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Mounting Evidence of Systemic Errors with Electronic Voting Machines

Raises Troubling Questions about the 2004 Election

by Robert E. Martin

"The price of democracy is eternal vigilance."

-       Thomas Jefferson

After the 2004 Presidentail election numerous

allegations of data irregularities and systematic

flaws surfaced that may have affected the outcome

of both the Presidential and local elections.

Ohio essentially decided the outcome of the Presidential race, with John Kerry giving up after unofficial results showed George W. Bush with a 136,000-vote lead in the state.

Indeed, one day after Kerry conceded the election there were at least 300,000 missing votes in Ohio, many of them in the heavily Democratic counties of Cuyahoga and Franklin, which had not been counted. Moreover, Bush's lead was cut by about 3,800 votes when one day after this is was discovered that about 3,800 votes were falsely recorded on a single machine in Franklin County, Ohio.

The research & investigations contained in this story are compiled from countless sources and data bases, most significantly Ohio Board of Elections Offices, the Election Intelligence Review, and blackbox.org, an activist group of computer programmers, journalists, election officials and concerned citizens that have researched the newly installed 'touch-screen' voting machines that were given the green light to be installed in 37 states for the 2004 election.

While the 'major media' have all but neglected the mounting evidence contained in this story, the allegations range from significant exit poll and other data irregularities potentially characteristic of fraud, to complaints of uneven voting machine distribution which might lead to long voting lines and disenfranchisement.

The major challenger, John Kerry, has stated he will not contest the election results, however recent statements by Dennis White of the Ohio Democratic Party indicate Kerry will "participate' in the recount effort. Additionally, other groups and individuals including Ralph Nader, David Cobb (Green Party), Michael Badnarik (Libertarian) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, along with members of the House Judiciary Committee are filing injunctions in Ohio that seek an abeyance to the December 10th certification deadline.

BACKGROUND & PROBLEMS

The core of this tale is one of good intentions that became misdirected, of Congress being misled into thinking electronic voting machines were 'fraud proof', and of $3.9 billion being showered on states throughout the union to purchase the machines for the 2004 election.

In the process, legislators have opened themselves to creating a nightmare of epic proportions in any democracy - untraceable election fraud.

From the historical data archived on the Internet, for over a decade software designers have been working on developing DRE'S - direct recording election systems - that are intended to replace numerous paper ballot systems and cumbersome lever machines. Overnight after the 2000 election chaos, these systems became 'hot commodities'.

Reformers & developers pitched the idea of chad-free elections to Congress and on their promises passed the Help America Vote Act on October 29, 2002, with its altruistic vision of quick & secure voting in every polling place in America.

However, numerous scientists working on the machines have expressed concern about the complex security issues surrounding the technology, so they began voicing concerns to journalists.

One journalist in particular, Bev Harris, started examining the coverage of elections throughout the United States where DRE's had been used and found what she felt was a disturbing pattern of upsets, as well as cases in which certain brands of the machines had malfunctioned. While miscounts occur often in elections, with the DRE's there are no paper trails employed to set the counts correctly.

In the midterm elections of 2002, the problem seemed to spread. One of the first states to move to DRE's was the state of Georgia, which placed a $54 million order for 22,000 new voting machines.

Two days before that election incumbent Max Cleland was five points ahead of his Republican challenger, yet Cleland lost the race by 7 percent - a 12-point shift in 48 hours.

In Minnesota, Democrat Walter Mondale also led in two of three polls on Election Day 2002, yet Republican Norm Coleman ended up winning by 3 percent.

In Colorado, where DRE's were mixed with optical scan systems, polls showed a neck-to-neck race, yet Republican Wayne Allard ended up winning by 5 percent.

With these outcomes the Senate majority tipped from one party to the other, shifting all committee chairmanships, along with their power to set the nation's political agenda, into Republican hands.

Essentially, two vendors - Diebold and ES&S - supply 80% of the electronic voting machines used in the United States.  Between them they alone provide voter registration, printing of ballots, programming of the machines, counting & tabulation of the votes, and the final reporting of results for over 150 million Americans.

In 2003, Walden O'Dell, CEO of Diebold, said in a letter to Ohio Republican officials that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President." Diebold supplied the machines used in Ohio and Florida, two of the 'swing' states critical to the 2004 election.  O'Dell raised $700,000 for the re-election of G.W. Bush in the 2004 election.

The Issue of Security

        Following this apparently 'coincidental' trend in 2002, Bev Harris started researching all she could on the Diebold Company. When she did a Google search she accessed a website that contained an FTP link to a large mass of program files used by Diebold to tie all their machines together and make them work properly, however one folder she found was called - strangely enough - 'rob-georgia'.
       

When she downloaded the file she discovered instructions to replace the files in the new Georgia voting system.  She also discovered that Diebold machines could be accessed with a 'supervisor smart card' and that they all had the same password hard coded into the system. Thus, anybody with a smart card could conceivably tamper with vote counts.
     

After Harris posted the Diebold files on her web site in February 2003, Diebold spokesman Joseph Richardson denied the company put any patch on the Georgia machines. However, in September 2003, Harris received 13,000 internal Diebold memos & e-mails that an employee leaked to her. In one of those memos, a Diebold engineer named Ken Clark acknowledged that anyone could get into the central server to make changes to the audit.
   

So how did the U.S Congress respond?
   

Back in the mid-1980s, states wanted standards for elections and asked the Federal Election Commission to draw them up. The FEC tried to get Congress interested, only Congress had no interest.
       

With no money or guidance from Congress, the task fell to the National Association of State Election Directors. From here it was determined that standards could not be federal because the federal government couldn't enforce them and the best route would be to allow individual states to adopt their standards.
  

Because the program was put together without any money, officials had to rely on the vendors to assure the system was secure. And the vendors relied upon programmers to qualify the software.

After Harris' allegations surfaced to minimal national coverage, Diebold hired a pair of 'swat' teams to debut and correct the problems raised. However, the failure rate sill clocked in at 15%.

After the mid-term election results of 2002 were certified, a new version of the software was installed.
       

Last July, Maryland signed contracts to pay $55 million to Diebold. Around this time computer scientists at Johns Hopkins University pored over the program files and discovered "stunning security holes in the system."
      

Despite certification of the machines used for the 2004 election, Congressman Rush Holt (Dem. New Jersey) and Senator Hillary Clinton (Dem.-NY) put forth bills in Congress to add a 'paper trail' to all touchscreen machines. If the number of votes at a county's various polling places failed to match the county total, a paper recount could be done.

Only 106 Democrats and 8 Republicans signed on for the House bill. Holt was unable to get his bill out of committee ruled by Congressman Robert Ney  - a Republican from Ohio, which is Diebold's home state.

Evidence of Electronic Voting Bias in the 2004 Election

    An analysis of Florida counties with 80,000-500,000 registered voters by three political scientists at Cornell, Harvard and Stanford concluded that  "in counties using DRE's the swing in favor of Bush that occurred in traditionally Democratic precincts was a 'significant predictor' of vote at the level of less than one chance in a thousand of this degree of anomaly happening by chance."
  

These analyses show Bush with a higher percentage of the vote in areas using optical scan ballots (as opposed to touchscreen machines).

An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus according to election officials that were discovered in another report.

In Gahanna, Ohio, 20,000 people were eligible to vote and the reported turnout was around 70%. 14,000 people voted, yet the machines reported nearly 21,000 votes.

The most significant evidence that the 2004 election was hacked in favor of Bush exists in a report by the New Zealand Press that examined differences between exit polls and reported voting in more detail.

It discovered that in a selection of non-swing states, the exit polls and final results match. However, in a large proportion of key 'swing' states (Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) the exit polls and final votes to no match. The error was in each case a 4-15" swing (change between exit polls & electronic voting) and the anomalies were not random. In each of these states, the machines reported favorably to Bush.

This report also comments "Democratic suspicions were raised by Republican resistance to implement any meaningful backup system for checking the results on Diebold and other electronic-voting machines."

Ohio's Warren County made the news twice. First, it was the last county in Ohio to complete its vote count. Second, Republican election officials counted the ballots in secret. The media were not allowed to observe the counting process. The justification Warren officials gave was that they had received a report of a terrorism threat warning, which was denied outright by both Homeland Security and the FBI.

According to the official election results posted on the Palm Beach County website, 542,835 ballots were cast while only 454,427 voters turned out for the election (including absentee). This leaves a discrepancy of 88,408 votes cast for presidential candidates.

Back to Ohio, in Cuyahoga County, the county's website shows that out of 29 precincts, there were 93,000 more votes than actual voters.

When would-be-voters were asked whether the nation was headed in the right direction, about 52-55% people replied negatively.

So finally, ask yourself this question: If Bush won the election fair & square, why did those precincts using DRE's average a five percent favorable bounce for Bush over the exit polls?
Incumbents never make surges from their last horse race number.

Examples:

* 1956 Eisenhower's final horserace projection 59.5%, his actual vote total 57.8%

* 1964: Johnson's final horse race projection 64%, his actual share of the vote 61.3%

* In 1972 Nixon's final horse race projection tally 62%, his actual vote total 61.8%

* In 1976 Ford's final horse race projection number 49%, his % share of the vote 48.1%.

* In 1980, Carter's final horse projection number 44%, his real % of the vote 41%.

* In 1984 Reagan final horse race projection tally 59%, his real share of the popular vote 59.2%.

* In 1996 Clinton's final horse race number 52%, his actual share of the vote 49.2%

* The alleged miracle comeback of incumbent Harry Truman cannot be included in this study because Gallup issued its "final" result 2 weeks before the election.

* In 2004 President Bush defied both public opinion and history to win the election 51 - 48.

The question America needs to answer now is 'How was this done?'

While it is disturbingly unlikely that any injunctions will be filed against the legitimacy of the 2004 Presidential election, Congress have asked the General Accounting Office to investigate irregularities with voting machines in the 2004 Election.

Dr. Stephen F. Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania calculated that the odds of just three of the major swing states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania all swinging as far as they did against their respective exit polls were 250 million to 1.

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