The Free Press confirms installation secret justification of uncertified election tabulation softwar

[Mc Mike]

35. I still have the Tech's business card.

He didn't swap memory cards out. He used the master PEB (yellow coded) cart, for our precinct (Ward 19, Precinct 4), which is used for set up and break down the Ivotronic, instead of using the Supervisory PEB cart (the red coded voting cart). He nserted it to access the diagnostic tool. I watched the big mouthed repug poll worker from 19, 3 let him use her Master PEB cart and do it on her machines before he came over to our section of the polling place. I questioned him, got his card, and watched him access the diagnostic, and saw the pretty graphics of voltage dips and swells. (This was the '07 mayor's race, which led me to raise concern in the '08 training for the presidential election.) But I thought at the time that they could show me a 'Space Invaders' graphic if they wanted to, and still 'Check Voltage' = Vote flip.

I'm an electrician (IBEW Local Union 5), so I know how to check voltages, but we're not talking receptacle source voltage, instead it's internal machine voltage, and the Ivotronics lack a diagnostic port. At least our machines did, in the 5 elections where I set up and broke down the machines. At any rate, the orange light at the back of the machine, by the power strip, will light up to show that the machine is getting ac voltage instead of working off of battery voltage, as I was informed in my spring of '07 training, and none of the machines were experiencing trouble, so it seemed senseless to mess with them.

The young technician worked in IT for the Planning Division of the Allegheny County Economic Development Dept., and was pressed into service for tech trouble shooting for the elections division, during election day of '07. He was just obeying orders, and if anything sinister was occurring, may not have been in the know. Both precinct 3 and 4 went repug for mayor in '07, and Dems have a 24 to 7 edge in registered voters around here. The race went to the Dems, but our precincts didn't. Doesn't matter.

But I still have the tech's card, and a written record of O'Brien's day and time of call to me, and the number he called from, and a record of my calls to Common Cause's 866 MY VOTE 1 hotline, and PFAW's 866 OUR VOTE hotline, and correspondences with the LWV's Vote411 website, and Fitrakis and Wasserman's FreePress, and the rest.

I 'pre-complained' in '08 to everyone. Our county didn't wind up experiencing a vote flip to repug, so I didn't need to follow up with an actual complaint, after the election. For my pre-complaining efforts, despite running several prior flawless elections at 19, 4's poll, I was suddenly deluged by a ton of problems. I documented them all and still have the documentation, right down to the problem machine serial number. At the end of the '08 final election, there was no issue for which elections officials could fault my handling of the machines or polls, (and I also worked elections after that, without any difficulties). But I got the drift. Since I pointed out the possible problem, all of the sudden a bunch of problems popped up that I had to field, like I was getting tossed an increasing number of raw eggs to juggle, so they could say for the record, election problems come from Mike, instead of Mike says election problems come from them. They still didn't leave me with egg on my face.