NEWSFLASH!

The result of the first-ever public examination of a secret, proprietary computer program used to count votes in 37 states. A hundred dollar item allows anyone to stuff the ballot box; remote access was left unprotected, encryption keys were made available to hackers, and passwords, audit logs and votes were easily compromised.

This report, and all information not attributed to others here, was provided by Bev Harris, author of "Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century."

You can overwrite votes. You can vote more than once. The system is vulnerable to both inside and outside attacks. Intruders can overwrite audit logs. You can assign passwords to all your friends. "Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts." -- Researchers from Johns Hopkins and Rice Universities, in a paper just released (http://avirubin.com/vote.pdf

"Computer Voting Is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say" (New York Times, July 24 2003) Analysis of an Electronic Voting System)

These discoveries were made after examining Diebold voting system files left on an open web site, in a security breach somewhat stunning in magnitude. These files had been stored, unprotected, on a company web site for several years. The site appeared to be in continuous use, with new files added frequently, and its design invited visitors into an ftp page, which was available with anonymous access and no password. On January 29, 2003, shortly after Bev Harris found the site (which caused her to interview Diebold employees about it) the web site was removed from public access. By this time, its files had been downloaded by several people in various locations around the world.

The Johns Hopkins Report In Full In HTML…Analysis of an Electronic Voting System

In The News

02/26/03

Mark Naymik and Julie Carr Smyth

Plain Dealer Reporters

Ohio counties lost their power yesterday to buy electronic voting machines.

To prevent contract controversies - like the one that recently embroiled the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections - and Election Day breakdowns, the secretary of state's office will negotiate and award contracts for new voting equipment in the state's 88 counties.

"We believe this will bring consistency to price, service and training," Dana Walch, Ohio's director of election reform, said in a memo to county elections officials.

Secretary of State Ken Blackwell said elections boards still might be allowed to pick voting-machine makers from a list certified by the state. He said the state wants to ensure that counties get the best price if they buy the same machines.

But, Blackwell added, he may consider selecting one machine maker for the whole state. "I don't want [election officials] to get too far down the track," he said.

Several county elections officials also have voiced concerns that Blackwell appears to favor Diebold Inc., an Ohio-based voting-machine maker, and has touted the company in meetings with them.

Wayne County Elections Director Patty Johns said she senses Blackwell is "pushing Diebold." He has openly talked about the company's merits to her and her board, she said.

LAWSUIT: Voting Machine Engineer Sues, Alleges Machine Design Flaws — Friday 2/21/2003

Dan Spillane, a voting machine test engineer, filed a lawsuit against his former employer, DRE touch-screen voting machine manufacturer VoteHere.

Computerized vote-counting machines are sweeping the country. But they can be hacked -- and right now there's no way to be sure they haven't been.

By Farhad Manjoo

Feb. 20, 2003 | During the past five months, Bev Harris has e-mailed to news organizations a series of reports that detail alarming problems in the high-tech voting machinery currently sweeping its way through American democracy. But almost no one is paying attention.

Harris is a literary publicist and writer whose investigations into the secret world of voting equipment firms have led some to call her the Erin Brockovich of elections. Harris has discovered, for example, that Diebold, the company that supplied touch-screen voting machines to Georgia during the 2002 election, made its system's sensitive software files available on a public Internet site. She has reported on the certification process for machines coming onto the market -- revealing that the software code running the equipment is seldom thoroughly reviewed and can often be changed with mysteriously installed "patches" just prior to an election. And in perhaps her most eyebrow-raising coup, she found that Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, used to run the company that built most of the machines that count votes in his state -- and that he still owns a stake in the firm.

Harris hasn't been alone in making such discoveries. A small group of writers, technologists and activists is working hard to convince elections officials all over the country that their rush to upgrade aging punch-card machines with seemingly more reliable touch-screen systems is dangerous. But so far neither the general public nor elections officials appear too worried.

It's not hard to see why: If you look at some of the conspiracy theory rhetoric on the Web spawned by the work of Harris and others, it becomes all too easy to dismiss the whole campaign as sour grapes. There is no smoking-gun evidence to support the conclusion that Hagel's landslide Senate victory in 2002 benefited from voter fraud. The same is true for several unexpected Republican victories in Georgia last year -- during which the entire state used touch-screen machines for the first time.

But Harris herself is no conspiracy nut. Her facts check out. Nor is she an ideologue. Her stories on voting machines are based not on her politics but on serious, in-depth investigative reporting. Since October, she's spoken to dozens of people in the voting world, from elections officials to "systems certifiers" to engineers whom she calls whistle-blowers. She's detailed some of her findings on her Web site, but she says they aren't the whole story -- which she'll tell in a book, "Black Box Voting," to be published in May.

When asked detailed questions about Harris' allegations, Diebold issued the following statement to City Paper: "Our review of this matter indicates that there is no merit to the insinuations of security breaches in the Diebold Election Systems solutions. The old Global Elections Systems site has been taken down because it contained old, out-of-date material. For 144 years, Diebold has been synonymous with security, and we take security very seriously in all of our products and services."

Maryland elections chief Linda Lamone says her staff discovered Diebold's open file server before last November's election and demanded that the company, which manufactures and administers touchscreen DREs for about 40 percent of the state's electorate, provide a secure server for Maryland's elections. Lamone says Diebold complied with the state's request. "They found [the open server] and refused to use it," Lamone says of the state election board's technical staff. "They were very upset about it."

Georgia, however, did use the open server, downloading software patches to tweak the elections program and ensure it worked properly on Election Day. Brit Williams, a college professor who tested and certified Diebold's system in preparation for Georgia's November elections, explains in a Web-published transcript of an interview with Harris that "we were in the heat of the election. Some of the things we did [involving the open server], we probably compromised security a little bit. . . . We've gone back since the election and done extensive testing on all this."

Georgia elections spokesman Chris Rigel could not be reached for comment.

The U.S. Senate race in Georgia produced unexpected success for the Republican party, and City Paper's county-by-county analysis of the outcome, published in December, produced unusual results. The analysis showed that 60 percent of Georgia voters lived in 101 counties where the November results showed pronounced shifts of party loyalty from the August primary.

The potential for election fraud in Georgia "needs to be examined under oath," Harris says, adding that lawyers are crafting strategies to bring lawsuits that would focus on election-software security. "Citizens of any place that used [DREs] would have standing to sue," she contends.

By 2004, most voters in the US may well be voting by touch-screen systems, provided by a handful of companies, mainly private. Routine oversight of the counting process is effectively impossible. Even in the event of a court challenge, there is no sure way of telling that the votes have been allocated correctly. I asked a spokesman for Diebold, one of the largest firms involved, how a losing candidate would know they had lost. "Our machines undergo a battery of tests undertaken by independent testing associations for logic and accuracy," he said.

Fine - in theory the machines are perfect: we all have computers that never go wrong, don't we? Unfortunately, there appears to be nothing to stop to a corrupt company, a corrupt official or a corrupt (or merely incompetent) programmer subverting the democratic will.

There has, naturally, been zilch coverage of this issue in the mainstream American press - because the White House hasn't mentioned it. But conspiracy theorists on the web (see, for instance, ecotalk.org and bartcop.com) are hard at work. The Florida election was, of course, a shambles again in the 2002 midterm election, especially in the primaries. The conspiracists, however, are concentrating on two other states.

One is Georgia, where all the votes in 2002 were cast on Diebold screens. The sitting Democratic senator and (to general astonishment) governor were both defeated in the election. Nine of Diebold's 12 directors are listed as Republican donors. The other case is Nebraska, where more than 80% of the votes last November were counted on machines produced by the leader in the field: ES & S. Nebraska handily re-elected its Republican senator, Chuck Hagel, who just happens to be the company's former chief executive and remains a major shareholder. I do not remotely suggest either election was rigged, though Charlie Matulka, Hagel's beaten Democratic opponent, has protested in a manner somewhat unusual for a candidate who only got 15%. This is probably all just paranoia, but the Paranoid party has as much right to participate in elections as anyone else - and to know how and why they have lost.

BREAKING NEWS: Voting System Integrity Flaw
— Wednesday, 5 February 2003, 8:40 pm

Walk right in, sit right down. Replace vote-counting files with your own.

Feb 5, 2003: Yesterday, technicians and programmers for Diebold Election Systems, the company that supplied every single voting machine for the surprising 2002 results in the state of Georgia, the company that is preparing to convert the state of Maryland to its no-paper-trail computerized voting, admitted to a file-sharing system that amounts to a colossal security flaw.

"Technology transfer for updates!" This is among the benefits in the Diebold PowerPoint sales presentation given to the State of Georgia. Easy updating -- too easy, apparently.

Diebold Election Systems, which builds the AccuVote machines, both optical scan and touch-screen, was parking files on an unprotected public Internet location. Not a few files -- thousands of files; election files, hardware and software specifications, program files, voting program patches -- and sometimes, files with curious names.

Though the address is obscure, whistleblowers found the FTP site using a simple Google search. A Global Election Systems web site, located at http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Towers/2256/ contains a list of links like "History," "Press Releases," "Staff" and -- amazingly -- "FTP."

The FTP button gave total access to anonymous users, allowing anyone to download or upload to the motherlode. The FTP site contained no copyright statement, asked for no user name, put locks on no directories. Visitors (or vote-riggers) from anywhere in the world could simply walk in the front door.

A person interested in tampering with an election would have to wonder why in the Sam Hill anyone would hand over what amounts to an instruction manual for vote-rigging to anyone who can navigate a Google search.

URGENT ACTION NEEDED

"Black Box Voting," 425-228-7131 http://www.blackboxvoting.com

Dan Spillane, Senior Test Engineer for voting machines: 206-860-2858

Chuck Hagel: 202-224-4224

Senate Ethics Committee: 202-224-2981

Charlie Matulka, ran for office against Chuck Hagel: 402-228-1009

Rebecca Mercuri, expert on computerized voting machines 215/327-7105

The Hill Article: http://www.thehill.com

"Hagel's ethics filings pose disclosure issue" -- "The Hill" 1/29/2003

On October, 10, 2002 Bev Harris, author of the upcoming "Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering" in the 21st Century, revealed that Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has ties to the largest voting machine company, Election Systems & Software (ES&S). She reported that he was an owner, Chairman and CEO of Election Systems & Software (called American Information Systems until name change filed in 1997). ES&S was the ONLY company whose machines counted Hagel's votes when he ran for election in 1996 and 2002. The Hill, a Washington D.C. newspaper that covers the U.S. national political scene, confirmed her findings today and uncovered more details.

Hagel's campaign finance director, Michael McCarthy, now admits that Senator Hagel still owns a beneficial interest in the ES&S parent company, the McCarthy Group. ES&S counts approximately 60 percent of all votes cast in the United States. According to the Omaha World-Herald which is also a beneficial owner of ES&S, Hagel was CEO of American Information Systems, now called ES&S, from November 1993 through June 2, 1994. He was Chairman from July 1992 until March 15 1995. He was required to disclose these positions on his FEC Personal Disclosure statements, but he did not.

Hagel still owns up to $5 million in the ES&S parent company, McCarthy Group. But Hagel's office, when interviewed by Channel 8 News in Lincoln, Nebraska for the evening news on October 22, 2002, said he had sold his shares before he was elected. His office issued a fact sheet claiming that he had made full disclosure.

Last week, Hagel's campaign finance director, Michael McCarthy (currently an owner and a director of ES&S) admitted to Alexander Bolton of The Hill that Hagel is still an owner of ES&S parent company, the McCarthy Group, and said that Hagel also had owned shares in AIS Investors Inc., a group of investors in ES&S itself. Yet Hagel did not disclose owning or selling shares in AIS Investors Inc. on his FEC documents, a required disclosure, nor did he disclose that ES&S is an underlying asset of McCarthy Group, in which he lists an investment of up to $5 million in 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001.

GREEN — Diebold has become a start-to-finish election company with the acquisition of Data Information Management Systems, one of the largest voter registration companies in the United States.

Headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., Data Information has provided voter registration solutions and customer support for more than 22 years in a variety of jurisdictions, including Los Angeles County, where the company installed the largest county-based voter registration system in the country.

“I think it’s a very positive move,” said Jeff Matthews, Stark County Board of Elections director.

“They support Los Angeles County with 10 million registered voters,” he said. “If that system can handle Los Angeles County, that system can handle Ohio’s 7 million.” Diebold said it has successfully interfaced with Data Information systems in several jurisdictions, including Los Angeles County.

Votescam

This is as good a place as any to start and this is what initially sparked my interest to really dig into this story and find out more. Go to the link marked "Chapters" and read all about it: VoteScam

American Coup: Mid-Term Election Polls vs Actuals

Scoop’s analysis shows that - according to the polls - the Republican Party experienced a pronounced last minute swing in its favour of between 4 and 16 points. Remarkably this last minute swing appears to have been concentrated in its effects in critical Senate races (Georgia and Minnesota) where it secured it's complete control of Congress. Scoop

Rebecca Mercuri loves computers. But when it comes to counting votes in an election, she favors plain old paper. Computers, she says, just can't be trusted with our democracy. Wall Street Journal

Can we trust the vote count anywhere? In any race? In any election?

It involves going back to a simpler era. It is just this. Hand counting all ballots at the precinct level by the election workers under the watchful eyes of the community, and the posting of the results at each precinct station, plus the saving of the individual ballots so that they may be reviewed or re-counted at any time. Online Journal

Elections In America - Assume Crooks Are In Control http://www.ecotalk.org/...

Fraud and manipulation endemic...... http://www.heraldtribune.com/

Ever since Mayor Daley of Chicago "found" tens of thousands of dead people to "vote" for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election, many Americans have suspected the Democratic party’s urban political machines to be awash in voter fraud. As notorious as the Democrat political machines are, the origins of vote fraud in America lie in the Party of Lincoln. The massive vote fraud that took place during the War between the States and for the ensuing twelve years of "Reconstruction" provides an abject lesson in tyranny that has ominous implications. http://www.mises.org/...

First of all, whether a citizen can prove vote fraud is not the question. The question is whether the Board of Elections officials can prove that they are running a verifiable election. After all, these administrators are supposed to be servants of the people but most of them act as elections are their rightful monopoly. In fact, any attempt by any American citizen to monitor elections will most likely land the person in jail.
http://www.hoffman-info.com/votefraud.html

Great Bartcop article on Voting Machine Fraud, Execs GOP contributions http://www.bartcop.com/110702otter.htm

The good voters of Ivory Coast rose up to throw out a former president who rigged his reelection. So did the voters of Serbia. Is America going the other way? http://www.quivis.com/fraud.html

The great Miami mayoral election voter fraud of 1997 not only buoyed Democratic attorney Kendall Coffey's fortunes, but netted the Miami Herald a Pulitzer Prize for a seven-part investigative series that reads like a pulp version of the casually corrupt South Florida in a Carl Hiassen or an Elmore Leonard novel. http://www.thegully.com/essays/...

Vote of No Confidence

Everything you need to know about stealing elections http://www.conspire.com/...

The elephant in the room is vote theft on a massive scale http://www.onlinejournal.com/...

It is now effectively illegal for citizens in 49 states to count their own votes on election day http://www.votefraud.org/...

When it comes to elections in America...assume crooks are in control...and then act accordingly. http://www.commondreams.org/...

Thirty-one city newspapers have documented voting errors that only add to the ballot-stuffing, dead-people-voting, hide-the-ballots-in-your-trunk, absentee-faking problems of the past. http://www.talion.com/...

Computer Vote Counts are Unverifiable http://www.votefraud.org/...

The Greatest Cover-Up Of All

The fundamental problems presented by the growing use of insecure voting machines have been ignored by the U.S. mainstream media, which minimized the widespread failures of defective voting equipment during the recent election as having been caused by "glitches" and "gremlins." http://www.rense.com/...

Vote Fraud In America http://www.votefraud.org/...

Diebold - The Face Of Modern Ballot Tampering

The lack of any exit polling on November 5, 2002 has been oddly ignored by the media. Those pesky tracking polls leading up to the elections have been explained away by a ‘late surge to the Republicans’ caused by.... hmmmm, how about sun spot activity? With no exit polls, there was no other feedback to conflict with the "official" results, this allowed the Diebold touch screen machines to change the way election fraud is carried out. Scoop

Voting Machines - A High Tech Ambush

Voting Machines - High Tech Ambush http://www.ecotalk.org/Vote-By-Mail.htm

"These machines are going to be a godsend for us," said Robert Lee, head of voter registration and a member of the committee that proposed their purchase. Lee called the machines "probably the most safe and accurate devices on the market." But some outside computer experts, whose concerns are discounted by city officials, say Philadelphia may be making a mistake. http://www.notablesoftware.com/...

July 2001 Report of the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project"Voting - What Is, What Could Be" (Mostly PDF documents) http://www.vote.caltech.edu/...

Machine Technology - It's Not Secure

Have elections in America been rigged to slowly, but surely shift power to the right? In the secretive world of voting machines, anything is possible. http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingSecurity.htm

Why One Tech Maven Fears Computer Voting http://www.notablesoftware.com/Press/WSJ.html

I have been in the computer programming business for over 30 years. I have written code that runs in devices like the Touch Screen voting machines. When I decided to write this piece, I wanted to describe what it would take to rig a Touch Screen and get away with it and make it very, very, very hard to detect. All Hat No Cattle

For all its apparent benefits, touch-screen voting is not a panacea, according to several nationally recognized computer experts. There are no documented cases of electronic vote-rigging occurring anywhere in the country, but only because it's nearly impossible to prove. KioskCom

"Congress could force these companies to submit current source code as a pre-condition, if they wanted to. Congress could keep it secret, so the copyright and trade secret laws would not be infringed. The Senators or whatever would have to sign non-disclosure agreements... there's no valid reason this code is not checked for accurary. Which leaves only invalid reasons for not checking the code - and that would be that they do have ways to monkey with the votes."

The Real Scandal Is the Voting Machines Themselves Computerized vote-counting is a terrible system. This is only news to those who haven’t been paying attention. http://www.commondreams.org/...

Rage Against the Machine Machines don't have political beliefs. But computer programmers do. http://www.tnr.com/...

The Nightmare Scenario Is Here - Computer Voting With No Paper Trail http://www.ecotalk.org/...

Touch-screen voting machines may look spiffy, experts say they can't be trusted. http://www.salon.com/...

Battelle was also under investigation during the search for the anthrax killer.
http://www.columbusalive.com/...

Rothschilds are part owners of voting machines. They were also behind the whole Enron debacle. Now they will be in charge of the software that runs the voting machines. The other owners have simular NWO backgrounds as well. http://www.rense.com/general31/roth.htm

"Your vote certainly counts. On the other hand, your vote may not be counted"Florida Touch Screen Voting System DEMONSTRATION http://www.jeb02.com/...

Manufacturers Admit Voting Machines Unreliable

ES&S machines have modems, allowing hacking to access & alter vote tallies http://www.rumormillnews.net/...

The Nightmare Scenario Good explanation by Dr. Rebecca Mercuri on paperless computer voting & fraud http://www.commondreams.org/...

Background Stories about ES&S Voting Machines http://pub103.ezboard.com/...

Chip Glitch hands victory to wrong party. Guess which party? http://www.voxnyc.com/...

It is astonishing that, after the Election 2000 debacle of November 7th, the Hillsborough County Election Supervisor, Pam Iorio, is seeking to replace the old punch card voting machines with touch screen devices that have no paper trail. http://www.legitgov.org/electronic_chad.html

In 1988, Roy Saltman authored the document "Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying" at the National Bureau of Standards. He painstakingly described the numerous flaws existing in punch-card systems, many of which were only revealed to the general public for the first time during the recent election crisis. Most people were shocked to hear these facts, including many members of the press, that "all votes do not count," was now finally being admitted as fact by some of the election officials and vendors involved. Roy's book also addressed serious fundamental flaws with computer precinct voting and off-site balloting. http://www.bartcopnation.com/...

Voting Machines Can't Be Trusted

"Outside experts don't need to examine Palm Beach County's new touch-screen voting machines" says Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore. "I don't like this machine," Naulty said. "I think it should be dumped. It doesn't meet my needs and it violates my rights." http://grouper.ieee.org/...

New touch-screen voting machines may look spiffy, but some experts say they can't be trusted. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/...

Personally, I'll never vote on a machine again if I can help it. For the next election, I'll vote "absentee" (i.e., through the mail). In fact, Oregon has wisely rejected voting machines altogether and handles its entire election through the mail. The state of Washington offers that option, and Colorado is considering mandatory mail-in voting. Maybe those states see an ambush when they see one. Dissident Voice

The Judge stated in his ruling that "There is no adequate and proper safeguard to prevent the computers from being programmed to distort the election results." http://www.votefraud.org/...

CalTech and M.I.T. Computer Experts -- Hacking the Machines Caltech Discussion

Proprietary software makes inspection of electronic voting systems impossible
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/...

Voting Machines' Maker Blamed. How Florida bought easily-rigged ES&S Voting Machines
http://www.tampatrib.com/...

Computerized voting lacks paper trail, scholar warns Stanford Report

Highly Partisan Republican Ownership of Voting Machine Companies

Right-wing, radical political activists financed USA's largest voting machine company. http://www.talion.com/...

Why we need to know who owns voting machine companies http://www.talion.com/...

Republican Controlled Voting Machines Hand Suprise Victories to... Guess which party? Vox

Voting Machine Companies owned by conservative Republican businessmen, bankers, religious nuts http://www.ecotalk.org/...

Republican Voting Machines, Election Irregularities, and "Way-Off" Polling Results http://www.ecotalk.org/...

Republican Manufactured Voting Machines Ivolved in Election Fraud http://www.voxnyc.com/...

Winning vote totals uncanny. County Judge Danny Scheel received 18,181 votes. Republican Carter Casteel got exactly 18,181votes. Republican state Sen. Jeff Wentworth also got 18,181 votes. http://www.mysanantonio.com/specials/...

Secret Group Manipulates Vote Machines http://www.rense.com/...

Voter News Service Failures & Suspicious Activity

Voter News Service sitting on Election Day data News Observer

"The code behind exit poll tabulation is astoundingly simple to write. And the more simple it is, the less error prone. Why, with two years and millions (billions?) of dollars could they not get it right? When I took Oracle 8i, we were taught DB querying on the first day, and produced percentage based results the first week. This story is hole-ier than a hula-hoop."

"The likely truth is that the "invalid numbers" were showing the opposite of the intended result. Better to just throw the whole notion of "asking voters who they voted for" out the window with a cheesy and unbelievable excuse, and rely on known methods such as stolen ballotboxes and outright fraudulent punch machines and the like. THOSE methods have been working for millenia, and that is why the VNS fell back on them, as opposed to
exposing the FACT the fraud starts and ends at the tippity-top.'

Since 1964, right after John F. Kennedy was assasinated, vote tabulation for national elections has been handled not by the government, but by a private company lacking any official oversight at all. This company, which changes its name on a regular basis, is currently called "Voters News Service" and is located in New York City. This company is owned by a consortium of TV networks and wire services, which are in turn controlled by the CIA through its Operation MOCKINGBIRD. The TV networks will make a great show of being "first with the election results", but in reality all of them rely on the numbers sent to them by VNS, while seldom aknowledging its existance during the election coverage. http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/...

How VNS helped to rig Nov. 5 Election for GOP http://pub103.ezboard.com/...

Why did VNS bow out the morning of the election? Did somebody get a horse's head in their bed? http://www.bartcop.com/vns2002.htm

Voter News Service Meltdown - Washington Post article http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Voter News Service (VNS) is a top-secret private consortium owned by ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News. It's current headquarters is in Brooklyn, New York.

It's been around (under different names) since 1964. It's the only company whose exit poll results are used by the news media to announce the "projected" winners in races for the president, U.S. House and Senate, state governors, and select races. With the use of computerized vote counters and the news networks exclusive control over polling data in major elections, the gates to election fraud were wide open. Computerized voting machines have now made election fraud as easy as stealing candy from a baby...

If VNS is helping to rig elections, why are they doing it? Generally speaking... I believe that the same people who can't rake in enough money, also can't get enough power. The news networks are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the richest corporations and individuals in the world. They certainly have an agenda. Their arrogance and disregard for the little guy is clear. They may think that we're not smart enough to pick the 'right' kind of leaders... right for them, that is. So they might try to do it for us.

Voter News Service warrants an investigation. Its operations should be shut down regardless. It's in a perfect position to sabotage the election process. Let the counties count the vote and report it to the states. If it takes a day or two for the states to report the results... so be it. Democracy takes time."Why did VNS bow out the morning of the election?

VNS got into a lot of trouble for correctly calling Florida for Gore after exit polls showed him winning by a comfortable margin. After that 'debacle' they were forced to completely re-design their computer hardware and software. They were my client, and ran on a large IBM mainframe with legacy software. They were forced to get off the mainframe and on to a completely different hardware and software platform. Everything had to be built from scratch. Supposedly, they didn't have time to fully test the new environment thoroughly far enough ahead of this election cycle. Therefore, they chose to use this election to test the new environment, but not publicly release the results. Why does VNS think their "Gore wins" Florida 2000 projection was wrong? Bush guaranteed he would win Florida, even after VNS said he lost it. http://www.bartcop.com/111102bonus.htm

VNS - CIA link? VNS, the guys who are deep sixing their exit poll data, used an outside company to develop their computer programs. It turns out that the company is..... Battelle Memorial Institute, an Ohio-based technology company that also works as a defense contractor to help build the new VNS system. A Battelle spokeswoman declined comment on Tuesday's performance. " http://story.news.yahoo.com/...

On Scrapping The Exit Polls

"I'm astounded that no one finds this to be of any interest. If you're going to fix an election one thing you need to worry about is an outside party monitoring that election and using well-established and accepted methods of predicting its outcome. Suppose the consortium had McBride beating Bush by 5% and yet Bush was declared the winner. Two possibilities: either the exit polling methodology was flawed or the election was stolen. Are we to believe that a consortium of the nation's most prominent news organizations is so incompetent as to have this happen to them?" http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

Massive voter fraud was being planned for months. The fix was in. Be warned. This exclusive interview with Greg Palast will boil your blood. http://www.buzzflash.com/...

There's only one reason the exit poll has been scrapped. How could they explain away a (potential) lead by the democrats and then suddenly have the GOP controlling congress. http://story.news.yahoo.com/...

Serious Election Problems All Over The US

Diebold Magic? http://www.bartcop.com/111102fraud.htm

LA Times: December 11, 2000. Special Report: What happened in Florida is the rule and not the exception. A coast-to-coast study by The Times finds a shoddy system that can only be trusted when the election isn't close. http://www.cnn.com/2000/...

An electorate's worst technology nightmare came truebut what's amazing is that it didn't happen sooner. How we set ourselves up for the mayhem of the 2000 presidential election. http://www.metroactive.com/...

Miami Herald's 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning series on vote fraudDetailing the pervasive voter fraud that subsequently overturned the mayoral election http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1999/...

Florida 2002: Sluggish Systems, Vanishing Votes Neumann

Alert: Ghost Precincts, Vigilance Needed http://pub103.ezboard.com/...

Broward vote total off in reporting glitch The missing 104,000 votes raised questions about the county's $17.2 million electronic voting system http://www.miami.com/...

Arkansas Republicans went to court to keep votes uncounted http://www.kark.com/

A statewide recount in Alabama's gubernatorial election demanded by Democratic Governor Siegelman gave victory to his Republican challenger:http://www.sfgate.com/...

Problems in Texas with touchscreen voting machinery http://www.news8austin.com/...

Kansas provisional ballots caused problems http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/...

South Carolina's voting equipment creats difficulties http://www.thestate.com/...

Nebraska's election fiasco http://www.theindependent.com/...

New Jersey's tally delayed by computer problems http://www.newsday.com/...

Massive Polling Fraud in Florida http://www.voxnyc.com/...

Michigan ballot shortages and polling problems http://www.tv7-4.com/...

San Francisco ballot shortages http://www.kron4.com/Global/...

Florida Vote Fraud - High-tech voting system working fine "Go back to sleep, citizen. Nothing to see here!" http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/830822.asp

"I'll tell you right now, this election is fixed!" http://www.drudgereport.com/...

"Flyers were being left on cars in black neighborhoods warning that voters with outstanding tickets or warrants might be arrested when they show their ID to vote. Early voters were met by poll watchers from the Republican Party of Arkansas who demanded identification and challenged voter ballots." http://www.pbcommercial.com/...

Fraudulent automated phone messages in Florida Bush said he was unaware of the phone call effort - even though the call says it was ``paid for by Jeb Bush for Governor Campaign'' http://election2002.tbo.com/...

Vote Fraud Texas style http://www.jshull.org

Voting Problems In Orlando, South Florida "These folks are so crooked they have to screw their socks on in the morning" http://news.tbo.com/news/...

Black voters were told to get behind the white voters. They were told to remove NAACP stickers from their cars, or leave the polling place without voting. It all sounds like a promo for "Mississippi Burning," or maybe a documentary about egregious civil rights violations in some Deep South backwater fifty years ago. But it happened in November 2000. http://www.counterpunch.org/tnfraud.html

The Tennessee Voter Empowerment Team met to discuss information they have received. http://www.nashvilleinsanity.com/...

NPR's Wade Goodwyn reports that absentee ballot fraud is tipping elections in Dallas. One city council election was invalidated and two big civic projects squeaked through, thanks to a longstanding practice in the city's minority neighborhoods. Brokers know when absentee ballots are delivered and scoop them out of mailboxes at houses and nursing homes. Prosecutors and legislators says it's fraud that must be stopped. http://www.users.qwest.net/~alkolwicz/...

The first fiasco in the Florida vote was over paper. The second was electronic. How hard is it to get votes right? Hanging chads are nothing compared to how untested technology can ruin an election day. http://www.baselinemag.com/...

Additional Resources

Sign the Resolution on Electronic Voting http://verify.stanford.edu/evote.html

Repository for Voter Complaints http://www.votewatch.us/

Vote fraud is a cancer that can destroy a free country and leave little or no trace of its spread. If we were counting money, would it be done with secret count? Never; all who touch money must sign for it. There are checks and cross checks, an audit is done and an outside auditor is called in as a check against inside corruption. Do you think for a moment that all this expensive auditing is done to find honest mistakes? No, it is done to detect and catch white collar thieves and embezzlers! Undetected, they can easily drive a company bankrupt, so it is imperative to catch this type of thief. Even so, almost daily an embezzler is uncovered; how many escape detection? http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/...

Recommendations to promote accuracy, integrity, and security in computerized vote-tallying, and to respond to identified problems in software, hardware, operational procedures, and institutional changes. http://www.itl.nist.gov/lab/specpubs/500-158.htm

Can engineers save the electorate? http://www.embedded.com/...

In the national debate over upgrading election infrastructure, Peter Neumann is an unlikely defender of the low-tech approach. As principle scientist at Stanford Research Institute's Computer Science Laboratory Neumann has spent the last 20 years studying how intrusion detection systems, cryptography and advanced software engineering can improve the reliability and security of computer systems. But get him talking about how to run an election, and Neumann becomes an outspoken advocate of the paper ballot. He's also a sharp critic of computerized touch-screen voting machines. "Some of them have lovely human interfaces, but if there's no assurance your vote goes through, it's irrelevant." http://www.wired.com/...

More links to vote fraud articles http://scoop.co.nz/mason/...

Special Thanks

Thank you to the good people of http://bartcop.com and http://BartcopNation.com/ for compiling the information for this article.

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