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| 11-8-06: Rumsfeld replacement (Robert... |
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| Author |
Message |
    
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 162
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 9 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - 5:26 pm: | 
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Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will resign, reportedly to be replaced by former CIA director Robert Gates. Did you know that Robert Gates was involved in the voting machine industry?
Gates was on the board of directors of VoteHere, a strange little company that was the biggest elections industry lobbyist for the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). VoteHere spent more money than ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia combined to help ram HAVA through. And HAVA, of course, was a bill sponsored by by convicted Abramoff pal Bob Ney and K-street lobbyist buddy Steny Hoyer. HAVA put electronic voting on steroids.
You can find copies of the VoteHere lobbying forms here: http://sopr.senate.gov/cgi-win/m_opr_viewer.exe?DoFn=0
I can't get them to save to pdf, perhaps you can. Enter search terms in both "registrant" and "client" fields and put in terms "Rhoads" "Livingston" and "Votehere" (one at a time.). Then look at the gravy train while it was in the process of derailing American democracy.
I first became acquainted with VoteHere when I met a source, Dan Spillane, who is the wonderful guy that identified the Diebold source code modules for me after I found the Diebold files. He is the person who introduced me, and subsequently everyone else, to the odd role of The Election Center and R. Doug Lewis in the elections industry.
Spillane filled me in on The Livingston Group, VoteHere lobbyists, run by Bob Livingston -- the fellow that Hustler publisher Larry Flynt outed during the Bill Clinton blow job days. Larry Flynt offered a million dollars to anyone who could out a Republican congressman for adultery, and out popped peccadillos by Livingston.
Livingston couldn't live that one down, so he resigned his post as House Speaker-Elect and became a lobbyist -- but that's not all! He also launched a group called "Center for Democracy" which was going to "monitor elections." This group also featured several good old boys from the tobacco industry and some mining companies.
Former VoteHere test engineer Dan Spillane was looking into all this because he had been fired after he questioned the certification process on a touch-screen system in which he had identified 250 flaws. It was way back in November 2002 that Spillane told me, "The voting machine industry is a house of cards. And the certification and testing process is the bottom card in the house of cards."
But don't run out of the room to take a shower yet. There's more.
VoteHere, a company shilling cryptographic solutions and filled with NSA types (another director was Admiral Bill Owens), for some reason claims they were unable to prevent themselves from being hacked. In this alleged hack, VoteHere claims that someone stole their source code. Said source code was offered to me, an obvious attempt at entrapment which I refused to touch with a 10-foot pole.
Nevertheless, VoteHere claimed to the newspapers that they had supposedly "tracked" the hacker and had identified the hacker as an activist in the election reform community.
For some reason, it was decided that I should be investigated for this "hack" of VoteHere -- nevermind that I can't remember how to change the password on my own laptop. Therefore I was interviewed by the Secret Service several times about this. Curiously, they never seemed to ask any questions about VoteHere, only my role in finding the Diebold files and publishing the Diebold memos.
This nonsense eventually culminated in a gag order and a letter from the U.S. Attorney to appear in front of a federal grand jury with information on all the visitors to the Black Box Voting Web site. (As if they couldn't get that in less dramatic ways in post-Patriot Act America).
Attorney Lowell Finley went to bat for me on this. A reporter named George Howland from the Seattle Weekly got wind of it. When it hit the press, the investigation stopped.
VoteHere never sold any voting machines that I can find, but apparently did set up some deals to embed its cryptography into some voting systems. We found memos in the Diebold trash about VoteHere's crypto-crap, and Maryland Director of Elections Linda Lamone shows up in VoteHere-related letters. Sequoia Voting Systems signed an agreement with VoteHere, but its not clear to me whether they ever did anything about it.
Robert Gates stepped away from VoteHere shortly before he showed up in Chapter 8 of my book, Black Box Voting, in a short bit about the VoteHere company history. You can read that here: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf
I don't know about you, but I'd rather use a paper, pencil, and count by hand at the polling place than have former CIA director Robert Gates fooling around with my vote.
But that's just me.
-- Bev Harris
Founder, Black Box Voting
PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED, WITH LINK TO http://www.blackboxvoting.org |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3398
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - 5:53 pm: |
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Amazing--just when you think the sordid e-voting story can't get worse, you scratch a little deeper and the smell intensifies.
I wonder what Bob Gates will be doing for his next trick. |
LouAnn
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Lanbfflo
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - 8:57 pm: |
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Dear Bev-
Thank you for everything you are doing!
I saw "Hacking Democracy" over the weekend and was outraged. In fact, my husband was so disgusted he didn't vote yesterday.
Here is a link you might find useful; it allows you to convert anything to a pdf document by using the "print" feature.
The instructions are easy, and the software is free. www.software995.com
Again, thank you very much |
Jim March
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jimmarch
Post Number: 131
Registered: 05-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 3:44 am: |
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"Votehere" is connected to a greater variety of oddball folks than any voting industry company in history.
The lobbying dollars support that: Bev isn't kidding here, Votehere did more pro-HAVA lobbying than several well-known vendors in combination.
Now with that said: we do need to track the people involved, but we need to track the processes, procedures and gear quality even more.
Ultimately, what we need is a voting process that is so secure, so auditable and so transparant that even when run by somebody incompetent, criminal or both, we can trust the process.
It won't happen, CAN'T without *continuing* citizen oversight even once that improved process is in place.
If you've seen "Hacking Democracy" and reacted with shock and outrage, good. But understand: the reason it ever got that bad is because "we the people" didn't pay attention. We assumed out of laziness that "of course elections are going OK" - myself most definately included until Bev woke me up in mid-'03.
If we in turn have woken you up, good. Welcome to the world of involved citizenship.
(note from Bev -- Hey Jim, I edited out some of your more flamboyant statements.) Watch the statements of opinion about people's motivations, and allegations about them, unless we are ready to post proof. Subpoenas would be nice, wouldn't they? Folks, Jim March used to be a lobbyist, and is familiar with the amounts of money paid to lobbyists and the usual flow. The kind of lobbying being done by VoteHere was influence-focused lobbying, as opposed to issue-focused lobbying.
By the way, another big player in the HAVA lobbying, by the way, was Accenture, and I also found Northrop Grumman -- spelled various ways. |
Ami Silberman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jol
Post Number: 150
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 10:08 am: |
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Northrop Grumman? The only reason why I can see them being interested is that perhaps they want to get into the election machine business. At least they have competant programmers. |
Sue Bartlett
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Msfixit
Post Number: 2
Registered: 03-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 10:34 am: |
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Thanks for this Bev. I did read some of the scanned pages. I'm not clear on what they mean, on how they really interfaced, may have just been a cyber/security consultant using their background- BL wrote the names (he visited?) and they seemed a bunch of unrelated groups. i only saw one voting system on the one list i looked at - broward county. Although tempting to read shady dealings into this given his relationship to Iran/contra, and the Bush family, the CIA, it is also possible he was just trying to sell security software or consulting to the voting machine companies or get them to consider some level of security - obviously better than they have now. This needs some more digging.
I totally agree that we need transparent voting systems - did you hear what Oregon secretary of state said? he welcomes the idea of open source software for voting. |
Chuck Kaiser
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ckaiserjr
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 11:13 am: |
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I only hope that with the Democratic Party sweep on Tuesday, people don't assume that everything's better and taken care of and then let this issue go.
I agree...this could easily be exactly what Rove and his ilk wanted, in order to lull a previously complacent electorate into a false sense of security enabling them to unleash a final devastaing blow in 2008. |
Jim March
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jimmarch
Post Number: 134
Registered: 05-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 12:13 pm: |
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The amount of lobbying dollars involved was way out of proportion to their business size OR expected business size. The voting machine biz even post-HAVA isn't all that big. Selling an add-on security product to that market would keep a modest size software shop in business, maybe 20 geeks worth...but that doesn't justify lobbying expenditures dwarfing that of FAR bigger outfits each getting a far bigger chunk of the pie.
When money flows into politics for reasons that can't be explained on a business balance sheet, look out. It means trouble. |
Sue Bartlett
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Msfixit
Post Number: 3
Registered: 03-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 22 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 3:12 pm: |
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Thanks Jim, I'm a neophyte about how lobbying happens - so the $360,000 that VoteHere reported for each of the two years is alot of money, for the three lobbyists? Oh, this is just the House - i just found this - even more damning from freepress.org:
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1243
Excerpt from: Carter Gets It – But Will His Electoral Commission? by Kevin Zeese and Linda Schade April 24, 2005
...
Mr. Munro is currently the Chairman of the Board of VoteHere. VoterHere has invested over a million dollars in trying to capture the new “voter verification market” created by paperless e-voting. Rather than trust-inspiring voter verified paper ballots, VoteHere is marketing a cryptographic verification method – one that voters and even computer security experts will not be able to understand and that has not been tested in real elections.
Mr. Munro's company has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against voter verified paper ballots. In New York, Roberto Ramirez, a longtime adviser and aide to Fernando Ferrer, the former Bronx borough president, is a partner in Mirram Global that is being paid $10,000 a month by VoteHere to “prevent a new law that requires paper ballots,” according to a contract on file with the New York Temporary State Commission on Lobbying. New York is just one of many states where VoteHere is lobbying against voter verified paper ballots. |
Jim March
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jimmarch
Post Number: 135
Registered: 05-2006
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 4:33 pm: |
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Exactly.
So let's talk hypotheticals here.
You sell kumquats. You want a bill mandating massive kumquat sales to schools that will make you rich. So you divert big bucks to a small company supposedly involved in kumquats ("Kumboxes Inc.") so it's THEIR donations that get recorded as political expenditures in places like http://opensecrets.org and then when YOUR company ("Kumquats Inc.") gets all the juicy (pardon the pun) contracts, it's not your lobbying money linked to your new-found riches. Better yet, if "Kumboxes Inc." do any business at all it will NOT be in sales to government agencies, it will be in supplies direct to you and other Kumquat suppliers, so no money trail exists between the government and the lobbying money. Not a hint of corruption on paper.
Without proof, I would never assert that's what we're seeing with Votehere and the voting megavendors...that would be libel.
Pointing out that it has ALL the hallmarks though... |
Mark Wood
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Markyace
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 5:28 pm: |
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Hi Bev,
Firstly I would like to thank you for all the hard work you have done in exposing some of the anti-democratic and dark arts as practiced in modern politics. I enjoyed you film on HBO even though I live in Shropshire England and watched it online via good old Google.
Wow, I would just like to comment on this new appointment by Bush and its use as a distraction from his crimes which are many. The former CIA director Robert Gates has a very nasty history. I have just seen a piece on my favorite online news show called Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, which has a very interesting item on Mr. Gates.
The piece goes into some detail regarding Mr. Gates involvement with the infamous Iran-Contra Scandal. This guy is just as bad as Rummy Rumsfeld. Not only was he supplying Iran with weapons but also at the same time giving arms to Saddam Hussein. He was even implicated with the chemicals weapons used to gas the Kurds.
Like I said earlier this person has a very dark history. So once again many thanks for exposing this cheat and some of his crimes, and a very big thank you for waking up America. I firmly believe that your description of the rigged election scared many into action and more than made the difference that gave the democrats both houses. I hope your work will be even more fruitful and find more irregularity so that the democrats can have more seats and not rely on Lieberman, who I think, will be used as an excuse for inactivity.
Yours forever lol. Mark Wood
www.tagworld.com/Marky-aCe
Link for Democracy Now item below
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/09/1444242 |
Jonthan Korein
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: C1jdk
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 5:47 pm: |
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Hi Bev,
First off I want to congratulate you for the incredible work you've done. I've been following it for years, and feel eliminating vote fraud may be the single most important task facing America today.
I don't know too much about VoteHere as a company, and I certainly agree with the desire to have verifiable paper ballots and am suspicious of any company that opposes this.
But I do want to speak up because I know Andy Neff, the "Chief Scientist" of VoteHere, having worked with him for a number of years before he left for his job at VoteHere.
In addition to being a brilliant mathematician, his honesty and morality are beyond question. He would never knowingly participate in any vote fraud scam, and he has ability to design a system which is - if he had complete control of it - tamper proof. He's that good.
That does not mean that his work might not be abused by a company that was misleading him and would alter his work, so I'm hardly saying that VoteHere is automatically in the clear - at this point I am suspicious of every company involved in vote gathering.
But I felt I should mention this, as I know I would trust my vote to software Andy designed in a second, paper trail or not, so it's possible VoteHere's motivations are not that nefarious.
By the way - please don't everybody jump on me - I understand the limits of what I'm saying, and I'm not endorsing paperless voting - I'm just saying what I know about one person who has an important technical position at VoteHEre. |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 166
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 5:50 pm: |
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Here's a catch from a sharp-eyed citizen: VoteHere forked out $120,000 to kill paper ballot legislation last year
New York Times
Mayoral Candidate's Adviser Draws Pay to Lobby Albany Against Paper Ballots
*Please Note: Archive articles do not include photos, charts or graphics. More information. March 10, 2005, Thursday
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN (NYT)
Metropolitan Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section B, Page 10, Column 1, 893 words
DISPLAYING ABSTRACT - Roberto Ramirez, longtime adviser to New York City mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer, has $120,000 annual contract to lobby state lawmakers to block bill to require use of paper ballots; he is partner in Mirram Global, hired by VoteHere Inc of Washington State to block law; Ramirez says he will not lobby city officials if Ferrer is elected; lawmakers have to comply with 2002 federal law to overhaul voting systems; companies like VoteHere want computer-based touch-screen machines rather than less-lucrative optical scanners with paper ballots
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20717FE3C580C738DDDAA0894DD4044 82&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fSubjects%2fE%2fElections |
From the Mailbag
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mailbag
Post Number: 145
Registered: 10-2005
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 21 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 6:00 pm: |
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(admin note) Dr. Rebecca Mercuri is one of the pioneers in the election reform issue, and began researching and exposing problems with electronic voting back in 1989.
Nice piece about the connections with HAVA, Robert Gates and VoteHere but it appears that you've neglected to connect the rest of the dots.
VoteHere was the original owner of the verifiedvoting URL, which they provided to David Dill for his use. But, the early petition that Dill had posted on his website for signatures used the phrase "voter-verifiable" rather than "voter verified." I had immediately noted to Dill and others) my strong objection to the word "verifiable" but he insisted on using it, and later explained that it was necessary in order to gain acceptance among the cryptographic community (which of course included VoteHere).
All of verifiedvoting's writings and petitions (until fairly recently) have used the word "verifiable" (rather than "verified"), which one can confirm by Googling on "voter-verifiable" (with or without the hyphen). (Note that it is well documented that I, not Dill, originated the phrase "voter verified" though I do permit and encourage the free use of this terminology.
An extensive explanation of why "verifiable" is not the same as "verified" with regard to the auditing and authentication of paper ballots is on my website at http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html )
Thankfully most of the state and federal legislation that has been introduced (and passed) with regard to VVPATs, correctly uses the word "verified" rather than "verifiable."
Another connection between the academic election technology community and VoteHere was revealed in 2003 shortly after the Johns Hopkins Diebold report was released. As it turned out, Avi Rubin had failed to "remember" that he was a member of the technical advisory board of VoteHere, and further that he held stock options in the company (during the period when VoteHere was lobbying Congress). Details on this can be found at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home03/aug03/votehere.html.
Both Drs. Dill and Rubin now receive a considerable amount of federal funds annually for election technology research, awarded largely on the basis of a grant proposal and presentations that used certain other proprietary intellectual property without permission, attribution and/or remuneration.
I think it's important that your readers know the rest of the story. Feel free to post this message (only in its entirety, please) on your
website.
Thank you,
Rebecca Mercuri, Ph.D. |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 167
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 6:08 pm: |
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As I see it, VoteHere is a company that has existed for nearly eight years with no visible stream of income, at least in its elections division. It has undergone a name change of late and is now branching out into other areas of security. The revenue stream for VoteHere appears to have come largely from venture capital investments, and those generally come with strings attached, so I don't think I buy the hypothesis that it's acting as a conduit for lobbying fees from other parts of the industry. It may just be that they got a wad of venture capital and invested in expensive lobbyists trying to buy their way into the market.
There is a theory, supported with a small amount of circumstantial evidence, that VoteHere was behind a last-minute kill of paper trails in HAVA. |
Mark Wood
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Markyace
Post Number: 2
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 6:17 pm: |
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I have just been thinking about the Rumsfeld sacking and its relevance to the issue of voter integrity. Once again I would like to state that it was your film on HBO that revitalized folk’s interest in politics and its integrity, gosh you even made the front pages here in Europe, but looking through the papers today it appears to have disappeared from the radar screen and whitewashed from current memories. As such I think it is vital to get a new and successful depiction of dirty tricks or other misadventure to bring this issue you all have worked so hard on back up on top as an issue and major news item. I just wished I lived a little closer so that I could play my part in helping. |
Jim March
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jimmarch
Post Number: 139
Registered: 05-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 6:38 pm: |
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Sidenote to Jonthan Korein: it's not at all uncommon for a bad company to contain some good people. I don't disbelieve you regarding Neff, but I reserve the right to distrust VoteHere for a number of reasons.
Bev: their acting as a conduit for other people's lobbying money isn't inconsistent with their having their own agenda (and money) too  . |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3404
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 10, 2006 - 6:31 am: |
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Jim,
Thanks for explaining how you can spot red flags in lobbying expenditure by evaluating whether they are reasonable in light of a company's current or expected income from activities that are related to the lobbying. (If it seems like a company is spending way more on lobbing than makes business sense, chances are they are operating on someone else's behalf. In this case they deserve closer scrutiny as to the owners/shareholders and their network of political, financial, and issue-based connections.) |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1029
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 10, 2006 - 7:03 am: |
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To everybody: It's really hard (potentially impossible, at least) to make something tamper-proof if the possibility exists for it to be an inside job. |
Jim March
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jimmarch
Post Number: 141
Registered: 05-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 10, 2006 - 8:11 am: |
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Brant, banks have been dealing with that issue for as long as there have been banks.
The first solution was to operate on small scales and only within families. In Europe that meant Jews because Christians at the time were religiously barred from loaning money at interest but borrowing was OK. That's the origin of the original European banking houses and the stereotype "Jewish banker".
As the old restrictions broke down and professional banking began in the 1700s, something else had to take over: audit trails. The idea of a "transaction" to be tracked became a documented practice, with independent auditing and accounting. This was fully understood by the time Wells Fargo was running both banks and stagecoaches: you tracked what happened with documents AND money, who did what and when, and if the paperwork was wonky in ANY way you fired whoever was involved even if you couldn't prove fraud. Ask anybody in any bank what happens to employees who are slipshod with paperwork.
Elections today are not being run with the level of professionalism normal in the banking biz 150+ years ago. |
Adam Fulford
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Northofborder
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 10, 2006 - 1:27 pm: |
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I think that those files have been deleted from that Senate site. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1035
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 10, 2006 - 1:28 pm: |
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Lamb's axiom : Any major shift in method in a mechanical or physical application can completely destroy your ability to QA the system, at least temorarily. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1036
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 10, 2006 - 1:30 pm: |
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Also, Jim, remember that Diebold's favorite programmer was a bank crook first. Ironic, isn't it? |
Mark Wood
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Markyace
Post Number: 3
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 10, 2006 - 1:36 pm: |
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Just looking at my previous comments on this thread, like many folks I got excited about the election results and expected things to change instantly. After reflection realize that Rome was not built in a day and change comes about by hard work and time needed for good people to do the work.
Like I said before, it is fairly obvious too many that our systems of political control are at best undemocratic and only serve the interests of the big global corporations, no matter where you live, be it a city in the U.S.A. or a small town somewhere in Europe, the people that represent us do not serve our interests.
With this in mind I think we need to take the advice of the journalist Greg Palast and build the representative and democratic structures needed to bring about this change.
As the existing political parties are controlled by the lobbying industries who can throw around a lot more cash to lubricate things than we can, I think it is up to the new forms of citizens groups like Black Box Voting, to use this muscle and collective wisdom to take a serious look at our democracy and advocate public meetings whereby we can create the new groups needed to bring about this type of change in the establishment and implementation of policy.
I think we also need to explore ways of collective working thus lightening the work load on the inspirational individuals like the people that created Black Box Voting that have undertaken this great but needed burden. Let's take for example the data that you have collected about the current mid term election.
Examining this data and looking for useful information it contains must be time consuming, but a lot of it must also be fairly repetitious, perhaps we could find ways of disseminating this information amongst members and devising ways for people to work easily with this raw data.
It's also interesting to note that a lot of technically minded individuals frequent this site. I wonder if we could create something similar to the Seti Program that used internet links to look at data and had an inspirational system of checks and balances to make sure that the results where correct. I think they sent out the data in blocks to more than one person and simply compared the returned information and discarded mismatches.
Anyway, hope this helps and if you have mountains of paper work that just needs to be physically looked at would be more than willing to offer up my time to look at this.
(Message edited by Marky-aCe on November 10, 2006) |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 8
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 1:22 am: |
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I am utterly shocked and embarrassed by much of what I am reading on this blog. Has anyone had the opportunity to actually review the source code from VoteHere? It was intended to be publicly available from the beginning and was delivered in modules to the public as the code was developed. There's no hacking necessary at all. I have the source code right here on my laptop and have had it for a VERY, VERY long time. And it's entirely legal. Go and fetch it right now from their web site. That's the whole beauty of this concept! It's public! Otherwise VoteHere wouldn't work at all. It's a useless non-starter if it's not public. Get that point drilled into your head before reading further. There's nothing at all secret about it. Nothing. It's an old idea that's been written about in textbooks for decades.
It should also be clear to you all that brilliance is entirely unnecessary to understand how the protocol works. So any appeals to authority (i.e. Andy Neff's wonderful brain) are entirely irrelevant, because an average person can be made to see how simple it works. Better put, a high school student could have invented the protocol (strike that, a good junior high school student). In fact I sat down with the then-CEO of VoteHere Jim Adler here in Maryland and figured out the protocol in a few minutes time. I drafted a document explaining it which I know at least some people that frequently post here have received (whether they recall or not).
You might say, "Oh but there's cryptography involved and so it's complicated." Yes there is some crypto. But any crypto algorithm can be substituted and everything still works just fine. Wait... let me up the ante for you: you can actually REMOVE the cryptography altogether and the protocal itself still works! The crypto serves secondary purposes which make it useful for voting. Neff didn't invent anything with regard to that. The real power is in the timing of the interaction between the voter and the printer. All those guys did was put a simple twist on an old idea discussed in Bruce Schneier's classic tomb "Applied Cryptography." I consider it barely patentable, but nevertheless patentable.
To compare paper, pencil, and count-by-hand to VoteHere is clearly not to understand it. And to talk about Robert Gates or anyone else "fooling with your vote" further indicates a miscomprehension of the purpose of the technology. And before you launch any critique at me personally, note that I am an entirely unassailable combatant in this war for verifiable voting. I know all about Linda Lamone, Kevin Zeese, Linda Schade, Jon Cardin, and a host of other key players in Maryland. I have fought for appropriate paper ballot legislation here and lost much sleep preparing for Ways and Means Committee hearings. To dismiss VoteHere as "crypto-crap" is absurd. It's an idea that should be cultivated and encouraged. Because it provides by far the best election protection imaginable. It's FAR FAR FAR better than paper ballots alone. That's the key: don't think of it as mutually exclusive with paper. That's what got us into our fight over it in Maryland. Everyone just assumed they understood what it sort of intended to do and they all made fools of themselves. Let's not repeat that here. Please.
It's 4am or I'd write more. Does VoteHere deserve solid critique? Yes indeed. Does the technology deserve our support? You bet your last twinkie it does. Maybe I'll explain it once again for the umpteenth time on another post. Sorry to vent, but BBV has an unfortunate reputation for getting carried away with assertions. I love you people. And I want so much for you. But not understanding something is utterly NO EXCUSE for providing negative commentary with regard to it. Be adults. Read. Ask. Think. I'd like to be a positive force to curtail that reputation.
Good night and good luck.
Saul |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 169
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 7:00 am: |
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Saul,
The entrapment attempt occurred before the code was made public. You can document that VoteHere claims they were hacked and the code "stolen" simply by looking at old news articles. It made the mainstream press. The supposed "hacking" took place in Oct. 2003 and the media reports hit at the end of Dec 2003 and beginning of Jan 2003.
None of the experts I have worked with are enamored of the VoteHere approach. The specific problems with VoteHere's crypto solution are discussed elsewhere on this site. This particular thread outlines the relationships of VoteHere to HAVA lobbying, VoteHere to a member of its former board of directors, Robert Gates - now proposed to replaced Rumsfeld.
I am constantly amazed at some of the crypto crowd's willingness to trade the public, civic functions of hand counted paper ballots for a system developed and controlled by defense industry cronies.
And for those who are not familiar with VoteHere -- it allows you to check circumstantial evidence that you voted, but not to check that who you voted for was represented correctly.
By the way: the scientific community has been complicit in cover-ups of the truth, and makes errors -- as you just did when you asserted that VoteHere code did not need to be stolen because it was public, without doing your homework on the dates or running a simple media search. RABA technologies head Michael Wertheimer withheld crucial information from his report, supposedly because he was told to by Diebold lobbyists and people in Lamone's office. Scientists have yet to acknowledge the very real and continuing issues with GEMS, WinEDS and the other central tabulating programs.
To say that Black Box Voting has a "reputation" for making assertions is an elitist bit pushed by the scientists and their followers. You just made an assertion, about VoteHere. The scientists have made several incorrect assertions -- at one point, one of the very well known ones tried to get Hursti to CHANGE HIS REPORT so as not to expose an incorrect assertion this guy had been making.
I'm not trying to pit the citizens against the scientists, but I won't accept the arrogant and elitist statements about BBV's assertions being somehow less valid than those put forth by the ivory tower.
If I was to write a book about what I can document that the scientific community knew -- but did not tell -- I think the credibility wars would take on a whole new meaning.
For starters, let's drop the arrogance. Citizens have a right to be involved. Hand counted paper ballots have a right to be sitting at the solutions table, considered with as much seriousness as cryptography. Stop telling us how to think.
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Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 170
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 7:28 am: |
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One more item here: Proponents of keeping computers in voting often say they are "fighting for paper ballots" when what they are fighting for is optical scan systems.
When describing one's fight for paper ballots it is important to differentiate whether you are advocating public hand counting of paper ballots at the polling place, or paper ballots scanned and read by computer with some sort of crypto verification procedure.
These are two entirely different positions.
I would venture to guess that Saul is an opponent of hand counting paper ballots at the polling place, and when he says he is fighting for paper ballots, he means counting them by computer and verifying with cryptography.
I hope you will clarify this for us, Saul. |
Sue Bartlett
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Msfixit
Post Number: 7
Registered: 03-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 8:24 am: |
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I hate to say it, but probably the half million dollars they spent lobbying isn't unusual for a company funded by venture capital when they stand to make millions. It's probably why they had such government insiders on their board. In itself this is not necessarily suspicious, but I agree with Bev. Although it does help their business to not have legislation requiring paper audit,the fact they were actively lobbying against paper trails and paper auditing, seems at a minimum suspicious and not in the "people's" best interest. VoteHere spent $480K lobbying the Fed. House, according to the records Bev posted about. I found another article yesterday that I can't find now that talked about what they had spent on the NY leg. But it paid off. There in Washington state - they are using VoteHere software. see: http://www.votehere.com/news/archive06/091906.php
where it says they are using it in 15 counties in WA state, and there is another article here:
New technology allows voters to track their ballots
By Steven Friederich - Daily World Writer
Tuesday, November 1, 2005 10:33 AM PST
http://www.thedailyworld.com/articles/2005/11/01/local_news/02news.txt
"When Grays Harbor County switched to an all vote-by-mail system over the summer, many voters expressed concern that the county might lose their ballots in the mail.
But new technology is addressing those concerns. It allows voters to track their ballots over a Web site, using encrypted identification codes and FedEx-like tracking technology that was developed by Bellevue-based VoteHere Inc.
“It will affirm the fact all the ballots are counted, and for the first time ever we’re going to make sure voters are empowered to not just make sure their vote was just cast, but that it was, indeed, counted,” says Bryan D. Finney, director of government affairs for the company.
County Auditor Vern Spatz said voters might notice a new barcode on the green ballot envelopes. This barcode contains each voter’s encrypted voter identification.
As ballots come into the auditor’s Montesano office, Spatz said workers have been scanning the barcodes. The tracking codes remain scrambled throughout the process to avoid compromising the voters’ privacy, he noted." |
Adam Fulford
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Northofborder
Post Number: 2
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 9:54 am: |
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I did get the files to download after all, and could save them as PDF ("printing" into the pdf distiller). I haven't yet managed to find files with Livingston's name attached to them.
This information is surely weirder than what most fiction writers could conjure. |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 9
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 10:27 am: |
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I apologize for my tone. It springs from the very same indignation that you feel and duly express now. I sense what is suggestive of arrogance myself. And I don't like to see that any more than you do. And that fuels the tone. We are perhaps quite similar in that. So I agree. Let's drop that.
I understand the entrapment history and I'm sorry for any miscommunication on my part. What I was concerned about was the way in which including that piece of history in isolation affects the perception of the technology and the way in which the thread here unfolded. Surely that wasn't your intention, but clearly one would expect a followup clarification. I would have explained it quite differently in the original post. Or made it clear in the comments. Otherwise the thread develops into something quite misleading.
It should be clear to everyone that it doesn't matter if the emperor of some evil, nefarious regime developed this protocol. Trust is not necessary. The safety and security of the protocol is self-evident. It's like having someone explain geometry to you, or being told 2 x 3 = 6. Once you get it, you realize its truth and validity and power is public knowledge. Think less of it as being created and more like a discovery of some axiom or analytical truth. In such a case, the potential motivations of the source do not matter. To see comments to the contrary develop in this thread suggests that this concept is misunderstood. So I wanted to remind everyone that the conceptual framework of VoteHere only functions if the software is made entirely public and completely transparent, regardless of when the programmers ultimately chose to do so. It couldn't be used in a voting system without being entirely public. It wouldn't work. And most importantly, it makes no such claim to. So your recount of history I have no objection to. But the way you couched it was not ideal. And we witness the subsequent misunderstanding of its significance in the thread.
So you see, any discussion of Robert Gates and his past has no bearing on the utility of the technology. It might seem at first like it should. But it most assuredly doesn't. It would indeed be important with a company like Diebold and the use of DREs alone, which as has been well-established here at Black Box as riddled with proprietary and technological issues. And I duly congratulate you for that. But VoteHere's protocol transcends the method used. It works quite beautifully with hand-counted paper ballots. And I'm quite proud and happy to carry that flag by the way (to answer your followup question). No need to trust a computer to count our vote. VoteHere ensures that our vote doesn't get lost in the system, even when used with a hand-counted paper ballot. So it only magnifies the trustworthiness of a given system. That's why I championed its use with hand-counted paper ballots. It let's me know as a voter that my paper ballot wasn't lost, stolen, or destroyed. And that it was counted in the final tally.
More on what VoteHere failed to do properly in their lobbying efforts (in my clearly need-to-be-more-humble opinion) later... Thanks for your continued service to the election integrity community.
Frustrated and demoralized...
Saul |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 10
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 12:33 pm: |
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I'm contacting Phil Varner to further clarify his objections. Perhaps he did not place them in the proper context. I've analyzed this technology myself and have read numerous objections already, each of which my colleagues and I have shown falsely attributes risk and concerns. But I will be honest and reserve judgement on his analysis until such time as I have had an appropriate dialog with him. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1042
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 6:44 pm: |
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Bev said: "And for those who are not familiar with VoteHere -- it allows you to check circumstantial evidence that you voted, but not to check that who you voted for was represented correctly." What system actually does 'let you check that who you voted for was represented (I'd like to add counted) correctly', anyone? Did VoteHere claim that it would? SeeVote claimed that it did that, but I think that I proved that it didn't, as well as several other people. |
Paula Nelson
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Paulagem
Post Number: 37
Registered: 01-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 6:57 pm: |
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Saul, you used the phrase "frustrated and demoralized" . From reading the thread I would suggest that "frustrated and humbled" might be more accurate.
Humility is a virtue that helps us receive greater truth.
Love and Light,
Paula |
Marian Beddill
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Uu7thprinciple
Post Number: 41
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 7:44 pm: |
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I was able to see a demo and hear a presentation by VoteHere about 3-4 years ago, as a member of a LWV team. (And I have some experience in computer programming, though now a bit outdated.)
What I understood then was that the system worked this way: While voting at a DRE - whether at a site or (heaven forbid!!) on the internet - when you finished voting, the system would furnish you a character-string feedback, which represented your set of votes in such a way that nobody could determine what the votes were. It would be your "receipt" (using the term loosely.)
The system then did its internal magic to tally votes, adding yours in its own way.
The last step by the voter, is to somehow access the system, and get a report from it, of "your votes" -- again, in a character-string. Their claim (which I did and do strongly object to) is that if the two character-strings matched, then somehow Joe Blow should believe that his votes went to the right candidates! BS.
My retort was that it would be VERY easy to build a system which maintained two sets of books (hello- auditors!). One set reported to YOU with the "right" answer - the other set tallied the votes, which might or might not be truthful.
Soon after our group visit, and a followup forum on the topic, VoteHere quit pushing that system, and announced a change of product lines. They now feature "Mail-in Ballot Tracker". http://www.votehere.com/ ;
In closing, I'll say that I do not doubt that such a system CAN be built, and that it COULD do what they claim - nor even that VoteHere has done it. My doubt is that it could ever be shown to be valid, to gain public confidence, and that there could ever be a valid audit of such voting, since the document-trail would not begin with an INDEPENDENT voter-verified paper ballot record which satisfied security and integrity requirements, thus being available post-election, to be the parallel track of verification.
No internet voting, ever.
No paperless DRE's, ever.
Random audits of VVPB's, forever.
Don't let your valuable water or your valuable ballots dribble away and be lost:
http://noleakybuckets.org/ .
Marian
http://NoLeakyBuckets.org
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Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1047
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 8:15 pm: |
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So long as you view one vote singularly (and can't get a record of all the votes) they can tell you that any single vote was recorded any way they want to, the useful one being what you wanted to hear.... |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 11
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 9:08 pm: |
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To answer Brant's first question, the VoteHere technology does indeed guarantee and show the voter that her vote applied to her intended candidate.
The VoteHere technology provides a commitment string prior to casting the vote which prevents the machine from cheating without clearly being detected. That's part of the protocol. It works based on logic and commitment. It could be implemented on a hand-counted paper ballot system. It ultimately acts as an end-to-end transaction audit. It gives the individual voter knowledge that her paper ballot has not been lost, misread, manipulated, destroyed or otherwise miscounted. Not just a hint or conjecture, but true knowledge.
Also, to respond to Mr. Lamb's last comment, an important feature of the protocol is that a record of literally all the ballots/votes cast by every voter is made public after the election. This way, anyone and everyone can check to see if her vote is included in the final collection. It's one discrete aggregate ballot file, so no manipulation is possible without detection. All parties work from the same file. The counting software source code is made public also as part of the protocol. Literally anyone on the planet can verify tbe results of our elections. Any voter can complain if her vote is missing or if it has been changed to a different candidate.
It's a powerful tool that entails an honest outcome to any type of election. Start with the extraordinary value added to a hand-counted paper based system for the purposes of fruitful discussion. |
Marian Beddill
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Uu7thprinciple
Post Number: 42
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 10:00 pm: |
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Saul;
You have not explained how the system works. Only given sales-pitches saying that it does.
Take us through it, step by step.
A voter opens up her home computer, logs into the voting office and casts her ballot, gets some response (what is it?), and logs out.
(Or, does the same thing at a poll-site. Be explicit that it can be used in either method.)
Some kind of report goes from the input-computer to some central point. What goes there? Does it contain, in one "bundle", the roster of individual votes cast, AND the ID of the voter? (Privacy!)
When it gets there, what does the system do with the votes?
After the polls are closed, where does the database-data go? How is it transmitted?
When the voter later checks the system, what does it give her?
When she believes that the answer is "wrong", what is her recourse? To whom does she file a complaint? And, how can an error be rectified?
Then, when a thousand voters line up to claim that their vote-reports didn't match, what can be done? Where is the independent audit trail? The voter does not (as I understand it) have a printout showing who she voted for - only an encoded zxkjvayupebgpbgpbgpt-string of characters!
Lets have a plain-english description.
(Oh by the way, how could I verify that the published Open-Source program code is actually the compiled EXE file running on all the machines in the system?)
Marian
http://NoLeakyBuckets.org
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Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 12
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 12:05 am: |
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Let me dig up the document that I've already spent countless hours authoring. |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 171
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 3 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 8:04 am: |
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And as I remember, the VoteHere system was administered by "trustees." When asked about these trustees, the answer was that those issues remained to be ironed out.
Let's not gloss over the entrapment issue. When you see the film "Hacking Democracy" you see clearly that the attempt was to frame my findings in the context of "theft" of the Diebold files. Entrapment with "stolen" VoteHere files would have provided "pattern" of conduct which is one component to lodging a racketeering charge (RICO).
Though I was interrogated by the Secret Service through a division that was created with the enactment of the Patriot Act, the letterhead of the U.S. Attorney indicated that they were approaching it as a RICO case.
What was Jim Adler's involvement in cooperating with the entrapment attempt? Was there approval by the VoteHere board of directors? It doesn't pass the laugh test that this company was hacked and its source code "stolen" (and, as Saul indicated, they had already planned to give the source code away, meaning that offering it up in an entrapment attempt had no real downside to the company). What this looks like is a corporate or political attempt to frame a writer who was exposing information contrary to their business interests. The political nature of this does make the relationship of Robert Gates relevant.
This behavior is way, way over the line. This entrapment attempt was never investigated. I have an active Freedom of Information Act request in and the Department of Homeland Security has sent me a letter acknowledging that the files exist, but stalled producing the records saying that it will "take a long time" to find them and fulfill the request.
Those who believe the VoteHere concept is a good one should also read the novel by Dr. Herbert Thompson, "The Mezonic Agenda." There is much about encryption that even academics don't realize. For one thing, in the event that a supposedly bulletproof encryption technology is cracked, it is not necessarily removed from the marketplace. If in very wide use -- for example, used to secure Internet credit card transactions worldwide -- the U.S. Intelligence community can keep the method of cracking the encryption a secret, placing a strict Homeland Security-level ban on the individual who discovers how to crack it, and the encryption will publicly be considered "safe" while only the CIA and other members of the intelligence community know how to bypass the encryption.
What is in use in Washington state is probably the absentee ballot tracking system, not the same thing as the supposed "vote authentication" program claimed to secure the votes. I have no comment on that system. By the way, another thing that was never explained was the cost of the VoteHere system to supposedly secure the votes. As I recall, the charge was to be on a per-vote basis, but no one I know was ever able to get a figure for what it was going to cost the taxpayers. At some point you really must compare the COSTS of all this technology with simple hand-count, publicly, at the polls systems.
Things are never simple. But hand counted paper ballots are. |
Joseph Hall
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Joehall
Post Number: 110
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 9:15 am: |
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There are good people at VoteHere. I'm sure they lobbied their asses off to show the VC people that they were doing something when they weren't making sales.
Do note that they have made quite a few healthy sales in the past year or so. But not of the technology that seems to be the main focus of this thread. They've sold their absentee or vote-by-mail tracking application ("Mail-in Ballot Tracker") that ensures a jurisdiction hasn't lost any ballots to a few jurisdictions in WA (which have had problems with misplacing paper ballots). |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 172
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 9:35 am: |
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What the **???
"There are good people at VoteHere."
VoteHere was involved in an entrapment attempt which led to me receiving a gag order and being told to appear in front of a federal grand jury on a bogus investigation.
Geez. Things like this aren't done by an employee, folks, they are authorized by people at the top.
If that's the way they do business they should never be allowed within 6 light years of our election system. |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 174
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 10:03 am: |
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2005, New York Times, VoteHere: $120,000 annual contract to lobby state lawmakers to block bill to require use of paper ballots; Mirram Global, hired by VoteHere Inc of Washington State to block law
This isn't even included in the $480,000 from the VoteHere, Rhoads and Livingston Group lobbying. That puts them up to $600,000 in lobbying fees (or $720,000 if it is indeed annual) , a significant chunk of it specifically to block laws requiring paper ballots.
And by the way, look up the former Chairman of the Board at VoteHere: Admiral Bill Owens. He was on the Defense Policy Board and was running SAIC. (Hint: SAIC, involved in a coverup of Diebold flaws, see the BradBlog article on this) You'll see.
By the way, a fledgling company with no sales doesn't just happen to attract the former director of the CIA [Robert Gates] and one of the top people on the Defense Policy Board [Admiral William Owens] and one of the original NASED kingpins [Ralph Munro, who violated state law by accepting a position with VoteHere 10 days after stepping down as Washington Secretary of State without waiting the required 3 years]. Munro, who lists himself as a lobbyist on the VoteHere forms, somehow managed to get himself seated on the Carter-Baker panel to examine voting systems.
Ask yourself what was promised to these heavy hitters to get them involved. The product has never had particularly lucrative prospects, so what was the reason they chose to become part of this tiny company that sold virtually nothing in six years? |
Kathleen Wynne
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Wynnek
Post Number: 36
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 12:42 pm: |
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Joe,
Could this ongoing, unrelenting push to shine a positive light on a technical solution, any technical solution, to our electronic voting woes (despite the growing consensus by the American people to return to hand counting our ballots), be because this is an agenda-driven issue? Where elections governed by average citizens, without any need for computer expertise, is just not part of that agenda?
I hope not, but it certainly seems that way to me. If my suspicions are correct, I shudder to think of the consequences, if America is fooled again into relying on technology to secure the integrity of our votes.
Kathleen
(Message edited by wynnek on November 12, 2006) |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 13
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 12:58 pm: |
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It suggests in the title and explicitly states in the second paragraph of the initial post from Ms. Harris that Gates was on the board of directors of VoteHere. I would like to ask with a muted voice and polite tone: Where did you get that impression? Could you please provide some information to corroborate this? I would suggest that Mr. Gates did not play such a role. But to be fair, first I should examine the evidence that you provide to that effect. Thank you again for your service to this community. |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 14
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 1:08 pm: |
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Also of interest is the following quote regarding a novel: "the U.S. Intelligence community can keep the method of cracking the encryption a secret, placing a strict Homeland Security-level ban on the individual who discovers how to crack it, and the encryption will publicly be considered 'safe' while only the CIA and other members of the intelligence community know how to bypass the encryption."
Let's presume for the moment that the intelligence community indeed has such a protocol in place for implementation. What would the consequences of such a "crack" in the cryptography represent for VoteHere's technology? What are the ramifications? What exactly could they do with regard to an election if they held such a key? How could it be harmful? |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 176
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 2:16 pm: |
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Robert Gates was indeed on the board of directors of VoteHere. He is no longer on the board. Go to archive.org and look up the old info from votehere.com on board members.
I didn't get the existence of such a protocol from a novel. I got it from interviewing people who deal with such matters.
As to what they could do, surely "it's classified." Even I know that would be the answer.
And isn't this the whole point? Why are we doing this?
BTW, I haven't yet heard any answer to Marion Beddill's questions. Haven't heard any real answer to the fundamental ethics questions of a company involved in an entrapment scheme. Haven't seen any answers as to why a company laden with defense industry types should be involved in voting at all.
These are issues that should be discussed, in open debate, with citizens of all stripes. After all, it's our voting system.
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Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 15
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 3:35 pm: |
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The answer to your comment "Haven't seen any answers as to why a company laden with defense industry types should be involved in voting at all" was provided. It was provided by suggesting that it doesn't matter WHO is involved if the technology is self-evidently trustworthy. Search for the word "emperor" in my comments. That doesn't fully answer the original question of why it is self-evidently trustworthy, but it demonstrates that it doesn't stand as a valid question to pose on its own. So I'll endeavor to answer the trustworthiness question by virtue of answering Marion Beddill's questions. But I must do my homework first so as to present an honest and clear picture.
As to what they could do, surely "it's classified." Even I know that would be the answer.
With regard to your response, "As to what they could do, surely "it's classified." Even I know that would be the answer. And isn't this the whole point? Why are we doing this?"... classification has absolutely nothing to do with defining what "they" could do. What they can or cannot do is restricted by how cryptography is used in the protocol. It's a logic question. Once you crack the code, what does that give you free rein to inflict upon? Can you change votes without being detected? What gets "opened" exactly by cracking the crypto. Anything of significance? Surely it would be important to address that in order to place it in proper context.
First I must do the homework to demonstrate that Gates was not on the board of directors. I'm off to do something. When I return, I'll start digging. Or you can point me to a link if anyone has one handy. To save me some time. But don't go looking for me. Only if it's handy. I'm perfectly willing to do my own work if needed.
Thanks again for your time and service. I have to address one question at a time. |
Marian Beddill
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Uu7thprinciple
Post Number: 43
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 6:29 pm: |
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Saul;
Repeating my questions, so they don't get lost amid other topics, and in two posts, to separate the system functionality from voter-followup.
How does the VoteHere system work?
Take us through it, step by step.
A voter opens up her home computer, logs into the voting office and
casts her ballot, gets some response (what is it?), and logs out.
(Or, does the same thing at a poll-site. Be explicit that it can be
used in either method.)
Some kind of report goes from the input-computer to some central
point. What goes there? Does it contain, in one "bundle", the roster
of individual votes cast, AND the ID of the voter? (Privacy!)
When it gets there, what does the system do with the votes?
After the polls are closed, where does the database-data go? How is it
transmitted?
When the voter later checks the system, what does it give her?
(continued next post)
Marian
http://NoLeakyBuckets.org
|
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 177
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 6:31 pm: |
|
By all means, do your homework and let me know when you prove that "Gates was not on the Board of Directors."
Still no answer about why taxpayers should put a red cent into a company that involves itself in entrapment and harassment activities. |
Marian Beddill
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Uu7thprinciple
Post Number: 44
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 6:33 pm: |
|
(the semi-final part of the process):
Voter-followup, after the system reply by the VoteHere system to the voter:
When she believes that the answer is "wrong", what is her recourse? To whom does she file a complaint? And, how can an error be rectified?
Then, when a thousand voters line up to claim that their vote-reports didn't match, what can be done? Where is the independent audit trail?
The voter does not (as I understand it) have a printout showing who she voted for - only an encoded zxkjvayupebgpbgpbgpt-string of characters!
Marian
http://NoLeakyBuckets.org
|
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 16
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 9:32 pm: |
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Marian, don't worry. I wasn't joking when I said just above that "I'll endeavor to answer the trustworthiness question by virtue of answering Marion Beddill's questions. But I must do my homework first so as to present an honest and clear picture." I try to be straightforward. I try to do my due diligence and detailed, painstaking homework. I certainly fail on occasion. But I try to quickly and publicly admit to my errors and seek the truth above all else.
First things first (as James Bond would say): I need to post a document here which I have dug up. I was able to find a version that I had written back in March 2005. It's not the best, but it's a start. I'll keep looking for more recent, easier-to-understand versions. Or I'll simply re-write it altogether as I have time. It's an important foundation for answering your questions. I find it difficult to explain everthing without showing the progression that is demonstrated in this document.
The protocol itself requires no exotic math to follow. But it's the FULL purpose of it that gets confusing. Why do this? Why do that? There is some complex math used in some of the details, BUT this is always encapsulated in the process in such a way that you can take something for granted AT FIRST, see how it works in the larger picture, and THEN come back later and review it. That's how I try to explain it.
I could explain JUST the protocol to you very easily. But THAT would leave you asking a thousand questions (just as I did after it was first explained to me).
So let's see if this attachment upload works or not. I've never done this here before. Let me know if you can read this Word document. And yes I'll be searching for a better document in the mean time.
Thank you all for your continued service to the voting integrity community.
|
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 17
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 10:07 pm: |
|
Ok Bev. Please understand that I responded with indignation at first because I felt like my integrity was in effect questioned for being pro-VHTi (VoteHere's technology). Your initial language was powerful and frankly it hurt me. But you certainly do not owe ME an apology. I will try to be less sensitive. I'm trying to take a more dispassionate approach now. I hope you see that.
Time for the next step in our research. I followed your reference that you mentioned here: "Go to archive.org and look up the old info from votehere.com on board members."
Here is the actual link for anyone interested in checking this out for themselves:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://votehere.com
You'll have to copy and paste it into your browser because apparently the star (*) splits the link.
Please show me which of the 51 entries on this web page contains any documentation to support the claim that Gates was on the Board of Directors for VoteHere. I'm not doing this to be a pain in your ***. I just have to play devil's advocate and seek the truth. Just as you, I don't want to have to trust anyone. I want to see things for myself. So please tell me which of these 51 links demonstrates that Gates was on the board of directors. Everyone here can participate too! Just go through the 51 links and find it. I'll feel much better when I see it definitively in writing. I hope that you can understand that. It goes along with your motto "Don't tell us how to think." I kind of like that!
Take care all...
Saul |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 179
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 10:33 pm: |
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That was information I've archived during the writing of my book. I have it on an old computer. If not on archive.org, it will be findable in an old lexis-nexis search or something. I'm actually working on election followup, but when I get time, if no one else does, I'll go back and pull the original references. |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 18
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 11:09 pm: |
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Remember that they are a venture-capital backed company, and as such, they publish their members of their board of directors. Since Gates is not listed anywhere in their publication as a member of the board of directors, then either:
A. He was not a member of the board of directors.
-OR-
B. We can have some fun and get them into some serious trouble. Just think... you can bring them down in a simple action.
Find any reference which actually demonstrates that they are lieing when they still maintain that he has never been on their board of directors (because that's indeed what they maintain -- I have a letter here suggesting as much) and I will hire the legal team to harrass them for it. I'll pay you a bonus finder's fee prize (you name the amount before I commit) as an incentive. Anyone a taker? Anyone care to find the truth? I'll wash your car every month. I'll do your laundry for a year. You name it.
P.S. I still humbly maintain that he was never a member of their board of directors. If he was, then again, they are in for the ride of their life... as they have officially lied. |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 180
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 5 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 11:20 pm: |
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He is listed in a San Francisco Chronicle article dated Mar. 3, 2003 as a director of VoteHere. Gates is listed, along with ACCURATE members Avi Rubin and Dan Boneh, as a member of the VoteHere Advisory Board on a VoteHere Web page:
VoteHere Leadership
VoteHere’s Board of Directors, Advisors and Management Team are comprised of highly experienced people internationally recognized for their leadership and expertise in the arenas of technology, security and government.
Board Members | Management Team
Board Members
Directors Advisors
Adm. Bill Owens, Chairman
Jim Adler
Richard Green
Ralph Munro
Tom Simpson
Robert G. Wolfe
Keith Bantick
Dan Boneh
Larry Sabato
Berry Schoenmakers
Avi Rubin
Dr. Robert Gates
Admiral Bill Owens, Chairman
Admiral Bill Owens serves as the Company's Chairman. Currently, Bill Owens is Co-CEO and Vice Chairman of Teledesic, a global broadband networking company. Previously, he was President, Chief Operating Officer and Vice Chairman of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the nation’s largest employee-owned high-technology company.
During his distinguished military career, Bill Owens held the rank of four-star Admiral in the US Navy and served as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also served as the deputy chief of Naval Operations for Resources, Warfare Requirements and Assessments, commander of the US Sixth Fleet, senior military assistant to Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney and director of the Office of Program Appraisal for the Secretary of the Navy
* * * * *
Now I'm taking a moment to see if the S.F. Chronicle may have misread "advisory board" as "board of directors"
I didn't realize that Dan Boneh was also a VoteHere person. This puts the scientists that picked up the $8 million in ACCURATE grants very heavily weighted with VoteHere affiliations. |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 19
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 11:40 pm: |
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I hope you understand the extraordinary significance of the difference between being on the board of directors versus being on the board of advisors. It is monumental. They are two completely different things. And that significance weighs heavily in your post here on your web site AND in the similar claims you make in your book. Most entrepreneurial startups have a board of advisors that plays a very distinct role from the directors. Where there is power with a director, there is absolutely none with an advisor. It's a key distinction that financial analysts understand and appreciate.
The citation above that you have posted here amalgamates members of both classes and so does not demonstrate membership in the directors. Gates was in fact an advisor, not a director. |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 181
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 12:36 am: |
|
Yes, if he is on the advisory board I wouldn't expect him to have culpability for the decision to embark on an entrapment attempt in order to discredit or harass critics. That culpability would be in the hands of the board, but not the advisory board.
So far, the S.F. Chronicle says he is a director, VoteHere says advisory board, and there are references to court documents that reportedly refer to him as a director. Nothing definitive -- except you say you know that he was NOT a director, and that he WAS an advisory board member, therefore, you must have some level of inside knowledge about this.
I can imagine that the S.F. Chronicle reporter may have misunderstood and called Gates a member of the board of directors when he was actually a member of the advisory board.
You seem very close to the situation, Saul. You know this because...?
And since you seem to have close information on this, I'm interested in your take on the entrapment actions and the "hack" and "stolen source code" situations which Jim Adler specifically says VoteHere traced to voting integrity activists.
And what is your take on the SAIC, a company that Owens (and many reports say Gates) were involved with, doing an analysis of the Diebold programs, finding flaws that the purported solution for would be VoteHere?
Don't you think that's a conflict of interest?
And what's your take on the extraodinarily heavy representation of people who are enamored of the VoteHere solution in the NSF-funded ACCURATE program?
I'm asking you this because you apparently have personal or inside knowledge, since the Internet doesn't currently have any clear record on whether Gates was a director or an advisor, but you have stated that he was an advisor, with certainty.
I know the tone of this may sound aggressive, but please bear in mind that the actions taken against me due to VoteHere were extraordinarily and inappropriately aggressive, and need to be examined more closely before anyone even considers spending taxpayer dollars on VoteHere.
Whether Robert Gates or the advisory board members knew about the entrapment scheme or not I don't know; maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but it should be investigated further. |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 182
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 12:59 am: |
|
I should mention that I haven't had time to go back to the old computer where I stored source documents for my book. I used a lot of cites that were mainstream news articles, so it's very possible that the S.F. Chronicle article may have been my source, in which case -- unless the court documents change this -- it would appear that I am wrong about the position of director.
I'll check the court documents when I get a chance, and will issue a correction on the position held.
I don't see it as "huge" as Saul Iverson does. It doesn't even entirely get Robert Gates out of the line of questioning with the entrapment attempt, since the VoteHere Advisory Board members were given stock options. There was a fiduciary interest in discrediting and marginalizing critics, though the entrapment thing was hard to believe in its outright amateurishness and overreaching.
Being on the advisory board of a company that makes a police report claiming theft of code they are giving away, and then persuades law enforcement to harass one of their business critics about it -- hmm, I wouldn't say that's exactly a feather in a cap.
Whether or not it's culpable depends on who knew what and when. In fact, that question is getting more and more interesting. Now we know that SAIC was covering up flaws, and that RABA covered up, and that SAIC had connections with VoteHere while SAIC evaluated Diebold identifying flaws for which VoteHere is the solution.
I'm sorry. It really does stink. |
Adam Fulford
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Northofborder
Post Number: 3
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 4:12 am: |
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From Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel (8/18/03)
http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/aug03_Landes.shtml
"Another former SAIC board member, also on the board of VoteHere, is ex-CIA director Robert Gates, a veteran of the Iran/Contra scandal."
In These Times
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/voting_machines_gone_wild/
Voting Machines Gone Wild!
December 11, 2003
Robert Gates, ex-CIA director, former SAIC board member and a veteran of the Iran-Contra scandal, also is on the board of VoteHere.
YES! Magazine
Winter 2004 Issue:
http://www.yesmagazine.com/article.asp?id=683
Whose Voting Machines
by Doug Pibel
AIC board members Admiral Bill Owens (former military aide to Dick Cheney), and ex-CIA chief Robert Gates, who was implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, also serve on the board of VoteHere, a growing elections software company. SAIC itself is producing electronic voting systems in partnership with Diversified Dynamics.
The American Assembler Newsblog
5/2/2004
http://americanassembler.com/newsblog/index.php?m=20040502
Democracy In Peril: Secret Service Attempting to Use Patriot Act to Demand User Info From Black Box Voting
Okay, a word about VoteHere: This is the company that has no visible means of support. It doesn’t seem to sell anything. Its board is heavily infested with defense industry types – a former CIA director (Robert Gates, now heads George Bush School of Government); it had Admiral Bill Owens, also Vice-Chairman of SAIC and a member of the Defense Policy Board with Perle and Wolfowitz, a very close friend of Cheney; currently headed by former Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munro.
(Message edited by North-of-Border on November 13, 2006) |
Adam Fulford
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Northofborder
Post Number: 4
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 4:23 am: |
|
This really is stranger than a Kafka novel. Now, determining exactly what role Robert Gates played in this mysterious organization (that has all the appearances of organized crime) is proving to be a bit of a challenge.
(Message edited by North-of-Border on November 13, 2006) |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 20
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 7:55 am: |
|
Notice Mr. Fulford that none of these items show a documentary source. Noone in these examples bothered to demonstrate (or apparently conduct) their homework. Actually, in the last example you cite, you also see language written in the first person which suggests that the author is Bev Harris. That would be circular reasoning to use her as a source in this example.
Web queries are wonderful, and the internet is indeed a rich resource, but I personally feel a sense of responsibility in this community to do my own homework. I won't merely accept a reporter's word or an internet query about something for which I know I can obtain first-hand information for myself (based on the company dynamics). As Bev herself has said in her closing for this blog entry, "But that's just me."
I'll move on to answer other questions and insinuations later. First, though, I don't want to appear to neglect Marian's repeated concerns. Have you read the document I posted, Marian? We really must patiently endure and go through it first. |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 21
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 8:21 am: |
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Bev, for the greater good, we need to establish something. It is entirely possible that although the purveyors of the VHTi technology are potentially "evil" (I'm not making such claims or personally weighing in just yet on this issue), the technology itself could be quite valuable... and therefore should be treated quite independently of the company. We could always indict them for being bad people whilst encouraging the technology itself for the greater good. These are indeed separate issues. Do you not agree?
Would we withhold the cure for leprosy from our child or from the larger community because the scientist who makes the discovery was litigious? We would assail the scientist but independently evaluate his discovery. Right? |
Marian Beddill
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Uu7thprinciple
Post Number: 45
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 9:56 am: |
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Saul;
OK I have read the document you posted:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/VoteHere_VHTi_Explanation-45220.do c
It does not answer any but a portion of the original questions:
A voter opens up her home computer, logs into the voting office and casts her ballot, or, does the same thing at a poll-site. Be explicit that it can be used in either method. ?
[NO response. Does it work in both cases?]
...gets some response (what is it?)
[Partial answer, confounded by lots of examples which are NOT what she gets. Your example deals with ONE race - no hint what it does for ALL the races on the ballot!]
and logs out.
[No answer about this.]
...AND the ID of the voter?
[Your example hints that the public VoterID number is on the thing printed, but did not explicitly say so. Clarify!]
Some kind of report goes from the input-computer to some central point. What goes there? Does it contain, in one "bundle", the roster of individual votes cast,
[No answer about this, or any of the remainder.]
I am not impressed yet.
Marian
http://NoLeakyBuckets.org
|
Joseph Hall
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Joehall
Post Number: 111
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 10:19 am: |
|
Bev says: And what's your take on the extraodinarily heavy representation of people who are enamored of the VoteHere solution in the NSF-funded ACCURATE program?
I don't think any of us are enamored with VoteHere's solution... none of the PIs and few if any of the students (I don't speak for anyone but myself, of course). In fact, ACCURATE researchers published the major critique of VoteHere's method (and David Chaum's old method). That paper is here: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~nks/papers/cryptovoting-usenix05.pdf
Note that a position on an advisory board doesn't imply an endorsement of the company or the technology, just a desire to advise. |
Kathleen Wynne
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Wynnek
Post Number: 40
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 11:47 am: |
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Joe,
Are you saying Mr. Gates was against VoteHere's method?
If so, obviously, VoteHere didn't take Mr. Gates' advice.
Kathleen |
Adam Fulford
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Northofborder
Post Number: 5
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 4:44 pm: |
|
Saul,
What role exactly has Robert Gates played in VoteHere? Was the former CIA director (of Iran/Contra infamy) an innocent naif in regards to Votehere's nefarious activities? |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3427
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 6:05 am: |
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I think you'd have to ask Gates or the company CEO what Gates's input and role were.
Typically the roles and involvement of an Advisory Board member vary widely. E.g. they might be used to give feedback in relation to isolated organizational issues, or a specific technical problem, or a certain business development issue. The "post" title itself gives no indication. Advisory Board members are also often used just to lend their names and status and legitimacy/reputation, which helps the company if it is raising funds from other sources. It's impossible to know just how much involvement Gates had in VoteHere.
The fact that Advisory Board members got share or options implies that either they were expected to do something, or that someone felt their lending their name deserved some kind of compensation. |
Adam Fulford
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Northofborder
Post Number: 6
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 1:17 pm: |
|
C'mon, Saul. Stop being coy and give a straight answer. |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 22
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 2:09 pm: |
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Why are you goading me with "give a straight answer" when I haven't even answered yet? How can you judge my answer to not be "straight"? What answer did I give that was "coy"? Can I not be silent and do my homework rather than immediately spout slander from my mouth while being entirely speculative? I for one choose in this case to be responsible. Not to mention, you phrased your question in a loaded fashion. That's not fair (or respectable in my humble opinion). Moreover, in the mean time, I judge Catherine's answer to be a fair and respectable one, one that might mimic my own. Presently, I shall be doing my homework to adequately answer Marian's questions.
(Message edited by malachite on November 14, 2006) |
Adam Fulford
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Northofborder
Post Number: 7
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 6:13 pm: |
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Saul,
If the tongue-in-cheek phrasing of my questions rubbed you the wrong way, I'm sorry. But, surely you're aware that the names and titles on VoteHere's whatever-board look like they're straight out of a Robert Ludlum novel. |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 23
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 - 12:02 am: |
|
Initial Response to Marian:
Q1. A voter opens up her home computer, logs into the voting office and casts her ballot, or, does the same thing at a poll-site. Be explicit that it can be used in either method.
Yes it works in both cases. There may be subtle differences across all the various voting systems one might devise or imagine, but once one understands the core of what I explained in the document it becomes clear that VHTi can be adapted to meet any requirements or needs. It's the principle of the system that is most important to grasp. But to answer your question, yes you can use it in both cases. Let's focus on one type at the poll site for clarity... and because personally I don't feel entirely comfortable with the over-the-shoulder coercion possible with any at-home voting. It seems to defeat the purpose of a good part of this hard work. But that’s just me. I'm happy to answer your questions as best I can. And if I somehow fumble something up, I'll be sure to quickly admit and correct that.
Q2. ...gets some response (what is it?)
I'll review the entire process here for clarity. Follow the diagram shown in system 5. I’ll repeat it here for clarity, with the exception of removing the voter’s name. That is something that can be removed because it really is entirely unnecessary. Here’s the receipt:
----
Question 1: President
– Begin Ballot Record –
5BHX SW5Q KRM2 LNY6
CNFB AT57 S57I D60C
– End Ballot Record –
32 41 FF
Q1 President
2 Smith
4 Jones
3 Davis
Receipt ID# ABC12345
Digital Signature: 42EF FF01 0231 C008 A742 …
----
To answer one of your questions, this process can indeed be repeated for as many races and ballot questions as there are in the given district. There are a few ways to accomplish this, but none of them have any bearing whatsoever on the security of the system. One simple way would be to literally repeat this entire process below for each race. Another way would be for the voter to pick all the candidates first for all the races and them ‘cast her ballot’ all at once. In the end, it just doesn’t matter.
First the computer asks the voter which candidate she wants to select for Question 1 for that precinct, which for this example is the office of President.
Our voter picks Smith on the computer display as her choice for President.
Next the computer gives the voter the option to pick a column number (in a given range) to reveal for the candidates she did not select (i.e. Jones and Davis). She can simply hit a button to let the computer randomly pick these column numbers for her (more on the subtle but interesting significance of this step later). Let’s say she lets the computer pick them for her. The computer picks column 4 for Jones and column 3 for Davis.
Next the computer prints out the ballot just up to the line 32 41 FF (see the printout example I gave above).
Next the computer asks the voter to pick a column number (in a given range) for the candidate of her choice (i.e. Smith). She absolutely must pick this number herself. The computer cannot pick it for her.
Let's say the voter picks "2".
Now the computer prints the rest of the receipt for that question.
Q3. Some kind of report goes from the input-computer to some central
point. What goes there? Does it contain, in one "bundle", the roster
of individual votes cast, AND the ID of the voter? (Privacy!)
The votes on the machine are all encrypted as they are cast. They are indeed sent as individual entities that are “bundled” as you say. So each voter’s ballot has its own unique identity and is protected as such throughout the process from the machine it was cast on until it reaches the final central tabulating facility. All that is required is some sort of receipt identification, some way for the voter to find and identify his vote. No name of the voter or other direct link need be shown.
Q4. When it gets there, what does the system do with the votes?
The system uses a publicly available counting algorithm to sum the votes. The aggregate of ballots is published, each ballot in the same form as the receipt. What is important to note is that the algorithm is written to freshly compute the results on the receipt. We know it’s honest because anyone in the world can download the software and compile it and try it. The voter checks her receipt against the public record version of her receipt. If they match, all is well. If they differ, something got corrupted. A corruption might result in a different hash result, for example (the string between the ballot record notations on the sample receipt above). This leads to your next question:
Q5. When she believes that the answer is "wrong", what is her recourse? To whom does she file a complaint? And, how can an error be rectified?
Then, when a thousand voters line up to claim that their vote-reports didn't match, what can be done? Where is the independent audit trail?
This is the question for which the answer really drives home what this tool offers. It all depends on what you want it to do. Now you may cry foul at this point because I am not specifying a ‘particular system’ to evaluate. I levied that same criticism myself when I first heard of this approach. But follow along with me for a moment.
If you want a hand-counted paper ballot, something as you say to count as an “independent audit trail,” you can easily adapt the system I’ve described to accommodate as much. The voter would still get the receipt as before but would generate it by filling in a paper ballot and then have that ballot scanned as part of the process. The ballot would have the same unique ID number as the receipt. Note that there’s no way to trace this number to the voter. The ballots are kept secure and not released to the public. The voter can still trace back to her ballot however. And of course the paper ballots can be hand-counted (hooray for paper ballots!!!).
Notice that this is NOT your typical optical scan voting system scheme. The scanning here merely facilitates the auditing process. It allows the voters to collectively audit the vote. It need not be used to tally the votes (if one so chose). So no need to ultimately worry about Diebold or some computer hack or virus. So why bother with this auditing process you ask? Read on.
Now back to what the voter can do when identifying a corruption during the audit. Consider first the scenario we have now in a hand counted paper-ballot system. What if 2000 ballots are surreptitiously switched from one candidate to another? Chain of custody provisions attempt to preclude this. But suppose several people colluded or got paid off and it happened. And assume no physical evidence was left. How then would we know? We wouldn’t. The only way to achieve this is with an end-to-end audit. We need some way to safely pass our ballots through as many corruptible hands as we can imagine. We need to have knowledge that the package that begins in the booth reaches its destination intact. And remains there intact. For all to see and audit. That’s what an end-to-end transaction audit represents. And that’s what VHTi provides.
The voter can then complain and do anything we decide is appropriate for a lost/stolen/corrupted vote. Noone has ever had that ability before, so it hasn’t been largely considered or included in any legislation. Except perhaps for instituting an entire rerun of the election if it is evident that a large-scale loss of votes has occurred (such as in a warehouse fire or whatever scenario you like).
So the first answer to your question is to say that no the vote cannot be reconstructed from the receipt as I have described it. It was only initially intended to catch corruptions in this form. So how do we recover? We could add provisions for redundant information to be included so the vote can be reconstructed. But personally, I envision allowing a voter to recast his vote if he can show a corruption. That may seem wrong at first. That’s because we’ve never had the ability to demonstrate as much. What if your vote got switched from Smith to Jones for president? Wouldn’t you want to be able to know? And recover or recast your vote? Wouldn’t we want to know that a large number of votes in Volusia County got switched from Smith to Jones?
My next step is to explain why VoteHere’s efforts to rewrite legislation in Maryland were not necessarily “corrupt” or “nefarious” at all. They simply argued for a paradigm shift in how we write legislation. I was fervently opposed to their actions until I took a moment to ask questions.
It’s late. My wrists hurt. And I’ve lost significant sleep for the past few nights reviewing this. And no I don’t even get a lousy VoteHere T-Shirt or coffee mug for this. No nothing. Send a spy after me. Check me out. I do this in an endeavor to salvage our precarious election system.
Good night and good luck.
Warmest regards,
Saul
(Message edited by malachite on November 15, 2006) |
Marian Beddill
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Uu7thprinciple
Post Number: 46
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 16, 2006 - 9:39 am: |
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I'm myself on overload with other deadlines today, but I will be replying to Saul's long post.
Marian
http://NoLeakyBuckets.org
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Dan Vail
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Danvail
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 19, 2006 - 10:24 am: |
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I have been reading this site with interest since I saw the special on HBO.
My Dad always told me that if you want to know what's happening follow the money.
I then got interested in the Illuminati and did some research - why most of what has been posted on the internet is taken out of context there is an underlying truth - of course spun to reflect whoever is posting it. I couldn't believe it.
Then I got to thinking - dangerous I know - but conspiracies have existed forever! This country was founded by a conspiracy and yes there were two major parties vying for control.
I kept reading and came across a very interesting book - that is freely available on the internet - and things started to fall into place.
Remember the axiom - follow the money. This book puts into perspective all that we are seeing today - and that it's been going on at least - since the formation of this country.
http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm
While I haven't been able to check all the source material - the one's I have been able to check are legitimate - would be interested in hearing your comments as well |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3471
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 19, 2006 - 12:04 pm: |
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Another source of interesting info in the "big scheme" of global money movements is http://www.themoneymasters.com
Global money/power flows may be far more important than what we normally think of as partisan politics. It seems to me that the leadership of the major political parties in many countries function in close collaboration with high-level global money interests.
Plutocracy.
The way to change things is by reinvigoration of our grass-roots-level involvement, starting at the local level to create healthier systems and working our way upwards. Just changing heads at the top will not be enough, regardless of the parties involved. The brad-based electorate has to reclaim its power and authority, including taking responsibility for informing itself about what is going on. We cannot afford to wait for top-down change (which will never reflect the wishes of citizens because of how the election process serves the needs of monied special interests), or to wait for the media to spoonfeed us morsels of "truth" mixed up with entertainment and mis/disinformation.
But this is getting off topic. If Admin wants to move these last posts to General Discussion that might be a more appropriate location. |
Marian Beddill
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Uu7thprinciple
Post Number: 47
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 19, 2006 - 9:57 pm: |
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I have managed to get into the meat of Saul's response to my questions, and I am crafting my response.
I can say that:
* he did clarify some of the uncertainties;
* he did not satisfactorily explain the system to me;
* he gave several broad-brush generalities, where I sought specifics;
* his response to what the voter could do later, with the encrypted receipt, is feeble.
Marian
http://NoLeakyBuckets.org
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Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 61
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 - 12:20 am: |
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Feeble. Nice. I like your straightforward language. Perhaps you should download the software or review the available documents online at VoteHere.com. I will endeavor to answer your questions, but I'm not quite sure what the point is in having me type away all night long to reiterate what has already been well-established by the developers. Here is a link to get you started:
http://www.votehere.com/default.php |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 219
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 - 11:11 am: |
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Saul -- full disclosure here, have you invested in VoteHere or do you have a relationship of any type with VoteHere or its principles? Or are you an objective bystander?
The reason I ask is that you mentioned the documents that were provided to VoteHere's venture capital team, and it wasn't clear from the context as to whether you had personal knowledge of the documents or were just repeating what you'd heard.
The reason any connections or investments of yours in VoteHere are relevant is, if you have any ties whatsoever we would expect more effort to go into answering the specific questions raised by Marion Beddill. |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3484
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 - 12:17 pm: |
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Bev, I think you mean "VoteHere or its principals".
If Saul is affiliated with this project in any way he should say so. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1074
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 - 12:55 pm: |
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Principals or principles, either one could be right, think about it.  |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 63
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 - 3:26 pm: |
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Could we remove Dan Vail's duplicate post?
-----
I'll cut a deal with you. I'll make it crystal clear about my relationship with Dategrity/VoteHere, its principals (or even its principles as Brant suggests), and any investments I have. I'll answer any questions you have about said relationship... to your utmost satisfaction. I am truly committed to this. It's certainly only right and honest that I do so.
Here's what I ask in return. Will you please submit a quick public retraction with a commensurate level of exposure and visibility as each claim that you have made for which I demonstrate to be unsupportable with the amount of given evidence or even to be clearly false? And patiently put up with any questioning that I may pose of your claims? In the interest of integrity and straightforward communication to the public at large? It is also only right and honest that we all do so.
Fair deal?
I'm ALL ABOUT full disclosure. I'm all about honesty and integrity. I'm all about helping others to understand insofar as I am able. But I am most certainly NOT about promulgating anything as truth for which there is no meaningful evidence or for which one can demonstrate to be false or illogical in its assertion. Remember my posts about the Hursti documents? Same goal there. Nothing new from me.
Everyone here should equally be concerned about the appearance of spreading propaganda, wittingly or otherwise. I certainly wouldn't say that you are intentionally doing so, but even the appearance of doing so is particularly harmful to the cause. I care about you all (No really, I do) and I enjoin with your passion. But we should not be so zealous in our cause as to mislead the public in any remote way. We should painfully endeavor to avoid it. I stand firm to that principle. And I myself will be held mutually accountable by it.
Consider my offer. It's time for my supper. I'm here with my father and grandfather (age 86). I will check the posts later tonight.
Good night and good luck...
Saul
(Message edited by Malachite on November 20, 2006) |
John Dean
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Bozosforbush
Post Number: 911
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 - 10:23 pm: |
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Saul, you make me yawn...
We've got a lot of real people here, doing what they can to stop "the machines that can cheat."
And then we've got the mystery man, who obviously craves attention, and has an agenda contrary to the purpose of this site.
We've played these games before, and they get tiresome quickly.
Deserter, brain is fried, no WMDs, yada yada yada. No wonder we clowns laugh.
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Dan Vail
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Danvail
Post Number: 4
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 4:03 am: |
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John - What would be the harm in letting Saul have his say and honouring his request that the TRUTH - after careful dissemination of the FACTS be posted?
Shouldn't the opposing side have it's say as long as it is done in a transparent honest manner?
Isn't that the purpose of this site? Finding out the truth?
And please do delete my duplicate post made in error.
(Message edited by danvail on November 21, 2006) |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3490
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 5:40 am: |
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Dan, sure, that is reasonable. There's a history of folks with undisclosed vendor connections posting misinformation, e.g. accusing BBV of saying things that aren't true, when BBV has already gotten extensive independent verification that its claims are true.
Any BBV inaccuracies (rare) on this website are corrected quickly, in my experience. Vendor misinformation is not tolerated.
If Saul can point to inaccuracies on BBV he should do so. He should quote and cite any statements he takes issue with. (There are a lot of people who claim that BBV said things it has never said. This happens with great regularity. So if anyone claims "BBV/Bev said XXXX" they need to be able to back that up.) Saul should be open about any affiliations or allegiances he has. It would be misleading if he is posting here without being upfront about his ties to groups or individuals that may have a vested interest (commericial, academic, or otherwise). |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 65
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 5:51 am: |
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Mystery man... that's funny. I find it somewhat scary how easy it is to find out about me by simply executing an unsophisticated internet query. Utterly scary. But I'm an open book. I've also offered up here at BBV my affiliation with TrueVoteMD. There are posters here that know me personally, have regularly met me face to face in our weekly TrueVote meetings (during critical legislative sessions). I am actively involved in their Technical Committee. And I know the founders personally. You can simply call the number on their site TrueVoteMD.org and do a simple background check on me. It's no mystery. You'll quickly see if I have an agenda contrary to the purpose of this site. I spent the past several months supporting one of their founding member's bids for the U.S. Senate. He's also the co-founder of VoteTrustUSA (often on CNN, etc).
And in case you instinctively think TrueVoteMD must be some cover agency for the e-voting vendors, see what Bev Harris has to say about TrueVoteMD here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/show.cgi?tpc=1247&post=858#POST858
I suppose the only way in which I could have an agenda contrary to the purpose of this site is if the truth were somehow contrary to its purpose. As Al Gore would attest, the truth is sometimes inconvenient. So if perpetuating myths makes it easier to attain a goal, and you shudder at the thought of someone who is passionate about the truth (regardless of whether it seems to politically help his cause or not), then that is truly lamentable. |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 66
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 6:07 am: |
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I have no affiliation whatsoever with any vendors. Period. I have met with many CEO's of a variety of companies in my quest for knowledge and as a part of my role at TrueVoteMD. But I have no vested interest whatsoever. No conflicts at all. I earn a wage as a geek, an engineer. I'm noone special.
With regard to Dategrity/VoteHere, let me say this. Their CEO and another team member flew out to the east coast, drove up to the private home of a TrueVoteMD member, and sat down with us on a Super Bowl Sunday of all days to field questions about the VHTi technology. They came to us. They were venturing into antagonistic territory to answer questions. That's how I know them. I also met with many of their employees at the local Maryland legislative hearings. And I felt entirely comfortable contacting literally any of them with questions as I reviewed their technology. As I do with any CEO or employee of any company. I'm quite aggressive in my search for the truth.
And I won't be remotely tainted with any appearance of a conflict of interest along the way. |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 67
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 6:29 am: |
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Here is another statement I have questions about. Just questions, no need to respond defensively:
VoteHere spent more money than ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia combined to help ram HAVA through.
Where are the disclosures for Diebold for employees working on government affairs? Were they as open as VoteHere by offering up such disclosures? I see no evidence as of yet that they were. I suspect that either they avoided such disclosures altogether or we would find that these disclosures are co-mingled with other work (i.e. not cited as a separate line item for full disclosure). Help me to do my homework there.
Since I see no evidence of such disclosure from Diebold et al, I am curious to research what they are effectively hiding. Without such research, it would render any comparison to VoteHere incommensurate. |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 222
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 6:42 am: |
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Saul: Right now, we are processing over 400 Freedom of Information Act requests on the current election, and have at least 1200 more to send out as soon as certain time deadlines are hit. I will be happy to revisit this thread when there are less deadline-driven tasks at hand.
Thank you for disclosing the nature of your contacts with VoteHere. That doesn't explain how you say you know that Robert Gates was Advisory Board, not Board of Directors, since that information is conflicting in the mainstream news archives and on the Internet. But let's assume you just called them up and asked them, and that's what they said. Should we assume that?
The VoteHere mammoth lobbying fees are right on the disclosure forms, and as far as I can tell, Diebold invested the lion's share of its (oft-undisclosed) lobbying fees on state and LOCAL level lobbying for procurement purposes, rather than on lobbying in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). In looking at the HAVA lobbying, which took place on the federal level, VoteHere is the biggest player.
I can't invest the time for a blow by blow discussion on the merits and demerits of VoteHere, until probably after the first of the year. |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3491
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 7:24 am: |
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Saul,
Diebold already has a well-documented history of not disclosing all its payments to lobbyists. (As Bev clarified above, the undisclosed payments we know about were local level lobbyists, presumably those who might seek to influence buying decisions by logal government bodies. If Diebold made payments for other kinds of lobbying I haven't heard any specific allegations or heard of any documentation.) IIRC BBV handed over documents it found relating to Diebold's undisclosed lobbying payments to the SEC. |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 223
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 7:40 am: |
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Note: Diebold wasn't formally in the election business until Jan 2002, but it was informally involved with financing and purchase negotiations of Global Election Systems as of June 2001. HAVA was enacted in Oct. 2002 but they started making a run at it in late 2000 (Accenture lobbying) and in 2001 as well. |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 171
Registered: 07-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, December 23, 2006 - 11:20 pm: |
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Never heard of SeeVote before. And all I've gleaned from this thread is that the system is too technical for me to understand why I'm supposed to think it would work.
I just get this picture in my head of a guy with an accent standing on the street with a card table set up with three walnut halves. He holds up a pea. He says, "This you vote. See vote?" Then he places the pea under one of the walnut halves and starts to shuffle them......
I do remember Iran-Contra. A lot of it involved (in addition to illegal arms smuggling and drug-running) lying to Congress. The people who are supposed to represent me are in Congress. They can't represent me if other people in government lie to them under oath. Many Iran-Contra players didn't like the idea of the people of this country or their representatives having any say in foreign policy, so they lied to Congress. And some of them were convicted of lying to Congress, were then pardoned, and are now part of the Bush administration, which also appears to prefer that the people and our representatives don't have any say in government, other than to authorize whatever he wants, even if they now know that he lied to get it in the first place.
VoteHere reminds me of another phenomenon. In Confessions of an Economic Hitman John Perkins described how our government would to to foreign countries and offer them "development" loans and promise them the moon. The countries that accepted were further impoverished by those loans, and the leaders of countries who refused the loans seemed to meet with mysterious deaths and be replaced by more tractable leaders. So they fly out on Super Bowl Sunday to convince a potential critic that they're very worthwhile. Since Saul may wish to live as least as long as his grandfather of 86, I'm glad for him that he was convinced. I'm not.
SeeVote? SeeMiddleFinger? 
--Mark |
Russell Novkov
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rnovkov
Post Number: 157
Registered: 02-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 - 3:08 pm: |
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This needs to be heard.
Russell J. Novkov
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7377
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, January 6, 2008 - 8:49 am: |
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admin note: seevote topic moved to Tech Central forum |
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VoteHere VHTi Explanation