Wow. This is creepy stuff!
Yup!
NOW do you see why we want to do recounts of counties that are using this crap?
Here's something Bev Harris just posted to Blackboxvoting.org:
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BREAKING -- TUESDAY NOV 16 2004: Volusia County election records just got put on lockdown -- Dueling lawyers, election officials gnashing teeth, Votergate.tv film crew catching it all. Poll tape discrepancies, stonewalling; Scroll down for full story.
(scrolling...)
TUESDAY NOV 16 2004: Volusia County on lockdown
County election records just got put on lockdown
Dueling lawyers, election officials gnashing teeth, Votergate.tv film crew catching it all.
Here's what happened so far:
Friday Black Box Voting investigators Andy Stephenson and Kathleen Wynne popped in to ask for some records. They were rebuffed by an elections official named Denise. Bev Harris called on the cell phone from investigations in downstate Florida, and told Volusia County Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe that Black Box Voting would be in to pick up the Nov. 2 Freedom of Information request, or would file for a hand recount. "No, Bev, please don't do that!" Lowe exclaimed. But this is the way it has to be, folks. Black Box Voting didn't back down.
Monday Bev, Andy and Kathleen came in with a film crew and asked for the FOIA request. Deanie Lowe gave it over with a smile, but Harris noticed that one item, the polling place tapes, were not copies of the real ones, but instead were new printouts, done on Nov. 15, and not signed by anyone.
Harris asked to see the real ones, and they said for "privacy" reasons they can't make copies of the signed ones. She insisted on at least viewing them (although refusing to give copies of the signatures is not legally defensible, according to Berkeley elections attorney, Lowell Finley). They said the real ones were in the County Elections warehouse. It was quittin' time and an arrangment was made to come back this morning to review them.
Lana Hires, a Volusia County employee who gained some notoriety in an election 2000 Diebold memo, where she asked for an explanation of minus 16,022 votes for Gore, so she wouldn't have to stand there "looking dumb" when the auditor came in, was particularly unhappy about seeing the Black Box Voting investigators in the office. She vigorously shook her head when Deanie Lowe suggested going to the warehouse.
Kathleen Wynne and Bev Harris showed up at the warehouse at 8:15 Tuesday morning, Nov. 16. There was Lana Hires looking especially gruff, yet surprised. She ordered them out. Well, they couldn't see why because there she was, with a couple other people, handling the original poll tapes. You know, the ones with the signatures on them. Harris and Wynne stepped out and Volusia County officials promptly shut the door.
There was a trash bag on the porch outside the door. Harris looked into it and what do you know, but there were poll tapes in there. They came out and glared at Harris and Wynne, who drove away a small bit, and then videotaped the license plates of the two vehicles marked 'City Council' member. Others came out to glare and soon all doors were slammed.
So, Harris and Wynne went and parked behind a bus to see what they would do next. They pulled out some large pylons, which blocked the door. Harris decided to go look at the garbage some more while Wynne videotaped. A man who identified himself as "Pete" came out and Harris immediately wrote a public records request for the contents of the garbage bag, which also contained ballots -- real ones, but not filled out.
A brief tug of war occurred, tearing the garbage bag open. Harris and Wynne then looked through it, as Pete looked on. He was quite friendly.
Black Box Voting collected various poll tapes and other information and asked if they could copy it, for the public records request. "You won't be going anywhere," said Pete. "The deputy is on his way."
Yes, not one but two police cars came up and then two county elections officials, and everyone stood around discussing the merits of the "black bag" public records request.
The police finally let Harris and Wynne go, about the time the Votergate.tv film crew arrived, and everyone trooped off to the elections office. There, the plot thickened.
Black Box Voting began to compare the special printouts given in the FOIA request with the signed polling tapes from election night. Lo and behold, some were missing. By this time, Black Box Voting investigator Andy Stephenson had joined the group at Volusia County. Some polling place tapes didn't match. In fact, in one location, precinct 215, an African-American precinct, the votes were off by hundreds, in favor of George W. Bush and other Republicans.
Hmm. Which was right? The polling tape Volusia gave to Black Box Voting, specially printed on Nov. 15, without signatures, or the ones with signatures, printed on Nov. 2, with up to 8 signatures per tape?
Well, then it became even more interesting. A Volusia employee boxed up some items from an office containing Lana Hires' desk, which appeared to contain -- you guessed it -- polling place tapes. The employee took them to the back of the building and disappeared.
Then, Ellen B., a voting integrity advocate from Broward County, Florida, and Susan, from Volusia, decided now would be a good time to go through the trash at the elections office. Lo and behold, they found all kinds of memos and some polling place tapes, fresh from Volusia elections office.
So, Black Box Voting compared these with the Nov. 2 signed ones and the "special' ones from Nov. 15 given, unsigned, finding several of the MISSING poll tapes. There they were: In the garbage.
So, Wynne went to the car and got the polling place tapes she had pulled from the warehouse garbage. My my my. There were not only discrepancies, but a polling place tape that was signed by six officials.
This was a bit disturbing, since the employees there had said that bag was destined for the shredder.
By now, a county lawyer had appeared on the scene, suddenly threatening to charge Black Box Voting extra for the time spent looking at the real stuff Volusia had withheld earlier. Other lawyers appeared, phoned, people had meetings, Lana glowered at everyone, and someone shut the door in the office holding the GEMS server.
Black Box Voting investigator Andy Stephenson then went to get the Diebold "GEMS" central server locked down. He also got the memory cards locked down and secured, much to the dismay of Lana. They were scattered around unsecured in any way before that.
Everyone agreed to convene tomorrow morning, to further audit, discuss the hand count that Black Box Voting will require of Volusia County, and of course, it is time to talk about contesting the election in Volusia.
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Jim again. Lemme 'splain about Volusia County FL (uses Diebold optical scan, same as back in 2000):
In 2000, somebody really did try a pro-Bush hack. And it wasn't Diebold, because it was a spectacularly incompetent hack: they took a precinct's worth of PCMCIA memory card voting data, copied it (probably in a standard laptop) and hacked the copy so that it produced 4000-something votes for Bush and 16,022 negative votes for Gore. Yes, you read that right: negative votes. From a precinct with about 950ish voters. Late on election night, Gore was set to concede when somebody at Volusia caught this, did a hand-correction, that was reported up the Democrat food chain and somebody told Gore.
We had sketchy details on this going back to election night 2000...somebody at CBS news caught wind. The perpetrator(s?) were never caught. They most likely worked for the county elections division in at least a mid-level position. Then in mid-03, when we got ahold of the Diebold tech support internal mailing lists there was a pretty thorough deconstruction of what went on, and they were as puzzled by some of it as anybody else. Which is one reason I think Diebold (or rather, back then it was Global, same staff though) wasn't the dirty party, the other being that if they wanted to hack, they've have done so *competently*.
So we *knew* there could be vote-hackers running around off-leash down there, and they may have learned how to do a better job - Visual Basic scripts can simply *rape* an MS-Access runtime edition like on a GEMS box, and they're taught at community college adult ed classes...you see all the stuff I showed in that video? Well all of that can be done with about 10k - 20k tops worth of VB Script TEXT FILES controlling the Access runtime edition.
Set to kick off automatically in the dead 'o night with nobody around.
SOME sort of excrement has hit a rotary air movement device...there's now ballot lockdowns, lawyers, all kinds of crap going on and if I know Bev she's wading right into the thick.
Heh. Grab some popcorn folks, this one's gonna be good
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