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Bigger Than Watergate!

How To Rig An Election In The United States

Column: C.D. Sludge

07/08/03: (Scoop) The story you are about to read is in this
writer's view the biggest political scandal in American history, if not
global
history. And it is being broken today here in New Zealand.

This story cuts to the bone the machinery of democracy in
America today. Democracy is the only protection we have against despotic
and
arbitrary government, and this story is deeply disturbing.

Imagine if you will that you are a political interest group
that wishes to control forevermore the levers of power. Imagine further
that you
know you are likely to implement a highly unpopular political
agenda, and you do not wish to be removed by a ballot driven backlash.

One way to accomplish this outcome would be to adopt the
Mugabe (Zimbabwe) or Hun Sen (Cambodia) approach. You agree to hold
elections, but simultaneously arrest, imprison and beat your
opponents and their supporters. You stuff ballot boxes, disenfranchise
voters
who are unlikely to vote for you, distort electoral
boundaries and provide insufficient polling stations in areas full of
opposition
supporters.

However as so many despots have discovered, eventually such
techniques always fail ? often violently. Hence, if you are a truly
ambitious
political dynasty you have to be a bit more subtle about your
methods.

Imagine then if it were possible to somehow subvert the
voting process itself in such a way that you could steal elections
without anybody
knowing.

Imagine for example if you could:

- secure control of the companies that make the voting
machines and vote counting software;
- centralise vote counting systems, and politicise their
supervision;
- legislate for the adoption of such systems throughout your
domain, and provide large amounts of money for the purchase of these
systems;
- establish systems of vote counting that effectively prevent
anybody on the ground in the election ? at a booth or precinct level -
from
seeing what is happening at a micro-level;
- get all the major media to sign up to a single exit-polling
system that you also control ? removing the risk of exit-polling showing
up
your shenanigans.

And imagine further that you;

- install a backdoor, or numerous backdoors, in the vote
counting systems you have built that enable you to manipulate the
tabulation of
results in real time as they are coming in.

Such a system would enable you to intervene in precisely the
minimum number of races necessary to ensure that you won a majority on
election night. On the basis of polling you could pick your
marginal seats and thus keep your tweaking to a bare minimum.

Such a system would enable you to minimise the risks of
discovery of your activities.

Such a system would enable you to target and remove
individual political opponents who were too successful, too popular or
too
inquisitive.

And most importantly of all, such a system would enable you
to accomplish all the above without the public being in the least aware
of
what you were doing. When confronted with the awfulness of
your programme they would be forced to concede that at least it is the
result of a democratic process.

How To Rig An Election In The United States

So how would such a system actually work?

Well one way to run such a corrupt electoral system might
look like this.

- Each voting precinct (or booth) could be fitted with
electronic voting systems, optical scanning systems, punch card voting
systems or
the more modern touchscreen electronic voting machines;

- At the close of play each day the booth/precinct supervisor
could be under instructions to compile an electronic record of the votes
cast
in their booth;

- They might print out a report that contains only the
details of the total votes count for that precinct/booth, and then file
via modem the
full electronic record of votes through to the County
supervisor;

- The County Supervisor could be equipped with a special
piece of software and a bank of modems that enables all these results to
be
received and tabulated in the internals of the computer;

- The County Supervisors themselves could be assured that
their system was bullet proof, certified and contained tamper-protection

mechanisms par excellence;

- The Country Supervisor could be given a range of tools for
looking at the data within this software, but nothing to enable them to
directly manipulate the results;

- But unbeknownst to the County Supervisor the software could
actually create three separate records of the voting data;

- Meanwhile - also unbeknownst to the County Supervisor -
these three tables of voting data could be in fact completely insecure
and
accessible simply through a common database programme, say
Microsoft Access;

- Having the three tables would enable you to keep the real
data in place ? so the system could pass spot tests on individual
precincts and
booth results (should a precinct supervisor be particularly
astute) -while simultaneously enabling you to manipulate the bottom line
result;

- Finally you might also enhance the election hacker's powers
by including within the software a utility to enable them to cover their

tracks by changing the date and time stamps on files and
remove evidence of your tampering.

Fantasy Becomes Reality

The above description of a corrupt voting system is not the
result of an overactive imagination. Rather it is the result of a
extensive
research by computer programmers and journalists working
around the globe. Principally it is the work of investigative Journalist
Bev
Harris, author of the soon to be published book " Black Box
Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century "

And most important of all it is the result of research
focussed on investigating the actual software distributed by one of the
largest voting
systems companies operating in the recent U.S. Elections.

CAVEAT: It is important to note that the research
into this subject has not established that the files we have been
working on were in fact in situ in County Election
Supervisors offices at the last election ? nor have we proof that
the back door we have discovered - which might
enable the rigging of elections - was actually used in any recent
election. However it is the considered opinion of
all those involved in this investigation that it is not up to us as
journalists or programmers to prove that elections
were rigged, rather it is a responsibility of the electoral system
itself to prove its integrity.

What you read here amounts to revelation of
evidence of motive, opportunity, method, prior conduct , and a
variety of items of, consistent unexplained
circumstantial evidence . Significantly we do not believe we have
sufficient resources to complete this investigation
to its conclusion and are therefore making available our findings
to the media, community organisations, political
parties, computer scientists and geeks in the anticipation that they
will pick up the torch and take extend this inquiry
into every county in the United States.

How We Discovered The Backdoor

The story of how this story emerged is a great tale in
itself, most of which has already been told in this report by Bev
Harris.

SYSTEM INTEGRITY FLAW DISCOVERED AT DIEBOLD ELECTION SYSTEMS
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0302/S00052.htm

The short version of the story is relatively simple.

In the course of investigating the issue of the integrity of
new electronic voting machines Bev Harris learned that people around the
world
had been downloading from an open FTP site belonging to
Diebold Election Systems one of the leading manufactures of voting
systems.

This website contained several gigabytes of files including
manuals, source codes and installation versions of numerous parts of the

Diebold voting system, and of its vote counting programme
GEMS.

Realising we had stumbled across what might be the equivalent
of the Pentagon Papers for elections, the full contents of this website
have
been secured around the world at several locations. The
original website was itself taken down on January 29th 2003.

We can now reveal for the first time the location of a
complete online copy of the original data set. As we anticipate attempts
to
prevent the distribution of this information we encourage
supporters of democracy to make copies of these files and to make them
available on websites and file sharing networks.

http://users.actrix.co.nz/dolly/

As many of the files are zip password protected you may need
some assistance in opening them, we have found that the utility
available at
the following URL works well:

http://www.lostpassword.com

Finally some of the zip files are partially damaged, but
these too can be read by using the utility at:

http://www.zip-repair.com/

At this stage in this inquiry we do not believe that we have
come even remotely close to investigating all aspects of this data. I.E.
There is
no reason to believe that the security flaws discovered so
far are the only ones.

Therefore we expect many more discoveries to be made. We want
the assistance of the online computing community in this enterprise and
we encourage you to file your findings at the forum HERE

Finally, for obvious reasons it is important that this
information is distributed as widely as possible as quickly as possible.
We encourage
all web bloggers, web publishers and web media to re-publish
and link to this article and to its companion article by Bev Harris
which
contains detailed descriptions of how to use the GEMS
software to rig an election.:

To conclude this overview article I will make a few more
comments on the evidence we have thus far that the U.S. election system
has
been compromised. As stated earlier we do not at this stage
have proof that it has in fact been been compromised through this
method, just
a great deal of circumstantial evidence that it could have
been.

If this was Watergate, we are effectively at the point of
discovering evidence of a break-in and have received the call from
deep-throat
telling us that should dig much deeper.

Proof will follow in time we expect, but only if the work we
have begun is completed and this inquiry is taken into every corner of
the
U.S. electoral system.

Evidence Of Motive

This is probably the easiest part of this puzzle to get your
head around. The motivation of the Republican Party in general and the
current
administration in particular to gain ever greater amounts of
power - by whatever means possible and damn the consequences - is
evidenced
most recently in the Supreme Court's partisan appointment of
George Bush Jr. as President, the attempt to recall California Governor
Gray Davis, and the Ken Starr investigation and attempted
impeachment of President Clinton.

Evidence Of Opportunity ,

Republican connected control over the major election systems
companies in the United States has been thoroughly researched.

Bob Urosevich, CEO of Diebold Election Systems is also the
founder of ES&S, a competing voting machine company. Together these
two companies are responsible for tallying around 80% of
votes cast in the United States. Also significant, from what we can
determine
about the architecture of the software, is that its basic
structure was specifically a creation of Mr Urosevich's company I-Mark.

For more background on Diebold Systems connections to the
Republican Party see:

Diebold - The Face Of Modern Ballot Tampering
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00081.htm

Meanwhile Presidential wannabee and Republican Party United
States Senator Chuck Hagel has been directly connected to ES&S via his
campaign finance director, Michael McCarthy, who has admitted
that Senator Hagel still owns a beneficial interest in the ES&S parent
company, the McCarthy Group.

Senate Ethics Director Resigns; Senator Hagel Admits Owning
Voting Machine Company
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0301/S00166.htm

Evidence Of Method

The evidence of method has been detailed in a companion
article by Bev Harris, author of the soon to be published block-buster
Black
Box Voting.

Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065.htm

In this article ? which contains screenshots from the
software and detailed instructions on how one might rig an election -
Bev Harris
explains security flaws thus:

The GEMS election file contains more than one "set
of books." They are hidden from the person running the GEMS
program, but you can see them if you go into
Microsoft Access.

You might look at it like this: Suppose you have
votes on paper ballots, and you pile all the paper ballots in room one.
Then, you make a copy of all the ballots and put
the stack of copies in room 2.

You then leave the door open to room 2, so that
people can come in and out, replacing some of the votes in the stack
with their own.

You could have some sort of security device that
would tell you if any of the copies of votes in room 2 have been
changed, but you opt not to.

Now, suppose you want to count the votes. Should
you count them from room 1 (original votes)? Or should you
count them from room 2, where they may or may not
be the same as room 1? What Diebold chose to do in the files
we examined was to count the votes from "room2."

Evidence Of Prior Conduct

It is a recorded fact that every system of balloting
established in America has been gamed and rigged. I.E. America's
political practitioners
have a very long history of ballot rigging and vote
tampering. This is nothing new and evidence of the sort we have
uncovered has been
long predicted by computer scientists such as Dr Rebecca
Mercuri.

In more recent history investigative Journalist Greg Palast
has documented in detail Katherine Harris's use of electronic data
matching
technologies to disenfranchise thousands of Florida voters in
advance of the 2000 Presidential election.

We highly recommend readers purchase a copy of "The Best
Democracy Money Can Buy" by Greg Palast to read much more about this.

A compendium of links on Palast's investigations can be found
via a Google search on:
"greg palast florida katherine harris"

Consistent Unexplained Circumstantial Evidence

During the 2002 Mid-term there were numerous reports of
unusual happenings in counties throughout the United States.

Among the phenomena reported were voting numbers suddenly
fluctuating in the middle of the counting process, something you might
expect to see if the backdoor identified above were used
clumsily.

An organisation called Votewatch was set up during the 2002
elections to record unusual happenings and its archives can be viewed
here.

http://pub103.ezboard.com/bsoldiervoice

It will suffice here to cite a couple of specific examples ?
these are excerpts from the soon to be published " Black Box Voting:
Ballot
Tampering In The 21st Century". These examples of actual
events are consistent with the existence and use of an electronic vote
counting
hack described above.

November 1990, Seattle, Washington - Worse than the butterfly
ballot, some Democratic candidates watched votes alight, then flutter
away. Democrat Al Williams saw 90 votes wander off his tally
between election night and the following day, though no new counting had

been done. At the same time, his opponent, Republican Tom
Tangen, gained 32 votes. At one point several hundred ballots added to
returns didnï¿½t result in any increase in the number of votes.
But elsewhere, the number of votes added exceeded the number of
additional
ballots counted. A Republican candidate achieved an amazing
surge in his absentee percentage for no apparent reason. And no one
seemed
to notice (until a determined Democratic candidate started
demanding an answer) that the machines simply forgot to count 14,000
votes.

November 1996, Bergen County, New Jersey - Democrats told
Bergen County Clerk Kathleen Donovan to come up with a better
explanation for mysterious swings in vote totals. Donovan
blamed voting computers for conflicting tallies that rose and fell by
8,000 or
9,000 votes. The swings perplexed candidates of both parties.
For example, the Republican incumbent, Anthony Cassano, had won by
about 7,000 votes as of the day after the election but his
lead evaporated later. One candidate actually lost 1,600 votes during
the
counting. ï¿½How could something like that possibly happen?ï¿½
asked Michael Guarino, Cassanoï¿½s Democratic challenger. ï¿½Something is
screwed up here.ï¿½

November 1999, Onondaga County, New York - Computers gave the
election to the wrong candidate, then gave it back. Bob Faulkner,
a political newcomer, went to bed on Election Night confident
he had helped complete a Republican sweep of three open council seats.
But after Onondaga County Board of Elections staffers
rechecked the totals, Faulkner had lost to Democratic incumbent Elaine
Lytel.

April 2002, Johnson County, Kansas - Johnson Countyï¿½s new
Diebold touch screen machines, proclaimed a success on election night,
did not work as well as originally believed. Incorrect vote
totals were discovered in six races, three of them contested, leaving
county
election officials scrambling to make sure the unofficial
results were accurate. Johnson County Election Commissioner Connie
Schmidt
checked the machines and found that the computers had under-
and over-reported hundreds of votes. ï¿½The machines performed
terrifically,ï¿½ said Bob Urosevich, CEO of Diebold Election
Systems. ï¿½The anomaly showed up on the reporting part.ï¿½

The problem, however, was so perplexing that Schmidt asked
the Board of Canvassers to order a hand re-count to make sure the
results
were accurate. Unfortunately, the touch screen machines did
away with the ballots, so the only way to do a hand recount is to have
the
machine print its internal data page by page. Diebold tried
to re-create the error in hopes of correcting it. ï¿½I wish I had an
answer,ï¿½
Urosevich said. In some cases, vote totals changed
dramatically.

November 2002, Comal County, Texas - A Texas-sized lack of
curiosity about discrepancies: The uncanny coincidence of three winning
Republican candidates in a row tallying up exactly 18,181
votes each was called weird, but apparently no one thought it was weird
enough
to audit. Conversion to alphabet: 18181 18181 18181 ahaha
ahaha ahaha

November 2002, Baldwin County, Alabama - No one at the voting
machine company can explain the mystery votes that changed after
polling places had closed, flipping the election from the
Democratic winner to a Republican in the Alabama governorï¿½s race.
ï¿½Something
happened. I donï¿½t have enough intelligence to say exactly
what,ï¿½ said Mark Kelley of ES&S. Baldwin County results showed that
Democrat Don Siegelman earned enough votes to win the state
of Alabama. All the observers went home. The next morning, however,
6,300 of Siegelmanï¿½s votes inexplicably had disappeared, and
the election was handed to Republican Bob Riley. A recount was
requested,
but denied.

November 2002, New York - Voting machine tallies impounded in
New York: Software programming errors hampered and confused the
vote tally on election night and most of the next day,
causing elections officials to pull the plug on the vote-reporting Web
site.
Commissioners ordered that the voting machine tallies be
impounded, and they were guarded overnight by a Monroe County deputy
sheriff.

November 2002, Georgia - Election officials lost their
memory: Fulton County election officials said that memory cards from 67
electronic voting machines had been misplaced, so ballots
cast on those machines were left out of previously announced vote
totals. No
hand count can shine any light on this; the entire state of
Georgia went to touch-screen machines with no physical record of the
vote.
Fifty-six cards, containing 2,180 ballots, were located, but
11 memory cards still were missing two days after the election: Bibb
County
and Glynn County each had one card missing after the initial
vote count. When DeKalb County election officials went home early
Wednesday morning, they were missing 10 cards.

**** ENDS ****

Antiï¿½opyright Sludge 2003

-- -Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU 88.9 FM WED 8-9PM PST

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