Coastal Post Online
MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS MONTHLY - FREE PRESS
(415)868-1600 -
(415)868-0502(fax) - P.O.
Box 31, Bolinas, CA, 94924
October, 2004
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Vote Tampering Possible In California And Marin
By Carol Sterritt
"If the
thunder don't getcha, then the lightning will."
Jerry Garcia, musician-philosopher
"When some clown comes on messin' with me, I go messin' him right on
back."
Time-honored Chicago
street saying
We live in America. On election day, regardless of
party affiliation, we express our patriotism through our trip to the polls. For
many of us, although we scrutinize the candidates and their positions, and we
mull over the propositions, we are clueless when it comes to the actual inner
workings of the voting process.
Those of us who live in Marin County count themselves as being of (or at
least close to) those persons who have the most affluence, the most education
and perhaps the most political fervor of any group of citizens in this land.
Yet we are also naive. We all remember the last time that we voted. We were
handed a paper ballot. We cast our vote on this ballot and it remains in our
consciousness that this paper counts for something. At least our vote is on
paper, and so we feel most secure that our County does not engage in the
process of electronically encoding our votes in such ways that they might be
tampered with by the Forces of Darkness.
Certainly we have read enough about Diebold and ESS Voting Systems-we
understand that other voters may be unfortunate enough to live in places where
the vote is offered up into the innards of electronic machinery. There the
voting results sit waiting for some hacker to tamper with them. Thank God we
live in Marin! We vote and the vote is permanent - no electronic chicanery to
upset Marin's vote count. Surely our votes will never be as fleeting as votes
cast on the awful Diebold voting machines that even the major media speaks out
against. Right? Well, actually, I must beg to differ.
Diebold Machines Are Here Among Us
I have traveled to Sacramento and met with Bev Harris, the
amazing one woman campaign. It was her efforts that woke us citizens up to
important facets of current day voting procedures. Her close associate, Jim
March, described in detail the voting machinery that we use in Marin.
Regrettably, the picture that emerges is not a pretty one.
Yes, you are handed paper. But don't you remember that you had to hand the paper
over to a machine that electronically scanned the vote? (This machine is indeed
manufactured by Diebold.) From that machine, your vote was either sent by modem
or hand-carried into the central tabulating equipment that resides at the Marin
County Registrar of Voters' Office. Those results are tabulated and then sent
via modem to the state of California,
and during a presidential election, on to the Feds. This system is referred to
as a Diebold AccuVote system, or an OptiScan System. As secure data systems go,
it offers little security beyond that offered by the other Diebold systems.
True there is a paper trail. But the paper ballots will only be used to verify
every single vote if there is a recount. No recount, no match of your vote to
the inner tabulations of the machine. The County will abide by the state
mandate of testing one percent of the results. But the other 99% of the vote is
as ephemeral as the wind or the on-off whimsy spinning inside a computer
circuit.
You Can Hack Or Defraud The Vote, And It's Not That Hard
With phone security as loose as it is here in the County, a hacker can
easily access the working of the central tabulator, doing so unbeknownst to
Michael Smith, County Registrar, or any of his honest and hard working staff. Thus with
simply a small amount of hacking experience, a phone line, and a password
(Diebold uses such hard to crack passwords as "1111"), the entire
results of an election can be manipulated. This can take place without the vote
hacker ever entering the County Office! Now the hacker must possess a certain amount of finesse.
If he (or she) hacks the election by only a little, 3% or less, the state will
mandate a recount and the paper trail will out the fraud. But if you steal by
anything over 3%, the paper ballots stay in their box, and no one will ever
know.
But of course, there are other scenarios to consider. What if the central
tabulator or the OptiScan box has been previously recorded to add certain
results to the final tabulation? For instance, how do you know that inside the
AccuScan equipment, a vote for Kerry does not become a vote for Buchanan? If it
has been thus programmed, it could well be-and neither you or the County Registrar would ever know it. Those who worked with Bev Harris
earlier this year found a County in the Bay Area where primary votes for Kerry
were counted for Gephardt. So this is not simply a pie in the sky scenario. It
is a painful reality. Just how significant are the problems?
I spoke today (Sept. 24th) with Andy Stephenson. Stephenson is the Associate
Director of Harris' Black Box Voting project. He spent last week inside the
Registrar's Office in King
County, Washington. He went there to observe the
Washington State Primary election, held on September 14, 2004. Among other things, Stephenson
noticed that the Diebold central tabulator had a grand total of 24 modems
connected to it. He also watched the personnel. The three partisan poll
watchers (A Republican, Democrat, and an Independent) all had significant
defects to their style of poll watching. One person slept; another read a book.
The third poll watcher was a social gadfly who talked to any and all. None of
them seemed very interested in the election process.
Perhaps the most shocking occurrences that Stephenson witnessed were the two
times that the computer crashed. He became aware that something was wrong when
the Registrar's office personnel all began to desperately, "with long
faces," scramble about.
Stephenson brought his video recorder along to help him accurately record
the workings at hand. However, he was threatened by a person working for the
Registrar to "turn off that thing or else." The "else" was
the implied threat of arrest. Since elections in America are supposed to be free and open, the state laws governing
open meetings always apply. (These laws are known as "open meeting
laws.") It was illegal for threats to be made against Stephenson. But
since his being arrested would have prevented his continued poll watching, he
deferred to this employee. Stephenson believes that the Registrar needed to
prevent public knowledge that security was so lax inside the Registrar's
Office.
I asked Stephenson if over the past six months, either he or Harris had
encountered a single county anywhere inside the USA where the County is handling everything in a secure manner. Sadly,
Stephenson says that he cannot point to any one county anywhere as a good
example of providing the security measures that should be in place.
Not a single county. Needless to say, this is quite discouraging. The public
is told to get out the vote, and to take the time and effort to get in line at
the polling places-but with things as they are, how do we do it? Stephenson's
reply was eloquent. "We absolutely must vote because we need to overwhelmingly
show that we are there. Only in our large numbers can we overwhelm those
elements that are behind the tampering of our vote."
He and Harris will be establishing several pro-active measures in early
November to unravel any deceptions. Their measures will help to ensure that
recounts occur where they need to occur. Among those actions will be demands
that the strategic voting records be released to the public, in any local
jurisdictions where questionable activities arise. They will seek the establishment
of procedures ensuring that the GEMS systems never modem in their votes. And
of course, they will keep an eye turned to all political matters that create a
climate hostile to free expression via the ballot box.
The Repercussions Of Opposing Diebold
Our talk turned to the scandal thrown around Kevin Shelley, currently California's Secretary of State. If you have
not been following this news, here is a brief re-cap. Kevin Shelley had the
courage to override all the pressure that was brought on his office to retain
Diebold, ESS and other unverifiable electronic machinery. Instead of listening
to the Powers that Be, Shelley opened up hearings to the public. After several
days of hearings, he came to the hard conclusion that the electronic machinery was
simply too insecure to use during the coming presidential election. By late
April, 2004, he de-certified the Diebold Tsx machines in several counties.
Naturally, the Dark Forces descended upon him. Here it must be said, that
had he kept his nose very very clean, he might not be facing such turmoil. But
in his recent past, he had offered certain state monies (approximately $
250,000) to a local San
Francisco woman,
ostensibly for her to create a community center. However, allegedly most of
this grant money was split up among her acquaintances and they channeled the
money BACK to Kevin Shelley's personnel campaign coffers. The community center
was never built. It has still not been determined as to how much if anything
that Shelley consciously knew regarding this fund transaction. He has
instructed his staff to return all the money in question back to the original
state grant fund. You should note: none of this funding came from any funding
related to election process monies.
However, the State of California immediately descended upon a 17.8
million dollar fund that was set up for election monitoring, equipment testing,
and purchase of needed voting equipment. Using the excuse that Shelley could
not be trusted to oversee these funds, the funds were held in limbo until only
recently. This seizure of funds will impact the election process in our state.
It seems like somebody would rather not ensure that we have secure elections on
November 2nd. (This seizure of funds was unprecedented in state history. Although
a good many scandals have touched upon a good many politicians, usually the
funds for state programs are left intact. If for example, some California EPA
official has some questionable monies in his campaign war chest, we don't
dissolve the California EPA. Calling for an audit is one thing. But freezing
out an entire program is something else.)
Here in Marin County, our Registrar of Voters, Michael Smith wrote a detailed
letter to Gov. Schwartzenegger. According to the Marin Independent Journal,
"Marin has applied to the state for $89,000 of the federal elections money
for the Nov. 2 election to cover training and education for the county's 700
volunteers at 114 polling places," Smith said.
Furthermore, Shelley's office administers state Proposition 41 funds for
election improvements in counties statewide. Smith is worried that $923,000
Marin is seeking from that pool also could get tied up in controversy. The
state has offered assurances that these funds will be given to us. But as I
write this, the funding still is being used as a political football. One day
you hear that all is well. The next day you hear that the money must not yet be
handed out to the counties. The hour is getting late, election day approaches
and it does appear that we individuals should not leave democracy up for grabs
by government entities. These monies are supposed to come from a huge Federal
Fund that was instituted after the Florida 2000 election debacle. They are NOT
related to the California state grant monies that Shelley
allegedly abused.
Keep in mind that only you can decide if you are participating in the fight
for democracy or not. Local activist Zhenya (pronounced "jenya")
Spake has taken to the streets, leaflets in hand, to urge Marin citizens to
register and to make their voices heard. "A lot of people are worried
about the possibility of losing our democracy. But in this process of becoming
involved, revitalization occurs and we are bringing back democracy." Andy
Stephenson echoes this sentiment when he states how "it is up to each one
of us. We must have poll watchers in every precinct and every County Registrar's Office in the country." (He reminds us that since on
election day the polling place is governed by open meeting laws, no one can
prevent you from appointing yourself as a poll watcher. If they try to do so,
contact the District Attorney.)
We are challenged by this uneasy situation with voting machines, perhaps
because we have chosen to live in interesting times. We can face this
challenge with fear or we can face it with determination. And as always, only
the determined will prevail.
For further info, please see: www.blackboxvoting.org A website run by Bev
Harris