with Mary Mancini and Freddie O’Connell
Posted by Liberadio(!) on October 22, 2006 under Uncategorized | 
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If you missed Now’s program on the clean election movement you can watch it in its entirety at Google video.
“An examination of the Clean Election movement, in which candidates eschew private donations in exchange for receiving public money. Included: the campaign of Arizona state representative Doug Quelland (R), who is running for his third term.”
Posted by Mary Mancini on October 21, 2006 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
Unlike some people, I do not fear change. However, I do fear radical change in the hands of partisans without a verifiable safety net. This is why paper trails for electronic voting machines are a really good idea. I mean, I can’t think of any other reason why a politician or election official would not want to provide safeguards for an election, like paper ballots, unless they were rolling out the red carpet for election fraudsters.
Tennessee seems to have a particular problem this year in Shelby County where Diebold manufactured electronic voting machines, sans paper trails, were rolled out for use in the August primaries, experienced numerous problems, and were described by Jim March of Black Box Voting as “a hacking contest, open to whoever was most efficient and motivated to alter vote totals.”
Early voting in Shelby County for this current election seems to be heading in a similar direction.
WREG-TV in Memphis reported that two voters were given computer cards to plug into Diebold Election machines that were supposed to provide the correct ballots for each voters address. They didn’t. And when one went to get poll worker, “her voting computer screen went black, and then up popped the words ‘Your vote has been rejected.’” Poll workers, checking on the error, told her that their tallies showed that she had voted. The woman, who had used the machines on other occasions, says that she never finalized her vote.
After hearing her story, election official James Johnson said, “…we realized that the machine began to cancel out and that’s what it apparently started to do.” Whatever that means.
The woman was able to cast a provisional ballot but without a paper trail to compare with the electronic voting tally, how can we be sure her provisional ballot will match, and therefore count towards, the official vote count?
So why is Shelby County still using the Diebold machines after having so many problems in August? Well, all attempts to stop have been deflected. A lawsuit filed by Suhkara A. Yahweh, a local minister, and four other plaintiffs, that “contends the new machines are subject to tampering, that workers in some cases were not properly trained in the use of the machines and that the machines denied voters the right to cast secret ballots” was thrown out of court. U.S. Dist. Court Judge Jon McCalla ruled on Wednesday, October 18, the first day of early voting, that “granting an injunction, which would effectively put a halt to the election, would be an extraordinary step he did not believe was warranted.” The judge had canceled a hearing on the matter that was scheduled for the day before.
John Ryder, arguing for the Election Commission, said in court papers that the plaintiffs’ claims are “speculative and woefully deficient in that they are not supported by law of fact.”
But that’s not what Jim March of Black Box Voting found. March was asked by four Shelby County candidates (Shep Wilbun, Sondra Becton, Vernon Johnson and Otis Jackson) who brought a similar suit after the August primary to help secure public records from the Aug. 3, 2006 election. He found well-documented and widespread security violations. March obtained a copy of the Diebold GEMS database, along with the Windows event log and what he found was, in his words, “shocking”. “The sheer number of legal and security violations in the event log were horrifying, and it also showed that Shelby County — or someone — was accessing the file during the middle of a Temporary Restraining Order prohibiting this.”
Below is some of the evidence March found in “election official declarations and discovery documents obtained in litigation over a recent election using Diebold machines” 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.
(One malicious use for the Jumpdrive with password encryption would be for a fraudster to hand-edit vote totals on another machine, spend hours to get it to total correctly, and then upload altered results back to GEMS the following day via the keychain memory device.)
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. The only reason any trace was left was because the HTML editing tools failed to load – they either broke somehow or weren’t loaded correctly. Either way, it suggests that somebody may have been hand-editing vote total reports, and that’s potentially very significant. For example: GEMS creates reports of vote tallies throughout election night, in either HTML or PDF formats. An editor for PDF data is included on the GEMS main server as shipped by Diebold, and HTML editors are easy to get. Those tally reports could be easily edited on election night, shifting the apparent vote totals, and then the main GEMS database could be hand-edited to match the false reports across most of the day after the election, to be illicitly uploaded via the password-protected Jumpdrive.
A Final Shelby County Fact (based on election official depositions):
4) At 6:30pm on election day, the GEMS main server was cross-connected to the main county computer network, which in turn has a cross-connection to the main Internet. They did this to allow uploading results from four regional elections offices across the county.
To be clear, it appears that results were modemed in to the regional stations from the precincts. The regional stations were reportedly connected to the county network.
It is impossible to overstate the seriousness of this security violation. This practice is flat banned in California and many other states, and may or may not be illegal in Tennessee…we’re checking on that. As a practical matter, this allowed anybody sitting at a county PC to get to and manipulate the central vote tabulator database.
With this final insult, it can be plainly stated that this wasn’t an election. It was a hacking contest, open to whoever was most efficient and motivated to alter vote totals.
And there’s more.
Now we have this. Early voting numbers from the first day of early voting (as reported by the Tennessean):
County — 2006 — 2002
Cheatham — 310 — 148
Davidson — 1,150 — 3,900
Dickson — 449 — 346
Hamilton — 2,669 — 1,452
Knox — 2,615 — 3,238
Maury — 632 — 610
Montgomery — 1,509 — 1,107
Robertson — 455 — 370
Rutherford — 1,721 — 939
Shelby — 8,148 — 584
Sumner — 571 — 555
Williamson — 1,056 — 694
Wilson — 761 — 652
Although the Tennessean labels the Shelby County numbers as “explosive,” and “14 times more than opening day 2002,” others are quick to explain the obvious discrepancy claiming that this is not necessarily an increase in total voters but simply an increase in voters voting early (due to 19 early voting locations). Although this could be a plausible explanation, because of Shelby County’s recent election history it’s way too early to discount other explanations, including foul play.
The lesson here - and from the 2004 election (remember the exit polls?) - is that not every election anomalie can be explained away and it’s up to us to continue to ask questions and demand evidence. Our job does not end on November 8th. Those of us concerned with election integrity need to fight against the “tin-foil hat brigade” label and fight for both paper ballot and Instant Runoff Voting legislation.
Posted by Mary Mancini on under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
After the 2004 election, Clinton Curtis, a Florida computer programmer, testified before U.S. House Committee Judiciary Democrats about electronic voting machines and his roll in creating a “vote rigging” software program to steal elections:
Raw story followed up in the spring of this year.
Curtis, a former Republican, is running as the Democratic nominee in the 2006 U.S. House election, in Florida’s 24th district. His opponent is Republican incumbent Tom Feeney, whom he says commissioned the software program.
Posted by Mary Mancini on under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
Our friend, the dear Pam Kidd, wrote a moving and eloquent letter to the editor regarding Referendum #1. She says it better than we ever could - voting “yes” will write bigotry into the Tennessee constitution.
To the Editor:
When I was 3 years old, my cousin Ron-Ron, age 2, made it clear: He’d rather carry a purse like me than throw a baseball like my big brother.
He tried to fit in. He was the star of his high school football team — but Ron-Ron was still the person he was born to be.
Don’t pull out your Bible and tell me that God, who created this dear man, stood in judgment over him. The truth is, my cousin was better by far than I could ever be.
No matter how ugly he was treated, he never gave up on people. He never retaliated. He accepted others for who they were and loved them without condition.
I don’t know of anyone I would have trusted more to look after my children.
When Ron-Ron died last year, he was surrounded by an incredibly loving community. He had spent his short life empowering others and making them feel that they were worthy of God’s great love. He embodied all the best of our best Christian values, like judging-not and forgiving.
My question is this: Should Tennessee pass a law that discriminates against people like my cousin?
If you think not, will you me join me on Election Day as I take a stand for all those countless friends, relatives, coworkers and neighbors who just happen to be, among many, many other things, gay?
When I pull that lever and vote “No,” I’ll be standing proud against writing discrimination into Tennessee’s constitution.
Thank you, Pam.
Posted by Freddie on October 20, 2006 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
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Oprah wants him. Paul Waldman wants him. And now Time
Jake Tapper wonders whether a little dose of the history of Islam might help our clueless political leaders stop stepping in Shiite and then sticking their feet in their mouth.
The host of A Prairie Home Companion wonders why our hospitality continues to yield such inhospitable leaders.
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Conservatives are engaging in another pre-emptive strike… on themselves! Surprisingly, Dick Armey seems to want James Dobson to focus on his own damn family.
Posted by Freddie on October 19, 2006 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
In a new report, Public Citizen asks, “Who really represents Tennessee?” I think the more accurate question is, “Who do Tennessee’s representatives really represent?” Based on the numbers, it’s not entirely clear that our representatives are representin’.
I’m a big fan of transparency, and I look forward to ever more of the machinations of our government being exposed to the light of day, but being exposed is rarely enough to make a politician do something. To make a politician do something, enough people have to be vocal about an issue to persaude a politician that the issue could have an impact on an election.
In this case, so we see some numbers, not all of which are flattering to some of the officials in our state. What are we to do? We’re to look for candidates who have common sense notions of fairness in their approaches to representation and, even better, take pledges committing themselves to these notions. Take a look at Bob Krumm’s initial set of proposals for legislation in Tennessee. I find a lot to like, here, and I let Bob know.
We’re not going to prevent the pernicious influence of money in politics unless we say and do something about it.
Posted by Mary Mancini on under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
Summary: Today, we explain why being a single issue voter isn’t just for Republicans anymore. Can we get our liberal compatriots to stop, drop and roll into the voting booth for Harold Ford, Jr.? Plus, we see how many college scholarships we could’ve funded with the three-hundred billion that’s being spent on the war in Iraq (Hint: It’s A LOT); Salon notes that several military-heavy districts are not leaning as Republican as the GOP would prefer (It seems that they’re kinda PO’d right now); WaPo
Listen to: “Does Being a Single-Issue Voter Make Me Look Fat?”*
*Shout out to Jmora SweetTempers
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Posted by Mary Mancini on under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
We still don’t have any explantion for Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert’s actions. He knew what Mark Foley was doing and did nothing. Who is the GOP going to blame for this one? Did Hastert have a male adult role model who taught him to lie? Was he forced, as a young nubile man-child, to deflect blame over and over and over again while deftly pumping the media harder and harder and harder with false information until reaching that climactic moment, relieving himself of all accountability and responsiblity? Was he then forced to lay back, spent and satitated, in a pool of his own bulls**t?
House Majority Leader John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, is to appear before the House ethics committee (2 Dems, 2 Repubs) investigating who knew what when. Rep. Boehner said that he told Hastert. Hastert said he doesn’t remember the conversation. Will Boehner tell the truth or will we have to figure out what kind of abuse he suffered as a child?
Posted by Liberadio(!) on under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
Well, you should be.
New Laws and Machines May Spell Voting Woes (New York Times
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)
Posted by Mary Mancini on October 18, 2006 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
Even though Monday’s broadcast was our “gayest show ever,” we just can’t seem to get enough! Plus, David Kuo’s new book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction
Listen to “Religious Wrongs” (27:11 12.5MB)
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