Great article from 2 years ago... how much has changed?

[garybeck]

Two Voting Companies & Two Brothers
Will Count 80% of U.S. Election - Using BOTH Scanners & Touchscreens

by Lynn Landes - EcoTalk.org
April 27th 2004

Voters can run, but they can't hide from these guys. Meet the Urosevich brothers, Bob and Todd. Their respective companies, Diebold and ES&S, will count (using BOTH computerized ballot scanners and touchscreen machines) about 80% of all votes cast in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

Both ES&S and Diebold have been caught installing uncertified software in their machines. Although there is no known certification process that will protect against vote rigging or technical failure, it is a requirement of most, if not all, states.

And, according to author Bev Harris in her book, Black Box Voting, "...one of the founders of the original ES&S (software) system, Bob Urosevich, also oversaw development of the original software now used by Diebold Election Systems."

Talk about putting all our eggs in one very bogus, but brotherly basket.

Even if states or counties hire their own technicians to re-program Diebold or ES&S software (or software from other companies), experts say that permanently installed software, called firmware, still resides inside of both electronic scanners and touchscreen machines and is capable of manipulating votes. For those who are unfamiliar with the term 'firmware', here's a definition by BandwidthMarket.com: "Software that is embedded in a hardware device that allows reading and executing the software, but does not allow modification, e.g., writing or deleting data by an end user."

The ability to rig an election is well within easy reach of voting machine companies. And it does not matter if the machines are scanners or touchscreens, or are networked or hooked up to modems.

So, for those states and counties who think they're dodging the bullet by not buying (or not using) the highly insecure and error-prone touchscreen voting machines (which will process 28.9% of all votes this year), a huge threat still remains - computerized ballot scanners. They will count 57.6% of all votes cast, including absentee ballots.

--
I'll tell you what has changed....

We have dozens of activists groups all over the country now.
We have 10 or more legitimate independent research reports raising alarms about the machines.
We have dozens of lawsuits attacking the problem from various angles.
We have a $250,000 reward for whistleblower info
We have a few candidates running on election integrity as the main issue
The public is a little more aware than they were last time.

But will it be enough?

rest of article:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0404/S00233.htm

[longship]

1. Recommended and kicked.

Glad to kick a election theft thread with some activism cited.

We need to do more!!!
:kick:

[BeFree]

2. Maybe enough

We shall see.

I know that my county will audit the paper ballots, and that is a long, long way from the touchscreens of yore. I am fortunate to live in a state that had enough people aware of the problems and active enough to get paper ballots enacted as a law. And I helped.

Unfortunately, most of the country is not so fortunate.

Now, all we can do is hope that the numbers are so huge that any miscounts are evident. We will see how far the programmers are willing to go. They must be sweating it out these days, trying to decide where they might get caught, and where they can slide by.

[stellanoir]

3. Some states have caught on.

Governor Richardson comes to mind.

But otherwise the only difference is there is far more public awareness in some places.

Still, someone very close to the Dem candidate for Senator in my state told a mutual friend last month that "we're fine because we have optical scannars and they generate paper." tra la la.

Ughhh

Too bad the tabulators are totally hackable and the paper is never reviewed with a margin of victory greater than 3-5%. Most people here know of this of course.

So I bombarded the candidate's office and my friend's friend's inbox with this info. God only knows if it got through.

e-gads