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Comment Re:This will be really interesting (Score 1) 245

New York State? They have problems with their Democrats up there. Ohio is different. We gave the world a Boehner. Election Integrity work needs to be bipartisan but unfortunately there are those who insist that an election was rigged if ANY republican wins at all. Also, unfortunately, the shenanigans occurring with election administrators almost always favor Republicans. The Democrats classically use outside attacks like voting the grave yard, etc. and the system can protect itself from these kinds of attacks. Of course all forms of fraud are equally wrong but this is what we've been seeing in the field.

Comment Pearls of Wisdom from 6+ years in the field. (Score 5, Interesting) 245

I posted the article from Bev's press release. I worked on election fraud in 2004 for six years in Ohio. I was *hoping* all that time that we would find Democrats rigging for democrats. I had a punnet square going in my head. By and large 2004 was rigged for Bush. However, in the 18 of 88 counties we looked at what we found in over 30,000 photos of 126,000 ballots, poll books and signature books is that yes, Democrats sometimes rig for Republicans and Republicans sometime rigged for Democrats in down ticket races. The thing is that in a lot of Boards of Elections (county level) the "bipartisan" means someone switches parties. Sometimes this is a even a family member (the easiest one to push around).

The recommendation and rationale goes like this... The person I trust is not necessarily the person you would trust therefore we need transparency. No system can be secured against its administrators therefore we need transparency over security.

We must be able to verify four things. 1) Who can vote 2) Who did vote 3) Chain of custody 4) Vote count

Failing any of these points our elections are simply staged theater. Right now, we're failing ALL these points. No electronic system can be verifiable. Can't be done. Even under a paper system its difficult to put checks in place and to have mechanisms where a single voter or group of voter can raise a concern (even an honest mistake) and have it taken care of. A botched election is notoriously hard to clean up. Especially because recounts can and have been rigged. Litigating election issues is nearly impossible. The integrity of the election cycle must be maintained so no voter off the street and even most candidates can't get an issue in court with enough time to change the outcome of an election.

Therefore. *Most* Long term Election Integrity activists have come to support this basic starting principal: "Voter Marked Hand Counted Paper Ballots, Counted at the polls, on election night, no matter how long it takes, in full public view before all those who want to witness the count and before the ballots are moved and chain of custody issues arise."

Now. That handles points 3 and 4 but to be honest. 1 and 2 are tricky. They kinda require databases at this point because unlike the pool of poll workers this system don't scale well with the population. Bev's been finding voter histories have been erased in several counties in Tennessee. This is important because if a registered voter hasn't voted in a while then as part of house keeping (the person may have died or moved) they eventually get purged from the voter rolls. So someone(s) in Tennessee is erasing peoples' vote history so they get purged, show up at the polls and can't vote. There's already been some court rulings to handle this. The point is we need to remain vigilant and we need things transparent so we CAN be vigilant. We don't need computers to solve everything. We need the public to relearn how to do their civic duty and to do that civic duty.

Submission + - Bev Harris of Black Box Voting has released a dowload to Accenture's software (bbvforums.org)

Gottesser writes: "Permission to republish granted

I have found and posted the actual voter list software used widely throughout the USA (TN, WI, PA, CO, KS...) for Accenture voter registration and voter histories. I located the files on a magnetic backup tape of the hard drive of a county elections IT employee, part of a 120-gig set of discovery files.

The Accenture voter registration / voter history software is highly problematic, and has been reported switching voter parties in Colorado, and losing voter histories in Tennessee. Although it is now widely known that Accenture voter list software gets it wrong, just WHY the program misreports voter information so often has never been explained. I am hoping that by releasing this software to the public, it may shed light on what's really going on with our voter registration systems.

I also posted a Tennessee file with work orders and release notes which shows the Accenture software has a history of tripling votes in certain ("random") voter histories, going back to 2004. Except it is not random: Other files I discovered prove it is with primarily suburban Republican precincts that votes are somehow being recorded twice and sometimes three times for certain voters in the voter history report, and this didn't just happen in 2004; it also happened in the 2008 presidential primary and in May and August 2010, and according to election commission notes in Shelby County, also in the 2012 presidential primary.

Computer buffs, have at it. Much source code exists within the structure because it is built on MS Access. I do not read source code, though I can see some structural problems with the software (for example, it allows political party ID to be set differently from one precinct to another).

Here's the download link — http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/7659/82111.html

As a followup on our last story: The issue of 11,000 disappearing voter histories in Tennessee has now been assigned to a special master for investigation, and the state of Tennessee has officially announced that it has halted further voter purges.

To support the absolutely unique and highly effective investigative reporting by Black Box Voting, please consider making a generous donation, or (even better!) a monthly sponsorship:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
Or mail to:
Black Box Voting
330 SW 43rd St Suite K
PMB 543
Renton WA 98057

Black Box Voting, Inc. | 330 SW 43rd St Suite K — PMB 547 | Renton, WA 98057

Send To a Friend:
http://app.icontact.com/icp/core/message/forward?m=762641&s=53057943&c=LWP1&cid=325456"

Government

Submission + - ES&S to buy Diebold, Blackbox Voting to sue (blackboxvoting.org)

Gottesser writes: Long time elections rights activist, Bev Harris (She had an HBO special a while back where she hired Hari Hursti to hack an optical scan voting machine.) just sent this out... "Diebold/Premier Election Systems is being purchased by Election Systems & Software (ES&S). According to a Black Box Voting source within the companies, there will be a conference call among key people at the companies within the next couple hours. An ES&S/Diebold-Premier acquisition would consolidate most U.S. voting under one privately held manufacturer. And it's not just the concealed vote-counting; these companies now also produce polling place check-in software (electronic pollbooks), voter registration software and vote-by-mail authentication software." Our voting system is heading toward a server centric model with our vote being delivered to us by computers under lock and key far away from public oversight. Here's ES&S's press release Wikipedia's got something on the ongoing string of ES&S controversies as well:
Government

Submission + - Black Box Voting 2008 Election Protection Toolkit (blackboxvoting.org)

Gottesser writes: "Bev Harris over at Black Box Voting has done everyone a solid and released her 2008 Election Protection toolkit. For those interested the toolkit is like cliffs notes of Bev's 8+ years of experience on the front lines of the modern voting rights movement. The ebook gives short sweet information to get individuals actively involved in the full contact sport of democracy. The targeted audience: Those who believe that the political process requires more than just showing up once every four years to vote and what to roll their sleeves up and pitch in. Those who know that something's up with those voting machines. You may remember Bev Harris from her Emmy nominated HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy". I've been working on Election Integrity issues in Ohio for some time now and have met Bev several time. Her work is nothing less than groundbreaking. Please check it out."

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