By John Gideon, Executive Director, VotersUnite.Org and Information Manager, VoteTrustUSA.Org — May 8, 2006
This has been another week of “Train Wrecks” across the country. Three states had major primaries with mixed success and failure, a few states had local elections with failures, and some states are preparing for May primaries and they are meeting the “oncoming locomotive” as they can’t get machines or software for the machines and are having to revert to paper ballots or lever machines.
Elections Systems and Software (ES&S) is now facing investigations, lawsuits, or just plain pissed-off elections officials in West Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana, Texas, Pennsylvania, California, and other jurisdictions. And now we learn that Diebold has a huge security vulnerability that all voting systems experts who know the details are very concerned about.
Next Tuesday, May 9, finds the train barreling down on primary elections in West Virginia and Nebraska. May 16 brings potentially hazardous primary election whistle-stops in Kentucky, Oregon and, the grand central station that is Pennsylvania.
Let’s take a look at some of the continuing derailments from the past week, about which prompted Brad Friedman of The BRAD BLOG to ask of D.C. politicians and, more notably, the National Mainstream Media: “Is anybody there? Does anybody care?”
DIEBOLD ‘REVEALS’ MAJOR SECURITY PROBLEM
According to an article in The Morning Call Diebold has found a ‘glitch’ that represents a ‘potential security vulnerability’. After a bit of research it became evident that, in fact, Diebold had not found this problem and it is not a ‘glitch’ as they would have the voters believe. It’s far worse than a mere ‘glitch’ as so many in the media (and at the voting machine companies) like to portray these things.
As later reported by The BRAD BLOG this problem — a huge one — was, in fact, discovered by Harri Hursti and Security Innovation in the inspection of Diebold TSx DREs in Emery County, Utah as organized recently by Black Box Voting. An act for which the 23-year elected county elections clerk, Bruce Funk has been pushed out of his job. Or so the state is still fighting to accomplish.
It appears at this early date that Diebold probably would have kept this vulnerability, — reportedly a gaping security flaw — quiet and not taken any action except that they were asked about it by people in Pennsylvania. They finally were forced to admit its existence and that it’s, incredibly, a “feature” of all Diebold touch-screen systems! Administrative steps are being taken by the state, which has sequestered all of the machines, to mitigate, as much as possible, the impact of the problem.
What no one at Diebold has told anyone yet is why they allowed the voters in Ohio to vote on these insecure machines. It is apparent that Diebold had no intention of telling anyone but they got caught. Again.
One top state election official was quoted in The BRAD BLOG article as saying that this security vulnerability “relates to potential misuse of the procedure by which Diebold does field updates to the machines. It’s not a bug — it’s a deliberate but unwise ‘feature’. Every jurisdiction that uses the machines should be notified. Now that the story is out, I suspect they will be.”
Unfortunately, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has still not set-up a Help America Vote Act (HAVA) mandated “clearinghouse of information” that would ensure every jurisdiction that uses Diebold AccuVote TS or TSx Direct Recording Electronic voting machines would be notified of this issue. When contacted, the EAC’s spokesperson questioned the source of the information until a well-known computer scientist was named as a person to be contacted. It is still to be seen whether the EAC will do their job.
Black Box Voting says they will be releasing redacted versions of the reports, to mitigate the security threat, from both Security Innovation and Harri Hursti this week. Complete, un-redacted versions will be sent to all states.
LAST WEEK’S PRIMARY SUCCESS: NORTH CAROLINA
Even though North Carolina is served entirely by ES&S and even though 1,000 memory cards had to be replaced by the vendor last month after crack state officials bothered to test them, this week’s North Carolina primary was nearly trouble free. The successful primary is said to be attributable, in no small part, to the new legislation recently passed by the state and to the diligence of elections officials on the state and local level.
Also important to note is that North Carolina has an extensive network of activists who are well known by state and local elections officials and who work closely, in most cases, with those officials. As much credit needs to go to those activists as to the officials.
There is talk about the legislature changing some of the laws they just put on the books because they are too restrictive or, more likely, because some special interests don’t want them or would prefer to see them changed. This would be a travesty. Why would they want to go from verifiable optical scan ballots and a voter verified paper audit trail requirement to unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, touch-screen) elections that cannot be recounted or audited? Why would they want less transparency in the election process instead of what they now have? Let’s hope common sense and verifiable elections prevail in the Tarheel state!
LAST WEEK’S ELECTION FAILURE: OHIO
Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell’s talking-heads have been speaking all week about the great success the state saw in this past week’s primary election.
Of course, Blackwell’s office apparently ignored all of the problems across the Buckeye state or passed them off as “glitches” or “snafus” or otherwise blamed any problems on poll workers or voters. Even the media is complicit in the marginalization of the problems through the words they choose to describe them. One newspaper, on the same day had these two headlines over articles that described problems “Snafus plague new digital ballot system” and “Glitches mar Ohio’s first punch-card free election”.
As of May 6 — a full four days after election-day — Cuyahoga County had still not completed counting all of their ballots. Why? The county was forced to count 17,000 absentee ballots by hand because the Diebold optical-scan machines would not read them. There is some dispute over whether the machines were at fault or if it was the printer who printed the ballots who was at fault. Though it certainly seems as though they might have tested one to see if it worked before they sent out 17,000 to voters.
Also of note is that the county actually reported that at one point they could not find 70 memory cards from their DRE voting machines. As of May 5, there were still several cards that were lost. According to the Associated Press the county has used the back-up memory of the voting machines to provide the vote results in place of the memory cards. The state has promised an investigation into the problems in Cuyahoga County.
Credit needs to be given to the elections officials in Summit County. They were put in a nearly disastrous position by their vendor, ES&S, who provided them with memory cards that constantly failed during pre-election tests. Election officials predicted a disaster but they were able to overcome terrible service by ES&S and after multiple rounds of tests, they ended up with only one failed card on election-day.
No matter whether the problem is the machines, the poll workers, or decisions by elections officials, the voters are the ones who suffer when their votes are not counted. It’s time that officials in Ohio begin to think about the voters.
LAST WEEK’S OTHER ELECTION FAILURE: INDIANA
The run-up to the primary election in Indiana was pretty much a disaster with many counties not sure if they were going to be able to meet state law because their voting machines were not programmed and ready to work until the very last minute. In fact, the problems were so severe that, as reported by The BRAD BLOG, the Secretary of State and the State Board of Elections have both announced investigations and possible fines for ES&S, or perhaps even banishment from the Hoosier state entirely! Primary day proved to be just as much of a “train wreck” in many counties.
The Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal reported that Secretary of State Todd Rokita plans to send his chief counsel to Clark, Harrison, Jackson and Washington counties to investigate problems with voting systems sold and maintained by Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software. The paper went on to report:
“According to ES&S spokesman Ken Fields, the voting machines tabulated the ballots accurately at the precinct. The problem came when county election workers tried to electronically put the individual machines’ tallies into a central computer to determine totals for each candidate.
“That meant the counties had to manually enter the number of votes for each candidate in each precinct.”
Now, with all of the problems running up to the primary and the problems during the primary election, we learned on Saturday that Secretary of State Rokita has postponed, with no new date set, the hearing into the actions of ES&S. As reported by the South Bend Tribune ES&S requested and was granted a continuance.
“Feeney-Ruiz did not say what reasons the company cited for its motion, but ES&S had questioned the scope of the hearing when it was announced April 28.
“According to a formal complaint filed by Rokita that day, ES&S allegedly provided defective hardware, software and ballots in St. Joseph, Marion and Johnson counties.
“A company spokesman said he was only aware of service problems to counties, for which the company had already accepted some blame.”
ES&S CONTINUES TO FAIL THE VOTERS OF WEST VIRGINIA
West Virginia counties have had to use paper ballots in early voting after ES&S was a no show in many places. Many of them are working through the weekend in hopes that they can get ballot programming properly installed on their ES&S provided voting machines and then get all of the required tests done satisfactorily prior to Election Day this coming Tuesday.
On May 2, the Charleston Daily Mail, reported that Kanawha County Commissioner Kent Carper had filed a formal complaint with the Secretary of State’s office after ES&S failed to appear at public testing for the machines that morning.
The Daily Mail also reports:
Meanwhile The HuntingtonNews.Net reports, under the headline, “COMMENTARY: No, ES&S is Not a Division of FEMA: It Just Seems Like It in Wake of Foul-ups”, that the state is reporting that 25 to 30 of the state’s 55 counties will be completely ready for next Tuesday’s primary. This fact is only due to the long-hours put in by local elections officials.
What of the other 25 to 30 counties in the state? WTRF-TV reports that many counties are going to go with paper ballots and either hand-count them or use optical-scan machines for the vote tally in light of the problems.
Meanwhile Secretary of State Betty Ireland has said this about ES&S:
ES&S has countered by making excuses and blamed the very law that has brought them millions, if not billions of dollars in contracts!
“What we’re experiencing is challenges related to the implementation of the Help America Vote Act,” Friedman-Wilson said. “We’re working as closely as we can with our county partners as quickly as we can.”
Friedman-Wilson, who said the company is contracted to provide voting equipment in counties in all but three states, said the company also had to rely on the cooperation of the counties in programming the ballots.
“ES&S doesn’t have responsibility for the substance of the ballots,” Friedman-Wilson said. “There’s quite a bit of back and forth. It’s an intricate process with many steps.”
In other words, Friedman-Wilson is admitting that ES&S oversold their ability to provide their machines and their services. Who suffers for this greed? Only the voters, of course.
ARKANSAS COUNTIES TURN TO PAPER BALLOTS AND LEVER MACHINES DUE TO ES&S FAILURES
As reported by The BRAD BLOG and The Pine Bluff Commercial Jefferson County has decided that because of several ES&S “failures” the county will have to change their plans from using the ES&S iVotronic DREs to using their old voting system for early voting, the May 23 primary and run-off elections in June. The Commercial relates:
“In addition to being unable to ensure we would have everything we need to conduct the election, we would have no way to provide our voters with the access we desire in order to familiarize them with the machines,” Ashcraft said.
“Ashcraft said that as of Monday, Nebraska-based ES&S had not provided the commission with ballots, earphones and flashcards. Earphones are required under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. Flashcards are needed to store voting data.”
In the meantime state and local officials are working through the weekend, according to the Baxter Bulletin, in an attempt to have voting machines prepared for 8 2nd District counties. These counties are important because it is the only district in the state with a contested congressional primary this year.
Again, elections workers and officials are working overtime in an attempt to clean-up a mess that is only in existence because an election machine vendor over-sold their ability to provide contracted services. The voter ends up being the loser in the long-run.
MISSOURI COUNTIES DECIDE PAPER OR LEVERS ARE BETTER THAN FIGHTING ES&S FOR CONTRACT COMPLIANCE
The BRAD BLOG tells us that five Missouri counties have now joined the march back in time to their familiar paper ballots or lever machines.
Early voting begins in Missouri on May 8. Boone County is making contingency plans to drag a couple of their lever machines out of storage.
ES&S failed to properly provide ballot software for Carroll County who will now use paper ballots for early voting and only use e-voting for voters with disabilities in the primary.
Searcy County will use lever machines for early voting and on primary day if the iVotronics are not ready in time.
Newton and Marion Counties will use hand-counted paper ballots for early voting and hope that the machines will be ready for the primary.
Thus ends another week of failures and long hours by elections officials. It seems that some have gotten themselves on the right track and some are struggling to get on that track. Meanwhile the vendors continue to obfuscate and make excuses for their failures. While making millions of dollars in the bargain, of course.
Help America Vote, indeed.
In closing this week I would like to mention, again, Bruce Funk. He opened his office to allow Harri Hursti, Security Innovations and BlackBoxVoting to inspect the Diebold TSx voting machines that he was forced by the state of Utah to use in elections. For this act state officials have pushed him out of his job, even though it is his act of courage and responsibility that has led to the revelation of a security vulnerability that must be fixed before Diebold TS or TSx machines are used in any elections anywhere in the country.
Funk deserves our support. America needs more courageous and responsible elections officials like him. Please visit the VoteTrustUSA ‘Election Integrity Action Center’ and let the Emery County Commissioners know how you feel.
The previous four major chapters in our “E-VOTE 2006: Train Wreck” series can be found here and here and here and here
Bush is at 33% in the polls. If the 67% that disapproves of him were able to connect the dots with all these e-vote train wrecks, we’d really have something.
But they haven’t. The corporate media are largely responsible, but it’s also that ugly American tradition of "not being a sore loser." We don’t mind telling other countries their elections are rigged, but somehow we can’t bring ourselves to believe it’s happening here every four years.
Hello, America? It IS happening every four years. Are you glad that you allowed Bush to steal two elections? Guess what, America? The rest of the world isn’t glad at all. They think we’re stupid. And they’re right, America.
Americans only have time to watch Fox News.
Most are Un-informed (that’s the same as stupid) and way too busy….. doing something far more important.
You know Coffee at Starbucks, dinner at Applebee’s or fast food. Gotta hit Walmart, Target, Sam’s, Costco, Walgeens, the church, or friends house. Have to buy that Honda or BMW, attend kids birthday party, then attend kids soccer, tennis, have a late night ballgame, health spa, tanning salon, card game or need to visit with an old friend…. no time left for Democracy or America.
Whats more important then freedom, saving the principals established by our Constitution, Bill of Rights and Democracy?
I fear all is lost …. until the great depression arrives.
That will wake up the masses.
When all sides of the argument are in agreement to what the polls show, that Americans want democrats to take over the congress, and when those voter desires can be thwarted … we have a republican dictatorship in place.
The definition of a dictatorship, in modern terms, is a situation where the people cannot change their government when they certainly want to.
The KKKarl Rovians are not worried:
"But Rove confidently tells the Times that he isn’t worried about the troubles for the Bush Administration that a Democratic majority might bring."
"We won’t see how that plays out because they’re not going to win," Rove said (Raw Story link, bold added).
With all the destabilization that is taking place with the big three electronic voting machine makers putting out junk, how will anyone know the true results?
Perhaps KKKarl is not bothered because he has a plan. And we all know how those plans go …
And he has been using the wild impeachment rhetoric (borne of frustration the extreme left has) to scare republicans so the republican base will not jump ship or simply stay home in November.
Lets hope republicans know that no-one is going to impeach Bush while the great white hunter Cheney would be president to replace Bush. I suspect that is why they are keeping him on board.
What might be worse than impeachment would be to torture Bush and Cheney for two years with the truth of their actions these past years, in front of the world.
Make them resign in disgrace. Rub their noses in it. Who knows for sure what is best, that is a difficult subject.
But people tend not to think of the consequences of their actions during most election cycles, so anything could happen.
John
You caught a good one: "COMMENTARY: No, ES&S is Not a Division of FEMA: It Just Seems Like It in Wake of Foul-ups" (bold added).
The new FEMA is:
F**ked Election Machine Association
Their motto is:
"We have a Katrina election train wreck planned for your future … trust us"
Dear brethren, please pray for me, for tomorrow is primary election day in my state, West Virginia.
Yes, yes, I know I’m in good hands with the HAVA law and electronic voting machines to ensure accurate recording of my vote. But, as my state’s Secretary of State has said, it’s not that they don’t record the votes, it’s that they aren’t being tallied properly.
A few days ago I took my mother to the court house for some business and while there she voted (early). We were shocked that the voting was occuring on ES&S machines and not paper ballots. They said that the paper ballots were only used for one-issue elections. I told them the machines were broken and they got angry and argued that the machines were just fine. Apparently they didn’t get the "memo".
Yes, dear brethren, pray for me, for tomorrow I go to cast a vote and participate in Democracy, but my poor ballot might not survive to see itself registered. Come Mister Tally man, tally me away.
If a train wreck happens and nobody gives a damn, does anybody notice?
John:
Perhaps your post is the reason that Karl Rove is so certain that the Democrats will never take control of Congress?
Quote
"We won’t see how that plays out because they’re [Democrats are] not going to win," Rove said.
End Quote
Only one thing worse then going down, and that’s going down as a fool.
And the really scary thing is, NOBODY IN THIS WORLD IS GOING TO CARE! They have gone out of their way to tell us they know it’s not the Americans fault, but the fault of our government, but they are understandably losing Patience.
DISTASTE,
I do have sympathy for the rank and file employees at these companies (especially ES&S) that got this all dumped in their laps. They were ill-prepared for this onslaught, and probably had no tools to avoid it.
Who I cannot excuse is the sales people, the marketers, the excutives. They knew how much support was being promised, and how little was actually going to happen.
I have had the opportunity to sit across the desk from an ES&S salesman, and every other key vendor. Did they recruit them all from used car lots, or what? Lying sacks of excrement!
These companies knew they couldn’t deliver properly but it was SELL, SELL, SELL!
You’re right about one thing. If anyone’s going to fix elections, it will be those people that you stated. But these companies all lied their collective tushies off, and people need to know that.
FEMA ELECTION MACHINES
HUNG CHAD CHINA
These machines are being made in China and there is a reason they are not being delivered. It is called destabilization (link here).
DREDD,
The picture above "HUNG CHAD CHINA" is not appearing on my browser. What is it?
V. Kurt Bellman #11
It came up in the preview. But it is not coming up in my browser either in the final version.
You can right mouse click on it to get the URL under the "properties" listing in the window that pops up. Then you can put that URL into the browser address control and it will show up.
No biggie … it is a swastika …
Distaste #8 – I think V. Kurt said it well. It is the arrogance and greed of companies like ES&S that is now causing problems. It’s not the rank-and-file employees who are to blame for the actions of the sales staff and executives of the company.
ES&S knew exactly what they were doing when they sent their sales staff out to "Sell! Sell! Sell!" They knew, and ignored, the fact that they would never be able to service the contracts being signed.
It sounds strangely like something from the McCarthy Group. Oh! That’s right they are owned, in part, by the McCarthy Group.
ES&S was the only company of the 3 certified who agreed to meet the requirements of the new law in North Carolina. Had they refused, the law would have been hauled into special session.
They didnt’ expect to be the only vendor, our state has had every flavor of voting machine for at least 20 years.
Paperless voting for half of the state for 20 years.
A local NC company reps for ES&S and perhaps because they have a large team of regular employees locally, North Carolina avoided the endless problems and lack of support that other states seemed to have..
We had the NC Assoc of County Commissioners insisting that our new law be repealed or amended, they launched a major effort.
We had Diebold offer to help the state legislature
change our law (make it weaker)
The NCACC insisted that our primaries would be delayed, that the paper would cause problems, that the vendor (ES&S) couldn’t deliver, and that they wanted more choice of vendors (Diebold).
Any company doing business in our state would have to get their CEO to sign a sworn affadavit that they would not violate our law (uncertified software, failing to disclose problems etc).
Like I said, ES&S wouldn’t have been the only vendor, but Sequoia and Diebold literally left the state. And Diebold makes the touchscreens in NC.
So the rep had lots of local staff who he has employed for years, and who live in NC.
Our State Board of Elections centralized the testing, programming etc of the machines, and actually managed this well.
The vendor self reported the memory card issue to our state, and the issue was handled.
Our state has a bi-partisan board of elections, not a Secretary of State, and our county BOEs are bipartisan.
Our election directors are not appointed, they apply for the job and the county BOE vote on which candidate to hire.
We have dedicated good county election directors.
For once, I am proud of our state.
The approach was get lots of training out there,
and the training was also available online.
The election officials really put their back into this, and they did everything they could to deal with
any curveballs that came their way.
The main thing – we had voter verified paper ballots in all 100 counties for the first time.
We will never run on the assumption that each machine will do what it should, we will have a backup for every machine, for every vote. Our SBOE was on the hook to make sure that memory cards were tested and retested.
VVPB.
Counties that want to hand count have that option
by law in our state.
The lack of partisanship in administering elections, and the deliberate effort on the local rep to do things right – proved that our law does work,
and so does paper.
Citizens of NC are proud of our law.
Okay, so I went to vote (here in West Virginia). There were a few people waiting in line, but not a lot. This is not a general election for president, so it’s not unusual. What was unusual is that of the 4 ES&S machines there were only 2 working. The other 2 had paper jams and were being worked on.
Conversation with the election workers indicated a better understanding of the electronic voting issues than I’ve seen in the last several elections. But, they still have faith.
Ignorance is bliss, not wisdom.
In defense of ES&S employees, I would like to point out that some of these issues are the result of fatigue and insufficient manpower. Many of these companies, ES&S included, have been unable to absorb the tremendous increase in demand for election machines that resulted from HAVA. I am not an employee of any election equipment company, nor do I work in any capacitiy for the states in question. I do know, however, individuals closely associated with the events in West Virginia and Arkansas and I can attest to the fact that these issues did not arise out of incompetence, partisanship, or corporate conspiracy. Although genuine concerns exist regarding the new voting hardware, and they have been thoroughly documented here at bradblog, I believe the majority of our scrutiny should be focused on the conduct of those individuals with the greatest capacity to influence the outcome. Those individuals consist of Secretaries of State, County Clerks, and Election Commission officials. It is ultimately their responsibility to ensure the security and accuracy of the process and the validity of the result. Crucifying the overworked employees of contracted companies merely detracts from the more crucial issue of holding these elected officials accountable.
To NC Voter
What a crock. ESS lobbied/bribed their way into the state of NC. I live in Charlotte and we have voted on electronic voting machines for over a decade and have NEVER had one problem. Problem is, the company that makes these machines is a small company with good products and service, but no budget to bribe state law makers. I am appalled that you call an election with less then 10% turnout a sucess while the state election director and this "local company" president wine and dine on his big yaght while these smaller service companies only deliver what they promise. I think the new motto for ESS should be "Extra Sh&&^Y Service"….
I LIKE PIE!!!!!!!!it is tasty
ummmmmmmm thats not my name in the text entry above so you goverment ppl do not bomb me plz