Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News, Tuesday 03/18/08

[Melissa G]

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News, Tuesday 03/18/08


Esteemed DUer's, please consider taking a moment (or more)
to graciously participate by posting Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread.


If you can:
1. Post stories and announcements you find on the web.



2. Post stories using the new Spring 2006 Edition of "Election Fraud and Reform News Directory" listed here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x407240

3. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.



4. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.


Recommendations always appreciated! Thanks!:toast:

[Melissa G]

1. States n/t

[Melissa G]

5. Ohio seizes voting machines in criminal investigation

Ohio seizes voting machines in criminal investigation
By Ryan Paul | Published: March 18, 2008 - 08:38AM CT

At the request of election officials, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation has seized voting machines for forensic analysis and has launched a criminal investigation into the Franklin County Board of Elections.


The investigation was launched after Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's Secretary of State and chief election official, found that a candidate's name was marked as withdrawn on the electronic voting machine that she used during the recent primaries, an irregularity that was also reported by voters in other precincts. The state attorney general is now working with a team of computer forensic consultants to determine if there was any tampering.

Preliminary analysis conducted by specialists from SysTest Labs indicates that the internal audit capability of the Franklin County voting machines had been manually disabled by county election board programmers last year, making it almost impossible to tell if any nefarious changes have been made to the systems. SysTest also discovered that the election board had failed to adhere to routine machine testing standards and had tested only one machine in each precinct rather than all of the machines.

Ohio has seen one electronic voting disaster after another ever since counties in the state began adopting the technology. Two Cuyahoga election officials were convicted of rigging a recount in May 2004 because they literally admitted to doing precounts and displayed the evidence while being recorded on videotape. A different Cuyahoga county recount, for a November 2007 local election, was equally marred when Brunner turned the state's voter-verifiable paper audit trail law into a mockery by conducting the recount with paper ballots reprinted after the election from voting machine memory cards.

After all of these incidents, Brunner launched a $1.9 million security review which determined that the voting machines used in the state are all egregiously insecure and susceptible to manipulation and outright fraud in numerous ways. The review produced over 1,000 pages of documentation describing the profound flaws that impact the systems.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080318-ohio-seizes-voting-machines-in-criminal-investigation.html

[Melissa G]

7. KY- Hardin in line for new voting scanners

Hardin in line for new voting scanners


By SARAH BERKSHIRE
Monday, March 17, 2008 5:03 PM CDT


Machines should arrive in time for May primary

ELIZABETHTOWN — Hardin County is first in line to cut lines at voting booths this year.

Hardin County Fiscal Court approved a bid for 52 digital ballot scanner voting machines and 171 plastic voting booths Monday. Officials awarded the $257,598 bid to Harp Enterprises, an election services company in Lexington.

Officials addressed the issue at a Hardin Memorial Hospital Board of Trustees meeting because the bid needed to be finalized as soon as possible. The machines, which cost $4,500 each, are in high demand.

County Clerk Kenny Tabb said he had heard 87 of Kentucky’s 120 counties, armed with the 2002 Help America Vote Act residual money, were considering the voting machines.
http://www.newsenterpriseonline.com/articles/2008/03/18/news/news05.txt

[Melissa G]

8. NJ- Legal threat thwarts Union voting-machine check

Legal threat thwarts Union voting-machine check
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
BY DIANE C. WALSH
Star-Ledger Staff
Union County backed off its plans yesterday to have a Princeton University computer scientist inspect electronic voting machines where errors occurred in the presidential primary tallies.

Sequoia Voting Systems, the manufacturer of New Jersey's voting machines, threatened to sue the county if it allowed Princeton professor Edward Felten to conduct an independent study of the machines.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1205818545270600.xml&coll=1

[Melissa G]

10. MI- County clerk says primary do-over likely`impossible'

County clerk says primary do-over likely`impossible'
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
BY JULIE MACK

[e-mail]


KALAMAZOO -- Holding a do-over Democratic presidential primary in Michigan on June 3 would be impossible under current election rules because the voting machines would still be locked from the May 6 election, Kalamazoo County Clerk Tim Snow said.

State law requires ballot counts to stay locked in machines for 30 days after an election to allow time for recounts.

``They would have to change the rules, but that doesn't seem to bother the legislators,'' said Snow, who is second vice president for the Michigan Association of County Clerks, which is adamantly opposed to a do-over primary.

``We've already done it, and just the physical ability to do it in the time required, it's going to be difficult at best,'' Snow said. ``We'd be basically having three elections going on at the same time -- May, June and August.''

Michigan legislators reviewed a measure Monday that would set up a June 3 Democratic presidential primary. The draft legislation included language that would set up a public fund to collect private donations for the election, ban voters who had voted in the Jan. 15 Republican presidential primary and keep both presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama on the ballot.
http://www.mlive.com/news/kzgazette/index.ssf?/base/news-28/1205851812198890.xml&coll=7

[Melissa G]

13. NY- Ontario County officials eye old jail to house voting machines

(Voting Machines belong in the garbage dump but I'd settle for jail... if we threw away the key! :evilgrin: Sure is expensive housing these machines!)
Canandaigua, N.Y. -
With 54 new voting machines arriving in Ontario County on June 15, lawmakers decided Monday to pursue a plan to put them in the former county jail.

The county Public Works Committee decided to focus on a renovation estimated to cost about $200,000 at the old jail at 74 Ontario St. in Canandaigua. The work would provide for the storage, testing and maintenance of about 100 new voting machines — the number the county will have by next year.

The first batch will provide each of the county’s 54 polling places with one machine that allows people with disabilities to vote in the fall elections. An additional 40 or so machines will arrive in time for all voters to use them in the 2009 elections. The new machines comply with the Help America Vote Act, established to improve voting accuracy after the contested 2000 presidential election.

County Associate Planner Tom Harvey told the committee Monday that each machine weighs 285 pounds and requires about 15 square feet of space. That accounts for the work space needed around each machine so it can be maintained and tested several times a year. The renovation of about 3,000 square feet at the old jail would also provide for storage of blank and used ballots.

Depending on which section of the former jail is used, the renovation could include removing old jail cells and would also involve updating mechanical features of the building, such as heating and cooling methods.
http://www.mpnnow.com/news/x1126220056

[Melissa G]

16. FL- Voting Machine Dilemma: Putnam prepares to replace touch-screens

Voting Machine Dilemma: Putnam prepares to replace touch-screens

By Robert Younis
Concerns over the reliability of touch-screen voting machines could leave Putnam County footing the bill to replace more than $275,000 in equipment.

State officials recently decided to recycle 29,000 of the touch-screen machines and provided funds for about 15 counties to replace the equipment.

But not Putnam County.

Putnam Supervisor of Elections Susan McCool said the state set specific criteria for the grants and Putnam did not qualify.

snip
Another reason other counties are receiving state aid is they still owe money on the touch-screen equipment, McCool said.
Putnam’s are paid for, she said.
http://www.palatkadailynews.com/articles/2008/03/15/news/news01.txt

[Melissa G]

2. National n/t

[Melissa G]

6. E-Voting Firm Threatens Ed Felten If He Reviews Its E-Voting Machine

E-Voting Firm Threatens Ed Felten If He Reviews Its E-Voting Machine
from the well-that's-comforting dept

Many of the folks around here are surely aware of the name Ed Felten, the Princeton professor who runs the fantastic blog Freedom To Tinker, and who has been involved in a number of important technology news stories over the years. One of the first that brought him to much wider attention in the tech community happened back in 2001. The recording industry had set up a contest, asking anyone to try to hack its SDMI DRM offering. The idea was to prove that SDMI was a perfectly good DRM. But, of course, like every other DRM, it had its faults, and Felten and some of his researchers figured them out. That's where things got ridiculous. Despite the fact that the recording industry had told people to try to hack SDMI, when Felten went to present the paper, he was threatened with a lawsuit for breaking the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA. Eventually, after a ton of public pressure, the recording industry backed down, but Felten's name was cemented in the minds of many in the tech industry as a fighter for freedom of speech and, more importantly, the freedom to tinker.

It would appear that the folks at Sequoia, one of the big three e-voting firms out there, is somewhat unaware of this aspect of Felten's past. In the past few years, Felten has been one of a few top computer science experts who have been picking apart the problems with e-voting machines. His freedom to tinker with such machines has broken numerous stories revealing serious problems with the machines that many suspected, but were unable to confirm, since the e-voting firms kept the machines so under wraps. In publicizing these flaws, Felten has become one of the go-to guys when various governments are reviewing e-voting machines, so it should come as no surprise that election officials in New Jersey (where Felten lives and works) would be interested in having him run some tests on a Sequoia e-voting machine that they're looking at using in future elections.

This seems perfectly reasonable -- and if you're an e-voting company like Sequoia, it should also be a perfect way to build more trust in your machines, telling people that they've been reviewed by some of the top experts in the field who found nothing wrong with them. Except... that's not how execs at e-voting companies seem to think. Sequoia has, instead, sent a threatening email to Felten, saying that election officials who sent a machine to Felten would be breaking the state's terms of service with Sequoia, and that the company has:

"retained counsel to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties, including any non-compliant analysis. We will also take appropriate steps to protect against any publication of Sequoia software, its behavior, reports regarding same or any other infringement of our intellectual property."
Yes, this is quite reminiscent of the recording industry's threats to Felten in 2001. Hopefully this situation ends similarly -- with Sequoia backing down quite publicly and apologizing. It's disgusting that such a firm would threaten a well-respected researcher with lawsuits just for checking on the security of an e-voting machine. This is worse than the recording industry situation. This is about the sanctity of our democratic elections. For Sequoia, a firm entrusted with our elections, to threaten someone for merely testing its product to make sure it lives up to necessary standards is terribly worrisome. It should call into question any locality that chooses to make use of Sequoia e-voting machines.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080317/185348564.shtml

[Melissa G]

14. Brad blog Version EXCLUSIVE: Sequoia Voting Systems Threatens Princeton Computer Scientists with Leg

EXCLUSIVE: Sequoia Voting Systems Threatens Princeton Computer Scientists with Legal Action if they Carry Out NJ Commissioned Analysis of the Company's Touch-Screen Voting Machines

VP Edwin Smith Warns Scientists, in Email Obtained by The BRAD BLOG, of Plans to Take 'Appropriate Steps to Protect Against Publication of Software, Its Behavior or Reports Regarding Same'
ALSO: Company Website of One of Nation's Largest Voting Machine Vendors Refers to 'Democrat' Party in Explanation for Recent Primary Election Failure...
-- Brad Friedman

Sequoia Voting Systems has sent a legal threat to Princeton University computer science professors Ed Felten and Andrew Appel warning them of legal action should they proceed with an analysis of New Jersey's touch-screen voting machines as unanimously recommended last week by an association representing election clerks across the state.

In a terse email sent last Friday, obtained today by The BRAD BLOG, Sequoia's Edwin Smith, Vice-President of Compliance/Quality/Certification, warns the university academics that the company has "retained counsel to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties, including any non-compliant analysis."

"We will also take appropriate steps to protect against any publication of Sequoia software, its behavior, reports regarding same or any other infringement of our intellectual property," Smith threatens.

The email from Smith to Felten and Appel is posted in full at the end of this article. Felten has confirmed its authenticity late this afternoon.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5814

[Melissa G]

15. More from Brad blog...New Jersey, Sequoia and the "Democrat" Party

New Jersey, Sequoia and the "Democrat" Party

New Jersey has been on the precipice of spending some $16 million to purchase add-on "paper trail" printers for the Sequoia touch-screen machines. The cost would reportedly be $2000 to retrofit each of the state's 8000 Advantage systems. That purchase may be delayed or forestalled entirely depending on the outcome of the ongoing investigation into the voting system failures on February 5th.

In a detailed and confusing explanation posted on the company's website, Sequoia has found a complicated way in which they say poll workers and voters were to blame for the problems discovered on their voting machines during the recent New Jersey election.

NOTE TO SEQUOIA: You are one of the largest voting machine companies in America. You should know well by now that the major American political party which is not the Republican Party is named the Democratic Party, not the "Democrat party" as you have insultingly described them on your web page, as in where you wrote: "Let’s assume the Democrat party is assigned option switch 6 while the Republican Party is assigned option switch 12."

The letter from Sequoia's VP Edwin Smith to Princeton professors Andrew Appel and Ed Felten follows in full below...
Scroll down mid page at this link...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5814

[Yellow Horse]

21. Good report, but sorry NOT EXCLUSIVE to Bradblog.

Was reported by AP and others prior to his post.

Sorry.

[Melissa G]

9. American Statistical Association Calls for Audits to Increase Confidence in Electoral Outcomes

Thanks to Bill Bored for the post and the DU discussion here...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x499286

Original message
American Statistical Association Calls for Audits to Increase Confidence in Electoral Outcomes
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2008/3/prweb773424.htm

ASA Board adopts position on Electoral Integrity.

Alexandria, VA (PRWEB) March 17, 2008 -- The Board of Directors of the American Statistical Association (ASA) today called on the federal government to take actions, including election audits, that would assure greater levels of voter confidence in electoral outcomes. The specific actions recommended by the Board include conducting broader research into the integrity of elections, providing tools to help election officials conduct high-integrity elections, and recommending designs of acceptable ballots as well as procedures for testing ballots on the actual machines that will be used to record the results.

The Position on Electoral Integrity adopted by the ASA Board at its March meeting states, "It is critical that the integrity of central vote tabulations be confirmed by audits of voter-verified hard-copy records in order to provide high - and clearly specified - levels of confidence in electoral outcomes… Certification of any electoral outcome should require substantiating evidence that the putative winner was the intended selection of the plurality of voters. Compelling statistical evidence of electoral failure should be accepted as a basis for judicial remedy."

The ASA statement also encourages state governments to adopt routine monitoring of all electoral procedures to ensure continuous quality improvement.

more...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x499286

[Melissa G]

11. E-Voting Vendor Threatens Princeton Computer Scientists With Legal Action

March 18, 2008
E-Voting Vendor Threatens Princeton Computer Scientists With Legal Action
Sequoia Voting Systems, a company that manufactures electronic voting machines, sent an e-mail message last week to two computer scientists at Princeton University, warning them against dissecting Sequoia machines and software. The scientists, Edward W. Felten and Andrew Appel, are well known for exposing security flaws in electronic voting machines and warning the public against trusting them.


The scientists received the message because New Jersey election officials announced plans to send the men Sequoia e-voting machines for analysis. A Sequoia vice president, Edwin Smith, wrote that the plan would violate Sequoia’s contract for use of its machines. “Sequoia has also retained counsel to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties, including any noncompliant analysis,” the message read. Mr. Smith added that the company would “take appropriate steps to protect against any publication of Sequoia software.”


Last year Mr. Appel publicized weaknesses in Sequoia machines. In 2006 Mr. Felten helped to expose vulnerabilities in a Diebold voting machine. And in 2001 he received a threatening letter from the recording industry about a speech he planned to deliver on unscrambling encrypted digital music. —Andrea L. Foster

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2826/e-voting-vendor-threatens-princeton-computer-scientists-with-legal-action

[Melissa G]

3. International n/t

[Melissa G]

17. Mexican opposition party elects new leader

(Hey, who needs the actual vote! The polling company can give you the scoop ahead of time...:eyes:)

Mexican opposition party elects new leader

The party's Electoral Committee cited figures given by polling group Consulta Mitofsky, which showed Encinas with 49.4 percent of vote and his main opponent, Jesús Ortega Martínez, with 44.6 percent. Although official results won't be released until Wednesday, much of the country's media has already declared Encinas the winner.

Roy Campos, president of Consulta Mitofsky, said that Encinas would remain in the lead after the rest of the votes were counted. "The trend is very clear," Encinas said in a television interview.

Sunday's vote was split between those who strongly oppose Felipe Calderón's presidency, like Encinas, and party moderates who favor negotiating with the government, like Ortega. The party has been this way ever since the 2006 presidential election, when Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador contested the results, believing he had defeated Calderón, and declared himself the "legitimate" president.

Encinas, who once served in Obrador's cabinet and doesn't recognize Calderón as president, said the party needs "a very important redesign" to avoid these kinds of disputes. Both sides accused the other of voting irregularities in Sunday's election, including vote-buying, intimidation, and improper handling of ballots.

Notimex, the government news agency, reported that a fight broke out at one polling place in Mexico City, and that several other stations had to be shut down.

http://www.mister-info.com/?cmd=displaystory&story_id=10326&format=html

[Melissa G]

4. Editorial n/t

[Melissa G]

12. It Ain't Over Till It's Over

An unusual source :) America Weekly, The National Catholic magazine...

It Ain't Over Till It's Over
Many pundits predict that the 2008 presidential election will be close no matter which Democrat runs against the probable Republican nominee, John McCain. If true, that may portend ill for the conduct of the race, which could be tougher and uglier than when one candidate enjoys a large majority of support. As both candidates try to attract the nation’s growing number of independents, party leaders must conduct massive voter registration drives. Current excitement over the primaries already has attracted more first-time voters than usual. Since participation is vital to democracy, citizens and civic-minded organizations (including churches) also should register voters and encourage voting in November. Voter turnout, however, is hardly the final step in the election process.

Rather, in light of the 2000 and 2004 elections, a host of practical and mechanical concerns—regarding ballots and voting machines able to produce a paper record for a recount—needs attention now. Just as crucial is the need to prevent irregularities at the polls that in effect disenfranchise some voters. Given the record turnout in primary after primary this year, how is it that Ohio failed to have enough ballots on hand for its voters? Which other states, cities or towns will be unprepared for the inevitable? Consider too the inadequately trained officials at local polling places. To ensure fairness and accuracy on election day, trained election monitors should be on hand. Elections are the finale of a long, arduous process. It takes years of effective planning to produce one day of grass-roots democracy at the ballot box.

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10696

[Melissa G]

18. Off to work. Please post more if you can! n/t

[pleah]

19. K&R

[Kurovski]

20. Kick to the top!

Thanks, Melissa G! :loveya: