Yesterday Bev Harris’ BlackBoxVoting.org site began issuing “Bandwidth Exceeded” messages to users attempting to access the site. Such a message generally occurs when more users are attempting to access the site than the server can comfortably handle or when the bandwidth allocated by the domain’s Internet Provider is exceeded.
Today, attempts to access the site now simply return a “Cannot Find Server” page, leading me to believe that hack attempts and/or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have been successful for the time being. [UPDATE: BlackBoxVoting.org is now finally back online. At least for now.]
We have had such attacks here at the BRAD BLOG for the last three days which have taken us similarly down and/or greatly slowed page retrieval at various times. Given the much higher profile BBV has had, it’s little surprise that folks who’d rather see patriotic efforts like theirs discontinued would work feverishly to disrupt it.
Ms. Harris and BBV has been spearheading a huge “Freedom of Information Act” filing to collect and review audit logs and other materials from the election in some 3,000 US counties, and thus, her group has attracted quite a bit of attention in the past week. BBV has been attempting to warn Americans for at least the past year about the ticking time-bombs of unregulated, unauditable, and privately owned Electronic Voting machines and their corporate owners (the vast majority of them very closely tied to the Republican party).
Attempts to silence and/or disrupt sites like hers and ours, I believe, speak volumes in support of the underlying charges that we’ve been making. If there was nothing to fear in examining the inner-workings of these companies, and the way that our votes our counted — specifically in last week’s election — there would be no reason to attempt to silence and disrupt those who are attempting to do so.
In other words, if the election was clean and fair, what’s the fear of giving it a close inspection?
Now perhaps the problem at BBV really is simply related to an overage of bandwidth demand, however, given past attacks the site has received, similar attacks here, and the message changing from “Bandwidth Exceeded” to “Cannot Find Server”, I’m inclined to believe that the problem is hostile attacks.
To those who claim that the roughly 150,000 (so far) documented votes that have been reported and confirmed by Election Officials as being mis-allocated would not have changed any election results, I’d point out:
1) Those are just the numbers reported by a mainstream media which by and large went “on vacation” after Kerry’s “concession” last Wednesday.
2) Many of those mistabulated and/or lost votes discovered were due to software errors that likely exist on many other identical computers in many other counties in America where they may not yet have been noticed and/or reported.
3) The results of at least one ballot initiative last Tuesday has already been reversed when 70,000 previously mis-counted votes due to “software error” were “discovered” in Broward County, FL!
4) There has been a long record of elections in this country being mis-tabulated and/or reversed due to Electronic Voting Machine error in recent history.
Chapter 2 of Bev Harris’ book, Black Box Voting outlines tons of those recently overturned elections. Here’s the PDF version of Chapter 2, but since it’s currently offline as of this posting, here’s a summary of just a few such recent incidents summarized courtesy of Hunter over at DailyKos:
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Voting machines failed to tally “yes” votes on the 2002 school bond issue in Gretna, Nebraska. This error gave the false impression that the measure had failed miserably, but it actually passed by a 2 to 1 margin. Responsibility for the errors was attributed to ES&S, the Omaha company that had provided the ballots and the machines.
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An Orange County, California, election computer made a 100 percent error during the April 1998 school bond referendum. The Registrar of Voters Office initially announced that the bond issue had lost by a wide margin; in fact, it was supported by a majority of the ballots cast. The error was attributed to a programmer’s reversing the “yes” and “no” answers in the software used to count the votes.
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Software programming errors, sorry. Oh, and reverse that election, we announced the wrong winner. In the 2002 Clay County, Kansas, commissioner primary, voting machines said Jerry Mayo ran a close race but lost, garnering 48 percent of the vote, but a hand recount revealed Mayo had won by a landslide, receiving 76 percent of the vote.
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In the November 2002 general election in Scurry County, Texas, poll workers got suspicious about a landslide victory for two Republican commissioner candidates. Told that a “bad chip” was to blame, they had a new computer chip flown in and also counted the votes by hand — and found out that Democrats actually had won by wide margins, overturning the election.
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In 1986 the wrong candidate was declared the winner in Georgia. Incumbent Democrat Donn Peevy was running for state senator in District 48. The machines said he lost the election. After an investigation revealed that a Republican elections official had kept uncounted ballots in the trunk of his car, officials also admitted that a computerized voting program had miscounted. Peevy insisted on a recount. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “When the count finished around 1 a.m., they [the elections board] walked into a room and shut the door,” recalls Peevy. “When they came out, they said, `Mr. Peevy, you won.’ That was it. They never apologized. They never explained.”
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A software programming error gave the election to the wrong candidate in November 1999 in Onondaga County, New York. Bob Faulkner, a political newcomer, went to bed on election night confident he had helped complete a Republican sweep of three open council seats. But after Onondaga County Board of Elections staffers rechecked the totals, Faulkner had lost to Democratic incumbent Elaine Lytel. Just a few hours later, election officials discovered that a software programming error had given too many absentee ballot votes to Lytel. Faulkner took the lead.
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In a 1998 Salt Lake City election, 1,413 votes never showed up in the total. A programming error caused a batch of ballots not to count, though they had been run through the machine like all the others. When the 1,413 missing votes were counted, they reversed the election.
If an official investigation doesn’t take place immediately, there is little hope of determing the correct winner of any number of races from last week’s election. Not the least of which is the race for President of the United States. And I would think, especially after four years of questions about George W. Bush’s legitimacy as “President” that even the Right Wingnuts would like to be able to demonstrate once and for all to the American People that he was, in fact, legitimately elected this time.
For more on the suddenly silent Right Wingers, see my recent BuzzFlash Editorial. And be sure to sign this Online Petition calling for an immediate investigation!
There’s a small difference between the two messages "Bandwidth exceeded" and "Cannot find server". In the case of the former, the user is able to reach the site, but the ISP denied the request. The latter simply means that the browser was unable to even get there. This could possibly be a result of a DDoS, but it could just as easily be the effect of overwhelming traffic.
True, Howard. And I *believe* I noted that in my original article. I’m also glad to see that after being unable to get there at all today, I was just able to get there.
They’d spoken recently about having been hacked already after "sensitive information" was posted. And, of course, given my own late experience here with DDoS attacks, I’d think such attacks on BBV would be even more aggressive.
Hi Brad, I know nothing about computers, but when I tried to access bbv , my first thought was , are they being hacked. When I read yours was, I didn’t feel like such a conspiracy theorist afterall. What a climate of distrust we live in. You are so right. I only hate the ladies with white gloves visiting my house, when it is dirty. After a good cleaning, I welcome them. Turn over rock to see what is under them, get to the truth of this thing. Thanks for all your work.
Dang , why is none of this on mainstream media.
we of the world hoped you would save us from King George and his plans of empire building, but alas with more lawyers than any country in world you seem helpless in the face of this election fraud .After 2000 how could this happen .Is America so corrupt that the people have no power to ensure the results of a national election .Why arn’t people in the streets protesting ?
michael of nz
ps. nobody died when clinton lied