2004 was that 'his base came out' after the polls had indicated that Kerry was the winner by a comfortable margin. Does Rove's base, the holy rolling Right Wing, vote only after 5 PM?"

well ive been reading this thread all day, and it seems to me that Twitchy's research seems to prove that elections were stolen and the american people should afraid of what is to come next.

If "they" wield enough power to skew election results, i say. there is no stopping them. I dont think it matters how many people are aware of what bush and his friends have been upto. They already made it this far.

Originally posted by Conspiracy Theorist
well ive been reading this thread all day, and it seems to me that Twitchy's research seems to prove that elections were stolen and the american people should afraid of what is to come next.

I wish I could prove it, but I'm afraid as the mid-term elections roll around again nobody has raised so much an offical angry fist over this debacle. Hell the day of the primaries for the majority of the nation, all the news covered was Jon Benet's suspected killer and what he had for lunch on the flight to Denver. That's about how concerned people are, and then we wonder quietly in the back of our heads why things go wrong in our system as we sit on our collective arses. We don't even legally own our votes anymore and the people that count our votes and their methods are now protected under corporate proprietary secrecy. I don't know what bothers me more about it, the fact that we let them do it, or the fact that we don't care that they are doing it.

[edit on 31-8-2006 by twitchy]

Originally posted by twitchy
Just out of curiosity, how many other countries have similar electronic voting systems in place? I know Mexico does because they just went through the same frustration of questionable results and the refusal of a recount. Just how widespread is this practice globally?

Here is a starting point.

In 2003 a new eVoting system was introduced in order to try and convince citizens that the system was safe. In the two locations that originally started eVoting, a "Ticketing" system was introduced. The principle of this is to add a printer next to the voting machine (magnetic card and light pen), and a paper copy of the vote is printed and approved by the voter. Once the elections are finished, all the paper votes (tickets) are counted and compared to the electronic result. In case of discrepancy, the paper version rules. The paper count and the electronic count matched nowhere, and it was decided (against the law) to favour the electronic result, which was considered more reliable. The law to organise this new test stated explicitly that this was for one election only.

Belgium

There still remain some questions about the security of the electronic voting system, but no case of fraud has yet been uncovered. The voting system has been widely accepted, due in great part to the fact that it speeds up the vote count tremendously. In the 1989 presidential election between Fernando Collor de Mello and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the vote count required nine days. In 2002, the count required less than 12 hours. In some smaller towns the election results are known minutes after the closing of the ballots.

Supporters of the electronic vote claim that unless the fraud were intentionally designed into the machines, it would be impossible to carry an extensive fraud in such a small amount of time. However, security has always been an issue, and the Brazilian Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) regularly funds research aimed at improving it. The source code to the voting software is proprietary and the public is not able to examine it. In order to be able to recount the votes, a printing system has been developed and a new elector's registration system is planned.

Brazil

It is a common misconception that there is no electronic voting in Canada. While the federal elections still use paper ballots, voting technology has been used since at least the 1990s at the municipal level in many cities, and there are increasing efforts in a few areas to introduce it at a provincial level.

There are no Canadian electronic voting standards. Some systems used have been certified to United States standards.
Contents

Canada

The Estonian e-voting system is based and relies on the Estonian ID-card and the two-fold use of it. On the one hand it is a regular and mandatory national identity document [1]. As of May 2006 over 930 000 [2] cards have been issued (out of a population of about 1.32 million). The peculiarity of the ID card lies in its digital side -- the electronic chip integrated on the card together with a state supported public key infrastructure allow for both secure remote authentification and legally binding digital signatures.

To be able to cast an electronic vote the voter needs a computer with Internet access, the ID-card and a card reader. Therefore the number of ID cards issued only shows the potential for electronic voting, as far as card readers are not that common yet.

Estonia

Each Control Unit has a unique ID Number, which is painted on each unit with a permanent marker. This ID Number will be allowed to be noted by the Polling Agents and will also be recorded in a Register maintained for the purpose by the Returning Officer. The address tag attached to the Control Unit also will indicate this ID Number. This is to avoid replacement of a genuine EVM by another one.

As soon as the voter presses the 'blue button' against the candidate and symbol of his choice, a tiny lamp on the left side of the symbol glows red and simultaneously a long beep sound is heard. Thus, there is both audio and visual indications for the voter to be assured that his vote has been recorded.

India

With Elections looming again, I thought I would bump this thread up with a piece or two in the news...
Apparently not only can you steal an election, but according to Princeton University you can do it literally in under a minute...

Source
Some Princeton researchers made a demonstration video of how it's possible to steal an election with a Diebold voting machine in under a minute. Anyone with physical access to the machine can put in malicious software to steal votes—such as election workers who have unsupervised access to the machines before elections. All they have to do is open up the machine with a key (or pick the lock), remove the old memory card, stick in your own memory card, boot the machine, and it automatically installs any software that was on the memory card.

At the end of the demonstration election, the poll machine prints out the incorrect "stolen election" result. The internal memory card also stores in the incorrect result. Every piece of evidence of how the election actually went reflects the "wrong" result. And, after the election is over, the vote stealing software can delete itself. There's no evidence left that the vote has been conducted incorrectly.

There's even a flaw in Diebold machines that allow a virus to spread from machine to machine, infecting a memory card and using it to spread to other machines. – Jason Chen

www.alternet.org...
www.nwprogressive.org...
www.theinquirer.net...
You can hack a Diebold Voting Machine with a $12 tool...

Source
Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting recently got her hands on a Diebold voting machine and was able to hack it in four minutes with tools that cost $12. Harris’ handiwork is just the latest demonstration of how vulnerable electronic voting machines are to vote manipulation.

Here we go again...
Diebold voting machine failures strike again in Alaska
The elevated number of provisional ballots is due to the malfunctioning of the Diebold touchscreen machines.
E-Voting Machine an Easy Hack
Report Done For Cuyahoga Co. Ohio Finds The System May Be Unrepairable Before Nov. 2008

Diebold is branching out into other Big Brother Ventures as well...
Diebold releases branch-based fingerprint scanning system
Diebold is releasing a new biometric fingerprint scanning system which links consumer identities with account information.
atmmarketplace.com...
www.selfservice.org...

It is unutterably tragic that most people on ATS (if the posting level is anything to go by) are not checking out this vital thread. Sterling research by all concerned, especially Twitchy.

It looks like there's no way the Dems are going to get control of anything this mid-term election, which means there's no chance the war crim Bush is going to face impeachment - the least he deserves.

I shall be watching Zogby more carefully from now on, because exit polls are pretty accurate if done well... one of the signs of a rigged election is a massive discrepancy between final result and exit polls. But recently the compliant media, who should be really making a song and dance about this, have started to label exit polls as "unreliable". Ludicrous.

When will we have the direct democracy like in old time greece??? The US has never had such a government and IMO it will strictly remain representative, or at least it should be like that. Plus, a black rock and a white rock would be sooo easy for voting, much more reliable then those nasty electronics which can break down in a random EMP attack.

Originally posted by rich23
It is unutterably tragic that most people on ATS (if the posting level is anything to go by) are not checking out this vital thread....But recently the compliant media, who should be really making a song and dance about this, have started to label exit polls as "unreliable". Ludicrous.

Yeah, it's pretty sad to see this thread at the bottom of my list. Not wholly unexpected, but very dissapointing. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. I finally got so disgusted with the information I was turning up I couldn't bear to post it anymore lol. There have been some mainstream nods, 'Hacking Democracy' and some lesser known documentaries have circulated, but the public remains largely unaware, or scarier still, unconcerned.
Hardly surprising, we live in a culture in which more people vote for a televised singing competition than for the leaders of their nation. Sad to think we go around spreading this kind of 'democracy' to the rest of the world at the end of a rifle barrell. I think you said it best rich when you said "unutterably tragic" to which I would add sickeningly hypocritical.

It is sad to see this thread ignored. There is hope though in Ohio we now have a democratic SOS. Get a look at this Free Press story

www.freepress.org...

The real government conspiracy started in 2000 when Gore was denied his rightful title as president.

What a creepy article smithdaleus, a few things in there I hadn't come across before, thanks for posting it. I'm hoping as 2008 looms this topic will maybe pick up a little, but I doubt it. Another example of something we should really be concerned about and aren't. Plenty of votes for the latest American Idol though, a televised karioke contest garners more 'votes' than the election of arguably the most powerful man in the world. I don't know man, sad really. Democracy works, but then capitalism isn't exactly democracy either.

Just an update on some of the news items circulating in regards to this whole e-voting debacle.
They can still be hacked...

Source
A review by California's secretary of state finds that the machines can be easily hacked into, potentially putting millions of votes at risk.
Times Staff Writer
July 28, 2007
Three of California's electronic voting systems — including those used in Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties — can be easily hacked into, potentially compromising millions of votes, according to a detailed review announced Friday.

Makers of Los Angeles County's InkaVote system did not submit its equipment in time, so it wasn't included, said Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who requested the study. The three systems evaluated, used by more than two-thirds of California's counties, also had problems with accessibility requirements for disabled and non-English-speaking voters....

Testers "were able to bypass both physical and software security in every system they tested," Bowen said. "The severity of what it means, whether counties have adapted [security] procedures already … is something we have to analyze," she said.

"Our very existence as a democracy is dependent on our having voting systems that are secure, reliable and accurate."

Source
INDIANAPOLIS | When an Indianapolis company sold faulty voting machines to Lake and 46 other counties last year, Secretary of State Todd Rokita vowed to seek millions in penalties -- $59.4 million to be exact.

Instead, Microvote -- faulted for problems in the May 2006 primary -- will pay the state $363,000 in civil penalties and legal costs, an administrative law judge law ruled last week.

Meanwhile, the politically connected law firm Rokita hired to hammer out settlements with Microvote and another voting machine supplier earned $170,000 in legal fees for securing the state a combined $608,000.

Rokita gave his 2002 campaign manager, Indianapolis attorney Tom John, the $100,000 legal contract last year. The deal was increased to $190,000 last month, though a Rokita spokeswoman said the firm, John, Lewis and Wilkins, has billed only $170,000.

John, who became chairman of the Marion County Republican Party this year, initiated the investigation of Microvote equipment failures last year, while a member of the Indiana Election Commission. He resigned three days later and accepted the legal contract two weeks after that.

The following article is a long but sickening read...

Source
Earlier this month, the 2006 election challenge court case Squire v. Geer gave us a rare tour inside the scam known as "touchscreen voting." The "tour" comes with the backdrop of revelations that 56 of Ohio's 88 counties have "lost" all or some of the election records from the stolen 2004 election. Though the records were protected by federal law, this means it may now be impossible to definitively tabulate who actually won the presidency in 2004. We will write more on this breaking news story in articles to come....
Compounding their inability to count, "Board of Elections did not check the public counters prior to this recount to verify that the numbers on these counters corresponded to the numbers on the VVPAT (Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail] and the poll books, poll lists or signature book records."

This is a pattern repeated from the 2004 presidential election recount. Then-Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell issued a directive that allowed counties to recount, not based on their certified election results, but simply by running a few voted ballots through a counter and then hand-counting them to see if the numbers match. It defies logic that the BOE officials would recount without checking the numbers on the machine counters....

This must be some warranty...

Source
Warranty excessive on voting machines
It’s outrageous.

Election Systems and Software wants $300,000 from Luzerne County for a warranty on its touch-screen voting machines.

Luzerne County Director of Elections Leonard Piazza has complained to the company and also contacted the Pennsylvania Department of State asking it to help get the warranty price down.

Another 20 counties in the state have election computers from Election Systems and Software, so the intervention of the state would make sense.

So far, Election Systems and Software is not budging on its warranty price. It says the price is consistent with what the company outlined when the county bought the computers.

Source
County exec asks state to slow down voting machine changes
Friday, July 27, 2007
TRENTON -- Mercer County Executive Brian M. Hughes expressed concern yesterday over state-mandated changes to county voting machines when state and federal officials haven't reached a consen sus on machine requirements.

Hughes also called on machine- maker Sequoia to fulfill its commit ment to retrofit the machines with printers that will provide "paper trails."
"We are still waiting for Sequoia to deliver on its stated intention to us several years ago that it would provide these voter-verified paper trails," Hughes said during testi mony in front of the New Jersey Voting Machine Examination Committee.

Source
District 13 debate to look into secret coding
Investigators working out an agreement with voting machine maker to shed light on conflict

WASHINGTON --By LESLEY CLARK

Herald Washington Bureau

Government investigators looking into the contested District 13 congressional race are working out a confidentiality agreement with the voting machine manufacturer to look at the secret code used last November in the touch screen machines.

They've also found two testing areas that "merit further inquiry," said Rep. Charles Gonzalez, the Texas Democrat who chairs a congressional task force examining why more than 18,000 ballots cast in Sarasota County recorded no vote for either candidate in November's congressional election.

But any word on whether further testing of the machines is required to resolve the mystery of the missing votes won't come for at least another week, Gonzalez said. That's when the team from the Government Accountability Office is scheduled to meet - in public - with the task force.

Source

Under New Jersey law, all electronic voting machines must produce individual permanent paper records for each vote by Jan. 1.

That deadline comes just over a month before the state's new primary date, Feb. 5, which will include presidential contenders.

A federal lawsuit is pending against the state and Sequoia in which a citizens group alleges the company does not have the technology to equip its machines with a paper ballot printer by the deadline.

But there's hope that they will fix this problem, right?

Source
Agreement Reached to Move Holt Election Reform Bill
PFAW: Best chance to give voters paper trails, confidence in voting in 2008 and beyond.
WASHINGTON, July 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey announced a compromise that will advance H.R. 811, the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007." The bill bans paperless voting machines and requires a voter-verified paper record for every vote in the country.
"Today's announcement gives Americans renewed hope that Congress will
soon put an end to unaccountable, unverifiable, and inaccessible voting,"
said Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way. "Millions of
voters were disenfranchised in recent elections, and millions of others
have wondered if their votes were correctly counted. That is intolerable.
Given how much is at stake in the coming elections, passing this
legislation should be the nation's top domestic legislative priority."

Nope, probably not...

Source
Voting Paper Trail Bill May Move In the House but Die in the Senate
Legislation requiring paper records from electronic voting may be put on hold until 2010 because states can’t update their equipment in time for next year’s elections.

[edit on 12/16/2007 by Gools]

I don't know if it has anything to do with the new servers, but this thread has vanished from the list of subscribed threads on the My ATS page, and there's no subscribe button so I'm assuming it should be on the list.
Also can I get a mod to look at the above post and see if they can figure out what I did wrong, looks like a quote tag got missed but I can't seem to find it.

Came across this one in the news today, thought I would add it to the stack...

Secretary of state urges end to touch-screen voting in Ohio
COLUMBUS -- None of the three voting systems in use in Ohio, implemented in response to federal election mandates, is secure or safe from potential tampering, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner announced Friday, following the release of a months-long study.

Brunner said the state should to switch to optical scan systems and centralized vote counting to ensure every ballot cast is counted correctly and residents can trust the final outcomes....
Brunner recommended all counties using touch-screen units (more than half of Ohio's 88) switch to optical scan devices, with votes tallied at central locations instead of at individual polling places. Portage County uses touch- screen units; optical scan devices are used in Summit County.

Sounds exciting, but when your ead the fine print...

Brunner said she didn't think the changes could be implemented in time for the March primary....She offered no cost estimates for the changes.... serious review and consideration.

Review and consideration, that's the kicker. No dingbats, it requires jerking the plugs of these infernal machines out of the wall and making Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S to buy them back after they pay their fines for violating elections laws in the states they broke them in and fully disclosed all the software they've used in the last two elections.
Review and consideration?

Found this one on Alex jones...

Diebold Voting Machine Contractor Executive Has Criminal Background
Harris reports that Ken Hajjar, the Marketing and Sales Director at LHS Associates was arrested, indicted, and pleaded guilty to "sale / CND" (sale of controlled narcotic drugs) and sentenced to 12 months in the Rockingham County Correctional facility, and fined $2000. As things go for the politically connected, he was then given a deferred sentence and $1000 of his fine was suspended.

No biggie though, lots of companies don't discriminate against the legally impaired at the executive level, but look what else this guys is guilty of...

(from above)
The story becomes even more compelling given comments made by Ken Hajjar himself in a recent interview as he revealed that he totes memory cards around in the trunk of his car and defends the concept of swapping out memory cards during live elections!

Other LHS staff members we spoke with, including Mike Carlson and Tom Burge, provided similar comments. They said they would open machines up during an election and swap memory cards as needed. This is illegal under Connecticut law and Deputy Secretary Mara told us she has since informed LHS that such actions were in violation of Connecticut election laws.

"In 2006, as Hajjar argued in favor of their policy to change cards during elections, I asked him about about the laws which govern chain of custody issues. His response: "I mean, I don't pay attention to every little law. It's just, it's up to the Registrars. All we are is a support organization on Election Day".

He said he had three memory cards in the trunk of his car and, in the event they had to be used, the chain of custody issues wouldn't matter since, "once you run the [pre-election] test deck through, you're golden"."

Crazy stuff. I bump this thread around election time, it's sad to see the people waving political banners, donating money, making speeches and really getting into the whole democratic process, meanwhile, under their very bipartisan noses, the very system has been completely subverted.