February 26, 2007 at 23:42:25

A RETURN TO SANITY WHY WE MUST ELIMINATE COMPUTERIZED CONTROL OF OUR ELECTION SYSTEM:

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By andi novick (about the author) Page 5 of 11 page(s)

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In Landslide Denied the Election Defense Alliance (EDA) , a national election integrity organization, analyzed the 2006 exit poll data and the 'official' count. As Jonathan Simon, a former political survey research analyst and co-founder and author of Landslide Denied, stated in Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Elections Hacked, http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_rob_kall_061117_clear_evidence_2006_.htm:

"We see evidence of pervasive fraud, but apparently calibrated to political conditions existing before recent developments shifted the political landscape...so 'the fix' turned out not to be sufficient for the actual circumstances....When you set out to rig an election, you want to do just enough to win. The greater the shift from expectations, (from exit polling, pre-election polling, demographics) the greater the risk of exposure--of provoking investigation. What was plenty to win on October 1 fell short on November 7."

According to the Cook Political Report National Tracking Poll's Generic Congressional Ballot (below) there was a dramatic increase in the number of voters who decided to vote Democratic which occurred over the month of October, presumably as the Foley and other scandals were unfolding:

[Oct. 5-8: 50% Dem - 41% Rep; Oct. 19-22: 57% Dem - 35% Rep; Oct. 26-29: 61% Dem - 35% Rep.]

Thus one theory for why the Republicans failed to retain control in 2006 is explained by this significant shift of eligible voters who during the month of October decided to vote against the Republicans, a 17% jump which occurred after the vote-altering mechanisms were, or could be, deployed in the voting machines.

The EDA report concluded that without the machine tampering, the Democratic victory in the House was actually closer to 61% - 38%, which would have given the Democrats an additional 30 seats.

NUMEROUS STUDIES, INCLUDING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S OWN NIST REPORT, GAO REPORT AND THE EAC ASSESSMENT, PROVE THAT ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES CAN NOT BE TRUSTED

The evidence gives us little reason to trust the 'official' results of the last few elections and yet that is precisely what our government insists is our only option. Notwithstanding these voting-machine corporations' failure to meet minimal expectations of impartiality, honesty, freedom from conflict of interest and transparency, we are assured by the federal government, our election officials and these private companies that the voting machines Americans are now forced to vote on are tested and certified. One wonders if these machines were truly being tested and certified, how could they fail and misfunction with the regularity that they have in the last three elections?

The Voting Machines We Vote on Have not Been Properly Tested Nor Certified

The National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) was responsible for managing the qualification, testing and approval of voting equipment in America through "independent testing authorities" (ITAs). These so called independent testing centers are not really independent at all�they are funded by voting machine vendors to whom they issue their testing reports! The three labs which have been testing all the electronic voting machines in America are selected and paid for by the voting machines companies themselves to test their hardware and software � in secret � for Federal "authorities". These ITAs have arrogantly refused to answer questions about testing procedures or the certification process. Everything has been done in secret. All of the voting systems Americans vote on today were certified by these NASED vendor-selected labs.

Voting integrity activists' complaints about this sham certification process fell on deaf ears, but are now just beginning to be borne out by the unraveling scandal of the labs responsible for certifying the integrity of the voting machines. In 2002 HAVA transferred responsibility for accrediting these ITAs from NASED to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). In July, 2006 the EAC denied accreditation to Ciber Inc., the nation's largest so-called "independent" labe. In a damning assessment of Ciber, Inc. the EAC acknowledged what election activists had been saying for years, to wit, there are no independent requirements for testing and:

"the testing for a product tends to either use vendor developed tests or new tests developed specifically for the product-they have no standard test methods defined. This makes their testing dependent on vendor input and vulnerable to unique vendor interpretations rather than a core validated set of internal references for training and testing."
(Quoting from the EAC Assessment, endnote 26)

Ciber's chief voting machine technician is Shawn Southworth. Among Mr. Southworth's history of questionable work, there is Georgia's 22,000 DREs which Southworth had certified as good to go when they were sold to Georgia in 2002. Notwithstanding the Ciber/Southworth seal of approval, the machines allegedly froze up requiring the curious "patches" installed after delivery and before the 2002 election. Southworth figures prominently in this testing/certificaiton stench which goes back more than a decade.

Although the EAC's report declining accreditation to Ciber was issued in July 2006, this information was not make known to the election officials, who were relying on Ciber's certification of the machines used in the 2006 election. The EAC said nothing and permitted those machines to be voted on. Caught in that scandal was not only the nearly 70% of voting systems that had allegedly been qualified by Ciber in the 2006 election, but New York State had entered into a $3 million contract with Ciber to test and certify voting machines, which Ciber continued to pretend to be doing during this period, wasting the State's time and money under what can best be described as false pretenses.

It was not until the NY Times exposed EAC's and Ciber's secret in January of 2007 that the scandal broke. During those 6 months of the EAC's silence, Ciber's founder and director was apparently taking great advantage of this time, selling off 1.7 million of his stock in Ciber. Ciber's founder was not the only one to engage in insider trading during this six month period that Ciber and the EAC said nothing. The silence and insider trading only stopped when NY Times broke the story.

The False Stamp of Approval Which Stuck the American People with These Corrupt Machines and Delivered Billions in the Pockets of the Republican-donor Vendors:
Still Another Sordid Story in this Shameful History of the Demise of the Democratic Experiment:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
Oppose all DREs. Accept Optical Scanners only with sufficient hand counting protocol.

Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers

ElectionTransparencyCoalitition.org

Andi Novick Election Transparency Coalition, www.etcnys.org, http://nylevers.wordpress.com/

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