Hacking the presidency? (Let’s vote on it first)

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Hacking the presidency? (Let's vote on it first)

 

A dishonest presidential election sets aside the future economic,

social and military will of the American people. There is substantial

evidence that electronic voting machine corporations and political

forces in some states could turn aside the electoral wishes of the

U.S. populace on November 2 by means of election fraud.

 

by Tom Flocco

 

Philadelphia -- October 30, 2002 -- TomFlocco.com -- A series of

curious election upsets in 2002, allegedly linked to untraceable vote

fraud, could well have set the stage for another November presidential

legal conundrum.

 

This, as certain proprietary software secrets inherent in electronic

voting machine technology--supervised in some cases by a criminal

element, are engendering a growing public outcry for enforceable

`paper-trails,' properly certified software, but also a complete

separation of campaign contributions and private investment ties from

those companies that count American votes.

 

According to Beverly Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot

Tampering in the 21st Century, a manipulation technique she found in

Diebold Elections Systems' AccuVote central vote tabulator is able to

read totals from an untraceable bogus vote set within its software.

 

" By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of

votes is created; and this set of votes can be changed in a matter of

seconds, so that it no longer matches the correct votes, " said the

voting activist.

 

Election industry officials say their voting systems are secure

because they are protected by passwords and tamperproof audit logs;

but Harris says the passwords can easily be bypassed and the audit

logs can be changed--even without the county election supervisor

knowing about it.

 

Covering up vote fraud?

 

Harris appeared before the California Voting Systems Panel (CVSP) on

April 21, 2004, presenting a smoking gun Diebold internal memo proving

the company had not corrected Diebold's Global Election Systems (GEMS)

software flaws even though it had updated and upgraded the GEMS

program. She also showed Democrat Howard Dean how to fraudulently

alter the GEMS system on CNBC-TV.

 

In a convened August 11, 2004 CVSP meeting, member Jim March formally

requested a demonstration of the double set of books in GEMS; and

while the short 3-minute demonstration had been scheduled, the panel

refused to watch it and would not look at Harris' presentation.

 

Curiously, the panel met privately afterwards with Diebold

officials--but without informing the public or issuing a report about

the potential for vote fraud this fall.

 

Harris and her associate director Andy Stephenson, along with computer

security expert Dr. Hugh Thompson and former King County, Washington

elections supervisor Julie Anne Kempf, met with members of CVSP and

the California Attorney General's office to demonstrate the double set

of books in the GEMS system.

 

The Secretary of State's office stopped the meeting, called in the

general counsel for their office and a defense attorney from the

California Attorney General's office--refusing to allow Harris and

Stephenson to videotape their own GEMS demonstration, while also

prohibiting any audiotape and specifying that no notes of the meeting

could be requested in public records (Freedom of Information

Act--F.O.I.A.) requests.

 

Harris told us that Diebold knew about the problem too--or should have

known--because the company issued a " cease and desist " action against

her website when she originally reported the problem in 2003. Harris

also offered to show the problem to Marvin Singleton, Diebold's damage

control expert and other Diebold executives; however she said they

refused to look at it.

 

The state of Maryland commissioned its own report regarding Diebold's

system from Science Application International Corporation (SAIC) of

California, with Diebold allowing SAIC to examine the system using its

touch-screen source code.

 

Consistent with Black Box Voting assertions of election accuracy risk,

SAIC also said the Diebold system was subject to " several high risks

of vulnerabilities. "

 

Interestingly, Maryland went ahead and purchased $55 million worth of

the Diebold electronic touch-screen machines. The state's recently

hired computer experts have been able to hack the Diebold machines

with ease; and they were able to change the vote counts directly on

precinct machines--but also by using a modem.

 

In a move with likely far-reaching ramifications for the whole

country, the presidential battleground state of Ohio cited the same

security risks that Maryland found; but curiously, Ohio also gave its

counties the ok to purchase electronic systems, despite the

demonstrated ease of vote fraud: Diebold (40 counties), ES & S (11),

Hart InterCivic (7), and Sequoia (4). Again, no one has promulgated

litigation--despite prior knowledge of voting security risks.

 

Stealing a presidential election?

 

" The Diebold Global Elections System voting software, which runs on a

Microsoft Access database, can read election vote totals from a false

vote set, " says Harris, who added that Diebold purchased Texas-based

GEMS in 2002.

 

GEMS stores the votes in a ledger built in Microsoft Access; but while

accounting programs only allow one set of books, Diebold's GEMS system

contained three sets of " books, " according to Harris' findings.

 

The Secretary of State's office stopped the meeting, called in the

general counsel for their office and a defense attorney from the

California Attorney General's office--refusing to allow Harris and

Stephenson to videotape their own demonstration

 

The Founder of Black Box Voting explained further: " The elections

official never sees the three sets of books. All that is seen are the

reports that can be run, such as election summary (county-wide totals)

or a statement of votes cast (totals for each precinct), " adding, " the

official has no way of knowing the GEMS system uses a different set of

data for the detail report (used to spot-check) than it does for the

election totals. "

 

Why? " Because the GEMS interface draws its data from an Access

database which is hidden, " said Harris, offering further, " On the

programs we tested, the Election summary (totals, county-wide) come

from the vote ledger 2 instead of vote ledger 1; and ledger 2 can be

altered so it may or may not match ledger 1. "

 

Harris continued, " The Access database, which contains the hidden set

of votes, can't be seen unless you know how to get in the back

door--which takes only seconds. Two sets of books can easily allow

fraud to go undetected, especially if the two sets of books (votes)

are hidden from the user. "

 

" Using Diebold's GEMS system, one can type in a two-digit code into a

hidden location and decouple the books so that the voting system will

draw information from a combination of the real votes and a set of

fake votes, which can be altered any way one sees fit, " she said.

 

" ...Two sets of books can easily allow fraud to go undetected,

especially if the two sets of books (votes) are hidden from the user. "

 

Incredibly, Harris completed the short lesson in potential November

vote fraud by revealing, " when you put a two-digit code into a secret

location, you can disengage the vote tables, so the tampered totals

table doesn't have to match precinct by precinct results. This way, it

will pass a spot check--even with paper ballots--but it can still be

rigged. "

 

The Black Box founder clarified the issue: " You want the report to add

up on the actual votes. But unbeknownst to the election supervisor,

votes can be added and subtracted from vote ledger 2. Official reports

come from vote ledger 2, which has been disengaged from vote ledger 1.

If someone asks for a detailed report for some precincts, though, the

report comes from vote ledger 1. Therefore, if you keep the correct

votes in vote ledger 1, a spot-check of detailed precincts (even if

you compare voter-verified paper ballots) will always be correct.

 

Harris also deals with the issue of bypassing the passwords: " The

manual on Diebold's " ftp " website tells that the default password in a

new installation is " GEMSUSER. " Anyone who downloaded and installed

GEMS can bypass the passwords in elections. One can overwrite the

" admin " password with another, copied from another GEMS installation. "

 

She continued: " The password will appear encrypted; no worries, just

cut and paste. We saved the old " admin " password so we could replace

it later and delete the evidence that we'd been there. An intruder can

grant himself administrative privileges by putting zeros in the other

boxes, following the example in " admin. "

 

According to Black Box Voting`s website, " (Microsoft) Access

encourages those who create audit logs to use auto-numbering, so that

every logged entry has an un-editable log number. Then if one deletes

audit entries, a gap in the numbering sequence will appear. However,

we found that this feature was disabled, allowing us to write in our

own log numbers. We were able to add and delete from the audit without

leaving a trace. "

 

On August 26, 2004, Beverly Harris wrote that " some locations removed

the Microsoft Access software from their GEMS computer, leaving the

back door intact, but essentially removing the ability to easily view

and edit the file. "

 

" However, you can easily edit the election, with or without Microsoft

Access installed on the GEMS computer. As computer security expert

Hugh Thompson demonstrated at the August 18, 2004 California Secretary

of State meeting, you simply open any text editor, like `Notepad,' and

type a six-line Visual Basic Script, and you own the election, " said

Harris.

 

Harris also discussed the issue of hacking the election results on the

GEMS central tabulator through telephone lines: " Mohave County,

Arizona, for example, has six modems attached to its GEMS computer on

election night. King County, Washington state has up to four dozen

modems attached at once, " she said, adding, " most counties say they do

not hook up GEMS to the internet--they remove the disk from the GEMS

computer and physically take it to another computer from which the

internet feed comes. "

 

But Harris clarifies: " You can access a computer through phone lines

as well as through the internet. If you have dial-in number, it's

possible to get at GEMS computers from anywhere, using RAS. The

dial-in protocols are given to poll workers, many people in Diebold

have them, lots of temp workers have them, and the configurations have

been sitting on the internet for several years. "

 

" We asked who was allowed to access the central tabulator, after it

was already turned on, and who is given a password and permission to

sit at the terminal, " Harris continued, " Several officials told us

they don't keep a list. Those who did gave us the names of too many

people--county employees, Diebold employees, and county database

technicians all get access to GEMS. Print-shops who do the ballots

also have some access. "

 

" Whether one votes by absentee ballot, touch-screens or

`fill-in-the-bubble' optical scanning machines, all votes are

ultimately brought to the `mother ship,' the central tabulator at the

county level, which adds them up and creates a results report, " said

Harris.

 

" The central tabulator is far more vulnerable than the touch-screen

terminals, " she said, adding, " if you were going to tamper with an

election, would you rather tamper with 4,500 individual voting

machines, or with just one machine, the central tabulator which

receives votes from all the machines in the county. "

 

The accurate vote crusader says " at present, not a single location in

the United States has implemented security measures to fully mitigate

the risks. "

 

Diebold's `GEMS' found in most states

 

Since 1,000+ of Diebold's `GEMS' software systems are currently used

in electronic voting machines in 37 states--each of which will count

up to two million votes at once--questions can be raised as to the

vulnerability and accuracy of Tuesday's presidential vote tally--let

alone Senate, House and local races.

 

" ...if one deletes audit entries, a gap in the numbering sequence will

appear. However, we found that this feature was disabled, allowing us

to write in our own log numbers. We were able to add and delete from

the audit without leaving a trace. "

 

Harris told TomFlocco.com, " Much of this information has been

corroborated by formal studies and by 13,000 internal Diebold memos

and emails written by the company's own programmers. "

 

The memos were leaked to Harris in September, 2003, revealing that a

top Diebold engineer had been aware of security flaws for a lengthy

period of time.

 

Andy Stephenson visited the Washington state attorney general's office

in February, 2004 to inform them of the problem; but nothing has been

done to inform that state's election officials, and safeguards have

not been implemented.

 

" At present, not a single location in the United States has

implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks. "

 

Interestingly, Governor Arnold Swarzenegger (R-CA) recently froze

funds allocated by Secretary of State Kevin Shelley which would have

paid for increased scrutiny of the voting system in California,

according to Harris.

 

Early warnings of national vote fraud

 

At the outset of her crusade, Beverly Harris said she was intrigued by

an article written by freelance investigative reporter Lynn Landes

which said direct-recording electronic voting systems (DRE's) had

become hot, but also highly profitable commodities in the wake of the

controversial 2000 presidential vote recount in Florida and the push

for `chad-free` elections, according to Vanity Fair (April, 2004).

 

The vote activist thought Landes' DRE findings were troubling; and

after some research, Harris found a disturbing pattern of Republican

election upsets as well as instances of malfunctioning software and

machines related to certain brands.

 

The Vanity Fair piece recounts a series of curious Senate races which

Harris questioned as highly suspicious:

 

1. In the fall of 2002, Georgia became the first state to replace all

its voting machines with DRE electronic models. A poll by the Atlanta

Journal-Constitution put Democratic Senate incumbent Max Cleland five

points ahead of his Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss--just two

days before the election. Chambliss won by 7 percent--a 12-point shift

in 48 hours!

 

Rob Behler, a short-term Diebold employee from the ABSS Temp firm,

shared some staggering inside information about the 2002 Georgia

election to Beverly Harris in a phone interview ( " Georgia--on

California's mind " )

 

2. In another 2002 senate race, Minnesota Democrat Walter Mondale led

in two of three polls on election day in a state using many optical

scanning electronic voting machines where paper ballots are read and

recorded electronically. But Republican Norm Coleman won by 3 percent

that day.

 

3. Colorado Republican senate incumbent Wayne Allard was running neck

and neck with Democrat Tom Strickland in 2002, but won by 5 percent on

election day--helping to turn power of the U.S. Senate, all committee

chairmanships and control of the America's political agenda over to

Republicans.

 

4. Seven Republicans competed for a vacant state representative seat

in the spring of 2004 when Connie Mack IV resigned to run for

Congress. Nebraska's Election Systems & Software (ES & S) touch-screen

electronic voting machines were used by the county to tally the votes.

10,000 Broward citizens signed in at the polls; but the electronic

touch-screen voting machines indicated that 134 of them failed to vote

after showing up at the polls to sign in. This is important because

the individual who came in second in the race only lost by 12 votes!

Florida's touch-screen machines have no paper trail, so there was no

way to facilitate a recount to validate the election. Case closed. 134

votes just turned up missing.

 

5. In November, 2002 Democratic governor Roy Barnes lost to Republican

challenger Sonny Perdue--the first time in 134 years that a Republican

had won the governor's seat. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll had

shown Barnes leading Perdue by 11 points just two days before the

election: a 11%+ shift in 48 hours! Another victory for electronic

touch-screen machines?

 

" ...you can easily edit the election, with or without Microsoft Access

installed on the GEMS computer. As computer security expert Hugh

Thompson demonstrated at the August 18, 2004 California Secretary of

State meeting, you simply open any text editor, like `Notepad,' and

type a six-line Visual Basic Script, and you own the election, " said

Harris.

 

Vanity Fair said Diebold wiped clean the machines used to tally

Georgia's upset votes, raising questions as to whether the company was

covering up evidence of election tampering. But no one complained or

brought litigation to subpoena either public testimony or evidence.

 

Such examples indicate a serious omen for the Bush-Kerry election--not

to mention critical senate, house and gubernatorial races; and this

time Democrats may not roll over and concede so easily " for the good

of the country " if President Bush is reelected to a second term--given

the 2000 Florida recount fiasco and Supreme Court litigation.

 

Thieves, thieves -- tramps and thieves?

 

Harris traced the implementation of the double set of books to October

13, 2000, not long after embezzler Jeffrey Dean became Diebold's

senior programmer. Dean was hired as Vice President of Research and

Development in September, 2000, adding that Dean's access to the

company's programs is well documented through internal memos from Diebold.

 

Immediately after Dean joined Diebold, according to corporate memos,

another Diebold programmer, Dmitri Papushin, flagged bogus votes

appearing in vote tables; but after a dozen changes before the

November 2000 election, all the changes retained the new hidden vote

tables! And this has continued up to the present, according to Harris,

who says anyone can use or sell the information.

 

BlackBoxVoting.org's associate director Andy Stephenson obtained the

court records of Jeffrey Dean which noted that the King County,

Washington prosecutor was after him for over $500,000 in restitution.

 

10,000 Broward citizens signed in at the polls; but the electronic

touch-screen voting machines indicated that 134 of them failed to vote

after showing up at the polls to sign in. Florida's touch-screen

voting machines have no paper trail, so there was no way to facilitate

a recount to validate the election.

 

Dean told prosecutors (whose offices were on the ninth floor of the

King County courthouse) that he was unemployed, when in fact he was

working for Diebold who afforded him with 24-hour access to Diebold's

King County. Washington GEMS central tabulator, according to

Stephenson. (Dean worked on the GEMS tabulator on the fifth floor of

the same King County courthouse!)

 

Unfortunately, New York Attorney General Elliott Spitzer is not

employed by the state of Washington.

 

Stephenson says that Jeffrey Dean (by his own admission) is subject to

blackmail; but more critically, his embezzlement charges in the police

record indicate he was involved in " `sophisticated' manipulation of

computer accounting records, " and that " he was embezzling in order to

pay blackmail over a fight he was involved in, in which a person died. "

 

" So now we have someone who's admitted that he's been blackmailed over

killing someone, who pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement, who

is given the position of senior programmer of the (Diebold) GEMS

central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 cercent of the

votes in the (Bush-Kerry) election, in 30 states, both paper ballot

and touch screen, " said Stephenson.

 

Harris and Stephenson talked to Jeffrey Dean's partners and others who

worked with the embezzler: " we got descriptions such as

`sophisticated, cunning, very bright, highly skilled and a con man,' "

the two said.

 

The Diebold internal memos leaked to Harris and Stephenson also

revealed that " Dean was sent the passwords to the GEMS 1.18x files

months after Diebold took over the election company. Diebold clearly

did not examine the GEMS program before selling it, or, if it did,

chose not to correct the flaws. And after exposing this problem in

2003, Diebold still failed to correct it, " according to both activists.

 

Before Diebold purchased Texas-base GEMS, one of its directors,

Michael K. Graye, was arrested in 1996 in Canada on tax-fraud and

money-laundering charges that involved $18 million; but before he was

sentenced, the U.S. indicted him for stock fraud, after which he spent

18 months in Canadian and U.S. prisons before pleading guilty to tax

fraud in Canada, according to Vanity Fair.

 

Harris found out that Jeffrey Dean's friend John Elder--a convicted

cocaine trafficker who served nearly five years in the same prison

where Dean was incarcerated--joined Dean at Diebold's GEMS operation

not long after Dean signed on with the company.

 

" So now we have someone who's admitted that he's been blackmailed over

killing someone, who pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement, who

is given the position of senior programmer of the (Diebold) GEMS

central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 cercent of the

votes in the (Bush-Kerry) election, in 30 states, both paper ballot

and touch screen, " said Stephenson.

 

Diebold's newest ex-con came aboard to oversee the printing of paper

ballots and punch cards produced for elections in several states; and

Dean had by this time become a consultant.

 

Diebold says Dean is no longer with the company; but as of April,

2004, John Elder remains with Diebold as manager of the company's

printed-products division.

 

Good men coming to the aid of their party?

 

Diebold Election Systems, based in the key battleground state of Ohio,

is headed by Chairman and CEO Walden O'Dell, a George W. Bush pioneer,

raising more that $100,000 for Dubya's election war chest.

 

Wide reports also reveal that O'Dell helped organize and raise

$600,000 for Bush-Cheney 2004 at a fund-raiser attended by the

Vice-President on June 30, 2003. Shortly thereafter, the Diebold CEO

sent a letter to Ohio Republicans, reiterating his commitment to " help

Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year. "

 

In 2001 and 2002, Diebold, Inc. gave nearly $100,000 to the Republican

National Committee and zero to the Democrats. This, while Diebold

director W. R. Timken Jr. raised $200,000 for Bush-Cheney and 11 other

Diebold executives gave added $22,000 to Timken's

beneficence--according to the New York Times. That's over $1 million

from Diebold to Republicans--if anyone is counting.

 

We ran into Harvard computer scientist and acknowledged electronic

vote expert Rebecca Mercuri at a presentation in Philadelphia last

year. Mercuri was adamant about making secret proprietary software

available for public inspection since " the country has so much riding

on an honest vote count. "

 

Mercuri added that all e-voting machine companies refuse to open up

their software for public viewing, while the certification of their

machines is also kept secret. When combined with substantial campaign

contributions to one party by a company that counts 50% of the votes

in 37 states, many citizens could ask whether a fix could be in for

November 2--especially if the vote is as close as expected.

 

If the polls keep certifying the presidential race as deadlocked, it

would follow that Americans may likely be more inclined to accept a

close win by either Bush or Kerry--say 51-52% to 49-48%--despite clear

evidence of possible vote fraud.

 

Elections Systems and Software (ES & S), a Nebraska-based touch-screen

company whose machines counted the Spring, 2004 Broward-Palm Beach

primary election which could not account for 134 missing votes in a

race won by only 12 tallies, used to be American Information Systems

(AIS) whose former chairman was none other that current two-term

Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel.

 

Hagel won a surprise victory--one of the country's major 1996 upsets

for the Republican party; but curiously, his AIS electronic

optical-scan machines counted some 85% of the votes in his senate

race--what some would consider an outrageous conflict of interest.

 

Vanity Fair said throughout his first senate term, Hagel retained an

indirect investment of at least $1 million in AIS through the McCarthy

Group; but since AIS became ES & S, McCarthy kept its minority interest

in the newly named company, and Senator Hagel still has his share in

the McCarthy Group.

 

In another incredible conflict of interest, if not bravado, McCarthy's

chairman, Michael McCarthy, also served as Hagel's treasurer in his

2002 U.S. Senate re-election as Congress looked the other way,

permitting Hagel's campaign treasurer to own the company which counted

most of Senator Hagel's electi0on votes!

 

Some would consider it strange that both GEMS and Austin-based Hart

InterCivic are both based in the Lone Star state. But not when one

considers that Hart is backed by wealthy Republican Texas investor Tom

Hicks of Stratford Capital Partners.

 

Hicks' primary investment company Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst

coordinated the 1998 purchase of Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers

from George W. Bush and his partners, in which Dubya pocketed a $14.9

million profit from his original but controversial $1 million Harken

Energy stock sale just days before Gulf War I hostilities commenced.

 

A common thread running through most electronic voting machine

companies seems to be total and all-out secrecy regarding

software--despite multiple U.S. intellectual property laws, but also

large financial contributions to the Republican Party--from backers

and owners--to some of the same e-voting corporations. But no one ever

institutes litigation to test the laws regarding political conflicts

of interest. Even a U.S. Senator is brazen enough continue with major

conflicts.

 

Beverly Harris offers some final thoughts as to what the American

people might expect during the 2004 Bush-Kerry election: " We found

that you can melt down an election is six seconds, simply by using the

menu items in GEMS. You can destroy all data with two mouse clicks,

and with four mouse clicks, you can destroy the configuration of the

election, making it very difficult to reload the original data. "

 

" According to testimony given before the Cuyahoga Elections Board, the

Microsoft Access database design used by Diebold's GEMS program

apparently becomes unstable with high volume output. This problem,

according to Diebold, resulted in thousands of votes being allocated

to the wrong candidate in San Diego County in March, 2004.

 

For her part, the Founder of Black Box Voting warns candidates: " Don't

concede the election. Make a statement about voting without auditing.

Hold off on your concession until the canvass is done. Wait until

audits and records can be examined. If your county melts down into

litigation, hold officials accountable if they chose to ignore warning

and failed to mitigate risks with preventive actions--like

disconnecting all telephone modems. "

 

Harris warns election officials: " Disconnect those modems NOW. If you

don't. You have to be replaced. " For reporters: " Some election

officials will lie to you. Show your kids what bravery looks like. Be

courageous. Report the truth. "

 

As public awareness and more knowledge generates increased activism

during November--perhaps in the form of multiple protracted lawsuits,

the American people may ultimately ask to go " home where we belong, "

i.e. elections with carefully certified and audited paper ballot trails.

 

A dishonest, fraudulent election is nothing more than a coup d'

etat--a non-violent overthrow of the United States government.

Traceable, certifiable paper ballots are much safer and will cost far

less in the long run when an election necessitates a vote recount. But

dare we vote on it first?

 

Beverly Harris and Andy Stephenson may be contacted at

www.BlackBoxVoting.org

[Guest guest]

, " califpacific "

<califpacific> wrote:

>

>

>

http://tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News & file=article & sid=100 & mode= & order=0 & th\

old=0

>

> Hacking the presidency? (Let's vote on it first)

>

> A dishonest presidential election sets aside the future economic,

> social and military will of the American people. There is substantial

> evidence that electronic voting machine corporations and political

> forces in some states could turn aside the electoral wishes of the

> U.S. populace on November 2 by means of election fraud.

>

> by Tom Flocco

>

> Philadelphia -- October 30, 2002 -- TomFlocco.com -- A series of

> curious election upsets in 2002, allegedly linked to untraceable vote

> fraud, could well have set the stage for another November presidential

> legal conundrum.

>

> This, as certain proprietary software secrets inherent in electronic

> voting machine technology--supervised in some cases by a criminal

> element, are engendering a growing public outcry for enforceable

> `paper-trails,' properly certified software, but also a complete

> separation of campaign contributions and private investment ties from

> those companies that count American votes.

>

> According to Beverly Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot

> Tampering in the 21st Century, a manipulation technique she found in

> Diebold Elections Systems' AccuVote central vote tabulator is able to

> read totals from an untraceable bogus vote set within its software.

>

> " By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of

> votes is created; and this set of votes can be changed in a matter of

> seconds, so that it no longer matches the correct votes, " said the

> voting activist.

>

> Election industry officials say their voting systems are secure

> because they are protected by passwords and tamperproof audit logs;

> but Harris says the passwords can easily be bypassed and the audit

> logs can be changed--even without the county election supervisor

> knowing about it.

>

> Covering up vote fraud?

>

> Harris appeared before the California Voting Systems Panel (CVSP) on

> April 21, 2004, presenting a smoking gun Diebold internal memo proving

> the company had not corrected Diebold's Global Election Systems (GEMS)

> software flaws even though it had updated and upgraded the GEMS

> program. She also showed Democrat Howard Dean how to fraudulently

> alter the GEMS system on CNBC-TV.

>

> In a convened August 11, 2004 CVSP meeting, member Jim March formally

> requested a demonstration of the double set of books in GEMS; and

> while the short 3-minute demonstration had been scheduled, the panel

> refused to watch it and would not look at Harris' presentation.

>

> Curiously, the panel met privately afterwards with Diebold

> officials--but without informing the public or issuing a report about

> the potential for vote fraud this fall.

>

> Harris and her associate director Andy Stephenson, along with computer

> security expert Dr. Hugh Thompson and former King County, Washington

> elections supervisor Julie Anne Kempf, met with members of CVSP and

> the California Attorney General's office to demonstrate the double set

> of books in the GEMS system.

>

> The Secretary of State's office stopped the meeting, called in the

> general counsel for their office and a defense attorney from the

> California Attorney General's office--refusing to allow Harris and

> Stephenson to videotape their own GEMS demonstration, while also

> prohibiting any audiotape and specifying that no notes of the meeting

> could be requested in public records (Freedom of Information

> Act--F.O.I.A.) requests.

>

> Harris told us that Diebold knew about the problem too--or should have

> known--because the company issued a " cease and desist " action against

> her website when she originally reported the problem in 2003. Harris

> also offered to show the problem to Marvin Singleton, Diebold's damage

> control expert and other Diebold executives; however she said they

> refused to look at it.

>

> The state of Maryland commissioned its own report regarding Diebold's

> system from Science Application International Corporation (SAIC) of

> California, with Diebold allowing SAIC to examine the system using its

> touch-screen source code.

>

> Consistent with Black Box Voting assertions of election accuracy risk,

> SAIC also said the Diebold system was subject to " several high risks

> of vulnerabilities. "

>

> Interestingly, Maryland went ahead and purchased $55 million worth of

> the Diebold electronic touch-screen machines. The state's recently

> hired computer experts have been able to hack the Diebold machines

> with ease; and they were able to change the vote counts directly on

> precinct machines--but also by using a modem.

>

> In a move with likely far-reaching ramifications for the whole

> country, the presidential battleground state of Ohio cited the same

> security risks that Maryland found; but curiously, Ohio also gave its

> counties the ok to purchase electronic systems, despite the

> demonstrated ease of vote fraud: Diebold (40 counties), ES & S (11),

> Hart InterCivic (7), and Sequoia (4). Again, no one has promulgated

> litigation--despite prior knowledge of voting security risks.

>

> Stealing a presidential election?

>

> " The Diebold Global Elections System voting software, which runs on a

> Microsoft Access database, can read election vote totals from a false

> vote set, " says Harris, who added that Diebold purchased Texas-based

> GEMS in 2002.

>

> GEMS stores the votes in a ledger built in Microsoft Access; but while

> accounting programs only allow one set of books, Diebold's GEMS system

> contained three sets of " books, " according to Harris' findings.

>

> The Secretary of State's office stopped the meeting, called in the

> general counsel for their office and a defense attorney from the

> California Attorney General's office--refusing to allow Harris and

> Stephenson to videotape their own demonstration

>

> The Founder of Black Box Voting explained further: " The elections

> official never sees the three sets of books. All that is seen are the

> reports that can be run, such as election summary (county-wide totals)

> or a statement of votes cast (totals for each precinct), " adding, " the

> official has no way of knowing the GEMS system uses a different set of

> data for the detail report (used to spot-check) than it does for the

> election totals. "

>

> Why? " Because the GEMS interface draws its data from an Access

> database which is hidden, " said Harris, offering further, " On the

> programs we tested, the Election summary (totals, county-wide) come

> from the vote ledger 2 instead of vote ledger 1; and ledger 2 can be

> altered so it may or may not match ledger 1. "

>

> Harris continued, " The Access database, which contains the hidden set

> of votes, can't be seen unless you know how to get in the back

> door--which takes only seconds. Two sets of books can easily allow

> fraud to go undetected, especially if the two sets of books (votes)

> are hidden from the user. "

>

> " Using Diebold's GEMS system, one can type in a two-digit code into a

> hidden location and decouple the books so that the voting system will

> draw information from a combination of the real votes and a set of

> fake votes, which can be altered any way one sees fit, " she said.

>

> " ...Two sets of books can easily allow fraud to go undetected,

> especially if the two sets of books (votes) are hidden from the user. "

>

> Incredibly, Harris completed the short lesson in potential November

> vote fraud by revealing, " when you put a two-digit code into a secret

> location, you can disengage the vote tables, so the tampered totals

> table doesn't have to match precinct by precinct results. This way, it

> will pass a spot check--even with paper ballots--but it can still be

> rigged. "

>

> The Black Box founder clarified the issue: " You want the report to add

> up on the actual votes. But unbeknownst to the election supervisor,

> votes can be added and subtracted from vote ledger 2. Official reports

> come from vote ledger 2, which has been disengaged from vote ledger 1.

> If someone asks for a detailed report for some precincts, though, the

> report comes from vote ledger 1. Therefore, if you keep the correct

> votes in vote ledger 1, a spot-check of detailed precincts (even if

> you compare voter-verified paper ballots) will always be correct.

>

> Harris also deals with the issue of bypassing the passwords: " The

> manual on Diebold's " ftp " website tells that the default password in a

> new installation is " GEMSUSER. " Anyone who downloaded and installed

> GEMS can bypass the passwords in elections. One can overwrite the

> " admin " password with another, copied from another GEMS installation. "

>

> She continued: " The password will appear encrypted; no worries, just

> cut and paste. We saved the old " admin " password so we could replace

> it later and delete the evidence that we'd been there. An intruder can

> grant himself administrative privileges by putting zeros in the other

> boxes, following the example in " admin. "

>

> According to Black Box Voting`s website, " (Microsoft) Access

> encourages those who create audit logs to use auto-numbering, so that

> every logged entry has an un-editable log number. Then if one deletes

> audit entries, a gap in the numbering sequence will appear. However,

> we found that this feature was disabled, allowing us to write in our

> own log numbers. We were able to add and delete from the audit without

> leaving a trace. "

>

> On August 26, 2004, Beverly Harris wrote that " some locations removed

> the Microsoft Access software from their GEMS computer, leaving the

> back door intact, but essentially removing the ability to easily view

> and edit the file. "

>

> " However, you can easily edit the election, with or without Microsoft

> Access installed on the GEMS computer. As computer security expert

> Hugh Thompson demonstrated at the August 18, 2004 California Secretary

> of State meeting, you simply open any text editor, like `Notepad,' and

> type a six-line Visual Basic Script, and you own the election, " said

> Harris.

>

> Harris also discussed the issue of hacking the election results on the

> GEMS central tabulator through telephone lines: " Mohave County,

> Arizona, for example, has six modems attached to its GEMS computer on

> election night. King County, Washington state has up to four dozen

> modems attached at once, " she said, adding, " most counties say they do

> not hook up GEMS to the internet--they remove the disk from the GEMS

> computer and physically take it to another computer from which the

> internet feed comes. "

>

> But Harris clarifies: " You can access a computer through phone lines

> as well as through the internet. If you have dial-in number, it's

> possible to get at GEMS computers from anywhere, using RAS. The

> dial-in protocols are given to poll workers, many people in Diebold

> have them, lots of temp workers have them, and the configurations have

> been sitting on the internet for several years. "

>

> " We asked who was allowed to access the central tabulator, after it

> was already turned on, and who is given a password and permission to

> sit at the terminal, " Harris continued, " Several officials told us

> they don't keep a list. Those who did gave us the names of too many

> people--county employees, Diebold employees, and county database

> technicians all get access to GEMS. Print-shops who do the ballots

> also have some access. "

>

> " Whether one votes by absentee ballot, touch-screens or

> `fill-in-the-bubble' optical scanning machines, all votes are

> ultimately brought to the `mother ship,' the central tabulator at the

> county level, which adds them up and creates a results report, " said

> Harris.

>

> " The central tabulator is far more vulnerable than the touch-screen

> terminals, " she said, adding, " if you were going to tamper with an

> election, would you rather tamper with 4,500 individual voting

> machines, or with just one machine, the central tabulator which

> receives votes from all the machines in the county. "

>

> The accurate vote crusader says " at present, not a single location in

> the United States has implemented security measures to fully mitigate

> the risks. "

>

> Diebold's `GEMS' found in most states

>

> Since 1,000+ of Diebold's `GEMS' software systems are currently used

> in electronic voting machines in 37 states--each of which will count

> up to two million votes at once--questions can be raised as to the

> vulnerability and accuracy of Tuesday's presidential vote tally--let

> alone Senate, House and local races.

>

> " ...if one deletes audit entries, a gap in the numbering sequence will

> appear. However, we found that this feature was disabled, allowing us

> to write in our own log numbers. We were able to add and delete from

> the audit without leaving a trace. "

>

> Harris told TomFlocco.com, " Much of this information has been

> corroborated by formal studies and by 13,000 internal Diebold memos

> and emails written by the company's own programmers. "

>

> The memos were leaked to Harris in September, 2003, revealing that a

> top Diebold engineer had been aware of security flaws for a lengthy

> period of time.

>

> Andy Stephenson visited the Washington state attorney general's office

> in February, 2004 to inform them of the problem; but nothing has been

> done to inform that state's election officials, and safeguards have

> not been implemented.

>

> " At present, not a single location in the United States has

> implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks. "

>

> Interestingly, Governor Arnold Swarzenegger (R-CA) recently froze

> funds allocated by Secretary of State Kevin Shelley which would have

> paid for increased scrutiny of the voting system in California,

> according to Harris.

>

> Early warnings of national vote fraud

>

> At the outset of her crusade, Beverly Harris said she was intrigued by

> an article written by freelance investigative reporter Lynn Landes

> which said direct-recording electronic voting systems (DRE's) had

> become hot, but also highly profitable commodities in the wake of the

> controversial 2000 presidential vote recount in Florida and the push

> for `chad-free` elections, according to Vanity Fair (April, 2004).

>

> The vote activist thought Landes' DRE findings were troubling; and

> after some research, Harris found a disturbing pattern of Republican

> election upsets as well as instances of malfunctioning software and

> machines related to certain brands.

>

> The Vanity Fair piece recounts a series of curious Senate races which

> Harris questioned as highly suspicious:

>

> 1. In the fall of 2002, Georgia became the first state to replace all

> its voting machines with DRE electronic models. A poll by the Atlanta

> Journal-Constitution put Democratic Senate incumbent Max Cleland five

> points ahead of his Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss--just two

> days before the election. Chambliss won by 7 percent--a 12-point shift

> in 48 hours!

>

> Rob Behler, a short-term Diebold employee from the ABSS Temp firm,

> shared some staggering inside information about the 2002 Georgia

> election to Beverly Harris in a phone interview ( " Georgia--on

> California's mind " )

>

> 2. In another 2002 senate race, Minnesota Democrat Walter Mondale led

> in two of three polls on election day in a state using many optical

> scanning electronic voting machines where paper ballots are read and

> recorded electronically. But Republican Norm Coleman won by 3 percent

> that day.

>

> 3. Colorado Republican senate incumbent Wayne Allard was running neck

> and neck with Democrat Tom Strickland in 2002, but won by 5 percent on

> election day--helping to turn power of the U.S. Senate, all committee

> chairmanships and control of the America's political agenda over to

> Republicans.

>

> 4. Seven Republicans competed for a vacant state representative seat

> in the spring of 2004 when Connie Mack IV resigned to run for

> Congress. Nebraska's Election Systems & Software (ES & S) touch-screen

> electronic voting machines were used by the county to tally the votes.

> 10,000 Broward citizens signed in at the polls; but the electronic

> touch-screen voting machines indicated that 134 of them failed to vote

> after showing up at the polls to sign in. This is important because

> the individual who came in second in the race only lost by 12 votes!

> Florida's touch-screen machines have no paper trail, so there was no

> way to facilitate a recount to validate the election. Case closed. 134

> votes just turned up missing.

>

> 5. In November, 2002 Democratic governor Roy Barnes lost to Republican

> challenger Sonny Perdue--the first time in 134 years that a Republican

> had won the governor's seat. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll had

> shown Barnes leading Perdue by 11 points just two days before the

> election: a 11%+ shift in 48 hours! Another victory for electronic

> touch-screen machines?

>

> " ...you can easily edit the election, with or without Microsoft Access

> installed on the GEMS computer. As computer security expert Hugh

> Thompson demonstrated at the August 18, 2004 California Secretary of

> State meeting, you simply open any text editor, like `Notepad,' and

> type a six-line Visual Basic Script, and you own the election, " said

> Harris.

>

> Vanity Fair said Diebold wiped clean the machines used to tally

> Georgia's upset votes, raising questions as to whether the company was

> covering up evidence of election tampering. But no one complained or

> brought litigation to subpoena either public testimony or evidence.

>

> Such examples indicate a serious omen for the Bush-Kerry election--not

> to mention critical senate, house and gubernatorial races; and this

> time Democrats may not roll over and concede so easily " for the good

> of the country " if President Bush is reelected to a second term--given

> the 2000 Florida recount fiasco and Supreme Court litigation.

>

> Thieves, thieves -- tramps and thieves?

>

> Harris traced the implementation of the double set of books to October

> 13, 2000, not long after embezzler Jeffrey Dean became Diebold's

> senior programmer. Dean was hired as Vice President of Research and

> Development in September, 2000, adding that Dean's access to the

> company's programs is well documented through internal memos from

Diebold.

>

> Immediately after Dean joined Diebold, according to corporate memos,

> another Diebold programmer, Dmitri Papushin, flagged bogus votes

> appearing in vote tables; but after a dozen changes before the

> November 2000 election, all the changes retained the new hidden vote

> tables! And this has continued up to the present, according to Harris,

> who says anyone can use or sell the information.

>

> BlackBoxVoting.org's associate director Andy Stephenson obtained the

> court records of Jeffrey Dean which noted that the King County,

> Washington prosecutor was after him for over $500,000 in restitution.

>

> 10,000 Broward citizens signed in at the polls; but the electronic

> touch-screen voting machines indicated that 134 of them failed to vote

> after showing up at the polls to sign in. Florida's touch-screen

> voting machines have no paper trail, so there was no way to facilitate

> a recount to validate the election.

>

> Dean told prosecutors (whose offices were on the ninth floor of the

> King County courthouse) that he was unemployed, when in fact he was

> working for Diebold who afforded him with 24-hour access to Diebold's

> King County. Washington GEMS central tabulator, according to

> Stephenson. (Dean worked on the GEMS tabulator on the fifth floor of

> the same King County courthouse!)

>

> Unfortunately, New York Attorney General Elliott Spitzer is not

> employed by the state of Washington.

>

> Stephenson says that Jeffrey Dean (by his own admission) is subject to

> blackmail; but more critically, his embezzlement charges in the police

> record indicate he was involved in " `sophisticated' manipulation of

> computer accounting records, " and that " he was embezzling in order to

> pay blackmail over a fight he was involved in, in which a person died. "

>

> " So now we have someone who's admitted that he's been blackmailed over

> killing someone, who pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement, who

> is given the position of senior programmer of the (Diebold) GEMS

> central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 cercent of the

> votes in the (Bush-Kerry) election, in 30 states, both paper ballot

> and touch screen, " said Stephenson.

>

> Harris and Stephenson talked to Jeffrey Dean's partners and others who

> worked with the embezzler: " we got descriptions such as

> `sophisticated, cunning, very bright, highly skilled and a con man,' "

> the two said.

>

> The Diebold internal memos leaked to Harris and Stephenson also

> revealed that " Dean was sent the passwords to the GEMS 1.18x files

> months after Diebold took over the election company. Diebold clearly

> did not examine the GEMS program before selling it, or, if it did,

> chose not to correct the flaws. And after exposing this problem in

> 2003, Diebold still failed to correct it, " according to both activists.

>

> Before Diebold purchased Texas-base GEMS, one of its directors,

> Michael K. Graye, was arrested in 1996 in Canada on tax-fraud and

> money-laundering charges that involved $18 million; but before he was

> sentenced, the U.S. indicted him for stock fraud, after which he spent

> 18 months in Canadian and U.S. prisons before pleading guilty to tax

> fraud in Canada, according to Vanity Fair.

>

> Harris found out that Jeffrey Dean's friend John Elder--a convicted

> cocaine trafficker who served nearly five years in the same prison

> where Dean was incarcerated--joined Dean at Diebold's GEMS operation

> not long after Dean signed on with the company.

>

> " So now we have someone who's admitted that he's been blackmailed over

> killing someone, who pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement, who

> is given the position of senior programmer of the (Diebold) GEMS

> central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 cercent of the

> votes in the (Bush-Kerry) election, in 30 states, both paper ballot

> and touch screen, " said Stephenson.

>

> Diebold's newest ex-con came aboard to oversee the printing of paper

> ballots and punch cards produced for elections in several states; and

> Dean had by this time become a consultant.

>

> Diebold says Dean is no longer with the company; but as of April,

> 2004, John Elder remains with Diebold as manager of the company's

> printed-products division.

>

> Good men coming to the aid of their party?

>

> Diebold Election Systems, based in the key battleground state of Ohio,

> is headed by Chairman and CEO Walden O'Dell, a George W. Bush pioneer,

> raising more that $100,000 for Dubya's election war chest.

>

> Wide reports also reveal that O'Dell helped organize and raise

> $600,000 for Bush-Cheney 2004 at a fund-raiser attended by the

> Vice-President on June 30, 2003. Shortly thereafter, the Diebold CEO

> sent a letter to Ohio Republicans, reiterating his commitment to " help

> Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year. "

>

> In 2001 and 2002, Diebold, Inc. gave nearly $100,000 to the Republican

> National Committee and zero to the Democrats. This, while Diebold

> director W. R. Timken Jr. raised $200,000 for Bush-Cheney and 11 other

> Diebold executives gave added $22,000 to Timken's

> beneficence--according to the New York Times. That's over $1 million

> from Diebold to Republicans--if anyone is counting.

>

> We ran into Harvard computer scientist and acknowledged electronic

> vote expert Rebecca Mercuri at a presentation in Philadelphia last

> year. Mercuri was adamant about making secret proprietary software

> available for public inspection since " the country has so much riding

> on an honest vote count. "

>

> Mercuri added that all e-voting machine companies refuse to open up

> their software for public viewing, while the certification of their

> machines is also kept secret. When combined with substantial campaign

> contributions to one party by a company that counts 50% of the votes

> in 37 states, many citizens could ask whether a fix could be in for

> November 2--especially if the vote is as close as expected.

>

> If the polls keep certifying the presidential race as deadlocked, it

> would follow that Americans may likely be more inclined to accept a

> close win by either Bush or Kerry--say 51-52% to 49-48%--despite clear

> evidence of possible vote fraud.

>

> Elections Systems and Software (ES & S), a Nebraska-based touch-screen

> company whose machines counted the Spring, 2004 Broward-Palm Beach

> primary election which could not account for 134 missing votes in a

> race won by only 12 tallies, used to be American Information Systems

> (AIS) whose former chairman was none other that current two-term

> Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel.

>

> Hagel won a surprise victory--one of the country's major 1996 upsets

> for the Republican party; but curiously, his AIS electronic

> optical-scan machines counted some 85% of the votes in his senate

> race--what some would consider an outrageous conflict of interest.

>

> Vanity Fair said throughout his first senate term, Hagel retained an

> indirect investment of at least $1 million in AIS through the McCarthy

> Group; but since AIS became ES & S, McCarthy kept its minority interest

> in the newly named company, and Senator Hagel still has his share in

> the McCarthy Group.

>

> In another incredible conflict of interest, if not bravado, McCarthy's

> chairman, Michael McCarthy, also served as Hagel's treasurer in his

> 2002 U.S. Senate re-election as Congress looked the other way,

> permitting Hagel's campaign treasurer to own the company which counted

> most of Senator Hagel's electi0on votes!

>

> Some would consider it strange that both GEMS and Austin-based Hart

> InterCivic are both based in the Lone Star state. But not when one

> considers that Hart is backed by wealthy Republican Texas investor Tom

> Hicks of Stratford Capital Partners.

>

> Hicks' primary investment company Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst

> coordinated the 1998 purchase of Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers

> from George W. Bush and his partners, in which Dubya pocketed a $14.9

> million profit from his original but controversial $1 million Harken

> Energy stock sale just days before Gulf War I hostilities commenced.

>

> A common thread running through most electronic voting machine

> companies seems to be total and all-out secrecy regarding

> software--despite multiple U.S. intellectual property laws, but also

> large financial contributions to the Republican Party--from backers

> and owners--to some of the same e-voting corporations. But no one ever

> institutes litigation to test the laws regarding political conflicts

> of interest. Even a U.S. Senator is brazen enough continue with major

> conflicts.

>

> Beverly Harris offers some final thoughts as to what the American

> people might expect during the 2004 Bush-Kerry election: " We found

> that you can melt down an election is six seconds, simply by using the

> menu items in GEMS. You can destroy all data with two mouse clicks,

> and with four mouse clicks, you can destroy the configuration of the

> election, making it very difficult to reload the original data. "

>

> " According to testimony given before the Cuyahoga Elections Board, the

> Microsoft Access database design used by Diebold's GEMS program

> apparently becomes unstable with high volume output. This problem,

> according to Diebold, resulted in thousands of votes being allocated

> to the wrong candidate in San Diego County in March, 2004.

>

> For her part, the Founder of Black Box Voting warns candidates: " Don't

> concede the election. Make a statement about voting without auditing.

> Hold off on your concession until the canvass is done. Wait until

> audits and records can be examined. If your county melts down into

> litigation, hold officials accountable if they chose to ignore warning

> and failed to mitigate risks with preventive actions--like

> disconnecting all telephone modems. "

>

> Harris warns election officials: " Disconnect those modems NOW. If you

> don't. You have to be replaced. " For reporters: " Some election

> officials will lie to you. Show your kids what bravery looks like. Be

> courageous. Report the truth. "

>

> As public awareness and more knowledge generates increased activism

> during November--perhaps in the form of multiple protracted lawsuits,

> the American people may ultimately ask to go " home where we belong, "

> i.e. elections with carefully certified and audited paper ballot trails.

>

> A dishonest, fraudulent election is nothing more than a coup d'

> etat--a non-violent overthrow of the United States government.

> Traceable, certifiable paper ballots are much safer and will cost far

> less in the long run when an election necessitates a vote recount. But

> dare we vote on it first?

>

> Beverly Harris and Andy Stephenson may be contacted at

> www.BlackBoxVoting.org