Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org writes, "Shall we torture Florida and Ohio? If that's what it takes to get better security in place... yes! Black Box Voting Cleanup Crew instructions for Friday, Oct. 1 2004 -- 1. We need your help sending a specific public records request to every county in Florida and Ohio... WHAT WE KNOW: - The 'central tabulator' controls up to 2 million votes per county in a single machine. This software is a tempting target for manipulation. Most counties do not even keep a written list of who accesses the central tabulator. The central tabulator has attack points before, during, and in the 10 days after elections (prior to certification). Most counties do not keep a written log of who enters the central tabulator room. THE BEHAVIORS WE WANT CHANGED: Slipshod control of central tabulator access. We want to know the names, dates, and times of all people who access the central tabulator and the room it resides in (and who they work for)."

AJC reports: "With Election Day less than two months away, a conservative group rated Georgia's paperless touch-screen voting system the worst in the nation, with FL and several other states not far ahead. The Free Congress Foundation, a longtime fixture of the political right, warns in a new report that if the Nov. 2 vote totals are contested, the result could be a 'fiasco,' since so many states have installed electronic systems that have no paper ballots that can be recounted. Georgia, the first state to install a paperless system in all counties, was graded 'F-minus' based on the reliability of the equipment and its capacity for a 'verifiable recount. The foundation's 'report card' also gave Florida a failing grade, in part because Palm Beach County has installed touch-screen machines to replace the infamous 'butterfly' punch card ballots."

"In a decision that could require the state to provide a paper trail of votes on touch-screen machines, a judge on Friday threw out a state rule that PROHIBITS manual recounts in counties using the ATM-style equipment. The immediate effect of the ruling and its impact on Tuesday's primary election was unclear Friday night. But the groups that brought the lawsuit against Secretary of State Glenda Hood said the ruling means some sort of paper backup on electronic voting is required... One possible way would be to order voter-verified paper trails -- meaning a machine would give voters a printout showing how they voted. Another is to require a printout of the 'ballot image' recorded on the touch-screen machine after each vote, which shows what a voter did on each contest on the ballot."

David Corn writes, "The Election Center's description of its activities does not note that it also allows the manufacturers of voting equipment to hobnob with state and local elections officials. (At one panel, according to an audience member, Representative Bob Ney, a Republican, was applauded when he dismissed demands for auditable paper trails for electronic voting, noting that a rigged electronic machine could also be fixed to produce a misleading paper trail. ) But in the hallways of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, voting machine manufacturers--including the companies that have drawn the most criticism--have been plying their wares. And to impress the local officials at the conference, three leading manufacturers of voting machines have been paying to make sure the attendees--the government employees who decide what voting machines are purchased--have a swell time."

"A new poll shows growing support for requiring electronic voting machines to produce a voter-verified paper trail. Just under half of all respondents -- 44% -- said they thought computerized voting systems are unreliable, up from about one-fourth of respondents in other studies. And [74%] said the systems should produce a paper record that the voter can review. 60% said they would vote for a presidential candidate this year who supports requiring a paper trail... By contrast, just 15% of respondents said they would support a candidate who said producing a paper audit record is an unnecessary expense and that voters can trust what they see on the voting-machine screen... While neither candidate has come out clearly for or against requiring a paper trail, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has said that he thinks systems should be able to trace and recount all votes."

"Four years ago, about 2,300 voters traveled the winding roads through this remote county to cast their ballots before Election Day on state-of-the-art, push-button electronic voting machines. For 678 of them, their votes were never recorded. Vice President Al Gore won this state by 366 votes. Even if the missing votes had gone for George W. Bush and given him New Mexico's five electoral votes, it would not have changed the outcome of the presidential race. But the missing votes in Rio Arriba County show that even in the finest electronic voting systems - New Mexico holds itself out as a leader after a decade of experience - serious miscounts that could sway elections can occur if the computerized machines are not correctly programmed... The outcome of a close presidential election could hinge on votes that cannot be reconstructed. 'What are we going to do?' [Prof. Avi Rubin] asked. 'Do we throw our hands up on a national scale and say 'We messed up'?' "

Even though Chavez won in a 59%-41% landslide, his opponents are claiming fraud. Exhibit A is roughly "500 instances where votes to oust Mr. Chavez tabulated by one voting machine matched the result in a nearby machine -- which they said suggests the machines had been preprogrammed to cap the number of anti-Chavez votes... The Carter Center said it found a pattern of matching "yes" votes to oust Mr. Chavez at 402 voting tables, which each have one or more machines. It found a similar pattern affecting support for Mr. Chavez in machines at 311 tables." A statistical argument like this one can go on forever. "Venezuela's controversy over computerized voting, even if it eventually is resolved, doesn't bode well for coming elections in the U.S. As many as one in three U.S. voters will use ATM-like machines to punch in their choices. Unlike Venezuela, there will be no paper trail to check in the event questions arise."

This week's election in Venezuela offers a preview of what will happen in the US on November 2. President Hugo Chavez won his recall election 58%-42%, but his opponents are now crying massive fraud - citing touchscreen machines. In this case, Venezuela bought touchscreens that DO produce paper trails, so a recount is possible. But the opposition says the paper ballots were altered after Election Day by the military. Plus they believe the software was rigged to cap the total number of anti-Chavez votes. Isn't electronic voting simply wonderful? Not!

NY Times reports, "The elections director of Mohave County, Ariz., was so proud of his new electronic voting system that Bev Harris barely had the heart to point out its vulnerabilities. But she did, and before long she was ticking off the ways that she said an outsider could hijack his central tabulator - the computer that stores all of the county's votes - and steal an election. By the time she had shown him a 'backdoor' way to gain access to his software without a password, the elections director was visibly concerned. Before she left, he asked her to send him a list of things he could do to safeguard this year's election. Ms. Harris's visit to Mohave County was part of a monthlong trip in which she and her deputy, Andy Stephenson, traveled to 10 states, investigating flaws in electronic voting and giving on-the-fly computer security tutorials." You GO, Bev & Andy!

"A Democratic congressman who wants to add a paper trail to Florida's new voting machines lost another legal battle on Friday when a state appeals court agreed his lawsuit should be dismissed. But U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler is pursuing a similar complaint in federal court, arguing that the new touch-screen machines will not allow for an accurate manual recount -- like the one needed during the 2000 presidential election fiasco... The appeals court found that using a paperless voting system does not severely restrict the right to vote and that voters are not guaranteed 'a perfect voting system.'" Wexler didn't ask for "perfection" - just a paper trail that permits a recount. These judges should all be impeached!

Harvard researcher "[Rebecca] Mercuri says the likeliest e-voting fraud would involve unauthorized remote access to voting machines, when a hacker manipulates results; or backdoor access to voting systems by workers with approved access but their own agenda. She described her concerns at a Defcon keynote address, 'Hack the Vote.' As part of her challenge, Mercuri is calling on e-voting system vendors VoteHere and Advanced Voting Solutions to supply any challengers 'full specifications' of their voting system for review. The first person to undetectably change vote tallies can claim $10,000 from a separate challenge. That $10,000 is being offered by noted e-voting proponent and Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist Michael Shamos. His $10,000 bet, the Direct-Recording Electronic (DRE) Hacking Challenge contends no one can hack undetectably into a DRE voting machine."

NY Times reports, "Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near. The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election... Voters in 15 Florida counties - covering more than half the state's electorate - will use the machines in November, but reports of mishaps and lost votes in smaller elections over the last two years have cast doubt on their reliability... The elections office first noticed the problem in spring 2003, but did not publicly discuss it until this past May... A new state rule prohibits manual recounts in counties that use touch-screen voting machines except in the event of a natural disaster."

You should contact your representatives now about verified voting and other essential voting reform legislation HR2239, HR4250, S.1980 and S.2437 if you want to make sure that all our votes really count--which is essential, especially in a close election. We only have until 7/26 (Mon) to start the process!

Amanda Lang writes, "When speakers from the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) attend the August 24-28, 2004, Election Center's conference for federal and state election employees in Washington, DC, they will be participating in a huge conflict of interest as they eat, drink, and make-merry at the Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S (voting machine vendors) sponsored events." The EAC is under pressure from voters to set standards requiring paper trails, but the vendors are strongly opposed. Meanwhile the Election Center actually certifies these machines as "working" - despite their many documented security flaws. How can voters have confidence in the EAC and Election Center when they get money from the vendors? EAC: HAVAinfo@eac.gov or (866) 747-1471 EC: http://www.electioncenter.org/whoareyou.html

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel analyzed the results of Florida's Democratic Presidential primary in March. They focused on districts where there was only one race on the ballot - the Presidential race. Undervotes occurred 1.09% of the time in counties with touchscreen machines and 0.12% of the time in counties that use optical scanning - 9 TIMES WORSE. Pinellas County registered the highest undervote rate, at 2.87%, among touch-screen counties, with 756 undervotes. Only three of the 39 counties using optical scanners performed worse than the best of the touch-screen counties. Broward County showed a 0.9% undervote rate among 18,766 voters, while Palm Beach showed a 0.54% undervote rate among 53,059 ballots reviewed, with a combination of 458 undervotes in precincts where there was only once choice on the ballot. Touchscreen systems are 4 times more expensive than optiscan. Touchscreens should be banned until printers are added and proprietary software is replaced with open source code.

Anyone who has read the reams of material written on the electronic voting issue will recognize the name of Mischelle Townsend--the Riverside County (CA) Registrar of Voters. Townsend is among the most widely quoted of the pro-touch screen/paperless voting advocates, and was suing California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley for his rejection of paperless electronic voting. However, Townsend abruptly retired last week to help her father-in-law go through knee surgery after facing increasing scrutiny during an investigation into the stoppage of the March 2, 2004 Riverside County primary election vote count. During the almost hour-long stoppage, witnesses said Townsend allowed two unauthorized officials from Sequoia Voting Systems to type in instructions into one of the computers used to electronically tabulate the Riverside County votes.

"Over 200 people turned out on a hot and steamy Washington, DC, day to voice their support for H.R. 2239, The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act. Sponsored by Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ), this act requires that all electronic voting machines produce a paper record, allowing for proper recounts and complete voter accountability [also sponsored by] Rep. Marcy Kaptur (OH), Rep. Robert Wexler (FL), Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL), and Rep. John Lewis (GA). Representatives from True Majority, Rock The Vote, Common Cause and VerifiedVoting.org were also on hand to show the immense amount of public support for true accountability in elections. Democracy For America came through in a big way for this event, with the presentation of a petition signed by 127,470 Americans who believe in the integrity of every vote. Congressman Holt was thrilled with the petition, affirming our belief that only with a truly accountable, verifiable and audited voting system can democracy prevail. "

"There will be a Nationwide 'Computer Ate My Vote' Day of Action on July 13, 2004. Already, organizers in 15 states have signed on with a coalition of nationwide organizers to put on rallies focused on asking state election officials to sign a pledge for Voter-Verified Paper Ballots (VVPBs). The nationwide organizers come from TrueMajority.org, MoveOn, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, Working Assets, Common Cause, Democracy For America, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the National Committee for Voting Integrity, and of course VerifiedVoting.org. Collectively, these organizations represent three million or more constituents with at least 300,000 of them already at least activated enough on the verified voting issue to sign a petition for VVPBs. You can see which states are signed on so far, as well as draft materials for an organizer's toolkit. If you are interested in assisting with organizing one or more of the rallies, email dayofaction@verifiedvoting.org"

Greg Palast writes, "In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted... About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12% of the electorate... The U.S. Civil Rights Commission looked into the smelly pile of spoiled ballots and concluded that, of the 179,855 ballots invalidated by Florida officials, 53% were cast by black voters. In Florida, a black citizen was 10 times as likely to have a vote rejected as a white voter... One TV network stated as fact that Florida's black voters, newly registered and lacking education, had difficulty with their ballots. In other words, blacks are too dumb to vote. This convenient racist excuse is dead wrong. After that disaster in Gadsden, Fla., public outcry forced the government to change that black county's procedures to match that of white counties. The result: near zero spoilage in the 2002 election. "

"The League of Women Voters rescinded its support of paperLESS voting machines on Monday after hundreds of angry members voiced concern that paper ballots were the only way to safeguard elections from fraud, hackers or computer malfunctions. About 800 delegates who attended the nonpartisan league's biennial convention in Washington voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution that supports 'voting systems and procedures that are secure, accurate, RECOUNTABLE and accessible.' That relatively neutral stance was a sharp change from last year, when league leaders endorsed paperless terminals as reliable alternatives to antiquated punch card and lever systems. About 30 percent of the electorate will use touchscreen voting machines in the November election, and hardly any of the machines provide paper records that could be used in case of a contested election." Congratulations to Bev Harris, Barbara Simons, Genevieve Katz, and all the dedicated activists who changed the LWV!

NY Times opines, "The move to provide paper trails is being fought by a handful of influential advocates for the disabled, who complain that requiring verifiable paper records will slow the adoption of accessible electronic voting machines. The National Federation of the Blind, for instance, has been championing controversial voting machines that do not provide a paper trail. It has attested not only to the machines' accessibility, but also to their security and accuracy - neither of which is within the federation's areas of expertise. What's even more troubling is that the group has accepted a $1 million gift for a new training institute from Diebold... According to [leading paper trail opponent Jim] Dickson, the American Association of People with Disabilities has received $26,000 from voting machine companies this year."

NY Times opines, "There is ... a stunning lack of transparency surrounding this process. Voters have a right to know how voting machine testing is done. Testing companies disagree, routinely denying government officials and the public basic information. Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state, could not get two companies testing his state's machines to answer even basic questions. One of them, Wyle Laboratories, refused to tell us anything about how it tests, or about its testers' credentials. 'We don't discuss our voting machine work,' said Dan Reeder, a Wyle spokesman. Although they are called independent, these labs are selected and paid by the voting machine companies, not by the government... Brian Phillips, president of SysTest Labs, one of three companies that review voting machines, conceded, 'There's going to be the risk of a conflict of interest when you are being paid by the vendor that you are qualifying product for.'" DUH! We DEMAND paper trails!

Secretaries of state have the duty to ensure that state elections are conducted properly and the votes are counted accurately. So why is Cathy Cox, Georgia's secretary of state, acting like a Diebold lobbyist instead of a servant of the people? She has ignored the evidence that paperless touchscreen voting machines are unreliable and unsecure. She has ignored the evidence that Georgia's voting machines were tampered with before the 2002 elections. She has provided inaccurate information about her office's handling of the voting machines, and resisted every attempt to have a public discussion of the vital issue of voting security. Every voter in Georgia should be demanding accountability -- or her resignation.

In the past 20 months, Harris has become Americ's leading critic of electronic voting (see 'Black Box Backlash,' March 10). Her reporting on the problems with new computer voting machines has been a key component in a national, grassroots movement to safeguard voting. Her astounding discoveries have resulted in important studies by distinguished computer scientists. She has been leaked thousands of pages of internal memos from Diebold Election Systems, one of the country's leading electronic voting companies. She is frequently cited by newspapers across the country and is a guest on national and local television and radio stations. Thousands of people visit her Web site and participate in its reader forums. Now, Harris claims, the government wants our names, forum messages, and computer addresses.

One of the excuses for buying unauditable touchscreen voting machines is that they include features to enable people with visual impairments to cast their ballots without assistance. In California's primary election last March, however, the audio feature that's supposed to guide blind voters through the ballot and the machine's functions just plain didn't work. California has done the sensible thing and decertified these machines. The other 49 states need to follow suit.

Federal Computer Week reports, "Thirteen members of the House of Representatives have asked the General Accounting Office to investigate electronic voting and the security and reliability of voting machines. Eight Republicans are among the 13 signers, as what had been a largely Democratic issue becomes increasingly bipartisan."

"A computer science expert criticized electronic voting systems planned for the November election as highly vulnerable and flawed, saying on Wednesday a backup paper system is the only short-term solution to avoid another disputed presidential election. 'On a spectrum of terrible to very good, we are sitting at terrible,' Aviel D. Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, told the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. 'Not only have the vendors not implemented security safeguards that are possible, they have not even correctly implemented the ones that are easy.'... Phil Singer, a spokesman for the presidential campaign of Democrat John Kerry , said Wednesday, 'After what happened in Florida in 2000, making sure that there is a reliable paper trail in place to account for every vote is just common sense.'.. [But Jeb Bush said] he is not concerned about using the machines in November." Of course not - he's going to rig them to elect Big Brother!

Ben Cohen President of TrueMajority.org writes: "In California, 50 TrueMajority members filled a Sacramento sidewalk last week calling for accountability from paperless electronic voting terminals. [T]he crowd urged state officials to dump California's unverified voting machines. The very next day California's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel said that's exactly what should be done. The panel recommended to California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley that he revoke the certification of the model TSx paperless electronic voting machine, made by Diebold Election Systems. ... For more information about computer voting systems, check out www.verifiedvoting.org or www.calvoter.org/votingtechnology.html#resources and www.blackboxvoting.com."

Truemajority.org writes: "What: federal hearing on paperless voting When: Wednesday, May 5, 11:45 am Where: 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Ariel Rios North Building Washington, DC. 9 states now have taken action to ensure elections there have paper trails, so the tallying can be routinely audited and so recounts are possible. TrueMajority and other groups are working to safeguard voters in the other states from computer voting systems that have proven unreliable. Lots of states have been waiting for a federal panel to make its recommendations on computer voting systems. The Election Assistance Commission is considering national standards, and after a year's delay the panel is holding its first meeting MAY 5. TrueMajority and other groups committed to secure elections were not allowed to testify on the computer voting mess and our proposed solutions, and the list of those who will speak is heavily tilted against us. So we're taking the message to the street."

In Ireland, "Voters in all constituencies will be using a paper ballot rather than voting electronically on 11 June following the publication of the interim report of the Independent Commission on Electronic Voting... It is impossible to certify the accuracy of the software used in the e-voting system, the report said, adding that the absence of an auditable voting trail is all the more worrying in light of the potential problems. Furthermore, a number of tests performed at the request of the commission identified an error in the count software which could have led to incorrect distributions of surplus votes, according to the 28-page document. 'There is a possibility that further testing will uncover further software errors,' noted the commission. "

"Voters can run, but they can't hide from these guys. Meet the Urosevich brothers, Bob and Todd. Their respective companies, Diebold and ES&S, will count (using BOTH computerized ballot scanners and touchscreen machines) about 80% of all votes cast in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Both ES&S and Diebold have been caught installing uncertified software in their machines. The ability to rig an election is well within easy reach of voting machine companies. And it does not matter if the machines are scanners or touchscreens, or are networked or hooked up to modems."

AP: "California should ban the use of 15,000 touch-screen voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems from the Nov. 2 general election, an advisory panel to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley recommended Thursday. By an 8-0 vote, the state's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel recommended that Shelley cease the use of the machines, saying that Texas-based Diebold has performed poorly in California and its machines malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election, turning away many voters in San Diego County. The recommendation affects 15,000 Diebold touch-screen machines in San Diego, Solano, Kern and San Joaquin counties. Thousands more machines made by Diebold and other manufacturers in 10 other counties are unaffected, although the panel is to make a recommendation regarding them next Wednesday... Panel member Marc Carrel, an assistant secretary of state, said he was 'disgusted' by Diebold, which has 'been jerking us around.' "

Tri-Valley Herald: "It is an uncommon day when the nation's second-largest provider of voting systems concedes that its flagship products in California have significant security flaws and that it supplied hundreds of poorly designed electronic-voting devices that disenfranchised voters in the March presidential primary. Diebold Election Services Inc. president Bob Urosevich admitted this and more, and apologized 'for any embarrassment.' 'We were caught. We apologize for that,' Urosevich said of the mass failures of devices needed to call up digital ballots. Poll-workers in Alameda and San Diego counties hadn't been trained on ways around their failure... Unknown thousands of voters were turned away at the polls. 'We're sorry for the inconvenience of the voters,' Urosevich said. 'Weren't they actually disenfranchised?' asked Tony Miller, chief counsel to the state's elections division. After a moment, Urosevich agreed: 'Yes, sir.' "

VotersUnite.org writes, "Participate in the nation-wide distribution of 'Myth Breakers' to all local election officials. Give them the real scoop about HAVA misunderstandings, examples of election disasters, price comparisons of voting systems, hidden costs of DREs, election complexities added by the use of DREs, alternative HAVA-compliant voting systems, and more. Join with other activists throughout the nation to hand-deliver copies of this eye-opening information to your local election officials starting the week of April 19 through 24. VotersUnite! in the kick-off event Tuesday, April 20. 1) Sign up to help by emailing us. 2) Download the Myth Breakers (820Kb) and print it. Make copies if you're delivering to more than one election official. 3) Hand deliver it to the election officials in the counties you signed up for. 4) Tell them, 'I'm with VotersUnite.org, a non-partisan group of citizens concerned about electronic voting, and I'm delivering your copy of Myth Breakers.'"

"VerifiedVoting.org invites you to join us in lobbying the U.S. Congress for reliable and publicly verifiable elections systems in Washington, D.C., from Friday, April 23, to Wednesday, April 28, 2004. We will meet with legislators to get federal bills passed to require a voter-verified paper ballot. [We need support for the hotly-contested Senate bill S1980 or similar legislation and for House bill HR2239, which already has over 130 co-sponsors.] * We'll make appointments with federal legislators who have not yet signed on as co-sponsors. * We'll urge them to do so and to help get the bills onto the floor for a vote as quickly as possible. * If they don't commit on the spot, we'll leave a few 'talking points' with them and set a follow-up call. * We'll attend a legislative committee hearing if it remains scheduled on April 28. AND * We'll seek to meet with the chairpersons and as many members as possible of the two committees, House and Senate, that have oversight for these bills."

From CNET: "VoteHere, a maker of security software for voting machines, published the source code for its product online in hopes of garnering additional analysis of its method for verifying the integrity of electronic votes. The company, which has patented its VHTi technology, wants comments, not competition, so it released the code and several documents to its Web site under a license that restricts use of the code to analysis for a period of 60 days. 'We pride ourselves on being good students of cryptography,' said Jim Adler, founder and CEO of the Bellevue, Wash.-based company. 'We know there is no security through obscurity, so we want to be open.' Revealing encryption algorithms for peer review is a standard practice in encryption circles and allows experts to poke holes in other people's technology. VoteHere hopes the additional scrutiny will prove that its technology is sound, Adler said."

"Common Cause shares many of the concerns of the growing number of Americans who have serious concerns about the reliability and security of new touch-screen voting machines... We believe that no one's right to vote has meaning if the voter cannot be reasonably assured that their vote was counted as cast. Common Cause believes that the ability to verify one's vote and have a record of each vote as cast must be an integral part of voting equipment -- it is important for the accuracy of vote-counting and for Americans' long-term trust in elections. We do not believe that current touch screen technology allows the voter to verify his or her vote in a meaningful manner. The voter must have faith that the internal software is correctly tallying the vote -- and there is currently no way to verify the vote independent of that software. We believe it is critical at this point to provide a voter-verifiable paper audit trail as one of the essential requirements of voting systems."

Kos writes, "Isn't this lovely? It's a bill in the Florida Senate amending how the state handles its recounts. Republican backed, of course. (It's in section 30, Line 19): 'A manual recount may not be conducted of undervotes on touchscreen machines.' The irony is that recounts aren't a partisan affair -- they merely confirm the intent of the voter, and in theory, should benefit both parties equally. That is, unless Republicans are very, very confident as to the results they'll get on touchscreen machines. And for the record, I'm less Diebold-obsessed than many people, and I'm clearly not a conspiracy tin-foil-type. But things like this really make me wonder."

"Voting machine crusader Bev Harris has repeatedly called for applying strict accounting practices to electronic voting systems. Unfortunately, the only voting machine company taking that approach is TruVote. TruVote was founded in response to the 2000 election debacle by Athan Gibbs, a professional accountant, an Afro-American minister and a man dedicated to making the American election system fair, honest, and transparent to all voters. Today, Athan Gibbs is dead. He died in a terrible car/truck wreck when he was thrown from his vehicle after his Chevy blazer collided with a semi and rolled several times into the oncoming traffic lanes. Again, progressive politics are terribly damaged by the bizarre death of a true patriot fighting for democracy. The best way we can remember Athan Gibbs is to help TruVote live on and fulfill Athan Gibbs' dream."

"Election officials in Bay County, Florida, plan to recount all of the almost 20,000 ballots cast in Tuesday's presidential primary because of vote-counting irregularities, election Supervisor Mark Andersen said Wednesday...the county's optical scanner did not count the votes correctly because of a discrepancy between the way the absentee and standard ballots were printed... The Associated Press reported that Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri held a 2-to-1 lead over Kerry in the county, with more than 60 percent of precincts tallied."

Our only opportunity to require a voter-verifiable paper trail everywhere in the U.S. for the November 2004 election is "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003." The House version (H.R. 2239) was introduced in May by Rep. Rush Holt. The Senate version (S. 1980) was introduced in December by Senator Bob Graham. VerifiedVoting.org is in the midst of a campaign to contact every Senator as many times as possible to let them know how much we care about passing this bill. We have heard that the House bill may not move until Congress becomes clear on which of the three Senate voting bills (Clinton's S.1986, Boxer's S.2045, or Graham's S.1980) is gaining the most support. It is important that GRAHAM's bill emerge as the obvious choice, or it is unlikely that we will have a paper trail by this election. ACTION: Call or fax your Senators EVERY DAY until they co-sponsor GRAHAM'S bill. Guidelines, a toll free phone number, a sample letter, and information resources are here.

"The Pentagon won't use an Internet voting system for overseas U.S. citizens this fall because of concerns about its security, an anonymous official said Thursday. The official said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz made the decision to scrap the system because Pentagon officials were not certain they could 'assure the legitimacy of votes that would be cast.' Computer security experts who last month reviewed the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or SERVE, had urged the Pentagon to scrap the system, saying it was too vulnerable. The experts said the system could be penetrated by hackers who could change votes or gather information about users. 'Internet voting presents far too many opportunities for hackers or even terrorists to interfere with fair and accurate voting, potentially in ways impossible to detect,' the experts said in a statement Jan. 21. 'Such tampering could alter election results, particularly in close contests.'" They'll just have to steal the 2004 election the old-fashioned way.

Mark Fiore's hilarious new toon about electronic voting will make you ROTFL - unless it makes you cry.

"Poll workers in Alameda County noticed something strange on election night in October. As a computer counted absentee ballots in the recall race, workers were stunned to see a big surge in support for a fringe candidate named John Burton. Concerned that their new $12.7 million Diebold electronic voting system had developed a glitch... For an unknown reason, the computerized tally program had begun to award votes for Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to Burton, a socialist from Southern California... Alameda County officials still don't know why the computer program failed on election night. In fact, they only discovered the malfunction because they could compare the paper absentee ballots the software was counting to the computer's tally. The rest of the county's voters cast electronic ballots... Alameda County officials refused to allow the Mercury News to review the software code used to test its electronic voting system, saying it was a Diebold trade secret."

"One guy picked the locks protecting the internal printers and memory cards. Another figured out how to vote more than once - and get away with it. Still another launched a dial-up attack, using his modem to slither through an electronic hole in the State Board of Elections software. Once inside, he could easily change vote totals that come in on Election Day. 'My guess is we've only scratched the surface,' said Michael A. Wertheimer, who spent 21 years as a cryptologic mathematician at the National Security Agency. The state has no choice but to use its $55 million worth of AccuVote-TS machines made by Diebold Election Systems for the primary. The old optical scanners are gone." So reports the Baltimore Sun.

NY Times opines, "Four computer scientists brought in by the Pentagon to analyze a plan for Internet voting by the military issued a blistering report this week, concluding that the program should be halted. These four are the only members of a 10-member advisory committee to issue a report on the program. Their findings make it clear that the potential for hackers to steal votes or otherwise subvert elections electronically is too high. Congress should suspend the program... There is every reason to believe that if federal elections can be tampered with, they will be, particularly when a single hacker, working alone, might be able to use an online voting system to steal a presidential election. The authors of this week's report concede that there is no way of knowing how likely it is that the Pentagon's voting system would be compromised. What is clear, however, is that until the vulnerabilities they identified are eliminated, the risks are too great."

"It was the first time a Florida election using touch screens has been decided by less than 0.25%. When an election is that close, Florida law requires a 'manual recount' of all under-votes and over-votes. But Broward and Palm Beach county elections officials were not sure how to follow the law since most of the voting was done on touch-screen machines, which leave behind no ballots to manually count... While its guidelines are 'not presently definitive,' [the Secretary of State] will probably end up with a rule stating that votes cast on electronic voting machines will not be subject to a manual recount." This is a RED ALERT for everyone concerned about Florida's vote-counting!!! We DEMAND that Florida's legislature pass a law requiring VVPB and manual recounts!

Here is a PERFECT example of the need for voter-verified paper ballots - from FLORIDA. "Ellyn Bogdanoff's 12-vote victory margin over Lauderdale-by-the-Sea Mayor Oliver Parker ultimately held up in the House District 91 race, but controversy swirled after 137 voters in parts of Boca Raton and coastal Broward County went to the polls but didn't cast a vote for any candidate [in an election where this was the ONLY race!] The result raises suspicions about the accuracy of the electronic equipment. But the absence of a paper trail means there's nothing that can be done to verify the results shown by the electronic devices... 'If I lost the election by 12 votes and I found out 134 people [in Broward County] came to vote and somehow didn't vote, I'd be apoplectic,' [State Rep. Joe] Negron said. 'I'm not buying for one minute that 134 people went in to vote and showed their ID and got into the booth, and did everything they needed to do, and then didn't [vote].'"

VerifiedVoting.org writers, "Meeting personally with your legislators or their staff is the most powerful way to get your message to them. So, talk with them in person about House bill H.R.2239 or the identical Senate companion bill S.1980. Let them know you want verifiable elections. There's only about one more week before the Senators and Representatives head back to DC, so attend one of their local, public meetings - if they are holding any - and ask if they will co-sponsor H.R.2239 or S.1980. Better yet, take some time to visit locally with one of your legislators. If you cannot schedule an appointment with the legislator, meet with the staff. Here are some guidelines for holding a constituent meeting with your Senator, Representative, or their staff. 1. Choose a legislator. 2. Assemble a group for the meeting. 3. Schedule an appointment. 4. Research the legislator. 5. Plan a concise presentation. 6. Meet with the legislator. 7. Follow up with a thank you letter."

Rep. Rush Holt's Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (H.R.2239) now has 94 cosponsors - largely thanks to the tens of thousands of letters that people like you have sent to your representatives. And now we have an opportunity to make the same impact in the Senate. Senator Bob Graham has introduced a companion to H.R.2239, and it needs your support. Tell your Senators that you want e-voting machines to be open and accountable!

"A company developing encryption-based software for secure electronic voting has itself become the victim of a computer break-in, the company's top executive told MSNBC.com. Federal authorities have confirmed that the incident is under investigation. The intrusion into Bellevue-based VoteHere's corporate network occurred in October, said Jim Adler, VoteHere's founder, president and chief executive officer. No suspects have yet been named, but Adler said his company, in cooperation with investigators, had developed substantial information about the source of the intrusion over the past two months. 'We feel that it may have been politically motivated,' Adler said. Adler's revelation came amid a deepening debate over e-voting and its vulnerability to election fraud -- and a controversy over surreptitious methods to get information about how e-voting software works."

"Critics warned Monday that computer error or outright fraud easily could alter the outcome of elections conducted on Palm Beach County's electronic voting machines... 'Both a purposeful attack on the computer system or just a computer malfunction will put our whole democratic process in chaos,' Rep. Robert Wexler [D-FL] said. County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore said their analysis was deeply flawed. 'It's just a bunch of lies,' she said. LePore said it would be impossible to rig the machines. Someone would have to break into a secure warehouse and tamper individually with 5,000 machines because they aren't connected." Hey Theresa - you or your staff could just OPEN that "secure" warehouse! That's what happened in Martin and Seminole Counties, where GOP commissioners let GOP operatives criminally alter absentee ballot applications using "secure" office computers. When will Palm Beach Dems dump Terrible Theresa?

"While states wait on Congress to allocate funds set aside by the Help America Vote Act, concerns about the security and reliability of new computer voting machines have led election reform experts to believe Election Day 2006 is a more likely goal... The law authorizes Congress to provide $3.86 billion to the states for reforms. So far, states have received $650 million of the nearly $1.5 billion appropriated in 2003. The remaining $833 million sits in the national treasury awaiting confirmation of four nominees to an election assistance commission, the body that will allocate the rest of funds and provide guidance. But the congressional delay has pushed hefty implementation costs onto the counties, Brace said. 'The counties are caught in a bind,' Brace said. 'The requirements are there, but none of the money has really been provided like what was promised.'"

"Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) introduced the Voter Verification Act. 'After the election of 2000 and the mid-term election - where stories of voter problems were not uncommon - we have to put an electoral system into place in which Americans can have full confidence,' said Graham. 'This legislation will take us one step further to ensure that every vote really counts and we do not have another debacle like the 2000 election.' Key provisions of the legislation include: - Requiring that all voting systems produce voter-verified paper records for use in manual audits - Banning the use of undisclosed software and wireless communication devices in voting systems - Requiring mandatory surprise recounts in .5% of both domestic and overseas jurisdictions. - All voting systems would have to meet these requirements in time for the November 2004 election. There is bi-partisan companion legislation already filed in the House. HR 2239 is sponsored by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and 94 other members."

"The push to pass Rep. Rush Holt's Verified Voting Bill (H.R. 2239) has been strong, and we've had some success. Every Representative is now aware of the bill (or should be). You've been calling, emailing, and faxing. Now meet with them in person at a town meeting. On December 9, Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) introduced a companion bill into the Senate - S.1980, identical to H.R. 2239 in both title and text. This is marvelous progress, and now we need to get Republican co-sponsors immediately. Here's the project, initiated by Operation Enduring Vote: 1. Check your Representative's and Senators' recess schedules to see whether their town meetings are listed on our site. 2. If there is no meeting listed, call the local or DC office (1-800-839-5276) of your Representatives. 3. Attend as many meetings as you can. Ask Representatives publicly to support and co-sponsor H.R. 2239. Ask Senators to support and co-sponsor S.1980. 4. Report the results to pass2239@verifiedvoting.org"

"At least five convicted felons secured management positions at a manufacturer of electronic voting machines, according to critics demanding more stringent background checks for people responsible for voting machine software. Voter advocate Bev Harris alleged Tuesday that managers of a subsidiary of Diebold Inc., one of the country's largest voting equipment vendors, included a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records. The programmer, Jeffrey Dean, wrote and maintained proprietary code used to count hundreds of thousands of votes as senior vice president of Global Election Systems. Diebold purchased GES in January 2002. According to a public court document released before GES hired him, Dean served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that 'involved a high degree of sophistication and planning.'"

Shockingly, the League of Women Voters opposes VVPB. In an Open Letter to LWV President Kay Maxwell, LWV members write: "It becomes increasingly difficult, in the face of the growing concern from highly respected computer scientists about the insecurity of Direct Recording Electronic (touch-screen) voting machines (DREs), to accept the LWVUS position that individual paper confirmation for each ballot (VVPAT) is 'unnecessary and (can) even be counterproductive'. This stand is particularly disconcerting since VVPAT is currently the only way we have of the voter being assured that the vote cast is the vote being counted. National's stand acts to stifle the research and debate that is occurring across the country in every state and county... We cannot remain silent in the face of a position that can be dangerous for our democracy and embarrassing for the League." LWV members: sign the petition and e-mail KMaxwell@LWV.Org

TrueMajority writes, "The bedrock upon which any democracy is built is confidence that elections are free, fair and accurate. Yet companies such as Diebold are selling machines that leave no tangible evidence of a person's vote. We all know that computers sometimes crash and data is lost, yet the companies selling these machines refuse to let election officials inspect the inner workings of the machines or software. Please support legislation that would simply require that I as a voter be able to approve a paper copy of my choices before they are registered in the computer. These anonymous paper copies can then be saved. If there is ever a question about the intent of the voters the paper ballots can be checked and both voters and candidates can be confident in the outcome. I urge you to support this simple measure that can prevent a real crisis in our democracy." Fax this letter to your representatives for free!

The electronic voting machine "industry insists that its systems are secure and trustworthy, with or without paper. Harris Miller, who leads a new trade association for the industry, said that the group had no position in favor or against paper trails, but dismissed the issue as a 'theological debate within the academic community.' Mr. Miller, who is also president of the Information Technology Association of America (www.itaa.org), called some opponents of electronic voting 'black helicopter theorists' and Luddites who 'want to go back to the bad old days' of stuffed ballot boxes and chad wars." Tell Harris Miller what YOU think: hmiller@itaa.org

"Secretary of State Dean Heller said Nevada has become the first state to demand a voter-verifiable receipt printer on new touch-screen voting machines being purchased for the 2004 elections... 'A paper trail is an intrinsic component of voter confidence,' Heller said in explaining why he insisted that Sequoia - which already has nearly 3,000 machines installed in Clark County - include the receipt printers on new machines for the upcoming elections. The printers must be added on existing machines by 2006... The decision to go with Sequoia machines was based in part on a review by the state Gaming Control Board's slot machine experts who issued a report saying the Diebold machine that was analyzed 'represented a legitimate threat to the integrity of the election process.'" That's a powerful statement, since Nevada's Gaming Control Board is probably the world's expert in electronic machine fraud, given its supervision of Nevada's huge casinos. We demand VVPB for ALL states!

"U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer said she would introduce a bill requiring electronic voting machines to produce paper receipts by November 2004. The announcement was a major victory for voting rights advocates and computer scientists, who have been arguing for more than a year that paperless voting terminals exposed elections to hackers, software bugs and mechanical failures. But voting equipment companies and county registrars sharply criticized the measure, saying printers would dramatically increase the cost and complexity of voting. Boxer and Rep. Rush Holt plan to introduce the bill early next year. The bill would require electronic voting companies to meet tougher security standards, including surprise audits and background checks for software engineers. 'I'm not a paranoid person by nature in any way, but we need to make sure there's confidence built into the system,' Boxer said. 'I can think of nothing more important than that to be sure that every vote counts.'" You GO, Barbara!

The Gazette of Maryland reports, "An e-mail found in a collection of files stolen from Diebold Elections Systems' internal database recommends charging Maryland 'out the yin-yang,' if the state requires Diebold to add paper printouts to the $73 million voting system it purchased... The e-mail has been cited by advocates of voter-verified receipts, who say estimates of the cost of adding printers -- as much as $20 million statewide -- have been bloated. 'I find it appalling,' said Del. Karen S. Montgomery (D-Dist. 14), who plans to file a bill mandating a voter-verified paper trail... State Board of Elections Administrator Linda H. Lamone told The Gazette last month that Diebold had given a preliminary estimate of $1,000 to $1,200 per machine to add printouts, or up to $20 million for the state's more than 16,000 machines." $1200 for a $100 printer????? We demand Diebold be indicted on extortion!

"The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) today announced a group of leading election systems companies will align with ITAA to form the Election Technology Council (ETC). ETC members will work together to raise the profile of electronic voting, identify and address security concerns with electronic voting, develop a code of ethics for companies in the electronic voting sector, and make recommendations in the areas of election system standards and certification." Will those recommendations include Voter Verifiable Paper Ballots? Absolutely not, according to ITAA president Harris Miller in a phone interview with Democrats.com. Miller thinks we should simply trust the experts - NOT!

Sen John "Ensign said that his amendment to the Equal Protection of Voting Rights Act of 2001 requires a permanent paper record be available as the official record for any vote recount. It also must give a voter the opportunity to change the ballot or correct an error before the paper record is produced. 'There's nothing more important than having a valid ballot box,' said Ensign, a Republican, who lost a race to U.S. Sen. Harry Reid in 1998 by 428 votes. In that race, Ensign requested a recount of the paper ballots used in Washoe County after it was determined paper ballots had been misprinted and scanning machines had misread some of them for the count... The minutes of the Senate hearing clearly state his intent: The purpose is to provide for a system that 'permits voters to verify their vote at the time it is cast and used as the official record for recounts'... A new Federal Elections Assistance Commission, created by voting rights act, will have the final say."

"An Illinois company is touting a new voting machine that may allay fears in the ballot booth - a touchscreen machine that creates an accompanying paper ballot recording every vote... The company, Populex, will show off its equipment at the state Democratic meeting in Orlando, making the machines available for delegates in a mock election on various questions on issues the party's interested in... 'One thing is for sure, people across the state of Florida do not have confidence in the electoral process,' Democratic Party Chairman Scott Maddox said Wednesday, touting the Populex system. Elections supervisors dispute that, saying the current systems - which some counties spent millions on - work just fine. 'We don't think it's necessary to have that kind of paper receipt,' said Ron Labasky, a lobbyist for the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections. 'We don't think they really serve any purpose other than eliminate people's paranoia.'" Hey Ron - wanna debate Election 2000?

NY Times opines, "New machines can already print a total of all votes cast, but that is simply a reflection of the computerized tally. What is needed is a paper record of each voter's choices that the voter can verify. The most reasonable answer is to require that the machines be equipped with printers that will produce what Representative Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, calls a 'parallel paper record' of the vote. That makes sense to us. Like deeds, diplomas and other vital public documents, the nation's votes still need to be preserved somewhere on paper... Too many elections teeter on a few hundred votes, and candidates rightly expect human beings to be able to double-check the results. America's election apparatus needs to move firmly and quickly into the computer age. But the public must feel secure that each vote is really counted. At this stage, a voter-verified paper trail offers the public that necessary security." Urge YOUR newspaper to endorse VVPB!

When Katherine Harris was elected to Congress, Jeb Bush appointed Glenda Hood to replace her as Secretary of State. So it comes as no surprise that "Hood said making a paper trail a statewide requirement is not necessary because Florida has multiple safeguards to assure the accuracy and security of touch screens, which are used in Palm Beach County and 14 other counties." Obviously Hood is determined to steal the White House AGAIN for Bush through electronic fraud that will be impossible to detect. We're NOT going to let Glenda HOODWINK Florida and the rest of the Nation! Call 850-245-6500 and demand Voter Verifiable Paper Ballots!

"CNN's LISA SYLVESTER: Congressman, Rush Holt, points out another problem with the electronic machines, it's impossible to verify results without a paper trail. REP. RUSH HOLT, (D-NJ): An electronic voting machine makes a recount meaningless. Whatever the machine said at 5 minutes after 8 when the polls closed it will say two weeks later when a judge orders a recount. SYLVESTER: Holt say, what's important is not just that people cast their votes, but that they also have a vote of confidence in the election system. SYLVESTER: Congressman Holt has introduced a bill that has bipartisan support that would require all voting systems produce a paper record that maintains anonymity but that can be used in a manual recount -- Lou. CNN's LOU DOBBS: Thank you very much, Lisa Sylvester from Washington. That brings us to tonight's poll. The question, 'do you believe digital voting machines should be required to print a paper record of each vote? Yes or No.'" The results? 97% said YES.

"Ohio's sweeping review of electronic voting machines turned up so many potential security flaws in the systems that the state's top elections official has called off deploying them in March. The detailed findings confirmed what academics, computer scientists and voter advocates across the country have said for months: Electronic voting systems are prime targets for manipulation by anyone from expert computer hackers to poll workers to individual voters. Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who ordered the review, said he and machine vendors are confident that all 57 problems identified by investigators can be fixed." A voter-verified paper trail is NOT one of the 57 problems! Remember, Ohio is the state that Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell PROMISED to deliver to Bush. Call Blackwell at 877-767-6446 (also email election@sos.state.oh.us) and demand paper trails for ALL electronic machines!

"Early this year Bev Harris... found Diebold software... on an unprotected server, where anyone could download it. (The software was in a folder titled 'rob-Georgia.zip.')... This in itself was an incredible breach of security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the machines both the information and the opportunity to do so... Meanwhile, leaked internal Diebold e-mail suggests that corporate officials knew their system was flawed, and circumvented tests that would have revealed these problems... Why isn't this front-page news? In October, a British newspaper, The Independent, ran a hair-raising investigative report on U.S. touch-screen voting. But while the mainstream press has reported the basics, the Diebold affair has been treated as a technology or business story -- not as a potential political scandal... But there's nothing paranoid about suggesting that political operatives, given the opportunity, might engage in dirty tricks."

From CNET News: "Diebold is facing threats on two fronts as free-speech advocates pursue monetary damages against it and a presidential candidate urges a congressional inquiry into the company. Diebold, which makes touch-screen voting machines in use around the world, on Monday reiterated its withdrawal of copyright takedown notices directed at numerous Internet service providers with subscribers who posted copies of its internal e-mail correspondence--and in some cases links to those copies... Diebold's retreat in the courtroom comes as U.S. congressional representative Dennis Kucinich, who is seeking the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, jumped onto the anti-Diebold bandwagon by providing links to the Diebold e-mail correspondence from his House of Representatives Web site."

"Electronic voting machine maker Diebold Systems says it's withdrawing more than a dozen legal threats against ISPs for hosting users who publish or link to corporate documents suggesting there are flaws in its equipment and irregularities with certifying the systems for elections. Nor will it issue additional cease-and-desist notices concerning these corporate documents, US District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel heard today."

"Operation Enduring Vote is a six-week holiday push to pass HR 2239. Sponsored Rush Holt (D-NJ), HR 2239 would guarantee that all voters have a chance to confirm the accuracy of their ballots before they are cast on the electronic voting machines, and also requires that electronic voting machines permanently record our votes on secure, printed ballots. While HR 2239 has strong support, with 82 co-sponsors, including 3 recent Republican signers, the bill is opposed by Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), Chair of House Committee on Administration, and the bill has little chance of receiving a vote unless we act now. But Congress will recess for the Holidays in early December and reconvene in early January, so time is critical. One of the best ways to influence Congress is to show up en masse at every public forum they have during the Thanksgiving and Winter holidays and let them know just how important HR 2239 is to their constituents."

"Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) sent a letter to the Chairman and the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee requesting that the Committee hold a hearing to investigate abuses of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by Diebold Inc., one of the nation's largest electronic voting machine manufacturers. Recently, Diebold has waged an intimidation campaign to repress circulation of employee e-mails that raise concerns about the security of its electronic voting machines. Since early October 2003, Diebold has sent more than a dozen cease-and-desist letters to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and universities that host websites that either posted Diebold employee e-mails or merely hyperlinked to other websites with the e-mails. Diebold invoked the DMCA to pressure many ISPs and universities into removing websites and hyperlinks. These cease-and-desist letters were inappropriate." Kucinich even uploaded Diebold's files onto his Web site. You GO, Dennis!

"In a major victory for voting rights advocates, California's secretary of state announced that all electronic voting machines in California must provide paper receipts by 2006. Kevin Shelley also introduced stricter requirements for testing and auditing of the software used to record and tabulate votes in the nation's most-populous state. And because California commands a sizable share of the market for voting machines, the move may prompt changes in equipment being adopted nationwide. 'I think this is going to be a tidal wave from California eastward - it's going to get a lot of attention and may change a lot of minds,' said Stanford professor David Dill. Shelley wrote in his nine-page document that he is requiring the receipts not because 'voting systems are inherently insecure, they are not, but rather because people understandably feel more confident when they can verify that their votes are being recorded as intended.'" Fine, but why wait until 2006 - so Bush can steal 2004?

"A host of computer scientists and activists today joined forces to form the National Committee on Voting Integrity (NCVI) and threw down the gauntlet to U.S. presidential candidates, inviting them to take a position on the issue of electronic voting... The letter being sent by the NCVI today to candidates states, in part, 'We are writing to you regarding the integrity of the voting machines in the United States. It is our view that some of the technologies that have been adopted to tabulate votes, both before and after the 2000 Presidential election, pose a significant risk to the integrity of the democratic process in the United States. We write to you specifically to ask your views on this matter. What steps do you believe should be taken to ensure the integrity of voting?' The group will post responses on its Web site, www.votingintegrity.org"

Is George W. Bush going to be re-elected next year? Gore Vidal says: "No. At least if there is a fair election, an election that is not electronic. That would be dangerous. We don't want an election without a paper trail. The makers of the voting machines say no one can look inside of them, because they would reveal trade secrets. What secrets? Isn't their job to count votes? Or do they get secret messages from Mars? Is the cure for cancer inside the machines? I mean, come on. And all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. Is this not corruption? So Bush will probably win if the country is covered with these balloting machines. He can't lose... If we use old-fashioned paper ballots and have them counted in the precinct where they are cast, he will be swept from office. He's made every error you can. He's wrecked the economy. Unemployment is up. People can't find jobs. Poverty is up. It's a total mess."

Aviel D. Rubin, "The Johns Hopkins University computer scientist who identified security lapses in the voting system Maryland is adopting took his warnings to Annapolis yesterday, telling legislators he has no confidence the flaws are being fixed... [But] Linda Lamone, director of the [MD] state elections board, largely dismissed Rubin's concerns and insisted Diebold had completed all the recommended changes in its software. She accused computer scientists of trying to undermine confidence in elections officials. 'I think they're doing a great disservice to democracy,' she said. 'They're telling the public: Don't trust them, don't trust the voting equipment.'" You got THAT right, Linda - after Florida, we don't trust the machines, we don't trust their Republican CEO's, we don't trust the Republican Supreme Court, and we don't trust election officials like Katherine Harris and YOU. What part of "voter verifiable receipt" don't you understand???

Wired reports, "Citing concerns that Diebold Election Systems installed uncertified software on some electronic voting systems in a California county without the state's knowledge, officials are forcing the company to pay for an audit of all the company's voting machines used in the state in order to win certification for a new model... It's widely believed by voting machine makers that Secretary of State Shelley, who has previously stated his preference for electronic voting machines to offer a voter-verifiable receipt with their machines, may announce plans within a week or so to require this on voting machines used in the state."

"Our best, and possibly only, opportunity to require a voter-verifiable paper trail everywhere in the U.S. for the November 2004 election is 'The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (H.R. 2239)' which was introduced earlier this year by Rep. Rush Holt. VerifiedVoting.org is in the midst of a campaign to contact every Representative and Senator as many times as possible to let them know how much we care about passing this bill. Virtually all of our representatives in Congress have been called many times in the last week by over 100 volunteers. You can view the results here: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/houseofreps.asp. Since this effort started, TWENTY-ONE new co-sponsors have signed on. But the bill still sits in the House Administration Committee. Clearly, 100 volunteers is not enough. Our Congresspeople need to know that many, many of us really care. It is very important not to lose the momentum we now have!! PLEASE take a moment to call 1-800-839-5276."

When Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was jailed by Russian president Vladimir Putin for tax evasion, the NY Times eagerly embraced the "conspiracy theories" that Putin was really upset with Khodorkovsky's political hanky-panky. But when Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell was caught promising to "deliver" Ohio's crucial electoral votes to Bush in 2004, the Times contemptuously dismisses those of us who believe he might manipulate his company's machines to make Bush the winner as kooky "conspiracy theorists." Of course, the Times also dismisses as "conspiracy theorists" those of us who believe the 5 Republicans on the US Supreme Court threw out 175,000 uncounted votes in Florida because Bush 's tiny lead of 537 votes might be reversed. Write letters@nytimes.com

Indianapolis Star reports, "Boone County officials are searching for an answer to the computer glitch that spewed out impossible numbers and interrupted an otherwise uneventful election process Tuesday. 'I about had a heart attack,' County Clerk Lisa Garofolo said of the breakdown that came as an eager crowd watched computer-generated vote totals being projected onto a wall of the County Courthouse rotunda. 'I'm assuming the glitch was in the software.' A lengthy collaboration between the county's information technology director and advisers from the MicroVote software producer fixed the problem. But before that, computer readings of stored voting machine data showed far more votes than registered voters. 'It was like 144,000 votes cast,' said Garofolo, whose corrected accounting showed just 5,352 ballots from a pool of fewer than 19,000 registered voters. 'Believe me, there was nobody more shook up than I was.'"

"Marc Carrel, assistant secretary of state for policy and planning, told attendees Thursday at a panel on voting systems that California was halting the certification process for new voting machines manufactured by Diebold Election Systems. The reason, Carrel said, was that his office had recently received 'disconcerting information' that Diebold may have installed uncertified software on its touch-screen machines used in one county [Alameda]... Diebold officials, who were attending the meeting, seemed surprised by the announcement and expressed displeasure to several panelists afterward that it had been introduced in a public forum. They were unavailable for comment. Also present at the meeting were representatives from Solano, San Diego and San Joaquin counties, where officials are waiting for state certification to begin using the new machines." We demand a halt to certification of ALL electronic machines without voter-verified paper trails!

"A nonprofit Internet Service Provider (ISP) and two Swarthmore College students are seeking a court order on Election Day tomorrow to stop electronic voting machine manufacturer Diebold Systems, Inc., from issuing specious legal threats. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Center for Internet and Society Cyberlaw Clinic at Stanford Law School are providing legal representation in this important case to prevent abusive copyright claims from silencing public debate about voting, the very foundation of our democratic process. Diebold has delivered dozens of cease-and-desist notices to website publishers and ISPs demanding that they take down corporate documents revealing flaws in the company's electronic voting systems as well as difficulties with certifying the systems for actual elections." Three cheers from Democrats.com!

Wired reports, "Activists are trying to drum up support for a bill written by Rush Holt (D-NJ) that would force voting machine makers nationwide to provide voter receipts and make the source code for voting machines open to the public. The Holt bill, introduced in May, amends the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, which allocated funds for states to upgrade their voting machines and processes in the wake of the voting problems in Florida during the 2000 presidential campaign. David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University, has launched a grassroots campaign to gather support for the bill through his website, VoterVerified.org... The bill has 50 cosponsors attached to it, but all of them are Democrats. Holt said that Republicans are avoiding the bill because they view it as 'payback for Florida.' 'It got in the heads of some of the leadership that this is a partisan bill. And evidently word has gone out that Republicans should not co-sponsor it,' he said."

"Swarthmore College students embroiled in a legal battle against voting-machine maker Diebold Election Systems have received a groundswell of support from universities and colleges nationwide. Students at Harvard, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Duke University, the University of California at Berkeley and at least 10 other campuses have joined the fight for public access to internal memos obtained from a Diebold server in March. The memos suggest the company knew about security problems with its voting machines long before it sold the machines to various states, including California, Georgia and, most recently, Maryland. The memos have popped up on numerous websites since August, despite attempts by Diebold to force ISPs and webmasters to remove them from the Internet."

"Despite lawsuit threats from one of the nation's largest electronic voting machine suppliers, some activists are refusing to remove from Web sites internal company documents that they claim raise serious security questions. Diebold Inc. sent 'cease and desist' letters after the documents and internal e-mails, allegedly stolen by a hacker, were distributed on the Internet. Recipients of the letters included computer programmers [and] students at Swarthmore College... 'These legal threats are an acknowledgment of the horrific security risks of electronic voting,' said Sacramento-based programmer Jim March, who received a cease and desist order last month but continues to publish the documents on his personal Web site... [EFF attorney Wendy] Seltzer encouraged them to defy the Diebold cease-and-desist letters. 'People are using these documents to talk about the very mechanism of democracy -- how the votes are counted. It's at the heart of what the First Amendment protects.'"

Victoria Collier writes, "Intense, multi-faceted scrutiny and public awareness must surround every step of the process, not just the activities at the precinct. Otherwise ballot boxes tend to disappear on the way to the county courthouse, or arrive with their locks broken. Election 'officials' will be waiting with new locks, to replace the broken ones. The reported vote totals tend to change mysteriously when a secret corporate media consortium is in charge of reporting them. If anyone disputes the numbers, the same centralized media can assure the charges are never investigated or reported by the press. Election officials can manipulate or withhold the final election results to prevent citizens from proving fraud, and rotten Judges can throw out vote fraud lawsuits... Hand counted paper ballots and eternal vigilance are the only hope left for us. The corporate fascists are taking over, and we will never depose them non-violently as long as they control our elections."

Steven Levy writes: "Unfortunately, the machines have 'a fatal disadvantage,' says Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey, who's sponsoring legislation on the issue. 'They're unverifiable. When a voter votes, he or she has no way of knowing whether the vote is recorded.' After you punch the buttons to choose your candidates, you may get a final screen that reflects your choices--but there's no way to tell that those choices are the ones that ultimately get reported in the final tally. You simply have to trust that the software inside the machine is doing its job. It gets scarier. The best minds in the computer-security world contend that the voting terminals can't be trusted. Listen, for example, to Avi Rubin, a computer-security expert and professor at Johns Hopkins University who was slipped a copy of Diebold's source code earlier this year. After he and his students examined it, he concluded that the protections against fraud and tampering were strictly amateur hour."

Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) is sponsoring a bill (HR 2239) to require voter-verified paper trails for electronic voting machines. This bill is URGENT! The Democratic National Committee recently adopted a resolution endorsing HR 2239, so ALL Democratic Senators and Representatives should become co-sponsors. And if Republicans believe in the Constitution of the United States - which they are sworn to uphold - they should co-sponsor it too. VerifiedVoting.org is leading the battle for this bill by having grassroots activists call every Representative and Senator and report back whether they will co-sponsor the bill. YOU can make a difference!

Jeremiah Akin, a 28-year-old programmer who recently observed one of these tests in Riverside County, Calif., says that what he saw did nothing to mitigate his concerns about electronic voting -- indeed, the whole thing made him more worried than ever... 'I was picturing that people would go up and touch the touch screen and verify that what they had pressed was registered as a vote. But the way it's run is, they have a test cartridge that they pop into the back of the machine, and it runs a script -- it runs several hundred different voters, like some type of emulation... But the touch screens themselves weren't actually pressed. Nobody got to touch those. So we didn't see what was on them, and we didn't see the input that was put into the machine. All that we saw was the output that came out later. And, I mean -- that's like telling somebody that your calculator can add 2 plus 2, then pressing some buttons behind a screen, and then showing them that it says 4.'" (Salon Premium)

Campaign for Verifiable Voting in Maryland writes, "Will Your Vote Count in 2004? The foundation of our democracy is the right to vote and a key principle is that every vote counts. In reaction to the 2000 Presidential election in Florida, many states including Maryland are upgrading their voting systems. Unfortunately, Maryland is moving quickly to put in place electronic voting machines that make it impossible to safeguard the integrity of your vote - electronic voting machines that are not designed with an independent recount capacity - paper or otherwise. Take Action now to protect your vote!" This is an outstanding effort - one that EVERY state should emulate!

"In the wake of concerns raised about security flaws in e-voting systems, a lobbying group is strategizing a public relations and lobbying campaign to help voting companies 'repair short-term damage done by negative reports and media coverage.' And in a separate and surprising move companies, according to one vendor, are reversing their long-time opposition to giving voters paper receipts as a way to verify e-voting results... According to a draft plan produced by the Information Technology Association of America, a lobbying and trade association for the tech industry, e-voting machine makers are discussing ways to convince state election officials that their products are the gold standard and worthy of taxpayer money. The plan calls for a media campaign to 'generate positive public perception' of the companies and to 'reduce substantially the level and amount of criticism from computer scientists and other security experts about the fallibility of electronic voting systems.'"

WashPost: "Democratic legislative leaders called yesterday for independent auditors to study problems with Maryland's voting machines, saying they do not trust Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to resolve the matter on his own... Sen. Paula C. Hollinger (D) and Del. Sheila Ellis Hixson (D) asked that the agency examine a report issued in September by Science Application International Corp. on security weaknesses in a new computerized voting system the state is prepared to purchase for $55.6m. The SAIC report on the system, developed by Diebold Elections Systems Inc., found serious flaws that could allow tampering with election results. The study was a response to a July report by Johns Hopkins University computer scientist Aviel Rubin and colleagues who said the voting system was vulnerable to manipulation. The report led Diebold to tighten the security of its software, but Democrats questioned the impartiality of SAIC, the research company chosen by the Ehrlich administration."

"Defending the right to link to controversial information about flaws in electronic voting systems, EFF announced today it will defend an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and a news website publisher against claims of indirect copyright infringement from the electronic voting machines' manufacturer. On October 10, 2003, Diebold, Inc., sent a cease-and-desist letter to the nonprofit Online Policy Group (OPG) ISP demanding that OPG remove a page of links published on an IndyMedia.org website located on a computer server hosted by OPG. Diebold sent out dozens of similar notices to ISPs hosting IndyMedia and other websites linking to or publishing copies of Diebold internal memos. OPG is the only ISP so far to resist the takedown demand from Diebold. 'What topic could be more important to our democracy than discussions about the mechanics and legitimacy of electronic voting systems now being introduced nationwide?' said EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer." You GO, Wendy!

Bev Harris writes, "They've taken out BlackBoxVoting.com, the site owned by the Black Box Voting publisher, for the third time in a month. This is another bogus spam complaint. The first time: It was a bogus spammer, some religious looney web site who sent spam referring to us and then notified Spamcops. Their web site was not taken out, we were. We were cleared of any involvement and the site restored. The second time, it was a hacker that said 'I told you to leave me alone!' This time, it is another bogus spam complaint. We are awaiting an answer as to what the offending 'spam' was and who complained. We do have an opt-in list of activists; I have saved all the opt-ins, and if a mole opted in and then filed a bogus complaint, I will find this person and sue for damages. The sister site, BlackBoxVoting.org, which I own, has been shut down due to a Diebold demand." Truth is hanging by a thread - be sure to download the e-book while you still can!

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is a little-known but important federal agency. On December 10-11, 2003, NIST will host a "Symposium on Building Trust and Confidence in Voting Systems." Naturally, we would start by indicting Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, and George W. Bush - but that isn't on their agenda, which focuses on purely "technical" issues. If you live in the DC area and you care about paper audit trails for electronic voting machines, you should attend.

"Portland band Railer is launching a nationwide music tour in mid-October to join the fight against fraudulent voting technologies. The popular new wave rock act that won the Northwest's largest ever band search and will tour coast to coast spreading information about the new technologies while introducing new fans to their unique sound. Railer frontman Randall Scott says 'I think this is an excellent way to educate and invigorate people that aren't afraid to take action. The American voting system is on the fast track to corruption and we have less than one year to stop it before we lose every shred of democracy there is left.' ... While trying to survive the road, the band will donate 100% of their profits from their tour compilation CD to organizations that promote educating the public about new voting technologies... The 'New National Anthem Tour' begins this month in Minneapolis and ends in Portland."

UK Independent: "One of these, Diebold's vice-president of research and development, Talbot Iredale, wrote an e-mail in April 2002 - later obtained by the campaigners - making it clear that he wanted to shield the operating system from Wylie Labs, an independent testing agency involved in the early certification process. The reason that emerges from the e-mail is that he wanted to make the software compatible with WinCE 3.0, an operating system used for handhelds and PDAs; in other words, a system that could be manipulated from a remote location. In an earlier intercepted e-mail, this one from Ken Clark in Diebold's research and development department, the company explained upfront to another independent testing lab that the supposedly secure software system could be accessed without a password, and its contents easily changed using the Microsoft Access programme." Yet SAIC says the system is "secure"! (See http://www.govtech.net/news/news.phtml?docid=2003.09.30-70200)

Studies at Johns Hopkins and other universities have now presented compelling evidence that electronic voting machines are wide open to manipulation and fraud. Yet an 'independent risk assessment' ordered by a state governor showed that the machines in question were "extremely secure." How can this be? Well, maybe it's because the governor in question is Bush toady Bob Ehrlich. And the "independent company" hired to do the risk assessment is SAIC - a company with a major interest itself in electronic voting machines. SAIC also happens to be the recipient of one of the largest slabs of Bush Pentagon pork yet. AND it is the former corporation of David Kay, who was its VP until 2002. Could it get any more corrupt than this???

"The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players -- Diebold, ES&S (major share holder Howard Ahmanson), and Sequoia -- with a fourth, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC, David Kay former VP), coming on strong. All have been given billions of dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines nationwide by the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems -- many using 'touch-screen' technology that leaves no paper trail at all -- are almost laughably open to manipulation. In computerized Minnesota, former Vice President Walter Mondale, a replacement for Paul Wellstone, who died days before the vote, was also defeated in a large [and mysterious] last-second vote swing. Convenient 'glitches' in Florida saw an untold number of votes intended for the Democratic candidate registering instead for Jeb Bush."

"Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the extremist 'Christian Reconstructionist' movement, which openly advocates a theocratic takeover of American democracy, placing the entire society under the 'dominion' of 'Christ the King.' This 'dominion' includes the death penalty for homosexuals, exclusion of citizenship for non-Christians, stoning of sinners and - we kid you not - slavery, 'one of the most beneficent of Biblical laws.' Ahmanson also has major holdings in ES&S, whose former CEO is Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. When Hagel ran for office, his own company counted the votes; needless to say, his initial victory was reported as 'an amazing upset.' Hagel still has a million-dollar stake in the parent company of ES&S. In Florida, Jeb Bush's first choice for a running mate in his 1998 gubernatorial race was ES&S lobbyist Sandra Mortham, who made a mint installing the machines that counted Jeb's votes."

The "Fraudulent Voting Machine... is a teaching demonstration that shows why POST-ELECTION printouts from a computerized voting machine do not create election security. After each fraudulent election, three post-election audit trails will be displayed--one correct and two falsified. All three look equally authentic. The purpose of this demonstration is to show that unless each voter has the chance to verify a permanent, unalterable, physical record of his or her ballot choices, when the election is over there is NO way to know whether computerized voting machine results are accurate or wrong. The Fraudulent Voting Machine will run an election with two candidates, John Doe and Mary Smith. A 'machine test' will give you honest vote counts, but if you select a 'real election' and enter any votes, Mary Smith will WIN and John Doe will LOSE." This is a great way to show your friends what this issue is about!

"Punch-card ballots from Tuesday's historic recall election are sure to get a going-over by political activists, but some computer scientists think touch-screen voting machines deserve just as much scrutiny. While punch-card ballots caused headaches for Florida election officials with their 'hanging' chads, nearly one in 10 California voters will be using touch-screen machines, which don't produce printouts voters can see. And no paper printouts, the scientists say, would make a legitimate recount impossible. 'You can't do a meaningful recount if the question is about the integrity of the voting machines themselves,' said David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford. He urged voters in the four counties using touch-screen terminals to vote with absentee ballots. The concern of Dill was dismissed as overblown and irresponsible by county registrars and executives at the companies that sell the machines." Of course - they want to steal the election without getting caught!

Wired.com writes, "Information obtained by Wired News at a training session for Alameda County poll workers indicates that security lapses in the use of the equipment and poor worker training could expose the election to serious tampering. Voting-machine experts say the lapses could allow a poll worker or an outsider to change votes in machines without being detected. And because other problems inherent in the software won't be fixed before the recall, experts say sophisticated intruders can intercept and change vote tallies as officials transmit them electronically David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University and critic of electronic voting machines that don't provide a verifiable paper trail, calls the information about the county's security 'jaw-dropping.'"

Lynn Landes writes, "As California Governor Davis goes, so may go other elected officials, maybe even some Republicans... For those still living in the Valley of Denial, and think that the California recount is a fair election, here is the breakdown. On a geographical basis, British-based Sequoia takes the lead in the vote count in California counties. Twenty-one counties use Sequoia voting technology, 15 counties use ES&S, 14 - Diebold, 6 - DMF Associates, and 2 counties use PollStar. On the basis of registered voters, ES&S takes the lead with 7,305,680 voters, Sequoia - 3,682,051, Diebold - 2,412,971, PollStar - 1,308,789, and DMF Associates - 593,978. ES&S, the nation's largest voting company, is owned by the Omaha World Herald Company and has solid ties to the Republican Party... Diebold Election Systems, is the second largest company with 33-35% of the electronic vote. Walden O'Dell, Diebold's CEO, recently wrote a fund-raising letter for the re-selection of George Bush."

Xymphora writes, "The boring Canadian province of Ontario had an election yesterday, and the voters finally managed to kick out the right-wing American-influenced tax cutters, replacing them with a party whose main promise was that it would not cut taxes so that it would have enough money to pay for things considered inessential by the previous government, such as health care, education, public security and safety, and the electricity supply. A little sanity in an insane world. The interesting thing is the mechanics of the voting procedure. The election used paper ballots which were counted by hand at each polling station... Ontario is a huge place, with over 11 million people on 415,000 square miles or over one million square kilometers (at the longest points, 1,000 miles high and 1,000 miles wide), and yet this old-fashioned system produced election results in about an hour, with the winner giving his victory speech less than two hours after the polls closed."

Chris Floyd writes, "The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players--Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia--with a fourth, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), coming on strong. These companies--all of them hardwired into the Bushist Party power grid--have been given billions of dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines nation-wide by the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems--many using 'touch-screen' technology that leaves no paper trail at all--are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate whistleblowers and computer scientists at Stanford, John Hopkins and other universities. The technology had a trial run in the 2002 mid-term elections. In Georgia, serviced by new Diebold systems, a popular Democratic governor and senator were both unseated in what the media called 'amazing' upsets, with results showing vote swings of up to 16 percent from the last pre-ballot polls."

"Broward County commissioners are studying whether to dump the touch-screen machines that cost them $17.2 million in favor of the older system of optical scanners, which are far less costly and maintain a paper trail. They have also asked county staffers to research the feasibility of adding printers to the touch-screen machines... Elections Supervisor Miriam Oliphant said last week that retrofitting the machines to create paper ballots 'will be a costly endeavor' and would not commit herself to recommending such a move. In Miami-Dade County, Democrats are demanding a system of paper ballots that could act as a backup for the touch-screen machines. County commissioners asked staff to present them with a proposal within four months. Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore, however, contends no change is needed. She said the machines are reliable and a paper trail in unnecessary." When will Palm Beach voters free themselves from Theresa the Tyrant?

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today urged a technical association to stop balloting on a flawed proposal for an electronic voting machine standard. EFF invited concerned parties to write letters to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE), requesting an electronic voting machine standard that requires secure, voter-verifiable election equipment and technologies that support open democratic principles of governance. 'The IEEE voting equipment standard could impact dramatically the future of democratic systems in the U.S. and around the world,' said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. 'We urge the IEEE to take the measures necessary to rework the standard currently under consideration so that it includes benchmarks for secure voter-verifiable election equipment and addresses additional criticisms from the security community.'"

VerifiedVoting.com writes, "Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and over 30 cosponsors have introduced a bill that would require a voter-verifiable audit trail on every voting system. It's called the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (H.R. 2239). If we can get this bill passed, we won't have to fight, state by state and county by county, to preserve democratic elections. We urgently need to get H.R. 2239 passed. HR2239 is presently in the Committee on House Administration. We must bring it to action and get it passed before Congress recesses in October. Cosponsorship must be increased among all members in the House, especially Republicans. Support and cosponsorship must also be gained among all members of the Committee on House Administration, especially Republicans. So, please check our state pages to find out whether your Congressperson has taken a position on HR2239. Then take the initiative and call your Congressional Representative."

"Johnson County (MO) encountered problems when it used the touch-screen machines for the first time in a live election. In the April 2002 municipal elections, some modems used to transmit results from polling places to the central election office failed. The county no longer transmits results from polling places to the central election office via modem; cartridges that record results are hand-delivered to the office. Also, results were misreported in six races. The system miscounted hundreds of votes, and a recount was ordered. The hand recount was done by printing an image of each ballot recorded by the touch-screen machines. No outcomes changed after the recount. Schmidt said the voting machines worked fine, but problems arose when the results were fed into the main computer. 'We really can't answer what went wrong,' Schmidt said at the time... Diebold investigated the problem and said in a news release issued at the time that a software error had led to the election night problem."

"James DiPaula recommended to Gov. Robert Ehrlich that [Maryland] advance a plan which he said 'will correct specific risk factors and ensure reliability of the election process.'... Aviel D. Rubin, a computer security researcher [who exposed Diebold flaws], said he was mystified to see that the state planned to use Diebold machines despite the report. 'It almost seems as though the people writing the Maryland action plan either did not read or did not understand the S.A.I.C. report,' he said. 'What they should say is, 'We're going to put these systems on hold until they say that these things are safe to use.' ' James T. Smith, the Baltimore County executive, who has opposed the move to electronic voting, said the new report should stop the state from using the machines. 'For two years, Baltimore County has warned, 'Iceberg ahead!' and now independent experts have warned that it's a gigantic iceberg,' Mr. Smith said. 'Maryland should not say, 'Damn the iceberg, full speed ahead.'"

BlackBoxVoting writes, "The SAIC report evaluating Diebold software was quietly released today. It would seem that either Diebold is having a complete mental breakdown, or they are reading a completely different report. 'We are pleased to be moving forward,' said Thomas W. Swidarski, president of Diebold Election Systems. 'The thorough system assessment conducted by SAIC verifies that the Diebold voting station provides an unprecedented level of election security.' Huh? That's not what the report I read says. This Risk Assessment has identified several high-risk vulnerabilities in the implementation of the managerial, operational, and technical controls for AccuVote-TS voting system. If these vulnerabilities are exploited, significant impact could occur on the accuracy, integrity, and availability of election results."

BlackBoxVoting.com writes, "Claiming that links on the blackboxvoting.org site were infringing on their copyright, Diebold has temporarily shut the site down. The issue at question is links to a database of Diebold email provided by an insider that documents Diebold's ongoing campaign of fraud and deception in the design, manufacture and sale of its computer voting machines and software. Diebold originally objected to emails being posted in their entirety on the blackboxvoting.org site. When the material was taken down, Diebold then claimed that links to sites outside the US were infringing their copyright, and the ISP complied with the demand. This will not stand. We are searching for new home for the site and it will go back up as soon as we can manage it." Diebold has declared war on the First Amendment - we demand that ALL state and local governments immediately return Diebold voting machines!

Mark Crispin Miller writes, "A remarkable exchange concerning Diebold's voting machines in Volusia County, Florida. On January 17, 2001, Lana Hines, a county elections official sends out an inquiry as to how Al Gore ended up with a vote-count of -16,022. That's NEGATIVE 16,022-which just happens also to have been the total number of votes cast for various independent and third-party candidates who also ran. Pay close attention to the final entry, from 'Tab'-that is, Talbot Iredale, Vice President of Research & Development at Global/Diebold. The most troubling of his statement is in bold below. Iredale writes: ...the error could only occur in one of four ways: 1.Corrupt memory card. This is the most likely explanation for the problem but since I know nothing about the 'second' memory card I have no ability to confirm the probability of this." There are 3 other obscure possibilities. How can we TRUST these machines with our VOTES?

"Scoop has obtained internal mail messages from Diebold Election Systems which clearly and explicitly confirm security problems in the GEMS vote counting software that were highlighted in reports published in July.... Diebold Election Systems technical writer R&D Nel Finberg wrote to the 'support' list on 10-16-01: 'Jennifer Price at Metamor (about to be Ciber) [this is the certification lab responsible for certifying all US voting software] has indicated that she can access the GEMS Access database and alter the Audit log without entering a password. What is the position of our development staff on this issue? Can we justify this? Or should this be anathema?' The 'GEMS Access database'...is responsible for tallying votes from county precinct voting booths, these results are typically modemed into the central computer. Significantly this software is responsible for tallying all votes, optical scan, touchscreen and absentee ballots." Read on for more shocking revelations.

Financial Times: "Avi Rubin, a computer security expert, teamed up with two graduate students and pored through [Diebold's equipment codes] line by line.... Rubin's report called the Diebold system 'far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts', and said that reliance on e-voting systems such as Diebold's 'places our very democracy at risk'.... [S]ome have raised questions about the 2002 vote in Georgia - electronic across the entire state - which yielded multiple upsets. Meanwhile, in California... scientists are warning of potential trouble if one of the 135 candidates asks for a recount. Some of the state's e-voting machines do not provide a paper trail for independent verification. Researchers looking at electronic voting have begun to call for a slowdown. No one knows what percentage of the 2004 presidential vote will be cast electronically. Experts say more than 10 per cent of votes cast in the 2000 presidential election were electronic."

Bev Harris writes, "What happened at 3:31 p.m. on primary election day (3-5-02) in San Luis Obispo County California? A file from the Diebold stash examined by computer guy and voting activist Jim March, of Alameda County California, turns out to be from a real election, and it contains real votes. And it also contains a real problem for Diebold... For some reason, the Diebold optical scan machines in 57 precincts at once had an "E.T." moment. They "called home" with election results while the election was still in progress, summing up the votes in 57 precincts, then tagged the file to a Diebold employee and placed it on a Diebold company web site... It is AGAINST THE LAW to count votes before the polls close... Diebold and the county elections registrar claim that the optical scan machines are not hooked up to a modem at all" to prevent remote vote tampering. But obviously they are - which means Diebold is LYING! We demand an IMMEDIATE halt to ALL electronic voting!

"The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is 'committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the resident next year.' The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of Resident Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election. O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the resident's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion... The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible."

Rob Kall writes, "It will take American citizens to take back America. Just going out and voting won't do it either. There's far too much corruption in the voting business. First, Americans must clean up the vote - to prevent 'floridization' of the election process - the use of partisan companies to selectively eliminate tens of thousands of democrat voters. They must fix the massive problems with computerized, electronic voting. There are signs that this technology is being set up for corruption by the biggest military contractors. Dennis Kucinich told me he's working on a bill that will governmentize - the reverse of privatize - all software used for electronic voting. And that's the way it should be. Every ballot should be a paper ballot, and it should be hand counted. There are too many ways to corrupt the process by hacking the software. Once there's an honest and clean election process, THEN, Americans will easily take back America."

"On Aug. 22, a meeting was held. David Allen, publisher of BlackBoxVoting.org attended this meeting, which was a private teleconference among voting industry insiders that was supposed to be secret. He obtained a transcript and a document. Participants were R. Doug Lewis, who heads The Election Center, Diebold Election Systems, ES&S, Sequoia Voting Systems, Hart Intercivic, a few more voting machine companies, and the ES division of ITAA." Partial notes from the meeting include: "1) The purpose of the meeting was to get the voting vendors to pony up $200,000 by Friday for a massive PR campaign for the voting machine coalition; 2) Participants asked if a task force composed of defense contractors and defense procurement contractors could help them 'again' like they did with HAVA; 3) There was a significant amount of discussion about collusion and antitrust and 'of course you know I really shouldn't be here' and so forth; 4) They all agreed the meeting should never get into the media."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports: "In the end, Friday's two-hour discussion of whether computers should be the sole tabulators of Georgia voters' ballots came down to a challenge. Roxanne Jekot, a 51-year-old computer program developer from Cumming, said she and a few expert friends could crack Georgia's $54 million touch-screen voting system in a matter of minutes. Bring it on, said state election officials. 'If something can beat the machine, we need to know that,' said Brit Williams, who helped design the state's touch-screen security system. He put the odds of corrupting the software undetected at 1 billion to one.... Jekot said she could be ready as soon as next week. She said all she wants to do is point out weaknesses so that they can be fixed - and declares she can put an unauthorized vote anywhere she wants. Election officials promised to provide a voting machine, and a computer server into which votes from the machine are fed."

Georgia's Secretary of State, Cathy Cox, is a Democrat - and she even wants to be Governor. But she is utterly clueless about how Republicans steal elections, and about the vulnerability of electronic voting machines to fraud. Even Gov. Sonny Perdue - a Republican who probably benefited from the rigging of Cox's machines - is speaking out about vote rigging in the wake of the recent Johns Hopkins study on security flaws in Diebold machines. Nevertheless, Cox expressed "total confidence in Georgia's new electronic platforms," which she said "increased the accuracy of the vote count fivefold last year." How on earth would Cox KNOW - since there were no paper ballots to compare the results to??? In fact, the defeat of Gov. Roy Barnes and Sen. Max Cleland contradicted pre-election polls showing both in the lead. E-mail Cox at sosweb@sos.state.ga.us and tell her to stop trusting Republican black box voting machines and demand the immediate addition of voter-verifiable paper ballots!

Lynn Landes of OpEdNews.Com writes, "On August 6th Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) gave a contract to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to review the Diebold Election System's software in preparation for elections in Maryland... [But] SAIC is itself in the elections business" and was charged with fraud in Superfund cleanups, F-15 fighters, and nuclear waste disposal. "SAIC proudly lists DARPA in its annual report as one of its prime clients. DARPA ... until recently employed Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame. Poindexter was forced to resign when it was revealed that DARPA was prepared to trade 'futures' in terrorist attacks. DARPA has also developed a program to spy on American citizens, which has civil libertarians in an uproar. [Gov Ehrlich should] cancel the contracts with Diebold and SAIC, throw out all of the voting machines, and order a new batch of paper ballots. And most importantly, let the people count the votes."

"With such security questions floating around, legislators say they're asking tough questions of the entire electronic voting industry. And, basically, what those questions boil down to is trust. Should Americans trust the results of federal-level tests on voting systems? With critics like Dill and Rubin, that's easy to answer, said Doug Lewis, executive director of [The Election Center - electioncenter.org - which supervises the testing and certification of voting machines]. 'They want their view to win out, no matter if its fact or fiction,' he said. For legislators and voters, Lewis is a bit more hopeful. 'At some point in this society, you have to trust the institutions that are in charge of it,' he said." Is Lewis insane? How on earth can we trust election machines that have no audit trails or open source code, have documented security flaws, and are run by powerful partisan Republicans? E-mail Doug Lewis electioncent@pdq.net

Sandeep S. Atwal writes, "If the connections between Hagel and ES&S seem suspect, the origins of America's largest electronic voting machine companies may be just as distressing, especially for those who venerate the separation of church and state... Brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich founded American Information Systems. Bob is currently president of Diebold and Todd Urosevich is Vice President, Aftermarket Sales of ES&S. (In 1999, American Information Systems, purchased Business Records Corp to become ES&S.) American Information Systems (AIS) was primarily funded with money from Ahmanson brothers, William and Robert, of the Howard F. Ahmanson Co. The majority stake in ES&S is still owned by Howard F. Ahmanson and the Ahmanson Foundation. Howard Ahmanson belongs to Council for National Policy, a hard right wing organization and also helps finance The Chalcedon Institute... [whose] purpose is to establish Old Testament Biblical law as the standard for society."

"The Virginia State Board of Elections had a seemingly simple task before it: Certify an upgrade to the state's electronic voting machines. But with a recent report by Johns Hopkins University computer scientists warning that the system's software could easily be hacked into and election results tampered with, the once perfunctory vote now seemed to carry the weight of democracy and the people's trust along with it. An outside consultant assured the three-member panel recently that the report was nonsense. 'I hope you're right,' Chairman Michael G. Brown said, taking a leap of faith and approving Diebold Election System's upgrades... [But] Maryland officials, who signed a $55.6 million agreement with Diebold for 11,000 touch-screen voting machines just days before the Hopkins report came out, have asked an international computer security firm to review the system's security. If they don't like what they find, officials have said, the sale will be off."

"Diebold - under fire nationally for purported security flaws in its touch-screen voting system - offered to consider building all its voting machines for Ohio in-state if it wins a statewide contract... Political insiders say it would be virtually impossible - given the firm's political connections - for [Secretary of State Ken] Blackwell, a Republican, to not have Diebold on his final list. Diebold chief executive Walden O'Dell is a generous contributor to Republican campaigns and fund-raisers, from the Republican National Committee and White House on down. He and his wife donated a combined $8,500 to Gov. Bob Taft between June 2001 and October 2002, state records show, and Taft subsequently appointed O'Dell to the board of trustees at Ohio State University. W.R. 'Tim' Timken, one of Ohio's most influential Republicans, is on Diebold's board. Members of the Timken family contributed almost $66,000 to Republican campaigns in Ohio from 2000 to 2002."

Thom Hartmann writes, "Are computerized voting machines a wide-open back door to massive voting fraud? The discussion has moved from the Internet to CNN, to UK newspapers, and the pages of The NY Times. People are cautiously beginning to connect the dots, and the picture that seems to be emerging is troubling. 'A defective computer chip in the county's optical scanner misread ballots Tuesday night and incorrectly tallied a landslide victory for Republicans,' announced the AP on Nov. 7, just a few days after the 2002 election. The story added, 'Democrats actually won by wide margins.' Republicans would have carried the day had not poll workers become suspicious when the computerized vote-reading machines said the Republican candidate was trouncing his incumbent Democratic opponent in the race for County Commissioner. The poll workers were close enough to the electorate - they were part of the electorate - to know their county overwhelmingly favored the Democratic incumbent."

Bev Harris writes, "According to an Aug. 4 article in Wired.com: Diebold company spokesman Mike Jacobsen 'confirmed that the source code Rubin's team examined was last used in November 2002 general elections in Georgia, Maryland and in counties in California and Kansas.' Actually, the software may have been used in as many as 13 states and 197 counties, according to Diebold documents given to Santa Clara County in Feb. 2003. Earlier, Diebold had told reporters that the software which contained 'stunning security flaws' that made hacking easy, was an older version and never used in any election. Yet it was used, and provably so. The Diebold software version was easily verifiable: - The FEC requires certification of voting machine software by version number - The certified version number matches what was studied by the Johns Hopkins scientists."

Wired reports, "A recent report that showed touch-screen voting machines could be vulnerable to hackers spurred the National Association of Secretaries of State, a majority of whose members are in charge of their states' elections, to consider whether the standards for the machines should be beefed up to prevent tampering... NASS discussed asking the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, the government's standards-setting organization, to prepare a white paper on security standards for the new generation of computerized voting machines [but] no decision was made... Mary Kiffmeyer, Minnesota's [Republican] Secretary of State and the new NASS president, said there shouldn't be a 'rush to judgment' to condemn the current technology used in touch-screen voting machines." Why not? Our DEMOCRACY is at stake! E-mail Secretary.state@state.mn.us, director@nist.gov to IMMEDIATELY demand Voter Verifiable Audit Trails for all electronic voting machines!

Lynn Landes reports: "Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, a leading expert in voting machine security, had her conference credentials revoked by the president of the International Association of Clerks, Records, Election Officials, and Treasurers (IACREOT)...Mercuri believes that her credentials were revoked because of her position in favor of voter-verified paper ballots for computerized election systems. 'I guess in a very troubling way it makes sense that an organization like IACREOT, that supports paperless computerized voting systems, which are secret by their very design, would not want computer experts who disagree with that position at their meetings.'"

Rob Kall writes: "Imagine that a rogue programmer gets access to a few networks of computers in the California special gubernatorial election. The programmer manipulates the software to count wrong, making sure that Darrell Issa or whoever is running on the Republican ticket gets 10% more votes than the voters really gave him. This software 'fix' will do its work then delete itself. The program can be made to randomize the bogus numbers so they are a little different percentage at each voting location. Now imagine that this is not some independently acting rogue programmer. What if he works for the company and the company is currying favor for or selling power to the candidate or even to unidentified backers-- like some of the wealthy oil people who have funded attack ads for George Bush in the past. This is no far-fetched scenario. There are a lot of us who believe it has already happened."

"Scoop Editor's Note: What follows is a set of discoveries, the result of the first-ever public examination of a secret, proprietary computer program used to count votes in 37 states. A hundred dollar item allows anyone to stuff the ballot box; remote access was left unprotected, encryption keys were made available to hackers, and passwords, audit logs and votes were easily compromised. This report, and all information not attributed to others here, was provided by Bev Harris, author of 'Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century.'"

MSNBC reports, "Douglas Jones, a University of Iowa computer science professor who serves on Iowa's board of examiners for electronic voting systems, said he recognized one of the encryption flaws cited by the [Johns Hopkins] researchers' report as one he called attention to during a board meeting at least five years ago. 'I can say with great confidence that several Diebold representatives were at the meeting, and one of their people who was described to me as being one of their main programmers,' he told MSNBC.com. 'The fact that that flaw is still there, half a decade later, is as far as I'm concerned grounds for decertifying their machine.' Jones said that based on the researchers' report, he recommended decertification to Iowa's secretary of state on Wednesday. The issue would have to be considered by the full board of election examiners, he said."

NY Times reports, "The software that runs many high-tech voting machines contains serious flaws that would allow voters to cast extra votes and permit poll workers to alter ballots without being detected, computer security researchers said yesterday. 'We found some stunning, stunning flaws,' said Aviel D. Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, who led a team that examined the software from Diebold Election Systems, which has about 33,000 voting machines operating in the US. The systems, in which voters are given computer-chip-bearing smart cards to operate the machines, could be tricked by anyone with $100 worth of computer equipment... The list of flaws in the Diebold software is long, according to the paper, which is online at http://avirubin.com/vote.pdf... Ballots could be altered by anyone with access to a machine, so that a voter might think he is casting a ballot for one candidate while the vote is recorded for an opponent."

VerifiedVoting.org writes, "Billions of dollars will be spent in the next few years on voting equipment. Unfortunately, some believe the new technology may reduce election integrity and voter confidence. A proposed solution is to provide 'voter verifiability,' so that election results are guaranteed to reflect the intent of the voters. The workshop aims to bring together people interested in these issues. To maximize attendance by election officials, vendors, and technologists, the workshop is co-located and co-scheduled with the IACREOT Annual Conference, which is the dominant conference for local election officials. This year, IEEE will also have a meeting of its election standards working group just after the workshop." The conference is July 28-29 in Denver - call your local election officials and urge them to attend.

Lynn Landes writes, "Last year, while President Bush marshaled U.S. forces for the invasion of Iraq, the patriots at the Department of Defense awarded the contract for a new online voting system for the military... to an offshore company. It gets worse. Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) is the system and Accenture (formerly Anderson Consulting of Enron bankruptcy fame) is the company. And although Accenture has not been officially implicated in the Enron scandal, they have created a reputation of their own that is already raising eyebrows. "

Last year, Bexar County TX (San Antonio) purchased 2,233 of the computerized balloting machines and other equipment for $8.1 million from Elections Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb - the company controlled by Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and his campaign treasurer, Michael McCarthy. But the county doesn't want to use the machines until a "software upgrade" speeds the printing of a paper audit trail, which takes up to 30 hours AFTER the polls close. This post-election printing system is WRONG - the machines should print an IMMEDIATE confirmation like an ATM machine so the voter can make sure his/her vote was accurately recorded. Explain this issue to County Judge Nelson Wolff and the 4 county commissioners: kmireles@co.bexar.tx.us, rrodriguez@co.bexar.tx.us, lalcocer@co.bexar.tx.us, llarson@co.bexar.tx.us, mllano@bexar.org

"I, David Dill, am trying to organize opposition to unauditable electronic voting machines by technologists, especially computer science researchers. I have written a statement, for which I would like to recruit endorsements. This statement is intended be a message from technologists to the rest of the public, the gist of which is: Do not be seduced by the apparent convenience of 'touch-screen voting' machines, or the 'gee whiz' factor that accompanies flashy new technology. Using these machines is tantamount to handing complete control of vote counting to a private company, with no independent checks or audits. These machines represent a serious threat to democracy. Much better alternatives are available for upgrading voting equipment." Endorsements welcome from Technologists, Organizations, Elected Officials, Lawyers, Political Scientists, and Concerned Individuals.

SF Chronicle technology reporter Henry Norr writes, "[Stanford computer science prof. David] Dill was by no means the first scientist to challenge the move toward paperless voting. Among others, Peter Neumann, principal scientist at SRI International's Computer Science Lab and a leading expert on the risks associated with high technology, and Rebecca Mercuri, a software developer and Bryn Mawr professor who wrote her dissertation on electronic voting systems, have been arguing for years that there's no reliable way to guarantee the security and integrity of all-electronic counting systems. I used to think their concerns were worth worrying about but not all that likely to materialize. Now I've changed my tune: I'm convinced that the dangers are real, not just hypothetical, and that it's critical that our voting systems be fortified against them. One factor was the way the Florida situation finally played out. But numerous subsequent revelations have also influenced me."

Newsday reports, "Election.com, a struggling Garden City start-up scheduled to provide online absentee ballots for U.S. military personnel in the 2004 federal election, has quietly sold controlling power to an investment group with ties to unnamed Saudi nationals, according to company correspondence. In a letter sent to a select group of well-heeled Election.com investors Jan. 21, the online voting and voter registration company disclosed that the investment group Osan Ltd. paid $1.2 million to acquire 20 million preferred shares to control 51.6% of the voting power... [Election.com] declined to name the Saudi Arabian investors" - but we will! They are Sheik al-Bush, Sheik al-Cheney, and Sheik al-Rove! We demand the cancellation of all US contracts with Election.com!

Bartcop asks, "How come the South Carolina elections had the Democrats doing much better than the tracking poll data showed - and the Georgia elections, in an area with the same weather, same news and same social values, had a massive swing in a single day after the last tracking poll, in the opposite direction? Could it be the Diebold touch screen machines in use across the entire state of Georgia but not used at all in SC?... Who are Diebold? The corporate officers are as thick as thieves with the Republican hard right religious nut division." The campaign contributions of Diebold's directors and executives will have you seeing Red...

AP reports: "At least one in 10 voters nationwide cast ballots in the last presidential election on electronic machines, whose popularity is growing fast as counties replace the kinds of antiquated systems blamed for Florida's hanging chad debacle. But in Silicon Valley, computer scientists are calling for a halt to the trend - at least until voting machines are redesigned to produce a paper record of every vote. The idea is to provide more protection against hackers - or political hacks - who might tamper with the results. A test case in Santa Clara County ended in disappointment Tuesday for proponents of paper records. The local board of supervisors had the chance to make Santa Clara the nation's first county to purchase the so-called voter-verified paper backup system, but it voted instead to invest $20 million in 5,000 touch-screen machines that won't produce paper...this could open to the door to election fraud of unprecedented proportions, some experts say."

"Dan Spillane, a voting machine test engineer, has filed a lawsuit against his former employer, DRE touch-screen voting machine manufacturer VoteHere. Spillane's lawsuit charges wrongful and retaliatory termination; he contends he was removed so that he could not blow the whistle to certification labs and pass critical information to the US General Accounting Office. He says he has evidence which shows voting systems are certified despite known flaws, demonstrating a weakness in both the NASED and the ITA system for certifying machines... Spillane also alleges company officials bragged about using political connections to pass software, rather than meeting the rules. VoteHere's board of directors includes former CIA director [a BushDaddy appointee and pal] Robert Gates. VoteHere's Chairman is Admiral Bill Owens, who was senior military assistant to Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney, and also includes Ralph Munro, a key Washington State politician."

Salon reports, "During the past five months, Bev Harris has e-mailed to news organizations a series of reports that detail alarming problems in the high-tech voting machinery currently sweeping its way through American democracy. But almost no one is paying attention. Harris is a literary publicist and writer whose investigations into the secret world of voting equipment firms have led some to call her the Erin Brockovich of elections. Harris has discovered, for example, that Diebold, the company that supplied touch-screen voting machines to Georgia during the 2002 election, made its system's sensitive software files available on a public Internet site... And in perhaps her most eyebrow-raising coup, she found that Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, used to run the company that built most of the machines that count votes in his state -- and that he still owns a stake in the firm."

San Jose Mercury News reports, "In a major turn of events, all three voting machine makers competing for Santa Clara County's contract have told election officials that they're prepared to offer paper copies of touch-screen ballots for voters to inspect. Better yet, they'll include this feature at no cost to the county... It was only a month ago that Stanford University computer science professor David Dill began circulating a petition urging the supervisors not to buy a touch-screen system without a paper audit, as a protection against undetectable fraud and errors. At first, Dill's campaign appeared futile." But Dill's efforts produced dramatic results, as Sequoia Voting Systems and then Diebold offered enhanced machines. This should be required nationally!

BlackBoxVoting.com has been investigating tampering with Diebold's 22,000 new touchscreen voting machines in Georgia, where Republicans swept Senate and Governor's races despite polls predicting Democratic wins. They previously reported that a security-compromised software patch was applied to every machine before the election; but suddenly Diebold denies it ever happened. Who's lying? We don't know, but getting testimony under oath would sure help. Happily, BlackBoxVoting.com is working on a lawsuit, but they need help. If you're concerned about Republican voting machine fraud, see how you can get involved.

Avante Corporation writes: "Inspired by developments in the November 2000 election, one major question was asked over and over: 'Did my vote count?' The VOTE-TRAKKER answers this question with two features: 1. The Printer Paper Record: After the voter makes their selections on the touch screen, they press the 'Cast Ballot' button. A printout of their choices appears under a protective viewing window. The voter then can review the paper. They will see their selections for each contest. Also on the top they will see a header that contains a randomly generated number that does not tie the vote to their identity. Once the voter leaves the voting machine, a presence sensor sends a signal to the printer to retract the paper record into the voting machine. There is no intervention required by a poll worker. 2. The Skip Contest (No Vote) Feature." This is the FIRST certified (by California) machine with a paper trail - it should be required for ALL electronic machines!

Bev Harris writes, "Diebold Election Systems, the company that supplied every single voting machine for the surprising 2002 results in the state of Georgia, the company that is preparing to convert the state of Maryland to its no-paper-trail computerized voting, admitted to a file-sharing system that amounts to a colossal security flaw... Diebold, which builds the AccuVote machines, both optical scan and touch-screen, has been parking files on an unprotected public Internet location. Thousands of files were available: election files, hardware and software specifications, program files, voting program patches. The files on the Diebold FTP server are sensitive. If you want to tamper with election results, you either want to change the program or change the data file. That is why the program files, which control how the votes are tabulated, and the data files, which contain the actual vote count, should not be available for swapping back and forth like recipes on a cookbook site."

Thom Hartmann writes that when Chuck Hagel first ran in Nebraska "for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his company's computer-controlled voting machines showed he'd won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the general election. The Washington Post said Hagel's 'Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election.' According to Bev Harris, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska. Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide with 83% of the vote... about 80% of those votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that company. 'This is a big story, bigger than Watergate ever was,' said Matulka."

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) is the former President of McCarthy Group Inc., which owns ES&S, one of only 3 manufacturers of touchscreen voting machines. Chairman Michael McCarthy was Treasurer of Hagel's campaign until December 2002. Amazingly, ES&S machines tallied 85% of the votes in Hagel's 1996 and 2002 elections. Hagel still owns $1-5 million worth of the McCarthy Group, but Hagel refuses to disclose this fact to the Senate Ethics Committee. He even forced the committee to change its rules to give him an utterly Bushit exemption. The staff director, Victor Baird, resigned Monday after 16 years, apparently outraged over this manipulation. Hagel and McCarthy stand to get rich from election "reform" - but they could also rig the electronic machines to steal more elections for Republicans. This is a huge scandal - we demand a criminal investigation!

Peter Neumann of Stanford Research Institute's Computer Science Laboratory... Stephen Ansolabahere, co-director of the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project... Rebecca Mercuri, a voting technology expert and computer science professor at Bryn Mawr College... these are a few experts who criticize touchscreen voting machines for lacking paper trails and open-source software. With a Presidential election less than two years away, it's time for Congress to enact laws preventing the manipulation of electronic voting machines.

Computer insiders are increasingly becoming a greater risk to computer system security than high-tech bandits. Aggregating data (combining or making data accessible from various databases into one) has special security risks: the greater the potential payoff, the greater the risks. So, now that the government is hell-bent on computerizing every byte of your personal information, they are literally building a treasure trove for identity theft. But that's only one threat computers pose to the democratic process in our republic. "Risk experts feel even greater qualms about another system now moving toward the virtual realm: elections. This, democracy's biggest prize, will inevitably become a target for interested insiders as votes change from verifiable paper and mechanical ballots to bits, said Peter G. Neumann, a principal scientist at the computer science lab of SRI International, a research institution."