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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
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Carolyn Wilson Crnich Admits Hackable Diebold Optical-Scan Voting Machines Kept at Poll Worker Homes the Night Before Elections
Can't Speak to Security Vulnerabilities
By Brad Friedman on 3/25/2006 2:36am PT  

Blogged by Brad on the Road...

I know I'm supposed to be taking a few hours off (how's that going, Brad?)...But I couldn't help sharing with you a quick piece of audio from my regular Friday guest appearance on KRXA 540am's Peter B. Collins Show today (broadcast out of Monterey, CA).

I was pleased that Carolyn Wilson Crnich, Elections Registrar of Humboldt County, CA was able to join us on air for one of the segments (posted below.)

Crnich is one of the officials named as a defendant in the recent lawsuit against CA Sec. of State Bruce McPherson and other county elections officials around the state. The suit calls for the ban of use and purchase of Diebold touch-screen voting systems in the state since (amongst other reasons) they have proven to be hackable and their recent certification was in violation of state law requiring all certified voting systems to conform to Federal Voting System Standards. Diebold's machines do not conform to such standards because they contain "interpreted code" --- which is specifically banned by the Federal standards. Diebold has now admitted to the existence of such code on their systems. The forbidden code went unexamined and untested by Federal authorities when the machines received Federal certification.

Nonetheless, Crnich (we believe) is one of the good guys. She's proven willing to dump her previous plan to use Diebold AccuVote TSx (touch-screen) machines, which she was going to use in order to meet the disabled-accessible voting device requirement in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). She is now hoping to use the paper-ballot based Vote-PAD system in Humboldt County this year instead.

However, as our on-air conversation revealed, there are still very serious concerns with Humboldt County's optical-scan system since they use the very system, made by Diebold, which was shown to be hackable last December in Leon County, FL.

Of note in our conversation, Crnich admits that optical-scan systems are sent home with poll workers the night before elections where --- even if the hackable memory cards are wired into the machine so they can't be removed --- they can still be accessed by other means. If so, a malicious poll worker could modify the code on the memory cards, allowing an election to be hacked without a trace left behind during that breakdown in chain of custody for such home-stored voting machines.

Give the interview and discussion between Crnich, myself and Peter B. a listen. See what you think. It's good to have such an admission on the public record, and the fact that she admits to not knowing what could happen when these machines are stored at poll workers' houses.

Again, I'm glad she was willing (unlike many other Elections Officials around the country) to come on air and face some of these tough questions. Happy to hear your thoughts.

-- Carolyn Wilson Crnich, with Brad on the Peter B. Collins Show, 3/24/06 [MP3, about 13 mins]
-- Complete Brad appearance on Peter B. Collins Show, 3/24/06 [MP3, about 35 mins, and quite a bit funnier, IMHO]

(Thanks to Joe at the Peter B. show for sending the audio!)

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By John Gideon on 3/24/2006 5:22pm PT  

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

ES&S gave officials in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania an ultimatum, "Either accept 50 percent of your order by 5 p.m. (Wednesday) or get nothing." Buyer beware! I guess. Buyer beware, indeed. The folks in Cook County and Chicago are beginning to wish they had been better aware of what they were doing when they made deals with Sequoia. Now they are threatening to withhold any further funds from contracts due to the machines that did not work as advertised. For their part Sequoia did what the vendors always do; blame the voter and the poll workers for everything. ...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Also Mentions Steve Smith Texas Election Challenge
By John Gideon on 3/24/2006 12:28pm PT  

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Today our friends at Rawstory posted an article about Clint Curtis giving his background and more about his run for the House of Representatives from the Florida.

To Republicans, Clint Curtis is a traitor; a back-stabbing liar with an imagination that rivaled Jack Abramoff's influence over Congress.

To liberal Democrats, Curtis is a hero; a stand up guy who blew the whistle on computer voting fraud, testifying before a group of U.S. House Committee Judiciary Democrats after the 2004 presidential election.

And to the man himself, the Republican-turned-Democrat is nothing but a computer geek who purports to have found himself smack in the middle of a brazen political plot to tamper with elections in Florida, where fact can be stranger than fiction and politics as shady as swampy underbrush.

Also in the article is a bit about Supreme Court candidate Steve Smith of Texas who is considering challenging the election from earlier this month in which some strange numbers were posted. This was covered by BRAD BLOG earlier this week.

In the Texas case, Republican Steve Smith is preparing a challenge after losing in the state's Supreme Court Justice primary election earlier this month. In Winkler County, Texas, where Smith respectively received 74 percent and 65 percent of the votes in the 2002 and 2004 elections, he received zero votes in the recent primary.

And in Smith's home county, Tarrant, where he outperformed statewide results by 13 percent in 2004, he underperformed statewide results by 23 percent earlier this month.

Smiths' opponent, Don Willet, has close ties to President Bush. Willet served as a special assistant to the president in Bush's quest for faith-based initiatives.

Clint is enjoying the help of some avid supporters.

"Karyn Altman, a freelance writer and hospitality marketing professional in Miami, is one of a small, but dedicated team of volunteers throughout the country working to get Curtis on the ballot. Other volunteers are in New Jersey and California.

"Clint needs to raise $10,000 by April 7th so we can get him on the primary ballot," said Altman, who is in the process of organizing fundraisers for Curtis in South Florida.

Like many Democrats, Altman started becoming disillusioned with politics after the 2000 Florida fiasco in which the Supreme Court voted to put Bush in the White House. In 2002, after the computer voting machines were introduced in Florida, she says it took her three attempts for her vote to register for her Democratic candidate.

"When I discovered afterwards that I was not the only one who'd had this experience, I became obsessed with learning about electronic machines and the ways they could be manipulated without detection," she said.

"I find it outrageous that in spite of all of the evidence, the mainstream media refuses to cover this story," she said. "And the Democratic Party refuses to even consider, at least publicly, the possibility that fraud and election rigging could be taking place.""

For more info on The BRAD BLOG's continuing investigative series on
The Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises Vote-Rigging Scandal series, please see:
- A Quick Summary of the story so far.
- An Index of all the Key Articles & Evidence in the series so far.

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By David Edwards on 3/24/2006 11:59am PT  

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com


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We haven't forgotten Fox News' phony 'War on Christmas' where Bill O'Reilly, John Gibson and other Fox personalities attacked anyone or anything that used blasphemous words like "holiday".

Fox is again "fighting for the rights the Christian Majority" with another faux menace: The War on Easter.

Undoubtedly, the "Spring Bunny" will cause the downfall of The Republic.

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By David Edwards on 3/24/2006 8:12am PT  

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com


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Responding to the President's criticism of the media coverage of Iraq, ABC's Nightline, airs the story of an attempt to report on good news in Iraq.

After a day of covering the horrible violence in Iraq, ABC reporter Jake Tapper tried to find some lighter news. The ABC News team decided to cover a new Iraqi sitcom and the challenges of creating comedy for Iraqi television viewers.

The story quickly turned from good news to tragedy and fear as Jake's contact, who was also the head of the entertainment division for Iraqi TV, was murdered during filming.

Jake Tapper concludes the story with these words: "And there went our effort to show comedians trying to make Iraqis smile again. It ended with the funeral of the man who helped us put the story together. A horrible, gruesome, perfect metaphor for daily life in Iraq."

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By John Gideon on 3/23/2006 5:02pm PT  

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Today a federal court told New York state to present a HAVA plan by April 10. The court also found that intervention of LWV, NYVV and others would not be allowed. Essentially the court found in favor of chaos. Meanwhile the disaster in Illinois is continuing with thousands of votes still to be counted. Sequoia has done a good job of deflecting the machine failures into personnel errors and 'glitches'. At the same time election officials are saying that Sequoia should have to pay for the myriad equipment failures. The editorials and articles coming from Maryland are all pointed toward the state changing their voting system now....

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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By David Edwards on 3/23/2006 12:42pm PT  

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com


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CNN's Showbiz Tonight picked up on an interview Charlie Sheen did for Alex Jones' radio show where Sheen expressed his doubts about the "official" 9/11 story.

Besides Showbiz Tonight, the story has gotten some critical coverage by the New York Post, The Boston Herald and Human Events. Alex Jones' Prison Planet website explains "The mainstream media has finally seen fit to cover Charlie Sheen's comments on 9/11... penning hit pieces that seek to smear Sheen as an unstable crackpot."

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By David Edwards on 3/23/2006 11:18am PT  

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com


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Russ Feingold and Jon Stewart both do a great job in this interview. Videos have been floating around the internet since it aired last night. If you haven't seen it yet then it's worth a look.

Feingold: There is no valid legal basis for this and everybody basically knows it. They're just afraid to stand up to the President. The President needs to hear the voice of Congress and the voice of the American people. You can't make up your own laws.

Stewart: Here's what I like about it... I'm not sure, quite frankly, what censure is. I'm not even sure what a FISA court is. I'm not sure that I feel better that they were looking over the President's shoulder because I don't know much about it but this feels like some attempt at accountability. And that's what I really like about it.

Stewart: Because it seems like the worse you screw up with these guys the bigger the trophy they give you. And I like the fact that you're standing up - even if it's symbolic - that it's an attempt. I appreciate that and I thank you for it.

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By David Edwards on 3/23/2006 7:58am PT  

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com


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Howard Dean filibustered CNN's Soledad O'Brien to push the message that the Democratic Party has an effective strategy for changing the course in Iraq.

While the President Bush and the Republican noise machine are blaming the press, Dean said that the Democrats are having difficulty getting media coverage.

On the plan for Iraq, Dean said "We do believe that we can't withdraw immediately... Over the next couple of years we need to bring the troops home." On the apparent divided opinions of Democrats Dean said "There's a middle ground between Jack Murtha and Joe Biden and we think it makes a lot of sense."

Will the strategy as described by Howard Dean convince American's that the Democrats can get Iraq on track towards a resolution? Should the Democrats come together and support a single specific plan for Iraq?

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Poll Worker Training Blamed
By John Gideon on 3/23/2006 6:27am PT  

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

At noon Wednesday, Chicago was missing 252 memory cartridges, 93 from machines that scanned in paper ballots and 159 from touch screens. County officials couldn't find 162 memory cartridges from suburban precincts--68 from optical-scanning machines and 94 for touch-screen balloting.

The problems led midday to the sight of Cook County Director of Elections Clem Balanoff--his tie loosened and eyes bleary--rifling through blue duffel bags at a county warehouse for precinct returns for uncounted votes on missing memory cartridges.

It was only early last month that the state of Illinois certified the Sequoia voting system that was used in the Illinois primary in Chicago and suburban Cook County this week. In that 6 week period over 23,000 election judges had to be trained to set-up and use the voting machines and they had to learn a completely new set of procedures for opening and closing the polls.

The county and city failed to do that training or failed to do enough of it for those who were trained at all. According to this morning's Chicago Tribune:

Langdon Neal, chairman of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, further said that 4,000 of Chicago's 14,000 election judges attended no training and instead relied on a judge's manual that was sent in the mail and was written in a complicated and confusing manner.

Training for county judges emphasized videos and not hands-on instruction. None of the 9,600 election judges in suburban Cook County had ever touched the scanning device used to process paper ballots, said Cook County Clerk David Orr.

This clear lack of training and the introduction of new, un-reliable voting machines has caused what amounts to a disaster in vote counting. Three days after the voters went to the polls votes are still being tallied. In fact, memory cartridges were still being located as of Wednesday afternoon.

Not helping with all of the chaos were the machine failures reported all around the city and county:

  • "A high-tech voting system in Chicago and suburban Cook County provided plenty of frustration and confusion for voters during its first test Tuesday, as election officials dealt with missing power cords and ballots, jammed equipment and broken electronic voting machines." LINK
  • "As voting in today's primary election nears an end, some of the new, multi-million dollar voting machines were a hi-tech headache for voters." LINK
  • "As election officials closed the polls Tuesday evening, reports of glitches from throughout the day continued as both voters and election officials learned how to deal with a new, high-tech voting system in Chicago and suburban Cook County."LINK
  • So this week's Illinois primary has been a disaster with machine breakdowns, procedural errors, lost memory cartridges and a complete lack of training. They have to be able to learn from this and make changes; right? Well actually, as reported by VoteTrustUSA, they are going to take all of those Sequoia voting machines used in Chicago and suburban Cook County and they are shipping them all to Clark County, Nevada. Meanwhile, Chicago and Cook County will be getting another brand-new Sequoia voting system that has never been used in any election. Let's hope they can take just a little more time to train their poll judges because November will be here soon.

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    By John Gideon on 3/22/2006 8:12pm PT  

    Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

    It has been a busy day��.. the day that saw a lawsuit in California. �.the day that saw elections failures in Illinois. �.the day that saw Sequoia counties in California celebrate because the SoS certified their voting machines. �..the day that saw Summit Co., Ohio threaten a law suit against ES&S. �.the day that a recount in Tom Green Co., Texas is stopped by the SoS. And, the day that a potential challenge of the Texas primary is announced. Of course Sequoia decided that all of their problems in Cook Co., IL. were "operator error" typically not taking any responsibility for lack of training and poor machines....

    --- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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    By Brad Friedman on 3/22/2006 7:26pm PT  

    Heading up to Santa Clara to speak this weekend (see "Media Appearances" section at top of front page, and come on by if you can!) Don't know if I'll be on or offline over the next week. Please assume I'll be off, and don't hold it against me. Need a break anyway. Though knowing me, I won't be gone long. Although I'm happy to leave the messes in TX, IL, CA and elsewhere to John Gideon anyway ;-)

    He and David Edwards will be holding down the fort here. Treat them kindly. If anyone needs me, contact John or David and they'll know how to track me down!

    And stay outta the liquor cabinet while I'm gone! Seriously, I marked the bottles, and I will be checking them when I get back.

    P.S. Don't forget to VOTE FOR US!

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    Inexplicable Tallies from Electronic Voting Machines in Tarrant County, Elsewhere in State Require Full Recount and/or Contest, According to Campaign Manager
    'Serious mistakes were made,' Understates Candidate, Former Texas Justice Steve Smith
    By Brad Friedman on 3/22/2006 5:40pm PT  

    A Conservative Republican former Texas Supreme Court Justice, who ran against a Republican opponent backed by Gov. Rick Perry, is considering a challenge to the tremendously flawed Primary Elections held in the state two weeks ago on new Electronic Voting Machines.

    The campaign for Steve Smith announced last week in a Press Release received only last night by The BRAD BLOG (and posted in full below) has filed a "Public Information Act request with the Tarrant County Elections Administrator seeking to review public documents relating to the Republican Party primary election in Tarrant County" on March 7th.

    As discussed in their press release, but elaborated upon to The BRAD BLOG in an interview this afternoon with Smith's campaign manager, David Rogers, the results reported from all across the state seem to make little or no sense.

    For example, though his was a statewide race, Smith's home county is Tarrant where in 2004, according to Rogers, Smith "outperformed the statewide results by 13%, but this year, according to the results, he underperformed the statewide results by 23%."

    "Something doesn't make sense here," he noted, adding that turnout went up this year by 12,000 votes, but apparently a full "11,000 of them did not go to Smith."

    Amongst the many concerns alleged by Smith's campaign are that audit tapes from the voting machines are only available on 103 of the 211 election day voting locations, making it impossible to audit all of the races. "No audit can be correctly performed on more than half of the machines in the state," says Rogers.

    Perhaps more troubling still, is this item from Smith's press release:

    Winkler County, which went for Smith by margins of 260-92 (74%) and 468-249 (65%) in the 2002 and 2004 elections, went against Smith by an unbelievable 0-273 (100%) margin. Governor Perry received only 83% of the vote in Winkler County, and no other contested candidate topped 80%. The propositions on the ballot topped out at 93%.

    Due to time-constraints (we were supposed to hit the road about five hours ago), we weren't able to confirm those incredible Winkler County numbers. But if they are true, they are indeed mind-blowing.

    As previously reported, Tarrant County saw some 100,000 votes added incorrectly to the election totals on Hart InterCivic and ES&S voting machines on Election Day. As well, The BRAD BLOG reported on a whistleblower who worked for both Hart and later at Tarrant County. In July of 2004, he sent letters warning the Texas Secretary of State and Attorney General about serious problems which he regarded as both "criminal" and "fraudulent" both at Hart and in Tarrant County's Board of Elections. His letters, he told us, were completely ignored by all of the officials.

    And yesterday, that same Sec. of State in Texas was forced to shut down a mandated recount in Tom Green County when the Hart InterCivic machines were reporting results that differed by some 20% from the original totals as reported on Election Night.

    We wonder if he might decide to go back and talk to our whistleblower now. Apparently both the Smith campaign and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (as we learned earlier today when they contacted us for more info) suddenly have an interest in doing so.

    Rogers indicated to The BRAD BLOG this morning that they were seriously investigating a complete challenge to the election statewide and hope to get a much closer look at those Hart and ES&S machines in order to try and make sense of whatever the hell happened in Texas.

    We'd like to see that happen, of course. And now that a conservative Republican may have had his own ox gored by these infernal machines, perhaps it'll actually become a reality.

    The complete Press Release issued by Smith's campaign --- detailing even more "irregularties" in the race --- follows. [emphasis in the original] ...

    --- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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    By Brad Friedman on 3/22/2006 1:59pm PT  

    We'll have another fairly enormous story shortly concerning the problems, as reported previously, in Tarrant County, TX where some 100,000 votes were incorrectly added to the results of the March 7th primary by ES&S and Hart InterCivic electronic voting machines in use there. For a bit more background on that, see our report on the Hart InterCivic whistleblower who also worked in Tarrant County. He tried, to no avail, to alert the Sec. of State of problems with both Hart and Tarrant as far back as July 2004. His alarming letters, included in the article, were ignored by both the TX Sec. of State and Attorney General.

    But until the promised big story out of Tarrant...We received the following email last week after posting the aforementioned report. The writer, Jerry Lobdill, identifies himself as "a retired physicist and system engineer who has specified, designed, tested, and evaluated computing systems for the US Navy for 30 years." He was a supporter of Doreen Geiger who ran in Tarrant County for Democratic Party County Chair. Read Lobdill's note for details of how the Democratic Party seems to have rolled over in Tarrant County on this issue, chosing not to challenge the questionable results from the Hart InterCivic and ES&S machines.

    All of which leads the Lobdill to conclude in his note: "Democracy is dead here."

    That is, of course, particularly troubling considering the TX Sec. of State halted a recount in Tom Green County yesterday when the printed results differed from the reported results from Election Night by as much as 20%.

    Lobdill's email follows in full...

    --- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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    Electronic Voting Machine Vendor is accused of doing the work of three men, 'Larry, Curly, and Moe'
    After 30% Failure Rate of Memory Cards Revealed, Still More Problems Surface...
    By John Gideon on 3/22/2006 8:51am PT  

    Guest Blogged by John Gideon

    Summit County has recently had problems with failed memory cards as related by BRAD BLOG on March 9 and March 10. The problems in Summit County concerned a 30% failure rate found in pre-election testing for those cards. That problem alerted folks in North Carolina to test those same cards on their own ES&S machines where they discovered last week that more than 1000 of them failed to work!

    Now that those problems have been in the media (Yes, even the MSM has reported the problems) the vendor has decided to not be cooperative with Summit County, OH.

    The ES&S on-site project manager was not allowed by the company to attend a board of elections meeting to explain why there were problems with memory cards. Board members have also complained that ES&S staffers installing the system have suddenly become cold and getting any information is "like pulling teeth".

    The Akron Beacon Journal also reports on other problems the board is having:

    Delays in getting copies of the May 2 primary ballots to proofread, which has resulted in the board missing the date on its timeline for ordering ballots from the printer.

    ``They won't give us the opportunity to proofread the ballot,'' [Board Director] Williams said. He explained that the board, working in teams of Democrats and Republicans, routinely triple-checks the rotation of names on the ballots, but ES&S won't provide copies of the ballot to do that.

    [Board Deputy Director] Donofrio said in early copies the rotation --- the order in which the candidates' names appear on the ballot --- was incorrect.

    Williams said ES&S' attitude has been that the extra checking ``was not necessary,'' but the problems the board had with the company's performance have proven that it is.

    He said the board hoped to order the ballots on Monday. ``We'll be lucky to have them ordered by the end of the week,'' he said.

    However, that does not mean that ballots will not be printed in time for the May 2 election.

    And in addition:

    ES&S staffers, while training local poll workers, have actually broken three handicapped voting machines when they inserted the memory cards incorrectly.

    Donofrio said she intends to ask the company to replace the broken equipment.

    [Republican Board member] Arshinkoff accused ES&S of ``doing the job of three men --- Larry, Curly and Moe.''

    ``This is inexcusable. I think ES&S has failed in their capacity as a vendor. If this doesn't work in the May primary, we're going to have to make real hard choices,'' he said.

    Meanwhile, SoS Ken Blackwell's office has, in effect, just shrugged their shoulders and said that they hope both sides can get along and adhere to their obligations. Of course it was Ken Blackwell who chose ES&S as the vendor for Summit County.

    We will be sure to keep an eye on this situation and report back when there is more to pass on.

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