Guest Blogged By Michael Richardson
The 18,000 “undervotes” in Sarasota and other questionable elections in November 2006 election were not the only problems faced by Florida voters last year. Most of them, in fact, likely have no idea just how bad it really was.
Florida’s statewide voter registration database, and election management systems designed to work with it, were plagued in early 2006 with a host of problems. Some of the details are now revealed by a raft of email messages sent recently by a source to the non-partisan election integrity watchdog group BlackBoxVoting.org which posted them quietly on their site for public scrutiny.
Sixty-four email messages to election officials, spanning a four-month period from January to April 2006, from VR Systems, a Florida corporation, document a staggering series of serious problems with Florida’s new computerized voter registration database during the early months of its implementation. The emails, from Jane Watson, a manager at VR Systems, provide a disturbing picture vis a vis a nearly day-by-day report from inside the software test lab.
The Florida Voter Registration System (FVRS) is statewide voter registration database described by Watson in the emails as a “home grown system” built by IBM to Florida specifications and maintained by Department of State staff. Voter Focus is a software system, unique to Florida, which provides election management functions to 60 Florida counties.
The emails tell the tale of software failures which began in January 2006 as programmers furiously work to solve program glitches and failures prior to the state’s upcoming elections. The system went online before development was complete, in order to meet the January 1st deadline imposed by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). The source of the Florida emails, an insider familiar with the development and implementation of the database who has requested anonymity, tells The BRAD BLOG that, “The system should never have seen the light of day until the bugs were worked out. They used the voters and county election officials as guinea pigs to experiment on and test the program.”
Documented failures include the software somehow, without apparent reason, switching the party registration for voters. As one of the emails describes: “We are seeing instances of voters being changed to a different party when there was no user activity. This is our top priority now.” And the next day: “We worked this weekend on diagnosing voters whom we suspected as having had their party changed by Voter Focus…There were 3 counties with high numbers of suspected cases of this kind of inadvertent party change.”
The emails remain unclear on whether the problems were completely found and fixed, and whether or not all voter files had been correctly restored. Later emails suggest that various related problems still existed months later when voters, whose registration should have been recorded in the system, were nowhere to be found. Votingindustry.com, a website which tracks the progress of the implementation of statewide registration databases, currently describes Florida’s system as “Still working out kinks.”
Jane Watson, the author of the memos, spoke with The BRAD BLOG and confirmed the authenticity of the emails. She explained that the federal government with its HAVA mandates “didn’t understand the time it takes to develop programs.”
While Watson stressed her confidence that no voter was disenfranchised in 2006 because of bugs in the statewide voter registration system, she admits that “party changes never have worked as well as they should” and that “there are still some things to work out…”
She says that funding and staffing shortages remain an issue, though she believes that, overall, and counter to the indications in the recently uncovered email notes, the Sunshine State’s voter registration database is working well.
“The Department of State is short of staff of technical people,” she told us. “People don’t realize how complex these systems are. Unfortunately, voter registration has been a poor stepchild. But the Florida story is a success story, we are doing well, perhaps much more so than other states.”
The Florida Department of State’s Division of Elections did not respond to our request for comment.
The details of Florida’s registration system woes are perhaps best illustrated by the recently obtained emails, as written by Watson, which documented many of the troubles as they were discovered last year…
FVRS Week Two, Tuesday (Jan 10, 2006): “Things that used to work…don’t always work”…
FVRS Week Two, Thursday (January 12, 2006): “Horrendous problem…would have severely corrupted voter records”…(See Document 3)
FVRS Week Three, Thursday (Jan 19, 2006): “Blank records may have appeared”…
FVRS Week Four, Wednesday (Jan 25, 2006): “Red Alert…means something is seriously wrong”…
FVRS Week Four, Friday (Jan 27, 2006): “We thought we tested thoroughly”…
FVRS Week Five, Thursday (February 2, 2006): “Serious issues….voters being changed to a different party”… (See Document 17)
…
Wrong Party
…We are seeing instances of voters being changed to a different party when there was no user activity. This is our top priority now.
FVRS Week Five, Friday (Feb 3, 2006): “Friday was a tough day…three major issues”…
…
Wrong Party
…We worked this weekend on diagnosing voters whom we suspected as having had their party changed by Voter Focus. The audit shows FVRS as the operator but the main mistake was in our code. There were 3 counties with high numbers of suspected cases of this kind of inadvertent party change.
FVRS Week Six, Thursday (Feb 9, 2006): “A false audit…sometimes appears”…
FVRS Week Ten, Thursday (Mar 9, 2006): “DMV printout but no record in FVRS”…
FVRS Week Fourteen, Monday (Apr 3, 2006): “Birthplace…not being saved correctly”…
FVRS Week Fourteen, Thursday (Apr 6, 2006): “Disappearing election status”…
Disappearing elections? Germany becomes Delaware? False audits? Party switches by the software without cause?
What the heck is going on in Florida? How much of this system is available to transparent public oversight? And is there anybody watching the watchers at this point? Or are things still mired in the murky days of Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris and friends?…
Just turn over the nearest rock, there’s a Republican operative under it, I am sure
Florida was the beginning of the debacle we now call Iraq, which is in danger of another invasion:
(BBC). That is all we need. An infestation of invasions because someone does not want to use diplomancy and the UN.
So we at least need to be able to vote neoCon madmen out of office.
That will not happen with a “relax, nothing is really wrong here” attitude which is widespread in the election warlord realm.
And Florida is ground zero, Ohio zero minus one, and the what house is the cesspool.
Dredd, Link
There is NO WAY IN HELL that these software errors are errors! They are coded in by some writer with a task of producing that error!!!!!
Someone needs to talk with a software engineer every damn time this crap comes up and QUIT FALLING FOR THE “SODTWARE BUGS” COVER STORY.
I write code as do thousands of software engineers and errors cause crashes and lockups but there is NO WAY IN HELL that records or votes get changed from one party to another unless SOMEONE CODED IT TO DO THAT!!!!
This glitch bullshit is just that and you can uncover the lies by just submitting these crap excuses to a qualified sofware engineer.
SOMEONE WROTE CODE TO SWITCH VOTES!!! Software bugs cause crashes and lockups, they don’t misteriously rewrite themselves to do new tasks!!!!
STOP FALLING FOR THE LIES!!!! THESE COMPLAINTS ARE EVIDENCE OF SOFTWARE TAMPERING!!!!!!!!!
You don’t have to yell Marc, we know it 😛
# 4 and 5
Bravi, both…
becaue most people haven’t heard and don’t know
This blog is a joke, like all liberal blogs are.
You fools need to get a life.
What a bunch of losers.
lol…
PS – KEEP DRINKING THAT KOOL-AID!
“A false audit of city, city ward and zip code sometimes appears on the voter audit. The voter’s actual city, city ward and zip do not change, but there is an appearance in the audit as though it has.”
This is a symptom of a double set of books. If it is a bona fide “audit” it is reading the real data, not some parallel subset.
Great story, Michael, and thanks Brad for your unending energy and willingness to look.
Hmm, the trolls are out in force. Must have touched a nerve.
Hursti learned a great deal from the Diebold memos about attack vectors. The memos themselves certainly didn’t say “attack here, please.” They sounded like people were trudging through problem resolution.
The most interesting part about memos like these it what you can learn when you put your skepticals on and systematically run through the possibilities that any specific “glitch” might be a symptom of something else.
Comment 7. You and your’s are the fools. Rove has been fingered in voter fraud, in case you haven’t heard. You should get a life unless you prefer to occupy a cell in a U.S. Penitentiary with the rest of your crooked Republican soul mates.
“Connecting the Rovian Dots on Voter Fraudâ€
Data* indicate that the offices of the U.S. Attorneys across the nation investigate seven (7) times as many Democratic officials as they investigate Republican officials, a number that exceeds even the racial profiling of African Americans in traffic stops.
Conclusion: Rove orchestrated an effort to suppress Democratic votes by means of the voter fraud laws.
http://www.texaskaos.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3084
OT … about the Imus firing
I was watching Hardball’s David Gregory NOT GET IT.
Did not get that this involves the reputation of America.
Our public figures, whether in the Senate, like Trent Lott, the White House, or in the fourth Estate – the press media – simply must be American.
The Imus racist jingoistic puke makes us look very, very bad. Especially since we are invading and occupying countries in the world to bring them a better way (that is the neoCon fantasy anyway).
Surely we do not invade and occupy nations to bring them racism! But David Gregory thinks it is ok to break dance with Karl Rove and then castigate blacks simply because Imus was fired for being anything but American.
I say loud and clear – Good riddance. David Gregory should resign like Imus should have.
If Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the neoCons had any dignity they would resign as well … because of what they have done to the once respectable republican party.
I’m trying very hard to find a time when the Republican Party was respected by anyone other than the Chamber of Commerce or the defense industries.
1860, 1869 through 1880, 1922, 1929, 1948, 1960, 1963, 1968 through 1974, 1980, 1986, 1994, 2000 through present. There’s windows of nonscandal but that’s usually because the bums were tossed out 1930’s through WWII) or America was just locked up tight(Eisenhower). Their first administration had a Sec of War who practically invented war profiteering.
“An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.” — Simon Cameron, the true father of the Republican Party.
Gosh, “Liberals = Losers” had to go all the way to the Columbus Ohio Library to leave that comment.
Bummed out since your buddy Bob Bennett is out of a job L=L?
Or just since the OH GOP turned out to be as filthy and unAmerican as any party in any state has ever turned up to be? (That would include the Communist Party in the Communist State of the USSR).
But what do I know? Mmmm…that kool-aid is delicious! Turns out it’s got truth serum in it. Hot damn! 🙂
Uh oh… Brad used the Un-American word… it’s war now… 😉
Incredible. I can’t believe this story still has the capacity to sicken me.
A never-ending tummy twister that I’ve been entirely too sober for.
To think that just yesterday I was so naive as to think there WASN’T a defiled, defunct voter database here the State of Florida. I merely knew that we ranked the most rank; employing the most devious and corrupt State Officials I’ve ever watched sweat through a press conference. I wonder what else I should be wondering…?
Great work, Michael. And yes, someone IS watching/ filming–
and we’re carrying plenty of TUMS…
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=jeanniedean
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=zyvek
(For video of Florida-13 State Audit, Recounts, Lies, Suppression, Media Intimidation, ES&S oozing evil in Hi-Def, and other Florida Election Weirdness.)
Jeannie Dean/ Leonard Schmiege
VIDEO THE VOTE
http://www.videothevote.org
COMMENT #4
Dude, you do software better than me it sounds like, but I started out with hardware, and yes it is easy to change a Zero to a One by changing the power coming into the chip. OR inside the chip. So your software could make no difference on the outside, cause it’s good and TRUTH TABLE logic cushy /crunchy soft on the inside.
I hope you get what I am saying.
I think it’s too late for you to be turned onto this information finally. The damage is done. The controllers now CONTROL everything.
The main reason this is because of the MEDIA, and dedication of the corruption.
We are truly fscked.
Why do we allow Florida votes to count in national elections? Just cut them off until they are no longer ruled by criminals. Texass and Ohio too.
Floridiot #3
Wow … you found yet another RNC operative emulating a government official … keep up the good work.
KATHERINE HARRIS MIGHT BE THE FIRST STOP IN A SERIOUS INVESTIGATION OF THE FRAUD IN THE FLORIDA VOTE BEGINING WITH 2000 AND PROBABLY STILL EXISTS TO THIS DAY….Since KATHERINE “with an ax to grind” HARRIS knows all,,she may be more than willing to CATER AN AFTERNOON OF CHATTER ON A PLATTER WITH JEB SAUCE ON THE SIDE………………………..Charles Belenchia