- From: Eric Smith <snowdog@juno.ocn.ne.jp>
- Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 10:50:37 +0900
- To: <www-html@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <29240149.1075860609390.JavaMail.SYSTEM@melnibone>
I'm writing today to ask for your help because I'm very, very frightened. To cut straight to the chase, even the NY Times has now acknowledged that DRE voting machines can be used to silently subvert federal elections -- and it's untraceable. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/31/opinion/31SAT1.html The election is in less than ten months. Unless something is done IMMEDIATELY, we will be powerless to stop the permanent theft of the very foundation of America's democracy -- once the fix is in, there will be no turning back. Bev. Harris, author of "Black Box Voting" is building a national team of volunteer litigants to seek injunctions against the use of these machines in the 2004 election. If you can help, or know others who can, please contact her at the email address below: Bevharriscontact@aol.com The import of this threat cannot be overstated -- the issue is very real and very grave. The chilling, incontrovertible fact is that America's elections are being silently, deliberately and PERMANENTLY compromised. The problem lies in the rapid installation of unauditable, unverifiable DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) touchscreen voting machines in advance of the 2004 elections. And so, I'm writing to ask -- in fact to BEG -- for your help in seeking an immediate moratorium on the use of paperless, unverifiable e-vote machines in the 2004 election. The use of paper ballots may be the only interim solution to assure a verifiable election: DREs which produce verifiable paper receipts are available, but are not currently in widespread use. An immediate legal injunction to halt the use of non-verifiable DREs in the 2004 election is a stop-gap emergency measure, perhaps at this late date the only way to ensure the integrity of our Democratic process. Over the long term, lobbying for the implementation of Congressman Holt's Voter Integrity Act will provide a more permanent solution. Today, I'm asking you to aggressively and persistently bring the legal and personnel resources of your organization into the effort to save our electoral process. Before it's too late. Act now - your country needs you. And the time is getting very, very short. Tomorrow might be just one day too late. sincerely, Eric A. Smith Tokyo, Japan snowdog@juno.ocn.ne.jp BACKGROUND Compelling evidence for the gravity of the situation can be found in the following "smoking gun" internal emails from Diebold. As you've no doubt heard, the company began a desperate attempt at suppressing the distribution of these emails on the Internet, in a series of gag lawsuits succesfully countered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation last month. One of these emails -- from Lana Hires to Global Election Systems (now Diebold) -- baldly states how 16 THOUSAND e-votes for Gore were "disappeared" during the 2000 Presidential election. Hires frantically asks how she should explain this to an auditor: <I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 [votes] when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb" Additional excerpts from the Diebold internal emails: <For a demonstration I suggest you fake it. Progam them both so they look the same, and then just do the upload fro [sic] the AV. That is what we did in the last AT/AV demo. <Right now you can open GEMS' .mdb file with MS-Access, and alter its contents. That includes the audit log. This isn't anything new. <Elections are not rocket science. Why is it so hard to get things right! I have never been at any other company that has been so miss [sic] managed. <Johnson County, KS will be doing Central Count for their mail in ballots. They will also be processing these ballots in advance of the closing of polls on election day. They would like to log into the Audit Log an entry for Previewing any Election Total Reports. They need this, to prove to the media, as well as, any candidates & lawyers, that they did not view or print any Election Results before the Polls closed. However, if there is a way that we can disable the reporting functionality, that would be even better. "Diebold - The face of modern ballot tampering" http://www.bartcop.com/diebold.htm "If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines" http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm "How George W. Bush Won the 2004 Presidential Election" http://www.infernalpress.com/Columns/election.html "Safeguarding the Vote" http://www.yesmagazine.org./26courage/pibel.htm "Electronic Voting Machines Blasted by Scientists, Hacked by Author" http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00198.htm Alarming summaries of independent research by Johns Hopkins and Rice University, MIT, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and even Congress echo Harris's concerns: http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/20030724_evote_research_report.pdf http://www.vote.caltech.edu/Reports/ http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/20030723_eff_pr.php http://www.epic.org/privacy/voting/crsreport.pdf Did You Know: * Diebold "disappeared" over 16,000 Presidential votes in one Florida county during the 2,000 election? http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0310/S00275.htm * Diebold's primary business is making ATMs and ticket machines (which DO provide paper printouts, unlike their voting machines!), has already been infected with worm viruses: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,61526,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_8 * The Diebold "Accuvote" machine has been hacked and an election reversed by author Bev Harris: http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00198.htm * Diebold's Board of Directors donated over a quarter of a milllion dollars to Republican campaigns in the last six years? http://www.bartcop.com/diebold.htm * Sequoia machines use different software when being tested than when being used in elections? http://www.exit.com/RiversideVoteTest/RiversideCountyTestObservationBoard..pdf * Walden O'Dell, Diebold's CEO, is a Bush/Cheney Pioneer, and hosted a $600,000 fundraiser for Cheney in 2003? http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0311/S00084.htm * O'Dell in an Ohio Republican fundraising letter, promised to "deliver all of Ohio's votes to the President in 2004"? http://www.dscc.org/information/stopvotingmachines_letter/ * Senator Chuck Hagel secretly ran ES&S, the company that counted his votes in a "stunning upset victory -- the biggest landslide in the state's history? http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm * Hagel lied to Congress about about his involvement in the company? http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx * Hagel has already bought the rights to the "HagelforPresident2008" website domain? http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26 * Hagel's campaign manager, Michael McCarthy, is now a major owner of ES&S? http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0311/S00084.htm * Before running ES&S, Hagel was head of the Private Sector Council for George H.W. Bush? http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26
Received on Tuesday, 3 February 2004 21:10:04 UTC