Fair Voting Watch

The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru

2010-02-17T07:06:00.000-08:00

Since this is related to voting and possible vote-stealing, I thought I'd toss this one on the pile!

http://www.maxim.com/humor/stupid-fun/86265/mysterious-death-bushs-cyber-guru.html

The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru
Posted Wednesday 02/10/2010
Simon Worrall

Shortly before six o’clock on the evening of December 19, 2008, a man standing outside his home in Lake Township, Ohio heard the whine of an engine in the sky above him.

Moments later two red lights broke through the low clouds, heading almost directly toward the ground. It was a light aircraft, and for a second, as it descended below the tree line, the man thought it would climb back up. Instead, there was a terrible thud, and the sky turned orange. When the fire crews arrived, they found the burning wreckage of a Piper Saratoga strewn across a vacant lot. The plane had narrowly missed a house, but the explosion was so intense that the home’s plastic siding was on fire. So was the grass. The pilot had been thrown from the plane and died instantly. Body parts and pieces of twisted metal were scattered everywhere. A prayer book lay open on the ground, its pages on fire.

The crash would have remained a private tragedy confined to the pages of the local press and the hearts of the pilot’s widow and four children, but within days the blogosphere was abuzz with rumors and conspiracy theories: The plane, it was said, had been sabotaged and the pilot murdered to cover up the GOP’s alleged theft of the Ohio vote in the 2004 presidential election.

At the center of this plot was the Saratoga’s pilot, a prodigiously gifted IT expert named Michael Connell, whose altar boy charm and technical brilliance had made him the computer whiz of choice for the Republican Party. Left-wing Web sites openly referred to Connell as “Bush’s vote rigger” and claimed that his fingerprints were on all the most controversial elections in recent history. There were dark whispers of electronic pulses or sniper fire being used to bring down the plane—a black ops attack designed to keep him from testifying against his former cronies. Right-wing bloggers and talk show hosts derided such claims as the twisted delusions of liberal nut jobs and tinfoil hatters. The mainstream press sat on its hands.

But while the rumors, innuendos, and allegations continue to swirl through the ether, evidence has recently emerged that suggests the Ohio vote may have been hacked, and that Connell was involved.

Born in 1963 in Peoria, Illinois into a large Irish-American family, Michael Connell was a lifelong Republican and a devout Roman Catholic who went to Mass every day and wore a wristband saying what would jesus do? What Connell did was realize the potential of the Internet to shape politics. While still in his 20s, he worked as finance director for Republican Congressman Jim Leach, and as director of voter programs for Senator Dan Coats of Indiana. In 1988 Connell developed a voter contact database for George H. W. Bush, thus inaugurating a long association with the Bush family: Connell worked on Jeb’s gubernatorial campaign in Florida in 1998; two years later he was the chief architect of George W. Bush’s Web site as Dubya launched his bid for the White House.

But it was while serving as tech guru to Karl Rove that Connell developed his deepest and perhaps most problematic professional relationship. Recruited in the late ’80s, Connell became Rove’s most trusted cyberlieutenant: a Web wizard who could turn portals into power and who would gain access to the very heights of American politics by the time he reached 30 years old. Connell’s two Ohio-based companies, New Media Communications and GovTech, became virtual research and development labs for the Republican Party, building and managing Web sites and e-mail accounts for both Presidents Bush and a long list of leading Republicans. GovTech also designed and managed numerous Congressional IT systems, including those for the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees, putting Connell “behind  the fire wall” of some of the most sensitive gov--ernment Web sites from the safety of the Bush White House.

“Mike was known as the GOP’s Mister Fix-It,” says Stephen Spoonamore, an IT security expert and friend of Connell’s. “He built really intelligent tools that allowed people who wanted to win elections do a better job organizing their data.” But aside from his more legitimate business, Connell was no stranger to the darker side of American politics. He was forced to resign from Senator Coats’ campaign for his involvement in ethical violations. Connell’s was also the hand behind the Web site for the notorious Swift Boat Veterans’ for Truth smear campaign against John Kerry and GWB43.com, the secret e-mail account used by Rove and dozens of other White House staffers.

Just six weeks before his death, Connell had given a deposition in an Ohio lawsuit that accused Rove, Bush, and Co. of something far more serious than merely scrubbing e-mails: the theft of the 2004 Ohio vote. “This is the biggest scandal in our history,” says Mark Crispin Miller, a professor at New York University who has written extensively about electronic voter fraud.

“Watergate grew out of a paranoid attempt to disable the opposition. But Ohio was exponentially different. We’re talking about a systematic, centralized attempt to rig the voting system.”

“We decided to try to bring a racketeering claim against Rove under Ohio law,” says Cliff Arnebeck, the attorney who brought the suit, a broad-shouldered man with a Senatorial air dressed in a blue blazer. “We detected a pattern of criminal activity, and we identified Connell as a key witness, as the implementer for Rove.”

By any calculation, the Ohio 2004 election was a black day for American democracy. Lou Harris, known as the “father of modern political polling,” and a man not given to hyperbole, called it “as dirty an election as America has ever seen.” All the exit polls suggested Ohio would go to Kerry. But when the vote was counted George Bush had won by 132,685 votes, adding Ohio’s crucial 20 Electoral College votes to his tally. And putting him, not Kerry, into the White House. It has since been alleged that at several points on election night, the Ohio secretary of state’s official Web site, which was responsible for reporting the results, was being hosted by a server in a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Ohio’s secretary of state in 2004 was a fiercely partisan Christian named Ken Blackwell. Blackwell had hired a company called GDC Limited to run the IT systems, which had subcontracted the job to Michael Connell’s company, GovTech. Connell had in turn sub-contracted SMARTech, an IT firm based in Chattanooga, to act, it was claimed, as a backup server.

“By looking at the URLs on the Web site, we discovered that there were three points on election night when SMARTech’s computers took over from the secretary of state,” says Arnebeck. “It is during that period that we believe votes were manipulated.”

In computer jargon it is known as a man-in-the-middle attack.

“At the time I didn’t know who SMARTech were,” says IT expert Stephen Spoonamore, opening a file on his computer showing the Internet architecture map of the 2004 Ohio election. He points to a red box in the bottom right-hand corner showing SMARTech’s server.

“Then I found out: They host Rove’s e-mails. They host the RNC’s Web site. They host George Bush’s Web site.” His voice rises in disbelief.

“I go, ‘Holy shit, this is a man-in-the-middle attack! These guys have programmed the state’s computers to talk to a company with ties  to the Republican Party.’ It’s brilliant.”

With his wiry hair and designer glasses, Spoonamore looks like a character in a Tim Burton movie. A lifelong Republican, he is also one of the world’s acknowledged experts on cybersecurity, with a résumé that includes work for the U.S. armed forces and the FBI. In his spare time he has devoted thousands of hours to investigating cyberfraud in American elections. “I know I sound crazy when I talk about this stuff. No one wants to believe it. They say, ‘No one would steal an elec--tion.’ And I go, ‘Yeah, they would. And that’s exactly what they did.’ ”

Spoonamore believes that while Michael Connell may have facilitated electoral fraud, he was really just a tool of more powerful forces. “Mike has been called the Forrest Gump of GOP IT operations,” he says. “And I think there’s a truth to that. I think he was a good guy surrounded by wolves. He was always going to be the fall guy.”

The two men had gotten to know each other at Spoonamore’s Washington, D.C. offices in late 2005. “The two of us hit it off,” recalls Spoonamore. “We were the same age, the same generation. We had a lot of friends in common.” At the end of the meeting, Connell broached a delicate topic. “Mike asked me, ‘How easy is it to destroy all records of e-mail?’ ” recalls Spoonamore. “He sort of gestured toward the White House and said, ‘Because I have clients down the street who are working on that problem.’ And I stepped back and said, ‘If you are talking about White House e-mail destruction, I want nothing to do with it.’ ”

A year later, at an IT conference in London, Spoonamore confronted the pro-life Connell about the Ohio election: “He said, ‘I’m afraid that in my zeal to save the babies, the system I built may have been abused.’ ”

Three days later, in the back of a cab heading toward the airport, Spoonamore asked Connell if he would be willing to talk to a Congressional judiciary committee about what he knew. “I actually took Mike’s hand and said, ‘If I can arrange for a private meeting for you to sit down with the committee and explain what you think may have happened in 2004 and how your systems may have been abused, will you do it?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ ”

Connell never did talk to the judiciary committee. But in the months leading up to his death he was under intense pressure. In an attempt to extricate himself from the world of politics, he had sold two of his businesses, including GovTech. Throughout the fall his plane was being tracked by Arnebeck and his associates so they could serve him with a subpoena. Connell sought refuge from the maelstrom in his deep Catholic faith. He took to wearing a scapular, two squares of cloth with religious images favored by devout Catholics, under his shirt. He went to Mass twice a day and became more directly involved with the pro-life movement, spending weekends standing outside abortion clinics. He traveled to Burma and Thailand to work with religious dissidents and started a Catholic charity in El Salvador.

Finally, on October 8, 2008, Connell was served with his subpoena at College Park Airfield outside Washington, D.C. Seven weeks later his Piper Saratoga would fall from the sky.

On December 18, Connell flew to D.C. to meet with the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s organization, about starting a new branch and rebuilding their Web site. He stayed the night at a hotel, got up early to attend Mass and then a breakfast meeting. At about 11 a.m., Connell went to College Park Airfield to prepare to fly home to Akron. His firm, New Media Communication, was holding its Christmas party that evening, and he didn’t want to miss it. An experienced pilot with more than 500 hours of flight time under his belt, Connell waited for the weather to clear. Shortly after 3:30 p.m., he called his wife, Heather, in Ohio to say he had his “window.” He took off at 3:51 p.m.

At first everything went fine. On his approach to Akron-Canton Regional Airport, he asked the tower if there were any reports of icing and was told there were not. It was certainly dark and cold, with cloud cover at 1,000 feet, but the plane had a sophisticated autopilot system that would normally bring it onto the runway, like a homing pigeon. But at 3,200 feet, as Connell began his descent, air traffic control radioed to say he was off course by several miles. Connell radioed that he would correct his position. Something seemed to be wrong with the lateral controls.

The audiotapes of Connell’s last communications with the tower suggest a rising sense of panic and confusion. Realizing that he is still off course, he asks to do a 360-degree turn “to reestablish ourselves.” It’s an unusual maneuver at this late stage of the approach, and the flight controller denies the request. Instead, he advises Connell to “climb and maintain 3,000 feet.” Seconds later there is a loud rushing sound as the cockpit bursts open and the engine goes haywire. Connell screams, “Nine nine November declaring an emergency!” Out of respect for his religious beliefs—and his children—the tower reported that his last words were, “Oh, God!” In fact, he cries out, “Oh, fuck!” Then the tape goes dead.

Capt. Lorin Geisner of the Greentown Fire Department was the first person to arrive at the scene. “We received a 911 call, so we contacted the tower and asked what size plane it was and how many souls were on board,” he recalls. “But we were informed that the tower was in lockdown and that no information was available.”

According to sources, there were other anomalies. Normally, a night crash scene would be roped off and investigated in daylight. In this case representatives of the NTSB and FAA used light towers to photograph and document the scene. Connell’s plane was hastily removed to a secure hangar under cover of darkness. By 6 a.m. the investigators had vanished, leaving behind them a trail of debris, and one very angry widow.

“How is this OK?” asks Heather Connell, pulling a chunk of metal from a cardboard box she had brought in from the garage. She is kneeling on the floor of her husband’s basement office, a tidy space decorated with sleek black office furniture. A photo of a 25-year-old Connell with George H. W. Bush sits on the bookshelf next to an action figure of Dubya decked out in fighter pilot garb. A cascade of frizzy blonde hair tumbles forward over Heather’s face. Her eyes are red from crying. “They think this is part of the foot pedal.”

When I ask how she met her husband, she starts to hum the ’80s hit “Don’t You Want Me.” “She was working as waitress in a cocktail bar...” Then her voice falters. “That much is true. We met in Indiana. He was working for Senator Coats, and I was going to college and working at a sports bar. He was with a bunch of interns who came in. I carded every one of them and was in the process of kicking him out of the bar.” She gives a throaty chuckle. “He was used to people fawning over him, and I think he liked me because I was mean.”

“I didn’t go to the crash site on the night he died,” she says, picking another piece of debris from the box. As her husband began his final descent, Heather and the rest of the staff gathered at a restaurant for the company’s annual Christmas party. “I got a message that his plane had landed,” she recalls, choking back tears. “So I kept calling and calling.” She winces at the memory. “This is making me sick again.” Leaning back in her chair, she takes a drag of a cigarette. “They told me the plane had crashed and that he was dead, but I didn’t  want to believe it. I thought maybe he was on the way to the hospital, so I didn’t go to the crash site until December 26.” Her left nostril spasms. “I have pieces of my husband’s brain!” she cries. “I picked them up with my hands six days after the crash. Chunks of his skin and internal organs. How is that a proper investigation? How is that acceptable? How dare they leave pieces of my husband lying there!”

She pulls out another storage box filled with personal items from the crash site: $50 in cash; a charred prayer book with a note inside it reading, “I love you”; a Mickey Mouse dollar bill. Something important is missing, though. “Why do I have his earpiece?” she asks, pulling out the Jawbone headset of a BlackBerry. “This was in his backpack. And the backpack was zipped. So where’s his phone?”

“He always clips them next to each other,” interjects her 15-year-old daughter, Lauren. It’s an important detail because it suggests that the BlackBerry may have been intentionally removed from the backpack. On it were hundreds, if not thousands, of sensitive files and e-mails relating to Karl Rove and the Bush administration.

“I want to know where my husband’s phone is,” Connell says angrily. “It’s my responsibility as a mother and a spouse to find out what happened. And I will not accept ‘Cause of crash unknown.’ I will not.”

Though she is furious at the NTSB, she has no time for the conspiracy theories. While she admits that Connell was disillusioned with politics, she bridles at any suggestion that he could have been involved with vote rigging. “With Mike there was religion, family, and a love for democracy,” she says firmly. “He would never interfere with the democratic process. That’s just ridiculous.”

Connell’s younger sister isn’t so sure. “I knew he worked for the Bushes,” says Shannon Connell. The two siblings had diametrically opposed views—Shannon Connell is a pro-Obama liberal—but they never allowed this to come between them. “We stayed close despite the political differences. He was my brother.”

She doesn’t know whether Connell helped steal elections. If he did, she says, it was because of his passionate anti-abortion views. “I think he was convinced he was doing good—to save the babies,” she says. “That’s the only thing my sisters and I can come up with.

“Mike had been deposed, but he hadn’t been called as a witness yet,” she says of the possibility that her brother was murdered. “He was incredibly loyal to the people he worked for, but he would never have lied under oath. For want of a better expression, I think they played him. His death would have been a really nice Christmas present for Rove and Cheney.

“I am beyond looking for justice,” she says, resigned. “I just want the truth to be known. But I am not counting on it.” She may be right.

After more than nine months, the factual report into Connell’s crash had still not been made public. According to an NTSB spokesperson, it was “still being reviewed.” That’s scant comfort  to Connell’s family, who just want some sense of closure, whatever the outcome.

Still, “In my mind and my heart,” says Shannon Connell, “I am convinced he was murdered.”

We may never know the truth about Connell’s last flight, but contracts between Connell’s company, GovTech, and Ken Blackwell’s administration establish a credible scenario for electoral fraud and place Connell at the scene of the alleged crime.
Among other things, the contracts contradict Connell’s sworn testimony that SMARTech, in Chattanooga, merely acted as a backup site for election data.

The contracts, signed in March 2004, show that SMARTech was specifically tasked with creating a “mirror site” to manage election night results.“What this means is that Connell’s company was on both sides of the mirror,” explains Stephen Spoonamore. “And that the votes of the people of Ohio were in the control of a fiercely partisan IT company (SMARTech) and operating out of another state.”

Clouding matters further is the persistent specter of paranoid conspiracy that has enveloped the case from the beginning. In September 2009, an anonymous letter was sent to the FBI in Ohio and five other addressees, including Heather Connell.

“Enclosed is a document that is not meant to exist,” begins the anonymous writer. Included is what purports to be an “after action report” by a black ops agent. All names have been redacted, but the report provides a detailed time log of actions taken to install an AMD (microprocessor) in the engine of Connell’s plane at College Park Airfield in D.C. the night before he made his fatal last flight. Connell himself is not mentioned by name. Just the registration number of his plane, NP299N, which the agent confirms he had been sent to “neutralize.” The letter accompanying the report is headed MICHAEL CONNELL, HOMICIDE. It ends with the words: “Connell was not NST (national security threat).”

While skeptics may be tempted to dismiss these documents as the ingenious work of a hoaxer intent on pouring gasoline on the bonfire of conspiracy theories already surrounding Connell,  a number of experts from the intelligence community who have seen the document believe it to be genuine.

In early November, the NTSB finally released its factual report into Connell’s crash. The report concludes that tests carried out on the plane’s engine, flight control, and autopilot systems revealed “no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.”

A spokeswoman for the NTSB confirmed that the organization had received a copy of the anonymous letter, but would not say whether its claims were being looked into. “We’re investigating the accident,” she says, “not any possible criminal activity.” She adds that the NTSB forwarded the letter to the FBI in Cleveland. When asked to confirm this, Scott Wilson at the FBI’s Cleveland bureau, says, “The only thing I can say is...I can’t say anything.”

Ultimately, only a full criminal investigation can determine the truth about Ohio ’04 and the death of Michael Connell. Robert Kennedy Jr., who sought Connell’s cooperation during an investigation into the election, believes the current administration should pursue the matter. “I think this is more serious than Watergate,” he says. “Watergate was essentially about winning the battle for public opinion. That’s why the break-in took place—to gather strategic information about Democratic strategy and dirt. But the electoral process remained intact. The Ohio vote undermines the very foundation stone of American democracy. There should be an official investigation. Otherwise this becomes a blueprint for how to steal an election from here to eternity.”

That may not be enough for Connell’s widow. When I first spoke to her on the phone, Heather Connell was adamant that her husband’s plane crash had been an accident, God’s will. But she is no longer so sure. “This is a messed-up case of whether Karl Rove threatened my husband or not,” she says. I ask her directly if she now believes her husband could have been murdered. She takes a deep drag of her cigarette and, choking back tears, says: “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

How They Vote in Holland

2010-02-14T13:21:00.001-08:00

http://www.dutchnews.nl/local-elections-2010/2010/01/how_does_the_system_work.php

February 14, 2010

How does the system work?

There are local elections in the Netherlands every four years. If you are entitled to vote, you should get a ballot card from your local council a few weeks before the election. You must take this with you to your local polling station. If you don't get a card, contact your local town hall.

Polling stations are open from 7.30 to 21.00 hours.

When you present your voting card, you will be given a large piece of paper listing all the political parties running in the election and all the candidates on their electoral list.

The candidates are listed in priority order with the party's favourite at the top of the list. You can vote for anyone you like. Candidates lower down the list get can still get a seat on the council if they get a lot of votes.

You vote by filling in the box next to the name of your chosen candidate with a red pencil. (Voting computers have been abandoned because they are not fraud-proof).

Wealthy CEOs Conspire to Influence Elections for GOP

2010-02-10T10:17:00.001-08:00

http://www.alternet.org/economy/145578/wealthy_ceos_conspire_to_influence_elections_for_gop

Raw Story
Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:49 EST

Wall Street CEOs have formed a group to take advantage of new fundraising possibilities opened up by the Supreme Court decision to end the ban on corporate election spending.

Just three weeks ago, the United States Supreme Court ended a ban on corporate spending in political elections, drawing intense criticism for the ruling's potential to erode the democratic process.

This week, a group that includes some of the wealthiest Republican CEOs on Wall Street have formed a group to take advantage of new fundraising possibilities for the GOP.

The Supreme Court ruling could potentially allow the group, called the American Action Network, to take unlimited contributions from corporations for use in political campaigns.

"This administration as well as Citizens United [the Supreme Court ruling] - when you combine the two the prospects for funding these types of efforts are greatly enhanced," said Norm Coleman, one of the group's organizers.

Coleman called the group an "action tank" or a "think-and-do tank."

Members of the groups include:

Kenneth Langone, a former director of the New York Stock Exchange who defended a $139.5 million bonus in 2004 and has been sued for "extortion, defamation, fraudulent misrepresentation."

Robert K. Steele, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, helped Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson make his former bank one of the biggest beneficiaries of the $700 billion bailout.

Norm Coleman, who supported President Bush's 2005 bankruptcy bill.

Ed Gillespie, whose lobbying firm represents Enron, Citibank, Bank of America, Zurich Financial, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

According to the New York Times, the group also includes:

"Republicans who are donors, board members or both include Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi; Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida; Mr. Barbour a former chairman of the Republican Party; Fred Malek, an investor and official in the Nixon and first Bush administrations."

During his State of the Union address, President Obama looked at the Supreme Court justices sitting before him and said, "With all due deference to the separation of powers, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections."

Diebold declares Republican the winner in Massachusetts Senate election

2010-01-20T14:39:00.000-08:00

http://www.examiner.com/x-1969-Boston-Progressive-Examiner~y2010m1d19-Diebold-declares-Republican-the-winner-in-Massachusetts-Senate-election

January 19, 9:49 PM
Boston Progressive ExaminerMichael Richardson

If you like this ...
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Excerpts of the CIA analyst's warning to EAC about cyber vote fraud that have not been made public

The voting machines have made Republican Scott Brown the winner of the hotly contested special election to replace the late Senator Ted Kennedy. In Massachusetts over 90% of the ballots are counted by two voting machine companies, Diebold and Sequoia, and no human eyes watch the count.

Election integrity leader Sheila Parks and others announced an "Orange Alert" before the election after election officials declined to hand count the ballots despite the ease of one electoral race.

Both the Diebold machines and the Sequoia scanners have come under strong criticism in other jurisdictions for inaccurate results and flipped votes. Initially Attorney General Martha Coakley was seen as an easy victor in the election to replace Kennedy. However, as election day approached Brown's campaign rose in the polls creating a "perfect storm" for an election fix.

President Barack Obama jumped into the campaign making the highly Democratic state his political battleground to keep control of a filibuster-proof Senate and Coakley's defeat has cost him national credibility.

Coakley's camp reported voters were handed pre-marked ballots in some precincts but have not yet focused attention on the mischief that hackers or dishonest election officials can do with the electronic machines.

Both the Diebold and Sequoia machines are subject to tampering with malicious, self-deleting software code. Election officials in Florida and Connecticut have reported inaccurate vote totals from both voting machines when actual hand counts of ballots were made.

Secretary of State William Galvin's refusal to hand count ballots has election integrity advocates fuming and fuels concerns that the machine vote totals are rigged.

Voting machine critic Brad Friedman has called on Coakley to not concede the election without a hand count of ballots.

Readers that want more information on voting machine problems:
http://bradblog.com

Easily Hacked Voting Systems to be Used in MA Special Election for the U.S. Senate

2010-01-18T11:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.gouverneurtimes.com/st-lawrence-news/54-worldnational-news/10625-easily-hacked-voting-systems-to-be-used-in-ma-special-election-for-the-us-senate.html

January 18, 2010
Written by Nathan Barker and Brad Friedman

BOSTON, MA - Next Tuesday's Special Election for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts looks to be coming down to the wire. Surprising pundits in what had previously been thought to be a cakewalk for State Attorney General Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate hoping to fill the seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, Republican state Senator Scott Brown has come on strong in the final days of the campaign.

But as the election looms, tempers flare, money is poured into the contest from all sides, and Democrats sweat out what should have been a safe seat for them - a Democrat named Kennedy has held that particular seat for more than the last 50 years - questions about whether the election results can be trusted have already emerged in a race where the stakes couldn't be higher.

As the 60th "filibuster-proof" Democratic U.S. Senate seat hangs in the balance - and the party's healthcare reform bill and other key legislative hopes along with it - fears are mounting that the final vote tallies could be as questionable as they were in the recent NY-23 Special Election for the U.S. House. Perhaps even more so.

The electronic voting systems used in Massachusetts are notoriously plagued with problems and vulnerabilities, and are in violation of federal voting system standards. Moreover, they are sold, programmed, and maintained by a company with a disturbing criminal background.

The outcome couldn't be more important, and the race, according to a number of pre-election polls, couldn't be closer. Coakley began running in September, 2009 with a strong lead over Brown, her main opponent. But that trend has significantly changed in the last month leaving Coakley with a thin 2 point margin over Brown, according to a recent poll from Republican pollster Rasmussen. Another more recent survey, from a Democratic-leaning outfit, gives Coakley a more comfortable 8 point edge over Brown.

Still, the very real possibility that a Republican could win the seat has many in Washington sweating on the eve of the Special Election. All three candidates - Joseph Kennedy (no relation to Ted), a Libertarian running on the Independent Party ticket could also throw a wrench into the works - and their supporters are pulling out all the last minutes stops. But could we see another repeat of last November's U.S. House Special Election in New York, where questions still persist about the tabulation of the race and the failed and faulty voting systems that voters were forced to use?

The Diebold electronic voting machines to be used in more than 90% of the state's districts are the same demonstrably unreliable ballot scanning systems that were seen being hacked in the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary Hacking Democracy. The rest of the machines used in the Bay State are made by Sequoia Voting System, Inc., the same manufacturer whose machines were "misconfigured," to switch votes in Erie County, NY's Nov. 3, 2009 election and which have failed, and even been hacked, in a number of cases around the country.

Making matters worse, the company who sells, services and programs the Diebold optical-scan paper ballot systems to be used next week, LHS Associates, has a disturbing criminal background, and has admitted to tampering illegally with voting systems during past elections.

As seen in the climactic finale of Hacking Democracy, due to undocumented "interpreted code" in the system, included by Diebold in violation of federal voting system guidelines, the Diebold Accuvote op-scan system is easily hacked and votes can be flipped in such a way that the tampering would likely never be discovered.

The vulnerability, easily exploited by Finnish computer security expert Harri Hursti in the film, resulted in flipped results for a mock election held in Leon County, FL several years ago. At the time, news of the hack sent shockwaves throughout the e-voting industry, and among state and federal election officials. But the federally certified machines were never decertified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, despite the discovery of the code in violation of federal standards. That code, allowing this simple exploitation, still remains on the systems to be used in next week's special election in Massachusetts.

The key to the exploit is access to the scanner's memory cards. Those sensitive cards contain the programming instructions for how the machines should read paper ballots as they pass through it. They also track the tally of votes. In Hursti's hack, he was able to make a slight change to the memory cards' programming instructions which flipped the results in such a way that only a manual hand count of every ballot would have revealed the manipulation.

The machines and cards are often accessed by both election officials and the private vendors who program and maintain them. In Massachusetts, as in most of New England, an outfit by the name of LHS Associates services the machines.

The company has, to put it generously, a dubious record.

In 1990, Ken Hajjar, the Director of Sales and Marketing for LHS Associates - a childhood friend of company owner John Silvestro - was arrested and pled guilty to charges of selling narcotics. He was given a 12-month sentence, according to documents received via a public records request by the non-partisan election watchdog organization, BlackBoxVoting.org (BBV).

LHS Associates programs "every single voting machine in New Hampshire, Connecticut, almost all of Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine," BBV founder Bev Harris reported after releasing the documents.

Despite the dangers posed by accessing memory cards, LHS staff members have admitted to regularly opening up voting machines and swapping memory cards, during actual elections.

In 2006, Hajjar himself told Connecticut's Talk Nation Radio that his company considers such activities to be routine, even in jurisdictions where accessing memory cards is strictly in violation of election procedures.

"I mean, I don't pay attention to every little law," Hajjar admitted to TNR's Dori Smith. "We would have a whole bunch of machines in the trunk in the car and we hope the phone doesn't ring, but if it does, somebody tells us where to go, we replace the machine and then we go on our merry way."

One such illegal memory card swap by LHS took place in Montville, CT, during the recount of the 2nd Congressional District race in 2006.

Hajjar found himself in further hot water in 2007 when, after he'd left bizarre and obscene comments on a story concerning Diebold at The BRAD BLOG, he was barred from working at all in the state of Connecticut by Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz.

Failures of Diebold's voting systems have become legendary. In 2004, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) quietly issued an advisory that the Diebold GEMS tabulator system features a "vulnerability... due to an undocumented backdoor account, which could [sic: allow] a local or remove authenticated malicious user [sic: to] modify votes". The advisory would not be publicly reported until late 2005.

In 2006, Princeton University found it was able to easily implant a vote-swapping virus onto the company's touch-screen voting system memory cards that could pass itself from machine to machine, flipping an entire election, across an entire county, without detection in the process. The startling hack was reported nationally, and even demonstrated live on Fox News. Still, little if anything was done by federal or state officials to prevent the situation from happening in jurisdictions where the same voting machines are still used today.

In 2008, the Diebold optical-scan system was discovered to have simply dropped hundreds of ballots from its final results in Humboldt County, CA. The failure was due to a years-old bug in the Diebold voting system, which officials in Humboldt hadn't been made aware of.

A subsequent investigation by California's Secretary of State Debra Bowen revealed a number of flaws in the voting systems' audit log functions. Voting machine companies have long maintained that any tampering with machines would be easily revealed by an examination of such logs. However, Bowen's investigation discovered that those logs - which are required to be "permanent" records of all activities on the machines - could be easily deleted and/or modified. Moreover, it was discovered that ballots themselves could be deleted from the system without notice in the logs, or even to system administrators. A Diebold spokesman would be forced to admit at a public hearing last year that all Diebold voting systems contain a number of the flaws discovered by the state of California.

As to the Sequoia systems used in parts of Massachusetts, the Gouverneur Times filed a lengthy exposé on that company's storied history of failures following the NY-23 Special Election debacle where their optical-scan systems failed in a number of counties, leading to confusion, and zero votes reported for Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in a number of precincts.

In Massachusetts, the state mandates that paper ballots be preserved according to a secure chain of custody. However, the state has no threshold or automatic system to require a hand-count of those ballots. If the computer-generated tallies are accepted as legitimate, the actual paper ballots will never be counted or checked for accuracy unless one of the candidates files a petition. The petition filing must occur within 6 days of the election, requires at least 10 signatures per ward and "The petitioner must file a separate recount petition in each ward of a city or precinct of a town in which he desires a recount."

The only way to guarantee accurate election results in Massachusetts is for a candidate to request a hand-count of all paper ballots in each town in the state - within 6 days of the election. Otherwise, the results of what could be an exceedingly close election, for an extraordinarily important U.S. Senate seat, could end up going to the candidate who didn't actually receive the most votes.

Nathan Barker is a conservative editor and reporter for The Gouverneur Times. Brad Friedman is an award-winning freelance progressive investigative journalist, noted expert on issues of election integrity, and the creator of the The BRAD BLOG (http://www.BradBlog.com).

An Election, not an Auction

2010-01-06T19:01:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/An-Election-not-an-Auctio-by-John-Marty-100105-126.html

January 6, 2010
By John Marty

I wanted to share with you my latest column.
Thanks,

John Marty
DFL Candidate for Governor in Minnesota
http://www.johnmarty.org

An Election, not an Auction
by Senator John Marty

November 2, 2010 is supposed to be an election. Unfortunately, it is beginning to look like an auction, with government for sale to the highest bidders. Powerful interest groups buy favors with big campaign contributions.

Special interest money is a dominant force in determining who wins elections and even who runs for office. And it doesn't simply affect who gets into office. Once elections are over, special interest money influences who chairs legislative committees, who has the ear of powerful lawmakers, which bills receive a hearing, and ultimately what laws are passed. One congressional staffer, after observing the clout of interest groups, said, "If this were NASCAR, members of Congress would have the corporate logos of their sponsors sewn to their jackets."

It's an insidious process, in which wealthy interests buy elections and gain access and goodwill through campaign contributions. Most public officials are honorable people who would never "sell their vote." But this system has a very real, albeit subconscious, impact even on well-meaning public officials.

We can change this and we must change it. In the Minnesota Senate, I have been a leader, authoring campaign finance reform legislation to drive special interest money out. Politicians understandably want the money, because campaigns are expensive, and without the special interest money, they feel they cannot win. That's why reforms that put in public financing and limit spending are essential. With reform, politicians can win elections without taking the special interest money.

Let me give three examples of the problem: special interest money is destroying our environment, crushing health care reform, and buying big taxpayer subsidies.

Special interest money is destroying our environment. It is the reason we cannot pass basic environmental protection legislation in Minnesota, even though DFLers have a two-to-one margin in the Senate, and almost that in the House. The powerful interests fighting environmental legislation make generous contributions to both Republican and DFL legislative caucuses. Consequently, it is no surprise that legislative leaders appoint committee chairs and structure committees in a manner that won't upset those donors too much.

Likewise for health care reform. Even with all the talk about "universal" health care in Washington, there is not a single proposal to provide universal care under consideration. Even before the legislative compromising began, the Obama proposal with the public option was estimated to cover only 94% of the public, leaving 6% with no care, and many more whose insurance doesn't cover the care they need. That's not exactly universal.

So why isn't universal health care on the table? Senator Max Baucus, the chair of the committee that wrote the Senate legislation, refused to consider it. Is it any surprise that Baucus wants to require people to buy insurance, instead of providing universal health care, when he has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the health insurance lobby? Not surprisingly, the insurance lobby's money goes to all the key lawmakers involved in the health reform debate.

Special interests are brazenly buying taxpayer subsidies. Four years ago, Zygi Wilf and his family, the owners of the Minnesota Vikings, gave $20,000 to both the Minnesota Republican Party and the DFL Party. They gave $10,000 to the DFL legislative caucuses and $12,000 to the Republican ones. In fact, they gave $5000 to both Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty and to his DFL challenger.

Why would they give massive amounts to both parties? Because they want as much as $700 million in public money to subsidize a new stadium. They haven't won yet, but their proposal is getting a lot of attention at the capitol this year despite the worst budget crisis in memory.

Political insiders are so accustomed to lobbyists and interest groups bearing contributions that many have been desensitized to this influence peddling. Picture what would happen if the Wilf family made similar contributions to NFL officials before the next Vikings game.

A referee taking the money wouldn't be saluted as a successful participant by either the NFL or its fans. He would be thrown out of his job. The conflict of interest is obvious.

But in politics, unlike football, the special interests who give the most aren't thrown out in disgrace. They are actually admired for their clout. Candidates accepting their contributions are seen as major players because of the amounts they can raise.

This isn't acceptable. Isn't fair treatment from our government as important as fair officiating in our football games?

Do we value our democracy so little that we are willing to turn it over to special interests?

It doesn't have to be this way. Replacing special interest money with publicly funded campaigns would cost a fraction of what taxpayers pay in subsidies, tax loopholes and other give-aways that special interests buy. And the benefits of a clean environment and a health care system that works for everyone? That's priceless.

Detroit - Criminal investigation requested for elections violations

2010-01-06T18:25:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Detroit--Criminal-investi-by-Bev-Harris-100106-137.html

January 6, 2010
By Bev Harris

Black Box Voting calling for Detroit elections officials to be removed.

Let's watch Detroit carefully, because today's request to prosecute election violations may help with a rotten elections culture elsewhere in the USA.

Ex-candidate Tom Barrow has filed a formal request for investigation along with stunning documentation of chain of custody breach in the recent Detroit mayoral election. Black Box Voting has been in close contact with Barrow, and we will be reviewing additional documents related to this case. The allegations are fascinating.

Detroit citizens executed watchdog actions brilliantly. One of my favorite tactics: They piled leaves in front of the back door, and went out to check frequently to see if anyone was sneaking in and out. The leaves showed that someone had entered through the back door. A security guard confessed to letting strangers in to the security area.

There's more ... in fact, the full complaint and its accompanying Exhibit provides a pretty good primer for citizens and candidates who want to watchdog elections. Full details of the 79-point complaint, and you can discuss this story at this link:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/80797.html

But first, a word about how widespread this culture of violating chain of custody has become:

NEW HAMPSHIRE CHAIN OF CUSTODY VIOLATIONS

In New Hampshire (2008), Black Box Voting documented ballot boxes with removable seals affixed with post-it note style adhesive, ballots arrived in the wrong boxes, ballot boxes arrived open, they placed ballots in an unlocked room outside the ballot vault and they refused to account for the blank ballots. The only investigation launched was into the citizens who videotaped these transgressions.

ARIZONA CHAIN OF CUSTODY VIOLATIONS

In Arizona (2008), citizen observer John Brakey spoke up about broken and mismatched seals in Pima County. The only investigation done was into John Brakey himself, who was arrested, apparently for his loud utterances about the broken chain of custody. That got Brakey and his pesky observations off the premises while they proceeded to count; charges were later dropped.

In Maricopa County (2008), Black Box Voting board member Jim March revealed that they were ordering up to 10 copies of duplicate seal numbers (rendering seal numbers moot for chain of custody protection).

GEORGIA CHAIN OF CUSTODY VIOLATIONS

In Georgia (2006), one poll worker after the next wrote down notes detailing missing, mismatched and broken seals. No action at all was taken, except to ridicule Cynthia McKinney, the candidate who had the backbone to ask for chain of custody records.

MAINE CHAIN OF CUSTODY VIOLATIONS

In Maine (1992, but this one's a doozy), the chief of staff for the state of Maine Speaker of the House was caught in the ballot vault tampering with ballots. The giveaway: He was smoking and someone thought there was a fire. No one prosecuted the speaker of the house. The perp caught red-handed was convicted and sentenced to community service and a fine. He didn't finish his community service and never paid the fine.

OHIO CHAIN OF CUSTODY VIOLATIONS

In Ohio (2004), former Black Box Voting Associate Director Kathleen Wynne caught two Cleveland elections workers admitting to counting recount ballots secretly and out of public view, and then hand-picking the batches to count in public. They were convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison. They never served time; a judge stepped in and for no apparent reason, decided to suspend the sentence that had already been ordered.

CALIFORNIA DODGEBALL

In California (2009), citizens have been circling 'round with formal written requests to try to pin down who prosecutes election law violations and under what circumstances. This would seem to be a simple task, but the answers they've been getting from the Calif. Attorney General's office have been dodgier than G.W. Bush at a shoe-throwing festival.

WITHOUT ENFORCEMENT, LAWS AND 'CHECKS & BALANCES' DON'T PROTECT US

What's going on in Detroit right now is incredibly important, because it provides an opportunity to consequate significant violations of chain of custody. We need consequences and we need enforcement, or passing all the laws in the world won't do a thing to improve election integrity.

Already we have seen an unprecedented step: Due to breach of chain of custody, over 40,000 absentee ballots were excluded from the mayoral recount. This brings up two points:

(1) With such a large number excluded (far more than the margin of separation between mayoral candidates), there can be no reasonable certainty at all about the election outcome.

(2) Michigan has recently joined 25 other states in loosening up its absentee voting requirements, which will result in vastly more absentee ballots being cast, with fewer checks and balances than before. If you are a fan of the risky vote-by-mail craze, note that mismatched seals were primarily on the bottom of the absentee ballot boxes. The more vote-by-mail ballots there are, the more unsustainable the burden on chain of custody becomes.

Some Detroit officials are complaining about the cost of having all this looked into, blaming citizens, candidates, anyone but themselves for their own failure to adhere to their own rules and regulations. If Tom Barrow's Detroit actions can improve accountability and -- even better -- start undoing the culture of unaccountability we're seeing in elections administration, he will have performed an important service for us all.

HERE ARE SOME OF THE INTERESTING ITEMS FROM THE COMPLAINT:

#13 - Throughout the day, O'Hara, McDonald and Butler reported observing numerous individuals with large bags and back packs entering and remaining in the absentee counting station area. They also reported that at 8pm, the counting room security completely broke down and the general public was permitted to freely access the restricted access areas

# 23 - three people from ES&S, (the voting equipment computer company) had just signed in at 7:55 am along with one more individual from Premier.

[note that the location uses ES&S machines, but not Premier machines; why were technicians entering the building, and why was anyone from Premier there at all?]

# 36. County recount staff then proceeded to open the case but without looking at or verifying the bottom seal even though it too was recorded in the poll book by the election night workers.

# 37. Complainant challenged the failure to verify the 2nd seal and was vigorously and viciously verbally assaulted by recount election staff. Complainant was advised extremely harshly by Ms. Cynthia Hawthorne, Wayne County Elections Director, that "we never look at the bottom seal in a recount and are not about to start now just for you."

# 43. Subsequently, case after case was brought out and with Complainant on his knees [looking at seals on bottom], noting most of the seals did not agree with the poll book.

# 44. ... notwithstanding the seal differences, nearly all of the cases opened were disallowed and deemed not able to be recounted because there were significant discrepancies between the number of voters in the poll books and the number of voter ballots in the case along with other violations.

# 48. Now broadly suspicious, Complainant without anyone's knowledge created his own informal security system to reveal to him of any breaches to the building after hours.

# 49. In furtherance, he placed a large pile of leaves behind each of the three rear entry points of the building where the absentee voter containers were being stored during the recount. Each day before the days count began he checked the leaves for any disturbance.

# 74. Finally, on Monday, December 21, 2009, Complainant and his Team arrived at the recount location to obtain an explanation of why numerous time clocks on numerous polling computers showed dates and times which seemingly indicated that the polls had been electronically closed hours before the statutory required 8pm poll closing time.

# 75. However, before entering the building as was his daily ritual, Complainant did his normal walk around of the building but this time discovered that the rear door leaves had been pushed back and were now in a straight line. The door had been opened and the building had been entered!

# 76. Complainant immediately confronted county recount election staff who called the weekend security guard. After speaking with the guard in full sight of the room of observers, Ms Cynthia Hawthorne, explained to the room of over 30 people that the guard just admitted to her that 2 people had indeed come to the door, the door was opened and the guard invited the strangers in and allowed them to tour the "secure" area ...

Footnote # (10) Indeed, precinct 20-04 [certified as having hundreds of ballots] was an empty case with no voted, unused or spoiled ballots inside.

* * * * *

Black Box Voting is helping to bring attention to this case with the goal in mind to raise the bar on compliance and consequences. We have called for the Detroit election officials to be removed from their positions.

In addition, we will be arranging for examination of some specific public documents to put more light on the role the ES&S M100 and ES&S absentee counting voting machines may have played to cause discrepancies, and we will be looking into why a Premier voting machines technician got involved.

* * * * *
Author's Website: http://www.blackboxvoting.org

Kentucky's Elections "rigged for decades"

2010-01-06T15:36:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Kentucky-s-Elections-rigg-by-Mark-Crispin-Mille-100105-895.html

January 5, 2010
Kentucky's Elections "rigged for decades"
By Mark Crispin Miller

This story raises some important questions: First of all, where else in Kentucky has the vote been rigged--or is it just Clay County?

And if it's happened elsewhere in the state, how do we know that Senators Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning (and the state's four GOP members of the House) really were elected?

It's not an idle question, what with the Senate Democrats' ongoing struggle to come up with 60 votes. Because, in fact, there's reason to be skeptical not just about Jim Bunning's latest victory, but about some others in the Senate--including (of course) Saxby Chambliss, who obviously stole his "victory" in 2002; John Kyl of Arizona; John Thune of South
Dakota; George Voinovich in Ohio; Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby in Alabama; John Cornyn in Texas; and Bob Corker in Tennessee. Just to name a few.

I say there's reason to be skeptical about those pols' "victories" in particular because of evidence that election reform activists have garnered in those cases. But let's be honest,
and admit that there is actually no reason to be confident that any of our Senators were honestly elected; because the US voting system--based on an opaque and hackable technology, and run by private companies--is an entirely faith-based operation.

Too bad that almost nobody in Congress cares about issue, because (and this is no hyperbole) it's going to be the death of us if we don't talk about this system honestly, and take some major steps to overhaul it, very soon.

MCM

Federal Prosecutors: Kentucky Officials Manipulated Clay County Elections for Decades

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7627

The BRAD BLOG has long endeavored to fight back against the ddisinformation being put forward by the GOP "voter fraud" charlatans and fraudsters contending that massive fraud is being carried out by voters at the polls, requiring the institution of disenfranchising Photo ID restrictions at the polling place which would result in some 21 million Americans being unable to cast their legal vote, according to the League of Women Voters and most other serious experts on these matters.

Once again, a story out of Kentucky helps us highlight that it's election insiders, not voters themselves, who are, by far, the greatest threat to the integrity of elections.
We reported early last year on the passel of election officials in Clay County, KY arrested for buying and selling votes, manipulating ES&S electronic voting machines without the knowledge of voters, and otherwise fixing elections from 2002 to 2006.

As their January 19 trial date nears, more motions are being filed by federal prosecutors. The latest, filed last week, alleges that two of the top officials charged --- one, a circuit court judge and the other, the county school Superintendent
--- had been fixing elections for decades before their recentindictments...

Bill Estep (the reporter who has owned this story locally since it broke last year) at Lexington's Herald-Leader reported on New Years Day:

R. Cletus Maricle, a longtime judge, and former school Superintendent Douglas C. Adams began working with drug dealers more than 20 years ago to buy votes and control local politics, according to a court motion filed this week.

In a 1983 race for circuit judge, for instance, Adams gave drug dealer Kenneth Day $30,000 to buy votes for one candidate, while Maricle bought votes for the opposing candidate, the motion claims.

"During Election Day, Maricle asked Day how much money it would take to get him to go home," the motion says.
Two years later, Maricle and Adams bought votes for the same
candidate for magistrate, and Day helped, according to the court document.

Estep offers more details on the long-running scam, and the federal prosecutors' plans for holding these democracy-hating jerks accountable.

Attorneys for both of them, of course, deny all of the charges, claim that witnesses have lied, etc. But one of those charged, the county election directory, has already pleaded guilty and detailed how the long-running vote buying/selling scheme had been run with meetings in his garage and pools of hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash collected to affect (largely) Republican primary elections in Clay County.

Clay is one of the poorest --- and most Republican --- counties in the state, and has been the scene of numerous federal crackdowns over the past several years in which high-ranking local officials, including the mayor, have been busted for all manner of criminality including narcotics trafficking and more.

As we noted in our coverage of the Clay County arrests last year, one of the most notable aspects about the allegations --- at least to readers of The BRAD BLOG, if not the denialists in the e-voting industry --- was the description of how electronic touch-screen voting systems made by ES&S were directly manipulated by election officials who would mis-instruct voters on how to use them in such a way that they'd be able to later change the intended votes before they were officially "cast" on the unverifiable electronic systems.

ES&S is the nation's (and the world's) largest voting machine
manufacturer, and the type of systems manipulated in Clay County are used widely across the nation, despite numerous system failures in election after election, such as votes flipping and/or disappearing. We can now add the concern that they may be easily manipulated by election officials, directly from the voting booth, with little or no safeguards to keep that from happening.

ES&S recently purchased its next largest competitor, Premier Election Solutions, the new name given to Diebold, Inc's tarnished election division in 2007. That merger, resulting in ES&S taking control of some 70 to 80% of Americans' votes, is being investigated by the U.S. Dept. of Justice on anti-trust grounds, as well as in 14 states and challenged in court by its smaller competitor Hart InterCivic. The U.S. Senate is set to hold hearings on the merger early this year as well.

That hasn't stopped ES&S from moving forward, full speed ahead with the takeover.

A recent visit by The BRAD BLOG to the former head quarters of Diebold/Premier in Allen, TX reveals that nearly all signs of the former company have been removed, in favor of the new boss...same as the old boss...

BlackBoxVoting's Bev Harris Walks Us Through the DOJ Anti-Trust Probe of ES&S PARTS ONE & TWO

2009-12-22T16:04:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/BlackBoxVoting-s-Bev-Harri-by-Joan-Brunwasser-091221-7.html

December 21, 2009
BlackBoxVoting's Bev Harris Walks Us Through the DOJ Anti-Trust Probe of ES&S
By Joan Brunwasser

I'm happy to have with me Bev Harris, intrepid investigative journalist and founder of the non-profit elections watchdog group, BlackBoxVoting.org. Welcome to OpEdNews, Bev. Interesting developments in the election world these days. Would you care to walk us through the latest regarding the ES&S acquisition of its competitor Diebold (now known as Premier)?

Oh yes. Big things are happening here. The US. Dept. of Justice (USDOJ) has just announced that it has opened an antitrust investigation into the ES&S/Diebold deal.

In September, megamonster voting machine company Election Systems & Software (ES&S) acquired Diebold's Premier Election Solutions. BlackBoxVoting.org prepared a formal complaint to elicit action by the US Department of Justice.

The USDOJ needed specific information in order to ascertain that the acquisition would "overconcentrate" the elections industry. They use a formula called the Herfindahl Index for this. Unfortunately, the only thing the USDOJ can use is precise figures based on official sources, and there are over 5,000 jurisdictions. Getting the data is no picnic, and you can't just use something published on someone's Web site. So Black Box Voting compiled data from our many Freedom of Information documents and produced a sourced, detailed chart proving overconcentration of the industry.

We buttressed our complaint by documenting specific instances of past anticompetitive behavior, and provided a legal analysis, which showed that anti-trust actions can be taken years after the acquisition.

The Dept. of Justice wrote us last month to let us know they intended to take action if their preliminary evaluation supported our contention that the acquisition creates an unhealthy condition. And it didn't take long! Less than eight weeks after our complaint, the USDOJ launched a formal antitrust probe, and 14 individual states are now pursuing their own investigations.

That must have been a huge effort for Black Box Voting to put together the necessary information. Would you care to talk about that a little?

Several years ago, we began collecting government source documents and voting machine make and models per jurisdiction. This has been especially challenging since so many places have been changing equipment over the past few years. And the hardest part was identifying what each of the municipality-run jurisdictions run. Wisconsin alone has about 1700 different municipality jurisdictions.

Once we had the data, we had to figure out how to accurately weight it. Obviously the 1700 Wisconsin jurisdictions couldn't be put up one to one against, for example, the 64 county jurisdictions in Colorado. And we had to look at the method most likely to provide the type of data needed by the Dept. of Justice. Should we determine by percent of votes counted by each machine? By total number of units? Or by jurisdiction? We decided that the best way to organize the data for antitrust purposes would be by purchasing unit (jurisdiction), with a weighted sample to equalize municipalities with counties.

More information than people want to know I'm sure, but this is the kind of detail that was needed to move from general grousing about monopoly to precise calculation of anticompetitive impact in violation of the Clayton Act.

More was needed; we created color-coded "before and after" maps to provide visual images for the impact of the acquisition, and studied antitrust laws to learn more about what kind of information to provide.

Perhaps most important, we received advice from volunteer consultants, including election officials and former federal investigators. This helped us know what information to include in the complaint, and also helped us determine which examples from our news archives, which have accumulated thousands of stories
over the years, would work best for this purpose.

Wow. What an undertaking. Can you show us the maps of Before and After acquisition and explain to us just what we're seeing and what it means?

Joan - here are the before and after maps:

US Map Pre-Merger

US Map Post-Merger

The blue areas are Diebold; the red are ES&S. As you can see, the industry was already overconcentrated before the acquisition, with way too many locations dependent on just a few vendors. But after the acquisition, you see the blue areas convert to red, and it is clear that this gives ES&S near-total domination of US elections.

So, why is ES&S's domination necessarily a bad thing? Wouldn't some standardization of equipment across the country be helpful for those running the elections?

The reason antitrust laws exist is to prevent unhealthy and predatory business practices. We are already seeing these in the elections industry, where public records show that ES&S has been price-gouging and strong-arming local officials into "take it or leave it" clauses in contracts. If there isn't enough competition, it leaves election officials with no choices, no bargaining power, and no leverage to enforce quality controls or fairness.

For example, Black Box Voting obtained information in our public records requests which revealed that Angelina County, Texas had been subjected to horrible treatment by ES&S, and when they complained, ES&S threatened them with shutdown of election support for their 2008 presidential election if they didn't sign. The situation was egregious: ES&S required them to use ES&S-selected technicians to run their election, and the technician miscounted the election, resulting in a judge ordering a new election (at Angelina County expense!). Then ES&S charged Angelina County $1300 per day for the technician's work. When Angelina County officials protested, they were ordered to sign a new contract "or else."

An even worse example took place in Florida, where anti-competitive actions violated both the Clayton Act and the Sherman Act. When Ion Sancho worked with Black Box Voting to demonstrate the vulnerability of the Diebold system to vote manipulation, Diebold refused to provide a legally required update. Florida authorizes only three vendors to sell voting machines. When Sancho tried to replace Diebold's system with another vendor, all three vendors refused to sell to him. This kind of collusion is not just illegal; it is a crime. Then, the governor of Florida tried to push Ion Sancho out of office, threatening him with loss of his job if he didn't purchase the update, which the limited number of vendors refused to sell to him.

But there are worse consequences. What we have talked about so far is the "horizontal monopoly" -- when there aren't enough different vendors to buy from, which invites price-gouging, lack of quality, and strong-arming on contracts. But the "vertical monopoly" is even more dangerous.

A vertical monopoly exists because ES&S controls the whole process. Imagine this: Suppose you have just one farmer providing all the wheat for breakfast cereals, and the same farmer owns the ONLY breakfast cereal company. The farmer could price-fix and gouge on both ends, the supplier end and the retail end.

Diebold provides voter registration software, which affects WHO can vote; it provides electronic pollbooks, which control the report of WHO voted and who is allowed to vote, it controls the absentee ballot authentication software, which dictates which vote by mail ballots will be accepted for counting it controls the counting of both polling place and absentee votes, which is concealed from the public. ES&S has a similar vertical monopoly. This is a horrible, undemocratic situation that is ripe for fraud.

Quite literally, this vertical monopoly represents a transfer of power from the public to insiders with access to the system (whether they be government insiders or vendors).

The genius of a truly democratic system lies in dispersed power and public controls over public elections. When you consolidate power to a single entity, you create a system that is perhaps tidy, but very unstable. Dictatorships are tidy. Democratic systems are messy, but the dispersal of power makes them stable. Centralized control destabilizes our democratic system of government.

Note that currently, centralization has been achieved both by government, with the White House-appointed Election Assistance Commission, and through consolidation of the elections industry into just a few vendors.

Okay, I get it. Vertical and horizontal monopolies are not good in general and especially bad for democratic elections. Let's pause here. When we return, Bev will explain what happens now with the anti-trust probe by the DOJ. I hope you'll join us.

PART TWO

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Part-Two-BlackBoxVoting-s-by-Joan-Brunwasser-091222-134.html

December 22, 2009

Part Two: BlackBoxVoting's Bev Harris Walks Us Through the DOJ Anti-Trust Probe of ES&S

By Joan Brunwasser

Welcome back for the conclusion of my interview with Black Box Voting's founder, Bev Harris. So, Bev, what happens now with the anti-trust probe, which has proceeded, thanks to the ample documentation you provided the DOJ?

The DOJ can require ES&S to divest itself of the Diebold Premier Election Solutions acquisition. Diebold sure as heck won't want it back they practically gave it away by selling it for just $5 million and agreeing to remain responsible for the liability and lawsuits. ES&S wouldn't need to sell it back to Diebold; they'd just need to divest themselves of it.

It's not the direct profit potential that ultimately drives this acquisition, nor any subsequent acquisition if divestiture is required. This is actually about power. What's at stake has a much higher value than you'll ever see on the balance sheet.

If divestiture is required, and it probably will be, it could get interesting. There may be someone undesirable waiting in the wings to snap this up. If another entity takes it over, the real identity will become very important, and we should keep in mind that ES&S has ties that lead back to Kiewit a road-building outfit with quite a sordid history of hidden ownership for its highway contracting bids.

Omaha's Kiewit outfit got into trouble a while back for bid-rigging and was banned from bidding for several government projects. So then Kiewit said "Here we go Loopdy-Loo" and started creating entities inside of other entities. It got pretty nutty. At one point, a bunch of White Kiewit golfing buddies from Omaha pretended to be Black women from Seattle. They hid real corporate identities in Oklahoma too, where they had been banned from doing work with the government, creating a maze of confusion over true ownership during government procurement cycles. Some of Kiewit's executives were indicted in schemes to bid-rig and cover up true ownership.

ES&S does have origins that lead back to the Kiewit bunch, but true to form, you have to jump through so many hoops to follow their corporate permutations that you end up getting lost in the forest. I mentioned the Kiewit connections in our DOJ complaint, and I outlined some of the Kiewit backdrop behind ES&S here:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

In my opinion, it is essential for the DOJ to unravel true ownership behind ES&S, because if they don't, how will they know that the next entity is not just the same guys hiding behind a different screen? And how would we know that a divestiture wasn't just the same game, different name?

So ES&S will probably be required to divest itself of its Diebold election purchase, but the devil will be in the details. We'll have to be exceptionally vigilant to find the real identities behind whoever picks it up from there.

Another consequence would be nice: There is precedent for the DOJ to recover costs for their investigation and any litigation when there is a wrongful acquisition under anti-trust laws. It would be justified in the ES&S acquisition, because ES&S has done this before! In 1997, ES&S acquired Business Records Corporation, triggering anti-trust action by the SEC. The company certainly knew better, but tried to create a monopoly again. They should pay.

All this being said, the bigger problem we are facing is concealment of key steps in elections from the public. If you conceal essential steps in a public election from the public, it ceases to be public. And if you cease having public elections, you no longer have liberty -- a violation of our highest-level human rights.

So while the antitrust investigation can at least hold another monster at bay, it doesn't solve the core issues. It does have potential to open some helpful information up for public examination, because the subpoenas will be flying, not only from the US DOJ but from the 14 states, and in most cases the responses to those documents will be obtainable through Freedom of Information actions. However, it took me four years to obtain the DOJ freedom of information documents on the investigation they did into me back in 2004, so let's not hold our breath for the document dump. And we can't request the records until after the investigation is closed.

In the mean time, we need to keep our eye on the ball: We need to restore public right to see and authenticate every step of elections. I can't emphasize enough how dangerous the situation is right now: We have destabilized our form of government through centralization of control, and we have transferred power to
insiders by authorizing undemocratic concealment of public election processes.

Before we conclude, do you want to elaborate a little on what you said before about the core problem of "concealment of key steps in elections from thepublic?" What is the nature of this biggest problem facing our elections today?

Because we cannot see electrons, computerized counting conceals an essential step in public elections and therefore violates public right to know. Concealed vote counting systems have been deemed unconstitutional by the German equivalent of our Supreme Court, which has ruled that no public election can conceal any essential step in the election from the public.

Principles of public sovereignty over government are embedded into our Declaration of Independence (the document which provided much of the argumentation for women's suffrage), and are also internationally recognized and contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The anti-trust suit is fascinating and important, but it's even more important to view all election issues within the context of inalienable rights that is, the public right to examine and authenticate every step of its public elections. It is the "public" nature of elections, and the public controls, which differentiate a real democratic system from a false one.

How has this very important and anti-democratic aspect of our current elections escaped the attention of our fellow Americans?

There has been an effort, pushed along by the e-voting industry, to redirect arguments away from our inalienable rights and over to mechanics. In other words, instead of stating that the public has a right to see and authenticate every step of the election, we're told that having a "paper trail" will "ensure that elections are accurate and free of fraud."

Simply having a paper trail, or even hand counting all the ballots does nothing at all to restore our right to public controls if performed by government insiders behind closed doors.

We need to train ourselves to use the words "public" and "rights" every time we talk about elections. Learn the rights arguments (public right to see and authenticate every essential step of public elections). Practice using them when writing letters to public officials and always state the human rights framework when speaking with reporters.

Public elections, after all, are the consummation of our inalienable right to liberty. Whether we are talking about antitrust investigations or missing absentee ballots or strange impossible numbers, in every case we should insert the rights framework for our concerns. And using that framework means consistently using the words "public" and "right" in our communications.

Anything you'd like to add, Bev?

Thank you, Joan, for the opportunity to address these issues.

Thank you, Bev, for talking with me and for your tireless work as election watchdog. All American voters, regardless of their political views, are in your debt.

Seeing Through Sequoia's Transparent Election System

2009-12-10T13:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Seeing-Through-Sequoia-s-T-by-DanAshby-091207-756.html

December 10, 2009
Seeing Through Sequoia's Transparent Election System
By DanAshby

Staying Focused on the Real Solutions

The announcement of the Sequoia Frontier open-source E-voting system (10.27.09) is a significant fork in the trail to election integrity, but it would be a mistake to confuse this half-way mark for our destination.

I had thought ES&S would be first to market with an all-open-source E-voting system. No doubt, they're not far behind. The dwindling number of E-voting vendors still in business are now obliged to follow suit or be expunged from the marketplace, and for that we should be glad.

Although Sequoia's press release is essentially good news, the operative reality is that between now and sometime after 2012 when the open-source voting system announced today is certified for use, there will be another federal election conducted with the same batch of secretly programmed black boxes that hijacked the U.S. government in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006, and skewed the 2008 primaries, and whose predecessors, more likely than not, have been manipulating elections since shortly after their introduction in 1965.

Even if it weren't so dangerous, misapplied technology would still be an unnecessary distraction from the philosophical and practical issues that are properly the core issues of electoral democracy.

It's up to the EI movement to explain to the voting public, that even though open-source code, open data schema, and human-readable data formats are undeniably improvements over the secret, closed voting software currently in use, these features do not and can not address these fundamental civil rights principles on which democracy depends:

1. All aspects of the electoral process (except the casting of secret ballots) should be transparently observable and accountable to the citizenry, without the intermediation of secret actors or unobservable software processes.

2. Public elections should be a wholly public exercise, free of dependence on for-profit corporations or any technological priesthood.

Even as the E-voting industry as a whole follows Sequoia in a transition to open-source platforms, the public will remain dependent on private contractors, costly equipment, expensive upgrades, and even more expensive maintenance and service fees in perpetuity, so long as the institution of software-mediated voting is allowed to supplant the appropriately low-tech, citizen-mediated election model based on voter-marked paper ballots hand-counted in the precincts on election night, by the citizens themselves.

The advent of open-source voting software notwithstanding, current election administration trends project more, not less, private E-vendor control over public elections to come. All the E-voting vendors still in business are developing and deploying systems such as Sequoia's Frontier, that capture the entire electoral process end-to-end -- from voter registration, to ballot preparation, vote counting and tabulation, and reporting of results -- fused into one seamless, vertically-integrated, private product for sale. The final solution the E-vendors are industriously working toward, is a totalitarian dream of universal Internet voting. Is it democracy or an illusion? The cryptographers assure us they will know, and we should just relax and trust them.

In the immediate present, the E-voting industry is completing the inevitable trajectory of capitalism that culminates in monopoly. Unless the 75-percent market control resulting from the ES&S / Premier merger is undone by government intervention, we're already there.

Like gullible turkeys lured into a trap that's been sprung, we voters are now caught inside a black box.
The proper response to our situation is not to ponder our accommodation to the dark, but to kick the box to pieces and break out into the light.

The path to democratic recovery does not lead through the software development cycle.
When applied to elections, the end product of that process can only be the perfection of an illusion fatal to democracy.

We ordinary citizens cannot know the results of our own elections with the certitude that democracy requires, unless we administer the elections and count the ballots ourselves in the public arena of our neighborhood precincts.

Even though a transition away from closed to open-source voting systems may significantly decrease the risk that the succession of invisible electoral thefts that devastated the nation in this generation will be repeated into the next, let's not let this slight reduction from threat level orange distract us from achieving our ultimate goal.

We won't really be a free, self-governing people until we've kicked the money-changers and their programming minions out of the polling booth, and rebooted the time-honored democratic technology of paper ballots, counted by hand, in the clear light of the public eye.

What Al Gore Should Have Told Us 12/13/2000

2009-12-06T08:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-Al-Gore-Should-Have-T-by-Dean-Hartwell-091203-17.html

December 6, 2009
What Al Gore Should Have Told Us 12/13/2000
By Dean Hartwell

In early December 2000, Vice President Al Gore conceded the presidential election to Governor George W. Bush. While he was gracious and articulate, he should have foreseen the problems with losing an election he really won.

Instead of conceding, Gore should have told us the following:

“I have not lost this election. There was no election to begin with. You, the voters, have had nothing to do with the outcome.

Tens of thousands of likely Democratic voters in Florida, through no fault of their own, had their names removed from the voting rolls by a project directed by the Secretary of State of Florida, who just happened to co-chair my opponent's campaign.

John Ellis of Fox News convinced his network to call the election prematurely for my opponent. Oh, Ellis happens to be the first cousin of my opponent.

After the official count showed my opponent holding a slim lead, I was entitled to a machine recount throughout the state of Florida. Funny thing happened – one-third of the counties never bothered to do this mandatory act.

By now you are familiar with the hand recounts, which I requested under Florida law. The United States Supreme Court used an interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause that the majority would never consider for anyone else in our society to stop the recounts.

So here we are. A nation without law. A nation whose real leaders are making decisions without our consent. This does not bode well for our future.

If a president can be installed by means other than law, they can be made to commit actions against the law. Will anything the next administration does be for real?

We must be skeptical of the next president. He will not work for us but instead for the criminals who put him on the throne of power. He will do their bidding, not ours. And his policies will affect later presidents.

What happened after President Kennedy was murdered? We got a new president who escalated the War in Vietnam. And for what purpose? As we found out from sources such as the Pentagon Papers, it was not about communism but about controlling other parts of the world and making a group of people who profit from war even wealthier.

Other assassinations and illegal activities have plagued us since then. Take the October Surprise. The Reagan campaign team promised the Ayatollah in Iran weapons if Iran would keep our hostages there past the election between Reagan and President Carter. This illegal act led directly to the Iran-Contra Scandal in the late 1980s when President Reagan sold weapons to Iran and diverted some of the money to illegally fund the Contras in Nicaragua.

I cringe when I think of our future when we forget the rule of law. If people think I am a sore loser, so be it. Just don't say I did not warn you.”

Organized Crime Fighting

2009-11-23T11:34:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Organized-Crime-Fighting-by-Nancy-Tobi-091122-378.html

November 22, 2009
Organized Crime Fighting
By Nancy Tobi

(A personal essay from the collection of essays "The Life and Times of an MS-Endowed Democracy Warrior" found at WearyGrace.com)

In January 2008 New Hampshire held its first in the nation primary. I used to be so proud of this tradition, the state asserting its place in history, playing its pivotal role in determining the next president of the United States. Several years ago, enamored with and unwaveringly convinced of the honesty of the state's hand counted elections, I had written an op ed about how this tradition of fair and open elections justified NH's first in the nation primary.

Let other states, I wrote, rise to the level of open and honest elections found in NH's hand count elections, and then let them vie for first place in presidential politics.

I still believe this about the hand count elections taking place in NH's towns.

But what I failed to account for in my vociferous defense of the Granite State was that the hand count elections constituted only a very small percentage of NH elections. The rest were run by the private corporate election pirates.

During the years I was busy defending the state's open elections, I worked hand in hand in an unusual partnership with state officials to promote the NH method of hand counting. I wrote two hand count election manuals to share this tried and true method of publicly counting votes with the rest of the nation.

Even other election activists visiting New Hampshire would remark, upon observing our hand count elections, “Maybe democracy really does work here!”

I really wanted to believe that the state officials I worked with were good and honest people. Their doors were always open, after all.

But always something nagged at me underneath the rosy picture they all tried to paint of themselves. They were always evasive and wouldn't answer questions forthrightly about why they allowed the computerized voting machines to be used in the state, even with all the scientific reports showing how defective and insecure these machines were. They were always a little too cozy with the corporate e-voting pirates.

They never used their position of leadership to help us restore hand count elections to every city and town in the state.

After the 2008 Primary, other national activists came to New Hampshire to observe the election recounts that had been requested by candidates of both major parties. I called them the Women's Brigades, because they were all women and they came to fight a democracy battle on the NH soil.

The Women's Brigade chased after state employees collecting paper ballots from cities and towns for the recounts. They staked out the state office buildings where the ballots were being stored prior to the recount. They filmed, videotaped, and documented everything they saw. And what they saw was shocking. “They're all dirty,” the Brigade Captain told me one evening. “You have to distance yourself from all of them.”

I had never heard her so rattled. I knew that whatever she'd uncovered, it was serious.

But I knew these guys, didn't I? I had been hanging out with them for years. But the truth is, all the while I was hanging out with them, they were going about their business running things the way they wanted to run them, pushing me off to their handler, keeping me out of their way.

When I finally reviewed all the evidence from the Brigade, there was only one conclusion I could reach: She was right. The whole election recount was a dirty and suspect operation.

My son is an organizer for the environmental movement. He excels where I have always failed as an “activist”. I never did know how to organize people into action.

I have always operated mostly on my own, never knowing how to build a base, supporting troops to ride with me in the democracy wars.

I felt lucky to find the handful or so other dedicated warriors to join me from time to time.

Recently he asked me if I was getting ready to end my self-imposed exile from activism.

I told him I really didn't know. I told him that after the work done by the Women's Brigade I felt I understood better what I am up against and that maybe it was not such a good idea to get back into that fray. I told him that in all honesty, it appeared that what I am up against is nothing less than organized crime and that in many shapes and forms, I'd already been warned off by some of the players.

He thought about this for a moment, reflecting. And then he looked up and said, “If you want to fight organized crime, Mom, then you need to be an organized crime fighter.”

He's right. I can't get back into the saddle again as the lone ranger. If I decide to join the battle again I will have to be smarter and more thoughtful. I will have to have an organization more solidly behind me.

I will have to be an "organized".. crime fighter.

Cryptographic voting debuts

2009-11-17T08:50:00.000-08:00

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/rivest-voting.html

Cryptographic voting debuts

In last week's municipal election in Takoma Park, Maryland, voters voted by exposing three-digit numerical codes printed on their ballots in invisible ink. By later verifying the codes online, they could help minimize the possibility of election fraud.
Photo - Photo: Alex Rivest

A new system for ensuring accurate election tallies, which MIT researchers helped to develop, passed its first real-world test last Tuesday.
Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office
November 13, 2009

Last week, in Takoma Park, Md., a new cryptographic voting system that could ensure accurate vote counts was used for the first time in a real election. MIT’s Ron Rivest, the Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, helped develop the system and says he’s quite pleased with how the technology worked. Takoma Park’s city clerk, Jessie Carpenter, agrees that the trial “went very well.”

To minimize the disruption of existing voting procedures, the system, called Scantegrity II, was designed to work with ordinary optical-scan voting technology. Optical-scan voting — which has become the dominant technology in the United States since the 2000 presidential election — usually requires the voter to fill in bubbles printed on a ballot next to candidates’ names. With Scantegrity II, the voter instead uses a special pen to expose a code printed inside the bubble in invisible ink. Thereafter, the ballot is fed into an ordinary optical reader, which simply determines which bubbles have been darkened.

Any voter who’d later like to confirm her vote can simply jot down the code that’s in the exposed bubble, along with the ballot’s serial number, and take that information home. (In the Takoma Park election, voters could record their codes on cards stacked in the voting booths, which were printed with the names of the contested offices — mayor and city councilor.) The voter can then look up that serial number on the election commission’s website and confirm that it’s correlated with the code inside the bubble she marked. Although on the website, the code is never associated with the candidate’s name, Scantegrity ensures that if just 2 percent of voters confirm their codes, it’s statistically almost impossible for vote tampering to go undetected.

The key to the system is that before the election, the election commission prepares a set of tables that, taken together, link the ballot codes and the candidates’ names; but that link can’t be deduced from any one table by itself. Then the commission publicly releases a set of digital signatures that cryptographically describe all the entries in the tables without actually revealing them. That way, the tables can’t be tampered with after the ballots are cast, but neither do they reveal any information that ballot stuffers could use before the election.

After the election, the election commission releases some of the information contained in the tables — including the codes exposed on all the recorded ballots — along with encryption keys that verify its authenticity. The partially revealed tables conceal enough information to preserve voter anonymity: There’s no way to figure out which ballot went for which candidate. But they reveal enough information that anyone interested in performing an audit can ferret out fraud. How the system works

Going into the Takoma Park trial, the crucial question was whether 2 percent of voters would bother to write down their codes and check them online. According to Poorvi Vora, a member of the Scantegrity team at George Washington University, 1,722 votes were cast and 66 people checked their codes — almost 4 percent.

Carpenter says that she would have liked that number to be higher. But “that’s not the fault of the Scantegrity system,” she says. “We needed to have done more education of the voters.”

Another question was whether the decoder pens would hold up over the course of the day. “The smudging issue was one we were slightly concerned about,” Rivest says. “You know, if you take a highlighter and you run it over newspaper, it will collect the black ink.” Poll workers, he says, were instructed to check the decoder pens occasionally to make sure they were in good working order. But “the ink seemed to be lasting fine,” Rivest says, and “smudging wasn’t much of an issue.”

Carpenter adds that a very small number of voters refused to use the decoder pens, instead pulling out their own ink pens and filling in the bubbles. But since the Scantegrity system requires no modification to the optical scanners, that kind of improvised procedural change didn’t affect the final tally.

“I was a little bit afraid that we’d have a lot of invalid ballots,” Carpenter says. “But we didn’t. We had some, but I don’t think it was high compared to any other ballot-marking system.” Rivest confirms that, according to the Scantegrity team’s research, the fraction of invalid ballots was consistent with that seen in conventional optical-scan voting.

“I don’t think the system slowed us down at all,” Carpenter adds. Slightly after 5 p.m., she says, a large wave of voters hit the polls, and the wait got up to about 15 minutes, she says. But Carpenter believes that the sudden surge was the result of a story on a local National Public Radio affiliate describing the Scantegrity trial. “I think we got a little publicity boost that made people come out who might otherwise not have come out,” she says. “We just had tremendous lines once that story hit, and I can’t believe it was coincidence.”

When Takoma Park decided to use the Scantegrity system, “we certainly took notice of that,” says Matthew Masterson of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which oversees voting technologies and procedures in the United States. “The National Institute of Standards and Technology, who’s our partner in developing the standards, just held a conference on end-to-end cryptographic systems [like Scantegrity II], and we’ve started the process of looking at systems like that and how to test them.” Masterson adds that “anytime a jurisdiction takes a look at new technology like that —the cryptographic end-to end system in this case — that’s a great conversation for voters and election officials to be having. And in that sense, it’s very positive for democracy.”