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CONSUMER PROTECTION FOR ELECTIONS
Update: TUESDAY, DEC. 14, 2004: NOTICE Update SATURDAY, DEC 11, 2004: Computer guys -- here is the WinEDS audit log from the Snohomish County central tabulator for Nov. 2. Snohomish County is now trying to do a hand count for the Washington State gubernatorial race. Sequoia touch-screens. Good luck. Note: Please contact Bev Harris if you can help by providing a high-speed scanner to scan in .pdf documents. Returned from Florida with boxes of records, would like to get them on the Web. Update on Clint Curtis story, SATURDAY, DEC 11, 2004 Update THURSDAY, DEC. 9, 2004: Update on Black Box Voting actions Update TUESDAY, DEC. 7, 2004: Why the Feeney vote-rigging story sounds like disinformation -- as Madsen writes it. UPDATED: BradBlog is more credible, but a few questions remain. Discussions and updates on current investigations, volunteer actions, Volusia County lawsuit and more. Update: SUNDAY, DEC. 5, 2004: Black Box Voting is focusing on seven investigations right now. To the surprise of some, five of the counties we are investigating are Democratic. A national investigation we are doing trends Republican. Our members just want clean elections. We want answers, not theories, statistics, or potentialities, and therefore we are concentrating on areas which have anomalies, and where we believe we can get the facts. HOW TO DONATE. PayPal, credit card, Wish List, address are at this link. Our mailing address is Black Box Voting, PO Box 25552, Seattle WA 98165. If you have signed up to volunteer for Help America Audit go to VOLUNTEER INSTRUCTIONS for most current actions. To join the cleanup crew, e-mail crew@blackboxvoting.org Note that we will have an announcement around Dec. 10 for groups wishing to Help America Audit on a permanent or long-term basis.
Media calls and problem reports: 206-335-7747 or 206-354-5723
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Black Box Voting BookPaperback version- I will vote Chapter 01 - Compendium of errors Chapter 02 - Conflict of Interest Chapter 03 - History of vote-rigging Chapter 04 - Electronic vote-tampering Chapter 05 - Who's beholden to whom? Chapter 06 - Founding fathers wisdom Chapter 07 - What you won't find on company Web sites Chapter 08 - First public look into secret voting software Chapter 09 - Who's minding the store? Chapter 10 - 'rob-georgia.zip' -- noun or verb? Chapter 11 - Open source exam: The Diebold code Chapter 12 - Security breaches Chapter 13 - Solutions Chapter 14 - Practical activism Chapter 15 - The men behind the curtain Chapter 16 |
On November 12, seeking answers to a specific vote-fraud question on the Diebold voting machines, Black Box Voting went to Florida for one day. We didn't get back until Dec. 9. While in Florida, together with local citizens, we found significant problems in Volusia County (Diebold - audit did not check out; note the outstanding contributions of Florida Fair Voting Coalition and citizen Susan Pynchon), Pinellas County (Sequoia - stay tuned on this one, outstanding work by local citizens), Brevard County (Diebold -- obstructiveness and lying about public records) and Palm Beach County (Sequoia -- all kinds of problems, with very important work by local citizens), in addition to what's been reported elsewhere. Black Box Voting met with citizens in Florida who are making a real difference. What's in store for America: The key word is "relentless." We have not given up. We will not give up. 1. Unfortunately, the Black Box Voting "volunteer action" forums are compromised; hackers broke in and removed our own ability to use or moderate our own forums. Good people are working on that and we will solve it soon. 2. The Black Box Voting Cleanup Crew plan: Activating the Eagles "Doves, sparrows, and other low-flying birds gather together, but eagles soar alone and must be gathered one at a time." You, as an individual citizen, are America's best hope to clean up elections, which must be done starting at the local level. Using your own common sense, get started on your own local elections. Take an action, and let us know what you've done. Black Box Voting investigators will be traveling to meet with citizens who show that they take initiative on their own. Our republic will revive when we have REAL grass roots growing, that is, people who are taking independent action on a local level, using their own common sense. This does not always require a group. One person can make a real difference. We can help you by giving you ideas, technical advice, and by sending an investigator to you. - If actions taken by Black Box Voting make sense to you, try something similar in your local jurisdiction. - A Black Box Voting investigator may arrange to meet with you or your group, to help educate you, share ideas, and fund-raise. We will select those who show initiative on their own, with creative ideas that make things happen independent of our organization. When we say "fund-raising," we are not talking about fund raising for Black Box Voting. We visit you on our own dime. Whatever you arrange for fund raising during our visit will go to YOUR group, to empower action, purchase your local public records, pay court costs, whatever you need to use it for. Grass roots activism, in the form that is most dangerous to corporate-controlled power, is activism that is not centralized. A national organization with chapters in each state, which issues official position papers and directs/organizes actions, is using a corporate model itself. Black Box Voting is more revolutionary: We encourage INDEPENDENT action, which we do not control or directly organize. We are looking for relentless, clever, loosely allied people, taking actions they have figured out for themselves, using their own common sense and whatever resources they can bring to bear. This creates a swarm that becomes impossible to fight. Usually, before we will send an investigator to help you, you must show that you are taking action on your own. We are more interested in auditing elections and enforcing transparency than we are in holding rallies, and we are most interested in helping citizens who are self-directed, gutsy, sensible, and difficult to discourage. Relentless. Eagles. You can make it happen. We'll help. # # # # # Why the Feeney vote-rigging story sounds like disinformation, as Wayne Madsen writes itThe story hangs together better at BradBlog.com. ABOUT DISINFORMATION: Like a good lie, it has elements of truth. Trouble is, the truth in Madsen's story doesn't relate to the nuts and bolts of the story. DISINFORMATION IS DANGEROUS TO THE CLEAN VOTING MOVEMENT: Getting the facts is tedious, unexciting work, consisting of auditing and personal interviews, and it takes time. Many Americans want a magic bullet, a single shot that will blow the lid off everything at once. That's risky. If the mainstream media continues to be bombarded with stories that sound credible, but aren't, when the real thing comes down the pike it will be ignored. 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. 2. I mentioned a second problem, in that several of the Florida counties used different software in 2000 than they do now, and that various Florida counties use different manufacturers and different systems. Writing one program that would tamper with ES&S punch cards and Diebold optical scans at the same time is unrealistic. However, since Curtis says he did not insert the software into any voting system, this is (almost) a moot point. - The counties Curtis alleges Feeney wanted to rig were Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach. The first two used punch cards in 2000, switched to ES&S touch-screens in 2002, and used ES&S touch-screens in 2004. Palm Beach County used the infamous "butterfly ballot" in 2000, and switched to Sequoia touch-screens in 2002, and used those also in 2004. The Sequoia system has significant differences from the ES&S system, and the same software would not likely work for both - Note that the Wayne Madsen article does a bait and switch when he discusses Volusia County. He starts by saying it is Feeney's district, and then actually goes on to report a story broken by Black Box Voting in October, 2003, about minus 16,022 votes for Bush in Volusia -- which appears to have nothing to do with the Feeney story. BradBlog takes care not to draw conclusions that aren't supported. 3. The techniques used to program a vote-rigging system in the affidavit by Clint Curtis still have some technical problems. Candidate-switching is not difficult, and there are a number of ways to accomplish it. Programmers have pointed out the the use of VB5 doesn't match use of Unix systems, but several programmers I spoke with were unaware that the Sequoia touch-screens, used in Palm Beach, create their ballots from WinEDS, and that program runs on Windows, and is so replete with security problems that the state of Texas refused to certify it. Now, when I get a high-speed document scanner, I'll post the Texas FOIA documents that show how susceptible the Sequoia WinEDS program is to tampering. 4. Most political shenanigans are not conducted by the candidate himself, but by operatives. It is certainly possible for a politician to hold several meetings in which he commits a felony in front of several witnesses, but that's not usually how it is done. A more common technique is an envelope full of cash left in a drawer of an operative, with at least one, sometimes more, buffer layers between the operative and the politician. Clint Curtis says Feeney himself had meetings to directly discuss election rigging software. Could happen, certainly, but this seems unusual. But this gets a bit more interesting. As I was checking this out, I got a report from someone completely unrelated, on an entirely different kind of vote-manipulation endeavor, and Feeney's name came up in that, too. So the issue of Feeney's behavior is about as clear as mud. 5. The author says it will be difficult to write a program that will escape notice if the source code is examined. That's not quite true. I originally wrote that putting a trigger into a program can involve a very small amount of code, hard to detect -- and you can comment the code such that it looks like it is there for another purpose. Also, the certifiers do a slipshod job of code analysis, and you could probably drive a greyhound bus through their examination of the source code. But I've been receiving e-mails from programmers that point out something even more obvious: by slipping the rig into a .dll, a program that runs in the background in the operating system (which is never examined at all) you can certainly achieve vote-rigging and survive a source code review. Programmers pointed out to me that Curtis, as a programmer, should have known that. However, according to his affidavit, Curtis got his degree in Political Science and History, not computer science. He was apparently a self-trained programmer. I won't go into the technical merits more here, because if he didn't put the program into voting systems, they aren't relevant. 6. Now, my most significant objection to the story, which goes to Curtis's credibility, still involves his statement on the affidavit saying that he filed a "QUITAM" whistleblower suit, that is "pending." First, he doesn't spell it correctly. The correct spelling is two words, "Qui Tam." Next, Qui Tam cases MUST be filed under seal. If a Qui Tam is filed in Florida, both the evidence and the existence of the case must be sealed, and only the Florida Attorney General can unseal it. People have written to me to explain that Curtis did file a whistleblower suit, but did so a day after the deadline. That is not a Qui Tam, but an employment-related suit. In his affidavit, Curtis refers to filing lawsuits two different places. One is an employment suit, the other is a "QUITAM" suit. I found documentation of the employement suit and its dismissal, but saw no documentation at all about a Qui Tam suit. That means it's either still under seal, and therefore, by talking about it, Curtis just invalidated the suit and violated a court order, or there is no Qui Tam suit. Please do show it to me, if you can find it in the dockets and it has been unsealed. Black Box Voting board member Jim March and I filed a Qui Tam suit in California in November 2003, against Diebold Election Systems. Using a California law, we refused to seal the evidence, but still had to keep the existence of the case under seal. It did not come out from under seal until the California Attorney General got the court to unseal it, and the Associated Press covered the unsealing of the case. You cannot keep the unsealing of a Qui Tam case away from the press. The press has mentioned no FDOT Qui Tam. This goes directly to Curtis's credibility. I was not able to get hold of him today, and I will keep trying tomorrow, so that we can learn the answer to this. There are two other credibility-checking questions I need answered. First, a small scrambled egg on my face: I wrote "Court documents refer to a judgment against Curtis for copyright infringement. Actually, the court documents referred to might have been papers filed by an opposing party, i.e. Yang Enterprises, alleging the copyright infringement without proving it. According to the Daytona News-Journal, Yang says Curtis was "successfully sued" over copyright infringement. Parsing words here: "successfully sued" may mean there was a judgment entered, but according to Brad Friedman, Curtis says the case was settled out of court without either side paying the other. ("Each side paid their attorney's fees and went their merry way.") "Successfully sued" could also mean an out-of-court settlement in which Curtis paid a settlement to the other party. It is really stretching it to interpret "successfully sued" as simply filing a case. The term "successfully sued" could be a smear by Yang or Feeney, or it could be that Curtis didn't fully disclose the problems with the copyright infringement case. Because this goes to credibility, and in this case credibility is extremely important, the next two questions that must be answered are: Who was the former employer and what were the real terms of the settlement or judgment? One more credibility test: When Curtis lived in Illinois, he ran for office as a Republican. While discussing his run for office in a letter to the Bloomington Pantagraph he accused a local attorney of stealing $28,000. The accusation might be accurate, since it apparently was an embezzlement, and those are much more common than people realize. I'd like to know the names of the attorney and the injured party. My gut tells me -- but this is only speculation -- that Curtis was correct in blowing the whistle on the attorney for misappropriating $28,000. I say that because I've seen written up several financial fraud cases, met the embezzlers, it happens frequently. If he blew the whistle on a $28,000 theft and his charges were correct, that would shore up his credibility on the Feeney story. I announced on a national radio show Friday that I will be happy to take what you folks throw at me, if I am wrong on these points. In the mean time, because the implications of this story are so significant, I think we need to continue to exercise caution and get the story to the point where it is truly bulletproof. -- Bev Harris # # # # #
SUNDAY DEC 5 2004: IT'S TOO SOON TO PRESCRIBE REMEDIES1. We're not done yet. 2. This is not the only election. 3. The 2004 election was never audited. No one really knows whether it was accurate or not. No one really knows whether:
a. There was no fraud 4. It's still about auditing.
a. To do an audit, you start with spot checks. 5. It's time to get some answers. That's what we are doing aT Black Box Voting. 6. It is premature to recommend specific legislation. Though several voting integrity groups and so-called "experts" are trying to do that right now, no one really knows what the problems are yet. Before reinventing the wheel (again) we should finish some of the audits and investigations that need to be done. Black Box Voting files Public Records lawsuit against Palm Beach CountyNOV 30 2004: Today's lawsuit was filed naming Theresa LePore as defendant, citing her for failure to comply with the Black Box Voting public records request of Nov. 2, 2004. Black Box Voting filed the lawsuit this morning in Palm Beach County, served it per Florida law on LePore's attorney. Black Box Voting then made a surprise visit to the podium at the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections meeting held today in Orlando, where LePore was scheduled to make a speech on records retention. We went in through the kitchen, using a reconassaince map provided by a colleague, led by Kathleen Wynne dressed as hired help. Black Box Voting investigator Kathleen Wynne, in black jeans and a white polo shirt had earlier traveled through the route to the back entrance to the supervisor's meeting, nodding to the waiters. "Very nice, very nice," Wynne said authoritatively. Wynne led Bev Harris and Andy Stephenson through the back way without raising so much as an eyebrow, since she looked like hotel staff. Harris went onto the podium and introduced herself to the crowd. "I know I'm interrupting. This will only take a minute." She turned to LePore, "Since we can't get your attention any other way, I'm serving you with a courtesy copy of the lawsuit we served on your office this morning." LePore glared, turned her back on Harris, and refused to take the lawsuit, so Harris set it on the table in front of LePore. Stephenson stood up in front of the crowd of perhaps 200 Florida elections officials. "This was a courtesy call on Ms. LePore for failing to produce public records," he said. "For any of you who have not complied, we have more of these coming." Black Box Voting has identified 13 Florida counties who have earned litigation due to failure to comply with public records requests. The elections officials erupted into deafening shouts, boos, gavel-pounding, and then Wynne stepped up smack dab in front of the crowd, took a sturdy stance and panned the crowd with her video camera. "This is what democracy looks like," she said, as the officials scowled and shouted for the sergeant at arms. Unfortunately, the sergeant at arms was nowhere to be found. (Perhaps imbibing in the Sequoia Voting Systems lounge, just down the hall? We may never know.) Harris, Stephenson and Wynne made haste out the back door, but accidentally tripped a loud screeching alarm. The meeting broke up and people fanned out all over the place seeking to capture the rude individuals from Black Box Voting. Black Box Voting went to the meeting because it was on the official schedule as a speech by LePore on retention of election records. LePore seems to have been retaining records too aggressively, by failing to provide public records to the public. Unfortunately, it seems that the agenda was changed, unbeknownst to Black Box Voting, and instead of a speech it was to be an event honoring LePore prior to her retirement (she was voted out of office by Palm Beach County residents), and congratulating her on surviving so many lawsuits. LePore has one more lawsuit to go. # # # # # Updated FRIDAY DEC. 3, 2004: LePore ups the ante: $3,000 ... no, $4,000 ... no, $7,000 for election records. Though she has yet to present us with a bill, Theresa LePore has been upping the ante every time she talks to the media. It will be at least $3,000, she told the Orlando Sentinel. That is ... $4,000, she told the Palm Beach NBC affiliate. Now the $4,000 is for "research" and the $3,000 is for "copies." Lessee now...at $20 per hour for "research," that is 500 hours to retrieve the same records request that most counties are charging $20 for. "How much will it be?" Andy Stephenson asked another Florida county, up in the north panhandle. "Oh, that'll be about a dollah," the supervisor said. My my my. LePore's records must be gold-plated. We are supposed to get the official bill tomorrow. Snohomish County wants about $2,500 for their records. We also did statewide FOIA requests in all 50 states. Texas gave the records to us for free. Colorado charged $1,900 for 3,500 pages of documents. Michigan wants $125,000 just to look for the records. (All got the exact same request.) (This is what democracy looks like?) BREAKING -- TUESDAY NOV 30 2004: (Description of serving Theresa LePore with lawsuit at Florida Supervisor's meeting) -- Black Box Voting files lawsuit against Palm Beach County, Florida for failure to provide public records. Filed in the circuit court of the fifteenth judicial circuit, in and for Palm Beach County, FL, civil action no 50 2004 CA 011167 XXXX MB. full text of lawsuit. Today, at the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections meeting in Orlando, we made a surprise visit to the podium during Theresa LePore's send-off meeting to present her with a courtesy copy of the lawsuit we served on LePore this morning. Official attitudes on transparency: Florida public officials, attending a meeting on public business, paid for with public funds, which, under Florida law is considered a public meeting, were incensed that Black Box Voting walked into what they considered to be a private meeting, to hand a public records lawsuit to LePore. BREAKING -- TUESDAY NOV 23 2004: Citizens take action to clean up elections: (Summary of irregularities in Volusia) -- Volusia County resident Susan Pynchon, with the help of Volusia County attorney Daniel R. Vaughen, P.A., filed a lawsuit on Tuesday, Nov. 23, seeking to set aside the Nov. 2, 2004 Volusia County election due to irregularities. Full text of lawsuit BREAKING -- MONDAY NOV 22 2004: Florida counties stonewall records requests. While some Florida counties have been attentive to the public interest and have promptly complied with our public records requests (scroll down for the Nov. 2 records request, for critical audit diagnostics), other counties have stalled, stonewalled, failed to comply in a timely manner, or outright refused to provide the records. UPDATE: Several Florida counties refused to comply with the law, by failing to provide the 8 items in the Black Box Voting Nov. 2 public records request in a timely manner. The following counties have refused to be held accountable for the 2004 presidential election, by declining to produce basic audit documents until after all election contest periods have lapsed: Palm Beach County, Ft. Myers County, Pasco County, Highland County, Holmes County, Indian River County, Lee County, Levy County. Black Box Voting is requesting citizen audit groups to work with us to take these counties into full audit mode in December. Other counties may be added to this list. BREAKING -- TUESDAY NOV 16 2004: Volusia County election records just got put on lockdown -- Dueling lawyers, election officials gnashing teeth, Votergate.tv film crew catching it all. Poll tape discrepancies, stonewalling; Scroll down for full story. BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting has launched a fraud audit into Florida. Three investigators (Bev Harris, Andy Stephenson, and Kathleen Wynne) are in Florida right now. We will initiate hand counts on selected counties that have not fully complied with our Nov. 2 Freedom of Information request by Monday (Diebold counties) or Tuesday (other counties). BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: We have reports that both David Cobb (Green Party) and Michael Badnarik (Libertarian Party) will be filing for official recounts in Ohio. Black Box Voting is also launching a fraud audit in Ohio. Gotta be replaced: Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Please invoke the following name change on Blackwell immediately, as he is 2004's Katherine Harris. He should now be referred to at all times as "Katherine Blackwell." Please retain this moniker for any future runs for governor. How to be your own media. Spread the word. Latest Katherine Blackwell outrage: Failure to properly account for provisional ballots, and refusing to allow citizens to see the pollbooks. BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is implementing fraud diagnostics on the state of New Mexico. Information we recently received is indicative of widespread vote manipulation. We are not going to publicize the specifics here. BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is requesting legal assistance for a specific county in Georgia. Indications of corrupt voting processes, with possible criminal actions by local officials. BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is launching a fraud investigation on Pima County Arizona. BREAKING -- FRIDAY NOV 12 2004: Ralph Nader to audit Diebold machines in New Hampshire. According to Nader, the current situation with voting machines warrants investigation. Several elements make voting machines "probative" for investigation, according to Nader, a consumer affairs lawyer: proprietary ownership, secret code, vested interests, a high-value reward, and lack of any real consequences, or likelihood of getting caught, for vote manipulation. "We are told that shenanigans are just politics," said Nader at a press conference on Nov. 10. "Well, it's not politics. It's taking away people's votes." SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: Freedom of Information requests at http://www.blackboxvoting.org have unearthed two Ciber certification reports indicating that security and tamperability was NOT TESTED and that several state elections directors, a secretary of state, and computer consultant Dr. Britain Williams signed off on the report anyway, certifying it. Scroll down for more. Volusia County lawsuit alleges irregularities in Nov. 2, 2004 electionFull text of lawsuitSummary of allegations a. The Supervisor of Elections has unreasonably delayed providing information. b. The certification was based on inadequate and incomplete information regarding the election results. 6. Some or all of the information requested on Nov. 2, 2004 by Black Box Voting is still missing from 59 of the 179 voting precincts, including portions of or all of the voting machine tapes for those 59 precincts, which are a vital part of official paper record of the election results from those precincts. 7. Complete information on problems with the voting machines prior to and during the election has not been provided. 8. Complete information relating to memory card failures during the election has not yet been provided. 9. Only a partial list of the transmission logs from the Accu-Vote optical scan server has been provided. Despite repeated requests, the Elections office has refused to provide to the Volusia County Democratic party the official election results, now stating that those results will not be available until December 1, 2004. 10. The Elections office has provided incomplete data regarding Early Voting and Absentee ballots. The Supervisor of Elections, for example, reported that the total number of absentee ballots and Early voting ballots, combined equaled 89,999 votes, yet the published figures for those totals is 84,100 votes, leaving over 5,800 votes unaccounted for. 11. In addition to the pattern of delay in providing the requested information, the true election results are in doubt because of numerous violations of election law procedure and unanswered questions concerning the results. 12. The polls were opened early and closed late during Early Voting. 13. Many public records, including one signed results tape from a voting machine were found in the trash. Many of the requested records not furnished by the Elections office have been found in the trash. Results from the tapes found in the trash do not match the results of the copies of tapes furnished. 14. An email from Mark Earley, of Diebold Elections Systems, Inc., to the Elections office was provided which asked the recipient for an explanation of why Volusia County had more memory card failures than all of their other Florida customers combined, and then asked why the 17 memory card failures which the Elections office reported on November 3, increased to 25 before November 12, 2004. 15. The reported memory card failures were significant and troubling and included reporting zero votes after one week of voting, requesting permission to upload votes before the voting began, and messaging whether the card should be reformatted. 16. According to a statement by the Supervisor of Elections on November 17, 2004, the GEMS computer is not networked, and is "stand alone." The furnished computer logs show evidence of at least two attempts to remotely access the GEMS central tabulator, which is claimed to be secure. A computer screen shot printout on November 17, 2004 (found in the trash) shows that the GEMS computer at that time had two networked hard drives.
TUESDAY NOV 16 2004: Volusia County investigationDueling lawyers, election officials gnashing teeth, Votergate.tv film crew catching it all. Here's what happened so far: Friday Black Box Voting investigators Andy Stephenson and Kathleen Wynne popped in to ask for some records. They were rebuffed by an elections official named Denise. Bev Harris called on the cell phone from investigations in downstate Florida, and told Volusia County Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe that Black Box Voting would be in to pick up the Nov. 2 Freedom of Information request, or would file for a hand recount. "No, Bev, please don't do that!" Lowe exclaimed. But this is the way it has to be, folks. Black Box Voting didn't back down. Monday Bev, Andy and Kathleen came in with a film crew and asked for the FOIA request. Deanie Lowe gave it over with a smile, but Harris noticed that one item, the polling place tapes, were not copies of the real ones, but instead were new printouts, done on Nov. 15, and not signed by anyone. Harris asked to see the real ones, and they said for "privacy" reasons they can't make copies of the signed ones. She insisted on at least viewing them (although refusing to give copies of the signatures is not legally defensible, according to Berkeley elections attorney, Lowell Finley). They said the real ones were in the County Elections warehouse. It was quittin' time and an arrangment was made to come back this morning to review them. Lana Hires, a Volusia County employee who gained some notoriety in an election 2000 Diebold memo, where she asked for an explanation of minus 16,022 votes for Gore, so she wouldn't have to stand there "looking dumb" when the auditor came in, was particularly unhappy about seeing the Black Box Voting investigators in the office. She vigorously shook her head when Deanie Lowe suggested going to the warehouse. Kathleen Wynne and Bev Harris showed up at the warehouse at 8:15 Tuesday morning, Nov. 16. There was Lana Hires looking especially gruff, yet surprised. She ordered them out. Well, they couldn't see why because there she was, with a couple other people, handling the original poll tapes. You know, the ones with the signatures on them. Harris and Wynne stepped out and Volusia County officials promptly shut the door. There was a trash bag on the porch outside the door. Harris looked into it and what do you know, but there were poll tapes in there. They came out and glared at Harris and Wynne, who drove away a small bit, and then videotaped the license plates of the two vehicles marked 'City Council' member. Others came out to glare and soon all doors were slammed. So, Harris and Wynne went and parked behind a bus to see what they would do next. They pulled out some large pylons, which blocked the door. Harris decided to go look at the garbage some more while Wynne videotaped. A man who identified himself as "Pete" came out and Harris immediately wrote a public records request for the contents of the garbage bag, which also contained ballots -- real ones, but not filled out. A brief tug of war occurred, tearing the garbage bag open. Harris and Wynne then looked through it, as Pete looked on. He was quite friendly. Black Box Voting collected various poll tapes and other information and asked if they could copy it, for the public records request. "You won't be going anywhere," said Pete. "The deputy is on his way." Yes, not one but two police cars came up and then two county elections officials, and everyone stood around discussing the merits of the "black bag" public records request. The police finally let Harris and Wynne go, about the time the Votergate.tv film crew arrived, and everyone trooped off to the elections office. There, the plot thickened. Black Box Voting began to compare the special printouts given in the FOIA request with the signed polling tapes from election night. Lo and behold, some were missing. By this time, Black Box Voting investigator Andy Stephenson had joined the group at Volusia County. Some polling place tapes didn't match. In fact, in one location, precinct 215, an African-American precinct, the votes were off by hundreds, in favor of George W. Bush and other Republicans. Hmm. Which was right? The polling tape Volusia gave to Black Box Voting, specially printed on Nov. 15, without signatures, or the ones with signatures, printed on Nov. 2, with up to 8 signatures per tape? Well, then it became even more interesting. A Volusia employee boxed up some items from an office containing Lana Hires' desk, which appeared to contain -- you guessed it -- polling place tapes. The employee took them to the back of the building and disappeared. Then, Ellen B., a voting integrity advocate from Broward County, Florida, and Susan, from Volusia, decided now would be a good time to go through the trash at the elections office. Lo and behold, they found all kinds of memos and some polling place tapes, fresh from Volusia elections office. So, Black Box Voting compared these with the Nov. 2 signed ones and the "special' ones from Nov. 15 given, unsigned, finding several of the MISSING poll tapes. There they were: In the garbage. So, Wynne went to the car and got the polling place tapes she had pulled from the warehouse garbage. My my my. There were not only discrepancies, but a polling place tape that was signed by six officials. This was a bit disturbing, since the employees there had said that bag was destined for the shredder. By now, a county lawyer had appeared on the scene, suddenly threatening to charge Black Box Voting extra for the time spent looking at the real stuff Volusia had withheld earlier. Other lawyers appeared, phoned, people had meetings, Lana glowered at everyone, and someone shut the door in the office holding the GEMS server. Black Box Voting investigator Andy Stephenson then went to get the Diebold "GEMS" central server locked down. He also got the memory cards locked down and secured, much to the dismay of Lana. They were scattered around unsecured in any way before that. Everyone agreed to convene tomorrow morning, to further audit, discuss the hand count that Black Box Voting will require of Volusia County, and of course, it is time to talk about contesting the election in Volusia. # # # # #
SATURDAY NOV 13 2004:
What is a fraud audit?A fraud audit is not the same as a recount. It does not presume innocence. It does not make the assumption that if there is an anomaly with a benign explanation, it's okay to stop investigating. Any embezzler (or vote manipulator) worth his salt will build in an explanation that makes it sound like it could be an honest mistake, or a "glitch." Any investigator worth his salt knows you have to look deeper. Forensic auditing begins with indicators, like oddball statistics, mismatched records, or secretive, obstructive behavior. The next step is to obtain diagnostic documents. Later steps may include pulling all the ballots for hand recounts. Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting, has interfaced with law enforcement, including the FBI, state attorneys-general, the IRS, local police, and banking authorities, in several previous investigations during her work as an investigative writer. Her methods for isolating fraud have resulted in convictions or settlements from embezzlers and financial fraudsters. Black Box Voting is the first publicly funded, independent consumer protection group to investigate this election using forensic auditing methods.
Irresponsible mediaYou may have seen recent stories in the media (ABC News, Salon.com), and at other voting integrity Web sites like VerifiedVoting.org, telling you there is no reason to believe suspicions of fraud in the 2004 election. In fact, no member of the media nor any organization has done any real forensic auditing to determine whether there was or was not fraud. Trust in our electoral process is critical to our democracy. We need the right kind of investigation into anomalies, using appropriate methods. "Feel-good" statements, dismissive of real concerns into voting integrity, are not responsible. The truth is what it is. We might see something very uncomfortable unfold during these investigations. Or, maybe not. It's still too early to tell, but the evidence is mounting.
Snoopy 50-year-old womenThink of this like an assets investigation in a bad divorce: One party may have things to hide, the other party (we, the voters) wants to find out the truth. If you are looking for hidden assets owned by your ex, you don't call in a computer scientist from a university. You enlist the help of private investigators, accountants, lawyers, and your plain old common sense. In fact, snoopy 50-year-old women have proved invaluable in investigating voting machines. This is not a computer problem. It is not something a reporter who spends four hours researching a story can pronounce judgment on. We have been surprised to see prominent scientists announcing "results" before the data is in. We don't know what happened on Nov. 2. We will find out.
Here's what Black Box Voting is doing to investigate appropriately:We are doing forensic analysis of the available evidence. We are targeting specific locations based on criteria indicative of fraud. Why we can't disclose our documents yet Initially, we hoped to have everything public all the time. This resulted in butt-covering behavior on the part public officials, which hampered our investigations. Therefore, we adjusted our methods to keep critical investigations under wraps. That's just the way it has to be right now. Isn't it too late? We are dealing with well financed people who are trying to run out the clock. They probably will succeed in that. However, we probably will succeed in proving fraud. What we have going for us is this: - Public outrage: We read your letters and hear your anguish on the phone. Do not let go of those emotions. Your job is to focus those emotions into stubborn, relentless, nonstop pressure to make sure that there will be consequences for any and all electoral fraud. - Law enforcement. There are still plenty of honest cops. Also, in our experience, different law enforcement agencies don't always get along, and where one fails us, another may not. - We have the courts. (Somewhat.) Not all judges are unfriendly. They vote too. We can follow the example of tobacco industry lawsuits, launching many lawsuits, then sharing discovery and strategy until at last, we prevail. - We have the media (barely). Network TV has not yet been able to get its brain around the story of electoral betrayal in a 2-minute news byte. For the time being, you must be your own "network TV." Don't count on TV to spread the word. Instead count on America's spirit of self reliance. We will prevail. Be the media. - We have the Internet. Use it to share information at every level -- instant messaging, e-mailing, listservs, blogs, forums, Web sites, announcements, online media, online documents, film and video clips, audio clips, and any way that you can imagine to use it effectively. The Internet allows us to respond without boundaries, quickly, in unpredictable ways. - We have truth. # # # # # SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: We’re awaiting independent analysis on some pretty crooked-looking elections. In the mean time, here’s something to chew on. Your local elections officials trusted a group called NASED -- the National Association of State Election Directors -- to certify that your voting system is safe. This trust was breached. NASED certified the systems based on the recommendation of an “Independent Testing Authority” (ITA).
What no one told local officials was that the ITA did not test for security (and NASED didn’t seem to mind). The ITA reports are considered so secret that even the California Secretary of State’s office had trouble getting its hands on one. The ITA refused to answer any questions about what it does. Imagine our surprise when, due to Freedom of Information requests, a couple of them showed up in our mailbox. The most important test on the ITA report is called the “penetration analysis.” This test is supposed to tell us whether anyone can break into the system to tamper with the votes. “Not applicable,” wrote Shawn Southworth, of Ciber Labs, the ITA that tested the Diebold GEMS central tabulator software. “Did not test.”
He is the man who carefully examines our voting software. 
Ciber “tested”whether the manual gives a description of the voting system. But when asked to identify methods of attack (which we think the American voter would consider pretty important), the top-secret report says “not applicable.” Ciber “tested” whether ballots comply with local regulations, but when Bev Harris asked Shawn Southworth what he thinks about Diebold tabulators accepting large numbers of “minus” votes, he said he didn’t mention that in his report because “the vendors don’t like him to put anything negative” in his report. After all, he said, he is paid by the vendors. Shawn Southworth didn’t do the penetration analysis, but check out what he wrote: “Ciber recommends to the NASED committee that GEMS software version 1.18.15 be certified and assigned NASED certification number N03060011815.” Was this just a one-time oversight? Nope. It appears to be more like a habit. Here is the same Ciber certification section for VoteHere; as you can see, the critical security test, the “penetration analysis” was again marked “not applicable” and was not done. Maybe another ITA did the penetration analysis? Apparently not. We discovered an even more bizarre Wyle Laboratories report. In it, the lab admits the Sequoia voting system has problems, but says that since they were not corrected earlier, Sequoia could continue with the same flaws. At one point the Wyle report omits its testing altogether, hoping the vendor will do the test.
Computer Guys: Be your own ITA certifier.Here is a copy of the full Ciber report (part 1, 2, 3, 4) on GEMS 1.18.15. Here is a zip file download for the GEMS 1.18.15 program. Here is a real live Diebold vote database. Compare your findings against the official testing lab and see if you agree with what Ciber says. E-mail us your findings. TIPS: The password for the vote database is “password” and you should place it in the “LocalDB” directory in the GEMS folder, which you’ll find in “program files.”
Who the heck is NASED?They are the people who certified this stuff. You’ve gotta ask yourself: Are they nuts? Some of them are computer experts. Well, it seems that several of these people suddenly want to retire, and the whole NASED voting systems board is becoming somewhat defunct, but these are the people responsible for today's shoddy voting systems. If the security of the U.S. electoral system depends on you to certify a voting system, and you get a report that plainly states that security was “not tested” and “not applicable” -- what would you do? Perhaps we should ask them. Go ahead. Let's hold them accountable for the election we just had. (Please, e-mail us their answers) They don't make it very easy to get their e-mail and fax information; when you find it, let us know and we'll post it here. NASED VOTING SYSTEMS/ITA ACCREDITATION BOARD (You can find some contact info at this site) Thomas R. Wilkey, Executive Director, New York State Board of Elections; twilkey@elections.state.ny.us, phone 518 474-8100, fax 518 473-8315 David Elliott, (former) Asst. Director of Elections, Washington State -- (note from Black Box Voting: he has left and we have been unable to find his home number. We are very interested in David Elliott, for a number of reasons. If you can locate his addess, e-mail it to us privately.) James Hendrix, Executive Director, State Election Commission, South Carolina; Jreynold@scsec.state.sc.us, phone, 803 734-9060; FAX 803 734-9363 Denise Lamb, Director, State Bureau of Elections, New Mexico; phone (505) 827-3620 FAX (505) 827-8403 FAX (505) 827-3634 denise.lamb@state.nm.us Sandy Steinbach, Director of Elections, Iowa; phone, (515) 281-5823 FAX (515) 281-7142 sandy@sos.state.ia.us Donetta Davidson, Secretary of State, Colorado; donetta.davidson@state.co.us; phone, 303 894-2680 x301 - Fax 303 894-7732 Connie Schmidt, Commissioner, Johnson County Election Commission, Kansas; Fax: 913.791.1753 schmidt@jocoks.com (the late) Robert Naegele, President Granite Creek Technology, Pacific Grove, California Brit Williams, Professor, CSIS Dept, Kennesaw State College, Georgia; brit@kennesaw.edu 770)423-6422 Paul Craft, Computer Audit Analyst, Florida State Division of Elections Florida pcraft@mail.dos.state.fl.us Steve Freeman, Software Consultant, League City, Texas; svfreemn@ix.netcom.com Jay W. Nispel, Senior Principal Engineer, Computer Sciences Corporation Annapolis Junction, Maryland Yvonne Smith (Member Emeritus), Former Assistant to the Executive Director Illinois State Board of Elections, Illinois; phone (312) 814-6468 FAX (312) 814-6485 ysmith@elections.state.il.us Penelope Bonsall, Director, Office of Election Administration, Federal Election Commission, Washington, D.C.; "pbonsall@fec.gov Committee Secretariat: The Election Center, R. Doug Lewis, Executive Director Houston, Texas, Tele: 281-293-0101 electioncent@pdq.net Cell 713 516-2875 - Fax 281-293-0453 # # # # # THURSDAY Nov. 4 2004: If you are concerned about what happened Tuesday, Nov. 2, you have found a home with our organization. Help America Audit. Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history. We need: Lawyers to enforce public records laws. Some counties have already notified us that they plan to stonewall by delaying delivery of the records. We need citizen volunteers for a number of specific actions. We need computer security professionals willing to GO PUBLIC with formal opinions on the evidence we provide, whether or not it involves DMCA complications. We need funds to pay for copies of the evidence. TUESDAY Nov 2 2004: BREAKING NEWS: New information indicates that hackers may have targeted the central computers that are counting our votes. Freedom of Information requests are not free. We need to raise $50,000 as quickly as possible to pay for records and the fees some states charge for them. We launched one major FOIA action last night, and have two more on the way, pell-mell. Now is the time. If you can't donate funds, please donate time. E-mail to join the Cleanup Crew. Important: Watch this 30-minute film clip Voting without auditing. (Are we insane?)SEATTLE, WASHINGTON Nov 3 2004 -- Did the voting machines trump exit polls? There’s a way to find out. Black Box Voting (.ORG) is conducting the largest Freedom of Information action in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit. America: We have permission to say No to unaudited voting. It is our right. Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting systems -- optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal records request for internal audit logs, polling place results slips, modem transmission logs, and computer trouble slips. An earlier FOIA is more sensitive, and has not been disclosed here. We will notify you as soon as we can go public with it. Such a request filed in King County, Washington on Sept. 15, following the primary election six weeks ago, uncovered an internal audit log containing a three-hour deletion on election night; “trouble slips” revealing suspicious modem activity; and profound problems with security, including accidental disclosure of critically sensitive remote access information to poll workers, office personnel, and even, in a shocking blunder, to Black Box Voting activists. Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer protection group for elections. You may view the first volley of public records requests here: Freedom of Information requests here Responses from public officials will be posted in the forum, is organized by state and county, so that any news organization or citizens group has access to the information. Black Box Voting will assist in analysis, by providing expertise in evaluating the records. Watch for the records online; Black Box Voting will be posting the results as they come in. And by the way, these are not free. The more donations we get, the more FOIAs we are empowered to do. Time's a'wasting. We look forward to seeing you participate in this process. Join us in evaluating the previously undisclosed inside information about how our voting system works.
Play a part in reclaiming transparency. It’s the only way.# # # # #
Public Records Request - November 2, 2004 Pursuant to public records law and the spirit of fair, trustworthy, transparent elections, we request the following documents. We are requesting these as a nonprofit, noncommercial group acting in the capacity of a news and consumer interest organization, and ask that if possible, the fees be waived for this request. If this is not possible, please let us know which records will be provided and the cost. Please provide records in electronic form, by e-mail, if possible - crew@blackboxvoting.org. We realize you are very, very busy with the elections canvass. To the extent possible, we do ask that you expedite this request, since we are conducting consumer audits and time is of the essence.
We request the following records.Item 1. All notes, emails, memos, and other communications pertaining to any and all problems experienced with the voting system, ballots, voter registration, or any component of your elections process, beginning October 12, through November 3, 2004. Item 2. Copies of the results slips from all polling places for the Nov. 2, 2004 election. If you have more than one copy, we would like the copy that is signed by your poll workers and/or election judges. Item 3: The internal audit log for each of your Unity, GEMS, WinEds, Hart Intercivic or other central tabulating machine. Because different manufacturers call this program by different names, for purposes of clarification we mean the programs that tally the composite of votes from all locations. Item 4: If you are in the special category of having Diebold equipment, or the VTS or GEMS tabulator, we request the following additional audit logs: a. The transmission logs for all votes, whether sent by modem or uploaded directly. You will find these logs in the GEMS menu under “Accuvote OS Server” and/or “Accuvote TS Server” b. The “audit log” referred to in Item 3 for Diebold is found in the GEMS menu and is called “Audit Log” c. All “Poster logs”. These can be found in the GEMS menu under “poster” and also in the GEMS directory under Program Files, GEMS, Data, as a text file. Simply print this out and provide it. d. Also in the Data file directory under Program Files, GEMS, Data, please provide any and all logs titled “CCLog,” “PosterLog”, and Pserver Log, and any logs found within the “Download,” “Log,” “Poster” or “Results” directories. e. We are also requesting the Election Night Statement of Votes Cast, as of the time you stopped uploading polling place memory cards for Nov. 2, 2004 election. Item 5: We are requesting every iteration of every interim results report, from the time the polls close until 5 p.m. November 3. Item 6: If you are in the special category of counties who have modems attached, whether or not they were used and whether or not they were turned on, we are requesting the following: a. internal logs showing transmission times from each voting machine used in a polling place b. The Windows Event Viewer log. You will find this in administrative tools, Event Viewer, and within that, print a copy of each log beginning October 12, 2004 through Nov. 3, 2004. Item 7: All e-mails, letters, notes, and other correspondence between any employee of your elections division and any other person, pertaining to your voting system, any anomalies or problems with any component of the voting system, any written communications with vendors for any component of your voting system, and any records pertaining to upgrades, improvements, performance enhancement or any other changes to your voting system, between Oct. 12, 2004 and Nov. 3, 2004. Item 8: So that we may efficiently clarify any questions pertaining to your specific county, please provide letterhead for the most recent non-confidential correspondence between your office and your county counsel, or, in lieu of this, just e-mail us the contact information for your county counsel. Because time is of the essence, if you cannot provide all items, please provide them in increments as soon as you have them, and please notify us by telephone (206-335-7747) or email (Bevharrismail@aol.com) as soon as you have any portion of the above public records request available for review. Thank you very much, and here’s hoping for a smooth and simple canvass which works out perfectly for you. We very, very much appreciate your help with this, and we do realize how stressful this election has been. If you need a local address, please let me know, and we will provide a local member for this public records request. In the interest of keeping your life simple, we thought it best to coordinate all records through one entity so that you don’t get multiple local requests. # # # # # We now have evidence that certainly looks like altering a computerized voting system during a real election, and it happened just six weeks ago. MONDAY Nov 1 2004: New information indicates that hackers may be targeting the central computers counting our votes tomorrow. All county elections officials who use modems to transfer votes from polling places to the central vote-counting server should disconnect the modems now. There is no down side to removing the modems. Simply drive the vote cartridges from each polling place in to the central vote-counting location by car, instead of transmitting by modem. “Turning off” the modems may not be sufficient. Disconnect the central vote counting server from all modems, INCLUDING PHONE LINES, not just Internet. In a very large county, this will add at most one hour to the vote-counting time, while offering significant protection from outside intrusion. It appears that such an attack may already have taken place, in a primary election 6 weeks ago in King County, Washington -- a large jurisdiction with over one million registered voters. Documents, including internal audit logs for the central vote-counting computer, along with modem “trouble slips” consistent with hacker activity, show that the system may have been hacked on Sept. 14, 2004. Three hours is now missing from the vote-counting computer's "audit log," an automatically generated record, similar to the black box in an airplane, which registers certain kinds of events. COMPUTER FOLKS: Here are the details about remote access vulnerability through the modem connecting polling place voting machines with the central vote-counting server in each county elections office. This applies specifically to all Diebold systems (1,000 counties and townships), and may also apply to other vendors. The prudent course of action is to disconnect all modems, since the downside is small and the danger is significant. The central servers are installed on unpatched, open Windows computers and use RAS (Remote Access Server) to connect to the voting machines through telephone lines. Since RAS is not adequately protected, anyone in the world, even terrorists, who can figure out the server's phone number can change vote totals without being detected by observers. The passwords in many locations are easily guessed, and the access phone numbers can be learned through social engineering or war dialing. ELECTION OFFICIALS: The only way to protect tomorrow's election from this type of attack is to disconnect the servers from the modems now. Under some configurations, attacks by remote access are possible even if the modem appears to be turned off. The modem lines should be physically disconnected. We obtained these documents through a public records request. The video was taken at a press conference held by the King County elections chief Friday Oct 29. The audit log is a computer-generated automatic record similar to the "black box" in an airplane, that automatically records access to the Diebold GEMS central tabulator (unless, of course, you go into it in the clandestine way we demonstrated on September 22 in Washington DC at the National Press club.) The central tabulator audit log is an FEC-required security feature. The kinds of things it detects are the kinds of things you might see if someone was tampering with the votes: Opening the vote file, previewing and/or printing interim results, altering candidate definitions (a method that can be used to flip votes). Three hours is missing altogether from the Sept. 14 Washington State primary held six weeks ago. Here is a copy of the GEMS audit log. Note that all entries from 9:52 p.m. until 1:31 a.m. are missing. One report that GEMS automatically puts in the audit log is the "summary report." This is the interim results report. We obtained the actual Sept. 14 summary reports, printed directly from the King County tabulator GEMS program, because we went there and watched on election night and collected these reports. These reports were also collected by party observers, candidates, and were on the Web site for King County. Here are summary reports which are now missing from the audit log. Note the time and date stamps on the reports. Note also that they are signed by Dean Logan, King County elections chief. We have the original reports signed in ink on election night. What does all this mean? We know that summary reports show up in the audit log. There are other audit logs, like the one that tracks modem transmissions, but this audit log tracks summary reports. Dean Logan held a press conference Friday morning, Oct. 29. Kathleen Wynne, a citizen investigator for Black Box Voting, attended the press conference and asked Dean Logan why three hours are missing from the audit log. Logan said the empty three hours is because no reports were printed. OK. But we have summary reports from 10:34 p.m., 11:38 p.m., 12:11 a.m., 12:46 a.m., and 1:33 p.m. These reports were during the time he said no reports were run. Either the software malfunctioned, or audit log items were deleted. Because remote access through the modems is possible, the system may have been hacked, audit log deleted, without Logan realizing it. Perhaps there are two of this particular kind of audit log? Perhaps this is an incomplete one? Bev Harris called King County elections office records employee Mary Stoa, asking if perhaps there are any other audit logs at all. Mary Stoa called back, reporting that according to Bill Huennikens of King County elections, the audit log supplied to us in our public records request is the only one and the comprehensive and complete one. Perhaps it is a computer glitch? The audit log is 168 pages long and spans 120 days, and the 3 hours just happen to be missing during the most critical three hours on election night.
Diebold says altering the audit log cannot be done. Of course, we know a chimpanzee can't get into an elections office and play with the computer, but to demonstrate how easy it is to delete audit log entries, we taught a chimpanzee to delete audit records using an illicit "back door" to get into the program, Diebold told reporters it was a "magic show." Yet, Diebold's own internal memos show they have known the audit log could be altered since 2001! Here is a Diebold memo from October 2001, titled "Altering the audit log," written by Diebold principal engineer Ken Clark: "King County is famous for it" [altering the audit log] Here is Dean Logan, telling a Channel 5 King-TV News reporter that there were no unexpected problems with the Diebold programs. This was at the "MBOS" central ballot counting facility in King County in the wee hours of Sept. 15, on Election Night. Dean Logan on Election Night, Sept 14 2004 Note that he says there were no problems with modem transmission. When we obtained the trouble slips, in a public records request -- documentation that indeed the modems were not working fine, we were accidentally given the access phone number for King County. Were we so inclined, if we had simply kept this under our hat, we could take control of your central server on election night from our living room. Here are the trouble slips showing problems with modems. Note that King County generously provided us with the "secret" information needed to hack in by remote access. We did redact the specific information that gives this information to you. Here are more trouble tickets. One that is a concern: "OK to format memory card?" (This would wipe out the votes in the electronic ballot box.)
Election officials: Disconnect those modems NOW. If you don't: You gotta be replaced. # # # # # HOW TO MONITOR THE CENTRAL TABULATOR: Black Box Voting developed these guidelines to help you create an audit log, which can then be compared with the FEC-required computer-generated audit log inside the computer. Yes, this is a lot of stuff, and it might feel overwhelming, but whatever you can do -- it is very much appreciated.
THINGS TO BRING WITH YOU Note that some counties will require you to turn off your video camera during the entering of passwords, a valid request. You should, however, be able to videotape the rest. Don’t pull your camera out right away. Avoid confrontation by leaving your video camera in the bag -- better yet, a purse. Pull it out only when there is an event of significance. HUMAN FACTORS
You can’t be effective if you make assumptions or let others intimidate you. YOUR ROLE AS AN OBSERVER: CREATE YOUR OWN AUDIT LOG so it can be compared to the real audit log. Write down the following. For every event, write the date, time, including minutes. 1. NAMES & AFFILIATIONS: Get the names of everyone there. Find out affiliation.
2. WHERE ARE THE COMPUTERS:
Establish the number and location of all vote tabulation computers.
They call them different things: tabulators, servers. What you want is
the computer that adds up all the votes from everywhere in the county. 3. SYNCHRONIZE YOUR WATCH with the central vote-tally computer. Ask officials to tell you the time on the computer. If more than one, ask for the time of each and the ID number of each.
log the date and time, to the minute, in this format: CREATE A LOG FOR THE FOLLOWING: People: Ask names and affiliations for, and log the START and STOP time for:
a. Who accesses the terminal (the keyboard and screen) COMPUTER ACTIVITIES: Log the START and STOP time for the following events and write down the name of the person involved:
a. Putting disks, CDs, or any other item in the computer
h. PROGRAM CRASHES: WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING YOU CAN FIND OUT ABOUT MODEMS. i. Note when, where, and who feeds ballot data into the computer in the central office. Describe what they are feeding the cards into, where the items are located, who does it, and when. j. DISK MANAGEMENT:
- Note what kind of data
storage device is used to move data around. You are looking for floppy
disks, CDs, USB keys (about the size of a pack of gum). m. BEHAVIORAL CUES:
- Note whether people look worried or stressed. Log the time it begins and the time it ends and who they are. RECORDS TO REQUEST: Each state has a public records act, but in most cases, you can get records you ask for if you are nice. Here are important records you’ll want: 1. Get a copy of each INTERIM RESULTS REPORT. Stand guard over what you have. If someone comes in to remove or “replace one with a better copy” hang onto the first and take the replacement, marking it. Make sure all interim reports are time-stamped by the computer. If they aren’t, note the exact time you see them appear. 2. Request the COMPUTER AUDIT LOG for Oct. 29-Nov 2 (actually, it is important to get the printout BEFORE YOU LEAVE that night. It will only be a few pages, and can be printed from the vote-tally program’s menu. 3. Ask for a copy of all the POLLING PLACE RESULTS SLIPS. These are sent in with the results cartridges. Try to get copies before you leave that night. If they won’t give copies to you then, put in a public records request and ask how soon you can pick them up. 4. Ask for a copy of THE UPLOAD LOGS. These are on the computer and can be printed out on election night. They list each polling place and the time results were uploaded. 5. There are ADDITIONAL LOGS in the Diebold GEMS programs you can request: From the GEMS folder “data”, ask for the poster logs. There may be folders in the GEMS “data” directory titled “download”, “log”, “poster” and “results”. Ask for copies of these logs. 6. Here’s a report that is very long but incredibly important and valuable. Ask if you can have the ELECTION NIGHT DETAIL REPORT -- the precinct by precinct results as of the time all memory cards are uploaded from all precincts. Depending on the system, they’ll call it different things -- in Diebold, it is called the Statement of Votes Cast (SOVC) report. 7. Let us know which REPORTS THEY REFUSE to give you on Election Night. We can then put in Freedom of Information (public records) requests formally. Once we have your observation log, and the records you obtain on Election Night, we can start matching up events and data to audit for anomalies. # # # # # Post information in the county and state at BlackBoxVoting.ORG. If the site is hacked out, come back as soon as it is up and post the information. Thank you, and let’s have an orderly election. # # # # #
Now, there is a film crew who has been brave enough to capture what's really going on:THIS IS THE ONE: Here's the film that's breaking new ground on voting machine investigations. Includes never before seen footage and information: download 30 minute preview of the upcoming feature film. NOTE: Please give your attention to the real film by the real investigators: Russell Michaels, Simon Ardizzone, and Robert Carrillo Cohen -- they are the real deal. (Someone who ran off with a portion of the proprietary footage has been pitching a similarly named, inferior production which is missing most of the good stuff.) By the way, we've worked with most of the documentary producers out there, and Russell Michaels, Simon Ardizzone and Robert Carrillo Cohen are in a class by themselves -- In my opinion, they are the only filmmakers who have been doing real, in-depth, long-term in-the-field investigations on this issue -- Bev Harris. Remember:
- Don't concede: Candidates, make a statement about voting without auditing. Hold off on your concession until the canvass is done Note that most voting machine problems will be found between Nov. 3-12, during the canvass, and a few weeks later, when public records requests are obtained. |
To sign up for the Cleanup Crew: Sorry about the loss of the online form. For now, do this: e-mail us with your name, contact info, address, phone number. Subject: Cleanup Crew |
