Guest Blogged by John Gideon
Tonight Lou discussed the fact that Diebold voting machines and parts can be purchased on-line and at least one of those purchases has revealed a vulnerability in the Diebold TS-R6. The only response Diebold had was that there are only a few thousand of those machines being used as they are being replaced. Diebold obfuscates the truth; there are over 40,000 in use in Georgia and Maryland alone.
Hat-tip to our friends at the Open Voting Foundation who not only purchased the machine at E-bay, but went on to use it to discover one of the “worst ever flaws found in a voting machine” (at least until the next one is found, anyway.)
Video in Streaming Flash format…
Video in Windows Media format…
The text-transcript of tonight’s segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full…
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Voter watchdog groups report that in recent months, components for electronic voting machines and even an entire machine are regularly up for sale, even on E-Bay. A quick check on E-Bay found this Diebold motherboard for sale, listed as brand new.
Voter activists at Vote Trust USA say they lost a bid last week for a Diebold motherboard, but they scour the Internet regularly now to find any voting machines to run their own independent tests.
WARREN STEWART, VOTETRUST USA: I checked for all the other vendors because we know a lot about Diebold now. We’d like to know more about DSS and Sequoia and Hart InterCivic and the other vendors as well.
PILGRIM: A motherboard contains most of the core functioning of the voting machine. In essence, vital information on how the machine records votes. That can be valuable to activist groups who want to check the security of the system or hackers with an interest in tampering with the system.
The group Open Voting Foundation recently demonstrated that the Diebold TS machine could be tampered with only a screwdriver. It is one of the most popular voting machines. Tens of thousands used statewide in Maryland and Georgia, and in scattered counties across the country. The group says hackers could easily figure out the system and Open Voting bought the system on E-Bay.
ALAN DECHERT, OPEN VOTING FOUNDATION: Their programmers can figure out any number of ways to rig the vote with one of these machines. There are no tamper seals on the box at all. You can just use a screwdriver, open up the case. You can take it apart, put it back together and there’s no trace.
PILGRIM: Voter watchdog group Blackbox Voting say they recently bought a Diebold optical scan voting machine, complete with memory card, from a bankruptcy sale. They’re now testing those machines for vulnerabilities.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: Now we called Diebold to ask them about people selling these products online, they’ve not responded as of this broadcast. E-Bay returned our calls and says if a product is legally and commercially available, they don’t stop the sale on E-Bay. But they do have a policy of monitoring any products that could be used for illegal activity. So, after we drew their attention to the sale of the e-voting machines, they said they’d check into their policy on that.
DOBBS: Well, I suppose if one has legal title to it, the idea that you can just sell these machines, you know, you’ve been reporting, as have our colleagues, for months now on what is going on with these things. I mean it is mind boggling. You can see these county registrars in small and city registrars in small communities all across the country trying to deal with this. The federal government endorsing it. And it just looks like a complete nightmare.
PILGRIM: It’s a bit of a mess. It’s a lot of a mess. And it really seems a bit out of control at this point.
DOBBS: Should we get into the bidding for those voting machines on E-Bay?
PILGRIM: I think we could quite easily. We were quite tempted today, I have to tell you.
DOBBS: Well, I might quite easily, we’ll have to check the budget on that. Thanks very much, Kitty Pilgrim.
2004 Presidential Election Results
George Bush 63,948,856 52%
John Kerry 59,191,244 48% ~
George Bush 266
John Kerry 270
Ronald Reagan 2
Ohio ~ Kerry by 937 votes
Source: NBN News Agency
Maybe they should sell the Presidency on E-Bay ,it was “brought” in 2000 and 2004 ,soon why not.
… Jerry O\\\’Riordan
can you link that story ?
Is it me or is this the first story covered on the MSM that wasn’t covered on Bradblog first!
OT
Top 20 things you can do to protect election 2006 (PDF)
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.pdf
I’m really glad Lou is covering this story, but why does he have to cut the experts off so fast. They might as well have them yell out of a speeding train window.
I’m sure Alan Dechert has plenty to talk about if they would have him sit at a table and opine endlessly like Ed Rollins gets to do every night.
Come on Mr Dobbs, Al Gore would not have been bringing people across the border to drive down the wages of the middle class. Am I wrong? Place this issue as the top story, or are you right wingers itching to break out your Smith n’ Wessons.
Time is drawing nigh! We’re five minutes from facism!
Voting is best!
Dredd’s Law: Power corrupts followers of politicians in power at least as much as it corrupts the politician, and will if unchecked, result in absolute corruption of both.
Duverger’s law (link here) and the power structure of the US Congress (link here) is understood by at most 30% of Americans.
Some astute legal professors in law school do not understand, and therefore confuse, Duverger’s law as it would apply in the US (link here).
If you want to be an astute blogger, therefore, learn this:
That is because the Congress about that time, a very disturbed time in American history, decided it that way. And it was never fixed.
Nowadays the majority party (any party having the most members in the Senate and/or House of Representatives) takes all committee chairmanships and the majority vote in each and every committee. The minority party gets ZERO chairmanships and ZERO majority votes on any committee.
And committees have the power in the US Congress. They decide the fate of bills, oversight, subpoenas, and witnessess in the plethora of things they have jurisdiction over.
Thus, as has been presented on this blog ad nauseum, in the US one either takes into consideration the effect on majority status a political tactic or strategy has, or on the contrary, one is a political buffoon in place of being a political scientist.
Lou Dobbs, please continue to spread information so that Americans will activate.
Big Brother is a republican.
This is a great opportunity for this issue to get public notice!!! A hacker group should obtain one of these models off of ebay.
I’m sure the national press would finally take notice if one of the upcoming election results had “Homer Simpson” as the winner!!!!
Larry #6: Yesterday’s story started off being all about the vulnerability found in the Diebold TS machines. For some reason they decided, mid-interview, that they would change to a story about buying voting machines and mother-boards on-line.
The segments they are giving us are only 3 minutes long and that includes the talking between Lou and Kitty so there is not a lot of time for experts interviews.
Hopefully things get better and they are able to give more time to this subject.
Forgive me for asking the obvious, but exactly WHO was selling a voting machine on E-Bay and how the hell did they get their hands on it legally?
USA voters too irresponsible, irrational and emotional
to select their political representatives.
Apparently some in the MSM think the right to vote should be rescinded.
David Sirota addresses the issue
Shlomo: Hank Johnson was selling it. It already had 657 votes for Hank Johnson: 3 for McKinney.
Unfortuneately, I can’t link the 2004 election results based on Bush winning by 4,700,000 votes only to lose in the electoral college!
Really, the only link is to snatch John Kenneth Blackwell and apply the Chinese water torture.
The Chinese have used the water torture for centuries and it has 100% success.
There’s your link: John Kenneth Blackwell of the Buckeye State of Ohio.
In the meantime: “Poor George! He was born with a silver foot in his mouth!” Ann Richards
John #9
The fact that if the American people had been allowed to elect the men they wanted, Al Gore, ect… I am sure the borders would be safer because employers would have to pay a higher wage. The middle class wouldn’t be sinking, because we wouldn’t be in a stupid illegal war wasting trilions.
In other words, the issues that get top billing every night on Dobbs show would not be serious issues.
He calls it “Democracy in Crisis”. Doesn’t that deserve top billing and endless chat.
I think Dobbs wants reliable voting machines, but he doesn’t trust Democrats as much as Republicans for some reason, and backs off. Or it’s his producers. Also, there could be a worse reason. The only reason they’re covering it at all is because everybody knows it’s to late for the election system to be fixed anyway.