Voting anomalies all over: Indiana 9th district contested; Black Box Voting finds trashed poll tapes in Volusia Cty, FL; 268 absentee ballots found in box

DemocraticUnderground.com: After a day of furious auditing Bev, Andy and Kathleen of Black Box Voting have found discrepant results in Volusia county. At this time we have had an attorny LOCK DOWN all poll tapes, memory cartridges and the GEMS central tabulator. The discrepant results were concentrated in mainly minority areas. We are currently going through trash obtained early this morning by Bev and Kathleen Wynne via a FOIA request. At one point they were threatened with arrest but avoided it narrowly (Bev will do a full report later). Black Box Voting will be issuing a press release later today. This is it folks...the first crack in Florida.

Andy

And they even got VoterGate.tv to record the confrontation. Check out VoterGate's 30 minute pre-election video about Black Box Voting and their fight for the integrity of voting systems. Also you'll see a Diebold PR flack squirming when questioned about their CEO's notorious boast that "We'll deliver Ohio's electoral votes." They even go dumpster diving at Diebold and find a memo where some county refuses to pay for electronic machines that won't upload votes correctly. The crew that made this video is following Bev Harris around Florida now and finding trouble with county election officials all over the place.

More about Bev Harris' & co. sudden discoveries in Volusia County below.

Recounts are getting underway all over the place now, but here's a few stories that should inspire confidence in all believers in Democracy.

We have the final 4 PM exit polls from Nov. 2 now, and they show distinct 'red shifts' in many places. That is, the exit polls showed Kerry quite a few points higher all over the place. North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida all had major shifts. Via DailyKos diary.

Indiana Democrats are demanding a recount in their 9th district. Via DailyKos, a report from Roll Call:

The Indiana Democratic Party on Friday requested a recount of votes cast in the 9th district, where Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.) was narrowly defeated by Republican Mike Sodrel on Nov. 2.

The recount request was made after an election-equipment malfunction was discovered in Franklin County, which is not in the 9th district.

On Nov. 3, Hill conceded defeat to Sodrel, a trucking company owner, and the most recent vote tally available from the Indiana secretary of state's office showed Hill trailing by 1,485 votes. As of midday Friday, Sodrel had 142,257 votes to Hill's 140,772.

An emergency meeting of the state's recount commission was held Friday afternoon and the machines, ballots and all other material relating to the election were ordered impounded. The commission will meet again on Tuesday to decide the next course of action and to hear cross petitions from Republicans.

"They want to hear from the other side as well," Kate Shepherd, a spokeswoman for the Indiana secretary of state's office, said Friday.

Last week, Rock Island, Ill.-based election equipment vendor Fidlar Election Co. acknowledged that some of its vote-scanning machines counted straight Democratic ticket votes as Libertarian votes.

There is some really weird stuff happening in Florida. First the smaller story:

The unmarked brown box sat unnoticed in the Pinellas Supervisor of Elections office until Monday, two weeks after the election, when an employee cleaning a desk stumbled upon it (via DKos).

Inside were 268 uncounted absentee ballots.
[.....]
Five days ago, Clark sent the state the county's final results for the Nov. 2 election. But her office had failed to perform a standard check to ensure that all ballots had been accounted for.

Clark assumed her staff had performed the check, but they had not.

Now she will ask the state for permission to change Pinellas' official results. The canvassing board will count the missing ballots Thursday.

Although it is numerically possible, officials say the missing ballots probably won't change any results. Only a few races were decided by less than 268 votes - including the presidential contest.

George W. Bush won the presidential race in Pinellas by just 226 votes. While Bush's margin in Pinellas could change, his statewide victory won't.

A city commission seat in South Pasadena and a referendum in Indian Rocks Beach were also decided by fewer than 268 votes.

"If you found a couple hundred thousand votes in Ohio, that might be exciting," said Paul Bedinghaus, chairman of the Pinellas Republican Party. "I expect that human error will continue to occur as long as human beings are involved."

This is the third time since Clark became election supervisor in 2000 that her office has had problems handling ballots.

In the presidential race in 2000, the office neglected to count 1,400 ballots - and counted more than 900 ballots twice. In 2001, her office misplaced six absentee ballots in a Tarpon Springs city election.

And what was the margin of victory in 2000??!!?!?! Also this story quite accurately makes the point that these voting discrepancies affect other races, not just the presidential. So this one was probably just a little bureaucratic incompetence rather than malicious intent.

There's a sweet writeup, "HackTheVote FAQ" by Republican 'white hat' hacker (i.e. 'legit' tech security professional) Chuck Herrin, who was sickened by all the flaws in Diebold's systems, and he describes why one might go about hacking the central tabulator systems. This guy's motives are a perfect example of why I think following this story is important, not because I think that "Kerry Really Won" but because it shows that all sorts of people care deeply about the integrity of our system, and the flaws profoundly disturb them:

I feel that it is unlikely that these individual touch screen machines would be targeted. At greater risk than the individual touch screens are the Central Voting Tabulation computers, which compile the results from many other systems, such as touch screens and optically scanned cards. From a hacker’s standpoint, there are a couple of reasons why these central computers are better targets:

a. It is extremely labor intensive to compromise a large number of systems, and the chance of failure or being detected increases every time an attack is attempted. Also, the controversy surrounding the touch screen terminals ensures that their results will be closely watched, and this theory has been born out in recent days.

b. If one were to compromise the individual terminals, they would only be able to influence a few hundred to maybe a couple of thousand votes. These factors create a very poor risk/reward ratio, which is a key factor in determining which systems it makes sense to attack.

c. On the other hand, the Central Vote Tabulation systems are a very inviting target – by simply compromising one Windows desktop, you could potentially influence tens or hundreds of thousands of votes, with only one attack to execute and only one attack to erase your tracks after. This makes for an extremely attractive target, particularly when one realizes that by compromising these machines you can affect the votes that people cast not only by the new touch screen systems, but also voters using traditional methods, such as optical scanning systems since the tallies from all of these systems are brought together for Centralized Tabulation. This further helps an attacker stay under the radar and avoid detection, since scrutiny will not be as focused on the older systems, even though the vote data is still very much at risk since it is all brought together at a few critical points. This also has been born out by early investigations, where the touch screen results seem to be fairly in line with expectations, while some very strange results are being reported in precincts still using some of the older methods.

But from Volusia County, Florida, Bev Harris and the ragtag band of misfits known as Black Box Voting and affiliated voter-activists have zeroed in on suspicious county behavior. After hitting Florida counties with FOIA (Freedom of Information Act requests) they found that Volusia County wouldn't give them xeroxed copies of the poll tapes for one precinct in particular, a heavily black precinct that recorded far more votes for Bush than the party registry would predict.

In other words, the vote could have been manipulated here, and Black Box Voting is putting together a concrete investigation to lock down all suspicious county computers and voting machines. Bev Harris is a grandmother on a mission to protect voting integrity and shine light on irregularities. If only we had thousands of people like her...

Kathleen Wynne and Bev Harris showed up at the warehouse at 8:15 Tuesday morning, Nov. 16. There was Lana Hires looking especially gruff, yet surprised. She ordered them out. Well, they couldn't see why because there she was, with a couple other people, handling the original poll tapes. You know, the ones with the signatures on them. Harris and Wynne stepped out and Volusia County officials promptly shut the door.

There was a trash bag on the porch outside the door. Harris looked into it and what do you know, but there were poll tapes in there. They came out and glared at Harris and Wynne, who drove away a small bit, and then videotaped the license plates of the two vehicles marked 'City Council' member. Others came out to glare and soon all doors were slammed.

So, Harris and Wynne went and parked behind a bus to see what they would do next. They pulled out some large pylons, which blocked the door. Harris decided to go look at the garbage some more while Wynne videotaped. A man who identified himself as "Pete" came out and Harris immediately wrote a public records request for the contents of the garbage bag, which also contained ballots -- real ones, but not filled out.

A brief tug of war occurred, tearing the garbage bag open. Harris and Wynne then looked through it, as Pete looked on. He was quite friendly.

Black Box Voting collected various poll tapes and other information and asked if they could copy it, for the public records request. "You won't be going anywhere," said Pete. "The deputy is on his way."

Yes, not one but two police cars came up and then two county elections officials, and everyone stood around discussing the merits of the "black bag" public records request.

The police finally let Harris and Wynne go, about the time the Votergate.tv film crew arrived, and everyone trooped off to the elections office. There, the plot thickened.

Black Box Voting began to compare the special printouts given in the FOIA request with the signed polling tapes from election night. Lo and behold, some were missing. By this time, Black Box Voting investigator Andy Stephenson had joined the group at Volusia County. Some polling place tapes didn't match. In fact, in one location, precinct 215, an African-American precinct, the votes were off by hundreds, in favor of George W. Bush and other Republicans.

Hmm. Which was right? The polling tape Volusia gave to Black Box Voting, specially printed on Nov. 15, without signatures, or the ones with signatures, printed on Nov. 2, with up to 8 signatures per tape?

Well, then it became even more interesting. A Volusia employee boxed up some items from an office containing Lana Hires' desk, which appeared to contain -- you guessed it -- polling place tapes. The employee took them to the back of the building and disappeared.

Then, Ellen B., a voting integrity advocate from Broward County, Florida, and Susan, from Volusia, decided now would be a good time to go through the trash at the elections office. Lo and behold, they found all kinds of memos and some polling place tapes, fresh from Volusia elections office.

So, Black Box Voting compared these with the Nov. 2 signed ones and the "special' ones from Nov. 15 given, unsigned, finding several of the MISSING poll tapes. There they were: In the garbage.

So, Wynne went to the car and got the polling place tapes she had pulled from the warehouse garbage. My my my. There were not only discrepancies, but a polling place tape that was signed by six officials.

This was a bit disturbing, since the employees there had said that bag was destined for the shredder.

By now, a county lawyer had appeared on the scene, suddenly threatening to charge Black Box Voting extra for the time spent looking at the real stuff Volusia had withheld earlier. Other lawyers appeared, phoned, people had meetings, Lana glowered at everyone, and someone shut the door in the office holding the GEMS server.

Black Box Voting investigator Andy Stephenson then went to get the Diebold "GEMS" central server locked down. He also got the memory cards locked down and secured, much to the dismay of Lana. They were scattered around unsecured in any way before that.

Talk about your classic shady Florida government officials... GO BEV GO.... down to the wire!

Posted by HongPong at November 17, 2004 12:06 PM
Listed under Campaign 2004 , Tracking election irregularities .