Wired Breaks the Vote-Switching Software Story

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More Questions for Florida
By Kim Zettner for Wired News.
(via
Brad Blog)

A government watchdog group is investigating allegations made by a Florida programmer that are whipping up a frenzy among bloggers and people who believe Republicans stole the recent election.
Programmer Clint Curtis claims that four years ago Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Florida) asked his then-employer to write software to alter votes on electronic voting machines in Florida…
He said his employer told him the code would be used “to control the vote” in West Palm Beach County, Florida. But a fellow employee disputed the programmer’s claims and said the meetings he described never took place…

Curtis said Feeney asked for code that could go undetected on a voting machine and be easily triggered without any devices by anyone using the machine. Curtis had never seen source code for a voting machine, but in five hours, he said he designed code in Visual Basic that would launch if someone touched specific spots on the voting screen after selecting a candidate.
Once the code was activated, it would search the machine to see if the selected candidate’s total was behind. If it was, the machine would award that candidate 51 percent of the total votes recorded on the machine and redistribute the remaining votes among the other candidates in the race.
Curtis said he initially believed Feeney wanted the code to see if such fraud were possible and to know how to detect it. The programmer told Feeney that such code could never be undetectable in source code, and he wrote a paper describing how to look for it. But when he gave the paper and code to his employer, Yang told him he was looking at it all wrong. They weren’t looking at how to find code, Curtis said she told him. They needed code that couldn’t be found…

Many questions have been raised about Curtis, the 46-year-old programmer, who said he doesn’t know if anyone ever placed the prototype code on voting machines. But this hasn’t stopped frustrated voters and bloggers from seizing his story. Daily Kos mentioned the allegations, and Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog has written extensively about them.
Staff members for Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) met with Curtis last week to discuss the election allegations. Representatives for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida) inquired about other allegations from Curtis that his former company spied on NASA.
In September 2000, Curtis was working for Yang Enterprises in Oviedo, Florida, a software design firm that contracts with NASA, ExxonMobil and the Florida Department of Transportation, among other clients. According to Curtis, Feeney met with him and Lee Yang, the company’s president, to request the voting software.
At the time, Feeney was Yang’s corporate attorney and a registered lobbyist for the company as well as a member of Florida’s legislature. A month later, he would become speaker of Florida’s House of Representatives. In 2002 he was elected to Congress.

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It’s Electoral College Day For Ohio – Even Though It Shouldn’t Be Till The Recount Is Over

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Protesters Urge Delay for Ohio Electors
By John McCarthy for the Associated Press.

As it has done for 200 years, Ohio’s delegation to the Electoral College is to meet Monday to cast ballots for president and vice president – but this time, there are demands that the electors wait until after a recount. A demonstration was held Sunday as about 100 people gathered outside the Ohio Statehouse to protest the delegation’s vote.
The Electoral College’s vote in the Ohio Senate chamber is expected to be accompanied by demonstrations outside the Capitol sponsored by groups who don’t accept that President Bush won the key swing state by 119,000 votes, guaranteeing his victory over Democrat John Kerry.

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Bev Harris Weighs In On The Vote-Switching Software Story

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This goes with this post.
There has been a bit of a tinfoil hat alert with regard to the story I posted the Repubs hiring a programmer to write “vote switching” software.
I still have not personally had a chance to investigate the article, but Bev Harris had this to say on her blackboxvoting.org website, and it seemed important to take her stance into consideration while reading the article.

While MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and I had a run-in recently, I agree
with Olbermann’s earlier critique of the Madsen homeland security
story, and this new Madsen story is just as weak. Most of both Madsen
stories are bait and switch. Madsen wanders all over the place,
recapping unrelated information from real news agencies, piggybacking
onto their credibility, with only the most tenuous ties to what he is
actually trying to prove. The work done on BradBlog is much more
focused, and Brad seems to be a responsible researcher.
========================================
In my original critique, I raised questions about the Feeney
vote-manipulation story; some of them related to Madsen’s work. Brad
Friedman, the author of BradBlog and the primary researcher for more
credible work on Curtis, answered my original questions here. I have
updated this section.
1. Madsen’s article implied that Curtis’s vote-rigging program was
used in elections. Brad Friedman correctly points out that the Clint
Curtis affidavit explains that he designed a prototype and did not put
it into machines. (Many people have written vote-rigging prototypes,
and the writing of a program doesn’t prove anything about the
integrity of the 2004 election.) The issue then becomes: Are Curtis’s
allegations about Tom Feeney correct?
– Documents do confirm that Curtis worked for Yang Enterprises, and
that Feeney was involved with Yang. Documents do not confirm that
Curtis met with Feeney and discussed vote-rigging. Curtis names
witnesses in his affidavit, which is a good sign. The witnesses have
not confirmed the story, yet.

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Blackwell Interfering With Ohio Recount-Right On Schedule

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Oopsy. Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell promised America that he would not interfere with a recount. Now his office has instructed employees that Ohio voting records are not considered “public records.”
That means that Kenneth Blackwell has been caught in a big fat lie. And I’ve got the proof (I provide video and a transcript):
Last week, he promised in an interview with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann that he wouldn’t do anything to interfere with the recount. He said he would consider it “yet another audit of the voting process.”
Here’s the story detailing Blackwell’s “lockdown” of the Ohio voting records:

Blackwell Locks Out Recount Volunteers
By Ray Beckerman.

On Friday December 10 two certified volunteers for the Ohio Recount team assigned to Greene County were in process recording voting information from minority precincts in Greene County, and were stopped mid-count by a surprise order from Secretary of State Blackwell

Repubs Paid Programmers To Create “Vote Switching” Software

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Update: this post now goes with this one. (Bev Harris weighing in on this story.)
Texas to Florida: White House-linked clandestine operation paid for “vote switching” software
By Wayne Madsen for the Online Journal.

According to a notarized affidavit signed by Clint Curtis, while he was employed by the NASA Kennedy Space Center contractor, Yang Enterprises, Inc., during 2000, Feeney solicited him to write a program to “control the vote.” At the time, Curtis was of the opinion that the program was to be used for preventing fraud in the in the 2002 election in Palm Beach County, Florida. His mind was changed, however, when the true intentions of Feeney became clear: the computer program was going to be used to suppress the Democratic vote in counties with large Democratic registrations.

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TODAY: Congressional Hearing On Ohio Voting Fraud On CSPAN At 7AM PST, 10 AM EST – Will Someone Please Tape It For Me?

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According to the CSPAN Website, the congressional hearing with Rep Conyers will be broadcast on CSPAN.
Many thanks to those of you who emailed and called CSPAN to help make this possible. (I forgot to remind you yesterday, but I guess you guys had it under control 🙂
My cable company, Comcast, seems to think it’s more important to give me another home shopping channel than broadcast my country’s government to me (oh yes, they’ll be hearing from me), so I can’t tape it. So that means it’s up to one of you to hack the stream or grab it with your pvr or camera or vhs player for me to be able to store it in my archive.
At least we can all watch it online on CSPAN. I would much rather have a copy that I can study and analyze in the future.
Talk soon,
lisa

2004 VOTE
Review of Ohio Balloting
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Cmte., hosts a forum on the election in Ohio and possible irregularities in the vote itself and the subsequent counting of ballots. Many other Congressmen and interest group representatives take part in this event.

Another Peep Out Of The Democrats — They Are Asking The Obvious About Ohio

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This just in from the Democratic Party.
They are still beating around the Shrub a bit. Because, of course, if Kerry won Ohio, it would overturn the election.

Democratic News
—————
Dear Lisa,
Your response to Washington Governor candidate Christine Gregoire’s plea for help
has been overwhelming. Thanks to your generosity, the recount in Washington will now
go forward. With only 42 votes separating Gregoire and her Republican opponent,
today we can ensure that every ballot is accurately counted. This could not have
happened without you.
Your incredible grassroots support is vital to our continued fight to ensure a full
and legitimate count of every single vote in this election and future elections. In
addition to our strong commitment to the recount in Washington State, the Democratic
Party has empowered the Ohio Democratic Party to represent us as our official
observer during the recount. We will make sure that every vote in Ohio is counted.
But we aren’t stopping there. After consulting with our Voting Rights Institute
staff, Voting Protection Coordinators, Ohio legal team, Party activists, supporters,
elected officials, and others, and after reviewing available information, the
Democratic National Committee has decided to conduct a thorough investigation of key
election issues arising from the conduct of the 2004 general election in Ohio.
This investigative study will address the legitimate questions and concerns that
have been raised in Ohio and will develop factual information that will be
critically important in crafting further key election reforms. This project seeks to
answer such questions as:
* Why did so many people have to wait in line in certain Ohio precincts and not
others?
* Why weren’t there enough machines in some counties and not others?
* Why were so many Ohioans forced to cast provisional ballots?
We will find answers to help implement and advocate reforms in the future.
Let me be clear. We do not expect either the recount in Ohio or our investigation to
overturn the results of this election. But both are vital to protecting every
American’s voting rights in future elections. And the Democratic Party will never
waver when it comes to upholding this sacred trust.
Thank you again for your incredible support.
Sincerely,
Terry McAuliffe
Chairman

Getting Ready To Podcast

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Many of you have requested a podcast of my blog. I didn’t understand what a podcast was, at first, so I couldn’t tell you yes or no about it. But now I get it, and it sounds like something that would be easy to produce that would be a lot of fun ad kind of be perfectly suited for my content.
This is great timing too because I was already going to put up some MP3s of my old radio shows when I was on Free Radio Berkeley in 1995. Now I can slice up the shows into my podcasts.
I never thought about it before (an mp3 version of my blog), but now I can’t wait.

Common Freaky Knowledge About The Affiliated Companies and People Behind Electronic Voting Machines (And The Processing Of The Votes By Those Machines)

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Sure, you’ve heard all this information before. But it is pretty incredible. The foxes are guarding the hen houses big time.
from the google cache of http://www.retrovsmetro.org/blog/.

Diebold
Diebold ranks third behind ES&S and Sequoia. Diebold manufactures an array of machines including ATM machines, ticket machines, and the like, and notably, only its voting machines fail to provide an auditable paper trail. CEO Wally O’Dell, a Bush Pioneer who has visited Bush at the Crawford Ranch, promised to deliver Ohio for Bush in 2004, and indeed he did. O’Dell sponsored a $600,000 fundraiser in his home for Dick Cheney (and attended by Cheney) in July 2003. Director WR “Tim” Timken is also a Bush Pioneer, and has donated over a million dollars to the Republican party since 1991.
Diebold is arguably the most political of the voting machine companies; its directors and corporate officers are staunch GOP contributors, including Louis Bockius III, Donald Gant and Eric Roorda. Since 2000, the company has donated $170,000 to the Republican National State Elections Committee. All of the $240,000 donated by Diebold’s directors and chief officers to political campaigns since 1998 has gone to GOP candidates or the party.
SIAC
Admiral Bill Owens, a top Republican Party donor, military aide to Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary, is a former CEO of SIAC. On the board: Robert Gates, former CIA director, George H.W. Bush’s Deputy National Security Advisor and head of the George Bush School of Business. Owens and Gates are now on the Board of VoteHere, another voting machine company with strong ties to the defense industry.
Populex
Populex is responsible for Illinois’ e-voting system. Frank Carlucci, former CIA Director, is on its Advisory Board. Carlucci is a business partner of G H W Bush, and head of the Carlyle Group.
Accenture
Spun off from Arthur Anderson in the wake of that nasty Enron scandal, Accenture reportedly has the exclusive government contract to provide electronic voting for the military. Accenture got into the voting biz when it acquired Election.com, a company funded by Saudi money. Accenture’s biggest business partner is Halliburton.