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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 11567
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 3 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 3:50 pm: | 
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ELECTION SYSTEMS & SOFTWARE - This is transparency? ES&S voting machine log provided in Chinese. Translated, the end of the file says it is a report that "smells fishy."
BBV NEWS - Black Box Voting recently obtained a set of ballot scan batch files from an ES&S M650 voting machine. One of the logs is a text file containing entirely Chinese and Korean characters.
Taking the last two Chinese characters in the last line of the report, and using a Google translator utility, we get the literal translation: "Breathing of Fish Report."
Perhaps this audit log provided more information than intended.
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 11568
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 4:03 pm: |
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Here is a copy of the audit log file in the original format, provided to a public citizen for a USA election recently.
If you can make heads or tails of this file, please let us know. A more legible audit log was nearly as troubling, containing multiple alerts "Ballot too short!" for a set of absentee ballots being fed through the scanner.
Election officials, of course, refused to let any member of the public examine the ballots.
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Troy Seman
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Tseman
Post Number: 11
Registered: 6-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 4:26 pm: |
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You can't make this stuff up. Once again truth is stranger than fiction. |
Mimi Kennedy
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mimi_kennedy
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2011
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 6:41 pm: |
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The truth will out. One way or t'other. Gandhi once said something to the effect of reassuring his questioner that he was not afraid now that humanity had the atom bomb more than at any other time in human history. Because he said "the twins"-truth and nonviolence-were stronger. And he knew human hands had to launch the bomb. So he thought there was a chance for survival as humanity woke up to wanting truth. Maybe same is true for our awful 'hidden software' democracy. Humans will out the truth because they know many are searching and will find it. Like the way we launch pictographs into space, hoping someone out there might be looking.(At last! I've hit upon a scenario in which I think honest elections have better odds than the fulfillment of the analogy I gave!) |
Ellen H. Brodsky
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ehbrod
Post Number: 36
Registered: 1-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 8:40 pm: |
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Greetings from Broward County FL. We still use the M650s. That is really something Bev! ES&S M650 Audit log in Chinese! Well it shouldn't surprise you that in 2004 when I did a Public Request for the AB Ballot Audit log, the only thing they were finally able to produce was a torn up log on old computer printout paper. There is no storage of audit data in that system. It was in an event log format and did not scan any ballots. It is also the most well known secret among election administrators that every time they run the ab ballots through these scanners they get a different result. |
Charles Christopher
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ilikeinfo
Post Number: 333
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 9:40 pm: |
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>ES&S voting machine log provided in Chinese.
Bev,
Can you be more specific as to how / why one concluded this? That the log file was provided in Chinese?
And just to make sure we are on the same page, the file is saving to my PC with the name "2010G110-81979.unk" which does NOT match the filename in the link. Can you verify the file comming from BBV matches the original?
If the file comming down is correct, it looks like a binary file and thus is NOT intended "for direct human consumption". ;) This in turn implies it is intended to be viewed using some propritary application.
Thanks
Charles
Problem definition *FIRST*, solution formulation *SECOND*.
The frog just needs to *SEE* the thermometer
Twenty-Five Ways To Suppress Truth
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 11570
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 10:12 pm: |
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Charles, edit the file extension to change it from unk to log. When our forum software doesn't recognize a file extension it substitutes unk, for unknown, I think.
Yes, it is not intended to be read as Chinese, though most of the characters are Chinese and Korean. It is intended to be read by proprietary software.
That's one reason we should not be using proprietary software.
Nevertheless, the last two characters in the file are Chinese characters, and they do translate to fishy smell report. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 11571
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 10:16 pm: |
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Hi Ellen!
The M650 system in Saguache County Colo. changed its results midstream for the local election official's election (she lost, then surprise surprise, she won!). The Unity audit log had time stamps that went backwards during part of the report. (Unity is the ES&S central tabulator)
But hey, trust it all, right? |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 11572
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 10:22 pm: |
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Charles, at the very bottom of all the state forums and other forums is one called VIP. I use this for temporary file swaps. I have enabled you to jump into that one, which contains a full set of batch files. Each absentee batch file contains 10 files of various types. Except one - the second to the last has a file that appears to be an Internet-related .dll file.
Please feel free to share your observations in the private VIP area if you like.
I sometimes use these private work areas for informal discussion. No need to clutter up the public forums with speculative information. |
Ellen H. Brodsky
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ehbrod
Post Number: 37
Registered: 1-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 10:26 pm: |
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I guess they still haven't fixed the counting backwards problem.
Did they handcount the ballots? Or just run them through the scanners again? Sure would like to see that audit log. By the way the initialization of that torn up log was missing the bootup and election coding information.
I opened the file in notepad. |
Charles Christopher
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ilikeinfo
Post Number: 334
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 10:32 pm: |
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Thank you, just wanted to double check before I spent too much time on it. There is clear struture in the file, probably some data can be figured out without too much of a headache.
>though most of the characters are Chinese and
>Korean. It is intended to be read by proprietary
>software.
Well, that's an artifact of using a tool (text editor) for which the file was never intended.
But there is poetry in the random roll of those binary dice resulting in "SMELLS LIKE FISH". ;)
Problem definition *FIRST*, solution formulation *SECOND*.
The frog just needs to *SEE* the thermometer
Twenty-Five Ways To Suppress Truth
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Richard J. Delaney
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Nomoreredbull
Post Number: 2
Registered: 3-2012
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - 10:00 pm: |
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Dear Bev, I googled Unity log file and found this webpage, here's the link, after reading some of it, I was curious to learn whether or not ES & S was using this software as a means for tabulating results, if so, the game is BEYOND rigged...
http://www.unitysoftware.net/clientpics/UnityElementsbrochure.pdf |
Richard J. Delaney
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Nomoreredbull
Post Number: 3
Registered: 3-2012
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - 10:07 pm: |
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here is just one of the tasks the Unity software is capable of, scary...
"Journal posting"
The journal entry form has been designed with the bookkeeper in mind. You can use the keyboard
extensively along with a range of shortcut keys to quickly enter accounting batches. Each batch
can have as many debits or credits as needed and Unity Elements will ensure each batch balances on each date used before posting.
the fact that such a capability is available is frightening, but horrendous, if this is the background code for the tabulating software. thanks, Rich |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 11584
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2012 - 1:48 pm: |
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Hi Richard,
Looks like that is an unrelated Unity Software. The "Unity" suite is a customized election management part of the ES&S voting system. |
