Way to go, Brad. Great report.

It is sickening what's going on with these machines. I thought it particularly disingenuous that they stated that "Diebold found" the problem. (Unless, of course, they mean to admit that they knew about the problem all along and chose to do nothing, which of course is also possible.) You can be sure they never would have admitted to these problems if it weren't for the independent tests arranged by Bruce Funk and BBV.

V. Kurt Bellman, a former PA Election Director, has had quite a number of things to say over at BBV. He has confirmed that the machine referred to in this news article is the TSx, which is exactly what was investigated in Utah.

My poor little credit union bought two new ATM's. For the last 3 months they have never worked more than two days in a row. Now we have 2 diebold trucks parked in front every day as technicions work on them. Does all their equipment suck? Can people hack the ATM's as easy as the voting machines?

Catherine A - Thanks for the info. I must run out for a bit, and haven't yet had time to review the article at BBV you mentioned, but please feel free to post a link to it in comments here so folks can follow up on that info!

Hi Brad,

I thought of posting a link or two but Kurt Bellman has been posting on quite a few threads. These are lively discussions, with lots of different points of view, and the thread title is not necessarily a good indication of the topics under discussion since we veer OT at times.

I suggest using the BBV search facility here.

Put in just these 2 parameters:

Keyword: type in Bellman
Look in: select Name of authors

Then press the Perform Search button at the bottom of the form. You'll see the various conversations and you can pick & choose.

It's been helpful having Kurt's perspective. He's clearly someone who took his job very seriously, and he's seen the best and the worst of them. He knows the PA law inside out but is less familiar with regulations, laws and what-really-happens-on-the-ground in other states.

Kurt is learning about some of the irregularities and improprieties he hadn't known about. He is educating us about how things are seen from an election director (ED)'s point of view, and how we can all interact most effectively.

BTW Kurt has had some nice words to say about BradBlog.

The question is ,...

What are these unscrupulous private corporations who have contracted to be e-voting machine vendors doing in between the electorate (voting public) and our ballot boxes.

Out sourcing these voting tabulation services to privately held companies is a neo-conservative
fascist republican wet dream,... while Democracy is being flushed down the toilet.

They are creating chaos and mayhem at the voting booth so that they can game the voting results.

Paper ballots should be hand counted by municipal employees,... with an open door policy for people
to witness and verify the accuracy of the vote count,.. then the ballots should be locked away in the event a recount is necessitated.

Take these e-voting machines and return them to the vendors,... with full financial reimbursements.
We can not afford to jeopardize the foundations of our Democracy,... via the use of these junk-box
electronic voting equipment. These companies and their machines are grossly incompetent,... we can
not entrust them with the voting results.

STOP THIS FOOLISHNESS,... IRREPRABLE HARM IS
BEING DONE TO OUR GOVERNMENT.

Santorum supposedly closed the gap with Casey to single digits, btw...

"A "fix" is said to be on its way from Diebold"

They must have calculated that they need to switch more votes to win!

THE FIX IS IN!!! stupid cunts

hey grizzly bear dancer, do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

The Old Turk in #5 said "what are these unscrupulous private corporations who have contracted to be e-voting machine vendors doing in between the electorate (voting public) and our ballot boxes." Perhaps he was listening to Thom Hartmann filling in for Randi Rhodes on Air America today, as I was, since Hartmann said virtually the same thing.

I just can't believe that there is not some Constitutional basis to challenge HAVA or whatever law allowed private vendors with proprietary software to secretly tabulate our votes! Couldn't someone challenge that, in the absence of tangible proof (ie- a paper ballot), there is no way to prove that they have not been deprived of their constitutional right to vote and have their vote counted?

Perhaps someone with a legal background (?Dredd, anybody?) who knows the Constitution better than I do could tell me why this hasn't been done?

Just remember, if we can't get these darn machines to work by November, we can still buy those bums some cigarettes and overwhelm the system.

Liberals aren't so dumb!

John #2

ATM machines are known to be more reliable, in general, than voting machines.

They must go thru more mature testing than voting machines go thru.

I found an older page that discusses some of the risks outside the current heated debates (link here).

I noticed that one IN story (listed in Thurs. Daily Voting News here at Bradblog) had it right in the headline. They didn't use the word "glitch," but instead dug up that great old WWII word, "snafu."

"Snafu" is a much more descriptive word for these electile disfunction situations. It's an acronym for, "Situation Normal, All F***ed Up."
That's pretty much The way it is. If a computer is counting our votes and there is a problem - even one problem - then the situation is normal, and our election is "all f***ed up."

I propose that we (6 or 7 of us anyway...) make a point of writing a letter to the editor to every paper that uses the word "glitch" and inform them that what happened was not a "glitch" but a "snafu," and all the implications of that.

You can bet the Diebold "fix" will be in just like it was in Ohio in 2004 when the exit polls had Kerry ahead and Bush was assured that everthing was under control and Diebold Man had pledged he would do anything he could to help Bush get reelected. My fear is that votes will not be accurately accounted for and that election shenanigans will have a predetermined outcome like was done in 2000 and 2004. This administration already controls the information avenues of this country, so would it be a surpise if it controlled the outcome of elections.

That was my first reaction. They're rigging it so Santorum wins. No shame whatsoever.

Michael Shamos called me last night to thank us for being discreet about what we found in Emery County, and to let me know that Harri Hursti has been proven right twice now.

The Pennsylvania situation is specifically due to the Black Box Voting project in Emery County Utah. It will roll through the rest of the states.

The problem is very serious and because primary elections are being held, releasing even a small part of what makes this security hole so dangerous presents an immediate threat to U.S. elections.

The Black Box Voting Hursti Report II will come out by May 10.

To my knowledge, the TSx machines in Ohio were fully vulnerable in the May 2 election and Pennsylvania is the first state to take action, but the other states must follow.

Diebold has admitted in a letter to Dr. Shamos that the vulnerability Hursti found is real. What is disgusting is that at the same time as Diebold is ADMITTING this, and Pennsylvania is purging their system and reinstalling everything from top to bottom, Diebold is in Emery County working very sloooowwwly and wasting time trying to eat up the ridiculous $40,000 fee they are trying to punish Emery County with --- when it is now virtually certain that the whole thing is a farce, because they already know that the state of Utah will have to invoke the same emergency security measures as Pennsylvania --- which will mean wiping the machines clean and starting over.

Fasten your seatbelts.

and by the way...

this now is being said to apply to both the TSx and the older TS machines.

To just "lockdown" these E-Voting machines is a useless exercise in frivolity. Diebold Election Systems, Inc. is mostly funded and supported by the Republican propaganda machine. Their equipment comes with prebundled software which is carefully and decisively programmed into the machines to ensure a wider margin of victory for Republican candidates. This software is an advanced form of malware and hackerware and is remotely controlled using invisible code. Test runs are nothing more than placebos. Everything will seem to work just fine, including any expected outcomes. But when you run "live" on the day of elections, the hackers stand ready and willing to control the ultimate outcomes. It won't matter how many more Democrats voted for their candidates. Many of their votes will be either dropped from memory, flip-flopped to look like Republican votes and\or random double-votes will be added for Republican votes. What's worse is that none of these will be traceable. The only possible way you can prove the tallies would be to print out every page that would include every voter and they would have to be alphabetized and physically counted, line by line. You should not, under any circumstances, trust the totals the equipment generates. They will be rigged.

Most Republicans are quite smug and arrogant for, irrespective of the polls or how their constituents may disfavor them, they know the machines are designed to guarantee their victory. People like Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania plans to be re-elected in this very manner. As it stands now there is no way he can lose.

If you think we're living in a democracy and that we still have a two-party system and that our vote still counts, I implore you to come back to reality. These machines are sealing our fate. We are sheep being led to the slaughter.

Harry J. Conrow:

The facts do not support your conclusions. Disinformation.

I'm hoping you are just repeating disinformation you heard elsewhere, not creating it to muddy the truth.

This situation is very bad. Horrifying. But the picture you painted sends everyone running up the wrong side of the mountain.

I encourage you to visit Black Box Voting and VoteTrustUSA for a more accurate picture. The formal report on the touch-screens will be out by May 10.

Great report Brad. Thanks for all the good work you have put into this mes with the voting machines.

The question remains, what are we, the people, going to do about it?

It is apparent, just as Brad has said, that the Republicans in power have no intention of giving up fixed elections.

Are the Democrats going to do anything? Maybe, in states where they have the power to do something.

The only thing I can think of is to organize outside the Democratic Party, since this is an American issue, not party issue, and petition the Secretary of State and the Governor of your state for paper ballots. Demand that the machines be replaced. We do not trust them and with very good reason.

Get a list of articles and reports which have cast doubt on their effectiveness. Take tem to the state capital and ask that the state to take action, NOW.

It isn't that hard. Just send the machines back or throw them in the dumpster. Make paper ballots. Buy pens with indellible ink.

Because, if the states won't listen, they will see no taxes from any of us, as that would be taxation without representation and we have always frowned upon that, even before we were a nation.

If that does not work, and we are still stuck with those damnable machines, then we will have no choice but to throw a "mean fit," as we would call it down in Georgia, that will make the guys in the "Brooks Brothers Riots" in Fla. look like pansies on parade.

But here is the deal. We had better mean what we say and be willing to pay the consequences, because there will probably be some. Is our country worth it? Is our freedom worth it? is our Democracy worth it? Is Impeaching the war criminals in the White House worth it?

If any of the above mean anything to us, we had better be prepared to fight, because it is going to come to that. These people cannot affors to lose power.

To Bev Harris.

Yes, I read what www.votetrustusa.org and www.blackboxvoting.com have to say. I strongly encourage anyone else who has not read their articles to also read them carefully.

What I stated earlier for the most part is not misinformation although you may interpret it as such. Simply because you disagree with me certainly does not make me "wrong". GW Bush literally stole the election from Al Gore in 2000 and more or less did the same thing to John Kerry in the 2004 election. It is common knowledge that these electronic voting machines were at the core of it all. It is excruciatingly clear that this state of affairs still has neither changed nor improved. My convictions are more than warranted, they are justified.

Bev, thanks for the confirmation of the fact that this was from information gleaned from the inspection of the machines in Emery County. I too have been in contact with Shamos and one member of the V-STAAB in California who brought the issue to the attention of Shamos and PA.

They both confirm that this is big and, of course, they are not giving details for the reasons you give.

What is troubling is that Diebold did nothing to let other states know. As you pointed out Ohio used machines that were vulnerable earier this week.

I let Paul Miller in the WA SoS office know about it immediately. He called Diebold and the person he talked to claimed not to know anything about it. Miller is now talking to Shamos and the person in Calif.

Every state that has TSx and TS machines needs to be asked to contact PA to get more information. I am working with ElectionLine.Org to get something out to the states. The states will believe what they put out because they are not tainted.

John,

I'm glad that you are notifying the EAC. However, since the full report hasn't gotten to either David Jefferson (California V-STAAB) or to Michael Shamos --- only the skeletal issues have been delivered to date --- it would be prudent to get all the facts.

For example, when Dr. Shamos called me and described the mitigations being used in Pennsylvania, I have to say that they did not appear to be the full mitigation needed according to the videotaped examination we have by Security Innovation and Hursti. Dr. Shamos also had not been briefed yet on the problem with the macros.

I told Dr. Shamos that I will arrange a direct phone call between him and Hursti today to make sure the full recovery path is implemented. He is breaking new ground and has put Pennsylvania ahead of the pack on this.

With regard to this: "Every state that has TSx and TS machines needs to be asked to contact PA to get more information."

The states will receive the official and complete and unredacted report from Black Box Voting by Wednesday. Sending a version with incomplete information or guesses could do more harm than good.

Because the vulnerability is so serious, and until ALL states have been able to implement the FULL recovery path, we can release a redacted version only, but will send an unredacted version to the states. Unlike the SAIC and others, we will release the full unredacted version as soon as adequate time has elapsed to implement the recovery path.

It is important not to intercede at this point using partial information. Even Dr. Jefferson and Dr. Shamos do not have full details yet; we have brought Hursti back to the U.S., and have transcribed the full 16 hours of videotaped examination, and will be coordinating this with the Security Innovation report.

Please include caveats that you have not seen the full report in any notification that you do. It is premature to recommend the specific recovery path until the full report is issued.

We're getting there. It's just days away. We appreciate your work.

Clarification:

I mentioned that we will be releasing the unredacted version when adequate time has elapsed to do the recovery path.

We will release it WHEN ENOUGH TIME HAS ELAPSED (a short time only) regardless of whether they have actually implemented the recovery path.

I notice that the GEMS problems were redacted from the SAIC report and never released. It is our position that the responsible parties have the obligation to do the mitigations, and once they have had time to do so, if they fail to do so, that's too bad. It gets released anyway.

That's the same policy CERT has, by the way. They give a very short window to fix the problem and then --- regardless of whether it has been fixed --- they release it.

I want to make one thing clear, and Dr. Shamos indicated to me that it is agreed among all the scientists that this will be made crystal clear. This is the work that Black Box Voting did, which was set up by Black Box Voting, funded by Black Box Voting, using source code files provided by Black Box Voting.

This time around, there will be no stripping out the source.

Bev #24 - Let's be clear that no matter what Black Box Voting did if Bruce Funk did not take a big chance and give you access to his machines, this issue would never have been found. Let's give the real credit to the real hero, Bruce Funk for taking a big chance. He lost his job over this. That fact needs to be hammered every chance we get. The Lt. Gov. and the Emery county council all need to be told that over and over again.

John,

Bruce has asked folks not to "hammer" the county council every chance they get. This is being handled through litigation and by exposing the problems in a responsible way.

The new lead article at Black Box Voting provides the details about what's going on with Bruce Funk.

Black Box Voting worked with him to secure legal counsel and we are funding his legal counsel. We worked with him before, during and after to make sure he knew what he was getting into (he was retiring anyway, but Diebold has tried to accelerate his retirement by a few months). The most protective thing we can do now is not harass public officials, but make sure everyone knows the magnitude of what was found, so that the justification for his courageous actions will be clear to all.

Apparently there is a security breach in California. Harri has asked me to forward him these links so he can deal with it.

This is not a story about California scientists, or electionline.org, or John Gideon, or even Brad Friedman. As Brad has so eloquently written here, attribution is not about ego, it's about credibility. This is a Black Box Voting project.

Bruce Funk is truly a hero, as is Ion Sancho, Harri Hursti, Dr. Herbert Thompson, and yes, the whole team at Black Box Voting who half-killed themselves on this project, and all the citizens who donated to underwrite this important work.

Bruce Funk selected Black Box Voting because, as he said on the videotape we have, he researched every elections organization in the U.S. and decided that BBV was the most credible one and the most qualified to do the job. He asked us to come to Utah. We then set about securing and selecting experts.

We speak to Bruce very often, and we know the most important thing we can do is justify his trust in Black Box Voting by producing a report that not only provides sufficient detail, but communicates the risks in a way that is understandable for non-scientists.

That involves working closely with the primary author to translate "Finnglish" into a clear communique.

We're very close. We should all be working together on this, but it is difficult when egos get in the way and strip or minimize appropriate attribution of who's responsible for doing the work on this particular project.

It's not scientists in California.
It's not John Gideon, though you do wonderful things.
It's not even Brad Friedman. He's reporting on the results and meltdown produced by this Black Box Voting project.

The project was done at the behest of a brave electons official, and with a team that included Bruce Funk, Kathleen Wynne (videographer and transcription); Jim March (photography and tech supplies); me (writing, logistics, negotiations and project management), Harri Hursti, Security Innovation. It involved flying five people in (twice) from four differing locations, location test facility space, all kinds of gadgets to connect and so forth, figuring out the hotel situation during the middle of a basketball tournament, driving through the mountains in snowstorms, identifying which public officials need to get what and when, and financing.

It's not too much to ask for the same courtesy everyone else gets. That's all we ask and, at this point, insist upon.

"Let's give the real credit to the real hero, Bruce Funk for taking a big chance. He lost his job over this." (#25)
As opposed to which false credit and to which false hero?
At this critical juncture that kind of statement was unneeded and unwise. It acts to splinter rather than unify.
We are facing a multi-billion dollar industry being fought by a loose coalition(?) of mostly volunteer patriots who have been climbing a cliff without adequate equipment or financing.
Black Box Voting, particularly Bev Harris, has been involved in this fight for longer than most everyone else. She has been a catalyst that has awakened the citizenry to this assult upon the very foundation of a representative form of government. It was BBV that engendered the trust of Ion Sancho and Bruce Funk so they trusted that BBV would do a professional and conscientious job in investigating and reporting in a deliberative manner. Unlike the vendors who seem to be taken uncritically at their word, the activist community must be extremely careful to be absolutely accurate. Bruce Funk did not have a "job". He was a public official elected by the citizens of his county. There are legal processes by which to remove a public official, none of which were followed by the commisioners of his county refusing to allow him to do the job he was elected by the citizens to do. They are the ones who should now be recalled.

Why was the Technical Advisory Board assembled by California Secretary of State McPherson not able to conduct their examination on the memory card's vulnerabilities in its working environment. That is, to have an actual Diebold TSx machine with associated memory card to examine in its entirety. That would have included all possible paths to the memory card, both electronic and physical. Instead, Diebold only provided source code related to the memory card. If they had had an actual Diebold TSx machine to examine they would probably have discovered the vulnereabilities inherent in the machine's firmware itself.
They also would have discovered that their recommended mitigations were not adequate in the real world environment in which these machines are used.

Perhaps they asked for such an opportunity and were turned down. I hope that was the case. If they were turned down, by whom? That is a valid question that hopefully will be answered in future hearings.

The California Secretary takes great pains at his political campaign speeches to claim that he has established the "strictest" voting standards of any other state. Yet he has never subjected a voting system to the kind of security examination that Ohio, Maryland, or Pennsylvania has. He touts the volume testing as somehow a great test that is designed to insure the voter their vote has been recorded accurately. When in reality it is a reliability test, not a security test. He has never subjected the Diebold voting systems to the kind of tests that Ohio used Compuware to conduct. Nor a "red team" test that Maryland subjected the machines to. This despite assembling a very qualified computer security team that would have been able to subject the Diebold Voting Systems to a truly state-of-the-art
rigorous scientifically based examination. Paid for by Diebold themselves.

Someone in the California Elections Division does not want the Diebold voting systems, or any other electronic voting system, to be subjected to the kind of examination called for by the California Election Code, and authorized by that same code to be paid for by the vendors, not the taxpayers of the state. There is no excuse for this lack of in-depth examination. In one month Californians will be going to the polls to vote on electronic voting systems that are unreliable, insecure, and known to be very prone to manipulating the actual vote.

Worse, the Secretary failed his constitutional duty to make the required written findings that these voting systems were effective for the intended use, complied with all federal and state laws, and were safe from fraud and manipulation. Instead he approved them with the "condition" that they can only be used IF they compy with all laws and standards. Effectively transferring the responsibility for making such findings onto the counties, who have neither the expertise nor personpower to make such findings. He has abdicated his constitutional duties as Secretary of State. To add insult to injury, he then tells the counties in his last Condition that all HAVA and state money can only be spent on voting systems that comply with all laws and standards. Cynically knowing that at least the last three Approvals with Conditions do not compy with all laws and standards. He has effectively transferred his responsibilities onto the counties.

I look forward to seeing the Report that Black Box Voting will shortly be issuing. Then we will see what the California Secretary will do in reaction. Will he take the same courageous act as former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley did in April 2004 and de-certify certain voting systems, or will he seek to mitigate the inherent vulnerabilities by ineffectual and belated Procedural fixes that allow the voters of this state to vote on voting systems that we cannot trust accurately reflect the intent of the citizens of this state.

He does have the power to insist on an effective, rigorous, and uniform audit procedure to be used throughout the state for the June Primary Election. Will he use that power for the benefit of the voters, or will he once again acquiese to the need for expediency in the interest of the local election officals? He does have the power to de-certify the Diebold voting systems and make that de-certification effective immediately (for good cause).

Then he should subject all electronic voting systems to a rigorous, effective, and thorough examination by computer experts, both in security and programming, prior to any future use in an election in California.

We demand that public officials do their job, not hide problems and act in deference to the vendors or expediency for the local election officials.

My thanks and appreciation to Black Box Voting for doing the grunt work that has revealed vulnerabilities that we have long suspected but did not have the evidence to prove. Also a big thank you, and appreciation for all public officials who are conscientious in their dedication to their public trust. Such officials should be praised and thanked. It is a sad commentary on the current state of public service that the courage of Ian Sancho and Bruce Funk is the exception rather than the rule. I hope their example will spread far and wide and show other public officials what should be the norm.

My thanks also to Brad for his untiring efforts towards revealing the dangers inherent in electronic forms of voting, and bringing it to a wider audience than heretofore possible.

All voting reform activists need to be recognized for the work they do. From John Gideon at VotersUnite.org, VoteTrustUSA.org, VerifiedVoting.org, and BlackBoxVoting,org. Also the many others who have contributed to this fight. We have one enemy; electronic voting systems that have never been adequately tested, are overpriced, are unreliable, and worst of all, are highly vulnerable to subverting the will of the people in our elections.

hip hip, Jody.

It is Jody Holder who dug through the morass of California regulations and came up with EC 19002. The California study was specifically due to BBV invoking EC19002. To my knowledge, no one had ever used that little-known law, which allows citizens to demand an examination of a voting system.

Of course, we filed the 19002 request in June 2005, got stalled by McPherson's office in July, stalled again in August, ignored altogether in Sept., were given excuses in October, visited in person to get the 19002 examination in November, sent a letter from our lawyer threatening to sue if Calif. didn't do the study and --- gee! California study was done, corroborating the Hursti Report.

However, he didn't release the study until three days AFTER he decided to recertify.

And the study wouldn't have been done AT ALL if not for Jody Holder and another citizen, Jerry Berkman, pushing for the use of that obscure law.

Yet who hears about this? I can think of no finer example of a citizen exercising management over his government that the work done by Jody Holder.

Bev Harris #28

Many thanks for your dedication to the cause and for giving credit to Jody and Jerry, along with the various organizations listed in Jody's message # 27 as well as info garnered here from Brad....."King of the Blogs"...!!

All you folks are a fine example of what is needed to take back your country from the dictators that have wormed their way into the fabric of everyday life in the U.S.

From north of the border, I sit, watch and read what is happening down there, and I can honestly say that in all my 40 years of living in Canada, I have never seen such a travesty of justice, corruption by elected officials and misuse of the highest honour anyone can be afforded......that of "President of the United States of America"...!!

Sad to say, that title doesn't carry too much weight anymore in the free world, thanks to the corrupt officials in office at present. However, hopefully, with the diligence of genuine patriots like yourselves, you will ferret out the rats and once again have fair and honest elections and regain your true status in the free world.

"God Bless America"

Mar

Thanks for your support. Hopefully things are starting to fall apart for those who have created this mess, none too soon for sure!

Bluebear2

Up here, the champagne is chilled and cork will be popped when Diebold goes down....lol..!!!!