Stealing Elections 101

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.


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With a tip of the hat to cometman, an update on the horror show that is Premier Election Systems, or Diebold. Cometman's other excellent diary, introducing cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore, can no longer be found on Pff, because Pff is no more. Fortunately Arthur Gilroy reprinted it in full and it can be found here. Both of the Spoonamore interviews to follow. But first, this bit of joy from the Washington Post.

A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.

The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.

. . .

Officials in Butler County, Ohio -- north of Cincinnati -- were the first to raise the issue when 150 votes from a card dropped in March. Brunner's office originally said that 11 counties had the same problem but has since revised that to nine. Her office was not able to say how many dropped votes were discovered in those jurisdictions.

"I can't provide odds on whether dropped votes were not recognized" during the decade GEMS has been used, Rigall said, "but based on what we know about how our customers run their elections and reconcile counts we believe any results not uploaded on election night would have been caught when elections were being certified."

So, in 34 states, over 10 years this flaw that causes tabulation problems has only occurred 9 times. We know this because it's only been caught by election officials 9 times. Well, I know I feel better.

But now, the bad news. Diebold's voting machines may be riddled with problems such as these and we would have no way of knowing because Diebold won't allow any audit of their programming.

Stephen Spoonamore, a cyber security expert, who has made a career of auditing similar systems, is baffled as to why to Diebold allows its banking systems to be audited, but not its voting machines. Well, not really. This life-long Republican is pretty sure he knows why. Because they're designed to steal elections.

Among the revelations in these two interviews: 1) There is no such thing as unhackable computer security. The only defense is a transparent process that can be audited and Diebold won't allow it. 2) Spoonamore is certain that Max Cleland actually won the election he lost to the odious Saxby Chamblis. 3) A voting tabulator should have no reason to subtract votes, only add them. Yet, the Diebold machines have a subtraction function.

And much, much more.





5 comments:

Unknown said...

So can you talk to me about this zionist hate-mongering infestation that's apparently taken over at MLW?

Since when is posting jokes about holocaust victims seen as in good taste at MLW?

I figured you'd prefer to discuss it here than there. :-/

So would I. :(

Curmudgette said...

I did respond to you, which you know I almost never do.

I can only tell you here, what I told you there. It was not a joke about the Palestinians.

Unknown said...

Thanks.

Keep me talking here because I need to not be back there. I've been reading back through all shergard's diaries. Holly crap he writes a lot of very professional looking diaries. He's amazing really to have the patience. And especially considering the ton of shit he gets in return.

I count seven regular zionist thugs that post jokes and so on there and then there's mattes sometimes, Maryscott acting as the Zionist cheerleader and finally you once or twice.

You actually seem to be the only one remaining cool but of course nobody's shooting at you.

Even so you're wrong in your thinking from what I've seen. I have no idea how you got so twisted around. Well no, I'd guess it is soley because you see Maryscott in the fight and come to her rescue.

It's painful to see her acting as a cheerleader for racists. She herself at least appears not to comment politically but leaves no doubt which sides she's on. It's no wonder shergard calls her a zionist. What other assumption could anyone make unless they knew her from elsewhere as I fortunately do?

How did things get so bad.

Unknown said...

Not a joke about Palestinians?

He was talking about Shergard who only ever posts on one topic and he mentioned "ethnic cleansing". How is that not a reference to the Israeli occupation?

Can you please just not start out like this? How can you possibly hope to gain anything by denying that the joke was about the I/P situation?

Unknown said...

BTW? Don't lie about me at MLW if you don't want -- and I mean REALLY REALLY BADLY WANT me to post there.

I should have thought that obvious.

I would like to discuss this with you reasonably but you are starting poorly. Lies about me and the bizarre denial that the joke referenced Palestinians.
-----------------------------------

I've read over about 7 weeks worth of shergard's diaries. maryscott seems to be extremely aggresive towards shergard from before that time but it really gets painful about 4 weeks ago.

Anything happen around then?