Tony Pierce, filling in for Andrew Malcolm (columnist and Laura Bush’s former press secretary) at Los Angeles Times’ “Top of the Ticket” blog picks up (with attribution, gracias) on our scoop earlier this week about the 100% unverifiable, yet highly hackable Diebold touch-screen e-voting machines out of Van Wert County, Ohio, now for sale, on the cheap, at eBay…
You really can get anything on EBay, even electronic voting machines proved to be easy to corrupt for purposes of voting fraud.
Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog first noticed that “more than 10” AccuVote-TS voting machines, built by Diebold, were being sold on the online auction site for the buy-it-now price of $1,200 (plus $50 shipping and handling).
The machines are used and don’t come with user’s manuals, power supplies, batteries or memory cards, which may explain their discounted price. However, for those who wish to rig elections, machines like these are priceless.
Friedman was contacted by the seller, who told him that he had more than 100 of the electronic voting machines that were originally used in Van Wert County, Ohio.
AccuVote-TS voting machines were also used in New Jersey, when a professor at Princeton demonstrated how easy the Diebold machines were to manipulate for nefarious means.
Pierce offers more information in his piece on that landmark Princeton hack from September 2006 and the hackability of these systems in general.
Long time readers of The BRAD BLOG likely recall the Princeton hack came about when VelvetRevolution.us (as co-founded by The BRAD BLOG) gave the Diebold touch-screen system to computer scientists there for the — at the time — highly secretive, first-of-its-kind examination, after we’d received the machine from a source of ours. We originally broke the story of that hack exclusively both here at The BRAD BLOG and in a slightly shorter version at Salon.
The alarming hack — which demonstrated how a virus could be inserted into one of these systems and invisibly flip the results of an entire election — received a great deal of attention from the mainstream media at the time, and was even covered in a live video demonstration on Fox “News”. (See that video at right.)
Though the Princeton hack was on a Diebold AccuVote TS (with no so-called “Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail” printer) versus the TSX model (with VVPAT) being sold now on eBay, the many ways available to game them in order to flip election results with very little possibility of detection are essentially the same…
We’re delighted to see “our hometown paper”, the LATimes, pick up the Diebold/eBay story, since they haven’t, um, exactly led the way in coverage of e-voting concerns over the years, despite the importance of California to the nation as a whole when it comes to setting standards and security procedures for these systems. Unverifiable, oft-failed, easily manipulated touch-screen e-voting systems identical or similar to the ones now for sale on eBay are still, incredibly, used by some 20 to 30% of the nation’s voters, even after everything we’ve learned about them — and the thousands of pages we devoted to those warnings here — over the years.
The BRAD BLOG has contacted the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), as well as CA Sec. of State Debra Bowen and former OH Sec. of State Jennifer Brunner (who both commissioned landmark independent studies of these same Diebold touch-screen systems and strongly recommended against their use in any election based on those findings) for comment on this matter. We’re curious if they are as concerned about the availability of these machines to the general public as we are, since we can think of a number of ways in which they could potentially be used nefariously in advance of the 2012 elections.
While we’ve been promised a response from the EAC (though have yet to receive it), we have not yet heard back from either Bowen or Brunner. If we receive response from any of them, of course, we will update as appropriate.
Interesting that Tony Pierce of Los Angeles Times has followed this closely enough to know about the Princeton hack.
Perhaps there’s still hope for real journalism from at least a few members of the corporate MSM. But then Pierce’s piece reflects that he still doesn’t know the difference between “voting fraud” and “election fraud.”
Voting machines for sale … votes for sale … elections for sale … eBay … we got your democracy baby.
On sale now …
If Brad takes up a collection to buy one for a symbolic torching to highlight the importance of voting with paper in 2012, I’m in for 2 bits.
@Ghostof911
I’d rather have a whack at it with a baseball bat pinata style. Charge a couple bucks a whack and it could be a good fund raiser. Definately a good photo op and cathartic release.
used voting machines have been on ebay for years
here’s an OT question: why are you only on for 1/2 hour on KPFK — can’t they give you a full hour?!?!?
Here is a forensic tool for all of you election fraud truthseekers:
The 1988-2008 State and National True Vote Model (TVN).
https://spreadsheets.google.com...0D5VI_eg#gid=0
TVN is a data warehouse as well as an analytical tool to uncover the anomalies in state and national presidential election data. Most important, it calculates the TRUE VOTE which is much different than the OFFICIAL recorded vote.
And you can play what-if to your heart’s content. Here is one very powerful feature: You can target the exit poll vote shares required to match the recorded vote, the exit poll, or the calculated True Vote.
The exit pollsters don’t provide the components of the unadjusted exit polls. But the TVM does: it automatically calculates Kerry’s share of returning Gore, Bush, Nader and NEW voters required to achieve the unadjusted exit poll or any other vote share. It also calculates the implausible corresponding shares required to match the bogus recorded vote.
Here is one statistic to keep in mind. In 238 of the 255 state presidential elections from 1988-2004 for which unadjusted exit poll data is available, the conservative 3% margin of error was exceeded in 65 elections – and 64 favored the Republicans!
TVM is a piece of cake to use. I converted the Excel spreadsheet to a Google DOC. The online chat feature enables users to interact.
TVM is an extremely powerful model; there is nothing like it anywhere. Try it. Tell your friends about it. Help make it go viral so that people can see for themselves that the presidential elections were stolen in 1988, 2000 and 2004.
TVM is fully documented (click the links on the Main data input screen). Yu can get started right away. Just enter the election year, indicate if it is a state or national analysis, and the calculation method (1-5). Example: 2004, FL, 2
See you in the TVM.
Typo in #6: It’s TVM..The True Vote Model.
Hi Brad. I’ll be checking in Friday and next week when you sub for Malloy.
Richard
Brad,
I forgot to mention this.
Let’s check out Oregon 2008.
In the TVM enter:
2008, OR, 2
And the envelope, please…
Obama’s True Oregon Vote Share: 56.34%
Recorded: 56.75%
Richard
Bravo, Brad! Glad the substitute was more astute than the regular guy at the LATimes. Who won in 1988? Oh, yeah. That Bush I guy, right? And those 2000 and 2004? That other guy, Shrub.
Meanwhile, in the No Reason To Trust The HappyTalk file:
Radioactive iodine was found in milk on the West Coast, proving for the first time that Japan’s nuclear crisis is affecting U.S. food.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/...20049459.shtml
It’s not radiation that kills, it’s the Fear Of Radiation that kills – so says CBS
the thing to remember here is,the problem is NOT just with the touch screen machines,the optical scan machines are equally prone to hacks,insiders manipulation and general problems that do NOT lead to an accurate count….this is unconstitutional because,WE THE PEOPLE, are suppose to be able to self determine our leaders and obviously we can not self determine if we can not oversee the counting of votes that determine those leaders….no one can oversee the “blackboxes” because they use an electronic signal which of course can not be seen
Plunger wrote @10:
Actually, Plunger, the milk was from cows who graze near the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California’s San Luis Obispo county.
The more likely source for the trace levels of iodine in their milk would be the nearby plant, not Fukushima.