PAGE 5
N O R T H C O A S T T IM E S E A G L E , JULY 2005
ELECTION FRAUD UPDATE
JEFF DANZIGER
BY MARGIE BURNS
The Washington Spectator has reported (April 15) on
an explosive affidavit by a Florida computer-software engineer,
Clinton Curtis, stating he was told in the fall of 2000 to develop
software that could alter the final vote tabulation in an election
and be undetectable.
Curtis said the vote-tampering program was requested
by Tom Feeney, a Republican member of the U S. House from
central Florida and a former lobbyist for the computer company
where Curtis worked. Feeney’s office has said he would not
comment on the affidavit.
Curtis said Feeney was very specific in his original
request that (a) the program to accomplish this needed to be
touch-screen capable; (b) that the user should be able to trigger
the program without any additional equipment; and (c) that the
program must remain undetected even if the source code was
inspected. The Curtis affidavit was dated December 6, 2004,
and was posted on the Internet the same day.
On March 3, Clinton Curtis passed a lie detector test
given to him by Tim Robinson, retired chief polygraph operator
for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, according to
The St. Petersburg Times. According to the Times, Feeney has
denied the accusations against him.
Curtis’ story that he was ordered to conceal a vote
switching program in the “source code" is worrying because
there are few or no safeguards in most states to prevent such
tampering.
More and more states are turning to electronic touch
screen voting machines or to optical-scanning equipment, or
both, to tabulate votes. Alan Dechert, president of the newly
formed nonprofit Open Voting Consortium (OVC), points out
that in November 2000 about 12% of all ballots in the U.S.
were cast with secret software —“invisible" in Dechert’s words.
In 2002, the number had grown to about 18% of U.S.
voting machines, and in 2004 it was over 30%, Dechert says.
“That’s more than 30 million invisible ballots created with secret
software in the most recent and controversial election.”
According to Dechert, “Even where we have paper
ballots, those are mostly counted with black boxes that are hard
to audit."
Voting machine companies have refused to provide
their source codes to investigators, claiming that they are propri-
tary information. The sellers of the vote-counting software have
zealously guarded their programs from the public, from election
officials, from everyone — on the dubious grounds that compet
itors could steal their ideas if the source codes were open to
inspection.This argument is false, according to voting technology
experts.
As pointed out by James M. and Kenneth L. Collier in
their 1992 book Votescam, the computers that did the vote count
in November 1988 held in their inner workings small boxes that
contained secret code that only sellers of the computers could
read.
The Collier brothers, who together investigated long
term vote fraud in Florida, are both deceased. (Their book
remains available at www. votescam.com or through Victoria
House Press, P.O. Box 120, Taos, New Mexico 87571.)
You may ask: what kind of software is required to count
something as simple as a ballot? Can the programming be more
sophisticated than the workings of a computerized cash register
at the supermarket or an automated bank-teller machine?
The computer voting machines do not have to do any
thing complicated at all. They must simply be able to register
votes for the candidate or party or proposal chosen by a voter,
Bikes & Beyond
1 0 89 MARINE DR.
ASTORIA, OREGON
tabulate them, count them up, and deliver arithmetically correct
totals. People with no formal training, even children, used to
perform this function all the time.
A necessary first step to effective investigation of the
voting machine companies — only two companies control over
80% of vote counting in the U.S. — would be to compel an
investigation by impartial and credentialed observers of the
companies’ source codes. However, Congress has not pushed
very hard for an effective investigation of these companies,
which are also substantial corporate campaign donors.
One exception is the question raised by Representative
John Conyers (Democrat of Michigan), ranking minority member
of the House Judiciary Committee. Conyers has been making a
heroic effort to focus congressional attention on election abuses.
In response to citizen protests, an official panel called
the Baker-Carter Election Commission has been put together,
co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secre
tary of State James A. Baker. Regrettably, the commission’s first
public hearings on vote fraud focused not on problems in vote
counting, suppression of turnout, or on unequal dispersal of
voting machines. It considered accusations of fraud by individual
voters.
Conyers issued an angry formal statement: “The first
meeting of the Baker-Carter election commission was disap
pointing and, at times, outrageous and tainted with racially
charged innuendo," he said. “Let me make absolutely clear
that I greatly admire former President Jimmy Carter and believe
he was insightful and on-target throughout the hearing.However,
given the incredible lack of balance and profound lack of good
faith demonstrated by some of Carter’s fellow commissioners
and many of the witnesses at this hearing, at times he seemed
to be a lonely voice of sanity."
The remarks of James Baker, which were echoed by
a number of rightwing political operatives called as witnesses,
seemed to have the singular purpose of perpetuating hoaxes
and conspiracy theories about ineligible Democratic voters being
allowed to cast votes. The remedy was cleverly repeated like a
broken record: “photo ID, photo ID, photo ID."
Rightwing pundit John Fund was called as an expert
witness by the commission and offered radically charged
proposals, with rhetoric in the same nasty spirit. The substance
of the testimony alleging “voter fraud" was a fraud itself.
In Ohio, where many of the most obvious voting
problems and abuses occurred and where the Conyers
subcommittee held local hearings, a special prosecutor is
investigating whether the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections
broke the law in the way it handled a voter recount.
The Akron Beacon Journal reported in April that minor
party Presidential candidates David Cobb of the Green Party
and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party have written a
letter to the Cuyahoga County prosecutor alleging that the board
violated state law in the recount because it did not randomly
select the precincts it recounted. Instead, the letter alleges, the
county selected recount precincts only from among those with
550 voters or more, eliminating 90% of the county’s precincts.
The candidates’ attorney said: “This is similar to randomly draw
ing a card out of a deck, but before doing so, eliminating all suits
but hearts."
The candidates also allege in their letter that the chosen
precincts were “of a special sort — those in which U.S. Senator
John Kerry received either his largest or second largest number
of votes in the ward.This meant precincts in which Bush received
an unusually high number of votes could not be examined, nor
could the precincts in which the third-party candidates received
unusually high vote totals "
Any impartial investigation on transparency and account
ability in vote counting is a step in the right direction But progress
has been uneven. Utah is one place where things are deteriorat
ing.
In April, Utah’s Voting Equipment Selection Committee
adopted DRE electronic-ballot voting machines for use in the
state Public-interest research groups, including Utah Count
Votes and US Count Votes, say that the DRE (or direct recording
electronic) voting system is more risky and more costly than the
AutoMARK optical-scan paper ballot, which has been endorsed
by the National Federation of the Blind
The Utah Election Office failed to inform voters of a
substantially lower bid from the AutoMARK company and did
not publish comparison analysis of the paper ballots and the
more expensive DRE electronic ballot systems. Instead, accord
ing to the public-interest groups, rumors were spread that the
AutoMARK ballots "cannot handle as many races and issues as
the old punch-card system did for Salt Lake County, and without
allowing the vendors an opportunity to know about or refute
these false rumors."
The groups point out that the largest available punch-
card system allows for a maximum of 228 punch-holes, while
the AutoMARK allows for more. The AutoMARK bid for Utah
offered the state a two-sided ballot with 300 lines with a larger
type-size and could be adjusted to handle even more. The sight-
disabled use large-type printing, as well as Braille, to print their
ballots.
One problem with the DRE electronic-ballot voting
system is lack of an adequate paper trail. The public-interest
groups are urging citizens to be forewarned. Under the Help
America Vote Act, funds can be spent by states and counties
only on either DRE or optical-scan voting systems. Any states
or counties rushing to implement new voting systems before
the 2006 elections, therefore, will have to choose either DRE
or op-scan. While optical scanning has had problems, at least
an op-scan system can include a paper ballot, which can be
recounted by hand.
The DRE voting machine, however, does not have a
paper ballot. Any problem resulting from mistakes or manipu
lation, or even from electric power failure, cannot be checked
with a hand count. Furthermore, according to the voting technol
ogy specialists in US Count Votes and similar associations, the
DRE systems will “cost more to maintain, secure and upgrade."
That means that federal grants to the states under the
Help America Vote Act will be spent on repairing and restoring
rather than on security for voter registration rolls, or information
systems for detailed election results, or for developing a data
base of election rules, procedures, and laws to help voters,
poll workers, and election officials.
US Count Votes recommends that citizens around the
nation write their county and state election officials, protesting
the adoption of DRE systems and calling for paper ballots that
can be recounted by hand. A letter that individuals can print,
fill in with a name and address, and mail is posted on line at
http://uscountvotes.net/scriots/letteraen/ltr pick adressee php.
Organization of public interest groups around election
reform has progressed substantially and is among the most
hopeful signs following the November 2004 election.
The central project of US Count Votes is to put together
a database into which information can be fed about elections in
every state, so that any discrepancies can be detected immedi
ately after the election. The project has already begun, using
volunteer computer programmers to carry out the work. A public
archive system will be set up to catalogue all the original data.
There is also the Open Voting Consortium, already mentioned,
“a non-profit organization dedicated to the development, mainte
nance, and delivery of open voting systems for use in public
elections.
As has been noticed, the fewest problems with voting
and vote tallying in 2004 occurred in precincts that still used the
old fashioned paper ballot, counted by hand. The guideline for
safe and accountable voting and vote tabulation goes: vote in
private; count votes in public.
One simple remedy for some states, especially states
with large cities, would be simply to have smaller precincts.
There is no reason why all inner-city precincts have to have
overcrowded polling places, shifting and confusing changes of
polls, or long lines at the polls owing to a lack of voting machines
or a lack of election officials.
Starting well before the next election, any area with high
population density and frequent vote problems should responsi
bly redraw their most crowded precincts: more people, more
voting machines. A legal maximum for the ratio of population
served per voting machine would help, and any responsive state
government should be willing to help fund the requisite improve
ments. In a smaller precinct, cheating and manipulation would
also be harder to get away with.
Network television sportscaster Jim Lampley has
commented online that “at 5 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day
2004, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the
offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the
Presidential election. John Kerry was a 2-to-1 favorite. You can
look it up.”
Lampley had more to say; “People who have lived in the
sports world, as I have, bettors in particular, have a feel for what
I am about to say about this: these people are extremely scienti
fic in their assessments. These people understand which inform
ation to trust and indicators to consult in determining where to
place a dividing line to influence bets, and they are not in the
business of being completely wrong. Oddsmakers consulted exit
polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their odds-
making at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.
Sportscaster Lampley goes on to conclude the votes that
November day could not have been fairly and legally counted.
He also criticizes media silence and passivity: “Is there any
greater imperative than to reverse this crime and re-establish
democracy in America," he muses. “Why the mass silence?
Let's get to work with the circumstantial evidence, begin to
narrow from the outside in, and find some witnesses who will
turn. That’s how they cracked Watergate. This is bigger, and
I never dreamed I would say that in my baby boomer lifetime."
Margie Burns is a professor at University of Maryland-
Baltimore County. She wrote this Article for The Washington
Spectator.
‘The best Italian rettau ran t b etw een San Franchco A Seattle. ”
-JO NATHAN NICHOLS. THE OREGONIAN
T h e b e lt Italian m ta u r a n t In Aitorta, evo rT
-RICHARD FENCSAK. THE DAILY ASTORIAN
1149 COMMERCIAL, ASTORIA
(503) 325-9001