Blogged by Brad Friedman from Houston…
The results of California Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s landmark “top-to-bottom” review of electronic voting systems in California are due on August 3rd. (UPDATE: The SoS’s Office informs us the report will be released this Friday. Details now posted here.) It’ll be the first such official analysis, performed by several teams of testers, in which these voting systems have actually been tested for vulnerabilities and failures by “red team” hack/penetration testers, as well as having the system source codes fully and independently tested.
An article by Steve Harmon published in several CA newspaper this week offers a preview of the battle which may be ahead, including one exceedingly disturbing suggestion that California Election Clerks may be preparing to “ignore Bowen’s findings and continue to use their systems” no matter what she may find, and whether or not she decertifies the systems for use.
Yours truly is quoted early in the piece, suggesting that “voting machine companies are quaking in their boots,” as Bowen is doing precisely what she was elected to do and is fulfilling her campaign promises through the unprecedented series of tests.
John Gordon of Public Radio’s Future Tense program followed up that printed report with his own four-minute audio report in which I’m also interviewed:
Of note in both reports, the voting machine company spokesholes are on the defensive, as expected. But the real battle after Bowen releases her findings may lie with the California Association of Clerks and Election Officers (CACEO), currently led by President Steve Weir, who makes some startling statements in the report…
As is his wont, Diebold’s David Bear misleads voters again in the report, by telling Harmon, “You have some who’ve made allegations that are either unfounded or rely on a scenario not reflective of a true election environment…It’s all based on a scenario of a so-called hacker with complete and unlimited access to a system.”
Yes, Mr. Bear — A “so-called hacker with complete and unlimited access to a system” such as the 13-year Monterey County, CA, Registrar of Voters, Tony Anchundo, who is now in jail after having pled guilty to 43 criminal counts. Or heck, even a “trusted” voting machine company insider, like David Bear, for example, who is regularly allowed “complete and unlimited access” to the voting systems.
But it’s comments from CACEO’s Weir which are the most disconcerting. CACEO is already on record going coo-coo over Bowen’s temerity in actually testing the voting systems these Elections Officials rely on, and which, they’ve been telling us for years, are completely secure.
In Harmon’s article, Weir asks “What’s the problem the secretary is trying to resolve? Show me where the systems have actually been hacked and where votes have been changed. There’s no evidence of it. It’s theoretical.” The presumption being, we guess, that we should wait until after an election is hacked to do something about it. Nothing like closing the barn door after the horses are long gone. (Just ask Christine Jennings in Florida.)
Weir’s statement also misses the point — one that he surely knows well by now, given all the science that has come out on this over the last several years — that a proper hack of these systems would, in fact, not leave any evidence behind for him to see. (Just ask Christine Jennings in Florida.)
The most disturbing point from Weir, however, is in the penultimate graf in which he suggests that CACEO may now be modeling their legal tactics after the Bush Administration and their beliefs that the law does not apply to them…
Dick Cheney would be proud.
We’ve invited Weir to appear on today’s Peter B. Collins show, but we’ve yet to receive a response. Hopefully we’ll hear back soon and we’ll be able to ask him about the statements above on the air.
If the law don’t apply to them anymore, then it don’t apply to US ANYMORE!
It does not sound as if they are factoring in the State Attorney General.
Jerry Brown is the people’s lawyer, you know, the ones who vote. Weir only represents the electronic voting machine companies.
And Jerry Brown has already taken on MicroSoft and forced them to change Vista, the new piggy OS.
So he is not likely to back down if they get jiggy wid it or get in his face like they seem to like to do in their arrogant defiance of reality.
Electronic Voting Machine Manufacturer’s and their enablers are TERRORISTS!
We had better get a grip on this FACT before this next election.
Sounds like they have misinterpreted Stalin’s statement “those who count the votes decide everything“.
Has there been any resolution on the ES&S source code over at Iron Mt.?
What arrogance. This is EXACTLY why voters HAVE to stay vigilent in every location throughout the U.S.
We really need a legal team to challenge these instances of Registrars of Voters simply ignoring any law or directive they don’t like. We need to get the courts involved, and ASAP.
Oh, BTW, I’m told there will be opportunity for PUBLIC COMMENT on the Top to Bottom review process TOMORROW in Sacramento. I don’t have the specifics, but if anyone wants to know, leave a message on this thread with email address and I will find out more for you.
Brad, the comment made by the guy from (I think) Contra Costa, about there not being enough time to train pollworkers on another system, simply holds no water, and I’ll tell you why. I am a precinct supervisor/pollworker in Sonoma County (SC). I was provided with a half day’s training program on the machines SC uses. The training was almost a complete waste of my time. Before I explain why, I want you to know that this was NOT because of SC elections officials, who are GREAT, btw. The training our county received from the company representative was a joke. There is no way that, had any real problems arisen on election day with these machines, that any one of us who received that training would have been able to problem-solve a solution.
The training we received was like this: What do you do if the machine stops working? Go see if it’s still plugged in. I mean, give me a break. When my husband went to vote at our neighborhood precinct, he asked if he could use the machine available, and the pollworkers told him please no, because they don’t really know what to do if anything goes wrong.
The reasons that I say that the training was ALMOST a complete waste of my time, as opposed to a complete waste of my time, is that the training made it possible for me to recognize the machine when I see it, and to get the instructions that showed me how to assemble and disassemble it. You can see, though, that there is simply no need to spend 1/2 day on these important aspects of these machines. Otherwise, the damn thing sat on the floor of my living room for a couple of weeks between my training and election day, in its box. Had I had a larger vehicle to store it in, I would have left it there, because it’s heavy and cumbersome.
So, if the Contra Costa guy’s reason for not wanting to provide a different system is because they won’t have time to provide their pollworkers with the kind of training we all received the last time, then my vote is that this is a non-reason. Doesn’t matter. And anyway, it’s up to the company to do whatever it has to do to make sure that their machines work efficiently on voting day. This training issue should be THEIR problem, not the taxpayer’s/voter’s problem.
Oops, the testimony opportunity is next Tuesday (July 31st), NOT tomorrow, as I reported above. More as I get more details.
{ED NOTE: Nope. The public comment period is actually next Monday (July 20). Here’s the details. – BF}
I take it that Weir is a another shameless RepubLIcan, no?
– Tom
Dredd:
Thanks for that hopeful thought. That could make for a fairly high profile battle for this invisible struggle of ours. How about this headline:
FORMER GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA JOINS ACTIVISTS IN FIGHT FOR VOTING INTEGRITY.
I like Jerry Brown. He came here to give a speech when he was running for president.
Larry # 11
I like it:
That is not much of a stretch. And lets add:
Hell, I really can’t argue with “elect more women” as a way of cleaning up politics.
However I will hold them accountable too.
I like Debra, and Nancy … and well … you get the picture.
They are sooooo competent!
With Debra Bowen and Jerry Brown on the case we actually have a pretty good chance of getting accurate results out of California elections.
Wow, Democracy stands a chance after all.
Brad, I’m having trouble posting again. It’s almost like someone has hacked your site, so it performs like an electronic voting machine: I try to post and it just doesn’t let me until I’ve done it about 5 times. It’s very frustrating.
It did finally post.
MarkH
That does not sound like something wrong at BradBlog. You should try using another browser. You should also try emptying your browser’s cache. That has caused commenting problems for people in the past.
LeftIsBest –
You got it wrong again! 🙂
The Public Comment period is actually on MONDAY according to the SoS’ office who informed me (as follows) late this afternoon:
I will post this info in it’s own item tomorrow. But feel free to spread the word (accurately!) 😉
The County Boards of Supervisors have ALWAYS had control of the voting systems, but they don’t want to take the blame for being sucked in by the HAVA scam, so they put these spurious claims that it takes longer to feed paper ballots into a optical scanner- stop right there! The point is accuracy, not speed. The point is also trust, and optical scanners are hackable computers, so this is a red herring. Don’t fall for it. The Republican owned voting machine cartel is fighting desperately to stay on the California gravy train and if your Board of Supes tries to keep their hackable machines, that’s a green light to file suit. The elections belong to us- it is the only control we have in deciding how the government is to be run. The whole nation, if not the world is watching to see what actions we Californians take to put an end to this fiasco.
Chuck- You are right on- The Board of Supes is the place to kick ass- Everybody should insist on a moratorium on new purchases- In SF- There will not be any purchase of systems until disclosure of code- this may trigger a hand count- John