E-voting in the Trenches: A Two-Year Chronology

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Florida's Technical Advisory
The findings in California led Florida's Division of Elections to issue a technical advisory "Recommendations and Guidelines" without mentioning either the Hursti hack or Diebold machines by name. This advisory extended beyond Diebold to include all electronic voting machines. In a stunning Catch-22, summed up by BradBlog in a March 3rd, 2006 column:
In the case of the Leon County hack, we learned, the actual paper ballots used in the mock election - had they been examined by hand - would have revealed the correct election results instead of the flipped results as reported by Diebold's optical scan counter. However, since Florida law specifically disallows ballots which have already been counted by machine to be hand-counted or even audited, the true election results would never have been known. Even in the case of a recount - which would not have occurred in the case of the mock election test, since the flipped results were nowhere near close enough to have triggered a mandatory recount - such ballots could only be rescanned by the machines which ha(d) miscounted them in the first place. http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2499

Brennan Center Report
The Center released its report in June 2006 after a year's investigation into electronic voting across the country. It is instructive to look at the full title of the press release: "Brennan Center Task Force Says Software Attacks Pose Real Danger To All Electronic Voting Machines. Threat of Hacking Can Be Reduced by Simple Countermeasures - Random Audits of Paper Records; Ban on Wireless Systems." The press release contains this worrisome statement: "The vast majority of states have not implemented election procedures or countermeasures to detect a software attack even though the most troubling vulnerabilities of each system can be substantially remedied."
http://www.brennancenter.org/presscenter/releases_2006/pressrelease_2006_0627.html

John Gideon's Daily Voting News
Continuous, state-by-state, national coverage of election fiascos can be found online at John Gideon's Daily Voting News at www.votetrustusa.org and www.votersunite.org. This is one of the only places to get an overview of the problems with electronic voting across the country. While the material comes from many sources, much of it is from Los Angeles-based Brad Friedman, an indefatigable investigative reporter with elections as his beat. See his blog at www.bradblog.com. Also, check out Black Box Voting http://blackboxvoting.org, Election Justice Center http://election.solarbus.org, and http://verifiedvoting.org

"Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" Robert Kennedy Jr.
This article appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in June 2006 and instantly created a stir. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, speaking at the Take Back America 2006 Conference in D.C., apologized for her slowness in realizing the severity of the problem of election fraud. She credited Kennedy's article with her "awakening." This indicates how the subject has begun creeping into the mainstream press. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

Lou Dobbs, CNN Series on Electronic Voting
In June 2006, Lou Dobbs of CNN has an ongoing series on electronic voting, including online straw polls on the CNN website to gauge public opinion. The "quick vote" on June 27 read: "Do you believe that e-voting machines should be disallowed until their integrity can be assured?" Of more than 11,500 voters, 98% were in favor of this statement. As CNN and Dobbs are not bastions of liberalism, this shows that the mandate has begun spreading across the boards. VoteTrustUSA is assisting with series.

Catherine Crier's Court TV Segment, "Defending Our Democracy"
In June 2006, Catherine Crier did an in-depth segment called "Defending our Democracy" in which she stated that the failure to count 350,000 votes in Ohio in 2004 "threatens to turn us into little more than a banana republic." This is part of a series on voting.

Creation of the Election Defense Alliance
The Election Defense Alliance was set up in mid-2006. From their website:
The purpose of EDA is to help build and coordinate a comprehensive, cohesive national strategy for the election integrity movement, in order to regain public control of the voting process in the United States, and to insure that the process is honest, transparent, secure, verifiable, and worthy of the public trust. To accomplish this purpose, EDA will serve as a strategic hub for a coordinated network of citizen electoral integrity groups and individuals, already working at the national, state, and local levels, to amplify the effectiveness and size of the election integrity movement. Our primary functions will be to provide coordination and focus, eliminate duplication of efforts, create a clearinghouse for the sharing of materials and other resources, and facilitate critical leadership in decision-making about strategic priorities and tactical approaches. http://electiondefensealliance.org/purpose:

Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud and the Official Count. Steven Freeman and Joel Bliefuss, Seven Stones Press.
From a BuzzFlash review:
As the authors note in their chapter on how the media has ignored the questions raised by the 2004 election, "That a journalistic examination of the exit-poll discrepancy is deemed 'not fit to print' by both the corporate and the independent media indicates how far our standards have devolved. It seems undeniable to us that the very same set of facts applied to a foreign election anywhere in the world would have garnered front-page coverage in every American newspaper and would have been the lead story on every American news program. If election fraud in Ukraine or Haiti is news, why isn't election fraud in the United States?" This is a question we ignore at great peril to our democracy.

Armed Madhouse. Greg Palast, Dutton, June 2006.
Author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Greg Palast won the George Orwell Courage in Journalism Award for the investigative journalism he has done for the BBC. You won't see him on American television though. His wicked sense of humor takes a bit of the sting out of a terrible indictment about our elections and our "elected officials."

Election Fraud Litigation and Investigations
According to Catherine Crier's Court TV report, machine-related lawsuits and investigations have been launched in 20 states. As more states run afoul of the inaccurate and insecure machines, more election litigation is expected. www.voteraction.org

As this movement begins to gather speed do what you can to help it along. Without true and fundamental election reform, our democracy remains at grave risk. Turning this around will take the effort of millions of our fellow citizens working together. Can you think of a more worthwhile enterprise?

Thanks to John Gideon of VoteTrustUSA and VotersUnite! for fact-checking. Ariella Brunwasser's masterful editing was instrumental in turning this document into something more closely resembling a silk purse than a sow's ear.

For more information about the "Invisible Ballots" lending library project, contact Joan Brunwasser at CountEveryVote@gmail.com. The project, operated by Citizens for Election Reform, is sponsored by the International Humanities Center http://ihcenter.org/groups/citizensforelectionreform.html, a nonprofit organization and donations are tax-deductible under Section 501 (c)(3) of the IRS code.

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Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election (more...)

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and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.