Blackboxvoting.org Raises Vote-Audit FOIA Request 1023
aacool writes "Blackboxvoting.org has raised the largest Freedom of Information request in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit. Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting systems -- optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal records request for internal audit logs, polling place results slips, modem transmission logs, and computer trouble slips."
Get over it (Score:1, Informative)
Before it's slashdotted, here is the request: (Score:5, Informative)
From: Black Box Voting
To: Elections division
Pursuant to public records law and the spirit of fair, trustworthy, transparent elections, we request the following documents.
We are requesting these as a nonprofit, noncommercial group acting in the capacity of a news and consumer interest organization, and ask that if possible, the fees be waived for this request. If this is not possible, please let us know which records will be provided and the cost. Please provide records in electronic form, by e-mail, if possible - crew@blackboxvoting.org.
We realize you are very, very busy with the elections canvass. To the extent possible, we do ask that you expedite this request, since we are conducting consumer audits and time is of the essence.
We request the following records.
Item 1. All notes, emails, memos, and other communications pertaining to any and all problems experienced with the voting system, ballots, voter registration, or any component of your elections process, beginning October 12, through November 3, 2004.
Item 2. Copies of the results slips from all polling places for the Nov. 2, 2004 election. If you have more than one copy, we would like the copy that is signed by your poll workers and/or election judges.
Item 3: The internal audit log for each of your Unity, GEMS, WinEds, Hart Intercivic or other central tabulating machine. Because different manufacturers call this program by different names, for purposes of clarification we mean the programs that tally the composite of votes from all locations.
Item 4: If you are in the special category of having Diebold equipment, or the VTS or GEMS tabulator, we request the following additional audit logs:
a. The transmission logs for all votes, whether sent by modem or uploaded directly. You will find these logs in the GEMS menu under "Accuvote OS Server" and/or "Accuvote TS Server"
b. The "audit log" referred to in Item 3 for Diebold is found in the GEMS menu and is called "Audit Log"
c. All "Poster logs". These can be found in the GEMS menu under "poster" and also in the GEMS directory under Program Files, GEMS, Data, as a text file. Simply print this out and provide it.
d. Also in the Data file directory under Program Files, GEMS, Data, please provide any and all logs titled "CCLog," "PosterLog", and Pserver Log, and any logs found within the "Download," "Log," "Poster" or "Results" directories.
e. We are also requesting the Election Night Statement of Votes Cast, as of the time you stopped uploading polling place memory cards for Nov. 2, 2004 election.
Item 5: We are requesting every iteration of every interim results report, from the time the polls close until 5 p.m. November 3.
Item 6: If you are in the special category of counties who have modems attached, whether or not they were used and whether or not they were turned on, we are requesting the following:
a. internal logs showing transmission times from each voting machine used in a polling place
b. The Windows Event Viewer log. You will find this in administrative tools, Event Viewer, and within that, print a copy of each log beginning October 12, 2004 through Nov. 3, 2004.
Item 7: All e-mails, letters, notes, and other correspondence between any employee of your elections division and any other person, pertaining to your voting system, any anomalies or problems with any component of the voting system, any written communications with vendors for any component of your voting system, and any records pertaining to upgrades, improvements, performance enhancement or any other changes to your voting system, between Oct. 12, 2004 and Nov. 3, 2004.
Item 8: So that we may efficiently clarify any questions pertaining to your specific county, please provide letterhead for the most recent non-confidential correspondence between your office and your county counsel, or, in lieu of this, just e-mail us the contact information for y
Re:Ohio and Florida (Score:2, Informative)
They do? (Score:4, Informative)
Secondly, Diebold's CEO, Walden O'Dell, said that about only Ohio, because he lives and works in Ohio, and is a GOP backer.
Bad taste? Yes. "Interesting" that a CEO of a company is a Republican? Nope. Do I wish he would have had the scruples to stay out of politics since his company is making voting machines? Yep.
But please, take off your tinfoil hat. When he said he was committed to delivering Ohio to Bush, he meant that as a GOP campaigner, contributor, and backer. Not that he was going to secretly have a 13,000-employee company rig a presidential election.
Voting machines? (Score:4, Informative)
Every 5 years, we vote for our president and sometimes mayors / deputies as well.
It takes roughly 3 hours after the closing of the voting offices before we know the name of our president, without room for contestations over the regularity of the vote.
How come we can achieve that by using such a primitive method as ballot-paper-goes-into-ballot-enveloppe-goes-into
Re:Ohio and Florida (Score:5, Informative)
I can't believe they didn't require a paper trail. Simply can't believe it.
Re:Wow, that's a lot of data... (Score:2, Informative)
It is not rocket science it is just tedious.
Re:Illegal! (Score:5, Informative)
If, however, it should turn out that he has won Ohio, for example, when all the ballots are counted, then he will still gain Ohio's electoral votes and, presumably, the presidency, in spite of the fact that he has conceded defeat. That is not going to happen, as a practical matter, but it is at least theoretically possible. Elections boards don't stop counting just because one candidate or the other admits defeat - they still have to have a final count for the records, if nothing else.
-1, Who Needs Facts (Score:5, Informative)
#1, The election results were statistically similar to the exit polls in Ohio and Florida.
#2, only 20 out of 88 counties in Ohio (IIRC, I may be fudgy on the exact number) used Diebold machines, the rest were punch card ballots.
Re:We failed America (Score:5, Informative)
What makes you think that? I live in a suburb of Cleveland and we had the same old paper ballots as previous years.
Voting in America : hardly fair and democratic (Score:1, Informative)
1. voters can be deleted from the lists en masse, as the name of their party is written down. Therefore the secrecy isn't preserved.
2. use of electronic devices the quality and neutrality of which are very difficult to check. The easiness with which such devices can be made to give fake results is proverbial.
As for the current elections, noone knows whether some of these machines aren't biased.
Therefore the fairness of these machines is not insured.
3. Polls and partial results are given while people are still voting. The temptation to influence their choice at the crucial moment is enormous, as has been shown by Fox News, which was announcing 269 electors for Bush, in order to galvanize republican troops and indecise voters in swing states. The voters are influenced by partial results at the very moment they are voting.
Therefore the neutrality of the electoral process is not insured.
To sum up:
1. The secrecy of opinions isn't preserved.
2. The fairness of voting devices is not insured.
3. The neutrality of the electoral process is not insured.
The foundations of democracy are clearly shattered by such failures in an electoral system.
For the country which likes to claim to be the largest democracy in the world, it's a shame.
Re:Illegal! (Score:3, Informative)
As far as I know, concessions don't have any legal strength. In 2000, for instance, Al Gore conceded on election night (or morning, whatever), then had to un-concede when Florida looked like it was coming back around.
Concessions are just a custom, giving a clue to the rest of us that we can stop bickering.
Re:Ohio and Florida (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ohio and Florida (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They do? (Score:5, Informative)
Um, you weren't up last night were you? CNN and most of the other major networks *REVISED* their exit polling numbers to match the election around 1 or 2:00am (PST). The poll numbers all day indicated Kerry was going to win almost all of the swing states. Then he doesn't, then the poll numbers were revised... I don't get it either
Re:We failed America (Score:2, Informative)
Hogwash. I live in Ohio, voted for Kerry, and I'll tell you that the vast majority of balloting in Ohio is still on paper punch-cards. Kerry lost in Ohio because he received fewer votes in Ohio.
Next time, try a little research first. THEN toss your tantrum.
Re:What I don't get... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Voting machines? (Score:3, Informative)
If we were going with straight popular vote as the winner, the election could of been called by 11p.
Civics lesson? (Score:4, Informative)
There are no Federal elections in the United States; all elections occur at the State level or below. Since the Federal Government doesn't run elections, they won't have any documentmation about them.
As a matter of fact, it's a historical accident that the People vote for President at all:
Perhaps it would be better for everyone if the State legislatures just nominated the Electors themselves instead of leaving it to the People.
Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What I don't get... (Score:3, Informative)
In the 2000 election, exit polls were a mess, but it was also found that people would lie about the exit poll for fun resulting in bad numbers also. Last time, Florida was called earily while the panhandle of florida was still open and voting (different timezone). The result was alot of people leaving the polls assuming their vote did not account resulting in an even closer race in 2000.
I would never trust exit polling. Between how much it will shift based on which county, even which polling area you are at, and people are not always truthful with polls. I could get a poll showing a landslide for Bush in California. I just have to go ask at a poll area known to be highly Republican. I can not poll all the areas.
Re:C'mon 3.5 million votes (Score:1, Informative)
Re:What I don't get... (Score:3, Informative)
The real question... (Score:1, Informative)
Unfortunately, I'm guessing that the answer is yes. Then you have a problem. Not only is the vote counting methodology used in the electronic systems fairly easy to subvert, but the methods to do so are a.) well published, and b.) done correctly, nearly impossible to detect. And that discounts other rigging methods (if (date == ELECTION_DAY) { tmp = MAX(bush.votes, kerry.votes); kerry.votes = MIN(bush.votes, kerry.votes); bush.votes = tmp; } or if (rand()/RAND_MAX 0.49) { kerry.votes++; } else { bush.votes++; } ).
So what are you going to do? Cleverly, manual recount is out of the question. Throw another $4 billion at getting it done right? I doubt that. Now is a great time for voter fraud because nobody has the stomach for "another Florida". I'm sure most would just as well assume not to look into it.
Even if there was fraud in the electronic systems and we discounted them entirely, a frightening number of people still voted for Bush. Considering his past performance you can only conclude that there's a fairly large portion of the voting populace that thought Bush was the best candidate and would likely welcome the fraud (based on their general acceptance of fraud and perjury perpetrated by the candidate during the execution of his job) if it helped him win.
Chalk one up for all those "terrorists" out there. They wanted Bush to win so badly. I'm sure they had no direct influence on the election, but they'll be pleased with the result all the same.
And here's to sticking it to the rest of the world, America! Allies? Friends? BAH! What do we need them for? Bush is already his own best friend! Really, who would Jesus bomb?
Re:They do? (Score:3, Informative)
You'd think the two would be related, but they're not. Kerry and Bush are for marriage being for "a man and a woman". And, here in Michigan, the vote for a constitutional ban on gay marriage passed by a pretty large majority despite being a Kerry state.
Re:Not necessarily unreasonable... (Score:3, Informative)
Caller ID is certainly not a secure method of authentication, as evidenced by the many spoofing services currently available. A better idea would be real authentication--in this situation, symmetric encryption with pre-shared keys would work, assuming you assign someone trustworthy at each end of the connection. Public-key could be used if that is impractical.
Re:Fishy? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Consistent Voting (Score:3, Informative)
The most basic reason is historical. When the U.S. was founded, it was created to be a decentralized government. Any decisions that wouldn't affect other states were left to the states. Within the states, any decisions not affecting the rest of the state were left to the counties, or districts, or whatever. Yes, this is a simplification, but that is the gist of things.
When it comes to voting, the federal government basically decided that the method of voting that one state chose didn't really affect any other state, so it was left up to each state to decide the voting method that they want. Likewise, many states decided that the voting method any particular county used didn't affect anyone in any other county, so they left it up to the county to decide.
The result of this history is that in most places in the US, a county determines what the method of voting is. In some places it may even vary across the county (a county says either X, Y, or Z is a valid method). The precincts of the county then count their own votes, and trasmit those to the county officials. The county officials add those votes all up, and transmit the necessary totals to the state. The state adds theirs up, and declares who won in that state. So as many possible voting methods as you can imagine might be involved in one state's voting, but the result all end up determining the winners, and that's what is important.
Now, there are some exceptions to this. It is generally recognized that allowing voter intimidation, vote-buying, and voting fraud does in fact affect areas outside the immediate locality where they occur. So there are some guidelines that apply across all areas, such as the requirement that the ballot be cast in privacy, if it is possible for the voter to do so. But the machines used aren't dictated at all.
Now, what happens if there is a machine that is shown to be open to fraud or mistakes? It kind of depends on the fraud or mistake, really. An example is the hanging chad problem in Florida. The problems with those machines could really only lead to the citizen's votes either being not counted, or counted in the wrong column. Since no more votes could have been cast than were available to be cast, the only ones who should have a problem with the machines are those who are forced to use them. Since the elected officials are the ones that determine the machines to be used, and the people elect those officials, then the people have basically given their approval of the machines, problems and all. When the people of that area decide that the machines no longer are worth using, they should let their officials know, and if a significant number of people have problems with the machines, they will be changed. (This last couple of parts assume no actual collusion or fraud on the parts of the officials, of course, which is a potentially serious problem).
If, however, it can be shown that electronic voting machines have the capability of turning in more votes than can be eligible from where they are being used, then it is a problem that affects others in that state, as the other people's portion of the vote has been decreased fraudulently. In this situation, I beleive the states have the power to say that certain things are not allowed. I don't know if the Federal government has that power, however - it would really depend on the situation, I believe, and what courts/justices had to interpret the action.
In addition, the whole confusion and legal challenges to "provisional" and "absentee" ballots just muddied the waters even further.
Absentee ballots are really straightforward - if you are going to be unable to vote where you are supposed to for some reason (travelling, etc.), you can request an absentee ballot. You fill it out and submit it according to guidelines (has to be received withing X
Re:What are the possible consequences? (Score:2, Informative)
That is a question of Ohio state law. Fraud in Ohio does not invalidate the results in New Jersey or Alaska. Presumably Ohio has state laws for what to do if an election is found to be fraudulent, and those are the laws that must be followed.
Take a look at Article II of the United States Constitution [house.gov]. I think it is pretty clear that:
it's comming (urgent) (Score:3, Informative)
www.georgewbush.com
www.georgebush.com
Are == no longer == accesible from outside of the United States.
Another very happy news are looming out
just few hours after the election.
According to Reuters U.S. strategic military petroleum reserves are being filled causing mayor drain in normal oil flow (and driving price of oil sky high) inspite the fact that every driller is sucking crude like crazy, Reuters is predicting that "commander in chief" will be pretty agressive in the middle east soon.
Re:Not necessarily unreasonable... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Civics lesson? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:They do? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/images/hom
http://www.democraticunderg
See the difference? I know i do.
Re:Not necessarily unreasonable... (Score:3, Informative)
One detail left out: did it answer calls from every phone number in existence, or just the ones on an approved list?
Caller-id _can_ be spoofed, of course, even without actually tapping the phone lines, which could be done.
Note: I'm just saying it can be done, not that it was. Plus I'll bet it does accept calls from anywhere anyways, and has some sort of login protocol/password that's supposed to protect it. If they were smart, it's some variant of certificate-based authentication. If they weren't, it's plaintext or the like.
Re:Ohio and Florida (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not necessarily unreasonable... (Score:1, Informative)
This is also assuming the extra calls were connected long enough to hack into a machine and change the results. Key in this case is long enough to change the results.
A nice theory and all, but unfortunately it donesn't hold water.
As for how long they would be attached...
Back in the good old days of BBS's there used to exist this "network" called FIDOnet. It consisted of individual BBSs that every night would call each other and exchange message/packets thereby allowing conversations to propagate worldwide.
Ocasionally at the time, I would sit up at night and watch the process. My system would call out to the local hub, excange e-mails (if there were any) and then vait for calls from the next system in line.
Unless there were large emails to be exchanged most of these calls took less than 30 seconds from connect to hangup.
I can't imagine a some well designed Dibold hack software would take any longer than that to do it's work. Chances are, it would take the exact same amount of time as a voting maching to do its work.
--Posted Anonymously to protect from political reprisal.
Re:ATMs give me a receipt, why can't a voting mach (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Extra votes in machines (Score:2, Informative)
Exit poll shenanigans (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ohio and Florida (Score:2, Informative)
That's still interesting/confusing/disturbing that even though state law requires a paper trail you're not really getting one (like another poster in this thread said - a paper log printed at the end of the day shouldn't count as a paper trail).
There's MUCH more going on than "Bush & Kerry (Score:5, Informative)
This is indeed going to be a hell of a lot of data, but our resources are considerable.
We were going to do this no matter WHO won. Because it's not just about the top of the ticket: more money gets tied up in local bond measures, construction projects and the like than in the "top of ticket campaigns" in many states. Check out how much money went into the California propositions, for starters.
It's also not just about the races themselves: folks, there are legal standards for the use of electronic voting machines at both the Fed and State levels. The garbage put out by Deibold for sure and probably ES&S, Sequoia and others DO NOT meet those legal standards!
But we have to prove it. For that, we need data.
We've gotten one KEY piece already: proof that King County hacked into their audit log and destroyed three hours worth of records on election night during the WA state primaries.
The fact that they COULD (on a Diebold box) proves that the gear doesn't meet legal security standards. The remaining question is "why did they hack the log?". Two possible answers:
1) It's possible the vote tally box went massively wonky, it took 'em three hours to clean up, and they didn't want to admit it had puked so they edited the log. Still an illegal-as-hell destruction of records and the fact that it's even possible is a gross condemnation of the gear in question...
2) They actually rigged the race with some crude clueless technique that left an audit trail item - so they scrubbed the log.
------
Speaking generally, this sort of "broad net" approach to FOIAs that BBV.org is undertaking is a pain, but it's how you scoop up killer documents that blow the lid off. Go watch the mostly factual movie "Erin Brokavich" for a real-world example of this.
We have a new advantage in California - Prop59 just "supercharged" our version of the FOIA (California Public Records Act) by establishing a constitutional right to public records. That will have a positive effect on the California requests.
--------
Speaking personally, I'm pretty sure Bush won it fair overall. If I'm eventually proven wrong, I don't think it'll be in Ohio, it'll be in Florida.
Full disclosure: I'm a Libertarian-leaning Republican who supported Bush over Kerry despite reservations. But I'm also a flat-out enemy of concealed-source, zero-paper-trail voting systems.
Jim March
Re:They do? (Score:5, Informative)
You could start with the record number of black appointments to Federal positions. Clinton connected with black Americans in a way that gave them hope, he made them feel like the promises of the Civil Rights movement would come true if he had anything to do with it. I'd say that's concrete, to make a person who feels like a second class citizen realize the their guarantees under the Constitution will be upheld. It's lasting as well. Bill Clinton gave Black folks hope, I don't know if you can measure how much that was worth, and nobody can take it from them.
Your qualifier of lasting is a bit difficult. Did a Republican Congress or Administration make a thing less lasting? Like Bush I's cuts to Head Start or his assault on Affirmative Action.
The general idea behind Clinton's policies was to preserve the programs, such as Affirmative Action and anti-poverty programs like Head Start, while creating a rising tide that would lift all boats.
Diebold machines have a voting fraud feature (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/?q=node/view/78 [blackboxvoting.org]
Quotations from that article:
"The Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole":
Submitted by Bev Harris on Thu, 08/26/2004 - 11:43.
Investigations Issue: Manipulation technique found in the Diebold central tabulator -- 1,000 of these systems are in place, and they count up to two million votes at a time.
By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks.
This program is not "stupidity" or sloppiness. It was designed and tested over a series of a dozen version adjustments."
But I assume you all already knew this...
More on the BBV FOIA process... (Score:5, Informative)
We're more interested in the machines.
Let's be clear what's going on with this effort:
An "audit", when done properly, means using multiple pieces of information and matching them up to make sure the pieces fit right - and if they don't, figure out why.
We have basically three sources of info on what really happened last night for any given county:
1) Media reports;
2) Eyewitness reports from various election observers;
3) The FOIA (or state-level equivelent) data.
As just one example: media reports say that a Volusia County memory card went blotto last night. Observers saw the flurry of activity that surrounded this. There are also supposed to be "help desk trouble tickets" generated for any such malfunction, and the runaround needed to recreate the data (this was an optical scan Diebold county thank GOD!) should leave an audit trail.
So we'll be looking at this case from ALL angles. Carefully. The media report says it was a dead memory card, based on interviews with county elections officials. OK, no problem if true - with optical scan, you can go back to paper and recover, by hand if necessary.
But remember that in 2000, we *know* somebody attempted an inept hack of one of these same memory cards (PCMCIA). They duplicated a card, probably in a laptop on the way back from the field to county HQ and hacked the duplicate so it registered 16,022 negative votes for Gore and 4,000ish for Bush, in a precinct with 900-something voters tops.
Sure, it got caught and fixed, and somebody let Gore know in time for him to cancel his concession phone call - but the perpetrators were never caught and the county still has egg on it's face from this.
Did the same morons try something similar?
Dunno. But we'll find out. Bet on it.
Jim
Re:They do? (Score:1, Informative)
And the greatest commandment is this: Love one another, as Christ himself loved you.
Like this??:
2 Kings 2:23-24
23) From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" 24) He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD . Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.
Sending bears to rip some dozens of children to bits.
That's a marvelous example of not murdering, and of loving each other, eh?
CNN's results appear to have been doctored. (Score:2, Informative)
Check out my page [chaboud.com] to see how CNN silently revised its exit poll results for Ohio between 12:24am and 1:41am. In order for their numbers to make sense, Kerry must have received negative votes in later exit polls.
Re:We failed America (Score:2, Informative)
Re:They do? (Score:2, Informative)
It would be totally different if the person had said SOME black communities, because that is a subset of "black communities". This isn't the part I was refering to as being racist, but it is anyway. It points the finger at black communities on the whole, which from the statement I gather are composed of "black people", and lumps them all into one socio-economic situation. That's racist because it's sterotyping based on race. Period.
I agree with your second paragraph to a degree, you worded it much better than the first poster did. But you generalize again when you say, "all blacks want the same things".
Given that there is a good statistical probablility that some black people voted for Bush while others voted for Kerry, I'd say your logic is probably flawed - in fact at work today I sat down with two ladies, both black, and listened to them discuss politics. After listening I can tell you that they don't want the same thing.
What you and I probably agree on is that there are many PEOPLE (note I don't denote race here) that are well below the average standards of living here in the US.
Let's try and work together for individuals and families - let's leave the colors behind. "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you."
When I see kids playing, I don't see black kids, I see kids. When I see an older lady I don't see an older black lady, just an older lady. Break out of the box. We need to come together, to help each other. Our leaders haven't done a good job at uniting Americans. We are all brothers and sisters.
Peace