6-8-2005: Palm Beach County fails audit

Author Message   admin Board Administrator Username: admin Post Number: 575 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 1 (A keeper?) Posted on Wednesday, June 8, 2005 - 6:32 pm:        Documents obtained by Black Box Voting in a Nov. 2, 2004 Freedom of Information action do not substantiate the Palm Beach County election results. The Sequoia Voting System records show thousands of anomalies, all of the poll tapes lack signatures, and internal voting machine logs show an abundance of malfunctions. Some results were run BEFORE election day. Several important records are missing altogether. Black Box Voting sued former Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to obtain the records, and obtained them from her successor, Arthur Anderson. You be the judge -- Audit records can be found HERE: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/6620.html Summary of anomalies: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/6627.html   harmonyguy Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: harmonyguy Post Number: 55 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Wednesday, June 8, 2005 - 8:57 pm:        A pre-emptive clarification.... Arthur Anderson, Palm Beach County Supervisor Of Elections is NOT to be confused with the Arthur Anderson accounting firm, of Enron Fame. Same name, presumably unrelated.   brantl Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: brantl Post Number: 22 Registered: 01-2005 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Thursday, June 9, 2005 - 5:28 am:        Interesting seque. Hi, Brantl & HG: Actually, the Enron accounting firm was spelled differently -- it was Arthur Andersen. Palm Beach Elections Supervisor is Anderson. BTW: If you're curious as to what happened to Theresa LePore, she is now the elections fraud investigator. Really. -- Bev   mmiixx Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: mmiixx Post Number: 138 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, June 10, 2005 - 3:55 am:        elections fraud investigator. For who ?   truckee Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: truckee Post Number: 16 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, June 10, 2005 - 7:58 am:        In today’s tallahassee.com, they mention "three to five employees having access in each jurisdiction, and that the system "should send up a red flare" if a dishonest employee tries to change vote totals. Is it possible to determine who those employees are? If so, would there possibly be a trail to follow...example, any financial bonuses to that employee after GW won that jurisdiction? Or in Diebolds financial records any info pertaining to bonuses, raises, etc. Could be interesting.... Hi, Truckee -- Black Box Voting and our members did a major series of public records requests just before the election to obtain the names of employees with access to the election system. What we found was that many counties do not keep a formal list, many counties do not have a separate locked room for the tabulator, those that do have that don't keep a key log, and simply "remember" who has keys. The attention to security over the voting system is very poor, and many counties do not believe that the public has the right to know the names of those who access the central tabulator. However, even if we were able to obtain all the names -- probably doable with a more aggressive series of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests -- the payments to such employees, if any, would be camoflauged, not generally available. We have financial records from Diebold, though these are not generally available to the public and are not available through FOIA requests. We have not found "on the record" payments to employees of counties, but Diebold does make very large payments to MBE (Minority Business Enterprise) temporary staffing firms. There are some peculiarities with these; for example, hundreds of thousands paid to a temp firm by the elections division at a time when no one in that vicinity even seemed to be using Diebold. We did also find payments in the form of "success fees" to lobbyists and also to people who had not registered as lobbyists, but say that's what they were doing with the money. Also -- let's debunk the prevalent myth of the day -- this isn't about Diebold rigging elections for George Bush. This is about a broken election system. The positions we feel are the most attractive targets for election manipulation are: (1) County Supervisor/Commissioner (controls lucrative zoning and construction contracts) (2) County Sheriff (3) Presidential (where manipulation would also be likely to occur during the primary race). -- Bev   truckee Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: truckee Post Number: 17 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - 6:04 am:        Since Diebold is raising such a fuss, would some form of technical 'test hack' to their system be a reasonable request?   linda_franz Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: linda_franz Post Number: 121 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 1 (A keeper?) Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - 8:29 am:        Truckee, You'd think, huh? Only if that test is done without Diebold's knowledge of where it's going to be and without their choice of program versions, etc. No stacked decks. And why, if security is so important to Diebold, would they not welcome tests and information about the vulnerability of their systems? Shouldn't these systems have undergone scrutiny in a shakedown test where anything and everything could be thrown at them? Instead, we're supposed to believe that security lies in election officials, most of who don't know enough to handle the systems in the first place? Take a real good look at HAVA. It's written to emphasize "Voter Fraud." Look at all the PR on this issue from vendors and election officials. They always talk about "Voter Fraud." The issue all along is not "Voter Fraud." It's ELECTION FRAUD. That includes insider fraud. Let's get real about fraud. As long as there have been elections, there has been election fraud. Individuals have committed this fraud. But a lone voter is only capable of just so much, without inside access. Access to the system makes the potential enormous. Election officials can be unwitting accomplices. Bottom line, any official should be interested in testing the security of their systems, and NOT through means engineered by the vendors or state officials. That's actually a patriotic duty. (Message edited by Linda_Franz on June 15, 2005)

The public must be able to see and authenticate these four essential steps for an election to be public, democratic, and valid: (1) Who can vote (voter list); (2) Who did vote (3) The original count; (4) Chain of custody.