Be careful what you ask for: E-voting fraud coverage

[Atman]

There is a very good reason the vulnerability of e-voting machines is suddenly a big big story.

The republicans are getting their asses kicked. Even if they're doing NOTHING in the way of tampering with the machines, they've now firmly embedded the fraud meme into the tiny little pea brains of their supporters, giving them something to seethe about and repeat endlessly for the next two years. Their base will be able to "have faith" that the GOP is really still a bunch of good Christian conservatives, and it provides them a convenient punching bag to keep their rage up until 2008. "Democrats rigged the vote" will be the "It's Clinton's fault" of the next two years.

Hey, surprise, surprise, I'm a hopeless cynic. But I've seen too much of this shit, and I can find no plausible reason for this story to have been ignored for so long when everything they are reporting now could have been found by any reporter with five minutes at The Google.

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE. Our presence at the polls must be so overwhelming that anyone who tries to claim the vote was stolen by democrats will receive the appropriate level of ridicule and scorn.

.

[babylonsister]

1. No way. This story wasn't ignored, but it took a long time to get all

the pieces in place. Andy Stephenson was a major player in this, and he died last year.
I imagine we are lucky to be seeing this now, prior to next week. People will be crossing their t's and dotting their i's so as to prove they're not influencing anything. They know it's not going to be pretty and people will be watching.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. Regardless of what happens, we need verifiable voting.

[Warren DeMontague]

3. Fine by me, if it means getting rid of those damn machines.

All the better. And all the harder for them to whine about it being a "tinfoil conspiracy theory" when they start getting results they don't like.

[gerrilea]

4. Yep...thought the same thing a couple weeks ago...

They can blame their loss at the polls as election fraud...

But we should remind them of what we were told..."Get over it"...even though there was proof of fraud at the times...the media wouldn't even talk about voter fraud unless it was framed as a conspiracy theory or "sour grapes"...

I'll bet that if there are great losses on the repukes side that the close races will be decided in court...in a 1/2 a heart beat...

[shooga]

5. DieBold is full of Republican Plants:

Associated Press Associated Press | Also by this reporter 2003-12-17 18:23:00.0
SAN FRANCISCO -- At least five convicted FELONS secured management positions at a manufacturer of electronic voting machines, according to critics demanding more stringent background checks for people responsible for voting machine software.

Voter advocate Harris alleged Tuesday that managers of a subsidiary of DIEBOLD, one of the country's largest voting equipment vendors, included a COCAINE trafficker, a man who conducted FRAUDULENT STOCK TRANSACTIONS and a programmer JAILED for FALSIFYING COMPUTER RECORDS.

The programmer, Jeffrey Dean, wrote and maintained proprietary code used to count hundreds of thousands of votes as senior vice president of Global Election Systems, or GES. DIEBOLD purchased GES in January 2002.

According to a public court document released before GES hired him, Dean served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that "involved a high degree of sophistication and planning."

"You can't tell me these people passed background tests," Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century, said in a phone interview.

DIEBOLD spokesman Michael Jacobsen emphasized that the company performs background checks on all managers and programmers. He said many GES managers -- including Dean -- left at the time of the acquisition.

"We can't speak for the hiring process of a company before we acquired it," Jacobsen said. He would not provide further details, saying company policy bars discussion of current or past employees.

The former GES is DIEBOLD's wholly owned subsidiary, Global Election Management Systems, which produces the operating system that touch-screen voting terminals use.

Dean could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) announced a bill last week that would require stringent background checks on all electronic voting company employees who work with voting software. The bill, which Boxer plans to introduce in January, would toughen security standards for voting software and hardware, and require touch-screen terminals to include printers and produce paper backups of vote counts by the 2004 presidential election in November.

Harris and Andy Stephenson, a Democratic candidate for secretary of state in Washington, conducted a 10-day investigation in Seattle and Vancouver, where the men were convicted. Harris and Stephenson released the findings in a 17-page document online and at a news conference in Seattle.

Also Tuesday, Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed announced legislation that would require electronic voting machines in the state to produce a paper trail.

If the legislature approves it, touch-screen machines in the state would be required to produce paper receipts by 2006.

Voters would get to see but not touch or remove the receipts, which would be kept in a county lock box. Computer programmers say software bugs, hackers or electrical failures could cause more than 50,000 touch-screen machines used in precincts nationwide to delete or alter votes.

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley said last month that touch-screens in the nation's most populous state must provide paper receipts by 2006.