The Privatization of Big Brother
Special to The Dubya Report
May 21, 2003

As the 2004 presidential campaign has gotten underway in earnest in the last few weeks, two disturbing trends have coincided. First, new questions have emerged concerning data aggregator ChoicePoint, including revelations that the firm provided the Department of Homeland Security with information on foreign nationals obtained under questionable circumstances. ChoicePoint's DBT subsidiary gained notoriety during the 2000 election as the company that produced the error-laden "purge list" of Florida voters, ultimately found to be 97% incorrect. Second, as states have rushed to upgrade their vote-gathering systems, in response to the Voting Rights Act of 2002, serious questions have been raised about the security and integrity of electronic voting machines. These events have occurred in a political climate in which a federal agency was recently employed in a state partisan endeavor, when the Department of Homeland Security was called upon to help locate Democratic state legislators from Texas who had fled to Oklahoma in order to thwart a redistricting plan that would have altered the political makeup of the US House of Representatives.

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Act for Change
Stop the Florida-tion of the 2004 election
Computers threaten accountability of voting system

Today, there is a new and real threat to voters, this time coming from touchscreen voting machines with no paper trails and the computerized purges of voter rolls.

You can join SCLC President Martin Luther King III and investigative reporter Greg Palast in opposing the "Florida-tion" of the 2004 Presidential election by signing this petition. A complete copy of the petition will be delivered by Working Assets to Attorney General John Ashcroft.

ActForChange Petition: Stop the Florida-tion of the 2004 election

Rep. Rush Holt Introduces Legislation to Require All Voting Machines To Produce A Voter-Verified Paper Trail

Washington, DC – Rep. Rush Holt today responded to the growing chorus of concern from election reform specialists and computer security experts about the integrity of future elections by introducing reform legislation, The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003. The measure would require all voting machines to produce an actual paper record by 2004 that voters can view to check the accuracy of their votes and that election officials can use to verify votes in the event of a computer malfunction, hacking, or other irregularity. Experts often refer to this paper record as a “voter-verified paper trail.”

--snip

3) Requires all voting systems to meet these requirements in time for the general election in November 2004. Jurisdictions that feel their new computer systems may not be able to meet this deadline may use an existing paper system as an interim measure (at federal expense) in the November 2004 election.

YAHOO!!!!

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Voting machines in 2002 primary criticized
Miami-Dade misled by firm, report says

The company that sold Miami-Dade the touch-screen voting machines used in the disastrous 2002 primary election misled county officials about the equipment and delivered goods that were ''hardly state-of-the-art technology,'' according to an inspector general's report obtained Wednesday by The Herald.

The draft report by the county inspector general's office following a seven-month investigation provides a critical account of the process leading to the $25 million purchase of a voting system that was expected to lead to trouble-free elections. Instead, the Sept. 10, 2002, election -- a national black eye for Miami-Dade -- was plagued with problems caused in part by the lengthy start-up time for the machines.

--snip

The report says ES&S's sales team ''conveniently left out'' critical information about its product's capabilities and breached the terms of its contract. Even so, the IG's office recommends county elections officials keep the equipment.

''We have to learn to make do with what we have,'' the report concludes. ``Surely there will be upgrades to the system. However, [county] management should not be led blindly down the path of education by a vendor who turned the 2002 Miami-Dade County elections into a beta test.''

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"I don't have a good feeling about the 2004 elections. The Democrats apparently don't mind that Diebold (R-Funny software) owns and controls the voting process and that it's ILLEGAL to attempt to verify if the machines are accurate.

There's an old hustle I learned in my days as a pool shark: "I agree to play by your rules if I get to keep score."

As long as the Democrats are willing to let the GOP keep score, and by law that score cannot be verified, they don't have a chance."

-- Bartcop

BartCop

May. 19, 2003
Voters must have faith in the vote count

By Warren Slocum

COMPUTERIZED voting is here to stay. The only question is: Should we blindly trust touch-screen voting systems to capture and count our votes correctly?

Opinions vary. Surprisingly, some elections professionals say that touch-screen voting systems can be trusted. But when voters are given the choice, most say, ``absolutely not.'' And the computer scientists who have studied this issue say no way.

--snip

Why should California require that voters check their electronic votes against a paper summary ballot?

The answer is so that California can have an accurate vote count and avoid the chaotic election scenarios that other states have experienced. The verification of the vote can help ensure the integrity of election results.

--snip

The choice of providing voters an opportunity to check their votes is upon us. The consequences are serious. One computer scientist has said, ``Touch-screen voting systems have fatal security flaws so dangerous that they could allow people with access to the software to modify election results on a national level, and without detection. It is a matter of national security that we fix these flaws.''

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TV networks signs contracts for AP to count the vote on election night

(05-15) 15:56 PDT NEW YORK (AP) --

The Associated Press announced Thursday it has signed agreements with five television networks to provide special vote tabulation services for them starting with next year's presidential primaries.

The AP will provide continuous running election-night returns on presidential, gubernatorial and congressional races for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox News Channel under contracts that run through 2008.

The agreements mean that AP will be taking over one of the two primary functions of the Voter News Service, a consortium that had been created by the six news organizations in 1993 to conduct exit-polling and count votes. VNS was disbanded after election-night failures in 2000 and 2002.

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Dade's voting software fails tests
ES&S' fixes not certified by state
By Peter Wallsten and Lesley Clark

TALLAHASSEE - The company being paid millions of dollars to run Miami-Dade's high-tech voting machines has failed to win state approval for its plan to fix the problems that led, in part, to last year's bungled primary elections.

State officials withheld their blessing last week after finding flaws in a new computer program designed by Election Systems & Software to make booting up the iVotronic machines quicker and easier.

The flaws, according to a letter from the state Division of Elections, were ''of sufficient gravity'' and far enough out of compliance with state standards that the new software could not be approved.

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Resolution on electronic voting
Introduction

As a result of problems with elections in recent years, funding is being made available at all levels of government to upgrade election equipment. Unfortunately, some of the equipment being purchased, while superficially attractive to both voters and election officials, poses unacceptable risks to election integrity - risks of which election officials and the general public are largely unaware.

We are in favor of the use of technology to solve difficult problems, but we know that technology must be used appropriately, with due attention to associated risks. For those who need to upgrade, there are safe, cost-effective alternatives available right now, and the potential for vastly better ones in the future. For these reasons, we endorse the following resolution:

"Computerized voting equipment is inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering. It is therefore crucial that voting equipment provide a voter-verifiable audit trail, by which we mean a permanent record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy by the voter before the vote is submitted, and is difficult or impossible to alter after it has been checked. Many of the electronic voting machines being purchased do not satisfy this requirement. Voting machines should not be purchased or used unless they provide a voter-verifiable audit trail; when such machines are already in use, they should be replaced or modified to provide a voter-verifiable audit trail. Providing a voter-verifiable audit trail should be one of the essential requirements for certification of new voting systems."

We elaborate below:

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To Register Doubts, Press Here
By SAM LUBELL

AFTER the 2000 presidential election, with its disputes over the balloting in Florida and its hanging chad, the federal government moved swiftly to revamp the country's largely paper-based and mechanical voting systems. More than $1 billion has been appropriated for buying electronic voting systems, including optical scanners and touch-screen machines, that eliminate ballots written or punched on paper or tallied by mechanical equipment.

--snip

But not everyone likes the switch to electronic balloting. Some of the loudest opposition, in fact, is coming from computer experts who say the new technology could prove more troublesome than its predecessors. They warn of equipment malfunction, unchecked tampering and the lack of secure proof for each vote.

A group of more than 100 technologists, led by David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, has called for tighter security measures on electronic voting apparatus and a "voter-verifiable audit trail," meaning a permanent record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy even after the election. (The group's "resolution on electronic voting" is at verify.stanford.edu/evote.html.)

Without such a trail, Dr. Dill warned, if a machine is tampered with or malfunctions, "then the votes in question are corrupted and you have no option but to hold another election or accept bad results." Thus the only reliable backup, the group contends, is for the machines to print out paper ballots after each vote, which can be hand-counted if necessary.

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Report: Vendor of Miami-Dade voting machine failed to explain potential problems with devices

By Associated Press, 5/8/2003 08:43

MIAMI (AP) The provider of the touch-screen voting machines used in last year's botched primary elections misled officials about the equipment, a government study said.

The 41-page draft report by the Miami-Dade office of the inspector general said Election Systems & Software's sales team ''conveniently left out'' vital information about the touch-screen device capabilities and in effect turned the election into a live test for the software.

--snip

Miami-Dade County precincts had problems opening and closing polls and tallying votes during the Sept. 10 primary. The problems were blamed on a lack of training, a lack of familiarity with the new touch-screen voting systems provided by Election Systems & Software, and poor organization.

The county's touch screen system replaced older punch card voting technology that came under heavy criticism during the debacle in Florida in the 2000 White House race.

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Hanging, dimpled, pregnant and preserved
They were trouble in voting machines and clutter in storage rooms. And now, part of history.

By Associated Press,
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 8, 2003

TALLAHASSEE - Florida's chad will hang around.

Six-million-plus ballots cast in Florida's disputed 2000 presidential election have been ordered transported from county seats to the state archives in Tallahassee and kept there for their historical value.

Secretary of State Glenda Hood sent a letter this week to 67 election supervisors around the state directing them not to destroy the ballots, which are to be transferred later this summer.

State officials have estimated that the ballots and related election records take up about 5,000 cubic feet - enough to fill more than 450 four-drawer file cabinets, or a 25- by 25-foot room from floor to 8-foot ceiling.

But at least one county won't be sending any ballots to Tallahassee - they've already been destroyed.

--snip

"These documents could one day again become important data or evidence with regard to the consideration of having the best, reliable voting system that we can have," Farmer said.

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Jim Crow revived/sp/in cyberspace

By Martin Luther King III and Greg Palast
Originally published May 8, 2003

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Astonishingly, and sadly, four decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. marched in Birmingham, we must ask again, "Do African-Americans have the unimpeded right to vote in the United States?"

In 1963, Dr. King's determined and courageous band faced water hoses and police attack dogs to call attention to the thicket of Jim Crow laws -- including poll taxes and so-called "literacy" tests -- that stood in the way of black Americans' right to have their ballots cast and counted.

Today, there is a new and real threat to minority voters, this time from cyberspace: computerized purges of voter rolls

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Silence Of The Lambs:
The Election Story Never Told

By Greg Palast

Here's how the president of the United States was elected: In the months leading up to the November balloting, Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, ordered local elections supervisors to purge 64,000 voters from voter lists on the grounds that they were felons who were not entitled to vote in Florida. As it turns out, these voters weren't felons, or at least, only a very few were. However, the voters on this "scrub list" were, notably, African-American (about 54 percent), while most of the others wrongly barred from voting were white and Hispanic Democrats.

Beginning in November, this extraordinary news ran, as it should, on Page 1 of the country's leading paper. Unfortunately, it was in the wrong country: Britain. In the United States, it ran on page zero — that is, the story was not covered on the news pages. The theft of the presidential race in Florida also was given big television network coverage. But again, it was on the wrong continent: on BBC television, London.

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Firm in Florida election fiasco earns millions from files on foreigners

Oliver Burkeman in Washington and Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Monday May 5, 2003
The Guardian

A data-gathering company that was embroiled in the Florida 2000 election fiasco is being paid millions of dollars by the Bush administration to collect detailed personal information on the populations of foreign countries, enraging several governments who say the records may have been illegally obtained.
US government purchasing documents show that the company, ChoicePoint, received at least $11m (£6.86m) from the department of justice last year to supply data - mainly on Latin Americans - that included names and addresses, occupations, dates of birth, passport numbers and "physical description". Even tax records and blood groups are reportedly included.

--snip

The controversy is not the first to engulf ChoicePoint. The company's subsidiary, Database Technologies, was responsible for bungling an overhaul of Florida's voter registration records, with the result that thousands of people, disproportionately black, were disenfranchised in the 2000 election. Had they been able to vote, they might have swung the state, and thus the presidency, for Al Gore, who lost in Florida by a few hundred votes.

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