Audit Arizona (AUDIT AZ) Articles

AZ Democratic Party Passes Holt Bill Resolution

2007-01-25T11:50:00.000-08:00

RESOLUTION

ARIZONA DEMOCRATIC PARTY, “ADP”

Saturday, January 20, 2007 - Phoenix Arizona

Submitted by: Ted Downing; Chair [downing@cox.net]

ARIZONA DEMOCRATIC PARTY-- ELECTION INTEGRITY COMMITTEE - ADP-EIC

RESOLUTION FOR A CALL TO ACTION IN SUPPORT OF THE

NEW RUSH HOLT BILL TO IMPROVE THE TRANSPARENCY AND

AUDITABILITY OF THE AMERICAN ELECTORAL PROCESS

WHEREAS: The Arizona Democratic Party - Election Integrity Committee “ADP-EIC” conducted a comprehensive campaign to observe and document the 2006 election, asserting rights granted political parties under Arizona law, publicly advocating for the fundamental right of every Arizona citizen to vote and to have each vote counted as intended in a secure, transparent, impartial, and independently audited election process; and

WHEREAS: EIC members locally, statewide, nationally and collectively realize that security maintained through obscurity doesn’t work! Only by the full light of transparency can the system be secured, audited and made democratically reliable as our votes are processed to our satisfaction; and

WHEREAS: The New York Times reported on its front page January 4 2007 that Ciber, one of three companies selected and paid for by voting machine companies to secretly test their electronic voting systems failed to receive interim accreditation from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission six months ago for failure to follow quality control procedures and an inability to document that it was adequately testing to federal voting systems standards. Ciber tested AND certified machines were in use for the November election around the nation and in Pima County and 12 other Arizona counties; and

WHEREAS: Legislation that will be introduced by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), would require all voting systems used for federal elections to produce or require the use of a durable voter verified paper ballot to serve as the vote of record in all audits and recounts by 2008; and

WHEREAS: Mr. Holt's bill would establish a nationwide mandatory random manual audit for federal elections, would require that notification be posted in each polling place informing the voter that the voter verified paper ballot will be the vote of record in recounts and audits and warning them not to cast their ballot before verifying the accuracy of the paper ballot; and

WHEREAS: The proposed legislation would force the public disclosure of voting system source code, software, firmware, and ballot programming files and prohibit partisan and corporate conflicts of interest in the testing and certification of voting systems, with an eye towards letting America's huge technically proficient population perform the “honesty checking” that the Federal bureaucracy and laboratories have thus far failed to accomplish; and

WHEREAS: Mr. Holt's legislation would require that voters be provided the opportunity to vote on an emergency paper ballot in the case of voting machine malfunction, prohibit the presence of wireless communications devices in voting systems, ban all Internet connectivity and prohibit the unsecured storage of voting machines prior to elections.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:

The Arizona Democratic Party, the Central Committee of party re-affirms its commitment to a transparent, impartial, and independently audited election process.
We fully support the efforts of our Election Integrity Committee to achieve those goals and we applaud the tireless and effective work of U S Rep Rush Holt, VoteTrust USA, and other Election Integrity Groups in Arizona and nationally.
We support a requirement that all voting systems produce or require the use of durable, hand-countable and separate voter verified paper ballots.
We support a mandate that in audits and recounts, the voter verified paper ballot is the vote of record.
We support the complete elimination of paper roll and thermal paper use by direct recording electronic voting systems.
We support a requirement that notification be posted in each polling place informing the voter that the voter verified paper ballot will be the vote of record in recounts and audits and warning them not to cast their ballot before verifying the accuracy of the paper ballot.
We support a requirement that voters be immediately provided an emergency paper ballot in the case of any machine failures, and a requirement that the emergency paper ballot be counted as a regular and not provisional, ballot.
We support a requirement for disclosure of source code, object code, executable representation, and ballot programming files for inspection by any person.
We support security standards including documentation of secure chain of custody for the handling of all software, hardware, vote storage media, and ballots.
We support standards for prohibiting conflicts of interest between testing laboratories and vendors
We support the establishment of a Testing Escrow Account, so that financial transactions between labs and vendors will pass through a government agency and a requirement that test reports be publicly disclosed.
We support funding that can be used by any DRE jurisdiction to purchase scanners and ballot marking devices to replace their DREs, whether of not they have already purchased paper roll printers.
We support the preservation of the private right of action for voters and parties.
We support all of these vital reform efforts at both state and national levels, and applaud Mr. Holt for taking up this important cause in Washington DC.

VIDEO LINK TO SHOW HOW EASY TO CHANGE TOTALS HACK

2006-11-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

Video Links To Show Ease of Changing Votes

Howard Dean and Bev Harris hacking the vote http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhMUtzOxjJY 2.23 minutes

Also from 2 days ago Lou Dobbs Speaks of "Hacking Democracy" new Documentary 6 minutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDehHoywnLA&mode=related&search=

The Princeton university report How to Hack a Voting Machine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GamR4y_ykA0&mode=related&search= 9 Minutes

The 2004 Election How To Steal An Election http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvwnJqLLgK8&mode=related&search= 00:46 minute

CNN Should e-voting machines be outlawed? Arizona certifies that fast to!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1rfGNf3nNw&mode=related&search=

Gallup: Only 1 in 4 Americans Very Confident Votes Will Be Counted Accurately Oct 27^th 2006

HBO Nov 2, Hacking Democracy http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/hackingdemocracy/index.html

RECAP OF HACKING PROTECTION

2006-11-02T13:12:00.000-08:00

RECAP (Hacking Protections & Audit):

1) The “6:59pm report” can catch early vote manipulation, especially if it is outside interference not controlled by the elections department staff.

2) The 2^nd chance of catching any misdeeds is the SB 1557 2% audit, which is especially effective at catching precinct-level manipulation as per Hursti. Also will need luck if the races hacked are picked (one in 4 races are picked by lottery).

3) The 3^rd chance is the Audit Board that makes up the canvas. Anything that slips past the above two steps may be caught here. Coconino Election Director Patty Hansen said; “It wrong, we should not be auditing ourselves and performing the canvas”. The Audit board should be able to verify the election results by matching the precinct results with the GEMS report. This can’t be done with the mail-in ballots that were run on central count scanners. But with the backup of the 6:59pm pre-modem report a comparison now could be made of the mail-in votes comparing before and after the key vulnerability point when the modems are active and the county has enabled outside interference for the sake of results expediency. Small counties do not need central count scanners. We must push into sorting and using precinct scanner that produce a tape, but that won't happen this election. See also SOS PROCEDURES MANUAL pages 153/154 - audit board instructions. Larry Bahill, former Pima County Election Director knows better than anyone else how this works.

4) And only if our A CANDIDATES PLEDGE OF TRUST TO VOTERS--NO EARLY CONCESSION (letter attached) will we have the time needed to sort this out. The post-election audit boards may not start their work for up to 10 days post-election. That may be the first time the 6:59pm reports are looked at, if the elections officers delay public records reporting of that data. They cannot withhold that data from their audit boards.

We ask your assistance in making all these things happen. We want a formal request to every election official in the state asking them to make a backup of their election data just before they turn the modems on at 7:00pm election night, and print a vote summary at the same time to be held until after 8:00pm.

We need to coordinate SB1557 recount efforts in each county and get notified immediately by county Party people if the any party try veto, so we have enough time to coordinate with the LP. We need audit boards in every county containing trustworthy party-appointed people whom we can advice and mentor on the use of best-practices audit tools such as the 6:59 reports.

And we must get the message across to candidates: don't concede until the process and our votes are completely inspected. This isn't “being a sore loser”, it's protecting our votes and must be spoken of in exactly that fashion: finish the process, protect our votes, protect our Democracy.

Thank you in advance for your kind support of this ground-breaking effort here in Arizona, and for helping make this state a model for the nation in intelligent party oversight of the Democratic process.

John Brakey

Jim March

Hacking The Precinct Vote

2006-11-02T13:11:00.000-08:00

Problem TWO: “Hacking The Precinct Vote”

We know that the Diebold precinct optical scanners do have “interpreted code” in use, a type of programming banned under the FEC rules concerning voting systems.

Thomas W Ryan Ph.D on INTERPRETED CODE:

“This is code that is readable by humans and modifiable by humans. This is kind of code that is often used by scientists and engineers …because it is easily modifiable, and should be used only in an experimental environment.

It should never be used in any device or system that requires security and [it] is explicitly prohibited by the 2002 Federal Election code.”

Confirmation comes from University of California, Berkeley report on the Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuBasic Interpreter Voting Systems Technology Assessment Advisory Board of 2/14/2006.

HBO starting tonight will show “Hacking Democracy” http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/hackingdemocracy/index.html on how this was done in Leon County, Florida. This incident is often referred to as the “Hursti Hack”. Finnish security expert Harri Hursti proved that field editing of the interpreted code by a semi-sophisticated hacker could produce a faked paper tape audit trail, or a pre-stuffed “electronic ballot box” memory device containing negative and positive votes to throw the election in any conceivable direction.

Solution to protect precinct votes:

Fortunately SB1557 audits (when performed effectively and comprehensively) are better set up to catch “precinct vote hacking” than they are early vote auditing. SB1557 must therefore be aggressively implemented and if any Party tries to sit out the process to “veto” it, we must make rapid connections with the other parties to end-run obstruction. Pima County did this successfully in the post-primary recount, going so far as to recruit extra volunteers and loan them to the Libertarian Party as counters approved by the L.P. county chair. This model can be replicated. We get effective auditing out of it.

We believe that working with elections staff per Arizona Revised Statutes, a visibly transparent and fair election can be presented to the public. We intend to accomplish this in accord with the procedures manual created by the Arizona Secretary of State as of August 2006.

This publication is available in PDF:

http://www.azsos.gov/election/Electronic_Voting_System/2006/2006_Electronic_Procedures_Manual.pdf

ELECTIONREPORTING...........................................................................156

Election Night Reporting............................................................................156

ELECTION REPORTING

Election Night Reporting

Upon initial tabulation of election results, and additionally as new results are tabulated, the counties will communicate election results to the secretary of state in an agreed upon electronic format using an application supplied by the secretary of state. The results shall not be released before 8:00 p.m. on Election Day, or until all polls are closed, whichever occurs first. (Page 156)

Hacking the Early Vote

2006-11-02T13:05:00.000-08:00

We must bring to your attention possible vulnerabilities in our voting systems, especially as they relate to counties running Diebold Election Systems products.

Problem ONE: “Hacking The Early Vote”

There is a 1 hour window for a hacker to change the votes. The early ballots are an especially tempting target for manipulation.

Early ballots on paper are scanned and processed generally before 7:00pm on election day. A few “straggler ballots” trickle in after but the numbers are not generally very large.

The phone modems are turned on at 7:00pm on election day allowing the precincts to report totals. This phone communication method is fundamentally stupid. It opens the “crown jewels” (the central database of votes) to outside manipulation by anybody who has that phone number, often NOT changed between elections. Diebold's software protocols allow standard personal computers to make an incoming connection, not just voting machines. Elections officials would never know that this “rogue” slipped in and manipulated the database.

At 8:00 pm the totals are tabulated and the first report is generated and released.

The mail-in votes in a Diebold environment are a target because Diebold's “central count” scanners (firmware 2.0.12) do not keep an independent paper record of the vote. They have their own printer, but it is basically disabled. Diebold precinct optical scanners print a ticker-tape of vote totals. The “central count” scanners used to do the same thing; Diebold disabled this in late 2002. With no independent audit trail, anybody manipulating the central database of early votes would not be caught without massive hand-counting in excess of the counting available under SB1557.

In Pima County, literally 1 box of 900 ballot could hold over 400 different precincts in one box. This makes it impossible, per the laws of Arizona, to scrutinize that paper effectively unless the results of the race are within 1/10 of 1 percent (ARS 16-661). There is no other state that has this low of a recount threshhold in our country.

If this HACK was to happen, there is nothing we could do with out evidence!

We did not know until our “roadtrip” that Coconino and Mohave counties also have these scanners in addition to the Pima and Yavapai systems listed with this dangerous gear. There may be more Diebold counties that have these audit-crippled scanners.

Solution to protect votes by mail:

Before the phone modems are turn on the Election Director MUST DO two things:

1) Before phone modems are turn on backup the central database of votes to a non rewritable CD the data and call it the “6:59pm report”. NOTE: election officials regularly make backups of their data, so we're not asking for anything unusual or difficult.

2) Print a complete report that gives the totals of all early votes cast and also done by precincts and place in envelope and do not released till 8:00pm to media and political parties. (The date and time is on the top right of report.)

Together these steps preserve a record of the vote from just before the counties open their systems to outside interference. We have tried and failed to stop this practice; making an audit record specific to this issue is our only remaining hope of catching outside manipulation if it happens.

John Brakey
Jim March

Conflict of Interest: Corporate Control of Elections

2006-06-08T22:45:00.000-07:00

The Elections Center leads industry attack on computer scientists
Promotes insecure DRE machines at public’s expense

Summary by Sandra Spangler

It has come to light that Diebold, through Jack Abramoff’s firm Greenberg Traurig, paid $275,000 to Robert Ney, Republican Chair of the House Administration Committee who has not allowed Rep. Rush Holt’s HAVA reform bill HR 550 that would require manual audits and voter verified paper records to be voted out of committee. Ney stepped down from the chairmanship and is the subject of a widening investigation that is bringing him closer to indictment.

A powerful tightly knit closed private network operates secretly to influence Secretaries of State and Election officials in every state to enforce discipline that keeps officials accountable to vendors, not to the public. Election Directors who tell the truth like Ion Sancho, Election Director in Leon County FL and Bruce Funk, County Clerk of Emery County Utah have been demonized and threatened with loss of their jobs and pensions.

This private network is coordinated by The Election Center that initiated a PR campaign in cooperation with an industry trade group, the Election Techology Council (ETC) within the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) funded by $100,000 contributions from each vendor member to malign the reputations of computer professionals who point out flaws and security risks of electronic voting.

Attacks on the credibility of computer scientists continue as Diebold tries to defend itself against revelations of massive security holes that Harri Hursti in a Black Box Voting report shows were engineered into the Diebold TSx by design. Michael Shamos, PhD, a Pennsylvania computer scientist who examines and certifies machines in that state who generally has supported paperless touch screen voting, acknowledges the severity of the the national security risk. Avi Rubin, PhD a computer scientist from from Johns Hopkins who worked as an elections worker in Maryland in 2004 knows that insufficient control of chain of custody of voting machines and their smart card ballot boxes leaves these machines open to tampering. Rubin says he almost had a heart attack when he learned of the newest revelations that showed the security holes engineered into the Diebold TSx.

The Elections Center is run by R. Doug Lewis, a political operative who reports no special expertise in voting systems security, management or risk in a skimpy biography.

Lewis, through the Elections Center coordinates professional organizations of Elections Directors and Secretaries of State that have power over the federal and state certification of voting machines. Vendors are ex-officio members of these organizations and ply their wares through face time purchased through the corporate affiliate program.

According to the American Prospect article Don’t Count On it “The Election Center’s members include approximately 1,000 dues-paying state and local election-administration officials, as well some voting-machine vendors. The center provides a host of services for its members, informing them of new developments in election law, sponsoring professional development conferences, and offering training workshops for new election officials. In advance of the last election, the [Elections] center also performed a quasi-oversight role over the machine-testing process.”

The National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) was commissioned by the Federal Election Commission over a decade ago with the authority to select which private labs would test new voting-machine technologies.

The vendors pay so-called Independent Testing Authorities to test their hardware/firmware and software. Two labs, Wyle and Ciber did not report any of these security flaws discovered by Harri Hursti and validated by the Callifornia Voting System Board. Lab directors, Shawn Southworth and Jim Dearman have served on the NASED Voting Systems Board.

The NASED with the involvement of the Elections Center federally certifies voting systems. Most states, including Arizona, have a closed non-transparent system that rubber stamps federal certification with no performance or security tests. Only California, and perhaps Pennsylvania, have rigorous procedures to independently examine voting systems. Ironically, the Arizona SoS tested the AutoMark in an actual primary election, but did not publicly demonstrate or test the Diebold TSx

HAVA authors mandated that the Elections Assistance Center (EAC) pass a new set of recommendations for state guidelines by 2006. The EAC passed on the responsibility for standards to the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). According to Rebecca Mercuri, PhD from Harvard University, the IEEE voting standards working group has been “hijacked” by industry representatives who place profit above security. A long-time ES&S employee, Herb Deutch chairs this working group.

The Elections Assistance Commission chartered the National Institute of Standards (NIST) to form a committee, the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) to establish standards by which voting machines would be tested. The charter requires by law that there be no conflict of interest in the decision makers.

According to a Report from VoteTrust USA TGDC committee members Dr. Brit Williams and Paul Craft who have ties to the Election Center and vendors, intervened when vendors objected and wielded their power to compel the TGDC to delete new standards requiring voter verified paper audit trails in order to allow existing voting systems to comply with standards.

A “revolving door” between former regulators and industry reinforces vendor influence over state certification of voting machines. A report by TrueVote Maryland calls attention to a “Whitewash in the Making.” “Maryland State Elections Director Linda Lamone, current NASED President hired a firm closely linked to vendors, the Craft Freeman & McGregor Group Inc., to “independently test” Diebold voting machines after massive security holes were reported. GOP Maryland Governor, Bob Ehrlich has repudiated the DRE machines. Paul Craft, formerly head of the Florida Bureau of Voting Systems Certification who has no credentials to evaluate voting machine security formed a partnership with former state voting machine certifiers Steve Freeman and Kate McGregor. Craft has been linked to purges of voter rolls in Florida.

As industry has acquired power and influence by establishing a professional network coordinated by the Elections Center, the American election system has become increasingly privatized, undemocratic and unaccountable to public oversight.

Blackboxvoting.org has posted a list of organizations that organize and maneuver U.S. Elections. BBV points out that these organizations share a:

o Privatization ethic

o Pay to play (swap contributions for face time)

o The Elections Center plays a major role in training (propagandizing).

o These organizations (NASS) (NASED) etc. consider themselves to be private entities, not public, and may claim that they are not subject to public records laws. They sometimes claim that their meetings are not subject to public meetings laws. In other words, these organizations provide a way to conduct The People's business in private.

RESOLUTION- Feb. 2006

2006-02-25T10:15:00.000-08:00

RESOLUTION

STATE COMMITTEE MEETING

Phoenix, AZ Saturday, Saturday, February 25, 2006

Submitted by:

Gerry Straatemeier, State Committee Member

District 26 – Pima County

Authored by; Sandra Spangler, PC LD 26 and

John R Brakey, PC LD 27 also both members of AUDIT-AZ

AMERICANS UNITED for DEMOCRACY, INTEGRITY, and TRANSPARENCY in Elections

Resolution to Recommend that the Democratic National Committee Establish a National Election Integrity Clearinghouse

WHEREAS, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) report^ⁱ released October 21, 2005, and endorsed by the Chairs and Ranking Members of three House Committees found that "some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes." Some of these machines "did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected" and,

WHEREAS, two vendors provided electronic voting machines that counted 80% of the national vote; flawed voting systems were certified by a federal vendor-financed testing authority; states do not routinely perform their own independent inspections of voting systems before certifying voting equipment; prohibited interpreted code was found in the removable memory cards capable of changing vote data in Diebold optical-scan systems by two independent computer experts retained by nonpartisan Black Box Voting at the request of Leon County FL Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho. The experts easily penetrated the county’s election system and were able to flip votes in a mock election. All Diebold op-scans and touch screen machines have subsequently been found to contain prohibited code and,

WHEREAS a troubling pattern of lost votes on both optical scan and touch screen voting systems validates the GAO findings. Iowa State University computer expert Dr. Douglas Jones^ⁱⁱ who examined optical scan machines used in a disputed LD 20 Maricopa County, AZ primary election, found that if voters followed the ballot marking instructions, there was a 1 in 12 chance that their votes would not be counted. In New Mexico Sequoia Edge touch screen machines recorded up to a 37% undervote in some Hispanic and Native American precincts; ^ⁱⁱⁱand,

WHEREAS machines equipped with voter verifiable paper audit trails (VVPAT) that store votes invisibly on hidden memory cards and print out paper records on continuous rolls of thermal paper that cannot be recounted, are neither reliable or accurate. The significance of what has come to be known as the “Harri Hursti Hack” reported in the Washington Post^{^iv} is that valid verification through random manual audits based on statistically significant norms that trigger automatic manual recounts of legal voter-marked paper ballots to reconstruct elections are the only effective checks upon computerized voting that will restore public confidence in elections, and

WHEREAS the Arizona Democratic Party is the first state party in the nation to respond to the demonstrated security vulnerability of electronic voting and the specific problems identified by the GAO report by forming an Election Integrity Committee composed of citizen experts to restore public oversight and accountability to elections. The Committee has set up seven Mini-Task Forces to monitor, investigate, identify problems, propose solutions and hold election officials accountable for: Equipment Certification, Tabulation, Voter Registration, Absentee/Early Voting in Polling Places, Election Administration, and Law, Legislation and Initiatives and,

WHEREAS: without national regulation private vendors are allowed to wield enormous financial power to apply unequal and unfair standards when they negotiate contracts with counties and states and often collaborate to enforce proprietary rights. Ability to undermine the authority of state and county election officials to administer fair elections by arbitrarily restricting choice by threatening lawsuits for patent infringement, reserving the right to whom they will sell, willfully canceling contracts in some states while honoring the same terms in others must be restrained ^{^v}and,

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED Arizona Democratic Party recommends that the Democratic National Committee establish an Election Integrity Information Clearinghouse and database within the DNC to coordinate and mobilize a national action network to defeat the erosion of public oversight of elections caused by private vendor control. The Arizona Democratic Party recommends that states set up Election Integrity Committees based on the Arizona model to:

Collect and analyze data to identify patterns common to more than one state to share that information quickly through the network.
Quickly detect changing tactics and technological exploits that threaten election integrity/security and abuse voting rights
Hold regional or targeted problem area summits that assemble the best legal, technical and government professionals to educate citizen experts on how to improve skills to evaluate election systems.

i “ELECTIONS:Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of Electronic Voting Systems Are UnderWay, but Key Activities Need to Be Completed http://www.BradBlog.com/Docs/GAOReport_ElectionSecurity_102105.pdf

ii STATEMENT OF DOUGLAS W. JONES Regarding the Optical Mark-Sense Vote Tabulators in Maricopa County http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/ArizonaDist20.pdf

“Ballot Box Breakdowns” by John Dougherty, Phoenix New Times http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=750&Itemid=113

iii New Mexico Overview http://www.voteraction.org/index.php/static/About_Voter_Action/2006-01-15 09:22

ivAs Elections Near, Officials Challenge Balloting Security In Controlled Test, Results Are Manipulated in Florida System http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/21/AR2006012101051_pf.html

v ES&S reneges on Leon County...http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/17106.html?1137199250

Ballot-Box Fraud Committed by Poll Workers in Tucson, Arizona

2006-02-21T11:40:00.000-08:00

Ballot-Box Fraud Committed by Poll Workers in Tucson, Arizona

At Precinct 324 on November 2, 2004

John R. Brakey was the Democratic Precinct Cluster Captain for four precincts in Arizona Legislative District 27, a part of predominately-Hispanic Congressional District 7. On Election Day 2004 he observed a multitude of irregular activities and was greeted with hostility by poll workers at two of the four voting stations he monitored. Brakey, a veteran civic activist, thought he "smelled a rat.” Accordingly, he felt impelled to initiate an audit of the voting process at one of these suspicious stations, Precinct 324.

All across the country, others were simultaneously beginning investigations of voting irregularities. So what was so different about what John Brakey did?

First and foremost, John Brakey went after a paper trail different than the ballots themselves. The ballots were locked up and could not be viewed without a court order, whereas most of the other documents could be obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests (or fished out of the trash the day after Election Day). What were these documents? First there were the complete “Signature Rosters” maintained by the county, which contain the names of all voters registered in each precinct, each voter being assigned a "Register Number" in alphabetical order. Second, there were photocopies of printed pages of these rosters that were ACTUALLY SIGNED BY VOTERS on Election Day. Third, there was the “Consecutive Number Register,” or "CNR." On the CNR, a poll worker (specifically, the clerk) HAND PRINTS the name of each voter who was issued a ballot at the polling station that day in the order of his/her arrival. Fourth, there were the "Notice to Voter Slips," on which poll-worker annotations (specifically by the judges) link the signatures on the Signature Rosters via the voters' Register Numbers to the names to be hand printed on the CNR. In principle, every voter who signed a roster would have had his or her name copied into the CNR at least once. Some voters’ names will appear twice (or more) because they spoiled a ballot and were issued a blank replacement ballot (or ballots). The spoiled ballots should then have been marked "spoiled" by the poll workers and set aside to be turned in at the end of the day, since every ballot issued must be accounted for.

Another way a voter name could appear twice on the CNR would be if a double vote were cast by this voter -- or by someone else in this voter’s name. A double vote is a way of “stuffing the ballot box” by voting more than once. Intentionally voting more than once in a federal election is a third-degree felony in most states and probably also violates federal election-fraud laws. The punishment varies from state to state but is usually up to five or 10 years in jail and fine of up to $5,000 or $10,000. Serious business for an individual, and even more serious if carried out as part of a conspiracy.

If there were such a conspiracy, how would one detect it? Frankly, neither John Brakey nor David Griscom, a retired Ph.D. physicist who began to assist him, had a clear idea what could be detected by means of the audit they had embarked upon. But before getting into what they found, let us consider in a little more detail exactly what it was that they did. They counted the number of UNIQUE NAMES on the CNR and also the numbers of UNIQUE SIGNATURES on each of the SIGNATURE ROSTERS – of which there were three: the “regular” Signature Roster, the Inactive Roster and the Provisional Ballot Signature Roster. For present purposes, the first two rosters can be lumped together under the rubric “rosters of voters whose ballots were accepted at the polling place.” By contrast, the PROVISIONAL BALLOT Signature Roster held the signatures of persons judged by the poll workers to have no assured right to vote at the polling place, but whose vote MIGHT be counted if subsequently approved by the Pima County Recorder. Accordingly, after filling out a PROVISIONAL ballot, the voter seals it in an envelope and prints and SIGNS his/her name and address on an attached affidavit. Upon receiving these provisional ballots, the Recorder checks the names and signatures against her records. If these voters (1) had NOT voted by mail-in ballot AND (2) WERE REGISTERED IN PCT 324, their ballots would have been counted. Otherwise, they would have been rejected.

As mentioned above, if everything had been done correctly, every name appearing on a signature roster would also appear at least once on the CNR. But one thing Brakey found was that there were three more unique names on the signature rosters than were unique names on the CNR. That was a small error, but when he asked the question of how many unique names there were on all signature rosters and CNR COMBINED, Brakey was shocked to find that there were 19 unique names on the CNR that were IN ADDITION TO the names signed on the various rosters. Combined with the three "extra" signatures, this made a total of 22 voters who made their signatures on a roster on Election Day but WHO WERE NOT CREDITED ON THE CNR AS HAVING CAST A VOTE! At the very least, this represents a gross error or misfeasance on the parts of the poll workers because the 19 “new” names on the CNR were not even close to being misspellings of the names of voters who actually signed in.

Another thing to come out of the Brakey-Griscom analyses was that the number of votes officially cast – combining all ballots accepted at the polling place (i.e., those actually put into the ballots box) with all those cast as provisional ballots – was 895, in exact agreement with the accounting on the "Official Ballot Report and Certificate of Performance" (the fifth and final part of the audited paper trail), which was signed by all seven poll workers. So far so good. HOWEVER, the number of UNIQUE NAMES on the CNR proved to be just 884. The inescapable conclusion is that 895 – 884 = 11 felony double votes were cast. But by whom?

There were 29 voters whose names appeared twice on the CNR and one whose name appeared thrice. Initially, all would be potential candidates for the double voters, but on the basis of documentary evidence, 20 of these voters could be reliably identified as individuals who likely spoiled their first ballot and were issued blank replacements. One of the remaining 11 instances of a voter being issued a second or third ballot was a person known from interviews and witness accounts to have voted only once, yet a second ballot was cast in her name as an alleged spoil replacement. In seven of the other 10 cases, the second or third same-name entry on the CNR was separated from its first occurrence by a number of places ending in a zero, specifically, 70, 80, 100, 100, 100, 120, 510. How likely is that?

People who run casinos (and some of the people who gamble) know the precise odds for such things as rolling “snake eyes” on a pair of dice (one chance in 36). Physicists like David Griscom do these kinds of calculations routinely (which is why their conventions are no longer welcome in Las Vegas). Suppose, for the sake of this discussion, that there were a slot machine with 885 numbers on each of seven cylinders. (Here, the number 885 is selected because it was the total number of ballots cast at John Brakey’s precinct 324 last November.) Suppose also that one of the jackpots could be won by having EACH of the 7 cylinders stop on a number ending in a zero. Assuming the machine was honest, you would have very close to one chance in 10 million of winning this jackpot. A different calculation pertains to the chances of seven double voters EACH INDEPENDENTLY casting his/her second vote at a precise moment causing the official record of this second vote to be separated on the CNR from his/her first one by a number of places ending in a zero. But the odds of this happening are about the same, close to one chance in 10 million. Dr. Watson, might have remarked, “Mr. Holmes, I suppose that this PROVES that these seven events CANNOT have been seven crimes committed independently by seven different criminals, but it COULD have been seven crimes committed in a deliberately systematic fashion by a single individual.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson.”

Suppose now that we had a slightly more normal slot machine with just three cylinders but that each cylinder had numbers running from 1 to 895. On a fair machine, your chances of winning the “three-number-one-hundreds” jackpot are one out of 895 multiplied by itself three times, or about one in 717 million! However, the mathematics is quite different in the case of three double votes out of total 895 votes cast each being SEPARATED by exactly 100 places from their first occurrence. Griscom's calculation of this case gives one chance in "just" 131 million. Nevertheless, these odds are proof "beyond the shadow of doubt" that these three double votes constitute a single crime committed by a single person -- the person (i.e., the clerk) that happened to be in control of the CNR. “But,” complained Dr. Watson, “why would this person give himself or herself away by deliberately making the numbers so regular?” Sherlock Holms replies, “We don’t need to answer that question to get a conviction, dear Watson, but we can infer that the criminal either wanted to be caught or, more likely, that he or she wasn’t familiar with THE FORENSIC VALUE OF STATISTICS.”

"In fact, we haven’t yet exhausted the forensic applications of statistics to the PRESENT case,” the legendary detective might then have announced to a nonplussed Dr. Watson. Here, Holms would be referring to the peculiar “rule of eleven” that infected the Precinct-324 poll records last Election Day: That is, there were exactly 11 voters who signed one of the two rosters for which “the voter's ballot was accepted at the polling place," but whose names are NOT LISTED ON THE CNR, 11 voters who signed the Provisional Ballot Signature Roster but are NOT LISTED ON THE CNR either, 11 voters who improperly signed BOTH the “regular” Signature Roster AND the Provisional Ballot Signature Roster, 11 registered voters listed on CNR who FAILED TO SIGN ANY ROSTER AT ALL, 11 phantom voter names appearing on the signed affidavits attached to 11 of the 59 provisional ballots that the poll workers submitted to the Recorder's office that DO NOT CORRESPOND TO A SIGNATURE ON ANY SIGNATURE ROSTER NOR TO AN ENTRY ON THE CNR, 11 felony double votes (already discussed), and 11 extra ballots issued as alleged spoil replacements (which might tend to camouflage, BUT DO NOT DISPROVE, the 11 double votes).

With regard to this “rule of eleven,” Griscom proposed a crude calculation of the probability of the number eleven popping up seven times in this context as independent random mistakes. It goes like this: If 11 out of 906 voter names (or 11 out of 895 ballots cast) could have been mishandled in a certain way, then surely it was possible that they could have been mishandled in the same way, say, 15 times. With this very conservative assumption, there would have been one chance in 15 that the number of errors of a given nature would come out precisely 11. But if, as is true in the present case, SEVEN DIFFERENT KINDS of errors were committed, there is just one chance in 15 raised to the 7th power that the NUMBERS of EACH of these seven kinds of errors would come out exactly equal to 11 AS SEVEN INDEPENDENT RESULTS OF RANDOMLY MADE MISTAKES. This calculates to one chance in about 170 million! It is the third independent “gambler’s odds” calculation implicating Pct 324 poll workers in a conspiracy to corrupt the election process. It should be remembered that INCOMPETENCE IS NOT A DEFENSE since incompetence can ONLY lead to RANDOM ERRORS, whereas the calculated odds STATISTICALLY RULE OUT RANDOM ERRORS!!!

Moreover, there were three MORE irregularities occurring in numbers close to, or related to, the number 11. First, as mentioned above, there were 22 voters who signed a roster but whose names do not appear on the CNR. Well, 22 = 2 ´ 11! Second, there were 10 blank entries in the CNR (just 1 less than 11), whereas no trained poll worker would have left so much as a single blank space by accident! Third, there were nine voters (2 less than 11) who were evidently told to vote provisionally EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE NOT REQUIRED TO. (That is, Recorder hadn't preprinted "Es" next to their names on the "regular" or inactive signature rosters, which she would have if she believed that those persons had been early voters.) If these three additional VERY-IRREGULAR irregularities had been folded in with the seven different ones mentioned in the previous paragraph, the odds of all 10 being random accidents would have come out to about one chance in about 570 BILLION (a number that Griscom recognizes to be about 44 times the age of the universe in years!!!).

But statistics is not the only evidence for possible criminal wrong doings. In fact, Griscom used the data that John Brakey had assembled to create a “balance sheet” similar to the Official Ballot Report and Certificate of Performance filled out and signed by the Pct-324 poll workers after the polls had closed. This does not involve “higher math.” Rather, it is very similar to the way you balance your checkbook.

The most common discrepancy between Griscom's balance sheet and the poll-worker-signed Official Ballot Report and Certificate of Performance involves poll-worker annotations on documents in the public record indicating that 98 voters had cast PROVISIONAL BALLOTS, whereas only 59 provisional ballots were submitted to the Recorder's office. The ONLY POSSIBLE RECONCILIATION of this discrepancy is to conclude that 98 – 59 = 39 provisional ballots were FED INTO THE (optical-scan) BALLOT BOX ON ELECTION DAY! Moreover, 36 of the 98 provisional voters listed on the CNR were NOT REGISTERED in Pct 324 and therefore their ballots would not have been counted had they been sent to the Recorder’s office in their sealed-and-signed envelopes. Since the Recorder did accept 48 of the 59 provisional ballots that WERE sent to her (11 were rejected), it is inferred that AT LEAST 36 – 11 = 25 of the provisional ballots scanned into the ballot box on Election Day were cast by individuals who could have been casting double votes after having already voted at their home precincts. Whether or not they were voting a second time, it was the Recorder’s prerogative to determine the VALIDITY of these ballots. The poll workers deliberately usurped this prerogative, thus destroying the integrity of the electoral process – 39 times!

The various irregularities committed by the Pct-324 poll workers clearly gave them both the means and the opportunity to steal votes in the presidential election. By Griscom's calculation, 113 votes out of the 895 ballots officially cast could have been shifted in one direction or the other, if that was the poll workers motive. (N.B. John Brakey has developed documentary evidence that there may have been still more stolen votes.)

If votes WERE STOLEN, on which candidate's behalf might this theft have been carried out? Well, Precinct 324 was registered 47% Democratic, while Republicans comprised only 22% of the registered voters. Yet, according to official Pima County records, Bush garnered 41.5% of the Pct-324 AT-THE-POLLING-PLACE vote, compared to Kerry's 57%. So should we conclude that fully two thirds of all Pct-324 voters who expressed No Party Preference decided to vote for Bush? Well, in fact, the 48 Pct-324 PROVISIONAL BALLOTS ACTUALLY ACCEPTED by the Pima County Recorder went just 19% for Bush and 81% for Kerry. This HUGE difference between the at-the-polling-place tally the accepted-provisional-ballot tally is simply too large to be an accident. Moreover, it can be argued that the provisional-ballot tally HAS TO BE a highly reliable representation of voter sentiment at Tucson Pct 324 last November 2nd, since it is difficult to imagine any means cheating on a provisional ballot that is sent to, AND ACCEPTED BY, the Recorder's Office in a sealed envelope with the voter's name and signature appearing on the attached affidavit.

Epilogue:

John Brakey made a complaint to the Pima County Attorney's Office concerning the poll-worker shenanigans at Pct 324 that he and David Griscom had uncovered as a result of more than 1,000 hours of auditing. Accordingly, one very smart detective was dispatched from the county Attorney's office to make very careful notes of the specifics of the Brakey-Griscom complaint against these poll workers. Whether or not the county Attorney actually read these notes is unclear. What IS clear, however, is that she discussed the matter with the Pima County Director of Elections, who -- without taking the time to understand the details -- had summarily fired the two head poll workers at Pct 324 ...for "INCOMPETENCE." (Recall that the odds against the "incompetence defense" run from one chance in 131 million to one chance in 44 times the age of the universe!!!)

The Pima County Attorney ended up dismissing the complaint on the strength of assurances from the Director of Elections that there were no problems with voting anywhere in the county on Election Day 2004 -- other than a few incompetent poll workers who he had already fired.

RESOLUTION - Nov. 2005

2005-11-16T10:27:00.000-08:00

"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is reduce a man to slavery.." Thomas Paine

RESOLUTION

PASSED AT THE FALL STATE COMMITTEE MEETING

Tucson, AZ Saturday, November 19^th, 2005

Submitted by:

Gerry Straatemeir, State Committee Member

District 26 – Pima County

Authored by; Sandra Spangler, PC LD 26 and

John R Brakey, PC LD 27 both members of AUDIT-AZ

AMERICANS UNITED for DEMOCRACY, INTEGRITY, and TRANSPARENCY in Elections

RESOLUTION FOR PUBLIC OVERSIGHT AND TRANSPARENCY OF ARIZONA ELECTIONS TO BLOCK PURCHASE OF DRE VOTING MACHINES

WHEREAS The Arizona Democratic Party supports the fundamental right of every Arizona citizen to vote and to have each vote counted as intended in a secure, transparent, impartial, and independently audited election process; and

WHEREAS we have reached a pivotal juncture in the elections integrity timeline within Arizona; and

WHEREAS the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) requires, in section 15481, subdivision (a)(2)(B), that:

(i) The voting system shall produce a permanent paper record with a manual audit capacity for such system.

(ii) The voting system shall provide the voter with an opportunity to change the ballot or correct any error before the permanent paper record is produced.

(iii) The paper record shall be available as an official record for any recount; and

WHEREAS Arizona has laws on the books, only permitting ballots to be machine recounted, preventing the required hand recounts of ballots; and

WHEREAS: The Secretary of State has used the powers of her office to consolidate partisan privatized control of elections in Arizona. She relied solely on privately hired consultants and has excluded independent computer security experts and public observers from the process of selecting voting systems compliant with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that mandates that one device to accommodate disabled or blind voters to vote independently and privately must be in place in every precinct by 2006; and

WHEREAS: The nonpartisan GAO report released October 21, 2005, endorsed by the Chairmen and Ranking Members of three House committees at a joint press conference found that "some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes." Some of these machines "did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected." and

WHEREAS: The Secretary of State has refused to address the discovery of the security hole found embedded in the 1.94w memory cards of the Diebold scanners that count votes in 12 Arizona counties. She echoes Diebold talking points that marginalize respected independent computer security experts who examine the secret proprietary software. Harri Hursti, a European consultant found that

“…the removable media (memory card), which should contain only the ballot box, the ballot design and the race definitions”,…” also contains a living thing – an executable program which acts on the vote data. Changing this executable program on the memory card can change the way the optical scan machine functions and the way the votes are reported. The system won’t work without this program on the memory card. Whereas we would expect to see vote data in a sealed, passive environment, this system places votes into an open active environment. “ See: http://www.blackboxvoting.org ; and

WHEREAS: The mounting evidence that computerized voting equipment is inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering undermines public confidence in elections. Protection of the right to vote so fundamental to democracy, demands public oversight and transparency to insure open, honest, trustworthy democratic elections; and

WHEREAS: The Secretary of State opposed the addition of Rep. Ted Downing’s LD 28 amendments to S 1342 that would have required any voting machine used in Arizona to produce a voter verified paper ballot. The Brewer Voting Action Plan specifies that

S 1342 “allows the Secretary of State to revoke voting machine certifications, authorize emergency voting systems and administer a fund for cities and towns that enroll employees in the election certification program.” And;

WHEREAS: The Secretary of State displayed bias for Diebold’s Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems when she misled legislators by introducing representatives from the American Federation of the Blind who claimed that requiring a voting system to have a paper ballot would disenfranchise the blind; and

WHEREAS: The Secretary of State failed to acknowledge the successful testing by the state of the ES&S AutoMark 100% HAVA compliant ballot-marking system designed with input from the disabled from the ground up in six precincts during the 2004 election The AutoMark has more features than any other machine to accommodate a wide variety of disabilities; and

WHEREAS: The Brewer Voting Action Plan requires that

“Any accessible voting device (DRE or touch screen voting machine) will be required to have a paper ballot or record that visually indicates all votes cast.”

The Brewer Voting Action Plan’s requirements are biased for Diebold DRE touch screen machines that are now equipped with printers that record votes on a “toilet paper roll” that the voter can observe. The paper record is not suitable to recount or reconstruct an election. The vote record is still invisible contained in the machine’s invisible programmable memory card. A ballot-marking machine marks an actual paper ballot that can be fed through optical scanners; and

WHEREAS: The Secretary of State, the Chief Elections Officer of the state of Arizona has failed to post a list of certified and decertified voting equipment on the official web site as promised. The Brewer Voting Action Plan states:

5. Post all certified election equipment and software on the Secretary of State Web site. Beginning January 1, 2005 all certified and decertified equipment, firmware, and software in Arizona will be posted on the Secretary of State Web site. This will allow the public to have full access to that information. Page 25; and

WHEREAS: The Secretary of State refuses to release a list of all certified and decertified equipment, firmware and software in Arizona without a formal notarized FOIA request; and

WHEREAS: The Secretary of State has developed no standards to decertify “faulty” voting equipment such as machines demonstrated to have an 18.3% error rate in a Maricopa County Republican primary, and has made no move to do so, awaiting the outcome of a lawsuit filed by Dr. Thomas W. Ryan, an independent computer expert with 25 years experience; and

WHEREAS: The Secretary of State has mounted a vigorous media protest of the lawsuit filed to make her accountable calling it “bogus,” “insulting” and “frivolous” and making false claims that she has indeed developed standards for decertification. She has accused the people who support the lawsuit of “usurping her powers”; and

WHEREAS: The Secretary of State has failed to maintain a transparent election evaluation process open to public comment as provided for in the Brewer Voting Action Plan; and

WHEREAS: The Secretary of State promotes exclusive meetings of vendors ES&S and Diebold with state and county election officers without public representation; and

WHEREAS: The Secretary of State reacted to a public attempt to find out who serves on the state certification committee and how voting systems are examined by canceling the meeting because of a lack of quorum, and further postponing a meeting date to allow ES&S to demonstrate the AutoMark for state certification; and

WHEREAS: The Secretary of State’s office submitted a Request for Proposals (RFP) from voting machine vendors that showed bias for DRE equipment. The RFP referred only to a machine’s capability of tabulating, storing and transmitting votes, rather than marking ballots. The RFP specified no requirements that machines not be networked to the Internet or have wireless cell phone connections; and

WHEREAS: Florida and other states report problems with unexpected financial consequences integrating Diebold touch screen voting systems with optical scan systems incurring unexpected costs not enumerated in the state contract and warn of Diebold deceptions as well as the risks of having to reimburse the federal government for non HAVA compliance; and

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that:

The Arizona Democratic Party and its Democratic elected officials will pursue every available option to:

Work tirelessly within the party and with officials of other parties to be sure that the 2006 elections are transparent and auditable, so that Arizona voters regain confidence that every vote cast is fairly counted.

Advocate actively for public oversight and ownership of Arizona elections that will protect the vote from machine error and vulnerability to security breaches.

The Arizona Democratic Party supports legislation in the upcoming session to increase voting security, such as those to be introduced by Rep. Ted Downing to

require voter-verified paper ballots
require hand-counted audits of a small sample of randomly selected precincts,
improve procedures for reports and transparent auditing and certification of all equipment and

Act to hold the Secretary of State accountable for specific actions that demonstrate a lack of transparency inconsistent with assurances outlined in the Brewer Voting Action Plan. Challenge any state contract award to Diebold for DRE machines.
Demand that any state contract award require the vendor to upgrade to required HAVA and national certification standards.
Compel the Secretary of State to produce written decertification standards and immediately decertify faulty voting equipment according to methods that can be visually verified.
Sponsor open public forums to

Expose flaws of electronic voting
Examine adverse consequences of “blended voting systems” Diebold touch screens with Opti-Scans
Discover hidden costs associated with training poll workers to implement a dual voting system.
Evaluate any state certification/decertification standards set by the Secretary of State
Educate the public to participate in public oversight of county boards of elections.
Work with representatives of disability advocacy groups to ensure that acquisition of voting systems is compliant with HAVA and is accessible to individuals with widest variety of disabilities.

Has American Democracy died an electronic death in Ohio 2005's referenda defeats?

2005-11-11T12:10:00.000-08:00

Has American Democracy died an electronic death in Ohio 2005's referenda defeats?

by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
November 11, 2005

While debate still rages over Ohio's stolen presidential election of 2004, the impossible outcomes of key 2005 referendum issues may have put an electronic nail through American democracy.

Once again, the Buckeye state has hosted an astonishing display of electronic manipulation that calls into question the sanctity of America's right to vote, and to have those votes counted in this crucial swing state.

The controversy has been vastly enhanced due to the simultaneous installation of new electronic voting machines in nearly half the state's 88 counties, machines the General Accountability Office has now confirmed could be easily hacked by a very small number of people.

Last year, the US presidency was decided here. This year, a bond issue and four hard-fought election reform propositions are in question.

Issue One on Ohio's 2005 ballot was a controversial $2 billion "Third Frontier" proposition for state programs ostensibly meant to create jobs and promote high tech industry. Because some of the money may seem destined for stem cell research, Issue One was bitterly opposed by the Christian Right, which distributed leaflets against it.

The Issue was pushed by a Taft Administration wallowing in corruption. Governor Bob Taft recently pleaded guilty to misdemeanors stemming from golf outings he took with Tom Noe, the infamous Toledo coin dealer who has taken $4 million or more from the state. Taft entrusted Noe with some $50 million in investments for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, from which some $12 million is now missing. Noe has been charged with federal money laundering violations on behalf of the Bush-Cheney campaign. Taft's public approval ratings in Ohio are currently around 15%.

Despite public fears the bond issue could become a glorified GOP slush fund, Issue One was supported by organized labor. A poll run on the front page of the Columbus Dispatch on Sunday, November 6, showed Issue One passing with 53% of the vote. Official tallies showed Issue One passing with 54% of the vote.

The polling used by the Dispatch had wrapped up the Thursday before the Tuesday election. Its precision on Issue One was consistent with the Dispatch's historic polling abilities, which have been uncannily accurate for decades. This poll was based on 1872 registered Ohio voters, with a margin of error at plus/minus 2.5 percentage points and a 95% confidence interval. The Issue One outcome would appear to confirm the Dispatch polling operation as the state's gold standard.

But Issues 2-5 are another story.

The Dispatch's Sunday headline showed "3 issues on way to passage." The headline referred to Issues One, Two and Three. As mentioned, the poll was dead-on accurate for Issue One.

Issues Two-Five were meant to reform Ohio's electoral process, which has been under intense fire since 2004. The issues were very heavily contested. They were backed by Reform Ohio Now, a well-funded bi-partisan statewide effort meant to bring some semblance of reliability back to the state's vote count. Many of the state's best-known moderate public figures from both sides of the aisle were prominent in the effort. Their effort came largely in response to the stolen 2004 presidential vote count that gave George W. Bush a second term and led to U.S. history's first Congressional challenge to the seating of a state's delegation to the Electoral College.

Issue Two was designed to make it easier for Ohioans to vote early, by mail or in person. By election day, much of what it proposed was already put into law by the state legislature. Like Issue One, it was opposed by the Christian Right. But it had broad support from a wide range of Ohio citizen groups. In a conversation the day before the vote, Bill Todd, a primary official spokesperson for the opposition to Issues Two through Five, told attorney Cliff Arnebeck that he believed Issues Two and Three would pass.

The November 6 Dispatch poll showed Issue Two passing by a vote of 59% to 33%, with about 8% undecided, an even broader margin than that predicted for Issue One.

But on November 8, the official vote count showed Issue Two going down to defeat by the astonishing margin of 63.5% against, with just 36.5% in favor. To say the outcome is a virtual statistical impossibility is to understate the case. For the official vote count to square with the pre-vote Dispatch poll, support for the Issue had to drop more than 22 points, with virtually all the undecideds apparently going into the "no" column.

The numbers on Issue Three are even less likely.

Issue Three involved campaign finance reform. In a lame duck session at the end of 2004, Ohio's Republican legislature raised the limits for individual donations to $10,000 per candidate per person for anyone over the age of six. Thus a family of four could donate $40,000 to a single candidate. The law also opened the door for direct campaign donations from corporations, something banned by federal law since the administration of Theodore Roosevelt.

The GOP measure sparked howls of public outrage. Though again opposed by the Christian Right, Issue Three drew an extremely broad range of support from moderate bi-partisan citizen groups and newspapers throughout the state. The Sunday Dispatch poll showed it winning in a landslide, with 61% in favor and just 25% opposed.

Tuesday's official results showed Issue Three going down to defeat in perhaps the most astonishing reversal in Ohio history, claiming just 33% of the vote, with 67% opposed. For this to have happened, Issue Three's polled support had to drop 28 points, again with an apparent 100% opposition from the previously undecideds.

The reversals on both Issues Two and Three were statistically staggering, to say the least.

The outcomes on Issue Four and Five were slightly less dramatic. Issue Four meant to end gerrymandering by establishing a non-partisan commission to set Congressional and legislative districts. The Dispatch poll showed it with 31% support, 45% opposition, and 25% undecided. Issue Four's final margin of defeat was 30% in favor to 70% against, placing virtually all undecideds in the "no" column.

Issue Five meant to take administration of Ohio's elections away from the Secretary of State, giving control to a nine-member non-partisan commission. Issue Five was prompted by Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's administration of the 2004 presidential vote, particularly in light of his role as co-chair of Ohio's Bush-Cheney campaign. The Dispatch poll showed a virtual toss-up, at 41% yes, 43% no and 16% undecided. The official result gave Issue Five just 30% of the vote, with allegedly 70% opposed.

But the Sunday Dispatch also carried another headline: "44 counties will break in new voting machines." Forty-one of those counties "will be using new electronic touch screens from Diebold Election System," the Dispatch added.

Diebold's controversial CEO Walden O'Dell, a major GOP donor, made national headlines in 2003 with a fundraising letter pledging to deliver Ohio's 2004 electoral votes to Bush.

Every vote in Ohio 2004 was cast or counted on an electronic device. About 15%---some 800,000 votes---were cast on electronic touchscreen machines with no paper trail. The number was about seven times higher than Bush's official 118,775-vote margin of victory. Nearly all the rest of the votes were cast on punch cards or scantron ballots counted by opti-scan devices---some of them made by Diebold---then tallied at central computer stations in each of Ohio's 88 counties.

According to a recent General Accountability Office report, all such technologies are easily hacked. Vote skimming and tipping are readily available to those who would manipulate the vote. Vote switching could be especially easy for those with access to networks by which many of the computers are linked. Such machines and networks, said the GAO, had widespread problems with "security and reliability." Among them were "weak security controls, system design flaws, inadequate security testing, incorrect system configuration, poor security management and vague or incomplete voting system standards, among other issues."

With the 2005 expansion of paperless touch-screen machines into 41 more Ohio counties, this year's election was more vulnerable than ever to centralized manipulation. The outcomes on Issues 2-5 would indicate just that.

The new touchscreen machines were brought in by Blackwell, who had vowed to take the state to an entirely e-based voting regime.

As in 2004, there were instances of chaos. In inner city, heavily Democratic precincts in Montgomery County, the Dayton Daily News reported: "Vote count goes on all night: Errors, unfamiliarity with computerized voting at heart of problem." Among other things, 186 memory cards from the e-voting machines went missing, prompting election workers in some cases to search for them with flashlights before all were allegedly found.

In Tom Noe's Lucas County, Election Director Jill Kelly explained that her staff could not complete the vote count for 13.5 hours because poll workers "were not adequately trained to run the new machines."

But none of the on-the-ground glitches can begin to explain the impossible numbers surrounding the alleged defeat of Issues Two through Five. The Dispatch polling has long been a source of public pride for the powerful, conservative newspaper, which endorsed Bush in 2004.

The Dispatch was somehow dead accurate on Issue One, and then staggeringly wrong on Issues Two through Five. Sadly, this impossible inconsistency between Ohio's most prestigious polling operation and these final official referendum vote counts have drawn virtually no public scrutiny.

Though there were glitches, this year's voting lacked the massive irregularities and open manipulations that poisoned Ohio 2004. The only major difference would appear to be the new installation of touchscreen machines in those additional 41 counties.

And thus the possible explanations for the staggering defeats of Issues Two through Five boil down to two: either the Dispatch polling---dead accurate for Issue One---was wildly wrong beyond all possible statistical margin of error for Issues 2-5, or the electronic machines on which Ohio and much of the nation conduct their elections were hacked by someone wanting to change the vote count.

If the latter is true, it can and will be done again, and we can forget forever about the state that has been essential to the election of every Republican presidential candidate since Lincoln.

And we can also, for all intents and purposes, forget about the future of American democracy.

Updated November 13, 2005
--
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION AND IS RIGGING 2008, available here and here, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO, available from The New Press in spring, 2006.