Tag Archives: voting machines

Scientific American, CBS News, AP, CNN, Wash.Post, NYT discuss U.S. Voting Machine Flaws

This was forwarded to me by Utah: Count Votes!

Dear Citizens and Voters,

Recent (August) articles and videos by Scientific American, The Associated Press, CBS News, The NY Times, The Washington Post, a top Republican cyber-security expert, and others, discuss the flaws of
U.S. voting machines.

These articles and videos are particularly important because our national press has not until now diligently informed us on election integrity and voting system issues.

Of specific interest are:

1.  the videos by Republican security expert Stephen Spoonamore,

2. articles by Ph.D. computer scientists rebutting the recent book
“Electronic Elections” by e-voting proponents,

3. *Today’s* CNN’s Lou Dobbs report that Diebold/Premier has publicly admitted that its machines drop votes from entire touch-screen memory cards and has warned all jurisdictions that use its machines of the
“bug” that can lose hundreds of votes in each county.  (Lou Dobbs video should be publicly available on U-Tube by tomorrow.)

NOTE: Any very close recent election outcomes implemented Diebold/Premier touchscreen voting machines are in doubt.

———

Please read these articles or view these videos and support strong,
scientific post-election auditing procedures.

RECENT ARTICLES:

AP & USA Today:  States throw out costly electronic voting machines
Aug. 19, 2008
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jej6XIWrQn6-gw5O5bJa1ELx78DgD92LK3E00
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jej6XIWrQn6-gw5O5bJa1ELx78DgD92LLDO00
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-08-19-electronic-voting_N.htm

Scientific American: Planning to E-Vote? Read This First, Aug. 18, 2008
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=electronic-election-day

CBS News: Voting Machine Doubts Linger, Aug. 16, 2008
Concerns Over Vulnerability Of Electronic Machines Sending Many States
Back To Paper Ballots
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/16/eveningnews/main4355733.shtml

NY Times: Officials Say Flaws at Polls Will Remain in November, Aug. 16, 2008
[NOTE: Officials in two states admit that their voting machines are
not accurately casting or counting votes]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/us/politics/16vote.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/us/politics/16vote.html

Washington Post: Ohio Voting Machines Contained Programming Error That Dropped Votes, Aug. 21, 2008 [Note: States like MD with paperless voting cannot detect these errors in their vote counts using audits.
States like OH and UT can detect the dropped votes *if* they do valid audits (Utah does not. Ohio does)]
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/08/21/ohio_voting_machines_contained.html

Company acknowledges voting machine error, Aug. 21, 2008
http://www.ohio.com/news/ap?articleID=688274&c=y

Did Washington waste millions on faulty voting machines? Aug 15, 2008
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/election2008/story/48508.html

Voting System Standards: All Form and No Substance, June 12, 2008
http://washburnsworld.blogspot.com/2008/06/voting-system-standards-all-form-and-no.html

Opinion – Help Our Veterans Vote, Aug. 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/opinion/11bysiewicz.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Editorial – The Right to Vote, Aug. 9, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/opinion/09sat1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Editorial – A Bad Electronic Voting Bill, Aug. 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/opinion/03sun2.html?_r=3&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

States seek workarounds for e-voting systems
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/803

Veterans focus of Dem voting law reform
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12624.html

How do you compare security across voting systems? Aug. 19, 2008 by Dan Wallach, Rice U. Computer Scientist [This paper refutes the work of two political scientists Thad Hall (U. of Utah) and Michael Alvarez
(CA IT) (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8641.html)  who support e-voting and claim that “paper ballots would fail to meet the standards to which e-voting is held.” The computer scientists’ conclusion is that “Of voting technologies presently on the market and certified for use in most states, precinct-based optical scanning systems appear to have the best resistance to security attacks, based on our complexity analysis.” ]
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1367
http://accurate-voting.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/risk-eval-final.pdf
http://www.josephhall.org/nqb2/index.php/2008/08/16/nakedeval
definitions:
O(1) attacks where one or a handful of attackers can change an
arbitrary number of ballots
O(P) attacks where you may need to get all P poll workers involved if
you want to tamper with N ballots
O(N) attacks that require you to bribe each voter individually

States rush to dump touch-screen voting systems, Aug. 21, 2008
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080820-states-rush-to-dump-touchscreen-voting-systems.html

Vote fraud, crumbling democracy’s bedrock, Aug. 21, 2008
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20080822_Vote_fraud__crumbling_democracy_s_bedrock.html

RECENT VIDEOS:

Republican Cyber Security expert, Stephen Spoonamore,  says Diebold is
stealing elections (see segment #3):
Segment #1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAyEfovA404
Segment #2  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTBLfgos5b8&feature=related
Segment #3  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzKbigGoMoo&feature=related
Segment #4  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vNvweInGFs&feature=related
Segment #5  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX8fRwsTpoQ&feature=related

U-Tube UNCOUNTED CLIPS:
Each week until the election  UNCOUNTED will release a clip because
people need to see stories that will motivate them to stand up and
help save our democracy.

WEEK 7: The Electronic Voting Machine Hokey Pokey (You Put Your Right
Vote In. It Spits Your Wrong Vote Out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqsL-KNiYJ8
Week 6:   The Sleeping Media  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdpclsWYomM
Week 5: Playing to Win with a Full Deck of Race Cards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-irWqvhpDo
Week 4: The Athan Gibbs Story http://youtube.com/watch?v=c8ewsDxXQD4
Week 3: [Utah discovery] Diebold’s Disreputable Distinction is Dead On
Deserved  http://youtube.com/watch?v=zwHX7zDVkuc
Week 2: Miller Dollar Programmer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7tjnuG-l6g
Week 1:  The Ballad of Steve Heller  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkhXzW32Rrs

TO OBTAIN A COPY OF THE FILM UNCOUNTED: http://www.uncountedthemovie.com

————
LWV, US links you to your State information. http://www.VOTE411.org
Check to be certain that you are registered to vote about a month
prior to the election.


The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author Kathy Dopp’s fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at

P.O. Box 680192
Park City, UT 84068
phone 435-658-4657

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://electionarchive.org

How to Effectively Audit Election Outcome Accuracy
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/VoteCountAuditBillRequest.pdf

History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of
Election Auditing Fundamentals
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pd 

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

GREEN PARTY FIELDS NUMEROUS REPORTS OF VOTING

Illinois Green Party http://www.ilgp.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, FEBRUARY 5, 2008

CONTACT:
Patrick Kelly, ILGP Media Coordinator,
773-203-9631, media@ilgp.org
Phil Huckelberry, Chair, ILGP Government &
Elections Committee, 309-268-9974,
phil.huckelberry@ilgp.org
Tom Abram, Media Committee, 847-814-6947,
tabram@gmail.com

GREEN PARTY FIELDS NUMEROUS REPORTS OF VOTING
IRREGULARITIES IN CHICAGO, ELSEWHERE

Voters who hoped to participate in the Illinois’ first ever statewide Green Party primary are receiving a very rude reception at many polling places, especially in Chicago.

In the early hours of voting, Green Party officials began receiving reports from frustrated voters across the state who, in many cases, had been told by pollworkers that there are no Green Party ballots available at their polling places, or that they had to vote on suspect electronic
voting machines, even while other parties use paper ballots.

Some of the most outrageous incidents, however, occurred across the wards of Chicago, where Green Party ballots have been apparently tampered with so they can’t be read and accepted by voting machines, voters are given Democratic ballots despite requesting Green ballots.

What follows are a few examples of reports. Check http://www.ilgp.org for more reports as they are received. More information will also be available at the Green Party gathering tonight at Decima Musa Restaurant, 1901 S. Loomis, Chicago (in Pilsen).

1st WARD, 26th PRECINCT

A voter reports that all of the Green Party ballots had been folded in half, causing them to not feed through the machine properly. The Republican and Democratic ballots were not folded. Because his first ballot kept getting rejected by the machine, the voter was asked by pollworkers to fill out another Green Party ballot, which also had been previously folded. That ballot was not able to be read and was rejected as well.

25th WARD, 8th PRECINCT

Pollworkers didn’t have any green ballots available and were asking voters if they wanted a Democratic or Republican ballot (but not Green ballots).

25th WARD, 24th PRECINCT

A voter asked for a Green Party ballot three times, and was given a Democratic paper ballot
each time. Finally, on the fourth time, the voter was told only touch screen available for Greens.

31st WARD

Mary Ann Esler, Green Party Committeewoman in the 31st Ward, went in to vote in the Green Primary this morning. The election judges refused to give her a Green Party ballot. The Democratic Precinct Captain, who was supervising the judges told them that there were no ballots for the Green Primary because the Green candidates were running unopposed.

The confrontation ended when Mary found the ballots hidden under some papers on the judge’s table. The judges then went into a big huddle with the Democratic Precinct Captain while Mary marked her ballot.

35th WARD

Jeremy Karpen, live blogging from the 35th Ward polling place, gives the following reports:

9:00am: After reporting an election judge for not orally offering Green Party ballots (when he is offering Dem and Rep) he was visited by the Board of Elections and then he called me [an expletive]. I asked him first to either list all three ballots or simply ask people what ballot they prefer, he said “I can if I want to.”

9:09am: Craig (my committeeman and roommate) was just handed a “green” democratic ballot and got all the way to the little voting booth before he realized what had happened. Dear lord.

9:45am: The Election Judge, who now seems to have an attitude, when asked if Green is a real party, said “unfortunately” and stated that it “isn’t a real party.” The person he was talking to was an electioneer for Bradley’s campaign and not a voter but there certainly were other voters in the room.

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=188400239&blogID=354973039

47th WARD

A voter was told there were no Green Party ballots. During a call to report the incident, the pollworkers told him that he could vote using an electronic voting machine, but they did not have any paper ballots available (although paper ballots were available for the Republican and Democratic parties).

50th WARD, 5th PRECINCT

Green committeeman reports that the election judge is only offering Republican and Democratic ballots.

COOK COUNTY, NORTHBROOK

An election judge reports that judges were instructed to keep a tally of Green voters on a tally sheet that numbers up to 50. There is no such tally for the Democrats and Republicans.

COOK COUNTY, NORTHFIELD TOWNSHIP, 44th PRECINCT

A voter writes: “At approximately 11:30 am, at the polling place at 74 Park Drive, Glenview, Green Party ballots were still in shrink wrap, in
the box, in the cabinet. Officials at the desk were indignant about my disappointment, and challenged me to “have credentials” in order to
register my complaint.

DUPAGE COUNTY, MILTON TOWNSHIP, 28th PRECINCT

A pollwatcher reports that and election judge asks voter “which parties’ primary ballot do you want?” The voter seemed confused by the question and the judge clarified by stating “Republican or Democrat”. The pollwatcher immediately interjected and corrected the judge and asked her to please state all three parties in the primary from now on.

DUPAGE COUNTY, MILTON TOWNSHIP, 44th PRECINCT

A voter writes: “A judge repeatedly tried to give me a Democratic ballot, which I refused. The Green ballots were still wrapped up and semi-out of sight.  As I approached the tables, I could hear only “Republican or Democrat?” over and over.

JACKSON COUNTY, MURPHYSBORO, 12th PRECINCT

A voter writes: “As I was leaving, the head lady was making a call about getting more Green ballots because they had only been sent three and at 7:30a they had already used 2 of them and she was worried about a run on Green voters.”

MORE REPORTS AVAILABLE ON ILGP.ORG AS THEY COME IN.

My voting experience

Salt Lake County decided to consolidate polling places and as a result there were long lines.  I went to vote after work and arrived at my polling place at around 6:30pm.  I waiting in a long line outside for about 1/2 hour and another 1/2 hour inside (including voting time).  Not only that, there was only one table with one person checking off names with one assistant.

What’s up with that?

I will elaborate in my actual vote expereience at a later time.  There’s some news coming down the pike about vote machines in which I will be involved.

More on Voting Maching Troubles

From Kathy Dopp:

Here is just ONE (1) day of news stories re. electronic voting problems in November 7 election (stories are continuing to unfold). One county using Diebold voting machines in another state has still not announced their election results due to memory card failures. Utah county’s “glitch” disenfranchised voters and touchscreens caused long lines in Utah. Federal law only requires ONE (1) touchscreen voting machine in each polling place for the disabled to use – Utah could use optical scan paper ballots which are conveniently manually auditable, voter verified, less expensive, cause no long lines; and are not susceptible to power outages, denial of service attacks, and vote flipping attacks. Is there any reason to trust insufficiently manually audited invisible e-ballots which are secretly counted by proprietary humanly-unreadable machine language software on voting machines whose components are made in China, Canada, and various U.S. states?
————————————————————————
It took over 24 hours for Cook Co. Illinois to count their votes. That’s with their brand-new Smartmatic clone Sequoia voting machines. County Clerk David Orr conceded that the hardware and software being used should be re-examined. / One of the striking problems that has come up around the country is the reason for long lines in many places. They just didn’t buy enough machines for the turnout they had. Another boon for the vendors when all they really needed to do was buy one Precinct-Based Optical Scan (PBOS) for each precinct and there would have been no need to go out and buy more DRE machines. And the cause of the long lines in Denver; poorly written, poorly tested voter registration software from Sequoia.

Other articles:
Continue reading

Manual Audit of Summit County Today

Kathy Dopp, Desert Greens candidate for Summit County Clerk sent this today:

In Summit County, the manual audit is being held today (Monday) at 10 a.m. at the County Building.

I assume that the manual audits are also being held today in other counties, but please call your own county clerk to find out for sure.

In Summit County, the final canvass is being held on Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the County Courthouse.

It would be great to go observe the manual audit and final vote canvass for your county. I’ve been told that the public may observe the manual audit, even though the written procedures do not require it – except to say a counting poll worker or watcher may observe – which I think means that anyone appointed by a political party or a candidate may observe.

We have an time critical need here in Utah. Please help find a Utah Senator and Utah Congressional Rep in the Utah Legislature to sponsor our independent audit legislation:

Click to access VoteCountAudit-UT.pdf

based on scientifically agreed-upon election audit principles (posted at the National Institute of Standards and Technology web site):

Click to access ElectionIntegrityAudit.pdf

Kathy Dopp
http://electionarchive.org
National Election Data Archive
Dedicated to Accurately Counting Elections
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Please donate or volunteer.

GETTING OVER IT – The Citizen Push for Election Integrity

From Bruce Funk in Emery County, who was locked out of his own office to keep him from going to work after having computer scientists discover that Diebold had sold Utah used, refjected voting machines from other states with security holes big enough to drive a truck through.

Share your voting experience with the US League of Women Voters  or attempt to inform them about other sites where problems voters had are listed.

 
E L E C T I O N    F O L L O W – U P    A L E R T

Election Day may be over but we’d like to hear about your voting experience. We’ve designed a survey to allow you to share your voting experience with the League. It is your personal story, Kathy, along with other statistics, that will provide the basis for Election Day 2006 follow-up.

If you voted a provisional ballot, we want to remind you to follow-up with your local elections official because you may need to show ID or proof of registration in order for your provisional ballot to be counted. All states have a free access system for voters to use to find out if their provisional ballot was counted. For more information on provisional voting, please check the state specific information on www.VOTE411.org or call one of the free hotlines listed on our 5 Things You Need To Know On Election Day cards.

We look forward to hearing from you and continuing our work to educate voters and improve the election system.

Sincerely,

Mary G. Wilson
Mary G. Wilson
President, League of Women Voters of the United States

PROTECT YOUR VOTE!

5 Things You Need to Know on Election Day

Read these important tips!

Election Day Problems? Call Toll Free:
1-866-MYVOTE1 OR 1-866-OUR-VOTE OR 1-888-VE-Y-VOTA

Join Us in Making Democracy Work at www.lwv.org

More on Voting Machines and Voting Today

Voting Machine Update

Voting machine encoders fail in Utah County
ABC 4 – Salt Lake City,USA
says voting machine encoders, used to program individual user cards have been incorrectly programmed, causing delays for many voters, primarily in Utah County.

Voters Experience Glitches At Some Utah Locations
KUTV – Salt Lake City,UT,USA
(KUTV) SALT LAKE CITY Election Day is underway and there are already reports of voting machine problems. The biggest is in Utah County where they were having

UPDATE: Voting machine glitch causes big delays, county says
Daily Herald – Provo,UT,USA
There were problems with the encoders at most, if not all, of the polls in Utah County, said Sandy Hoffmann, elections coordinator for Utah County, but all of

Early Morning Voting Machine Problems Reported in Utah County
New West – Missoula,MT,USA
By Tracy Medley, 11-07-06. Some voters in Utah County were turned away this morning because of technical difficulties with the new electronic voting machines.