Category: Skulduggery and Errors

It Pays To Complain – Election Officials Complain, Diebold Makes Public Pay

Humboldt County, CA found problems with the Dieblod GEMS system which it intended to replace, while it intended to continue to use its Diebold voter registration system.  Now it is left with 90 days to find another solution as Dieblod executes its option to terminate its support of the county.   Hard to interpret this as anyting but retribution and intimidation of the other juristictions, Brad Blog has the story <read>

As if you complained to GM that your fully paid for Humvee was a lemon and they said they would reposses it and your GTO next week.

It is interesting that the letter concerning the voter registration system, known as DIMS — in which no problems were either discovered or reported — is dated March 17, the day before the GEMS letter. The county’s DIMS voter registration database system is entirely separate from the GEMS vote counting system, and the county had hoped to continue using it. In fact, the county IT department was in the middle of performing a software upgrade to the DIMS system when the letters were received…

Back on April 6, Premier’s unfortunately-named spokesman Chris Riggall commented on the contract terminations to the Times-Standard: “We just believed it prudent to kind of make a, well, to essentially provide a clean break, or a fresh start, for however the county would like to proceed going forward. We thought it would provide the county an opportunity to make a fresh start.”

Another cautionary tale of they type of company we trust with our democracy and the dangers of dependence on vendors who supply proprietary technology.

NYT: Gov. Siegleman overdue for same as Sen. Stevens

Mr. Siegelman was convicted in 2006 on dubious corruption charges. He spent nine months in prison before being released on appeal, and he faces years more behind bars. He has long insisted that the case against him was politically motivated and that prosecutors engaged in an array of professional and ethical violations

Update 10/15:   Obama Justice Department Hangs Siegelman Whistleblower Out to Dry <read>

It’s hard to imagine a more clearcut case of unlawful retaliation. But the Obama Justice Department now is trying to ensure that Grimes does not receive unemployment benefits, and she has been denied health-care insurance–and she has a special-needs child!

Update 09/16: Siegelman Prosecutors Received Extensive Perks From Their “Recused” Boss <read>

Update 06/11:  Lawyer articulates flawed prosecution: Memo to Holder: Siegelman Prosecution Was Riddled With Misconduct <read>

Update 05/24: Siegelman’s First Trial Judge Blasts U.S. Prosecutors, Seeks Probe of ‘Unfounded’ Charges <read>

Update 05/14:  It gets worse, where is our Constitutional Law Professor Obama on this? <Brad Friedman>

Incredibly, the Bush-appointed prosecutors in the Siegelman case (who are, inexplicably, still on the job!) have now requested an even longer sentence for the former Democratic Gov. of Alabama who was railroaded as part of a Rove-led political prosecution.

Sign the letter to Attorney General Holder <read and sign>

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We have talked about Gov. Don Siegleman’s stolen election and subsequent political inprisonment before.  As a New York Times Editorial points out its high time justice was done.  Justice would start with his exoneration and the investigation of the actual potential criminals in Alabam and the Justice Department <read>

Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent decision to drop all of the charges against Ted Stevens, the former Republican senator from Alaska, because of prosecutorial misconduct raises an important question: What about Don Siegelman? A bipartisan group of 75 former state attorneys general has written to Mr. Holder asking him to take a fresh look at the former Alabama governor’s case. He should do so right away.

Mr. Siegelman was convicted in 2006 on dubious corruption charges. He spent nine months in prison before being released on appeal, and he faces years more behind bars. He has long insisted that the case against him was politically motivated and that prosecutors engaged in an array of professional and ethical violations…

In the case of Mr. Stevens, who was convicted of felony charges for failing to disclose gifts and services, Mr. Holder was so troubled by the way the prosecution was carried out that he decided to drop the case entirely.

According to the Siegelman camp, at least three of the same officials who have been accused of prosecutorial misconduct in the Stevens case were involved in Mr. Siegelman’s prosecution. If true, this alone would seem to justify a thorough investigation of the case.

Phoenix: Ballots Missing – Integrity and Confidence Also Missing

“If we are correct,” Risner wrote in his Monday letter to the Attorney General’s office, concerning the absence of as many as 19,000 paper ballots, as estimated by observers of the counting in Phoenix, “the question arises as to what happened to those ballots.” The latest mystery adds still more fuel to the already high-stakes, long-sought hand-count, and raises new questions in the nearly three-years long

Update 4/22/2009: Attorney General says Original Result ‘Affirmed”, but questions remain <BradBlog>

However, when a reporter asked about that quote from our report last week, during today’s press conference, Goddard admitted they did not examine the tapes.

“The two things we wanted to hear, we didn’t,” J.T. Waldron, a documentary filmmaker who has been covering the years-long struggle for transparency in the RTA election, told us after the conference. “First, they admit they didn’t look at the poll tapes. Second, they admit that they didn’t do any forensic examination of the ballots” to see if they were legitimate. Critics have pointed out that Pima County has, since the 2006 election, purchased a ballot-on-demand printer and could have printed out ballots to match any ‘fixed’ ’06 ballot counts. The originals were printed by an offset printer, rather than ink-jet, as used in the ballot-on-demand system, and a forensic examination of a sample of ballots, with a microscope, might have revealed any such tampering.

“He said he didn’t have enough evidence to justify a forensic examination of the ballots,” Waldron noted.

Sad,  that with a bit more transparency, we might have confidence in the assessment.

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Update 4/16/2009:  AP Article also quoted in BradBlog follow-up:

What may be of even greater concern is the voting machines in Pima County, which includes Tucson, are similar to those used in 12 of Arizona’s 15 counties and in hundreds of jurisdictions across the country.
If it turns out the election was rigged by manipulating Diebold Elections Systems (now Premier Election Solutions Inc.) computer election programs, as some fear, it will show weaknesses in electronic balloting that could endanger the democratic process.

We would emphasize that we should not “fear, it will show weaknesses in electronic balloting that could endanger the democratic process”.  We should welcome the information so we can take action.  And even if it turns out this particular election was not rigged and had no errors, we should be worried that the real risks and dangers to democracy are ignored.

**********Original Post

Two stories on the recount of a 2006 election in Arizona currently underway.  AZCentral has a good background article, Vote probe raises fears over ‘fix’ <read>

Under the scrutiny of criminal investigators, election workers in Phoenix have spent the past week in a painstaking recount of 120,821 ballots that were cast three years ago for a Pima County transit tax.

The primary objective is to determine whether someone rigged the election by tampering with the optical-scan polling machines in Pima County, transforming “no” votes into “yes” votes…

And, no matter what happens with the recount, state Attorney General Terry Goddard said he is convinced the equipment jeopardizes election integrity.

“These (Premier) systems are very, very bad,” Goddard said. “(They) are not state of the art in terms of security. They are not state of the art in terms of transparency.”

Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier, said his company uses the most advanced technology available and urges clients to establish security protocols. Although there are internal safety features to prevent and detect tampering, Riggall added, those must be supported by external controls over election workers who handle the equipment.

“You can manipulate any voting system devised by man,” he said, noting that even paper ballots are subject to fraud…

During an initial investigation, the Attorney General’s Office hired an independent company to analyze the machines. Experts at iBeta Software Quality Assurance found a number of “irregularities” and determined that the Premier system had “fundamental security flaws.”

They reported that a trained technician could have altered the vote and removed all evidence of the crime. However, they concluded that human error was a more likely culprit than fraud because evidence of tampering had not been erased.

The Attorney General’s Office dropped the case in 2007, but the Democratic and Libertarian parties continued private investigations and filed lawsuits for election record…

Former Pima County employee Zbigniew Osmolski filed an affidavit in July alleging that he was in a Tucson lounge when Crane admitted that he had “fixed the RTA election on the instructions of his bosses” and was fearful of indictment…

Risner noted that, according to sworn courtroom testimony, Crane routinely took voting data home during elections and had his office computer connected to the GEMS system. He also claimed that Crane purchased a hacking device before the election, one with “no other purpose than to illegally alter the programming of precinct voting machines.”

Now for the latest disturbing part from Brad Friedman, ‘Thousands of Ballots’ May be ‘Missing’ from AZ’s Criminal Investigation Ballot Count in Phoenix<read>

“If we are correct,” Risner wrote in his Monday letter to the Attorney General’s office, concerning the absence of as many as 19,000 paper ballots, as estimated by observers of the counting in Phoenix, “the question arises as to what happened to those ballots.” The latest mystery adds still more fuel to the already high-stakes, long-sought hand-count, and raises new questions in the nearly three-years long investigation into the 2006 election results.

If the ballots are indeed missing, did they ever actually exist? Was the Diebold electronic ballot box stuffed? Have ballots been surreptitiously removed by someone for some reason?

As we have said there is no reason to be confident that referendums are not subject to skull duggery: FAQ: Why Would Anyone Steal A Referendum?

Town Considers All Paper, No Scanners

[Easton Connecticut] is looking into using paper ballots for the upcoming budget referendums to save money.

We would recommend against all paper. Audits have shown that Connecticut election officials have difficulty counting even a few hundred ballots accurately. We also remember a very frustrating day observing the Easton election officials attempting to accurately count ballots for the audit after the November 2007 Municipal Election.

Easton Courier, Town considers paper ballots for referendums; Would likely save money due to cost of scanner ballots: <read>

[Easton Connecticut] is looking into using paper ballots for the upcoming budget referendums to save money.

The two registrars of voters, Republican Eunice K. Hanson and Democrat Nick Soares, plan to watch how the process of using paper ballots works in Monroe when that town has its budget referendum April 7.

The biggest question is how long it would take to count the paper ballots…

It costs the town at least $2,800 to hold a referendum. The major expenses are the special ballots needed for the new optical scanner voting machines and hourly pay for poll workers. The polls are open 14 hours for elections.

The ballots are 45 cents each. “That’s very costly,” Soares said, “so the biggest savings would be in the ballots….

He said hes unsure if paper ballots will save money because of the time needed to hand-count the ballots. “The new machines are quick” Soares said.

Eunice Hanson agreed. “It gives you instant results,” she said of the optical scanning devices that were supplied by the state as a way to modernize the election process. “They’re actually kind of cool. We’ve gotten used to them.”

Susan Koneff, Monroe’s Democratic registrar of voters, said paper ballots are cheaper and simpler. She said referendum results often are known within 25 minutes after the polls close.

“It’s a very efficient way to do a referendum,” Koneff said.

Koneff said the average turnout for a budget referendum in Monroe is from 3,000 to 3,500 voters. The town has about 12,000 registered voters and four polling places, she said…

Easton has 5,200 registered voters and one polling place, Samuel Staples Elementary School. While turnout obviously varies for referendums depending on the contentiousness of the issues involved, Soares said 2,500 to 2,600 people usually vote.

The town has to print a ballot for everyone in town just in case the turnout is exceptional. Extras also are needed for spoilage and, with budget referendums, for Easton property owners who live out of town.

We recommend against all paper. Audits have shown that Connecticut election officials have difficulty counting even a few hundred ballots accurately <Most recent audit report statistics>.  We also remember a very frustrating day observing the Easton election officials attempting to accurately count ballots for the audit after the November 2007 Municipal Election.

Although we disagree, election officials across Connecticut repeatedly complain that counting 10% of the ballots in audits will break the bank while they express a lack of confidence in their ability to count accurately.  It is refreshing to hear agreements that counting is not that costly.  However, we would rather see an optical scan count that can be compared to a manual count.  Counting at night after the polls close, after a 14 hour day, is much more difficult than counting for a audit after several days rest.  In addition an audit is closely observable by the public.

One final point.  We believe there is no requirment that ballots be printed for 100% of the voters in an election. An attempt to require 100% printing in law was not passed when proposed in the 2008 legislative session.

Diebold Audit Logs Miss Critical Data

“Today’s hearing confirmed one of my worst fears,” said Kim Alexander, founder and president of the non-profit California Voter Foundation. “The audit logs have been the top selling point for vendors hawking paperless voting systems. They and the jurisdictions that have used paperless voting machines have repeatedly pointed to the audit logs as the primary security mechanism and ‘fail-safe’ for any glitch that might occur on machines. To discover that the fail-safe itself is unreliable eliminates one of the key selling points for electronic voting security.”

In Connecticut we avoid these specific problems. But we don’t avoid similar problems.

Kim Zetter at wired has on of several reports on hearings in California <read>

Summary:  “The Humboldt Election Transparency Project” discoverd 179 missing ballots in the original election accounting.  One memory card total was dropped in accumulating votes after the election.  Subsequent investigations found that there was a known (to some) problem in the code that could cause that to happen, yet, no record of the event was in the audit logs and the audit logs could be easily deleted.   Yesterday the Secretary of State held hearings as reported by  Kim Zetter:

“Today’s hearing confirmed one of my worst fears,” said Kim Alexander, founder and president of the non-profit California Voter Foundation. “The audit logs have been the top selling point for vendors hawking paperless voting systems. They and the jurisdictions that have used paperless voting machines have repeatedly pointed to the audit logs as the primary security mechanism and ‘fail-safe’ for any glitch that might occur on machines. To discover that the fail-safe itself is unreliable eliminates one of the key selling points for electronic voting security.”

Following a public records request of GEMS logs, Threat Level previously reported that the Premier/Diebold logs did not indicate when election officials in Humboldt County, California, intentionally deleted more than two dozen batches of ballots from their system during the November general election.

The finding raised questions about the integrity of elections conducted with the system, but it was unknown at the time whether the problem with the audit log existed with other versions of the GEMS software used in other counties in California and across the country. Premier/Diebold didn’t respond to phone calls seeking information at the time.

In Connecticut we avoid these specific problems as we do not use the GEMS system for election totaling votes from memory cards.  (Our vendor, LHS uses GEMS for programming the memory cards for each of our elections).  But we don’t avoid similar problems, Connecticut uses an error prone three step process of manual transcription to produce our vote totals – for the November 2008 election this system dropped and added even more votes than the number of ballots dropped in California: e.g. <here> <here> <here> <here>

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Update 3/25:  Diebold tries to cut off Humbolt, Are the sending a message “Don’t Tread on Dieblod?”

Here is the Daily Voting News Summary which is good summary of what we have so far <read>

Yes Virginia! – No Ballots, No Problems – Trust The Memory

Close election in Fairfax County decided by reading computer memory.

Maybe it is all mostly accurate. But, without a voter verified paper record who knows? Maybe there is a lesson in here for us. Unfortunately, there is also a lesson here for those looking for ways to game the system in the future.

A close election in Virginia with electronic touch screen voting.  They have optical scanners, but they saved some paper and used their expensive touch screen machines.  One machine made an obvious error so they counted the votes in the memory log on the two machines in that precinct and declared the records in memory accurate.  Yet what about all the other machines that counted 89 votes more for one candidate out of 12,000 cast?

Stories in the Washington Post,  BradBlog and LocalTV

According to Brad and the WaPo:

the geniuses who run Fairfax County’s election decided to use only touch-screen systems in the election yesterday, despite having used both paper ballots and touch-screens in last November’s election. The WINVote “is the most widely used touch-screen voting machine in Virginia,” according to the Washington Post story in which explanations are given for why the Republican “narrowly defeated” the Democrat by 89 votes.

Officials are “not yet sure what caused the device to malfunction.”

WaPo’s earlier story — when the Republican John Cook was said to have been leading the entirely-unverifiable election by 69 votes, before the wholly-unverified and unverifiable “votes” from the failed machine were printed out, one-by-one, and then tallied by officials from the machines memory — notes that the race came down to the votes cast in the single precinct where the machine failed.

Brad had the same reaction that I did to a quote in the local TV story:

Voters are mixed. “I think the electronic equipment these days is pretty good,” said Fairfax County resident Julie Stewart. “But paper would be fine if they’ve got a lot of money and they want to spend the time doing it,” said Fairfax County resident Richard Carlson.

…Dear Richard: Paper elections are cheaper, more accurate, and take no more “time” to tally than touch-screen elections. And at the end of the day, it’s possible to know who actually won them.

Maybe it is all mostly accurate.  We have no reason to assume the result is inaccurate.  But, without a voter verified paper record who knows?  Maybe there is a lesson in here for us.  Unfortunately, there is also a lesson here for those looking for ways to game the system in the future.

Answer Quick: What Do Premier/Diebold and Wal-Mart Have In Common?

Hint: It is not low prices for computer memory cards.

The Raw Story has the story <read>

To convince Utah decision-makers that Premier was a big company with a substantial presence, Kathy Dopp, founder of UtahCountVotes.org, reported that a company representative told the decision-makers in 2006 that Diebold “has about 20 offices in Utah.” When pressed further, the representative refused to give the locations of any of the offices. In fact, the White Pages lists 18 Diebold offices.

However, when calls were made to all of these offices, only one picked up the phone. And when the addresses of offices listed under Diebold in the White Pages were visited, the addresses turned out to belong to either a Wal-Mart, a Sam’s Club, or no building at all. In the end, 16 of the 18 Diebold offices in Utah listed in the White Pages were false listings…

A quick investigation by Bob Fertik on Democrats.com revealed that a similar scam existed in New York, with another Diebold listing in Buffalo turning out to be a Wal-Mart. Out of 13 listings in Florida, 5 turned out to be Wal-Marts. Similar office listings have been uncovered in Alabama, Mississippi, and New Hampshire.

Another Discrepancy In Reported Vote Totals. And Another.

SOTS Web Site: 2876 + 0 = 2876, Town Clerk: 2862 + 103 = 2965

Update: And in Old Lyme…

Update: 2/10.  And in Old Lyme, from David Bidell again:

According to a 2/10/09 telephone call I had with the Old Lyme Assistant Town Clerk (Eileen Coffee), Joe Courtney received 350 votes in Old Lyme on the Working Families Party line and 2,612 votes on the Democratic line, for a total of 2,962 votes.  The WFP votes are not reported in the printed Statement of Vote or on the SOTS website

******Original Post 2/9/2009

David Bidell has uncovered another difference: <see most recent>

SOTS Web Site:   2876 + 0 = 2876,        Town Clerk:  2862 + 103 = 2965

According to a 2/6/09 telephone call I had with the Portland Town Clerk, John Larson received 103 votes in Portland on the Working Families line and 2,862 votes on the Democratic line, for a total of 2,965 votes.  This differs from the results reported in the printed Statement of Vote and on the SOTS website

Connecticut Voter Fraud Complaint

BradBlog.com story:

EXCLUSIVE: The New Voter Fraud Complaint Filed in CT Against the GOP’s Ann Coulter

New allegations of absentee ballot fraud in ’02 and ’04, follow on her multiple voter fraud crimes in FL in ’05, for which she was never ‘cleared’, as some media have inaccurately reported..

BradBlog.com story:

EXCLUSIVE: The New Voter Fraud Complaint Filed in CT Against the GOP’s Ann Coulter

New allegations of absentee ballot fraud in ’02 and ’04, follow on her multiple voter fraud crimes in FL in ’05, for which she was never ‘cleared’, as some media have inaccurately reported..

Another Short Story: Courtney and Working Families Votes Uncounted

Another story of candidates and parties shorted votes. This time it is the Working Families Party and Joe Courtney.

Update 1/15: Add Sherman and Plainfield to the list

Another story of candidates and parties shorted votes.  (Previous story with links to earlier reports of inaccurate reported results)  This time it is the Working Families Party and Joe Courtney.

Update 1/15: Add Sherman and Plainfield to the list

***************Original post************************
David Bidell noticed nine cases where the Working Families Party got zero votes.

Checking today, we see that according the Secretary of the State’s website, in Colchester, the votes for representative in the 2nd district are:

Sullivan-Rep: 2474
Courtney-Dem: 5120
Deshefy=Green: 175
Courtney-WKF: 0
Vachon: 1

But Courtney and the Working Families Party should have been credited with 208 more votes!

The question in an email from David Bidell:

Dear Ms. Bray:

I saw  published election results that Joe Courtney beat Sean Sullivan
5,120-2,474 in Colchester.  Can you tell me, in addition, how many votes
were cast for Scott Deshefy (Green), and how many of Courtney’s votes
werecast on the Working Families Party line?  I am trying to assess the
impactof third-party voting in CT.

Thank you for your assistance.

The response from the Colchester Town Clerk, Nancy Bray:

Hello Mr. Bedell:
Happy to answer your questions; G. Scott Deshefy received 175 votes for
Congressman.  Joe Courtney received 208 votes under the Working Families
line.  Anything else you need, please feel free to e-mail or call me.

Update 1/15:

From David Bidell to Plainfield Registrars:

I saw  published election results that Joe Courtney beat Sean Sullivan
3,952-1,746 in Plainfield.  Can you tell me, in addition, how many votes
were cast for Scott Deshefy (Green), and how many of Courtney’s votes were
cast on the Working Families Party line?  I am trying to assess the impact
of third-party voting in CT.

From Sonia Chapman, Plainfield:

J Courtney received 280 votes from working families and S Deshefy recieved
107 votes

From David Bidell to Sherman, Assistant Town Clerk Ellen Hipp:

I saw published election results that Chris Murphy beat David Cappiello
1,026-1,024 in Sherman.  Can you tell me, in addition, how many votes
were cast for Harold Burbank (Green), Thomas Winn (Independent), and how many
of Murphy’s votes were cast on the Working Families Party line?  I am
trying to assess the impact of third-party voting in CT.

From Assistant Town Clerk Ellen Hipp:

Burbank – 16
Winn – 15
Murphy Working Parties – 48
Murphy Unknown – 24

Unknown votes are when a person votes for a candidate under 2 different
parties and only one vote is counted.