There is new information on the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, November 2006 election that shows that voting results on more than 1 in 4 voting systems failed to match up with the results on the central tabulator. The election was held under the administration of Michael Vu, the county’s now-resigned Election Director who has, incredibly enough, been immediately hired up by the People’s Republic of San Diego County and their former Registrar Mikel Haas (along with Vu, one of America’s worst, so he was promoted by the county, naturally!) as the new Assistant Registrar of Voters…
In the 37 sample precincts where results didn’t match, there may have been corrupted memory cards, missing or torn reports, faulty printers or other problems, according to the independent audit commissioned by the Cuyahoga County elections board.
…
The audit committee found a match among 95 precincts out of 132 precincts in which three races were checked for discrepancies between vote-memory cards and paper records of ballots cast on electronic machines.
Amazing enough, but it gets much, much worse….
From Kim Zetter’s Wired report on the same audit of the same disastrous mess, revealing that the Diebold system used to tally election results is built on an old, out of date database engine that even Microsoft recommends against using!…
Wired also has a copy of the complete audit report [PDF].
The report also reveals that the new Diebold system has made things worse, not better, than even Cuyahoga’s old punch card system! For example, on the Diebold op-scan system they use for absentee ballots (they use Diebold touch-screen DREs for Election Day), “some optical scan ballots were scanned twice while others weren’t scanned at all,” according to Zetter, who adds…
And of particular note to San Diegans — who are also forced to use Diebold’s horrible, unreliable, inaccurate voting systems (touch-screen DREs on Election Day, op-scan for absentees) — where attempts by citizens to view election data have been continuously thwarted by Haas at every turn, comes this further clue as to why Vu will be perfect in his new job!
Whadaya mean “unclear”? It’s perfect! With a record like that, he’ll no doubt be promoted from Assistant Registrar to Registrar any day now in San Diego where, rumor has it, the Board of Supervisors are actually considering changing the town’s name to San Diebold…though we’ve yet to be able to confirm that particular report.
And for this…we have the boy king
i’d like a reporter (good luck) to get bush on record as to how a populous should react upon discovering proof that a politician fraudulently stole an election. say, like in russia. i know hypotheticals are not his strong suit (what is?) but it would still be interesting and could prove fruitful. because, while we all know that to be the case with bush, twice, at the rate election revelations are surfacing – we might soon have incontrovertible evidence of it. of course, even with proof, one could imagine the supremes stepping in claiming the new evidence would prejudice the country against bush.
Why am I not surprised? Diebold cannot, under any circumstances, be trusted with ANY election ANYWHERE. This is another of the many instances of hard proof of that fact. Diebold. Can. Not. Be. Trusted. to run ANY election ANYWHERE.
It is not surprising these facts were revealed. Those of us who have been subject to this, and other types of voting subterfuge expect some form of under handedness in some form or another to dis count, miss count our vote. The new element to this is, while it is still primarily a tactic aimmed at, and engaged against Afrimericans, it is becoming increasingly clear and evident that the the “Elite White Privileged Soicigeoeconimical Power structure has began to expand the practice indiscrinately in an ever increasing effort to over indulge their greed.
Sadly these practices are becoming more common, and what no one is paying attention to is even if it’s done in five or six areas during any given vote, that area is in for a long term negative after effect, and after six years of three here, One there, Six somewhere else, they all add up, and what you get is what you are seeing .
You are seeing an increase of homelessness, and mental illness among whites, more random, and specific homicides at large companies, universites, and in government agencies. The real irony is people can do something about it. They can sue. Every time and every where this type of rights violation occurs, people need to march down to their local federal court and file a civil, and constitutional rights violation lawsuit. Sue your local congressman, your local Senator, for they are complicit in these crimes by not doing what I outline here. It is the duty of your representatives to represent your interest not the interest of fat cats.
When people began to take such actions, voter fraud, and other illegal acts by your supposedly trustworthy public servants will cease, or at least lessen.
Corrupted memory cards. Ballots scanned twice.
Yup. Any doubts now that our elections are being stolen?
The choice of the Jet Database engine should surprise no one, it’s the heart and sole of MS Access.
Here’s a very thorough wiki on the Jet Database engine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mi...atabase_Engine
Capabilities of the Database Diebold is using,(including database locks and security), depend greatly on what version of Jet Diebold had deployed.
Jet supports multiuser access to the database, and employs a locking mechanism to try to ensure only one user is updating any one record at any given time.
Essentially Jet used 2 types of Locking modes, referred to as pessimistic and optimistic.
Both modes have drawbacks, but truthfully, during an election process, there should never be more than 1 user period updating the database.
In layman’s terms, here’s how the locking mechanism’s function:
“With pessimistic locking, the record or page is locked immediately when the lock is requested, while with optimistic locking, the synchronization is delayed for transactions until the operations are actually performed. Conflicts are less likely to occur with optimistic locking; since the record is locked for a shorter duration of time, there is a lesser chance of someone needing to access it while it is locked. However, it cannot be certain that the update will succeed because another user could potentially update the record first. With pessimistic locking, the update is guaranteed to succeed once the lock is obtained, but other users are unable to make their own changes until the lock is released. Lock conflicts, which either require the user to wait, or cause the request to fail (usually after a timeout) are more common with this policy.”
Vote flipping is more likely under an “optimistic” locking schema, while vote “loss” (think, Florida-13) is more likely under a pessimistic locking schema.
For flipping to occur, there HAS to be a 2nd user, aside from the election process itself, simultaneously accessing the database record. This is easy to accomplish in windows, since every single Windows machine out there employs “system users”, easily seen by bringing up the task manager (ctrl+alt+del) and choosing the processes tab.
Vote loss is even easier to accomplish, you just have to delay the actual write-to-media process long enough to exceed the lock timers. Infinite ways to accomplish that without leaving a trace.
If it’s access, it’s easily hackable. And since it’s Visual basic driven, Macro Code can be readily inserted that makes it look like a system call, and not an intruder.
here’s a reference to using Visual basic as a means to attack the integrity of an Access Databse: (Macro Virus)
http://www.securiteam.com/windo...TQ090A1VI.html
Yes, line by line examination of the database code of one or more of these “suspect” machines might prove very telling.
Jet = Access = Visual Basic.
There’s millions of coders here in the US and abroad and there’s NOTHING secure about it.
Well the Vudoo electioneering Vu patented in Ohio comes to sunny California.
It is the only way Haas could do worse. That explains the promotion too.
Not a word about this in the Cleveland Plain dealer or Canton (Home of Diebold) Repository.
Dan,
I remember several years back when RainForestPuppy (rfp) brought this up about Jet, I forget which security list I originally heard it on.
A quick search reveals problems back to 2000 with Jet.
http://archives.neohapsis.com/a...0-q2/0662.html
This just proves again, that it don’t matter what kind of software, or hardware it is, it CAN’T BE SECURED.
And it shouldn’t be used for elections.
It stuns me that the citizens of this country have not taken to the streets over Ohio’s pathetic engineering of republican control of our government. Because of Ohio, we have blood spilling over the world like the logo of Sherwin Williams paint.
Sometimes I just want to shake people and say ‘would you pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease wake up from your stupor and pay attention to what the f#@! is happening to your world!!!!!!!’
A handful of demons in Ohio and the whole earth is destroyed!
I propose that we have a ‘felon’ rule to our voting system. Not the one where don’t allow felons to vote. Instead, if we have people committing felonies to rig elections, we should entirely throw out those votes. In other words, Florida votes should have been removed from the national count in 2000 and Ohio votes should have been removed in 2004. If these states can’t guarantee a fair election, then why should the entire country suffer?
Whether it changes the outcome of a national election or not, a message should be sent to the individual states that the citizens of the ‘united’ states will not stand for the corruption of our nation by handfuls of felons.
Maybe if we had told Ohio that we wouldn’t stand for it in 2004, then 2006 would have been different. Are we going to be saying this every two years for the next century?
Maybe if we had thrown out Ohio votes, then California might reconsider hiring a vote-rigger.
Taking it back to 1999 even…
http://archives.neohapsis.com/a...9-q4/0051.html
Ram,
That would lead to a national DoS (Denial Of Service) for voting. Anywhere electronics are used, the vote can not be validated, or trusted.
The felon rule should be that if you get caught screwing around with the votes anywhere, you should get life in prison.
At least that’s my opinion. It’s as bad as breaking your Oath Of Office.
Ram,
And also I forgot to add,
In addition to life in prision, a special election.
Spare no expense.
Paper Ballots
Hand Counted
Citizen Oversight.
Were talking national security!
The thing I don’t understand about the optical scanner lovers is..
Why would you print the ballot on paper.
Then mark it with a pencil.
Then feed it into a electronic device which changes it to 0’s low dc voltage and 1’s high dc voltage that you can not PHYSICALLY SEE because of the PHYSICS of ELECTRICITY?
When..
You’ve already printed paper.
The electronics are pork, and un-validatable by humans.
I do understand why.
There’s only ONE REASON.
Theft of the election.
Alright, I got things to do today.
ttyl
“The thing I don’t understand about the optical scanner lovers is..
Why would you print the ballot on paper.
Then mark it with a pencil.
Then feed it into a electronic device which changes it to 0’s low dc voltage and 1’s high dc voltage that you can not PHYSICALLY SEE because of the PHYSICS of ELECTRICITY?
When..
You’ve already printed paper……
There’s only ONE REASON.
Theft of the election.”
That is obviously the primary reason, Phil, but there are additional secondary reasons. Feeding the paper ballot into the machine further empowers the elections bureaucracies, while providing job opportunities for computer experts and business opportunities for software developers and hardware manufacturers.
It isn’t JUST about stealing elections, it is also about making money from the process of stealing elections.
–Mark
McJobs and MS-Elections — priceless.
This election shit better hit the fan pretty quick or we may as well pack it in folks!
Come on Media!
Come on Democrats!
This is a conflict of interest against the American people! We don’t want crooks running our elections anymore!
Ram:
I’ll never think about Sherwin Williams in the same way again.
Hi,
Fortunately Arizona is cleaning up its election process
defects.
In 2006 Arizona SB 1557 implemented a constitutionally,
state and US, defective post election voting machine
verification process allowing political parties to
cancell the verification process.
In 2007 the Arizona legislature (SB 1623) is attempting
to correct the defect.
Thanks,
Frank Henry
Cottonwood, Arizona