Our Worst Fears - Diebold WasEngineering Rigged Elections: Consumer Report Part 4

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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

 

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