Brad, when you wake up, that Monkey Business Article
That Miriam wrote, says in one part that the voters were switched from Bush to Kerry, maybe I'm reading this wrong
Here it is,
"Numerous voters complained that on touch-screen review screens, they noticed their votes had been switched from one candidate to another. Almost every case involved a switch from Bush to Kerry."

Whoops! That's a major freudian slip.

It was the other way around. Kerry to Bush, female votes turned male if I've got it right.

ES&S and Triad need to be out of the voting process also. The only kind of ES&S machine that should ever be used, and I mean again is Automark. Everything else is prone to fraud and errors.

Diebold however is the most serious threat because its just a company full of pure crooks, and no matter what anyone thinks, it was Diebold's central tabulators which stole election 2004. As well as their optical scans and the ES&S iVotronic machines.

Doug E.

Yeah Doug,
I 'll never be happy with the vote until all the ballots are hand counted paper, like with voting day being a holiday and the counters are just workers at the polling places getting paid double time for working on that holiday
Just a dream of a perfect world, thats all, not this thing were living in right now

Diebold's machines and the Sequoia advantage also stole numerous races in 2002. For democrats also. What Diebold or its friend does, especially Triad, is elect neocons.

Doesn't matter who it is they elect people bought and paid for. And that's nothing less than a dictatorship proving we'll have blackmailed politicians for years to come.

So there will be no rest until Diebold falls, Triad is out of the process and ES&S only uses paper ballot AutoMark systems.

Doug E.

Doug - that wasn't a Freudian slip - it came straight from Victoria and her Secrets

{ed note: Comment Deleted --- SPAM}

This is Diebold's problem and perhaps the flaws ofall of America's relationships with their parents--don't get me involved

I will continue to urge absolute accuracy. Why give the opposition tools with which to challenge our credibility? Several details in the Cleveland article are inaccurate. Corrections:

Ion Sancho...That's why he's let a computer hacker have a go at one of his new machines.

Neither Harri Hursti nor Dr. Herbert Thompson are accurately characterized as "hackers." They are both computer security professionals.

In May, [Sancho] gave Dr. Herbert Thompson access to an Accuvote 2000.

Dr. Thompson never accessed the AccuVote 2000 machine, or any optical scan machine, nor any touch-screen machine, nor the memory cards. In February, Sancho allowed Dr. Herbert Thompson to use a VBA script to demonstrate vote manipulation on the GEMS server, the CENTRAL TABULATOR PROGRAM which runs on Windows on a PC. Dr. Thompson returned on May 2 and demonstrated a different, even more cunning script, also on the GEMS server.

But not even Thompson could have expected this: He was able to manipulate a memory card using homemade devices.

It was Harri Hursti who manipulated the memory card, not Thompson. Thompson manipulated the GEMS program but didn't touch the memory cards.

When he inserted it into the Diebold machine, 10,000 votes were awarded to one candidate, and the Accuvote detected no sign of fraud.

On Feb 14, Thompson changed 100,000 votes on the GEMS server (the central tabulator, not the optical scan machine), by typing a Visual Basic script into the "Notepad" program on the PC that contains the GEMS program. On May 2, he achieved the manipulation by typing a different Visual Basic script, this time using the DOS "edit" function.

BLACK BOX VOTING arranged and sponsored all of the Leon County demonstrations, and also provided the software for both Hursti and Thompson.

In a later test coordinated by Sancho, another security expert was also able to manipulate results, this time with flair: He programmed the Leon County computer's LCD screen to read: "Are We Having Fun Yet?", an homage to the 1983 hacker movie WarGames.

This reporter omits the name of Harri Hursti, whose memory card hack and subsequent report is widely accepted in the U.S. scientific community as the most important voting machine research this year. On May 2, both Hursti and Thompson were in Leon County.

On May 2, Hursti examined the remote access setup, and found multiple methods to penetrate it, but carrying out those exploits would have violated the law, even if given permission by an elections official. (that wouldn't have bothered a criminal intent on manipulating elections, however).

On May 26, Hursti demonstrated three versions of manipulating an election using only a memory card. His report: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVreport.pdf, presented recently to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and has already caused the state of Arizona to implement new security procedures.

But troubles began in 2003 when O'Dell...

That didn't happen until August 2003. Diebold was undergoing blistering scrutiny already.

Timeline:
Jan. 2003: Found Diebold files (Harris)
Feb 2003: Exposed (in BBV articles) the finding of the Diebold files, the uncertified patches thoughout Georgia
Mar. 2003: Obtained interview with Rob Behler, technician in Georgia who described replacing voting machine files all over Georgia, and large failure rates, with poor security. (Harris)
June 2003: Released Diebold source code (Harris)
July 8 2003: Released article on GEMS central tabulator flaws, and arranged for release of all 40,000 Diebold program files (Harris, Scoop)
July 24, 2003: Johns Hopkins report (Avi Rubin, Dan Wallach, et. al) released, New York Times reports "Stunning, Stunning Security Flaws"
End of July: Diebold internal e-mails, "memos" released to David Allen and Wired News.
First week Aug. 2003: Wired News wrote article about the e-mails, but did not print any of them.
Second week Aug. 2003: O'Dell letter obtained by Ohio Senator Theresa Fedor, article appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer
Sep 6, 2003: First Diebold internal e-mail (memo) published. This was done on BlackBoxVoting.org.

For those of you who like to see Republican plots, note that the newest Diebold pit bull is Joe Andrew, former head of the Democratic National Committee.

...manufactures half the country's voting machines

The figure is, at most, one-third. If you consider punch card machines and lever machines to be voting machines the figure would be 25 percent or less, but it is growing, of course, as those machines are moved into obsolescence.

Electronic Systems & Software.

The correct company name is Election Systems & Software.

Blackwell eventually certified the ES&S system, but not before Cuyahoga County had purchased Diebold machines.

Cuyahoga County has still not executed a purchase order for Diebold machines, though they have announced that they intend to.

When it comes to Diebold, Bev Harris loves to talk probabilities.

"Probabilities" generally means statistics, and I spend almost no time on stats, concentrating mostly on collecting evidence of the kind that can stand up in a court of law.

As president of Seattle-based BlackBoxVoting.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that monitors elections, she has taken on the mission of showing that Diebold is not only corrupt, but also too incompetent to shoulder the responsibility of managing the nation's voting.

I am not the president --- Linda Franz has been the president of the board, I am the founder, and the Executive Director of the nonprofit BLACK BOX VOTING, INC.

In her own effort to demonstrate the fallibility of Diebold machines, Harris successfully logged onto the Diebold site used to transfer voting software. No password required.

This had nothing to do with an effort to demonstrate the fallibility of Diebold machines. I was looking for information on past and current employees of all voting machine companies, starting with ES&S, then Sequoia, and then Diebold, and stumbled onto an open FTP site with the files, which launched the intense scrutiny of Diebold Election Systems.

Until that time, the favorite targets of voting machine critics were ES&S (my work on Hagel and inaccuracy, Lynn Landes' work on improper use of proprietary software and secrecy) and Sequoia (Dr. Rebecca Mercuri's examinations of the machines, and Daniel Hopsicker's video "The Big Fix 2000").

In August, Wired magazine published intra-office e-mails posted on the BlackBox website.

Wired didn't publish any e-mails. They published a story that the e-mails had been found. At that time the e-mails were not published on this Web site or anywhere else. In September, the first e-mail was published, and that was on BlackBoxVoting.org; we also published the first evidence of uncertified software and the first evidence that Diebold knew of the problems, both during the second week of September 2003. The BLACK BOX VOTING Web site was then shut down, due to the combined actions of Diebold and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), combined with actions taken by our volunteer former Webmaster.

Computer technician Jim March, a California Republican and board member at BlackBoxVoting.org...

To clarify, Jim March resigned from the BBV board the first week of Sept. '05. He did not have any formal position with BBV from Sept. through now. He moved from California to Seattle and yesterday, began work as a paid employee of BLACK BOX VOTING. We'll be announcing this formally in a day or two.

In comparison, voting software used by Diebold's top competitor is produced in-house for redundant security. "Our operating software cannot be bought off a shelf," says ES&S spokeswoman Jill Friedman. "You cannot connect our equipment with consumer equipment."

Are you serious? Check out Chapter 2, Black Box Voting book for a litany of problems with ES&S. While BLACK BOX VOTING is concentrating on Diebold and Sequoia, and a different group of researchers is focusing on ES&S. That company is hardly an example of either security or accuracy.

At Diebold, the optical-scan machines have USB ports --- the port of choice for everything from high-speed cable modems to iPODs.

Which model has USB ports? Most of the op-scans from Diebold were built using archaic technology from the 1980s.

Diebold spokesman Mark Radke dismisses BlackBox's findings as the work of conspiracy theorists. "People have to consider the source," he says.

Whenever Diebold says anything, you have to consider that source.

Election results, he counters, cannot be hacked from outside. "These machines are never hooked up to the internet.

First, Radke conveniently omits discussing the telephone line hookups, nor does he mention the wireless capability. Internet? Who needs Internet? He also fails to mention San Diego's July 26, '05 election where the GEMS tabulator was reportedly hooked up to the Internet.

We have layers and layers of security."

Heh. In Cleveland this week, they spent the whole time trying to make a case for using a single layer of security --- the perimeter defense, i.e., procedures carried out by election workers in attempts to mitigate the weak security of the Diebold programs. Layered security means that if you penetrate one layer, the next should hold up. With Diebold, you need to penetrate ONLY one layer: access to the system (either physical or remote).

"The way it's set up, you can't [hack] it on a massive scale," says Ohio Senator Jeff Jacobson (R-Butler Township).

Not on a national scale, but you can certainly affect it on a county scale, and perhaps in Georgia and Maryland, on a statewide scale. I call that massive, as compared with the old precinct-by-precinct scale.

The State of California, in conjunction with BlackBox's March and Harris, filed suit against Diebold for its voting-machine failures in the November 2003 elections.

Jim March and I filed suit in November 2003, citing the use of uncertified software and insecure software. The State of California did not join the suit until Sept. 2004, and their decision to join was not based on flawed elections. They took the stance that the problem was uncertified software, and chose not to investigate or deal with security problems or accuracy problems.

After several machines crashed and printers jammed, California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson blocked all future sales of Diebold touch-screens to California.

Not really. What he did was block sales until Diebold corrects the problem, and he will once again let them try to sell machines, giving them chance after chance to "correct the problems."

March and Harris provided hacked evidence showing that Diebold had installed software in its machines that had not been state-certified, which may have contributed to the problems.

We did not provide "hacked evidence" and we provided the evidence in Sept. 2003. The problems cited by McPherson took place in 2005, and not related to what we provided in 2003.

In September, Diebold refunded California $2.6 million and agreed to replace all touch-screens with optical-scan machines that had met state requirements. March and Harris both got $76,000 for their trouble.

Diebold loaned optical scans, but plans to replace them with touch-screens now. I donated the entire $76,000 I received (10% tithe to my church, remainder to BLACK BOX VOTING litigation fund).

On September 21, ... Diebold stock plunged 15.6 percent. O'Dell blamed Hurricane Katrina, saying that the storm had put the kibosh on ATM deliveries.

The problems were caused by the ATM division doing fraudulent accounting on its sales. Jim March was incorrect in his assessment that it was caused by voting machine problems. We insist on accuracy at BBV, so I shall smack him with a wet noodle today.

He [O'Dell] also fired his chief operating officer and took the reins himself, for good measure.)

O'Dell has been shuffled out of his CEO role into another position. Tom Swidarski now holds O'Dell's former position.

The cat's out of the bag with Diebold, Sequoia (and maybe its new parent, Smartmatic), E. S. & S., Triad, and all their toxic cousins in the Lewis Carroll world of electronic voting.

Too many Alice in Wonderland coincidences, such as 98% of all flipped votes going from Kerry to Bush, and the exit polls in Florida calling the Senate race on the button but missing by 3% in the presidential race. Too many corporate executives with political agendas, and too many political hacks in charge of election oversight.

The states are fighting back. The corner has been turned. Cowards on Capitol Hill, afraid to tell the truth about crooked elections since 1996, are now facing state and local officials who are banning hackable machines and outing the people who sell them.

Florida will be the last to clean house, because
you-know-who is related to you-know-whom. But when it does, maybe we'll even find out who murdered Ray Lemme.

Woah Bev, I dont think they have enough room on their servers to put all them corrections in

I wish people could get it right the first time, being reporters and all

Quick comments on Monkey Business article --- by and large, this article is very accurate. A long and complex article, I could find only three nits to pick, and it brings up very, very important information. I put in the three small corrections, and have other comments below. Both Hursti and I attended the meeting in San Diego she refers to.

“Hursti was able to take just one memory card from one voting machine in a precinct and infect the whole system,” Harris said.

I said this appears to be possible, but did not say that Hursti did it. We only had access to one machine. The structure of the Diebold system appears to allow corruption of the entire system from a single card, but we did not have the opportunity for proof of concept of that particular exploit.

Previously, Harris had videotaped a trained chimpanzee hacking into a Diebold system and deleting votes.

The Chimp deleted audit log events, not votes. Chimp video can be found here

Asked how quickly vote-tampering could be accomplished, Hursti described how an election official in Leon County missed the hack even while standing beside Hursti and watching. “When the message, ‘Are we having fun yet?’ came up on the screen, he jumped,” Hursti recalled.

Actually that was my quote. Hursti is extremely polite and would not say this, I don't think, out of respectfulness to TJ, the Leon County employee who jumped.

[cocaine trafficker] Elder also left the company long ago, he noted, adding that Diebold has always conducted criminal background checks on its employees.

Huh? If Diebold really said that, it's another cause for concern! Diebold put John Elder in charge of its ballot printing operation, and did not terminate his employment until shortly before the Nov. 2004 election. In an upcoming report at BlackBoxVoting.org, you'll see how much trouble a ballot printer can cause. The Diebold ballots contain a secret code on them which can invoke a number of different functions, causing the optical scan machine to change its behavior.

Some Internet bloggers have theorized that insiders might have sought to commit stock fraud using voting machines.

This is an interesting theory, originally proposed by Jim March. Global Election Systems, the voting machine company purchased by Diebold in 2002, was founded by stock market manipulators --- one of whom is still in jail. Two of the four founders of that company went to jail on fraud-related charges, and Forbes and Barron's wrote the founders up as "hazards to avoid at the golf course." They are widely credited with bringing down the Vancouver Stock Exchange through a series of stock manipulations known as "The Vancouver Maneuver."

Brad,

Here is another article for you from Cleveland University's online News:

Diebold Claims systems un hackable. Hackers hack them.

Keep up the good work, Bev! You are a hero and an inspiration!

OT Here's something to watch from Raw Story: "SUPREME COURT NOMINEE APPARENTLY GAVE FALSE ANSWERS TO SENATE COMMITTEE... DEVELOPING..."

Some one is posting the "http://TheFuturum.com" link on several threads here at BB under different aliases. I do not trust this. Will research this evening.

Mother Jones magazine, in the current issue, has FINALLY has addressed the stolen election with an article that pulls its punches at the conclusion. Anyone have any opinions on that? I can't help but feel theses guys are definitely too little, too late.

And dead silence still from The American Prospect on this issue.

OT Miers story now up

you guys have to listen to this song about bush ..... funny .....http://www.bushflash.com/idiot.html

Hey everybody! I've been trying to clear out cobwebs and refresh since returning from the 9/24 march in DC. I really need some R&R still. So - I took a break from the computer and all politics for awhile.

I hope the Monkey Business article will be corrected. I'm particularly disturbed about the incorrect vote switching information (from bush to kerry instead of vice versa.)

Here's another good article by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman:

Why can’t the left face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?

[snip] If some of its key publications are any indicator, much of the American left seems unable to face the reality that the election of 2004 was stolen. So in all likelihood, unless something radical is done, 2008 will be too.

Misguided and misinformed articles in both TomPaine.com and Mother Jones Magazine indicate a dangerous inability to face the reality that these stolen elections mean nothing less than the death of what’s left of American democracy, and the permanent enthronement of the Rovian GOP.

As investigative reporters based in Columbus, Ohio, we witnessed first-hand, up close and personal, exactly how the 2004 election was stolen, and how it will most likely be done in 2008.

In the precinct in which Harvey Wasserman grew up, and in the one where Bob Fitrakis now lives, we saw the well-funded, profoundly cynical and deadly effective mechanisms by which the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Blackwell GOP machine switched a victory for John Kerry to an easily-repeatable defeat for democracy.

That Kerry and the spineless Ohio and national Democratic Parties have been complicit is a crucial part of the problem much of the left also seems unwilling to face. But if you live in Franklin County, Ohio, and watch the Republican and Democratic Parties run joint pickets against progressive candidate, and cut backroom deals allowing incumbents of either party run unopposed, you may miss the full scope of the disaster.

And until the left faces the rot that defines the Democratic Party, there is no hope for a fair election in this country. In other words: those who think the White House can be retaken in 2008, but refuse to face the theft of the vote in 2004, should prepare to be ruled by the likes of Jeb Bush, now and forever. [snip]

ALSO - on October 14th (I just discovered) there was a debate between Steve Freeman, PhD and Warren Mitofsky. See: IndyMedia write-up. Did anyone follow this ... did CSpan carry it? I can't find anything written after the debate.

Bev Harris - thanks for all the information correcting the 2 articles linked by Brad. Are you planning to contact the authors and ask for corrections?

I forgot to mention that the Fitrakis/Wasserman article (linked in my comment #19) discusses in some detail the Mother Jones article refrenced by Jim Cirile #16.

Here's link to Steve Freeman's presentation during his debate with Warren Mitofky.
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htm

Also, a link to a report on the debate. Pehaps 6 or 7 of us should respond.
http://www.phillyburbs.c...219-10202005-557661.html

Kira,
thanks for posting that All of it.

I have to agree with Fitrakis and what you posted above.

I refuse to subscribe to or label myself with any political party and am totally an Independent. I am a real NON partisan. Not a "democrat" or a "republican" belonging to a "non" partisan organization.

Simply an American.

Facts are facts and crime is crime. As far as I am concerned, those Democrats, excepting Kucinich, Conyers, the Black Caucus and Barbara Boxer, deserve to lose elections for being so spineless.

Hillary Clinton and Obama and even Bill Clinton are great disappointments to me. They are complicent in this farce as far as I am concerned. I really don't care about Mr. Clinton lying about his sex life; what I do care about are LIES that have cost over 100,000 lives Americans and those human beings in the world.

Livelihoods and jobs lost and the destruction of my country that I believed in. The death of democracy and birth of fascism and oligarchy, where the poor and middle class are cut off, sink or swim, live or die.

Those are the things that make me angry. The democrats let it happen by having no spine. they are deluded.

Ok rant off.

Thank you very much, Onyx for the links. What a moron, that J.D. Mullane who wrote the article for Philly Burbs. He admits he's no good at math. I guess that is admission that he is simply a partisan hack.

[snip] According to my calculations, all of this adds up to sour grapes to the fourth power. Of course, being a journalist, I'm lousy at math, so I could be wrong. It might be sour grapes to the fifth power. Or sixth. [snip]

I would love to see 6 or 7 of us write a letter to Mr. Mullane.

Over here in the UK, where we've had the same hereditary head of state for over 50 (count 'em) years and our upper house consists of unelected appointees, we look on open-mouthed. If anything remotely like these shenanigans appeared to be happening in our elections , there would be a huge outcry and the police (amongst others) would be investigating it. At this very moment, the Conservatives (not my party) are choosing a new leader - and it's being done openly and democratically. We simply do not understand how you - the most powerful nation the World has ever seen - cannot organise yourselves properly yet have the effrontery to lecture other nations about democracy.

Hi Simon #24 and welcome to Brad Blog. Hang around for awhile so you can understand what is happening in this country. Yes - our jaws dropped too. We, who communicate here at this blog, have been researching deeply for at least a full year (some for longer) trying to understand what's going on in the good ol' USA.

The best way to describe it is 1930's Germany. We are dealing with a theo/fascist/corporatist oligarchy and our media is serving the bush administration by being a (sometimes PAID !!!) mouthpiece for White House propaganda. Dissent has been effectively stopped (arrests have been made since bush stole office in 2000 --- people with dissenting signs or placards are not allowed within 1/2 mile of any of bush's speeches ... even though they are paid for with taxpayer's money!!!) Our voting system is currently a sham ... and our 2 party system is effectively only a 1 party system ... the elites.

YES, Simon, we are in serious trouble. A huge portion of American Citizens have absolutely no clue what is going on, because the propaganda is what they hear on the news.

Thank you for your comments and I hope you will stay and talk with us more.

I don't even care when the Democrats are involved, they ALL need to go to jail!!!!

I sure as hell do not want to see more DLC stooges steal their way into office!!! Not one more neocon.

If the voting is not represenative of the people, we have NOTHING!

As far as I'm concerned Diebold must be dissolved and Triad must leave the business, Sequoia must become Smartmatic and ES&S must cease and become AutoMark.

Doug E.

RE: The "Monkey Business" article, I've let Miriam know about the typo, and apparently it's now been corrected online.

Also, this...

UPDATE: I'm told that CityBEAT editor, David Rollin took some heat for running the article! Please send supportive email as you see fit to: davidr@sdcitybeat.com

Brad, can you tell us who gave David Rollin heat? Readers and/or other?

Thank you Brad, Bev and all patriots. Sometimes it has been difficult to have the faith, just knowing that it was rigged election no one knew. I too am not a democrat per se, but I so want this admin out, I am not voting to make a statement but to win! Thank you again for giving HOPE!!