Diebold Patch May Be Evidence of '02 Election Tampering 526
An anonymous reader writes "Stephen Spoonamore, founder of IT security firm Cybrinth and former advisor to John McCain, claims he has new evidence of election tampering by Diebold in the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senate races. A whistleblower gave Spoonamore a patch that was applied to Diebold machines in person by the Diebold CEO. Spoonamore confirmed that the patch did not correct the clock problem it supposedly addressed, but contained two parallel programs. Without access to the hardware, he could not learn more. He reported his findings to the Justice Department, which has not acted."
and (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The worst thing is that the damage is done. No one you can vote for will ever restore the Constitutional rule-of-law and guarantee of due-process that are now in tattered, burning shreds.
Obama is to the right of Nixon - and is considered "center-left".
Once was America, now the Uber-Banana Republic.
Re:and (Score:5, Funny)
Once was America, now the Uber-Banana Republic.
Now is when we sing the UBR anthem...
[hand on crotch] "Yes, we have no bananas. We have no bananas today."
Re:and (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell does that mean? These linear political spectrums are not only stupid, their single dimensionality eradicate way too many variables to reduce someone's position arbitrarily on the line.
Re:and (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see...somebody, a libertarian propagandist no doubt, decided that the "social" and "economic" liberties were going to be orthogonal (ridiculous on its face) and equal in weight.
Then we're supposed to go stare at the macho quiz that has questions of the form, "do you eat babies, or are you a libertarian" for awhile, and then put ourselves on this magical chart, and lo and behold, most of us come out as libertarians.
This is some pretty crude propaganda, and if you're swindled by it, you need to wake up and smell the bullshit.
Re:and (Score:5, Interesting)
You just say that because you're a far-(right/left) radical NUT.
Liberal and Conservative have no definition and are therefore useless as argumentation techniques. Watch:
National Journal voted Obama the most liberal senator in office. This is bullshit on face, because Obama is still tied to the democratic party line; Bernie Sanders is probably the most liberal senator because, and get this
HE'S A FUCKING SOCIALIST. THE ONLY FUCKING SOCIALIST.
Oh, but National Journal can place an actually fairly moderate senator (dennis kucinich and his friends were far more liberal than obama) on the "most liberal" side, because you can't argue with it. Most in the republican party simply call someone Liberal if they disagree with them, but then again, republican leaders inserted that definition into their heads [fair.org], so you can't blame them too much.
National Journal, therefore, is a rag.
Liberal and Conservative mean nothing.
Left and Right are names for your arms and legs, not political associations.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, good! Maybe he could go to China too-- and ask them to stop polluting and burning so much oil.
By the way: Nixon was a moderate. Sarcasm works better with extremes.
Re:and (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the one thing I'm sick of hearing: How much gas and oil we use as an indictment in and of itself. I'm not saying you are doing this, but no one ever wants to mention that the U.S. is also the most productive nation in the world, by far. California, IIRC, is something like the 8th largest economy in the world, and it's less than 10% of U.S. by population.
Sure, we need to conserve, and we need to seek alternative energy, and all that, but so many people want to make the U.S. out to be nothing but greedy wastrels, which is not true. Sure, we can be greedy, and we can be wasteful, but we also have a lot to show for what we use.
Who is more wasteful of resources: the person who uses 1 unit of fuel and creates 1 unit of product, or the person who uses 10 units of fuel but creates 20 units of product?
Re:and (Score:5, Insightful)
that is because the people you expect to do anything are the ones that got elected so of course they won't do anything to themselves
however, this is a democracy and you have the right to free speech and you can make sure that your voice is heard by every politician and journalist and ear in earshot
and, in the end, if necessary, we can just start over from 1776
but that means that YOU have to do what YOU are supposed to do, instead of sitting on your fat ass eating cheetohs and whining about how unfair it is on slashdot
But Remember (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
McCain might also have tried to manipulate elections an old fashioned today by commenting on the probable timing of Obama's arrival in Iraq.
In what kind of nutcase fantasy world do you live that you think a stupid comment from one political candidate about another is on the same level as election fraud?
Re:Manipulating elections another way (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Manipulating elections another way (Score:5, Insightful)
If we talk while our enemy fights, we lose.
Yep and thus India remains firmly under British control.
Re:Manipulating elections another way (Score:4, Insightful)
My point is, Obama should feel pretty safe in Iraq.
Not from the Blackwater goons. And he might want to stay away from the showers.
Re:Manipulating elections another way (Score:4, Insightful)
And he might want to stay away from the showers.
He'll be fine, as long as he wears shower shoes and sprays his feet with Tinactin afterwards. Though some of the fungi in military showers can be pretty tough.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Though some of the fungi in military showers can be pretty tough.
So can a ground fault [google.com]
in case first link fails [thenation.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The pictures from Abu Ghirab showed naked men in black hoods, not tinfoil hats.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The extremists among the Iraqi insurgency and other terrorist groups are devoted to the idea of pushing the broader Islamic world into open war with the West. They would probably prefer that the winner of the election prolong the occupation so that they can continue to claim to be fighting against Western aggression and collaborators, rather than just killing their own people. The last thing that the kookiest of the terror groups want is a president who is interested in multi-lateral diplomatic settlement
Re:Manipulating elections another way (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't be silly. That's exactly the kind of thing they'd want. They can lie through their teeth, extract all kinds of concessions and appeasement, then point to those concessions as proof that the US is weak, immoral and powerless. Then launch an attack against the US but claim that they didn't do it. After the attack, more rounds of diplomacy and concessions, and the loop continues.
Further, they can point to the weakness of the US and tell the people they are oppressing that there is no help coming from the US -- just like Saddam was doing to his people before the war. Saddam used every city government anti-war resolution against us and his own people, repeatedly broadcasting the fact that the US wasn't going to ever do anything because all the people said they weren't. The fact he was wrong didn't stop him from doing it, and he was only wrong because we have a president that knows when enough is enough.
If you don't think this is how the terrorists operate, review the history of Iraq, or North Korea, which got concessions in exchange for nuclear limitations, and went ahead and built their nuke program anyway after they got the concessions.
An invasion and war, on the other hand, would push moderates in Iran into the arms of Islamic radicals that promise to defend them.
Yes, they win by spinning things either way. They lose if we remove them, which will never happen by talking to them. There is nothing we can say that will make them peaceful. They have no interest in compromise with Satan, unlike many of the people in the US.
Re:Manipulating elections another way (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be silly, making speeches is lousy theater. Video of anguished families rending their garments over the corpse of their child killed by an American soldier is a lot more effective in recruiting dissatisfied people than giving a powerpoint presentation about the oppressors.
Your enemies will certainly try to spin anything in their favor (what do you think the job of the White House press secretary is?) because nobody is going to hold a press conference to say "wow, we're idiots, it turns out those other guys are really great, look at this awesome aid package they're giving us!"
You have to convince people not to follow crazy leaders, which is difficult (it's taken eight years for us to ignore ours). You can either kill them mercilessly and terrify everyone into not wanting to risk it, you can give them jobs and food so that they're too comfortable to want to upset the status quo, or you can give them an alternate leader who they believe will be more effective (see: political history of Hamas).
As it stands, we're giving them jobs and then shooting them on their way to work, which doesn't make us look either strong or benevolent, it makes us look alternately malicious and idiotic.
Re:Manipulating elections another way (Score:4, Insightful)
Saddam had basically nothing to do with the war the US started against Iraq. He was just another dictator (hint - Pakistan was just another dictatorship until recently, but we're not going to invade them any time soon, right?). Iraq did not have a nuke program. It didn't have weapons of mass destruction. The reason given for the war was wrong.
Many, many more people have died in Iraq as a result of the invasion than would have died under Saddam's rule. Extremist religious groups are much more powerful now in Iraq than they were under Saddam's rule.
The old Iraqi government has never been meaningfully linked with any acts of terrorism against western nations. They had nothing to do with Al Quaida.
The US/Allied military invasion has killed far more civilians just in Iraq than terrorists have worldwide in the last 10 years.
These are facts... onto subjective opinion.... You are a true moron if you think that all Iranians believe the west "satan". Honestly, I hope you do not believe that Iranians hate the west and want a uniform Islamic world, because that would show absolute ignorance of Iran. The "they" you talk about are essentially a creation - "they" do not exist.
Also, how is North Korea an example of how terrorists operate? I mean, how on earth do you figure out that North Korea is a bastion of terrorism?
Basically, my advice to you is quit being so scared. These places you demonise are not actually inhabited by demons. They're just generally ordinary people.
OT here I come.
Re:Manipulating elections another way (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean, other than completely violating - year after year - the terms of the cease fire following his invasion of neighboring Kuwait. Other than regular attacks - with actual anti-aircraft guns and missiles - against the aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones that were set up to protect the populations he had been busy slaughtering in the many thousands in the north and south of Iraq. Other than his ongoing program to build and buy long range missiles (lots of business with North Korea on that front), which continued right up through 2003, in violation of his agreement not to, following his lobbing of SCUDs into Israel as he forces were being pushed back from Kuwait and the Saudi border. Other than his continuous shut-down of the UN inspectors and non-stop obfuscation about his weapons programs, including his refusal to come clean on the disposition of tons of VX gas and related hardware that were anything but imaginary (since they were seen and reported by inpsectors in the early rounds following Kuwait, before they were kicked out by Saddam). So, no, Saddam had nothing to do with his own regime being dismantled, other than a non-stop campaign of smuggling, scraping cash meant for his people's food and health so that he could buy military hardware and build palaces, live fire at coalition troops and aircraft on a regular basis, publicized cash payments to families of suicide bombers (remember the $50,000 checks and photo-ops?) to buy favaor with Hamas and Hezbollah, and more. Nah, he was just "trying to get by under an embargo." An embargo that he could have ended in a minute by simply doing what he said he told the UN he would do after being spanked following his violent invasion of Kuwait.
Many, many more people have died in Iraq as a result of the invasion than would have died under Saddam's rule
He buldozed dirt over mass graves - when anyone bothered to try to cover anything up - as part of a sustained effort that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. And, do you really count Iran's finance, sponsorship, and direct participation in years of destabilizing bombings in Iraq as being "a result of the invasion?" They just can't stop themselves, can they. They have no choice but to ship high explosives to Iraq, and pay the thugs they station there to strap them to mentally impaired women who are then sent into markets to blow up dozens of women and children at a go... because the invasion made them do it. I see.
It didn't have weapons of mass destruction
Other than the ones they used many times, and other than the large stockpiles observed by UN inspectors, but the disposition of which remained a complete mystery. Saddam's regime wouldn't allow further inspections in the areas where they were previously stockpiled, and wouldn't provide the documentation he agreed to provide showing the nature and timing of any disposal process. So, we know they had them - that is simple fact - and where they got to is not known.
You are a true moron if you think that all Iranians believe the west "satan".
Does it matter if the average Iranian thinks that, when the people who run the place, write the checks to people who DO think that way, and are willing to deploy armed insurgents who operate with that notion in mind? No, it doesn't. Not of the people who do NOT think like that aren't willing to tear that murderous theocracy down. Which they aren't willing to do. They support them, by continuing to give them power.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We seem to conveniently forget that extremists are not interested in diplomacy as a solution. Extremists were attacking the West long before the war in Iraq; it is a fallacy to assume they would just revert to killing each other, and leave the West alone.
Iran is case-in-point: The goal of the leadership in Iran has nothing to do with diplomacy; they want their nuclear toys, period, and will risk war to get them. The thought of a peaceful Middle East with a nuclear-armed Iran stretches just that little bi
Re:Manipulating elections another way (Score:4, Insightful)
See, now you're trying to make sense, which means those on the Right's eyes will glaze over and they'll just skip to the next comment which mentions terrorist fist-bumps and flag lapel pins.
I'm afraid that instead of trying to engage these people (listeners to right-wing radio), we're just going to have to ignore them and do the best we can for this country without their input. It's probably for the best, all around.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Manipulating elections another way (Score:5, Insightful)
There has to be a line. Yes, bad things happen in the world, and my heart bleeds a little every time I hear about a child starving to death, or the AIDS epidemic, or genocide. But the United States is only so strong, and only capable of dealing with so much.
Would you, personally, by hand, go out and try to feed EVERY homeless person in your city? Not build a shelter and feed the ones that come in. Actually walk the streets with a bag/shopping cart/truckload/whatever of food, and find the homeless, and feed them?
We spread ourselves too thin. We try to do so much good in so many places that all we manage is a barely mediocre achievement anywhere. I believe that isolationist policies are stupid, but we can't be the world's nanny anymore, we can't kiss everyone's boo-boos anymore. Our economy is in bad enough shape. Pouring so much of it into other places, nay, wasting it, is doing NOTHING to help stabilize ourselves. Yeah, it makes you feel warm and fuzzy to say 'My country feeds starving Nigerian babies' but what nobody says is that our aid programs drain public resources that could be put into health care, education, public works, or reducing the national debt.
Think about it. Yeah, it makes you warm and fuzzy to clothes a homeless man, but if you give him the clothes off your back, now, YOU are naked. How much good can we do to third world countries and those in need if we reduce ourselves to third-world status?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably not me or anyone in my generation; but the amount of time, money and effort wasted in waging these wars [war on drugs, war on terrorism, war on Islamic fundamentalist etc.] could have been well spent on improving the education
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with the American educational system is not, at the moment, a lack of money.
Re:Manipulating elections another way (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Kids being disinterested in school is not a problem. It is a good thing. Anyone who believes that school is good for kids is delusional.
Agreed. On the other hand, school should be good for kids. If it's not, we're doing it wrong.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think where we went astray was forcing our aid into places despite the armed opposition of various forces. As soon as the aid truck needs armed guards, a lack of aid is not the real problem and it will not help.
understatement (Score:3, Insightful)
We spread ourselves too thin.
We spent a trillion dollars on the Iraq war and ruined our economy. The majority of our discretionary spending goes to the military. And almost none of that money is actually going to aid.
We're way beyond "spread to thin".
but we can't be the world's nanny anymore
We've never been the world's nanny. Almost everything the US has done internationally has been in the US military and economic interest, including WWI and WWII. The difference between then and now is that (1) past ef
Re:Manipulating elections another way (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt Wallmart would want a greeter with Tourette's Syndrome, or undercontrolled Schizophrenia. Not so coincidentally, a disproportionate number (I've heard upwards of 50%) of the homeless population has mental disabilities. The rest? Yes, some are lazy. Some are young people who escaped abuse in a broken home, took up drugs, and are now essentially unemployable. Some people suffer from chronic pain which prevents them from working. Many are women who have escaped abuse, have young children to look after 24/7, and no marketable skills. Have you ever try applying for a job without an address or a change of clothes? Of course, don't let any of these cases get in the way of your simple and elegant world view.
Anybody surprised? (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly? Surprised that there exists interests in changing the outcome of an election in a favourable way?
Re:Anybody surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Anybody surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think if you could get Republicans to see how truly corrupt our election system has become, they'd be as outraged as well. But, it's hard to get a credible spokesman (read: a fellow Republican) to come out as vehemently against this as someone like Greg Palast has.
I think you severely underestimate a *partisan's ability to write off information that could force them into a state of cognitive dissonance.
Abu Ghraib was written off as "hazing" and "a fraternity prank."
I don't really see that mindset getting too outraged over election fraud in their favor.
*This goes both ways really. Anyone remember Dan Rather's fake documents?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Then, why isn't Donald Rumsfeld, at least, in jail? The instructions to make that prison the way it was came from the top. The punishment should reach there too.
Re:Anybody surprised? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm a former typewriter technician from 'those days'. You are ignoring some significant information.
Back 'then', and up to about 1990, typewriters were, as you pointed out, capable of printing fonts other than Courier and Prestige Elite. Such machines were somewhat rare, the most common alternative being Orator from IBM.
More significant, however were two features of 'those' documents: Proportional spacing and text centering. These capabilities were significantly less common, and centering is not a typewriter feature - it is an operator's skill.
Looking at one of the documents here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Guardgif.gif [wikipedia.org], you can see in the first paragraph the word 'Ellington'. It appears to me that the 'i' is properly spaced for proportional type. This limits the available typeariters at that time to pretyt much the IBM Executive or IBM Composer, neither of which were common, and both would have been uncommon on GSA purchasing. It's possible that the Lt. Colonel who is shown as the author could have a clerk using one of these, but very unlikely.
More interesting, the unit designation in the second paragraph, 111th F.L.S., has the superscripted 'th'. I don't think this was common on even the Composer, but maybe the Excecutive would have had that character. So this document was probably typed on an IBM Excecutive machine?
It doesn't seem likely that this was typed on any Selectric machine. There are characteristics that pretyt much leave out a Selectrtic as the source.
This picture of the document is pretty much inadequate for more serious analysis, sadly. It's been thorugh too many duplications, and many characteristics of the type are lost and useless for further investigation. Looking at the 'r's in the document, some are missing serifs. The word 'MEMORANDUM' has the 'R' dropped significantly, where further on the line the word 'FOR' is fairly well aligned. This is not easy to do on a typewriter, but then again the quality of the picture makes it nearly impossible to do a better analysis.
When I first saw these documents, I was astonished. These were not typed.
Oh, and the centering? On a proportional space machine, this is not a trivial operation. You need to space characters using 1,3,4, or 5 sub-spaces, and I forget the technical term for this level of escapment. A fair amount of training, and practice, are necessary. Maybe the clerk for a Pentagon commander has this skill, but not likely the clerk for a Texas ANG officer.
Nice try, but this was a fake. Though I'd LOVE to see the originals. The ink and impressions would answer a lot of questions. Copies fail these tests.
Give it up. Rather was fooled, and willingly so.
Let's ban all-electronic balloting so WE won't get fooled again, k?
ps- you wrote "The claims that the documents were fake, were based on the incorrect belief that typewriters could not produce superscript "st" and "nd"". Name me four. Hint, one I mentioned above. Second hint, ignore Adler typewriters, none used in GSA back then. Third hint, ignore Smith-Corona, Facit, Underwood, they dndn't make that sort of machine. Fourth hint, stick to IBM, Olympia, Royal. NOt so sure about Royal. You don't know typewriters.
Re:Anybody surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know why you're do paranoid that everyone's out to get Republicans -- parent to your post makes a good point that's even sympathetic to the Republicans who have so far refused to believe (or, perhaps, admit) that there was widescale election fraud related to the use of electronic voting machines.
At any rate, you should probably relax your grip on your Republican persecution complex and realize that the parent to your post said nothing at all about the accusation benefiting Republicans...
Question for you -- are you trolling, or are you really that bad at reading comprehension?
"Contained two parallel programs" (Score:5, Funny)
Were the Diebold voting machines Euclidean or non-Euclidean? Without this key bit of information, we can't know if these programs intersected or not.
Absentee Ballot! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I'll vote via absentee ballot and send it via registered mail. Paranoid? Maybe.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
>I think I'll vote via absentee ballot and send it via registered mail. Paranoid? Maybe.
Your absentee ballot is probably scanned on an ES&S (Diebold) tabulator.
Re:Absentee Ballot! (Score:5, Informative)
plus they don't count the absentee ballots unless the rigged results are close enough that the absentee ballots might change the outcome.
Re:Absentee Ballot! (Score:5, Informative)
Here in Oregon, enough people were opting to vote by mail that they just decided to get rid of polling places altogether. We do still have ballot boxes at various community locations (libraries, schools, etc.) so you can drop off your ballot instead of paying for postage.
Oregon's vote by mail system does not protect against vote buying. However, Oregon citizens are willing to risk that potential danger in exchange for the ability to have voting parties, where a group of friends can get together, discuss each issue on the ballot, answer each other's questions, and make an informed decision while eating cookies and generally enjoying each other's company.
Re:Absentee Ballot! (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in Oregon, enough people were opting to vote by mail that they just decided to get rid of polling places altogether. We do still have ballot boxes at various community locations (libraries, schools, etc.) so you can drop off your ballot instead of paying for postage.
We do that on local government elections here in Australia, but the electoral commission sends out a reply paid envelope for you to send back. One time I got about five ballot papers addressed to names like "John J Jones, Jane Q Smith" which I very carefully did not open, complete or send back. I suspect somebody forgot to remove example records from a database, though it might have had something to do with the fact I lived next door to a hostel with a large itinerant population who could be persuaded to fill out ballot papers in false names.
Re:Absentee Ballot! (Score:5, Interesting)
Either Diebold is a 1-person company, or the CEO prefers a "hands-on" approach to doing business
Purely hypothetical answer...
Let's say you have a master plan to make it possible for you to rig elections. Your plan involves your company becoming a major supplier of voting machines; machines which you can manipulate. How many people do you share your plans with?
Clearly your best chance for success is for as few people as possible to know about your plans; the ideal situation would be if your whole company were run as a legitimate enterprise and just you knew what was really going on.
If the CEO in fact did go where he was said to go (and that should be verifiable), then it should be brutally obvious he was up to something. Of course CEOs don't go out in the field to apply patches. But he might be the one to do it if he were rigging an election and trusted no one else to do it.
On an unrelated note, there is something very strange I find about the US election process. Your founding fathers went to so much trouble to create "cheques and balances", yet it never seemed to occur to them to make a completely seperate body for running elections. It blows me away the amount of power your politicians have over the elections they have to run in. In my country the house of commons, especially the PM, runs the country with no real counter point, but neither have any direct say in how elections are run - there is a separte body for that.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
On an unrelated note, there is something very strange I find about the US election process. Your founding fathers went to so much trouble to create "cheques and balances", yet it never seemed to occur to them to make a completely seperate body for running elections.
An honest question: when a traditionally authoritarian country claims to change its ways and have a fair election, isn't it the case that they can have international (UN?) parties there to monitor the election? If so, how do we get some of those?
No actors in the DOJ. (Score:4, Funny)
> He reported his findings to the Justice Department, which has not acted.
Bush co already patched the justice dept.
No worries.
This needs a "paranoia" tag. (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Atlanta, and lived here in 2002. "King" Roy Barnes and Max Cleland didn't get "robbed" of anything. They lost their elections because they were both liberal Democrats running in a conservative state in a big Republican year. Barnes in particular had become so personally obnoxious that a good many in his own party crossed over to vote against him out of pure spite.
Good grief, people. Put the tinfoil hats away.
Re:This needs a "paranoia" tag. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This needs a "paranoia" tag. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd really like to hear a Republican explain how the Republican party is "conservative"?
Whether they are or not is largely irrelevant at present. They still claim to be conservative, and conservative voters accept that claim to a such a degree that they vote for them. That's all.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you talking about?
No, really: what the heck are you talking about? Are you in the first grade? Do you know what a monarch is? Has the president declared himself a lifetime ruler, appointed by God?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Has the president declared himself a lifetime ruler, appointed by God?
Believes he is appointed by God - check
Believes he is absolute ruler - check
Declares war unanimously - check
Lifetime ruler - no
So no, not a monarchy, more like a theocracy (given the power wielded by various Christian groups in elections), with the trappings of democracy.
Re:This needs a "paranoia" tag. (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? You obviously have no idea what a monarchy is, but a theocracy? Just because religious people vote for another religious person does not make it a theocracy. Is Germany a theocracy? Because they actually have a Christian party, and their leader is the Chancellor of Germany.
He did not declare war unanimously. Only Congress can declare war, and Congress overwhelmingly supported the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. The president actually has very little direct power, he's mostly a figurehead. Congress are the people rubber-stamping his policies.
George Bush is an asshole, but please respect the English language and common sense.
And people, get over it! There is absolutely zero hard evidence that the Republicans have stolen any elections. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, not small amounts of circumstantial evidence and the ramblings of bloggers. You have to live with the fact that approximately half of the voting public voted for a complete jackass (making the large assumption that Kerry or Gore weren't idiots as well). That's one of the unfortunate things about living in a democracy. But you apparently don't know what that means either.
Re:This needs a "paranoia" tag. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cute very narrow redefinition but I was thinking more in line with something in the dictionary. Thanks for the personal attack too - what are they teaching in those schools there?
It became clear to me when Cheney visited Sydney with ten times the pomp and ceremony of a real Royal visit. We even had to have a special night time sitting of parliment to change a gun law for him the night before the visit. Consider what little the Congress, the Senate and the Supreme Court can do if they oppose actions of the Executive now - they can only draft laws that can be ignored or make judgements that will be ignored. Now compare that to the little European Kingdoms of a couple of centuries ago - some of which had elected kings (by the nobles) and sometimes even with limited terms.
Sure Sign (Score:5, Insightful)
The first flag should've been that it was the CEO who performed the patch. If a CEO _ever_ gets his hands dirty, you can rest assured that there is something illegal going on that needs to be covered up.
Re:Sure Sign (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not denying or claiming that anything is wrong but how does CEO's hands-on involvement for patching indicate anything?
I don't think anyone has said it's a "proof" of a cover-up when a CEO gets involved. It's just that it's very suspicious (why didn't he send a technician/engineer, who should be cheaper and more competent than a CEO at this sort of thing?).
It's same with voting irregularities (also mentioned in TFA). It doesn't prove anything, but it is very suspicious and warrants a detailed investigation in hopes of picking up (or not picking up) something more concrete than suspicion.
Something is fishy about that update. (Score:5, Informative)
As an IT support person, the scope of the Diebold patch update is suspicious. Why just two counties? Why not the whole state? Why a special trip by the CEO? Too many bells are going off here.
When I did IT updates. I would update a few test configurations and select users then let them run for a bit. Then roll out to the masses. About 2,500 PCs if you will.
The justice department needs to begin investigating this immediately.
This whole situation stinks to high heaven.
Thanks,
Jim
Re:Something is fishy about that update. (Score:4, Informative)
As an IT support person, the scope of the Diebold patch update is suspicious. Why just two counties? Why not the whole state? Why a special trip by the CEO? Too many bells are going off here.
Makes you wonder:
Was the software previously on those machines certified by the State?
Were the patches certified by the State?
If the answer to either of those questions is no, you've got prima facie evidence that laws were broken and the CEO knew about it.
Re:Something is fishy about that update. (Score:4, Informative)
Thanks for your reply there tublar.
I am an occasional election judge in Texas. I see our Optical Scan and Touch Screen machines scroll their very old their Microsoft boot up messages we turn them on. Old software versions for sure. This is OK. If it works it works. My county election head is very very very conservative about updates. I cannot imagine a casual update like this CEO did. Now he probably had agreement from those two counties. Those counties should have asked some pretty hard questions if he was not giving any others those updates.
The Diebold issues might be in three different places. I don't know how the machine is constructed. Here is a brief list for mischief; the OS, the screen display application on top of the OS, then perhaps something in any PCMICA cards. As the article author said, he did not have access to a machine and you really need the whole thing to see what it is doing.
Thanks,
Jim
Diebold == Premier Election Solutions (Score:5, Informative)
Remember folks, Diebold is now known as "Premier Election Solutions" [wikipedia.org]--they changed their name to get away from the bad PR! So don't call them "Diebold" any more and don't forget!
Just like MediaSentry becoming "SafeNet", we shouldn't be so quick to forget who the scumbags are!
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property [eff.org]
Re:Diebold == Premier Election Solutions (Score:4, Informative)
You're a little off. Diebold, Inc. still exists and is still called such.
Remember back when electronic voting (EV) was the hot topic and people on Slashdot were complaining (and rightly so) about how sloppy and insecure Diebold's EV systems were compared to their ATMs, vaults, safes, and their other systems related to money? Diebold, Inc., the parent company, deals with much more than EV systems. It remains Diebold. Their link to EV systems is contained entirely in a subsidiary, formerly Diebold Voting Systems, Inc., a year ago renamed Premier Election Solutions. New great name, same red hands.
It's a little confusing to distinguish, I know, especially when even the summary makes no effort to do so.
More pieces of the puzzle ( muzzle? ) (Score:5, Informative)
2003;
The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.
O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.
The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the 2004 election.
The CEO personally installed patches? (Score:5, Insightful)
The story says "The computer patch was installed in person by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, who flew in from Texas and applied it in just two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, both Democratic strongholds."
If that's accurate, that's astonishing to me.
I don't know much about "The Raw Story," which describes itself as an "alternative" news source. If this had appeared in the mainstream media I would regard it as something close to a smoking gun. I hope this isn't the end of the story.
Mainstream? (Score:3, Interesting)
And why would a huge corporate company make noise about criminal activity done by one of their possible advertisers, or someone with connections in Washington? They wait until the feds start busting them up. That way, you know they don't have any leverage inside the beltway, and there's nothing you can do to save them anyway.
When the feds are bought and paid for, and the media is bought and paid for, mainstream media becomes an outlet for AP stories that don't offend anyone.
How many more are there? (Score:3, Insightful)
The software engineers try to get a handle on how many bugs are left after a certain number have been found, but how do we get a handle on how many events like these might be happening after one has come to light?
It has long been pretty clear that these voting machine vendors, Diebold chief among them, have had something to hide because of how cagy they have been about allowing people to examine their machines. It's very frustrating that their arguments seem to always win out - it makes you wonder how many Secretaries of State (for non-US readers, that is a state-level office that is frequently in charge of elections. Not to be confused with the Federal level Foreign Minister) want to know what is going on, or really d know what is going on, and just want deniability.
Karl Rove (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting that he's not mentioned in the summary, but several [streetinsider.com] other [opednews.com] sources [bradblog.com] seem to indicate [epluribusmedia.net] that Karl Rove is behind this.
Go ahead and mod me down, I've got decent karma.
Re:Karl Rove (Score:5, Insightful)
Go ahead and mod me down, I've got decent karma.
Yeah, bashing Karl Rove will really get you modded down on Slashdot. Who's next, RIAA?
Diebold is a bunch of crooks (Score:5, Informative)
Jeff Dean, Senior Vice-President and Senior Programmer at Global Election Systems (GES), the company purchased by Diebold in 2002 which became Diebold Election Systems, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft for planting back doors in software he created for ATMs using, according to court documents, a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of two years[8]. In addition to Dean, GES employed a number of other convicted felons in senior positions, including a fraudulent securities trader and a drug trafficker.
Avi Rubin, Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University and Technical Director of the Information Security Institute has analyzed the source code used in these voting machines and reports "this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts.
Following the publication of this paper, the State of Maryland hired Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to perform another analysis of the Diebold voting machines. SAIC concluded "[t]he system, as implemented in policy, procedure, and technology, is at high risk of compromise."
WTF??? (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
>And I thought Braille on a drive up ATM was pointless.
Because you're not blind, and you've never had to trust a stranger to do an ATM transaction for you,
and you've never done an ATM transaction from the back seat of a taxi.
You are totally insensitive to the struggle of the visually impaired, and your joke is not funny.
Electronic voting will never be safe (Score:5, Insightful)
Electronic voting can be subverted very simply indeed, just by one person with the right technical knowledge. All electronic voting should be scrapped until a reasonably secure system can be organised, most likely by open source solutions. Even then there's no real reason for it.
And what the hell was the CEO doing installing patches? Sounds highly suspicous to me.
And the very simple reason for this (Score:3, Insightful)
... is that computers cannot be trusted to process anonymous transactions. Particularly when the stakes are high.
Digital electronic ballots can't be considered real, as they do not leave scads of physical forensic evidence the way a physical ballot would.
Everything else we do with computers involving trust also involves personal identification and verification procedures (logging in, checking a bank statement, etc. for which there are no analogs in voting systems) and even that is problematic enough.
Diebold Technician's POV (Score:5, Interesting)
I know they were rigged (Score:3, Funny)
Because I wrote the patch and I gave it to him and I personally watched him install it.
What? You don't believe me?
Guess I should have posted anonymously.
Obstruction of Justice Dept. (Score:3, Funny)
If the patch is not suspicious enough, inaction by the Justice Department is damning.
Re:Obstruction of Justice Dept. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obstruction of Justice Dept. (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of the Attorney General under U.S. law is to represent the United States, not the President.
Why does it need to be a (wholly irrelevant) Bush hate-fest?
Because the president of Diebold publicly stated that he would do everything he could to elect Bush president? Because Bush's flunkies have been inappropriately pushing prosecutors to investigate purported election fraud when it benefitted them? Because Bush has created such a culture of cronyism and corruption that's trickled down throughout the entire DOJ has basically become completely unreliable?
Re:Suspicious... (Score:5, Insightful)
Three problems with your point:
1) The patch was made to certified machines, thus making them non-certified.
2) It was only applied in 2 counties. (*cough*Democratic counties*cough*) Why not the whole state?
3) I'm fairly certain that if *I* merely open the ballot box or machine during the election, that satisfies the requirement for "tampering" regardless of me touching ballots or flipping bits, and I'd be making an extra stop at the local police precinct before going home.
Of course, it all depends on who's prosecuting and how it gets presented.
Re:Suspicious... (Score:5, Insightful)
But if:
1. it doesn't fix the problem it claims to fix
2. it was personnally installed by the CEO of the vendor's firm
3. it was only installed on a subset of machines (and those in democratic strongholds)
alarm bells should be going off all over the place.
If, at my bank, we tried to push a change that hit even one of the above, ten people would be on the phone to in-house lawyers, compliance, management, etc.
Had one of my new guys yesterday wanting to push a change. "I'll tell you what it does," he said. "Don't bother," I said, "if what it's doing is not obvious, it's not going anywhere."
Re:Suspicious... (Score:5, Insightful)
The CEO personally getting involved is more suspicious to me.
I mean Deibold is a fairly large company, why is the CEO applying patches to products in person?
And how often does he do this?
Re:Suspicious... (Score:5, Insightful)
why is the CEO applying patches to products in person?
And how often does he do this?
Whenever he needs to get paid
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Is that so? Seeing the blue dot next to your name makes me want to ask...
Are you hiring?
Consider this a joke if you aren't hiring, otherwise I'm serious.
Democracy Theater (Score:4, Insightful)
Although I am not an unconditional fan of open source. I think it has its uses and its non uses. But this is one definite use. It might be the case that as a matter of law right now, what you say is true--it's not evidence. But I actually don't see how we'd be hurt by having a law that makes it into evidence by making it, ipso facto, a crime to apply an undocumented patch at all.
If you're going to have voting machines at all, it seems to me they ought to have open source programs running on them. (I personally don't care if the programs are free in cost, though I imagine they could be. I only care that they are inspectable by anyone and that it is fair use to copy them to other machines for the purpose of verifying their correctness and aherence to advertised and required spec.) I don't see that anyone other than someone doing something illegal is served by keeping the source secret. The data, of course, might be protected. But the program should be auditable by anyone.
And in such a world, I don't see any reason whatsoever that it shouldn't be a crime for there to be any software applied where its entire content and purpose were not carefully documented. Then it wouldn't require any proof other than that it happened in order to detect wrongdoing; and it could be further a crime to phony up a faulty description of what the patch does, so that then it could be audited for validity by anyone who wants to.
The weak link in all this seems to be the hardware. It's quite hard to look at a box and know what's going on inside it. It requires specialized skill. It likely wouldn't be hard to make a machine with a dummy system for show that had the right program on it and another shadow machine tucked away that had the wrong program, with just some subtle wire somewhere leading to one doing the real voting. Call it "democracy theater" if you like, borrowing on the "security theater" moniker used a lot in other venues these days. Such a charade could be hard to notice. Which is why I prefer paper balloting. It means the entire process is exposed.
Re:Why not open source voting code? (Score:5, Funny)
Why doesn't Diebold allow for open source code?
* They are afraid of scrutiny. They might have errors and some might turn out to be embarrassing.
* Competition might ensue.
* Hide any funny business.
* Have to follow someone else's rules
* Have to spend effort/expense making code available.
* Code files too big as they were written with PowerPoint (tm)
Re:"Up against the wall, MF" (Score:5, Informative)
And how is this making war against the United States or giving Aid and Comfort to it's enemies in time of war? Here in the USA, that's how treason is defined in the Constitution. [wikipedia.org] Calling any and everything you don't like "treason" is exactly why it was defined that way, and why the Constitution specifies that a conviction can only be obtained by direct confession in open court or on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act. I knew that the standards of education here were dropping, but I didn't thing they'd dropped that far.
Re:"Up against the wall, MF" (Score:4, Insightful)
IMO, subverting an election would be very close to "in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
The enemies of the Republic would be any that would attempt to subvert the rule of the republic - which would include elections. (This is in practical terms, the equivalent of a coup.)
I'm not sure I exactly agree with this definition, but clearly an argument could be made that subverting elections would in essence be "war" against the republic.
It's certainly on less shaky ground than our governments declaration that all held at Guantanamo are legitimately held "unlawful combatants."
-Greg
Re:"Up against the wall, MF" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure I exactly agree with this definition, but clearly an argument could be made that subverting elections would in essence be "war" against the republic.
Umm, election fraud, pure and simple. It's not a new crime, and it has never been held to be treason. It's just more screechy politics that you would laugh at if the other side were making similar charges.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hrmm ... wilfully changing the outcome of an election against the will of the people by manipulating the votes cast is an attack on democracy. As such it is also an attack on the government. It could even be argued that it is doing exactly what Al Qaeda is trying to do.
It might not be treason, but it ought to be worth a trip to Gitmo.
A single voter selling his vote can land him in jail for a year (well, here anyway, don't know about the US). How many votes were aparently cast in these two counties? Let's sa
Re:"Up against the wall, MF" (Score:5, Insightful)
And how is this making war against the United States or giving Aid and Comfort to it's enemies in time of war?
Well, in the military, your oath is to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign, and domestic. Someone subverting the voting process, which is set forth in the Constitution, could be seen as an attack on the Constitution. Since the primary purpose of the military is to wage war, and their foremost oath is to defend the Constitution, it could follow that this act could be considered making war against the United States.
Another way to look at it is the act of changing the votes could change who has control of Congress, removing the "winning" party from power. This would be an unconstitutional method of changing government, which would be an act of war against the "true government" of the United States.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Diebold Election Systems, Inc.", the subsidiary of Diebold, Inc. involved in electronic voting systems, was renamed "Premier Election Solutions [wikipedia.org]", a.k.a. Premier or PES. The parent company remains Diebold.
Re:"Up against the wall, MF" (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder how many people have stopped to think through the implications of this charge. If it's proven to be true, it could very well mean Diebold's CEO is guilty of treason. In a time of war (which President Bush has repeatedly said is the case), that's a death penalty offense. While I don't favour the death penalty, I think you have to take a very serious look at it for somebody who hasn't just killed people, but who has attempted to kill democracy in an entire nation. This particular incident may have been restricted to one state, but Diebold has been very active in attempting to get its machines and methods protected from legal supervision at the federal level.
So what you're saying is, not only are liberals going to actively pursue the death penalty, but they're going to have to admit that we're at war to get there?
I don't know if I see that happening.. But I'm heading to the grocery store for some popcorn, just in case.
(yes, you can mod me down now)
Re:"Up against the wall, MF" (Score:5, Interesting)
Prescott Bush, the grandfather of our current president, and father of our past president, is guilty of this right here. He was involved in a large corporate-based scheme to overthrow the US government early in the last century. Look it up, I can't make something this crazy up...
Re:"Facts" wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Hm, you're right, there's only a few dozen websites out there claim Bob Urosevich was the CEO of Diebold Election Systems.
As far as I can tell his "official" title was, Bob Urosevich was the President [wikipedia.org] of Diebold Election Systems from January 2002 until the second half of 2004. Prior to 2002, he was the Chief Operating Officer and President of Global Election Systems (which was bought by Diebold).
Re:"Facts" wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, he was President of Diebold Election Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Diebold... a slight oversight, but not as simply wrong as you make it out to be (and it's understandable how one might confuse it with the parent company). See for example http://web.archive.org/web/20030811034309/www.diebold.com/news/newsdisp.asp?id=2915.
Re:Any Evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of two minds... (Score:4, Funny)
You're so cynical that it makes you cool.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
When one cites this case, can't the argument be made that the USA is just like any other third world country?
If you asked me, I'd say "yes" "yes" "yes" it is.
And I'd say you're an idiot.
You obviously don't know what a third world country is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World [wikipedia.org]
The quality of elections is not a characteristic upon which you can base which "World" a country is in. As a matter of fact, you can't even use the phrase "third world country" without accepting that the frame of reference is to the Cold War, where the USA & friends = the first world and the Soviets & friends = the second world.
Re:Oh, look, the story's gone ... (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, look the story is gone
Not from my squid cache, bro.
A leading cyber-security expert and former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) says he has fresh evidence regarding election fraud on Diebold electronic voting machines during the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senatorial elections.
Stephen Spoonamore is the founder and until recently the CEO of Cybrinth LLC, an information technology policy and security firm that serves Fortune 100 companies. At a little noticed press conference in Columbus, Ohio Thursday, he discussed his investigation of a computer patch that was applied to Diebold Election Systems voting machines in Georgia right before that state's November 2002 election.
Spoonamore is one of the most prominent cyber-security experts in the country. He has appeared on CNN's Lou Dobbs and ABC's World News Tonight, and has security clearances from his work with the intelligence community and other government agencies, as well as the Department of Defense, and is one of the worldâ(TM)s leading authorities on hacking and cyber-espionage.
In 1995, Spoonamore received a civilian citation for his work with the Department of Defense. He was again recognized for his contributions in 2004 by the Department of Homeland Security. Spoonamore is also a registered Republican and until recently was advising the McCain campaign.
Spoonamore received the Diebold patch from a whistleblower close to the office of Cathy Cox, Georgiaâ(TM)s then-Secretary of State. In discussions with RAW STORY, the whistleblower -- who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation -- said that he became suspicious of Diebold's actions in Georgia for two reasons. The first red flag went up when the computer patch was installed in person by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, who flew in from Texas and applied it in just two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, both Democratic strongholds. The source states that Cox was not privy to these changes until after the election and that she became particularly concerned over the patch being installed in just those two counties.
The whistleblower said another flag went up when it became apparent that the patch installed by Urosevich had failed to fix a problem with the computer clock, which employees from Diebold and the Georgia Secretary of Stateâ(TM)s office had been told the patch was designed specifically to address.
Some critics of electronic voting raised questions about the 2002 Georgia race even at the time. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who was five percentage points ahead of Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss in polls taken a week before the vote, lost 53% to 46%. Incumbent Democratic Governor Roy Barnes, who led challenger Sonny Perdue in the polls by eleven points, lost 51% to 46%. However, because the Diebold machines used throughout the state provided no paper trail, it was impossible to ask for a recount in either case.
Concerned by the electoral outcome, the whistleblower approached Spoonamore because of his qualifications and asked him to examine the Diebold patch. McCain adviser reported patch to Justice Department
The Ohio press conference was organized by Cliff Arnebeck and three other attorneys, who had filed a challenge to the results of that the 2004 presidential election in Ohio in December, 2004. That challenge was withdrawn, but in August 2006 Arnebeck filed a new case, King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell, alleging civil rights violations in the 2004 voting. The case was stayed in 2007. On Thursday, Arnebeck filed a motion to remove the stay and allow fresh investigation.
Individuals close to Arnebeck's office said Spoonamore confirmed that the patch included nothing to repair a clock problem. Instead, he identified two parallel programs, both having the full software code and even the same audio instructions for the deaf. Spoonamore said he could not understand the need for a second copy of the exact same pr