OPEN THREAD Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News, Wednesday 04/23/08

[Melissa G]

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


"It's Official! Paper BALLOTS for the State of New York!"

see post 6 for details!

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


2. Post stories using the 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.




Please "Recommend" for the Greatest Page (it's the link just below).
Thank You!

[Melissa G]

1. States n/t

[Melissa G]

6. NY-It's Official! Paper BALLOTS for the State of New York!

BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 4/23/2008 3:08PM
It's Official! Paper BALLOTS for the State of New York!
Last of the DRE (Touch-Screen) Voting Machine Vendors Withdraws Attempt for Certification in the Empire State
Though There Remains Plenty About Which to Remain Vigilant...
Congrats to Bo Lipari and the NY Verified Voting crew, on a milestone in their long, and continuing fight for election integrity in the state of New York. Writes Lipari this morning:

It's now official. Liberty Election Systems has withdrawn their DRE from the New York State and has informed the State Board of Elections that they will not pursue further certification testing or fill their one current order. LibertyVote/Nedap was the only remaining vendor offering a DRE in New York. The move represents the end of an era in New York State, and could be a harbinger for what lies ahead in the rest of the nation...
...
So for the first time since HAVA passed in 2002, New York State has no DREs of any type being purchased by any county, or undergoing NYS certification testing for 2009 purchases. For the vendors who for 6 years told us “New York is a DRE state”, we tell you now as we told you then, “Wrong. New York is a paper ballot state.”
Now, of course, the fight will continue to make sure the state actually bothers to count those paper ballots when they get them, as it will be error-prone, hackable, optical-scan devices that are purchased across the state.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5922

[Melissa G]

2. National n/t

[Melissa G]

8. Both Obama and Clinton camps claim lead in popular votes

Both Obama and Clinton camps claim lead in popular votes
By NEDRA PICKLER – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — If numbers don't lie, the Democratic presidential race is proving they can confuse: Both campaigns claim they are ahead in the popular vote.

The day after her big win in Pennsylvania, Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that she now has more votes than anybody who has ever run for president in a Democratic primary.

Not so fast, Barack Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, told reporters in a conference call. Obama has a comfortable lead in the popular vote and doesn't expect to lose it by the time voting ends June 3, Plouffe said.

So who is right?

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gddKleD2qYirWThIy2QEDnn5Z1TAD907Q61G0

[Melissa G]

9. We Can't Afford Even One E-Voting Morris Worm

We Can't Afford Even One E-Voting Morris Worm
from the catastrophic-failure dept

Over at CNet, Declan McCullagh has an interview with probably the most prominent computer scientist who supports paperless e-voting, Michael Shamos. In a wide-ranging discussion, Shamos acknowledges that e-voting isn't perfect but insists that every voting system has its flaws, and that e-voting can be made to work better than either paper ballots or touch-screen machines with paper trails (which he points out tend to jam a lot). Mike already pointed out some problems with Shamos's analysis, and you can check out Dan Wallach's post for a comprehensive rebuttal. But I found one of Shamos's comments particularly striking. He says:

Remember Robert Tappan Morris and the Internet worm? I would get worried if we start to see systematic evidence (of increasingly robust) attacks. But we've never seen any of those.
Shamos is referring to probably the most famous malware attack in the history of the Internet. In 1988, a grad student named Robert Morris created a worm that infected hundreds, if not thousands, of computers across the Internet. It was by far the most damaging Internet worm up until that time, and as a proportion of all hosts on the Internet, probably still ranks among the most successful worms in Internet history. The important point for our purposes is that nobody saw the Morris worm coming. The security vulnerabilities exploited by the Morris worm were known ahead of time, but few people other than the worm's author realized their seriousness.

Of course, once the Morris worm brought the Internet grinding to a halt for several days, everyone became acutely aware of the importance of security, and so they quickly fixed the bugs Morris had exploited. And luckily, at this point the Internet was still a relatively small, academic network, so while it cost millions of dollars of work to clean up the mess, no irreparable damage was done. But there wasn't a series of "increasingly robust" attacks leading up to the Morris worm that could have provided fair warning to Internet users of the day. The Morris Worm was a lot more sophisticated and successful than anything that had come before it. And by the same token, there's no reason to think that the bad guys will give us some advance warning by incompetently trying to steal a few city council seats before they disrupt a presidential election. If we continue to vote on insecure e-voting machines, we run the risk that our first clue that something is wrong will be when the voting machines in a key swing state "malfunction," throwing the presidential election into turmoil. I don't think we can afford to take that risk.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080421/200852907.shtml

[Melissa G]

17. Cybercrime and Politics: The Dangers of the Internet in Elections

Cybercrime and Politics: The Dangers of the Internet in Elections

* By Markus Jakobsson, Zulfikar Ramzan
* Apr 23, 2008



This chapter is from the book
Crimeware: Understanding New Attacks and Defenses
This chapter focuses on the 2008 presidential election to demonstrate the risks involved in using the Internet in campaigning. It analyzes the attack vectors that would be most likely to have an immediate and material effect on an election, affecting voters, candidates, or campaign officials.

* Oliver Friedrichs

While we first saw the Internet used extensively during the 2004 U.S. presidential election, its use in future presidential elections will clearly overshadow those humble beginnings. It is important to understand the associated risks as political candidates increasingly turn to the Internet in an effort to more effectively communicate their positions, rally supporters, and seek to sway critics. These risks include, among others, the dissemination of misinformation, fraud, phishing, malicious code, and the invasion of privacy. Some of these attacks, including those involving the diversion of online campaign donations, have the potential to threaten voters' faith in the U.S. electoral system.

The analysis in this chapter focuses on the 2008 presidential election to demonstrate the risks involved, but our findings may just as well apply to any future election. Many of the same risks that we have grown accustomed to on the Internet can also manifest themselves when the Internet is expanded to the election process.

It is not difficult for one to conceive of numerous attacks that might present themselves and, to varying degrees, influence the election process. One need merely examine the attack vectors that already affect consumers and enterprises today to envision how they might be applied to this process. In this chapter, we have chosen to analyze those attack vectors that would be most likely to have an immediate and material effect on an election, affecting voters, candidates, or campaign officials.
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1190114

[Melissa G]

3. International n/t

[Melissa G]

7. Zimbabwe ruling party raises prospect of joint government

Zimbabwe ruling party raises prospect of joint government
By ANGUS SHAW – 1 hour ago

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe's ruling party is floating the idea of a government of national unity led by President Robert Mugabe as a way out of a political crisis that has dragged on for weeks.

The overture, given a prominent place in the state-owned Herald newspaper Wednesday, could create room for discussion and diplomacy — even if the opposition has rejected any role for Mugabe in a possible coalition for this struggling southern African country.

The Herald also reported that the first results from a recount of 23 parliamentary races from March 29 elections confirmed a victory for Mugabe's ZANU-PF party in a district east of the capital.

Initial returns showed Mugabe's party losing control of parliament for the first time since independence from Britain in 1980, and the opposition and international critics of the regime fear the recount is designed to overturn that result and bolster the president.

No results at all have been released for the residential race, which opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is widely believed to have won. International pressure has been growing on Mugabe to report results and ensure they are not rigged in his favor.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jaGkiD_oeuNCWUEr7YyXikc7dKZQD907PVT00

[Melissa G]

4. Editorial n/t

[Melissa G]

10. No way we can trust the electronic ballot machines

No way we can trust the electronic ballot machines

To the Editor:

I have one simple question: Why don't our electronic voting machines provide a receipt or other form of paper trail that can be audited?

The cornerstone of a democratic nation is fair elections. So we must ask ourselves how well our democracy is functioning when there is no way to ensure that our votes are being counted accurately.

There is no way to prevent fraud or manipulation of vote totals. In fact, there are many cases of totals being changed via different computer programs that flip votes, undercount votes, overcount, or simply disenfranchise voters. If the U.S. saw a voting system such as ours in place in some emerging democratic nation, they would declare it unfair and contest the election results. We must now, sadly, do the same for our own nation. We disputed Ukraine's election results as inaccurate and corrupted a few years back, and they now have, after changes, a much more accurate voting system than we do.

Our voting machines are made by international corporations (Diebold is the leader). It has been proven many times that their voting machines can be hacked into by any who can write computer code. Not to mention the vested interests the CEO of Diebold may have in helping a certain candidate to win.

snip

Let's join together and demand that our precincts either use machines that produce a paper trail, or go back to the old paper ballots. Write to our County Board of Elections and U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett and let them know your concerns, so that we may have an accurate vote in November. We must protect this most important right and duty of each citizen.

Tim Meadors

http://www.times-news.com/opinion/local_story_114093120.html?keyword=secondarystory

[Melissa G]

11. Once Again

Headlined on 4/23/08:
Once Again

by Steven D on Booman Tribune (Posted by Richmond Gardner) Page 1 of 1 page(s)

http://www.opednews.com

by Steven D
Wed Apr 23rd, 2008 at 07:54:15 AM EST

Once again we have an election where the exit polls don't match the actual vote, where examples of voter suppression efforts abound in areas largely supporting one candidate (Obama), where not enough voting machines were available in areas largely supporting one candidate (Obama), where voters were even denied their right to vote on provisional ballots as required by federal law, etc. I could provide the details to support these claims, but Brad Blog has already done a far better job than I ever could. So if you are interested go visit his site for the detailed support for these strange and curious events reported at the Pennsylvania polls yesterday.

All I can say is this is all awfully reminiscent of my experiences in Cleveland, Ohio in 2004 as a volunteer for Election Protection. The same issues about broken machines, insufficient numbers of voting machines, voters mysteriously purged from voting rolls, long lines at polling places in one candidate's strongholds, exit polls off significantly, etc. Now maybe as BooMan suggests, a lot of white people lied to the exit pollsters, but I don't believe that. If the lying was to occur, I'd think it would be most likely to happen in the the numerous poll results produced prior to votes actually being cast, not after. And of course, all the votes were tallied on voting machines with no paper trail, and which have previously been shown to be easily hackable and/or incorrectly register votes cast for one candidate to another, or otherwise fail to register votes properly. But that's just one old white guy's opinion.

more...http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_booman_t_080423_once_again.htm

[Melissa G]

18. Public should be able to see election records

Opinion
Public should be able to see election records
Our view: Technology shouldn't negate the people's right to check voting results
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 04.23.2008

Pima County seems to have learned some lessons from the monumentally botched handling of voting during the Presidential Preference Election in February.

The county is also planning steps to enhance the security of its election system, but it is fighting to keep its election results database confidential.

First the good news. On Monday, the county announced that its first Poll Worker Academy will begin in May. Officials hope to train 2,400 potential poll workers by August, according to a memo from Brad Nelson, director of the Pima County elections division.

After a six-hour class, each pupil will taken a written test. Those who fail will either be assigned limited roles on the next election day or won't be allowed to work in a polling place, Nelson said.

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/235549

[Melissa G]

5. Action n/t

[Melissa G]

12. We still Need ER News Daily Editors. You can help!

PM Me, Melissa G for details or check in on this thread below...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3155118&mesg_id=3155118

[smith7745]

14. election machine menu

[tbyg52]

22. Hi smith 7745!

Welcome to DU!

Maybe it's just too early in the morning for me (not sleeping, might as well get on the 'puter), but can you tell me the meaning of what's shown on the screens?

[smith7745]

23. ES&S iVotronic

photos taken in Pennsylvania on 4/22/08. Use of the menu on the display unknown. The cartridge (PEB) was in the machine at the time.

[Melissa G]

13. That's all I can do for today. Have to go to a campaign debate tonight.

Post away folks! I'll check in after the debate if I can.
Love,
Melissa

[tbyg52]

15. All I can do today is K,R,&thank.

And hope some kind soul will take Wednesdays!

[Melissa G]

19. Thanks! That got us to Greatest so maybe some folks will help us out while we are sleeping!

Nighty night!!!:hi:

[kster]

16. K&R.nt

[Kurovski]

20. kick to the top, and thanks!

:hug:

[Mnemosyne]

21. Early morning thanks, another rec and a

:kick:

I'll try to jump in and help out some tomorrow when I have a few. :hi: