BBV Serves it Up! Come and get it !

[galloglas]

(Permission granted to copy, distribute, reprint, or cite granted
- requires link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org, credit source.)

SIX MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS FOR ELECTIONS:

1) Diebold agrees to waive proprietary claims to GEMS database files
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/17793.html

This is big, and has nationwide implications as it can open up access
for Volusia County, San Diego County, DuPage County, and other
areas where questions have arisen on voting machine results.

Black Box Voting has been assisting the Alaska Democratic Party
in fighting for the right to obtain the Diebold "central tabulator"
database files.

The crux of the dispute: According to Alaska Democrats, official
results from Alaska's 2004 election are riddled with discrepancies
but the Alaska Division of Elections refused to turn over the
voting files to the Democrats, arguing that the data format belongs
to Diebold and can't be made public. Diebold told Alaska officials it
owns the "structure of the database."

Today, Diebold caved and released its proprietary claims. The
formal letter from Diebold and the implications of this, which are
significant, can be read at the link above.

AND THIS:

2) Though you may already have heard that the US Supreme Court
is getting a case on electronic voting, you may not have seen the
particulars.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/17790.html

Pennsylvania's Lynn Landes is fighting the suit in the Supreme Court
as a citizen, by herself, with no lawyer (called a "Pro Se" case). She
follows in the footsteps of the founder of Pennsyvlania, William Penn,
who himself fought a Pro Se case which established the power of
citizen juries in English and American jurisprudence. Others who
fought and won Pro Se cases include Nelson Mandela and Emma
Goldman. Landes, in taking this on by herself, honors the Sufragettes,
who also fought a seemingly unwinnable battle. (Until they won.)

Landes has asked the Supreme Court to examine the important issue
of financial penalities invoked against those who file civil rights cases.
She has also asked the court to allow her to have her voting civil rights
case heard. For an analysis of the important and creative issues in her
case, and to view the lawsuit itself, go to the link above, and also see
Lynn Landes's site: http://www.ecotalk.org/Lawsuit.htm

AND MORE: NEW DOCUMENTS

3) Important new information is coming out by way of transcripts and
depositions obtained by Black Box Voting. Grab some popcorn. These
documents are available here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/17789.html

The documents, which include personal sworn testimony by 23-count
felon (for computer crimes) Jeffrey Dean, who ended up creating the
programs that process ballots and votes in much of the USA, are
filled with new information:

- Dean achieved remote access into several California counties for
the 2000 election. He did this to run a "VoteRemote" program, and
it involved transferring data back and forth from his office in a suburb
of Seattle.

- Dean sold vaporware to the state of Colorado

- In one election, on software for an absentee ballot counter that
Dean helped create, Sacramento County was unable to get
results out of the system until days after the election

- The documents contain testimony indicating that Jeffrey Dean
began programming components for King County absentee balloting
while STILL IN PRISON.

- A great deal of new information is provided about how Dean got
involved in elections, how Global Election Systems took over Dean's
company (Spectrum), and then Diebold took over Global and Spectrum,
and other information of historical significance.

- The documents also contain copies of checks forged by Jeffrey Dean.

Even Black Box Voting has not read all of these documents yet. They
are hot off the scanner and full of surprises.

AND THIS: AN IMPORTANT ISSUE THAT HASN'T BEEN ADDRESSED:

4) What protects your personal information once it enters e-elections?

here are the kinds of databases that are and will be created with new
e-elections technology:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/17778.html

- Massive computerized statewide voter registration databases
- Voter identification cards and voter biometrics
- VoteRemote-style electronic signature databases
- Electronic poll check-in databases
- And proposed by some companies, databases for electronic
verification of your vote

Are there any laws at all that protect this kind of information from being
purchased by companies like Choicepoint, one of the nation's primary
resellers of personal information to homeland security, law enforcement
agents, employers, insurance agencies and direct marketing groups?

Choicepoint, according to the Atlanta Constitution and the Associated
Press, has purchased voter registration databases before. It has a
$60 million contract with the Department of Homeland Security, and
was one of the first clients to sign up with lobbyist "The Ashcroft Group"
-- run by former attorney general John Ashcroft.

Within 24 hours of publishing this story, which is about the issues that
remain to be addressed in the ethics and regulations of data-brokering
for elections information, the president of Choicepoint called Bev Harris.

In this surprising conversation, he revealed that his wife is on the board
of directors for VoteTrustUSA. He said he did not believe this needs to
be disclosed.

He pointed out that Black Box Voting erred in the article iin saying there
were ties with Choicepoint and Equifax, and Black Box Voting issued a
correction in the story to that effect.

For more information on Choicepoint, see EPIC.org:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/choicepoint/

5) This story was broken by BradBlog, and it's important:

A court has ordered a re-do of an election in Ohio, due to Diebold touch
screens recording too many votes.

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002379.htm

6) Volusia County poll tapes are up here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/15675.html

Black Box Voting found numerous irregularities in the poll tapes from
Volusia County's 2004 election. The images of the tapes are now
posted, along with a list of the anomalies.

Among the problems:

Precinct 215: Multiple anomalies including mismatched vote counts

Precinct 303: A white rectangle appears in the zero tape and the
public defender's race doesn't appear on zero tape

Precinct 305: A documented case of time travel? Reported date
on voting machine is 18,000 years in the future.

Precinct 417: Doozy of a time error on results report. Poll workers
noticed it, signed off on it, thinking the clock stamp on the results
report was about an hour off. However, the clock was actually
nearly 13 hours off. In fact, it had not advanced even one second
during the entire day while the voting machine was counting ballots.
This gets into a tech discussion of CPUs and clocks, and is very
difficult to explain.

Precinct 527: Race # 60 recorded "zero" votes for both ballot
choices (all other races did record votes). The long report shows
no undervotes.

About a dozen precincts have "memory card error" on the tape.
Tapes for dozens of precincts reveal that the machines were
not tested before the election.
Several time discrepancies, one zero report was run at 11 p.m.
with results appearing at midnight.

* * * * *

Black Box Voting is a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501c(3) elections
watchdog group funded solely by citizen donations. Black Box
Voting does not accept any grants for corporations with any
interest whatsoever in computerized systems, databases, or
elections systems.

In fact, Black Box Voting recently turned down a $25,000 grant
because it appeared to come with strings attached. This is rather
excruciating, but we feel it is necesary.

If you support our work and our nonpartisan approach, you may
express your support with your credit card here:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
or with your checkbook here:
330 SW 43rd St Suite K
PMB 547
Renton WA 98055



* * * -Black Box Voting

edit to preserve personal email link

[kster]

1. KICK-N-RECOMMENDED..NT

[bettyellen]

2. "Black Box Voting recently turned down a $25,000 grant"

from who?

i'm not suprised there's a fundraising appeal tacked on there, LOL.
well, i'm still waiting on that videotape, before i give another cent.

[autorank]

3. Things are coming to ahead. A few thousand diligent activists are

going to cause the pot of election fraud to boil over.

It's important to remember that this isn't new, it didn't just start in 2000 and it's more than just machines.

In colonial times, voters would ride to their polling place and be greeted with booze courtesy of the candidates. In Virginia, James Madison found this objectionable so one election, he refused to do this on principal. That was the only election he lost.

In "bloody Kansas" in the 1850's, election fraud played a key role in causing the Civil War. Residents of Kansas would vote on "free" versus "slave" status. Pro slavery men from Missouri would invade the state and vote producing elections with many more voters than citizens of Kansas. The Democrat Pres. Buchanan knew what was going on but never challenged it.

Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, Democrats lose 1-2% a year in national elections due to "spoiled" ballots which show up in predominantly black and Hispanic precincts. A comprehensive study by a Prof. Klinker showed that this cannot be explained by chance or any other expected factor. It's deliberate neglect of voting procedures and equipment. This has never been seriously challenged by our party.

And in the mid 80's Roy G. Saltzman outlined the problems with computer voting we have today in a report to the National Bureau of Standards (Federal).

Pile it on, we need all the findings, exposes, and publicity we can get---to motivate action to stop this fraud.

RECOMMENDED

[autorank]

4. Please Rate UP the news thread...it's languishing!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x412108