Worried About Your Vote Counting?

Posted by Liberadio(!) on October 19, 2006 under Uncategorized |

Well, you should be.

New Laws and Machines May Spell Voting Woes (New York Times) “New electronic voting machines have arrived in Yolo County, Calif., but there is one hitch: the audio program for the visually impaired in some of them works only in Vietnamese.”

Think it can’t happen here? It already has. And it’s worse than a simple translation problem. Black Box Voting has a very detailed and explosive post by Jim March about the documented election law and security violations in Shelby County during the primary. Here’s a taste:

Shelby County Facts (as retrieved from the “Windows event log” of the GEMS server):

1) At 4:00pm the day after the election, somebody loaded a program called “JD Secure” into the GEMS server. “JD” stands for “JumpDrive” by the Lexar corporation. A “JumpDrive” is a small memory device, concealable in a closed fist, that allows rapid transfer of data. The fact that JD Secure was loaded means that data was not only moved around on a small, easily concealable memory device, but also that the contents of the memory device were password protected, further concealing what information was being transmitted. This violates system certification procedures and public/party observation laws (our right to transparent elections). It is difficult to conceive of a non-malicious purpose for concealment of data transfer (or manipulation) via password protection.

Four attempts to load the JD Secure software was documented across a period of about 15 minutes. So this loading of the memory device password application wasn’t accidental.

2) On 8/7/06 somebody loaded a complete copy of Microsoft Office Professional 2000. This would include the MS-Access program long known as the simplest way to edit the contents of a Diebold central vote database (and banned for use in elections in virtually all jurisdictions nationwide).

3) On 8/22/06 for a period of over an hour — and during a time period for which a Temporary Restraining Order was in effect — somebody attempted to edit HTML data files. The only significant HTML files on a Diebold main server are vote total reports.

And there’s more.

Also, they list suggestions on what to do if you experience voter fraud. Please spread these around.

What to do with evidence?
Never put it in a funnel. Always PROPAGATE evidence to at least 5-7 different places:

- A reporter
- Black Box Voting
- Your local elections office (this will seed it into the public record)
- Your e-mail list
- Your local elections reform group
- The EIRS reporting system
- A blog
- Someplace unexpected

Evidence = video, audio, photos, public records (stories and anecdotes are not evidence)