Programmer Claims he was Paid to Rig Votes 240
Duke Machesne writes "In the year 2000, Florida Republican Representative Tom Feeney hired programmer Clint Curtis, while he was working for NASA contractor Yang Enterprises, to write an undetectable vote flipping program which could 'control' the votes of electronic voting machines, according to Wayne Madsen's latest article for the Online Journal."
yes yes I'm sure.. (Score:5, Insightful)
how about some proof? good thing he's getting his 15 minutes of fame though.
Re:yes yes I'm sure.. (Score:2)
Proof, or disproof will come. Patience, folks. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.truthout.org/cblog.shtml [truthout.org]
Ok (Score:5, Interesting)
But is there really enough evidence to hold this up? I don't see this article citing any sources. And towards the end it starts to sound more like a crazy conspiracy theory than something real.
Re:Ok (Score:4, Insightful)
You, sir, are freakin' insane. You'd like to see the bloodbath that would probably ensue if it turned out to be true? You hate the results of the election so much that you'd like to find out that your republic had been destroyed?
I desperately want not to believe this. As long as most of us have reasonable faith in our electoral process, we can get through pretty much anything. The alternative is probably not far short of civil war.
Re:Ok (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps the alternative is indeed a civil war. In the long term, how is that worse than a government and nation cheated by the elite few?
Re:Ok (Score:2)
How many casualties does it take to settle a non-combatant struggle? Judging from the last civil war (not that those numbers would be too good of a metric for this sort of thing) about 110,000 lives (just from combat, not counting disease).
Are casualties really worth a conflict? I suppose a more apropos question would be would this
Re:Ok (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a very good way to start a war, when people know that there are cheaters in office they tend to want them out of office and are prepared to go to great lengths to get them out.
Witness Ukraine where a lot of people don't want a suspected cheater to take office they are threatening to become independent, something that would spark civil war. Yet you think letting the suspected cheater take office anyway would stop a civil war! Judging by the real world example your wrong.
As for saying there is precedent that's a pathetic excuse, what happened to Americas "moral" majority.
Re:Ok (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ok (Score:2)
Re:Ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ok (Score:2)
Daniel
Re:Ok (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean like a plummeting dollar, a failing economy, a losing war, an unprecedented transfer of money to the wealthiest few, thousands of war deaths, and a dismantling of civil rights and our constitution?
Who we elect matters. And if people get into government by corrupt means, they are probably up to no good and can cause serious harm to everybody. The US was founded by people who did not want to have hereditary rulers. Do you want to bring that back? Is Jenna's husband automatically going to be the next president?
Re:Ok (Score:2)
Correction: The US was founded by upper class white guys who turned the people against the current government in order to give themselves more power. Ever since then it's just been a trick of playing all the lower classes off of each other (servants against slaves by making laws not allowing the two groups to interact, poor farmers against indians by sticking the farmers on land the government promised to the indians, and for the last
Re:Ok (Score:2)
Don't forget alienating your allies, and imposing illegal trade sanctions on your largest trading partner.
Re:Corrections (Score:3, Insightful)
War deaths - deaths in a volunteer military, fighting for our freedom and security.
Damn straight. Just think of how many lives would have been saved if we had invaded Iraq before 9/11 and taken Saddam out. Oh, wait a second...that would be zero.
Feel more secure yet?
Re:Corrections (Score:2, Interesting)
Bogus.
Yes, once 9/11 happened there were people all OVER the Muslim world that were radical and embraced the death and destruction.
That doesn't mean they were guilty of committing the act.
Think about this: if we had been able to prevent 9/11 that mural wouldn't have existed
Re:Corrections (Score:3, Informative)
Eventually, perhaps, when it has been devalued to the point to eliminate the trade deficit and when a fiscally responsible president comes into power again (Republicans need not apply--they love running up big deficits).
The economy is not failing. We are winning the war.
Geez. I thought people like you didn't believe in taking drugs.
Here's a lesson on tax cuts.
Not only is the "lesson" utter nonsense, its attribution to Kamerschen is as phony as your other "
Re:Corrections (Score:2)
Re:Corrections (Score:2)
Re:Corrections (Score:2)
Re:Corrections (Score:2)
Re:Corrections (Score:3, Funny)
Like the South?
Re:Corrections (Score:2)
> Like the South?
No. Like Jesus.
bullshit (Score:2)
Bullshit and more bullshit. A handful of voluntary soldiers, over a hundred-thousand conscripts in Iraq, and over 10,000 civilians.
Fighthing for oil, personal vendetta, whatever, it is perfectly clear at this point that it had nothing to do with freedom or security. Bush was aiming to invade Iraq using any excuse at all the first day he stepped into office. He then diverted our military strength away from a place where
Re:Corrections (Score:2)
The dollar is falling; it will rise again.
I'm betting it won't rise much.
However, if you're quite certain about the dollar's future strength then you might want to take out some futures contracts and sell off some of those soon-to-be-worthless euroes and yen.
East Asian central bankers with some US$1.5e12 and holders of petrodollars would love it if you were right about the dollar regaining its value in the future.
OTOH, it might just be that the U.S. has been borrowing so much (US$33e12 total debt) tha
Re:Corrections (Score:2)
Your "lesson on tax cuts" is both apocryphal and idiotic. First, when a tax cut is given to those who have the least, each dollar is more valuable (more likely to be spent on necessities) than if the same tax cut is given to those who pay the most. Second, it's inappropriate to describe those earning the least as "paying nothing" b
Re:Ok (Score:2)
You deny thousands of people are dead because of the war in Iraq?
Get pissed already.
Re:Ok (Score:3, Interesting)
Yup. The Current Population Survey says that real earning for male members of the population has remained unchanged since 2002, and for female members of society the median has actually gone down very slightly as demographics shift. The rich are not getting richer. The earnings figures are pretty stable.
Based on total accumulation?
I don't understand. Are you trying to say that there are some rich people with a big pile of money
Re:Ok (Score:2)
I dunno about all the rest but this caught my eye.
I've been reading estimates in the news of the Iraqi civilian death-toll being over 100,000.
So, while we're on the topic, do you have anything to back these statements up?
Re:Ok (Score:2)
That figure came from a widely discredited Lancet study. A few seconds of googling will yield up all the detail you could ever want, but basically the people who conducted that study used bogus methodology to produce a number with a margin of error of anywhere between about 9,000 and about 200,000, then they split the difference and reported a figure of about 100,000.
The study was complete crap. The instant it hit
Re:Ok (Score:2)
Re:Ok (Score:2)
Re:Ok (Score:2)
Re:Ok (Score:2, Informative)
The republic stands if the people stands, not if the government can "live". If it means a bloody removal of the offenders, God bless them.
---I desperately want not to believe this. As long as most of us have reasonable faith in our electoral process, we can get through pretty m
Re:Ok (Score:3, Insightful)
i'd prefer civil war to faith in a broken electoral process. faith doesn't fix it. it just means we'll have false happiness while things get bad... re
Re:Ok (Score:2)
Install the program locally maybe?
What you want to believe is irrelevant. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What you want to believe is irrelevant. (Score:3, Interesting)
Fact 2: regardless of his thoughts, the election results do not make much sense.
No, they don't make sense if you're wrapped-up in the message the democratic party developed this election--"Anybody but Bush!"
I'm not saying that there wasn't fraud. There may have been. We simply don't know, and I hope the authorities thoroughly and publicly investigate every accusation. However, what I am saying is that this notion that fraud must have occurred because John Kerry lost HAS TO STOP.
Like the linked p
Re:Ok (Score:3, Insightful)
There are some classes of applications, more broadly of systems, where a very high value is placed on security. I think our current voting systems do not place nearly enough emphasis on the integrity of the system. Therefore, discovery of wide scale fraud would be a good thing because it will force people to place a stronger emphasis on security.
The w
Re:Ok (Score:2)
If this is true the *last* thing we should do is convince ourselves to not believe it. If bringing the truth to light sends us to civil war, so be it. The Constitution specifically says we have the right and the duty to overthrow the government if it becomes opressive. If we don't do that, if and when it becomes absolutely necessary, we aren't
Re:Ok (Score:2)
I don't have my head in the sand. If there are problems, then I want to see them exposed publically and remedied as best possible.
However, I'd much rather find out that this whole thing was a hoax to get a few minutes of attention. When I said that "you'd like to find out that your republic had been destroyed?", I didn't mean that I'd want that information to be hidden, but that I'd rather find out that it was incorrect.
Republic had been destroyed (Score:2)
Re:Ok (Score:2)
Maybe what you mean is that you hope that this isn't true. The question of what we believe or what we'd like to believe is less relevant here. I also think that no amount of revealed corruption will get people off their ass enough to fight a civil war. People are just too apathetic for this to happen.
Or maybe it's not apathy. Maybe it's the notion many people hold that politics, while an interesting topic for conversation, shouldn't affect daily life.
Re:Ok (Score:2)
Re:Ok (Score:2)
And THEY have all the guns! (Score:3, Insightful)
Republicans? Criminal? (Score:5, Funny)
Besides, you know that both sides do the same thing, so whatcha gonna do LOL! That's the way the world works, doncha know! No need to get upset!
Remember: It's a republic, NOT a "democracy." Calling America a "democracy" is just liberal propaganda.
Look, over there! Two guys who want to get married, and they're both abortionists! We're winning the war! Propaganda is king!
Really? (Score:2)
In what way? By your naievté?
Oh, right. By the fact that the Libertarian plank [lp.org] is "government is corrupt and evil, and corporations are good and benign, therefore we need to deregulate all corps and then we can sue them if they go bad"? Sure, that will stop corps from taking shortcuts [bhopal.com] to make a profit. Oh, and if the company gets caught [noaa.gov], they won't use their economic/legal power to reorganize into a sue-proof company [google.com], because only governme
zerg (Score:2)
And for God's sake, why didn't this come out 4 years ago? (you know, besides the murder of an investigator and the poisoning of a pet and oy vey...)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:zerg (Score:2)
I'm confused now. (Score:2)
wow, is this the next Oliver Stone screenplay? (Score:5, Interesting)
Conspiracy theorists of the world unite.
Re:wow, is this the next Oliver Stone screenplay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:wow, is this the next Oliver Stone screenplay? (Score:2)
Re:wow, is this the next Oliver Stone screenplay? (Score:2)
Suspension of disbelief is required from a story that presents things you know to be untrue or are technically impossible. Like Nemo the talking fish. Whereas with this story there's no basis on which we should have belief in these officials. Do we have any reason to believe that a group of high ranking politicians is incorruptible? Do we have personal knowledge of them that rules out such behavior?
People don't obtain power by shying away from questionable strategies.
Dubious (Score:5, Insightful)
I know there are many here at /. who would like to see a story like this be true (both for political reasons and for anti-e-voting reasons (I'm in this second group)). But if this has ANY truth to it, here is my guess:
It's a half-truth. The guy was paid to write a program to do it as an exercise to see how simple it would be to do. For all we know it was requested as part of a security review to be turned over to the company that made the e-voting equiptment to show them security holes that people were concerned about.
Now I have no proof, but if this is true at all, that would be my guess. And, of course, there is nothing wrong or illegal about writing such a program unless you intend to use or distribute it, which we also don't know about.
Re:Dubious (Score:2)
That interpretation makes no sense to me: why would they carry out a security audit in that way? If they did, that alone would demonstrate complete incompetence in security matters.
Now I have no proof, but if this is true at all, that would be my guess.
I don't know whether the original claim is true, but if it is,
Red herring (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a red herring.
The real trick was much simpler: they didn't send enough voting machines or polling booths to predominantly Democratic precincts. Bingo--the number of votes for the opposition is limited [copperas.com] to something you can beat.
--MarkusQ
Re:Dubious (Score:2)
I don't blame you for not RTFA, but its in the first sentance of the Slashdot headline for christ sakes.
[Comment Template] (Score:4, Funny)
[straw-man]
[beat with stick]
[close with soviet russia joke]
Overflow Bug? (Score:2)
As a result, certain precincts that swung heavily for a candidate would end up going the other way after that candidate's votes went over the limit, rolling back to zero. Sounds too stupid to be true [why would they only allocate 8 bits of memory to the vote counting???], but that's what I read somewhere.
So..
Re:Overflow Bug? (Score:2)
Re:Overflow Bug? (Score:2)
Re:Overflow Bug? (Score:2)
Because the guys who wrote that piece of crap software didn't know that an "integer" in the programming environment they were using would overflow at 32767. They didn't bother to check, either because they didn't know about overflows, didn't anticipate a vote count over 32767, or (most likely to me) thought "integer" behaved the same as in the 32-bit environment they were used to.
From other information I've seen about this system it looks like
Oh, no. (Score:2)
Thanks a lot.
Link to the affadavit (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/12/images/CC_Af fidavit_120604.pdf [buzzflash.com]
what the hell (Score:2)
Re:what the hell (Score:2)
Maybe, maybe not... http://enight.dos.state.fl.us/elections/resultsarc hive/Index.asp?ElectionDate=11/5/02&DATAMODE= [state.fl.us]
Possibly a troll article? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's practically a tell-tale sign of a fake article...
While the article is interesting, the connections run all the way to 419-ers...
I want more info. After all, extraordinary claims (like these) demand extraordinary proof.
Online Journal? (Score:2)
First the online journal is essentially nothing but a Republican consiricy site. Its registered to a Bev Conover (courtesy of public WHOIS). There is a ton of anti-bush and anti rebulican shit. She must be a democrat cult hero. A quick google search turns up plenty of stuff. Bev apparently has not liked Bush since his pre-presidential days because in 1999 She shares credit fo
Re:Online Journal? (Score:2)
But that certainly is another point to consider. Hey lets make up a sensational story about vote rigging. It will draw millions of hits, and we'll not only make the Republicans look bad, but we'll line our pockets as well....
Some links I found for Clint Curtis (Score:5, Informative)
Non-linkified because I'm going home from work soon and I want to go there sooner.
the affidavit:
http://www.rawstory.com/images/pdfs/C
his website (basically a big rant with a link):
http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/
his vote changing program:
http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/votefr
code:
http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/VoteFra
Re:Some links I found for Clint Curtis (Score:2)
the affidavit: http://www.rawstory.com/images/pdfs/CC_Affidavit_ 1 20604.pdf [rawstory.com]
his website (basically a big rant with a link): http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/ [justaflyonthewall.com]
his vote changing program: http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/votefraudprogram. htm [justaflyonthewall.com]
code: http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/VoteFraudCode.zip [justaflyonthewall.com]
That took me to the count of 63 seconds to linkify. That includes 2 previews for the forgotten [BR] tags and remov
Re:Some links I found for Clint Curtis (Score:2)
I don't see anything that makes me think his code has any knowledge of a particular e-voting vendor's database format. I've heard that Diebold does use MS Access which is apparently what he's using, but if it is suppossed to work on diebold systems, there would have to be some other indication that the database has a larg
Surprised. (Score:2)
I mean how else could they possibly win!
Things that have never happened to me or.. (Score:2)
+ never had my privacy invaded by government or non-government individuals or organizations.
+ never been unreasonably detained - the closest ever was march of 2002 flying back to CA from NC - I had to take my shoes off and they took my 2 inch suisse army knife from it's keychain sheathe.
+ never felt like the economy of the nation I live in was going to go belly up and leave my world in shattered ruins.
+ never felt that my rights have been diminshed even i
Re:Things that have never happened to me or.. (Score:2)
You are an upper middle class white guy who lives in the suburbs far from any sort of diversity? (maybe there is a upper-middle class 'minority' somewhere in your neighborhood').
I used to live right in the middle of Minneapolis. I heard first hand accounts of voter intimidation.
And how would you know if you privacy had been invaded? The best invasions are the ones that go undetected.
Re:Things that have never happened to me or.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Liberty at stake here (Score:2)
I'll make up a quote to go with it: "Those who rig elections obviously 'wish to not live' in a democracy. Perhaps their wish should be granted." Yet that means either Democracy will die, or election-riggers will die. IT ALSO DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MEAN that various elected officials parti
Unbelievable (Score:2, Insightful)
First, this story is essentially one guy's word against a bunch of other people's. How do we know he's not lying? The fact of the matter is, we have no objective (yes, objective) standard for weighing the truth value of this story, and so it's inappropriate to go and believe it.
Second, has anyone seen the vote-switching program? It requires access to not just the voting machine software, but the voting official who set it u
Re:Unbelievable (Score:3, Insightful)
You say that it's logistically impossible because there is no way of knowing which candidate will be which. Even if this was true, a corrupted voting machine in the right precinct could still swing an election.
Assume the existence of a corrupt machine that randomly (and I mean completely randomly) swapped one vote in ten from one candidate to another. Now, say that we place the machine in
This is ridiculous (Score:2)
Last time I looked, weren't the much maligned Diebold machines running Windows, as well as all their compe
Yeah, it DOES look fishy & Bev Harris's critiq (Score:3, Informative)
Some of it does look kinda fishy "in his favor".
Example: the FL dept. of transportation's inspector general's report on the Georgalis case:
http://www.dot.state.fl.us/inspectorgeneral/Report s/AnnualReport2003.pdf [state.fl.us]
---
OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL
ANNUAL REPORT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2002-2003
EMPLOYEE MISCONDUCT - REPRESENTATIVE CASE EXAMPLES
Georgalis - This investigation was initiated based on a complaint against Mavis R. Georgalis by Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), a Florida corporation.
YEI provides information technology services and support under an eight-year (January 20, 1999 to January 20, 2007) and approximately eight million dollar contract for the Department, known as the Electronic Document Management System contract.
The investigation established that Georgalis received travel reimbursements from the Department based on false claims for lodging and meals already paid by YEI. It also disclosed Georgalis engaged in a pattern of misconduct, over several years, by accepting gifts and other gratuities from YEI. These gratuities included trips with YEI officials to Biloxi, Mississippi and Las Vegas, Nevada. Georgalis further created a conflict of interest by accepting gifts from another contractor whom she regulated. Lastly, it has been documented that Georgalis used her position and Department resources to seek other employment opportunities.
Summary of Findings/Resulting Actions
Mavis Georgalis resigned her position with the Florida Department of Transportation on April 1, 2002.
On March 6, 2003 Georgalis was charged with receipt of unlawful compensation (Section 838.016 F.S.) Georgalis surrendered to the Columbia County Sheriff's Office on March 12, 2003 and is awaiting a court date.
---
So wait...Yang doesn't like a particular gov't official, so THEY admit to having bribed said official, official gets fired and charged (based on paperwork Yang submits?) and nothing happens to Yang which has connections to Jeb Bush and an FL congressman?
OK, that's...kinda funky. Doesn't mean Clinton isn't full of it of course.
If there is ANYTHING to this story, it looks like this guy Clinton got royally pissed at Yang, enough so to blow the secrecy off a Qui Tam action? Or did the secrecy period on the Qui Tam action already expire? "Qui Tam" whistleblower suits start out "in secret"...I oughta know, Bev and I filed one on Diebold back in Nov. of '03, secrecy wasn't lifted until just a couple months ago.
Damned if I know what's up here. I'm going to wait for more data.
Bev Harris is even more skeptical and has published this:
~~~
Why the Feeney vote-rigging story sounds like disinformation
ABOUT DISINFORMATION: Like a good lie, it has elements of truth. Trouble is, the truth doesn't relate to the nuts and bolts of the story. For example in the Tom Feeney vote-manipulation story, people are documenting relationships between Tom Feeney and Yang, and between the writer of the story and other scandals, but so far the evidence presented does not back up the vote manipulation story itself.
DISINFORMATION IS DANGEROUS TO THE CLEAN VOTING MOVEMENT: Black Box Voting is finding real evidence consistent with fraud. We are even finding, in one of our investigations, evidence consistent with a systemic, or widespread breakdown in security, possibly exploited. Getting the facts is tedious, unexciting work, consisting of auditing and personal interviews, and it takes time. Many Americans want a magic bullet, a single shot that will blow the lid off everything at once.
That's risky. If the mainstream media continues to be bombarded with stories that sound credible, but aren't, when the real thing comes down the pike it will be ignored.
Whil
Basic fact checking, thanks to the Internet (Score:4, Interesting)
According to the FDOT website (http://www.dot.state.fl.us/inspectorgeneral/) and archive.org, Cecil T. Bragg, Jr., CPA has been the IG since at least 2001 up until the present.
The only place that I could see Lemme's name mentioned anywhere was in http://www.dot.state.fl.us/businessmodel/pdf/Augu
Wayne Leaders, mentioned as an investigator for NASA, shows up as a 'Special Agent' in Jan 2003 in www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html, complete with a phone number you can reach him at (poor guy).
More details here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030831121943/
Which eventually leads to the real story:
http://web.archive.org/web/20021030045304
Curtis is one fcked up little dude.
Re:Would it even make a difference... (Score:2)
There weren't many electronic voting machines in Flordia in 2000 --> would this make a huge difference in a House race? and I can see the response now... yes yes - the 512 votes or whatever for Bush... "every vote counts"
So what was the point of your post? That it wouldn't have made a difference in some races, or that it would have made a difference in the biggest race? Or both?
Re:Would it even make a difference... (Score:2)
Re:Strange Bedfellows? Or Not? (Score:4, Insightful)
What does that say about Slashdot?
What does it say about your dependence upon straw man arguments? This may or may not be true, but what sites reference it or do not reference says nothing about the same. Given the history of the Republicans to engage in and condone rampant criminality it certainly passes the smell test.
Re:Strange Bedfellows? Or Not? (Score:2)
Five little words: Richard Milhouse Nixon and Watergate. One president was impeached for an illegal coverup of illegal election practices, and he was a Republican.
By the way, do you know what the difference is between your precious George W. and Dick Cheney on the one hand, and Teddy Kennedy vis a vis Mary Jo Kopechne? George W. didn't crash off a bridge when he was arrested for drunk driving (in Kennebunkport, Maine). (Cheney was in his early twenties, so we'll excuse him that bit of stupidity; but W. was
Re:Strange Bedfellows? Or Not? (Score:2)
Re:Strange Bedfellows? Or Not? (Score:2)
Re:Ohioan's should come out... (Score:2)
Wayne Madsen is a turnstyle person - aka, he's a group of people; very similar to the "Dread Pirate Roberts" (of Princess Bride fame).
Re:Ohioan's should come out... (Score:2)
Re:Opinion Journal investigation on same (Score:2)
Re:Opinion Journal investigation on same (Score:2)
Re:Opinion Journal investigation on same (Score:2)
Re:Opinion Journal investigation on same (Score:2)