Title 24.2 Elections - Chapter 10 - Election Offenses Generally; Penalties: § 24.2-1009. Stealing or tampering with ballot containers, voting or registration equipment, software, records or documents. “Any person who (i) steals or willfully, fraudulently, or wrongfully tampers with any part of any ballot container, voting or registration equipment, records, or documents, which are used in any way within the registration or election process, (ii) steals or willfully, fraudulently, or wrongfully tampers with the software used to prepare and operate voting equipment or the software or hardware used to collect and disseminate election returns, (iii) steals or willfully, fraudulently, or wrongfully tampers with an electronic activation device or electronic data storage medium of the type used to prepare, operate or back-up electronic voting equipment, (iv) willfully, fraudulently, or wrongfully intercepts, alters or disrupts the electronic transmission of election returns or the posting of returns on the Internet, (v) fraudulently makes any entry, deletion, or alteration to any item listed in (i), or (vi) aids, abets, or permits any other person to violate the provisions of clauses (i) through (v), shall be guilty of a Class 5 felony.”
The charge carries a 10 year maximum penalty.
NOW HERE’S AN INTERESTING QUESTION: WAS IT A VOTING MACHINE?
If a voting machine is unqualified to count votes, is it a voting machine? Virginia law is very clear that only approved machines are legally able to be used as “voting machines.” We would think that if a machine was in fact not able to be used legally, it wouldn't match the definition of “voting machine” and therefore, while Sabo may have hammered public property, he might not have hammered a legitimate “voting machine.”
By the time of Sabo’s trial, at least some evidence had cropped up that the WinVote machines weren’t properly certified for use. The judge refused to allow the jury to hear any evidence on this matter. Per the judge, whether or not the voting machine was legal was irrelevant. All she needed to know was that the voting machine was in use, and that’s all she would allow the jury to know.
THE WINVOTE SCANDAL
Advanced Voting Solutions (AVS) is the company that makes the WinVote machine. AVS management has ties to the old management team from the elections company acquired by Diebold, called Global Election Systems. AVS is run by Howard Van Pelt, who in 2001 was among the executives at Global. In fact, Van Pelt engineered the purchase of that company by Diebold.
Much has been said of Global; in a nutshell, four convicted felons and a swindler were involved in its management including three of its founders (stock and investment fraud) plus one 23-count embezzler and a stray coke dealer. There is no evidence Mr. Van Pelt has a criminal past, however his hiring and promotion in a company with such a checkered past is cause for concern.
Now Van Pelt and his motley band of programmers have brought us the WinVote machine, quite possibly the worst voting machine in America, and it takes a lot to earn the title “Worst of Breed” in e-voting today.
The WinVote is a paperless touch-screen, or “DRE” (Direct Recording Electronic) voting machine. You touch the screen, your vote allegedly ends up somewhere deep in the bowels of the machine, that’s all anyone gets to know. All information on the votes it processes is stored in “read-write memory,” meaning that changes can be written into it. This type of system is vulnerable to both deliberately programmed changes and accidental mistakes. It uses WiFi (wireless networking, which is like a cordless phone for a computer, basically a party line which allows anybody else to connect in while walking by or on the street outside).
VIRGINIA CERTIFICATION RULES
In Virginia, voting systems must be certified at the state level and per the long-standing policy of the VA State Board of Elections, federal-level oversight via NASED or the EAC and ITA review were required prior to state certification.
For those new to the issue, let’s translate: NASED (“National Association of State Election Directors”) was a quasi-governmental group at the federal level that was checking to make sure private testing labs (“Independent Testing Authorities”) were properly reviewing voting machines. After a number of remarkable errors, oversight is slowly switching over to the new Election Assistance Commission (EAC)...except as we'll see, not quite.
DR. BRIT “WILLCERTIFYANYTHING”
When the Virginia Board of Elections hired a voting system evaluator in mid-2002 to review the machine, they turned to Dr. Brit Williams, notorious for his pro-vendor stance disparaging security concerns. At one point Williams referred to citizens who questioned e-voting as “terrorists.” He never met a Diebold machine he didn’t love, even though those machines have now been hacked by professors from at least six different universities, a Finnish entrepreneur, a gun nut, a presidential candidate, two 50-year old women and a chimpanzee, each using a different method.
In comes Williams to examine the WinVote. But even the myopic Dr. Williams was taken aback by the WinVote WiFi elements, and he suggested that this feature NOT be used in the field while any voting is going on, and that it should be restricted to use at the election department warehouse to upload results.
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