Taking a stand against state-supported vote suppression

Former Marine Tim Thompson, in his first protest ever, refused to show a picture ID in order to vote in Tennessee's Super Tuesday primary. Even though he had the proper legal identification, he gave up his right to vote as a protest on behalf of the potentially millions of low-income, older, and college-age citizens who may lose their right to vote because of the new restrictive ID laws being enacted across the country. "Uncounted" filmmaker David Earnhardt, Thompson's brother-in-law, captured dramatic footage of Thompson's protest on his cell phone, and chronicled his journey on Super Tuesday in this short film, as Thompson's protest developed into a national story.

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"Corporations and Democracy" interviews Wisconsin democracy activist Ben Manski

Ben Manski, executive director of Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution and spokesperson for the Wisconsin Wave, talks to Steve Scalmanini and Annie Esposito, hosts of the August 19 edition of Corporations and Democracy, heard on KZYX&Z-FM, Mendocino County Public Broadcasting in Philo, California.

Ben, Steve, and Annie discuss heartland progressive populism and resistance to attacks on local government in Benton Harbor and other Michigan towns, to the results of the recent Wisconsin recall elections, including allegations of pro-GOP election fraud in a well-to-do county (not the first time this has happened!). Ben reviews the history of home rule provisions and the need to strengthen them today to provide a democratic bulwark against corporate personhood and corporate rule.

Listen online here!

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"Hacking Democracy" screens in Peterborough, NH

The documentary "Hacking Democracy" will be shown on Wednesday, September 7 at the Peterborough, NH Town Library, 2 Concord Street. The film starts at 7 p.m. You can reach the library at (603) 924-8040.

The documentary, first broadcast on HBO, exposes the dangers of voting machines widely used in the US. Electronic voting machines count approximately 90% of our votes in county, state and federal elections. The technology is also increasingly being used across the world, including in Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Latin America. Filmed over three years, Hacking Democracy follows a team of citizen activists and hackers as they take on the electronic voting industry, targeting the Diebold corporation, and uncovers incendiary evidence from the trash cans of Texas to the ballot boxes of Ohio, exposing secrecy, discarded votes, hackable software and election officials rigging the presidential recount.

Ultimately proving our votes can be stolen without a trace, "Hacking Democracy" culminates in the famous 'Hursti Hack'; a duel between the Diebold voting machines and a computer hacker from Finland - with America's democracy at stake.

Even though this is not a new film, easily-manipulated electronic voting equipment continues to threaten the integrity of our elections. Come see the film and talk with others about what can be done to protect the vote.

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Happy (belated) birthday, Election Defense Alliance

Election Defense Alliance turned five years old on Independence Day. Since then, they've worked on initiatives, advocacy and research to safeguard elections across the country. Right now they're on the ground in Wisconsin, where they are concerned that upcoming recall elections may be stolen. They are looking for volunteers, and for donations. If you can help out in Wisconsin on July 12 or 19, or on August 9 or 16, or if you can organize from home prior to the elections, please contact Mary Magnuson at MaryMagnuson@ElectionDefenseAlliance.org.

Please check out their website for more info on this important group and their work.

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Humboldt Co. CA group honored for work on election transparency

Humboldt County Election Transparency Project pioneers Mitch Trachtenberg and Kevin Collins have been given the Award for Excellent Innovations in the Field of Election Transparency and Integrity from the Grace Institute for Election Integrity. The county registrar of voters, Carolyn Crnich, and two officials from neighboring Yolo County were also honored.

The Transparency Project passes every ballot cast in an election through an optical scanner after it's officially counted. Images of the ballots are then placed online along with open-source software created by Trachtenberg that allows viewers to sort and count the ballots as they see fit. Thanks to the project, election officials noticed a discrepancy in Humboldt County's vote count in the November 2008 election and ultimately discovered that almost 200 ballots disappeared from the county's final vote tally. The discovery ultimately led to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen's withdrawing the state's approval of the Premier Elections Solution system used during the election.

More info here!

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Computer vote count warning from Election Defense Alliance

Two warnings on the security of the 2010 vote--with so many close races Election Defense Alliance provides these hair-raising reports on the hackability of electronic voting machines. Check out the second video for a look at some of the specific vulnerabilities of both touch screen and optical scan voting machines.

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Department of Justice says ES&S must sell off e-voting division purchased from Diebold

The Brad Blog reports that the Anti-trust division of the Department of Justice has ruled that Election Systems & Software, Inc.'s purchase of Diebold's e-voting division has created a voting machine monopoly. Had it stood, the purchase, made last September at rock-bottom prices, would have resulted in one privately-held and notoriously partisan corporation tallying some 70% of the votes cast in the nation.

The purchase was already under investigation by 14 different states, and had been opposed by election integrity groups, ES&S's competitor Hart Intercivic, the New York Times editorial board, and Senate Rules Committee chair Charles Schumer (D-NY).

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Will Diebold steal Ted Kennedy's seat – and the Senate?

The second of two articles...see the Brad Blog's report just below this on our blog for more potentially bad news for the majority of Massachusetts voters, who, we hope, expect a fair election regardless of whether they're for Brown, Coakley or Libertarian candidate Joe Kennedy.

by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman. Posted January 18 on Free Press

The same types of machines that helped put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000, and “re-elect” him 2004, may now decide who wins the all-important “60th Senate seat” in Massachusetts. The fate of health care and much much more hang in the balance.

As Bay Staters vote to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, most will be marking scantron ballots to be run through easily hackable electronic counters made by Diebold/Premier.

A paper ballot of sorts does come through these machines. But the count they generated was seriously compromised in the Florida 2000 election that put George W. Bush in the White House. Similar machines played a critical role skewing the Ohio 2004 vote count to fraudulently re-elect him.

In 2004, Lucas County (Toledo) Ohio, incorrectly calibrated Diebold scantron machines left piles of uncounted ballots in heavily black districts in the inner city.

The Free Press also found that on optiscan machines in Miami County, Ohio the reported totals were significantly higher than the actual number of people who signed in to vote.

Ironically, the cheated candidate in that election was Massachusetts’ now-senior Senator John Kerry. Kerry is circulating email appeals warning that this election is a "jump ball" in which "shady right-wing organizations and out of state conservatives have descended upon the state in droves."

But Kerry himself has infamously said nothing about the theft of the 2004 election. Neither he, the Democratic Party, nor the Obama Administration have done anything to change a system in which elections can be stolen by the very-well-funded Republican-owned companies that make and administer the vote-counting machines. A dozen election protection groups from around the country have now issued an "orange alert" warning that the Massachusetts vote count could be "ripe for manipulation."

Thus Kerry’s new colleague could be “selected” by the same means that deprived him of the White House.

According to Selectman Dan Keller of the western town of Wendell, some Massachusetts communities -- including his -- do have hand-counted paper ballots.

But most of the state relies on Diebold scantron counters which can be manipulated in numerous ways, including switching calibrations and moving ballots from precinct-to-precinct or county-to-county, thus reversing intended votes from one candidate to another.

According to Brad Friedman at BradBlog LHS Associates sells and services many of the machines being used in this special election. Though the vast majority of elected officials in Massachusetts are Democrats, control of the vote count can be a grey area where voting machines are involved, especially given Sen. Kerry’s 6-year stupor over the stolen 2004 election, a record of inaction amply matched by the Democratic Party and Obama Administration.

According to Friedman, LHS “has admitted to illegally tampering with memory cards during elections,” and has a Director of Sales and Marketing who has been “barred from Connecticut by their Secretary of State.”

The stakes in this election cannot be overstated. The deceased Senator Kennedy’s seat holds the key to a filibuster-breaking 60-seat Democratic majority in the Senate. State Attorney-General Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate, is a supporter of the Obama health care plan, and an opponent of atomic power.

Coakley’s opponent, conservative Republican State Senator Scott Brown, has been running a Tea Bagger-style “populist” campaign.

Poll results differ substantially as the campaign winds down, but all show a close race. Thus Diebold, a thoroughly tainted player with deep Republican roots, could hold the key to the election by shifting the outcome in just a few key precincts.

After internet-based reporting broke the story of the stolen 2004 election, thousands of election-protection activists turned out to monitor the 2008 vote count. Among other things, careful exit polling was done to provide a close reality check on official vote counts. Poll monitors interviewed voters and carefully scrutinized voting procedures and how ballots were handled and counted.

Often overlooked are voter registration manipulations, which were used in Ohio and elsewhere to strip hundreds of thousands of voters of their right to cast a ballot. In Ohio alone, more than 300,000 legally registered voters were electronically removed from the voter rolls between the 2000 and 2004 elections. Most were in heavily Democratic urban areas.

In 2008, the Free Press found that the number of purged Ohio voters jumped to more than a million.

Thus the fact that the electoral apparatus in Massachusetts is apparently in the hands of Democrats may not matter. Private vendors like LHS and Diebold have the actual control over the final numbers.

In Massachusetts, a recount only occurs if the final results are less than half of one percent, and as election reform activist John Bonifaz points out, Massachusetts does not require random audits of the computerized vote counting machines to compare the computer results to the optical scan ballots marked by the voters. Bonifaz notes that in the Al Franken-Norm Coleman Minnesota Senate race in 2008, “everything was ultimately hand-counted.” The problem in Massachusetts hinges on whether the race is close enough to trigger a recount, which candidates can petition for within thirty days.

Exit polls remain the gold standard for election integrity throughout the democratic world. But in Ohio in 2004, the exit polls indicated that the election results were reversed and that Kerry actually won. Jonathan Simon, election integrity expert, points out that the exit polls in 2008 in Minnesota “…had Franken winning by 10%! This is a huge disparity, not remotely reflected by the recount.”

“Could the exit poll have been that badly off? Or could a large number of ballots, 200,000 or so, been swapped out before the recount? Here is where the chain or custody, or lack thereof, comes in. These ballots were not exactly under heavy surveillance during the month-long period between election day and recount completion,” Simon said.

What will matter in Massachusetts is how thoroughly election-protection advocates are able to scrutinize voter certification, access and ballot security. Billions of dollars---and much more---are riding on the outcome of this election. Those who believe it cannot or would not be stolen are simply in denial.

Given the Democratic Party’s astonishing lack of leadership on so many issues, it is entirely possible that Scott Brown could legitimately beat Martha Coakley in this election.

But it is also possible that the outcome could be manipulated by the companies in control of the registration rolls and vote counts. It will be up to citizen election protection activists to make sure that doesn’t happen yet again.

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Easily hacked voting machines will be used in Massachusetts's special election today

The first of two articles to give a "heads-up" to Mass voters in today's special election for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat.

by Nathan Barker and Brad Friedman. Posted January 15 on Gouverneur Times

BOSTON, MA - Next Tuesday's Special Election for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts looks to be coming down to the wire. Surprising pundits in what had previously been thought to be a cakewalk for State Attorney General Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate hoping to fill the seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, Republican state Senator Scott Brown has come on strong in the final days of the campaign.

But as the election looms, tempers flare, money is poured into the contest from all sides, and Democrats sweat out what should have been a safe seat for them - a Democrat named Kennedy has held that particular seat for more than the last 50 years - questions about whether the election results can be trusted have already emerged in a race where the stakes couldn't be higher.

As the 60th "filibuster-proof" Democratic U.S. Senate seat hangs in the balance - and the party's healthcare reform bill and other key legislative hopes along with it - fears are mounting that the final vote tallies could be as questionable as they were in the recent NY-23 Special Election for the U.S. House. Perhaps even more so.

The electronic voting systems used in Massachusetts are notoriously plagued with problems and vulnerabilities, and are in violation of federal voting system standards. Moreover, they are sold, programmed, and maintained by a company with a disturbing criminal background.

The outcome couldn't be more important, and the race, according to a number of pre-election polls, couldn't be closer. Coakley began running in September, 2009 with a strong lead over Brown, her main opponent. But that trend has significantly changed in the last month leaving Coakley with a thin 2 point margin over Brown, according to a recent poll from Republican pollster Rasmussen. Another more recent survey, from a Democratic-leaning outfit, gives Coakley a more comfortable 8 point edge over Brown.

Still, the very real possibility that a Republican could win the seat has many in Washington sweating on the eve of the Special Election. All three candidates - Joseph Kennedy (no relation to Ted), a Libertarian running on the Independent Party ticket could also throw a wrench into the works - and their supporters are pulling out all the last minutes stops. But could we see another repeat of last November's U.S. House Special Election in New York, where questions still persist about the tabulation of the race and the failed and faulty voting systems that voters were forced to use?

The Diebold electronic voting machines to be used in more than 90% of the state's districts are the same demonstrably unreliable ballot scanning systems that were seen being hacked in the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary Hacking Democracy. The rest of the machines used in the Bay State are made by Sequoia Voting System, Inc., the same manufacturer whose machines were "misconfigured," to switch votes in Erie County, NY's Nov. 3, 2009 election and which have failed, and even been hacked, in a number of cases around the country.

Making matters worse, the company who sells, services and programs the Diebold optical-scan paper ballot systems to be used next week, LHS Associates, has a disturbing criminal background, and has admitted to tampering illegally with voting systems during past elections.

As seen in the climactic finale of Hacking Democracy, due to undocumented "interpreted code" in the system, included by Diebold in violation of federal voting system guidelines, the Diebold Accuvote op-scan system is easily hacked and votes can be flipped in such a way that the tampering would likely never be discovered.

The vulnerability, easily exploited by Finnish computer security expert Harri Hursti in the film, resulted in flipped results for a mock election held in Leon County, FL several years ago. At the time, news of the hack sent shockwaves throughout the e-voting industry, and among state and federal election officials. But the federally certified machines were never decertified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, despite the discovery of the code in violation of federal standards. That code, allowing this simple exploitation, still remains on the systems to be used in next week's special election in Massachusetts.

The key to the exploit is access to the scanner's memory cards. Those sensitive cards contain the programming instructions for how the machines should read paper ballots as they pass through it. They also track the tally of votes. In Hursti's hack, he was able to make a slight change to the memory cards' programming instructions which flipped the results in such a way that only a manual hand count of every ballot would have revealed the manipulation.

The machines and cards are often accessed by both election officials and the private vendors who program and maintain them. In Massachusetts, as in most of New England, an outfit by the name of LHS Associates services the machines.

The company has, to put it generously, a dubious record.

In 1990, Ken Hajjar, the Director of Sales and Marketing for LHS Associates - a childhood friend of company owner John Silvestro - was arrested and pled guilty to charges of selling narcotics. He was given a 12-month sentence, according to documents received via a public records request by the non-partisan election watchdog organization, BlackBoxVoting.org (BBV).

LHS Associates programs "every single voting machine in New Hampshire, Connecticut, almost all of Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine," BBV founder Bev Harris reported after releasing the documents.

Despite the dangers posed by accessing memory cards, LHS staff members have admitted to regularly opening up voting machines and swapping memory cards, during actual elections.

In 2006, Hajjar himself told Connecticut's Talk Nation Radio that his company considers such activities to be routine, even in jurisdictions where accessing memory cards is strictly in violation of election procedures.

"I mean, I don't pay attention to every little law," Hajjar admitted to TNR's Dori Smith. "We would have a whole bunch of machines in the trunk in the car and we hope the phone doesn't ring, but if it does, somebody tells us where to go, we replace the machine and then we go on our merry way."

One such illegal memory card swap by LHS took place in Montville, CT, during the recount of the 2nd Congressional District race in 2006.

Hajjar found himself in further hot water in 2007 when, after he'd left bizarre and obscene comments on a story concerning Diebold at The BRAD BLOG, he was barred from working at all in the state of Connecticut by Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz.

Failures of Diebold's voting systems have become legendary. In 2004, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) quietly issued an advisory that the Diebold GEMS tabulator system features a "vulnerability... due to an undocumented backdoor account, which could [sic: allow] a local or remove authenticated malicious user [sic: to] modify votes". The advisory would not be publicly reported until late 2005.

In 2006, Princeton University found it was able to easily implant a vote-swapping virus onto the company's touch-screen voting system memory cards that could pass itself from machine to machine, flipping an entire election, across an entire county, without detection in the process. The startling hack was reported nationally, and even demonstrated live on Fox News. Still, little if anything was done by federal or state officials to prevent the situation from happening in jurisdictions where the same voting machines are still used today.

In 2008, the Diebold optical-scan system was discovered to have simply dropped hundreds of ballots from its final results in Humboldt County, CA. The failure was due to a years-old bug in the Diebold voting system, which officials in Humboldt hadn't been made aware of.

A subsequent investigation by California's Secretary of State Debra Bowen revealed a number of flaws in the voting systems' audit log functions. Voting machine companies have long maintained that any tampering with machines would be easily revealed by an examination of such logs. However, Bowen's investigation discovered that those logs - which are required to be "permanent" records of all activities on the machines - could be easily deleted and/or modified. Moreover, it was discovered that ballots themselves could be deleted from the system without notice in the logs, or even to system administrators. A Diebold spokesman would be forced to admit at a public hearing last year that all Diebold voting systems contain a number of the flaws discovered by the state of California.

As to the Sequoia systems used in parts of Massachusetts, the Gouverneur Times filed a lengthy exposé on that company's storied history of failures following the NY-23 Special Election debacle where their optical-scan systems failed in a number of counties, leading to confusion, and zero votes reported for Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in a number of precincts.

In Massachusetts, the state mandates that paper ballots be preserved according to a secure chain of custody. However, the state has no threshold or automatic system to require a hand-count of those ballots. If the computer-generated tallies are accepted as legitimate, the actual paper ballots will never be counted or checked for accuracy unless one of the candidates files a petition. The petition filing must occur within 6 days of the election, requires at least 10 signatures per ward and "The petitioner must file a separate recount petition in each ward of a city or precinct of a town in which he desires a recount."

The only way to guarantee accurate election results in Massachusetts is for a candidate to request a hand-count of all paper ballots in each town in the state - within 6 days of the election. Otherwise, the results of what could be an exceedingly close election, for an extraordinarily important U.S. Senate seat, could end up going to the candidate who didn't actually receive the most votes.

Nathan Barker is a conservative editor and reporter for The Gouverneur Times. Brad Friedman is an award-winning freelance progressive investigative journalist, noted expert on issues of election integrity, and the creator of the The BRAD BLOG.

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Stop the Chamber: Online action calls for investigation, limits on US Chamber of Commerce

from www.StopTheChamber.com, a VelvetRevolution.us Campaign

The Chamber of Commerce, under the leadership of Tom Donahue, has gone from a well respected trade organization to an extremist political organization dedicated to corrupting American democracy by elevating the profits of big corporations over the well being of the citizens they serve. The most recent example of this corrupt behavior is the Chamber's announcement that it is spending more than $100 million to defeat initiatives to protect the environment and provide affordable health care to everyone.

The Chamber is the biggest lobbying operation in the United States, spending billions of dollars on behalf of big business over the past decade to corrupt the political system. Polluters like Big Coal, Big Asbestos, and Big Oil only need call the Chamber to stop any accountability for their toxic destruction. Wall Street banks and CEOs need only make sure that they have paid their Chamber dues to ensure that they can continue to rip off the taxpayers. And killers like Big Tobacco need only form a partnership with the Chamber to ensure that they will be given immunity from lawsuits that seek accountability for the death and sickness of millions of Americans.

Click here to sign on.

Tom Donahue has turned the once respected and even-handed Chamber into an extremist organization, bragging that the Chamber gutted the Clinton tobacco settlement, killed the Clinton health care plan, and scuttled previous oversight of Wall Street and the banking system. Now the Chamber is spending tens of millions on ads and lobbyists to stop health care for all, protect polluters from accountability, and shield the financial industry from government regulation.

Not only is the Chamber lobbying and advertising against the interests of Americans, it is also committing fraud and violating campaign finance laws by creating fake astroturfing front groups, with patriotic names like Citizens for a Strong Ohio, and then illegally funneling millions of anonymous dollars into those groups to attack candidates and judges who won't do their bidding. While this corrupts the electoral system, the Chamber persists, even when it is caught, fined and required to disclose its "anonymous" donors.

We have had enough and it is time to Stop The Chamber. Therefore, we demand the following:

1. Fire Tom Donohue. Mr. Donohue is the Chamber's corrupter in chief who single handedly turned the Chamber "into a pay-to-play vehicle for right-wing causes and corporate dishonesty. As Eliot Spitzer put it, "Tom Donohue has never once found a crime that he couldn't justify, as long as it was committed by one of his dues-paying members."

2. Drop Corporate Support for the Chamber. Over the past month, several large companies have abandoned the Chamber because of its anti-science stance on global warming. These include, Apple, Exelon Energy, Pacific Gas & Electric, Nike, and Public Service Company of New Mexico. As Nike put it, "We fundamentally disagree with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the issue of climate change, and their recent action challenging the E.P.A. is inconsistent with our view that climate change is an issue in need of urgent action." We will target companies with exposure and boycotts if they remain with the Chamber.

3. Launch A Criminal Investigation Against The Chamber For Fraud, False Tax Filings And Campaign Finance Violations. Former Alliance for Democracy co-chair Cliff Arnebeck led the charge against the Chamber in Ohio, where it was found to have committed fraud and campaign finance violations by creating a front group called Citizens for a Strong Ohio and funneling millions of dollars through it to defeat Supreme Court Justice Alice Resnick. This Chamber practice is widespread and was also used against Karl Rove-targeted Mississippi Justice Oliver Diaz, and in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Michigan, West Virginia, and Arkansas. We are asking the Department of Justice to investigate these illegal practices under RICO and to review whether the Chamber is actually a political action committee rather than a trade association. See our letter to DOJ here.

4. Ask Congress To Investigate The Chamber. In addition to a criminal investigation, we want Congress to investigate the activities of the Chamber to include astroturfing and election manipulation as outlined by Public Citizen. Read U.S. Chamber of Commerce Failed to Report Electioneering Spending and Grants, Public Citizen Asks IRS to Investigate. Send a letter to Congress here.

5. Reorganize The Chamber. The Board of the Chamber should shut down the Chamber's lobbying arm and legal reform arm, and return to being a respected trade organization rather than a partisan PAC.

6. Speak Out Against The Chamber. We ask companies, politicians and others that do not agree with the flat earth, anti science, partisan, anti people approach of the Chamber to speak out publicly against the Chamber.

Click here to Send A Letter Asking Congress To Investigate The Chamber.

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Diebold and the electronic vote: the rig is up

ESS's purchase of Diebold's voting machine division gives one company with notorious ties to the GOP control of eighty percent of the votes cast on touchscreen machines. But that's merely the tip of a toxic iceberg.

by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman. Posted on The Rag Blog September 24, 2009

Unless U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder intervenes, your electronic vote in 2010 will probably be owned by the Republican-connected ES&S Corporation. With 80% ownership of America's electronic voting machines, ES&S could have the power to shape America's future with a few proprietary keystrokes.

ES&S has just purchased the voting machine division of the Ohio-based Diebold, whose role in fixing the 2004 presidential election for George W. Bush is infamous.

Critics of the merger hope Holder will rescind the purchase on anti-trust grounds.

But only a transparent system totally based on hand-counted paper ballots, with universal automatic voter registration, can get us even remotely close to a reliable vote count in the future.

For even if Holder does void this purchase, ES&S and Diebold in tandem will still control four of every five votes cast on touchscreen machines. As the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to open the floodgates on corporate campaign spending, the only difference could be that those who would buy our elections will have to write two checks instead of one.

And in fact, it's even worse than that. ES&S, Diebold and a tiny handful of sibling Republican voting equipment and computing companies control not only the touchscreen machines, but also the electronic tabulators that count millions of scantron ballots, AND the electronic polling books that decide who gets to vote and who doesn't.

Let's do a quick review:

1. ES&S, Diebold and other companies tied to election hardware and software are owned and operated by a handful of very wealthy conservatives, or right-to-life ideologues, with long-standing direct ties to the Republican Party;

2. As votes will be increasingly cast on optiscans, touchscreens or computer voting machines in the United States in 2010, the scant few so-called paper trail mechanisms that are in place will offer little security against electronic vote theft;

3. The source code on all U.S. touchscreen machines now used for the casting and counting of ballots is proprietary, meaning the companies that own and operate the machines -- including ES&S -- are not required to share with the public the details of how those machines actually work;

4. Although there are official mechanisms for monitoring and recounts, none carry any real weight in the face of the public's inability to gain control or even access to this electronic source code, whose proprietary standing has been upheld by the courts;

5. With the newly merged ES&S/Diebold now apparently controlling 80% of the national vote through hardware and software, this GOP-connected corporation will have the power to alter virtually every election in the U.S. with a few keystrokes. Unless there is a massive, successful grassroots campaign between now and 2012, the same will hold true for the next US presidential election;

6. Aside from its control of touchscreen machines, the merged Diebold/ES&S also controls a significant percent of the electronic optiscan tabulators to count cards on which voters use pencils to fill in circles, indicating their vote. Accounts of fraud, rigging, theft and abuse of these optiscan systems are well-documented and innumerable. Any corporation that prints these ballots and runs the machines designated to count them can control yet another major piece of the US vote count;

7. The merged ES&S/Diebold now also controls the electronic voter registration systems in many counties and states. With that control comes the ability to remove registered voters without significant public accountability. In the 2004 election, nearly 25% of all the registered voters in the Democratic-rich city of Cleveland were purged, including 10,000 voters erased "accidentally" by a Diebold electronic pollbook system. So in addition to controlling the vote counts on touchscreen and optiscan voting machines, the merged Diebold/ES&S and sympathetic hardware and software companies that service computerized voting equipment will control who actually gets to cast a vote in the first place.

Lest we forget: in 2000, long before this ES&S/Diebold purchase was proposed, Choicepoint, a GOP-controlled data management firm, hired by Florida’s Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris, removed up to 150,000 Florida citizens from voter rolls on the pretense that they were ex-felons. The vast majority of them were not.

Computer software "disappeared" 16,000 votes from Al Gore's column at a critical moment on election night, allowing George W. Bush’s first cousin John Ellis, a Fox News analyst, to proclaim him the winner. The election was officially decided by less than 700 votes and a 5-4 Supreme Court vote preventing a full recount. An independent audit later showed Gore was the rightful winner.

In 2004, more than 300,000 Ohio citizens were removed from voter rolls by GOP-controlled county election boards (more than one million have been removed since).

Various dirty tricks prevented still tens of thousands more Ohioans from voting. The vote count was marred by a wide range of official manipulations coordinated by then-Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.

Diebold was a major player in the 2004 Ohio elections, but was joined by numerous other computer voting firms and their technicians in "recounting the vote" which confirmed the Bush "victory," despite exit poll results and other evidence to the contrary. In defiance of a federal court order, 56 of 88 Ohio counties destroyed some or all of their ballots or election records. No one has been prosecuted.

In short, the ES&S purchase of Diebold's voting machine operation is merely the tip of a toxic iceberg. Voiding the merger will do nothing to solve the REAL problem, which is an electronic-based system of voter registration and ballot counting that is potentially controlled by private corporations and contractors whose agenda is to make large profits and protect the system that guarantees them.

Although elections based on universal automatic registration and hand-counted paper ballots are not foolproof, they constitute a start. Stealing an election by stuffing paper ballot boxes at the "retail" level is far more difficult than stealing votes at the "wholesale" level with an electronic flip of a switch.

As it's done in numerous other countries throughout the world, the only realistic means by which the U.S. can establish a democratic system of ballot casting and counting is to do it the old-fashioned way. With human-scale checks and balances we might even be secure in the knowledge that our elections and vote counts will truly reflect the will of the people. What a concept!

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books on election protection, available at freepress.org at, where this article also appears, and where Bob's Fitrakis Files are also available. Harvey Wasserman's History of the U.S. is at harveywasserman.com.

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Indiana Court strikes down voter ID law

Good news: a state appellate court in Indiana has struck down a law requiring voters to show identification at the polls there.

The voter id law was declared constitutional last year by the US Supreme Court, but was re-heard at the appellate level according to the Indiana Constitution. The appellate court ruled that the law was in violation of the state's version of the federal Equal Protection clause because it didn't require mail-in voters or some nursing home residents to show IDs, thereby holding one group of voters to a less-stringent standard of identification.

Indiana state officials said they would appeal to the State Supreme Court, but voting rights activists and legal scholars welcomed the decision. Speaking to the New York Times, Daniel P. Tokaji, an associate law professor at Ohio State University, said the Indiana Constitution is more protective of voting rights than the federal, and suggested that the appellate judges did not believe that the purpose of the law, passed by Republican legislators, was control of voter fraud.

Tova Andrea Wang, of Demos, noted these laws "particularly disenfranchise the elderly, people of color, the poor, people with disabilities and students," all traditionally Democratic voters. She called the idea that id laws are necessary for election integrity "a total canard."

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Corporation-funded referenda and signature fraud on "Corporations and Democracy"

This Friday on KZYX and Z's "Corporations and Democracy", Annie Esposito and Alliance for Democracy council member Steve Scalmanini will discuss the growing trend of corporation funded initiative campaigns like the one currently underway in Mendocino County (read Steve's article on the campaign here). Was April's signature drive, funded by Developers Diversified Realty of Ohio, fraudulent? Were you misled, or even lied to, to entice you to sign their petition? Are California's voters protected from fraudulent petition circulators? What are some other states doing to prevent fraudulent initiatives? Steve and Annie's guest will be Joel Foster, Deputy Director for Programs at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, that sponsors the Web site www.stopballotfraud.org. The show airs this Friday, July 3rd, from 1:00 to 2:00 pm Pacific time, on KZYX and Z - 90.7, 91.5, and 88.1 FM, and streams at www.kzyx.org.

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Just what we needed--another set of floodgates

As if there wasn't already enough money in politics, this fall the Supreme Court will order a reargument of a case that would enlarge "free speech" rules for corporations, by possibly overruling previous decisions upholding limits on corporate spending in federal elections.

The case involved the corporate-funded group "Citizens United," which produced an anti-Hillary Clinton video which they proposed airing through "on-demand" cable prior to the 2008 primary season. produced an anti-Hillary Clinton documentary. McCain-Feingold bans certain corporate-funded broadcasts in the pre-election period, and requires corporate funders of such ads be disclosed. As part of their case, the lawyers for Citizens United argued in favor of overturning the 1990 case Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which upheld limits on corporate spending in candidate elections. Richard L. Hasen, writing on Slate.com, raises the question of whether postponing a decision on the case means that the court intends to overturn this 1990 decision, and others that control the inflow of corporate money into elections. He writes:

If after reargument in September, corporate limits fall—and limits on the money labor unions can spend on campaigns, with them—we may well look back on the 2008 election as a quaint time when the amounts spent on elections were relatively modest. Expect the floodgates to open, and the money to flow freely, as early as next year.

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Don't wait until it's too late!

Just go to the website www.stealbackyourvote.org to download, print, and share with fellow voters.

More info? Today's edition of NPR's On Point featured Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talking about vote suppression and which states are likely to be trouble spots.

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Three-peat for a stolen election?

Voters Unite has already logged reports of electronic voting machines flipping votes, in all but two incidents shifting votes from Obama to McCain. Their searchable database also has links to media coverage for many of these incidents.

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Problems voting? Here's some suggestions

If you have problems casting a ballot because of machine malfunctions, here's some suggestions, compiled by the folks at Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections.

Problems can include: machine problems, polling place problems (machines not set up on time), switching or closing of polling place, voters forced to vote on a provisional ballot, long lines/waits, intimidation, unusual ID demands, poll workers asking inappropriate questions, etc.

1) Video Your Vote If possible, plan ahead for any problems by bringing a video camera with you to Video the Vote. Then, spread it around (send it to us and we'll help). Remember, the focus should be on gathering evidence and not telling stories. So, use video, audio, photographs, get names and phone numbers of witnesses, as well as voting machine serial numbers, names of poll workers, and document the time of day.

2) At the First Sign of a Problem, Stop At the first sign of a problem with your machine (or if you have any other problem listed below), stop what you are doing and ask to speak to the supervisor (skip the poll worker) at your polling location. Explain your problem. If they try and wave you off, call your main election commission number and ask to speak to the election commissioner until your problem is satisfactorily addressed. Keep in mind that many poll workers/supervisors will try and blame the voter, otherwise known as "operator error." Do not leave your polling place until your problem is well-documented and addressed to your complete satisfaction and, if the problem is with the machine, that the machine is quarantined. Oh, and don't leave before you get to vote.

3) File a Report. File Several Reports. Your local polling place will have incident reports available to you. If they do not, call the main election commission for your county and ask for someone to bring one to you. Make sure that both you and the supervisor sign it. An example of a report is here (Hat tip: Wake Up and Save Your Country Voters Guide). The U.S. Election Assistance Commission also lists on their website where you can find out how to file a report in your state. Again, the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-Our-Vote can also help with any questions in this area.

4) Call the Election Protection Hotline Report your incident to the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-Our-Vote, especially if you feel you are being bullied or your incident is not being taken seriously. The ACLU has a hotline as well at 1-877-523-2792. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Greg Palast offer suggestions as well in their comic StealBackYourVote.org.

5) Pledge to Stand Up to Stolen Elections Go to NoMoreStolenElections.org and pledge to not concede until every vote is counted - and counted as cast.

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Make sure every vote counts!

A terrific list of to-dos and links, from United for Peace with Justice.

With the election less than a month away, now is the time to make sure that every vote is cast and counted!

In 2000 and 2004, the right-wing machine went national with voter intimidation, misinformation, and other manuevers to steal elections. Possible illegal attempts to remove or block registration are underway right now in six states. Now is the time for the antiwar movement to join election activists in communities to protect the vote. Check with local chapters of NAACP, ADC, AFL-CIO, and the ACLU for efforts already underway (see contact info below).

Resources:

• Vote Early. And encourage others to do so! Thirty states allow early voting; check if yours is one here. Early voting flags registration problems, which can then be addressed before November 4th. In addition, your time can be freed up to help get people to the polls and to be a poll monitor on Election Day.
• Register. In some states, there is still time for people to register to be able to vote in this election. Check the deadline in your state here.
• Poll Monitor. Staffing the polls allows you to be a resource for voters needing assistance and to deal with problems when they occur. Volunteer here or here to be poll monitor in your respective area.
• Join election protection efforts in swing states. Help staff election protection phones: 1-866-OUR-VOTE and, in Spanish, 1-888-VE-Y-VOTA. Or sign up here .
• Legal Assistance on November 4th. Voters have the right to complain on Election Day if they are not allowed to cast their ballot for the candidates of their choice. If they call 1-866-OUR-VOTE or, in Spanish, 1-888-VE-Y-VOTA, they will get legal assistance.
• Write letters to the editors now, giving the numbers listed above to call if voters have problems. State that stolen elections will not be tolerated! Tell your Congressperson and Senator that you take this threat to our vote seriously. Let them know that you expect them to object to the vote count in any state where there are clear examples of election fraud. For background information on what happened in 2004 in Ohio, watch this short video. Click here for an overview of the situation.
• If you have helped register new voters, ask them to confirm their registration before Election Day. Most of this can be done online. Be sure everyone has the number to call if they encounter problems on Election Day. Remind people how important it is to call when problems occur, ideally before leaving the polling station!
• Consider seeking or providing civil disobedience training for election protection volunteers. If there is conflict, it is important to be able to respond in a way that does not fuel the right-wing's desire to discredit our efforts. Thousands of people were involved in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to secure the right to vote for all. Check here for more information on nonviolent civil disobedience training, resources, and networking.
• Participate in local gatherings on November 5th to review and evaluate the process to make improvements for even better election protection during the 2010 election cycle.

For additional information and tips visit:

ACLU

AFL-CIO voter protection campaign

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

Election Defense Alliance

Election Protection - massive national effort by civil rights lawyers

Just Vote 2008

NAACP

Native Vote

No More Stolen Elections

Poll workers for Democracy

Steal Back Your Vote - a comic book piece to help inspire voter protection work

Video the Vote

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A few more articles on voting rights

Last week the New York Times found that tens of thousands of new voters have been illegally removed from the voting rolls--not because of any partisan action but because of mistakes in how states are following new regulations on registrations and voter files. Still, because the majority of new registrants are Democrats, the opposition party is going to take the biggest hit in November.

Regardless of whether human error or human malice is behind the Times's findings, there's a lot out there that stinks like a three-day fish. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have a net-full at FreePress.org, here. And there's a great defense of ACORN circulating c/o Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections.

Are you registered to vote? Are you sure? Check out this page at Election Defense Alliance to find out how you can confirm your voter status.

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Videos of Ohio Election Protection Conference now available online

New at Freepress.org: videos of the "As Goes Ohio ... Election Protection Conference" held September 26-28 in Columbus, Ohio, can now be viewed online here, including the keynote address by Mark Crispin Miller, author of Loser Take All and Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Elections. Click here for the full agenda for the conference. Here's a video of former Alliance national co-chair Cliff Arnebeck with an update on the the King Lincoln Bronzeville lawsuit.

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