A few clips from a blog on voting machines. You too can manipulate the vote!!! Last clip reports that Diebold tries to put a gag on an HBO Diebold documentary...
SOME VOTING MACHINES CAN BE EASILY USED FOR MULTIPLE VOTING BRAD BLOG - It seems there's a little yellow button on the back of every touch-screen computer made by Sequoia Voting Systems, that allows any voter, or poll worker, or precinct inspector to set the system into "Manual Mode" allowing them to cast as many votes as they want. Concerns about the flaw were first reported some thirty days ago to California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson's office by Ron Watt, a Tehama County, CA precinct inspector who has been a poll worker in the county for the last fifteen years. And yet, as recently as a radio interview last Tuesday, McPherson who has been crowing about having the country's most stringent security process for voting systems denied he was aware of any security issues with Sequoia systems. . . The complete sequence to override the system and enter manual voting mode, along with the Sequoia booklet received via Watt's public records request, is now posted at BlackBoxVoting.org. . . Sequoia's voting machines are perhaps the most widely used in California, in some 19 different counties, including both Tehama and Riverside, which is known as the "Home of E-Voting" as it was the first county in the nation to deploy such systems. But identical Sequoia machines are also used in dozens of other states around the country including Florida, Illinois and elsewhere. It is now confirmed that all such systems are completely vulnerable to virtually anyone who wishes to cast as many votes as they please. "I can do it in 18 seconds," says Watt. "I can train you to do it in 3 minutes. Just push the yellow button, wait 3 seconds and it chimes. Push the yellow button again, wait 3 seconds and it chimes again. Then it's all on the screen prompts. You're asked 'Do you want to enter manual mode?' and you push 'Yes'. . . And then you're on your way." "You can then vote as many times as you want. You won't ever have to stop until someone physically restrains you from voting," he explained. "But wouldn't someone hear the chime?" we asked… "No, it's barely audible. Quieter than the beep on your computer when it boots up. The systems are usually kept up against the wall to be near a power outlet and away from the poll workers for privacy. Plus, if you really wanted to pull it off, just come in with a friend and have them talk to the poll workers to distract them. Nobody would ever know." http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3714 BLACK BOX VOTING - [The California Secretary of State] had Sequoia demonstrate the process which, in effect, allows any citizen to cast multiple votes Sequoia agreed it could be done, but claimed it would be difficult to do unnoticed (they focused more on voters doing it than the idea of an insider doing it). The Secretary of State contacted every California county that uses Sequoia and confirmed with them that they were indeed aware of this feature. California counties are to inform all their poll workers of this and instruct them to be very vigilant during the Election Day to anyone spending too much time in the booth, or reaching around to the back of the machine where the button is located. Poll workers are supposed to be instructed to listen for a beeping sound made when the yellow button is pressed. The Secretary of State is reportedly going to require increased signage regarding criminal penalties for tampering with voting equipment are to be prominently displayed on every machine. http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/44823.html BRAD BLOG has obtained an exclusive partial transcript from a recent, unaired interview by a major broadcast network with former U.S. Elections Assistance Commission chair Rev. DeForest Soaries. Soaries was appointed by George W. Bush as the first chair of the commission created by the federal Help America Vote Act in the wake of the 2000 Presidential election Debacle. In the interview, available here for the first time, Soaries excoriates both Congress and the White House, referring to their dedication to reforming American election issues as "a charade" and "a travesty," and says the system now in place is "ripe for stealing elections and for fraud." Having resigned from the commission in April of 2005, Soaries goes on to explain that he believes he was "deceived" by both the White House and Congress, and that neither were ever "really serious about election reform." . . . In the unaired interview, conducted last August, Soaries says there are "no standards" for voting systems and that Congress and the White House "made things worse through the passage of the Help America Vote Act." . . . Due to underfunding and lack of attention to the EAC and the Election Reform it was supposed to oversee, Soaries says we now have an "inability to trust the technology that we use" to count votes in our American democracy, even as "we're spending a billion dollars a week in Iraq." . . . "Someone has got to be able to say, no one in America should use machine 'A' ever again," he says, in reference to the EAC's failure to decertify electronic voting systems even after they have been proven to be easily vulnerable to hackers and tampering. "And if it's not EAC," he continued, "it's got to be someone. Someone in America has got to hold America accountable for protecting the most fundamental right in a democracy and that is the right to vote." http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3491 BRAD BLOG - Diebold seems to be embarrassing itself yet again by issuing a statement calling for HBO to pull the [Diebold] documentary, or at least run disclaimers before, after, and throughout the film. I've seen it. If I were them, I'd try to do everything I could to keep America from seeing the film, as well. "Truth and accurate reporting are the biggest casualties of the film," Diebold Election System President David Byrd is quoted as saying in the media release. But ironically, as The Hollywood Reporter is reporting tonight, Byrd has not only never seen the film, but his claims that the film is "riddled with errors and slipshod reporting" apparently refer to a completely different film. Confusing a different film called Votergate with the short film called Votergate, which was an early version of the film now known as Hacking Democracy, Byrd writes a two page letter to HBO refuting several points in the other film! http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3708 _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
