10-4-07: Connecticut Mayoral Scuffle

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Author Message   Bev Harris Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 6785 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 6 (A keeper?) Posted on Thursday, October 4, 2007 - 5:17 pm:        We're not done with the Moonshine Election series, but here's some of what's happening behind the scenes in an upcoming series, the Godfather Elections series: Mayor Joseph Ganim of Bridgeport Connecticut was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to nine years in prison; his replacement, John Fabrizi, admitted to abusing cocaine for the first 20 months of his term(1). On Sept. 11, 2007, Chris Caruso, the former Conn. State rep. known for helping achieve a tough state campaign finance reform bill(2), ran in the Democratic primary for mayor against Bill Finch, the candidate substituted in for the cocaine-using mayor who had stepped in for the convicted felon mayor. In an election that has already landed in court, party machine-backed Finch was declared the winner by 270 votes. BUT WHY SHOULD WHAT HAPPENS IN BRIDGEPORT MATTER TO YOU? Whoever won or should have won, the procedures in Bridgeport mayoral primary have left plenty of room for fraud. As I have mentioned recently, I predict there will be fraud with the upcoming presidential primary races.(3) You'll hear a lot of noise about who's expected to win, and that person will fulfill the prophecy, but it is your duty as a citizen not to take everything at face value. The founders of this country never intended for you to trust a handful of publicists and some insiders with access to the voting computers. A DIFFERENT SET OF RULES FOR THE PRIMARIES Presidential primaries may NOT have the same legal protections as the presidential race itself, because in many states the primaries are considered to "belong" to political parties and in most states, the political party "machine" has a definite favorite candidate, which may or may not match the preference of The People. Party machine politics is big business. It's the gravy train. It may surprise you to learn that pleasing you is neither political party machine's top priority. The kinds of maneuvering reported in Bridgeport may provide clues for what to expect in presidential primaries, so let's tune in: - The City of Bridgeport is using new Diebold (now called Premier) optical scan machines, of the type hacked by Harri Hursti in the film Hacking Democracy. - The memory cards are programmed by a private subcontractor owned by John Silvestro, LHS Associates, which also services the voting machines. John Silvestro, LHS Associates NEW VOTING MACHINES, UNDER-THE-RADAR SUBCONTRACTORS New voting machines and private subcontractors are going to be widespread during the upcoming presidential primaries. While you're focusing on Diebold and ES&S, these little-known subcontractors are setting themselves up as mini-Choicepoint operations, with data mining and demographics operations and - oh by the way - some of them are also handling the voter registration databases, as well as programming the machines. In other words, this is a "Trust Me" elections model where you are trusting private contractors who also have killer demographic databases. They have precise, precinct-by-precinct and absolutely up to date information with which to overlay computer programming fixes, should they choose to do so. They'll bluster about their excellent reputations, but what they are really saying is: "Trust us." This is not what the founders of this nation had in mind. REPLACEMENT VOTING MACHINES One of the procedural incidents that attracted my attention in the Bridgeport Sept. 11 election is this: Despite a lot of hoopla about security procedures and special testing of memory cards and seals, we received citizen reports of at least one midday voting machine replacement. This, in a location where only 270 votes separated candidates. One or two polling places was enough to do the trick. WHAT ABOUT THE POST OFFICE? There were also reported anomalies with postal delivery of campaign materials (one candidate's materials were delivered, the others apparently were not). In this case it was campaign materials; in Broward County, Florida, it was absentee ballots. Fifty-eight thousand of them, to be precise, that somehow got waylaid in the post office during the 2004 presidential election. Especially in areas with a history of organized crime, a couple buddies in the post office is not beyond the realm of possibility. "TRAINING" OPPORTUNITIES The use of new machines was capitalized on in Bridgeport, with highly inappropriate "voter training" methods at the polling place. Here's how the maneuver worked, according to affidavits in the lawsuit filed by Caruso: With some cooperation from the elections registrar, who omitted information on polling place representatives and made some strategic last-minute assignment switches, one candidate managed to have his own people disproportionately represented as poll workers. They then "trained" voters on the new machines by guiding their fingers to vote for Bill Finch, pointing at his name while telling voters to vote "this way," blocking view of other candidate names. This "training" for new voting machines has cropped up in Kentucky as well, but with different methodology. In some of the Moonshine elections areas it has been alleged that the fine old tradition of vote-buying is now being facilitated by having voters "ask for help" while at the DRE machines (so they can prove how they voted); all it takes is one cooperative poll worker willing to shoot a hand signal to the buyer. While this may sound outlandish to you, in Moonshine territory it's just a new twist on an old tradition. WOOPS! WATCH THE MOVES WITH PROVISIONAL BALLOTS Some Bridgeport voters were told they could not vote, and there were reportedly no provisional ballots offered. (Bear in mind that primary elections may not require elections officials to follow HAVA requirements for provisional ballots). ASK CHAIN OF CUSTODY QUESTIONS. Black Box Voting decided to poke further into voting machine security for the Bridgeport election. Is it true that a voting machine was brought into one of the key precincts and swapped out midday? If so: - What was the chain of custody on the replacement machine? - Why was the machine taken out of service? - Was this substitute machine L&A tested? - Was the same memory card used, or a different one? - Who carted the machine around town? No citizen should take it on faith that a replacement machine is an honest machine, and this goes double for the massive vote-collecting "early voting" and "one-stop voting" machines used in some states. VOTING MACHINE SEALS I was interested in examining the Bridgeport records of the voting machine seals, because records obtained by former Rep. Cynthia McKinney in Georgia revealed many broken, mismatched and missing seals. A missing, broken or mismatched seal = automatic breach in chain of custody = vote of no confidence for all votes cast on that machine. I have a records request in for the Bridgeport documents on matching the seal numbers. In Georgia, the remedy for missing/broken/mismatched seals was simply to run a "zero report" - but this is pointless, because missing seals mean the zero report can be counterfeited. A better remedy is to replace the machine, but then we get into the questions I listed above. The act of replacing a machine often breaks chain of custody. It's a mess and they like to shrug, as if it's no big deal. All it takes is 60 seconds to reprogram some of these machines; it is a big deal. When I interviewed Mr. Borges, the Bridgeport Republican voter registrar, he indicated that there are two seals on the machines used in Bridgeport. The two seals - One seal over the memory card bay on the optical scan machine - One seal on the canvas tote bag. Unfortunately, one of them is meaningless. I have not seen the seal on the canvas tote bag, but that is actually the only seal that matters (if it even matters; I have a little experiment in mind...). The seal on the voting machine itself is a sham. 1) The design is cruel joke on elections officials and voters, and Diebold/Premier/LHS know it. They know it because they service the machines. Here's proof: The "Old Lady" hack - Two 54-year-old women bypass the seal with four minutes and $12: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/36510.html (If photo appears as broken link, right-click and select "show picture") Phillips head screws hold case together Memory card there for the taking, seal stays intact Switch the card, close the case, seal is undisturbed 2) According to Diebold product information, one of the "features" of the 1.96 version upgrade is the ability to reprogram the memory card through the modem port. The modem port is not sealed, only the memory card. CANDIDATE LAWSUIT Chris Caruso filed a lawsuit which is copied below. His lawsuit is unrelated to our records request, except that the judge issued an impoundment order on all the records we requested. Understandable. So that's where it stands right now in Bridgeport. Copy of Caruso lawsuit: http://www.bbvdocs.org/CT/2007-sept-Caruso-lawsuit.PDF (1,295 KB) Chris Caruso Here's where it should stand with you: 1) Be a skeptic. Any candidate with the wherewithal to rig the primary has the connections to plant media PR predicting they'll win. Skepticism is a healthy quality in today's "Money Party" political environment. 2) Remember the amazing Randi: "Don't look there, look here." While voting machine vendors and election officials tell you to focus on one thing, look under the table and up the sleeves. For example: A reporter in North Carolina was recently given a guided tour of voting machine security which involved driving out to a secret lair where the machines are hidden, being shown a cage with the machines, and an elaborate checking system whereby the seals on the machines are checked against a paper record containing what the seal numbers should be. He was convinced. But while he was looking THERE, he wasn't looking HERE: (Which insiders have keys to the secret lair?) (Where did the paper record with the list of seal numbers come from? Who keeps it?) In fact, our attention is almost always directed towards some mysterious rogue voter with intent to hack the system, and AWAY from the most obvious target: The insider, the janitor, the elections official, the sheriff. And when you ask about that, you get the answer that exposes the naked emperor: "Well you have to trust us." 3) Don't take it on faith that replacement machines have gone through any of the checks and balances. Ask for records. 4) Don't assume that it's okay for just a few seals to be missing, mismatched or broken. A few is all it takes. Ask for records and follow your line of questioning all the way through. The more they ridicule you and call you a conspiracy theorist, the more important it is for you to keep asking the tough questions. By the way, the legal term for racketeering, the charge brought against our friend the Bridgeport mayor, is "conspiracy." Next time someone calls you a conspiracy theorist, consider saying, "Well yes, in the RICO sense, I suppose I am." Joseph Ganim - 16 counts of racketeering 5) A service technician or "rover" toting machines around is just a guy saying "trust me." 6) Use whatever elections you can - city elections, special elections, and the upcoming elections this November - to learn as much as you can. Trust your common sense. If you would like more ideas, here's a link to the Black Box Voting Citizen's Tool Kit: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.html Unless you live in one of the hand-count-at-the-polls locations, like many locations in New Hampshire which do the vote counting right out in the open, you are stuck with a "Trust Me election" for both the primaries and the presidential. We did not concede to this and we should not surrender. Get in the habit of asking for answers and records. A properly functioning democratic republic is based on mutual distrust - checks and balances with the citizenry itself able to do the checking and the balancing. The "Trust Me" elections model only works when everyone is honest, and at least one Bridgeport mayor certainly has not been honest. In the next "Moonshine Elections" article, I'm about to introduce you to a lot more public officials who can't be trusted. WHAT'S THE SOLUTION? Get it out into the open. Citizens need to be able to see what's going on. No secrets, full freedom of information for everything election-related. No party-centric or insider-driven systems; while opposing party representatives are a nice feature, anything that omits the citizens fails to protect and secure our rights as the sovereign owners of the government. Specific solutions will require both short term and long term work, and using a number of single-purpose reforms, not one big omnibus that everyone loads their pork into. We will be getting to the first batch of specific reforms when we wind up the Moonshine series. * * * * * Footnotes (1) New York Times - June 20, 2006, by Alison Leigh Cowan; Bridgeport Mayor Admits to Substance Abuse (2) Hartford Courant - February 5, 2006; A Scrub Brush for Elections (3) Fraud has played a documented role in presidential primaries going back at least to 1960; If there's no fraud in 2008 it will be a first. The voting machines and the massive computerized voter registration databases and the idiotic new electronic pollbooks pretty much guarantee that we're in for a wild ride, and a slippery, hard to pin down one at that. PERMISSION TO EXCERPT OR REPRINT GRANTED, WITH LINK TO http://www.blackboxvoting.org   Catherine Ansbro Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Catherine_a Post Number: 4065 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, October 5, 2007 - 1:47 am:        "Asking for help" as a way of showing an official how you voted--very interesting, and quite plausible in areas where votes are routinely bought or strong-armed.   V. Kurt Bellman Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Formerelecdir Post Number: 1447 Registered: 04-2006 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, October 5, 2007 - 9:14 am:        Bev and Catherine, I want to clarify something. While I can see ALL KINDS of reasons why HAVA mandates, like provisionals, may not apply in some states in elections that have no offices for federal office, I am 99% sure that all the HAVA mandates apply to primaries where those federal offices are up. I know virtually ALL other federal election laws apply to primaries as well as General elections. The ONLY excuse I can think of is in states where the parties literally RUN the primary, and not the local government.   Bev Harris Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 6788 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 1 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, October 5, 2007 - 9:22 am:        Kurt, Do you know which section of HAVA or other legislation we can look at to clarify that issue?   V. Kurt Bellman Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Formerelecdir Post Number: 1448 Registered: 04-2006 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 2 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, October 5, 2007 - 10:21 am:        Bev, I'll look. It probably won't surprise you that I have the full text of HAVA on my hard drive. How the heck sick is that?   V. Kurt Bellman Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Formerelecdir Post Number: 1449 Registered: 04-2006 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, October 5, 2007 - 10:50 am:        Bev, Oddly, HAVA contains NO internal definition of the phrase "election for federal office", but as I said, many other federal election laws do. The best cite I can offer you is the text of a letter from the USDOJ to Gov. "Mike" Foster of Louisiana on May 22, 2003. The link is here: http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/hava/la_ltr.htm See the answer to Question #4 in that. There are cites to the other federal laws that DO define the term or phrase. Geez! Looks like HAVA was written in a hurry by staffers over a weekend. You know what!? I think it WAS!   Nancy Tobi Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Ntobi Post Number: 128 Registered: 01-2006 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 2 (A keeper?) Posted on Thursday, October 11, 2007 - 2:16 pm:        I think Primaries are different in many respects. I'll be interested in what you learn about the laws, but my understanding is that in many states the Primaries are run by the Parties, in which case they are not even falling under State laws, never mind federal law. This is one of the things differentiating NH and a good reason for it being a first in the nation primary: our primary election is state run and follows all the state election laws. It is not subject to the Party shenanigans you have in other states.   Bev Harris Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 6860 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Thursday, October 11, 2007 - 2:40 pm:        Nancy -- you know I LOVE New Hampshire, but one defect in the process ... it does not allow public viewing of the counting of the votes. It's party-centric. Do you know if New Hampshire allows the press to view vote-counting? Is this policy for who can view the counting embodied in law, or in procedures? I spoke last night with a gentleman from Connecticut, who brought up another point. He mentioned that Connecticut has a 10 percent spot check law, but there appear to be a whole slew of ways to do an end run around it. But worse than that -- he exercised his right to view the manual counting in the spot check for September's election, and the positioning of the process was such that he could not see a thing on any of the ballots. For counting in public to be meaningful, the simple procedure of positioning the process so that the public can see the ballots is necessary. Two concepts here: - The public - Position the process to allow meaningful viewing. But I'm wondering, in locations like Manchester NH -- we've got a primary thundering down the road there. How impossible would it be to allow the public to watch the scanning of the ballots on Primary Election Night?

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