7-18-2005: Are The Lights Going Out I...

Author Message   admin Board Administrator Username: admin Post Number: 804 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 4 (A keeper?) Posted on Monday, July 18, 2005 - 10:56 am:        (UPDATED 7/18/05 2:20 PDT) In a press conference today, congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) revealed problems with Diebold system and procedures in Georgia. Rumors are also swirling about a reported federal lawsuit filed by Mr. Sam Barber of American Computer Technologies, Inc. (ACT) against Diebold. Barber's lawsuit reportedly contends that he was thrown off the assignment when Diebold realized he intended to test the equipment properly. According to the Diebold memos and information from Bev Harris's Feb. 2003 interview with ACT contractor Rob Behler, assigned to assist with setup and acceptance testing, what resulted was a fiasco of uncertified patches and cobbled-together machine fixes. However, the involvement of Barber could prove problematic. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of Georgia dated March 18, 2003: "SAMUEL BARBER, Jr., 54, of Atlanta, Georgia, pleaded guilty before United States District Judge Orinda Evans, to a charge of making false statements to a federal grand jury."(1) ACT is a Minority Owned Business. Financial documents obtained by Black box Voting indicate that Diebold typically routes hundreds of thousands of dollars to "MBE" -- Minority Business Enterprises, which helps to win contracts. A "Punch list" obtained by voting integrity organization CountTheVote.org reveals multiple problems, including an uncertified August 8 2002 patch. The document indicates multiple problems with machine functionality. It is dated Dec. 3, 2002 (one month after the 2002 general election). Here are links to more related documents, provided by http://www.countthevote.org: Georgia SoS letter to Diebold (Moreland) Nov. 19, 2002 http://www.countthevote.org/cynthia_2005/cox_urosevich_12-02-02.pdf Georgia SoS letter to Diebold (Moreland) January 30, 2003 Georgia SoS letter to Diebold (Urosevich) December 3, 2002 (bug list attached) Diebold response to Georgia RFP listing ACT as subcontractor: (Microsoft Word doc) Original RFP response from Diebold including ACT as a MOB: A "patch" is a set of file changes designed to correct a problem or add new functionalities. Many more details about the 2002 Georgia Diebold deployment can be found in Chapter 11, Black Box Voting book. The August 8 patch was supposedly not required to be certified, because (according to Georgia officials Michael Barnes and Brit Williams) it was to the Windows operating system, which does not require certification. This statement by Georgia officials does not hold water, however. The (foolish) waiver for certification applies only to "COTS" -- Commercial Off The Shelf software -- which must not contain any modifications. A recent examination of the Georgia patches and the drivers in the Windows CE system used in Georgia's touch-screens, performed for Black Box Voting by Harri Hursti, revealed that Diebold altered at least nine "drivers" -- components which can produce undesired and/or illicit changes almost impossible to detect. Among the drivers that were altered: The keyboard driver, a keyboard backlite driver, the PCMCIA card driver, the smartcard driver, the touchscreen driver, the printer driver. Other patches, including the 'rob-georgia' patch and the 6-28-02 patch, affected the GEMS central tabulator. These patches contained instructions to replace Accu-Basic files, which are used to write a program to the memory card which acts on the vote report from the ballot box in the optical scans, which were used in Georgia for absentee ballots. (See http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVreport.pdf) However, the Georgia version of the AccuBasic file was missing from both the rob-georgia and 6-28-02 patches, indicating that whatever was in that file, Diebold did not desire to overwrite it. A bit of trivia about the Diebold files, which included many of the patches used in Georgia: On Jan. 23, 2003, Bev Harris found a stash of about 40,000 program files on a Diebold FTP site. Harris downloaded the files and made them available for review by election integrity advocates. However, others had different uses for the Diebold FTP site. Among the files: a snippet from a German porn movie entitled "Orgasm without End"; music-ripping tools, and a text list, most likely pointing hackers at other unprotected FTP sites. One common usage of unprotected FTP sites is illicit trading of music, films and so forth. The importance of these finds, however, is this: They prove that the Diebold FTP site was willing and able to RECEIVE unauthorized files as well as provide them to the public. This means that whatever files were on the Diebold FTP site might not even have been the real ones. Someone intent on manipulating elections could alter the software provided to Diebold techs, uploading repacement files containing malicious changes. * * * * * This article pertains to ACT. Another MBE of interest is Ran Temps, of Cleveland Ohio, which accepted large payments from Diebold from Jan. 2004 thorugh June 2004 -- a time when very few Diebold systems were used in Ohio. The federal lawsuit may be the first of many to come. Class action lawyers have already contacted Black Box Voting to inquire about copies of the 400 pages of financial statements found by Kathleen Wynne and Bev Harris, and the Diebold files found on the FTP site by Harris. A stockholder's suit is likely to hit as soon as the stock hits a predesignated trigger point, which may be soon. _______________ (1) Press Release from U. S. Attorney's Office Northern District of Georgia: "ATLANTA CITY CONTRACTOR PLEADS GUILTY TO MAKING FALSE DECLARATIONS TO GRAND JURY OVER ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS" March 18, 2003   harmonyguy Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: harmonyguy Post Number: 71 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Monday, July 18, 2005 - 12:21 pm:        Wright Business Solutions, of Cleveland Ohio Am I loosing my touch, or is this outfit NOT listed on the Ohio SoS site, nor on the Ohio Minority Business directory? (Message edited by harmonyguy on July 18, 2005) I wrote this while out of town. I wrote the name "Wright Business Solutions" from memory. It is possible it is "Wright solutions" or "Wright staffing solutions" -- I'll check when I get to the office tomorrow. Wright is definitely a minority-owned temporary staffing agency. Got in trouble in Chicago, where someone used bogus healthcare credentials.   harmonyguy Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: harmonyguy Post Number: 72 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Monday, July 18, 2005 - 7:30 pm:        I do understand!! Things CAN blur when travelling. I'll email some new info. HG Diebold checks are written out to 'Wright Solutions'   rigel99 Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: rigel99 Post Number: 12 Registered: 02-2005 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 1 (A keeper?) Posted on Thursday, July 21, 2005 - 6:35 pm:        Key Quotes: CongressWoman Cynthia McKinney: “Did we get our 54 Million Dollars worth From Diebold, Question #1. Question #2. Is do we know that the people who are making public policy in the Georgia legislature and in the US Congress…. Deserve to be there?” “In light of this evidence, I think the um course that had, they pursued by the California’s Attorney General is an appropriate course um, and that is that the taxpayers of the State of Georgia need to be made whole, a $54M contract is a lot of money to spend for a system that doesn’t work, and it’s not just um roadpaving equipment, this is who is going to make public policy for the people of the state of Georgia and for the people of this country. This is so serious at the highest levels of what stand for and who we are.” FULL TRANSCRIPT OF CYNTHIA'S SPEECH: TRANSCRIPT OF EVENT (KEY MOMENTS OF QUESTIONING) *********************** CYNTHIA BEGINNING SPEECH: Georgia broke the mold and set a new standard, the Diebold standard. I have been investigating as a citizen, a candidate and a Congresswoman, just what the Diebold era means for the voters of Georgia. We reveal the first results of our investigation today. The facts we present pose real issues for all other states that follow Georgia’s lead and adopt the Diebold standard for themselves. Our aim is an election environment in where voters have confidence in the results. Today we have with us, Sam Barber, who is a well he used to be a small business man, now he’s a very successful businessman with American Computer Technologies, Inc. He will make a presentation that I would ask you to pay very close attention to. CYNTHIA SPEECH AFTER END OF BARBER TESTIMONY & SEARCY PUNCHLIST SPEECH: … information and For many of us, it’s the first time we are actually seeing the kind of documentation and evidence that amounts to the privatization of America’s democracy. And I don’t know if this is the appropriate road that the American people need to take certainly right now. We’re talking about what happened in Georgia, but Georgia provided the template for so many other states, that any serious investigation needs to start right here in Georgia. So if you have questions, uh now we’ll be able to respond. WSB-News Radio Person asking questions: Congresswoman, Mr. Barber either one, everytime I’ve spoken to the SOS office about possible problems with electronic voting, the answers generally tends to be “well whatever problems might have cropped up in other states things have worked remarkably well in Georgia, would your response be ‘Well how do we know?’ Cynthia McKinney: I think um first, we’ll hear from Sam, because he has the technical expertise to respond to that question. Sam Barber: Well my position was that no one would really hear uh the real facts about the election, that’s why I spent 2 years conducting research, everything you heard today is not something that we are saying or hearsay, these documents came directly from the Secretary of State’s office admitting that there’s problems. WSB GUY: So when they say that things worked out well, what do you say? They say the results show that things worked out well. Sam Barber: I would just um recommend that everybody take a look at this punchlist and this letter that was written to the manufacturer um on December 3rd. WSB GUY: You would disagree. Sam Barber I would disagree. Because, I mean if you read this punchlist and the state is admitting themselves that there are 30 problems and anybody reading this would certainly say the elections certainly weren’t error free. And I wouldn’t accept answers from state officials about this because I knew. WSB GUY: Well, does that mean the last couple of elections, 2002 2004 we can’t trust the results. Well it means we haven’t seen any documentation from those results yet and until we could acquire some documentation to make a determination, I would focus only on what we have as proof for 2002. Former GA Resident and Citizens Asks: Hi, this is for Ms. McKinney, first of all, it’s a pleasure to see you again, I am a former Georgia resident and just visiting, Besides contacting your local officials, What Can an average citizen do to try to you know, correct some of these things?” CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Well the first requirement is for the press to do its job, and that is to inform the people of the facts, not commentary, just the facts. And The people I think will then be able to draw their own conclusions. DID WE GET OUR 54Million Dollars worth From Diebold, Question #1. QUESTION #2. Is do we know that the people who are making public policy in the Georgia legislature and in the US Congress (well not today, because in 2002 you had different victors) deserved to be there? And if in 2004 election we had the same problems, do those who are currently making public policy on behalf of the state of Georgia, deserve to be there? I would presume that only diebold knows for sure… (Audience, AMEN, clapping) **** McKinney Press Release For Immediate Release Contact: Richard Searcy, Press Secretary Richard.searcy@mail.house.gov July 17, 2005 Congresswoman McKinney Reveals Shocking Data on Diebold and Elections in Georgia “I have been investigating Diebold and electronic voting as a citizen, a candidate, and a Congresswoman. We reveal the first results of our investigation today.” Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (Decatur, GA) .. www.house.gov/mckinney … Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney held a press conference on Diebold and electronic voting in her District office today. With her at the event was Mr. Sam Barber, owner of American Computer Technology (ACT). Mr. Barber was a former partner with Diebold Elections Systems on the original 54 million dollar contract with the State of Georgia to provide equipment and services for Georgia elections. Mr. Barber’s company was to provide assembly and testing services for the Diebold DRE machines. Together, McKinney and Barber painted a very different picture of the problems with testing, certification, and the machines themselves than the picture of an almost flawless election that has been painted by the State of Georgia. With internal memos between Diebold and the State of Georgia, which were acquired through open records, and Mr. Barbers testimony, it was revealed that the voting machines used in the 2002 election were not adequately tested, the training provided by Diebold for Georgia election officials was seriously flawed, and in some cases nonexistent. It appears that the election was almost completely turned over to Diebold by the State of Georgia. “We continue to focus on the symptoms of the problem, instead of focusing on the source of the problems”, stated Barber. One of the documents shown to the audience and given to the press was a draft of the Georgia “Punch List”, dated December 3, 2002, which was after the general election had already been held. The List contained numerous bugs and errors that were encountered during the election, but kept from the public. Although the State of Georgia declared that the election went smoothly and encountered few problems, the Punch List revealed problems with the memory cards running low or out of memory, defective voting units, defective encoder performance, and deficient training on safeguards to detect tampering or theft. The list states, “Diebold staff providing training to counties, in many cases, were not adequately trained themselves and at times provided inaccurate information.” The list indicated that during the election, at least 5 county servers failed, and that there was evidence of failure with additional servers. Some CDs received from the counties that were supposed to contain election results were blank. There were also problems with a patch that was installed, and problems with “jumping” selections of candidates. Overall, the election was fraught with very serious problems, many of which had the potential to alter the results of the election. This was the first in a series of press conferences that McKinney has planned to inform the public of the danger of electronic voting without a verifiable paper trail.   admin Board Administrator Username: admin Post Number: 925 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, July 22, 2005 - 3:14 pm:        Woh. My bad. I juxtaposed Wright Solutions with Ran Temps in my head. I'm doing the detailed breakout of the Diebold vendors right now, I see the mistake. Thanks again, HG, for catching it. I edited the correction into the main article. Bev

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