Update for donors from Black Box Voting

[Guest guest]

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Bev

 

Wednesday, December 29, 2004 10:47 AM

Update for donors from Black Box Voting

 

An update on the Black Box Voting " Help America Audit " project:

 

You should have recently received a message with an update for our

donors. This is the second of three short updates, and it pertains to

computer analysis and audits. The third update is about our " Activate

the Eagles " program for empowering volunteers.

 

HELP AMERICA AUDIT:

 

The news coming out of Ohio -- vote suppression and punch card

problems (Triad) -- is fascinating. As you know if you have been

following this site, we are a nonpartisan 501c(3) organization and are

prohibited by law from becoming involved in recounts or partisan

politics. You can expect more news from Ohio, especially in the areas

of punch card integrity and vote suppression.

 

You can follow the latest breaking news in a new section on our Web

site: Click " News Stories " at this link -

http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/discus.cgi

 

As you will see, vote suppression and punch card issues in Ohio,

though significant, are only a small part of the problem.

 

Our voting system is not transparent (even if punch cards go away and

we deal more effectively with suppression). To date, almost nowhere

have the elections held on optical scan and touch screen machines

really been audited. Citizens are finding their questions surprisingly

unwelcome in too many places.

 

The pain of millions of Americans, who were forced to vote on

paperless touch-screens against their will, who have no idea if their

provisional ballot was counted, who wonder whether the central

tabulators lost or altered their optical scan ballot vote, whose voter

registration was lost in the computer, who were not allowed to watch

or ask questions, either during voting machine purchase or while votes

were being tabulated, will not be go away simply by doing

investigations into Triad voting systems (a punch card manufacturer

that is being phased out) in Ohio.

 

What we need is REAL electoral reform, so that all votes, everywhere,

for all positions, are cast and counted accurately. That is the

mission of Black Box Voting. We are in it for the long haul, and our

overall mission is to force accountability and transparency back into

our electoral system, on both local and national levels. Now the real

work begins:

 

THE " HELP AMERICA AUDIT " CAMPAIGN

 

On Election Night, Nov 2, 2004, Black Box Voting sent out a massive

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. What we requested were

audit documents - internal logs from the voting machines themselves,

in every county in America.

 

Our first audit, Volusia County Florida, using the documents we

received from our Nov. 2 request, resulted in a lawsuit seeking to set

aside the election in that county due to missing records and

discrepancies. We are still working on Volusia County.

 

Our second audit, Palm Beach County, Florida, resulted in a lawsuit

against Theresa LePore (of butterfly ballot fame in the 2000 election)

for unlawfully withholding records. She has still refused to part with

a large part of the records, and we are still fighting to get them. We

will win this fight; the question is, how long can she delay.

 

Our third audit, Lucas County, Ohio, is our first " open source " public

audit. You will see many more of these. We have posted internal logs

for the Diebold optical scan voting machines online. If you have

skills with computer records, or auditing, please join us in the

effort. You can find the Lucas County audit on this week's featured forum:

 

http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/discus.cgi

 

Our fourth audit is nationwide in scope, and pertains to auditing

various documents to identify the remote access setup for the Diebold

central tabulator, which was used in 30 states, and counted at least

40 million votes on Nov. 2. We have posted a number of documents about

this, which you can also find in the forum workspace at the above link.

 

In order to activate a truly " open source " audit, we beefed up our Web

site security and capacity. We are still working on that. We have

added two new domains: bbvdocs.org, which will be a gigantic document

repository, and bbvforums.org, which provides a workspace for citizens

who wish to help bring back transparent, accountable elections.

 

We also got a whole new look - thanks to the donated talents of Andy

Markley, at Art101.com - and our Web site,

http://www.blackboxvoting.org, is undergoing a transformation that

will make it easier to navigate and find information.

 

Another piece of infrastructure needed for " Help America Audit " is a

specific document scanner that can convert computer logs given to us

on paper into text files, and burn them to CD, so we can upload them

to the Web for open source audits. We are putting that apparatus in

place shortly, and it will help convert tens of thousands of pages of

documents into Internet-friendly form.

 

You may remember a group called Judicial Watch, who did the hand

recount of Florida in 2000. As you'll recall, they were not finished

in 10 days, or even 30 days. The project we have undertaken is large,

but of critical importance, and will continue throughout 2005. The

documents we are analyzing and the information we are obtaining will

be used in court and as basic research to guide corrective legislation.

 

We have already targeted additional locations for more auditing. These

locations include:

Cuyahoga County, Ohio

Snohomish County, Washington

Pima County, Arizona

Brevard, Duval, Broward, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Orange, and

Miami-Dade counties in Florida

Several counties in New Mexico

El Paso, Collin, and Comal counties in Texas

San Bernardino, Riverside, Alameda, Kern, and Los Angeles counties in

California

 

We are also following up on several FOIA requests pertaining to the

actions of members of NASED and the ITA certifiers. We do need your

continued participation. Please become a part of the action.

 

# # # # #

 

Because you are a donor, the three update e-mails have already been

automated to send. We protect your privacy and do not allow ANY OTHER

individual or organization to have your contact information. If you

receive ANY message from another group or individual that you suspect

came from your donation to Black Box Voting, please notify us immediately.

 

Now, if you haven't already done so, please hit " reply " and type ONE

of the following messages in the subject line:

 

- Please send me weekly updates

- Please send me monthly updates

- Please send me NO updates at all

- Please send me a custom response (type your question in body of message)

 

Here's an update on Black Box Voting:

 

On November 12, seeking answers to a specific vote-fraud question on the

Diebold voting machines, Black Box Voting went to Florida for one day.

We didn't

get back until Dec. 9.

 

While in Florida, together with local citizens, we found significant

problems in

Volusia County (Diebold - audit did not check out; note the outstanding

contributions of Florida Fair Voting Coalition and citizen Susan Pynchon),

Pinellas County (Sequoia - stay tuned on this one, outstanding work by

local citi

zens), Brevard County (Diebold -- obstructiveness and lying about

public reco

rds) and Palm Beach County (Sequoia -- all kinds of problems, with very

important work by local citizens), in addition to what's been reported

elsewhere.

 

Black Box Voting met with citizens in Florida who are making a real

difference.

WHAT'S IN STORE FOR AMERICA: The key word is " relentless. " We have not

given up. We will not give up.

 

1. Unfortunately, the Black Box Voting " volunteer action " forums are

compromised; hackers broke in and removed our own ability to use or

moderate

our own forums. Good people are working on that and we will solve it soon.

 

2. The Black Box Voting Cleanup Crew plan: ACTIVATING THE EAGLES

 

" Doves, sparrows, and other low-flying birds gather together, but

eagles soar alone and must be gathered one at a time. "

 

You, as an individual citizen, are America's best hope to clean up

elections, which must be done starting at the local level. Using your

own common sense, get started on your own local elections. Take an

action, and let us know what you've done. Black Box Voting

investigators will be traveling to meet with c

itizens who show that they take initiative on their own.

 

Our republic will revive when we have REAL grass roots growing, that

is, people who are taking independent action on a local level, using

their own common sense. This does

 

not always require a group. One person can make a real difference. We

can help you by giving you ideas, technical advice, and by sending an

investigator to you.

 

- If actions taken by Black Box Voting make sense to you, try

something similar in your local jurisdiction.

 

- A Black Box Voting investigator may arrange to meet with you or your

group, to help educate you, share ideas, and fund-raise. We will

select those who show initiative on their own, with creative ideas

that make things happen independent of our organization.

 

When we say " fund-raising, " we are not talking about fund raising for

Black Box Voting. We visit you on OUR OWN dime. Whatever you arrange

for fund raising during our visit will go to YOUR group, to empower

action, purchase your local public records, pay court costs, whatever

you need to use it for.

 

Grass roots activism, in the form that is most dangerous to

corporate-controlled power, is activism that is not centralized. A

national organization with chapters in each state, which issues

official position papers and directs/organizes actions, is using a

corporate model itself.

 

Black Box Voting is more revolutionary: We encourage independent

action, which we do not control or directly organize. We are looking

for relentless, clever, loosely allied people, taking actions they

have figured out for themselves, using their own common sense and

whatever resources they can bring to bear.

This creates a swarm that becomes impossible to fight.

 

Usually, before we will send an investigator to help you, you must

show that you are taking action on your own. We are more interested in

auditing elections and enforcing transparency than we are in holding

rallies, and we are most interested in helping citizens who are

self-directed, gutsy, sensible, and di

fficult to discourage.

 

Relentless. Eagles. You can make it happen. We'll help.

 

# # # # #

 

Bev Harris - Executive Director

Black Box Voting (.ORG) - http://www.blackboxvoting.org

To donate: Mail to Black Box Voting, PO Box 25552 Seattle WA 98165 or

donate

online: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html