Netcraft Shows Smartech Running Ohio Election Servers

goombah99 writes "Netcraft is showing that an event happened in the Ohio 2004 election that is difficult to explain. The Secretary of State's website, which handles election reporting, normally is directed to an Ohio-based IP address hosted by the Ohio Supercomputer Center. On Nov. 3 2004, Netcraft shows the website pointing out of state to a server owned by Smartech Corp. According to the American Registry on Internet Numbers, Smartech's block of IP addresses 64.203.96.0 – 64.203.111.255 encompasses the entire range of addresses owned by the Republican National Committee. Smartech hosted the recently notorious gbw43.com domain used from the White House in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act, from which thousands of White House emails vanished." Update: 04/25 01:24 GMT by KD : ePluribus Media published a piece called Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again on election eve 2006, when a similar DNS switch to Smartech occurred. They have been investigating the larger story of IT on Capitol Hill and elsewhere for two years.

Misunderstanding

[daveschroeder (516195)]

Your own submission answers your question.

Nothing "changed" or was "transferred". http://election.sos.state.oh.us/ [state.oh.us] is a special web site in operation for elections. Otherwise, it points to http://www.sos.state.oh.us/ [state.oh.us] as it does now. It appears that the State of Ohio contracted with SmartTech for hosting, processing, and dissemination of the election results via the special elections web site, when it is in operation.

That probably won't be a good enough answer for people, though. Regardless, it appears that SmartTech has obvious ties to the Republican Party, and hosts many sites for various Republican political interests. The Secretary of State of Ohio is a partisan political position. This doesn't mean there aren't questions that can be raised or points to be debated.

The sad truth is that partisans are involved in just about every aspect of the voting and elections process, and that's not going to change, ever.

Witness the decades-old joke from Democratic stronghold cities: "Why did the Democrat walk into the cemetery? To thank his voters."

It's April 2007. Anyone who believes the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen (or not) isn't going to change what they think now.

Re:Misunderstanding

[Jeian (409916)]

Save your logical explanations... Slashdot wants a conspiracy, so they're going to see a conspiracy.

Re:Misunderstanding

[tedshultz (596089)]

It's April 2007. Anyone who believes the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen (or not) isn't going to change what they think now.

Thats not true at all. In 2004 I thought all the people who were saying the election was stolen were crazy tin foil hat types. The more I learn, the more I realize that it is much more likely that I was the blind sheep type. No one is debating that lots of non standard and illegal activities took place during the 2004 election, the only question is how wide spread, and how well organized those activities were. The more stories that come out, the more people will start to change their minds.
--crazy tin foil hat guy

Re:Misunderstanding

[ShakaUVM (157947)]

I've looked into a lot of these claims, and most of them are nonsense.

I personally debunked the UC Berkeley study (cough) which "proved" the Flordia results were rigged. Though they hid it in a bunch of technical nonsense, essentially what they said was that they had a model to predict the outcome of results in Florida (based on past elections in 1996 and 2000) and since the 2004 numbers were different from what they expected, the results were rigged. QED.

Needless to say, this is complete hokum, and they should have been laughed out of the room instead of published.

Seems to me there's more evidence for a vast left wing conspiracy. :p

Maxwell's deamon

[goombah99 (560566)]

I've done stat analysis too. I concur with you that accusations based on statistical about what happened in florida don't seem to be strongly supported. That is to say the statistics are not conclusive. But I've also follwed the ohio reports pretty closely too. Some of the reports are incorrect. But some can't be so easily debunked. The strongest cases indicate that shoddy voting equipment created long lines that detered voters in selected precincts. It's also now certain that the recounts were rigged (they precounted then selected the precincts without problems for the official counts. And there are precints where the votes and voters don't add up. You always expect some of that so one can never really put a finger on if there was too much or too little. All very statistically nebulous. and hence an opportunity to tilt things and hide in the noise.

This is why getting the results early and having the ability to delay posting them enlarges the opportunity for dirty tricks. For example here's a sort of maxwell's deamon way to rig an eleciton completely legally. If you look at the early returns you will see lots of mistakes. Some will go in your favor some will go against you. If you selectively inquire with precinct judges only on the cases where the votes go against you, you can make gains. Indeed both parties routinely do this after the elections so that's not even science fiction. But now suppose your party, and only your party, is magically granted the power to do this on election night itself. Getting totals "fixed" is a lot easier when things are in flux. a simple phone call can say "Hey that can't be right, read those numbers again" will get you an updated total. After the election is done getting changes is much harder. Hence eraly knowledge helps. Running the reporting site would be a windfall.

Re:Misunderstanding

[Anonamused Cow-herd (614126)]

I've looked into a lot of these claims, and most of them are nonsense.

That may be true, but let me share a personal anecdote. Studying in Ohio during 2004, I was glad that my vote might "count" for something, and eagerly anticipated the elections. Being in a (rich and somewhat elitist) college town, you can imagine that liberal sentiment was widespread. Sure, there were a few Bush supporters, but almost everyone I knew of planned on voting Kerry. This is a sizable group of people, several thousand.

The (Republican) voting officials assigned us just TWO voting machines, which coincidentally turned out to be the two oldest in the county. One broke after about an hour in use.

Personally, I ended up standing in line almost 11 hours to vote. Some people stayed in excess of 13 hours (by far the highest in the nation). Needless to say, our votes didn't make it into the county tallies.

Meanwhile, the "townies" (rural and overwhelmingly Bush supporters according to results) had surplus machines, and faced no wait.

I'm not saying that Kerry would have won anyway, but just the brazenness of these people's anti-competitive activities astounded me. I can certainly believe that lesser forms of the same or similar methods were enforced in other areas of the state. IIRC, Ken Blackwell, then Secretary of State (no idea if he still is), said that he would do whatever it took to re-elect Bush. I think that's a quote, but I'm not certain. Certainly, this implies no illegal activity, but given the political climate, I certainly wouldn't rule it out.

Sec State is NOT a partisan position!

[coyote-san (38515)]

Damn it, this is why the republicans are driving this country into the ground!

The Secretary of State's office is NOT a partisan position. The Secretary swears to protect and defend the constitution (or whatever the equivalent is for Ohio state positions), not to protect the elephant. There should be a clear and unambiguous wall between the office holder's official actions and individual partisan actions, and should never, under any circumstances, use official resources for partisan purposes. When it's inevitable (the classic example being the president flying to events during the election season), the office holder is required to provide appropriate compensation for this use. E.g., equivalent first-class airfare for everyone on AF1, IIRC.

With most secretaries of state, I would agree with you that it's probably nothing more than temporary hosting during a period of high use.

But the outgoing Secretary of State, Blackwell (iirc), was extraordinarily partisan in his official acts. He's the reason why Ohio is usually the center of stolen election allegations. Given his amply documented bad behavior in the past, e.g., attempting to have his gubernatoral opponent disqualified on bogus grounds shortly before the election, a rational person would have no choice but to assume the worst and require proof that it truly was an innocent and unbiased decision.

Netcraft confirms it!

[Nimey (114278)]

The Republican Party is dying.

I fail to understand...

[Barkmullz (594479)]

...why this is revelant. This sounds like an association fallacy [wikipedia.org] to me.

Yawn

[pudge (3605)]

There is no evidence of any kind that any votes we changed through this server "switch" bullshit, or that even if it DID happen, that it possibly could have or would have gone undetected. The counties would surely have seen that their reported results were not what was being reported by the state. If there was going to be fraud, it would have had to happen at the county level, and if it happened there, then why bother to do it at the state level?

This doesn't even pass the smell test.

As the Democrats' own statistician, Jasjeet Sekhon, who coauthored their 2004 post-election report said:

More voters supported Bush in Ohio in 2004 than Kerry. There is no scientific evidence that they did not. There were some irregularities (such as the allocation of voting machines), but they were not large enough to change the outcome. Bush won in 2004; Democrats have to admit that he really did if they are to fix their electoral problems much like how an alcoholic fist has to admit that s/he has a problem.

Wrong IPs

[pudge (3605)]

Ohio: 64.203.98.137
RNC: 64.203.98.0 - 64.203.98.127

There is no evidence presented that the RNC controlled the Ohio server in question. It fell outside the range.

Jeremy Allison said it best

[Gothmolly (148874)]

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

Since the Internet is a series of tubes, either 1) anyone involved has no idea how it works, but got a free iPod for switching hosting facilities, or 2) its a plan by the geeks to throw the election, which, frankly, is better than the politicians throwing it.

So Ohio and RNC use the same host? So what?

[HighOrbit (631451)]

I don't think there is anything especially nefarious about a state agency and the RNC contracting for hosting with the same company. Big deal. They probably both buy stuff from Wal-Mart too. I think somebody with an axe to grind is leaping to a conclusion that simply is not merited by the evidence given here.

See, the Republicans are right. . .

[smooth wombat (796938)]

when they complain about voter fraud being rampant [columbiatribune.com]. I guess they didn't count on it being found out they were complicit in the fraud.

Personally, anyone found to be a participant in voter fraud [washingtonpost.com] should be barred for life from voting.

I can

[hey! (33014)]

think of an explanation.

On election day, the people who run the SOS's DNS point election.sos.state.oh.us to a contractor who has contracted to provide "real time" updates from election data, something the SOS's staff is not equipped to do.

That vendor markets hosting services to political and government entities. It unwisely assigns a governmental web site from the very next block of addresses that are given to a political client, and unfortunately that block of addresses has become implicated in a serious scandal. Note the address is not in the RNC owned block (contrary to the article's title).

Now there are a gazillion possible ethical temptations that marketing yourself to political and government entities entails. So contracts let to such companies should be looked at very closely. But this is no smoking gun; or if there is smoke, it is more likely to involve improper contract selection than anything else.

So, it bears looking into, but is nothing to get excited about yet.

Original Ohio Election Story HERE: check data

[luaptifer (974590)]

Read the original stories at ePluribusMedia [epluribusmedia.org], they will probably help answer some of your questions.

• Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again [epluribusmedia.org]
• Ohio's election website still sent real-time results to GOP mirror server [epluribusmedia.org]

Related stories

• The GOP, GeorgeWBush.com and the line that jumped the Congressional Firewall [epluribusmedia.org]
• Who is Michael L. Connell? Part I: The Atwater School of Politics [epluribusmedia.org]
• Behind the firewall, Who is Mike Connell? Part II [slashdot.org]
• Rove -ing emails: what else could go missing? [epluribusmedia.org]
• More email server evidence for Rep. Waxman [epluribusmedia.org]

Re:How reliable is the data?

[daveschroeder (516195)]

The "change" is because the elections web site is only in operation for elections. Its operation was contracted to SmartTech by the Ohio Secretary of State. There was no "hack". Partisans and partisan companies are involved in the elections and voting process. The key is having enough oversight to keep everyone honest.

Re:How reliable is the data?

[glassesmonkey (684291)]

What a horrible version of this story to pick. There are many submission with the whole story, but only this one is chosen.. How very /.


This was submitted yesterday when this was still news:

"The Free Press is reporting [freepress.org] how the IT company that provides Rove's emails and RNC websites, also hosted Ohio's 2004 election results. The country results were sent to Ohio's Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, and those results were hosted on a SMARTech webserver in TN. Blackwell had the IT guys switch the DNS [epluribusmedia.org] on election night in order to accomplish a man-in-the-middle [wikipedia.org] exploit on election results."

Re:Breaking News

[profplump (309017)]

That's not fair -- Nixon was actually a pretty effective president. People only remember the resignation, but he was able to push through a large number of domestic policy changes and had a foreign policy that extended beyond Vietman. Whether or not you agree with his politics (and be sure you know what they are before you make that decision), and the crimes he helped cover up, you should at least respect his effectiveness in the office.

Re:Breaking News

[Khaed (544779)]

Fuck.

AOLers found /.

Re:Breaking News

[Markemp (562755)]

Just because the other side isn't following the rules set by the Geneva Conventions doesn't mean we are freed from the responsibilities of following them. I'm pretty sure we're bound by them regardless of the antics of our enemies. I'll have to do some research to back this up, but I'm willing to bet there is no clause that waives your responsibilities to follow GC under certain circumstances.

Re:Breaking News

[ajs (35943)]

I remember Carter VERY well. Why would you consider him worse than Bush?

Where do I begin:

Carter was more in the "Religious Right's" pocket than Bush ever will be.

Carter was a Fundamentalist Christian (a religious affiliation), but it consistently galled the religious right (a political affiliation) that he wouldn't champion their causes. For example, he was politically pro-choice, but privately held that abortion was wrong.

Were visiting dignitaries allowed a glass of wine with dinner while visiting the White House in 1978? Nope! Alcohol was banned in the White House by Carter.

Ok... and that makes him a poor president, why? Remember, we're comparing him to a man who hired a flunky with no experience to head up FEMA!

Average mortgage rates during the Carter administration were over 15%! I don't even pay credit cards 15%!!!

Inflation was through the roof (12%).

Unemployment was high (7%).

The economy sucked under Carter. However, any economist worth their salt will tell you that this was an unavoidable consequence of global factors, including our exit from Viet Nam. There was also the fact that the Fed was still applying, what Greenspan would later prove to be a losing strategy for managing inflation. None of this was under Carter's control.

Deficit spending went through the roof (the deficit for the fiscal year 1979 totaled $27.7 billion, and that for 1980 was nearly $59 billion).

Devaluation of the dollar.

These are consequences of a poor economy. Again, not Carter's doing.

Gas shortages.

Gas shortages are a tough problem, and I have to give R.R. credit for enhancing our oil options. Carter may or may not have responded in similar ways, but by the time any response was possible, he was out of office.

Iranian hostage crisis.

Failure to rescue Iranian hostages.

This was a very touchy situation, and I doubt we'll ever know for sure what happened. All I'll say is that, from the PR perspective, Carter hosed this one and hosed it good. Beyond that, there's just too much that was never disclosed.

Demoralization and dismantling of the US military

Well, the dismantling of large chunks of the military was inevitable, after the buildup during Viet Nam. Even Reagan's huge buildup in the mid/late 80s was only a stopgap that lasted as long as the end of the cold war.

Canceled the B1-B program as well as the MBT-70. (Both badly needed to compete with our enemy of the time... the Soviets who had the T-72 and the Tu-160 BLACKJACK)

I see no reason that those were badly needed to cope with the Soviets, and Carter's dealings with the Soviets and with arms issues were a major accomplishment of his presidency.

It's actually kind of sad. Carter was probably the most intelligent president in US history. He just sucked as president.

I think he was the best president we ever had. He refused to allow congress to continue to play their games, and effectively gridlocked them for 4 years. A better 4 years, I couldn't ask for.

but things were better when he took office than when he left and things were much, MUCH better after four years of Reagan.

Military spending was through the roof. Deficit spending dwarfed Carter's administration. The CIA and NSA were dealing drugs for international power-plays. No, things were not "MUCH better" after four years of Reagan - not by a long shot.

Re:Cheaters.

[ScentCone (795499)]

Our democracy is in great peril as long as these "win at all costs" idiots are in the game.

Well, what a relief that the democrats would never stoop to grandstanding, using foreign money to fund campaigns, submit thousands of fraudulant voter registrations in key races, retain congressmen caught with $90k of bribe cash in their freezers (and put them on the Homeland Security oversight committee! you can't make stuff like that up!), etc. Do you REALLY think that the other party's habit of doing things like taking election cash from China as donations through a monestary in California DOESN'T count as "win at all costs?" You need a different complaint.

Re:Cheaters.

[KiltedKnight (171132)]

Our democracy is in great peril as long as these "win at all costs" idiots are in the game.

The problem is, they are in both of the major parties. They are both out to win at all costs and maintain or build their power bases. They are not concerned with doing the job they were sent there to do. They are more concerned with being reelected.

If you really want to do something, get a "no consecutive terms on Capitol Hill" law enacted in your own state. Make them come home and live under the laws they passed for the past two to six years while holding an elected office. Eliminate their special pension plans, forcing them to live under the same Social Security and Medicare plan they force everyone else to live under.

Change in the way our government works will not occur until the people wise up and realize they're being strung along with lots of lip service and "feel good" knee-jerk reaction laws.

I have no plans to hold my breath waiting for that change, however.

Re:Wierd

[jkauzlar (596349)]

Search for wierd [google.com]:

Did you mean: weird

Even more interesting is that the search for 'weird' and 'smartech' eventually leads to this interesting blog post [neomeme.net] which lists "Strange Domains Registered by the RNC"

• africanamericansforbush.com
• arabamericansforbush.com
• asianamericansforbush.com
• catholicsforbush.com
• conservationistsforbush.com
• democratsforbush.com
• farmersandranchersforbush.com
• jewishbushteam.com
• laborforbush.com
• militaryfamiliesforbush.com
• nativeamericansforbush.com
• sportsmanforbush.com
• wstandsforwomen.com (I liked this one :)

"After you've got your minority support locked away, you can then begin the attack ads:" (from the blog post)

• democratflipflops.com
• democratscaretactics.com
• demsagenda.com
• imaliberal.com
• liberalswantyourmoney.com
• stophillarynow.com

"...and, of course, to anticipate attacks by grabbing(and squatting on) those domains first:" (from the blog post)

• georgebushbites.com
• georgebushbites.net
• georgebushblows.net
• georgebushsux.com
• georgebushsux.net
• georgewbushbites.com
• georgewbushblows.net
• georgewbushsucks.net