Guest guest Posted August 31, 2004 Report Share Posted August 31, 2004 http://www.blackboxvoting.org/?q=node/view/75 Consumer Reports: Part 4 - Solutions to GEMS central tabulator problem Submitted by Bev Harris on Thu, 08/26/2004 - 11:29. Investigations Recommendations: County officials should be required to maintain the following procedures to mitigate risk: - Control access to the central tabulator through key logs and access cards - Get rid of all modems and any wireless communications. The use of the digiboard modem bank attached to GEMS has got to stop. - All corrective entries should be journaled and documented and publicly available, whether or not " they would change the outcome of the election. " (Click " read more " for the rest of this section) - Maintain a list of everyone who enters the central tabulator room, with log in and out times and dates - Any Diebold techs or county IT people who are allowed access the central tabulator room should be formally deputized or certified and sworn as election officials. Their names and credentials should be available to the public. The names of all individuals allowed access to central tabulators should be posted publicly during elections, and all individuals who have access the central tabulator should be available to citizens through public records requests. - Physical control, in addition to keys to the room, should include blocking off access through ceiling panels and limiting physical access through all other means. - In Diebold counties especially, the touch screens have got to go. The combination of a central tabulator that can be hacked six ways from Sunday in seconds, including the option of melting down the entire election, destroying the data, cannot be combined with unauditable electronic systems which keep no physical record of the vote. Short term corrective action for touch screen counties: All counties who have touch screens also have central count machines for paper ballots, for counting absentee votes. In November, use paper ballots and count them all in the high speed central count machine used for absentees. Polling place tapes State officials should require all counties to post polling place tapes containing all results before votes are transmitted to the central count facility. - Two copies should be printed, one to be posted at the polling place and the other to be attached to the vote data, sealed, and transported to the county in front of at least two witnesses. - A one hundred percent audit of all polling place tapes against the data in GEMS should be performed. This must include summing up the data on all polling place tapes, to compare totals from polling place vs. central tabulator. Remember: The way GEMS is constructed, it will pass the polling place comparison unless data is also totalled on both reports. The importance of the second copy: The first copy is sent privately to the county elections official. A second copy is needed in order to make an audit set of data available to the public simultaneously. - Quit co-mingling of data. Absentee and provisional/challenge/early votes must not be mixed together with polling place votes, but must be accounted for as a separate line item. - There must be consequences for failure to follow risk reduction procedures. - Taxpayers should demand that their local government dump Diebold and seek restitution of their money under consumer protection laws. WAYS TO GET TAXPAYER RESTITUTION: Attorneys: Black Box Voting may join in your county, state, or federal Qui Tam actions, waiving our right to the whistleblower bounty, retaining your own for attorneys fees if possible, providing the evidence we have (and it fills a small warehouse by now), in order to get taxpayer restitution for the purchase of this system. What about the Qui Tam requirement to seal the evidence? We believe that in this case, the fraudulent claims cases should be filed anyway, with a refusal to seal the evidence, to recover money for the taxpayer. Yes, there are some who say that to prevail with a false claims act, the evidence must be sealed, and some have kept quiet about what they are gathering, saying " nothing can be done until after the election. " We disagree. We, all of us, have an obligation to head off this train wreck. ALL evidence must be put into the hands of the public, so that we can have a fair election. Let us go forth with preventive actions instead of sabotaging the election in order to profit on the back end. Consumer fraud cases are needed to achieve taxpayer restitution. The evidence must not be sealed, because it is needed in order to put approprate security procedures in place to protect the election. California is expected to announce on Sept. 6 whether they will help seek taxpayer restitution in the existing Qui Tam. We predict that the California Attorney General will reject the effort to seek taxpayer restitution. Instead, they will try to rehabilitate Diebold. Two members of the California Voting Systems Panel have told Black Box Voting that they intend to deal with Diebold after the election. Diebold has just demonstrated its " voter verified paper ballot " to California. Yet, this system really doesn't matter, if you don't have security in place, don't audit, and can hack the central tabulator. More predictions Diebold (and many public officials) will claim, again, that they have corrected the problem. Public officials will omit any mention of the messy little business where the embezzler put the election-manipulation program into the central tabulator, or the uncomfortable fact that Diebold left it there for years, for anyone to use or sell. The GEMS software will remain secret, and even the county officials won't examine it, because they are forbidden to do so by their contract with Diebold. (See our consumer report on contracts) While we are walking local officials through the problems with GEMS over the phone, showing them it exists, we expect high ranking officials and the Diebold company to justify their decision to do nothing by attacking the messenger, (Black Box Voting). We will be called nuts, kooks, and cranks. How much taxpayer money is involved? You can't run the multimillion dollar Diebold voting system without GEMS. State of Georgia: $52 million State of Maryland: We hear it is up to $70 million by now. State of Arizona: Approx. $50 million State of California: In total, approx. $100 million All in all, the Diebold system is used in about three dozen states, and the amount of money spent nationwide is between 1/2 and 3/4 billion. This nasty situation reminds us of the Savings and Loan crisis in the 1980s, in that it is such a boondoggle that one hardly wants to admit that it exists. But, like the S & L scandal, the train wreck is approaching. It's not too late. * Voters want and deserve security procedures to protect the integrity of their vote this fall. * Taxpayers want and deserve their money back. * Public officials must be informed, and if they refuse to look, it must be documented so that they can be held accountable. * Anyone who looks has a moral obligation to do something about this. Any public official who looks has a legal obligation to take the appropriate steps. Click here to donate # # # # # Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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