Diebold - The face of modern ballot tampering

         by Faun Otter

 You can't vote them out if....

 You never voted them in.

The lack of any exit polling on November 5 has been oddly ignored by the media. Those pesky tracking polls

leading up to the elections have been explained away by a ‘late surge to the Republicans’ caused by.... hmmmm,

how about sun spot activity? With no exit polls, there was no other feedback to conflict with the "official" results,

this allowed the Diebold touch screen machines to change the way election fraud is carried out.

Previously, election cheating was a complex matter of ballot tampering combined with sample skewing.

That is to say, you screwed up ballots for your opponent with under or over votes, made sure that people likely to

vote against you wouldn't even get that chance (the program of voter disenfranchisement in Florida) and padded

your own vote total with such things as falsified absentee ballots.

In the much more high tech world of Diebold electronics we are seeing a wonderfully efficient vote rigging system,

the long proposed 'black box' technology. Imagine a black box in which you cannot see the workings. The only things

you can discern are an input and an output; in this case votes go in and collated totals come out. There is no paper

record of each individual vote cast to enable any cross check of the collated output. The only information you can

know for sure is the total number of votes cast on the machine. Each vote is stripped of any information as to who

cast that ballot to guarantee anonymity for the voters. You now have a system in which you have no way to check

vote recording, vote collation and transmission of the collated totals out of the black box.

The perfect crime?

Not quite.

Let me suggest an experiment. We take two ‘markets’ with similar socioeconomic mixtures and a well

established record of moving in the same political direction. We provide them with candidates from party

X and party Y. We then expose them to similar news stories, we spill TV and radio ads over between the

markets to make the effects less ‘local’ and give them identical weather on election day. The differences

between the markets are 1. the candidates and 2. the method of casting and counting the votes.

We then take a series of tracking polls on the gap between the candidates leading up to election day.

If we express the tracking poll data as the relative preference for the candidates (12 point lead by X, down one

point from last week etc.), any substantial discrepancy between the forecast and actual election outcomes should

arise from major news changes, the weather effects on turn out or a a social tendency to misrepresent voting intent.

Since both groups get the same news, the same weather and have the same social tendencies, any difference

between tracking poll and actual poll data should be in the same direction and of a similar magnitude.

Sooooo...... how come the South Carolina elections had the Democrats doing much better than the  tracking

poll data showed and the Georgia elections, in an area with the same weather, same news and same social values,

had a massive swing in a single day after the last tracking poll, in the opposite direction?

Could it be the Diebold touch screen machines in use across the entire state of Georgia but not used at all in SC?

Of course, such a perfect method of mischief has been attempted before,

http://www.votescam.com/frame.html

-- Go to the link marked "Chapters" and read all about it.

Watch how few lines pass before the names Bush and Sununu come up.

 

You can trim the wheels in mechanical voting machines but that is easier to spot than a computer program set

up to be date sensitive so it causes only to ‘misfunction’ on November 5. The current problem with virtual ballot

tampering was apparent as long ago as 1989.  Jonathan Vankin made this warning in "Metro: Silicon Valley's

Weekly Newspaper," of Sept. 28, 1989

“A single, Berkeley- based firm manufactures the software used in the machines that compile more than

two-thirds of the nation's electronically-counted votes. Analysts describe the software as "spaghetti code,"

tangled strands of instructions indecipherable to outsiders. The experts say the code could be manipulated

without detection. In fact, that may have happened already.”

http://www.conspire.com/vote-fraud.html

After systematic punch card fraud was revealed in the 2000 election, touch screens were proposed as a

panacea and have been rapidly adopted against the warning of experts,

“Critics warn local election officials could be trading one set of problems for another potentially as

bad, or worse, than last year's election debacle. They vigorously argue that fully electronic systems

pose data-security problems and lack a paper trail. "There's no way to independently verify that the

voter's ballot as cast was actually the ballot being recorded by the machine,'' said Rebecca Mercuri, a

computer scientist and visiting lecturer at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.”

http://www.kioskcom.com/article_detail.php?ident=1021

It would be interesting to impound a few machines from the heaviest leaning Democratic areas in Georgia and

reset the date in the machine to November 5, 2002. A hand counted series of inputs could be made to the

machines. Note to James Baker: hand counting is the gold standard against which we check machine counting

efficiency. An input of 500 or so ‘dummy’ votes could then be tabulated and the outcome checked against the

inputs.  Of course, you could just check the software code. Except for one problem;  the company refuses to

let anyone see their code on the grounds that is a trade secret.

Oddly enough, Diebold aren’t the only Republican partisans who “helped” select our candidates for office yesterday:

“According to his press office, in 1995 Chuck Hagel resigned as CEO of American Information Systems (AIS),

the voting machine company that counted the votes in his first Senatorial election in 1996. In January 1996

Hagel resigned as president of McCarthy & Company, part of the McCarthy Group that are one of the current

owners of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), which itself resulted from the merger of AIS and Business

Records Corporation. According to publicist/writer Bev Harris, Hagel is still an investor in the McCarthy

Group. ES&S is now the largest voting machine company in America. One of its largest owners is the

ultra-conservative Omaha World-Herald Company.”

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Landes_Ambush.htm

 

For more background reading on who gets to play with your ballot, see:

http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html

 

Who are Diebold?

The corporate officers are as thick as thieves with the Republican hard right religious nut division.

For those who have been lucky enough to forget, Senator Faircloth was the protege of Jesse Helms in NC.

It looks like the board and the directors were all putting up money for a Faircloth victory when Edwards

took that senate seat. I wonder if they conspired to put things right.....?

http://www.diebold.com/

Board of Directors

Louis V. Bockius III (2,4,5)

6/28/00 $15,000.00

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC

11/3/00 $10,000.00

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC

10/9/97 $1,000.00

VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE

10/9/97 $1,000.00

VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE

 

Christopher M. Connor

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The

Sherwin-Williams Company

5/22/00 $1,000.00

VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE

3/30/00 $1,000.00

DEWINE FOR US SENATE

 

Gale S. Fitzgerald (2, 6)

President and Chief Executive Officer , QP Group, Inc.

7/12/00 $500.00

NEW YORK REPUBLICAN FEDERAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE

10/12/98 $200.00

FRIENDS OF JOHN LAFALCE

10/18/99 $1,000.00

BUSH FOR PRESIDENT INC

 

Donald R. Gant (1,3,5)

Senior Director, The Goldman Sachs Group, L.P.

 

L. Lindsey Halstead (2,3,6)

Retired Chairman of the Board, Ford of Europe

12/22/98 $500.00

RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE

1/23/97 $500.00

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC

5/27/97 $200.00

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC

10/31/97 $500.00

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC

12/28/99 $500.00

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC

3/7/01 $300.00

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE

6/12/01 $200.00

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE

11/27/01 $200.00

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE

1/24/02 $500.00

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE

 

Phillip B. Lassiter (1,3,6)

Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Ambac Financial Group, Inc.

4/16/98 $250.00

NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE

CONTRIBUTIONS

9/21/98 $250.00

NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE

CONTRIBUTIONS

John N. Lauer (1,4,5)

Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Oglebay Norton Co.

10/10/00 $1,000.00

DEWINE FOR US SENATE

8/23/00 $250.00

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC

3/17/97 $1,000.00

VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE

Walden W. O'Dell

Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer, Diebold

2/14/01 $2,015.00

RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE

12/17/97 $1,000.00

VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE

1/30/01 $3,950.00

RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE

8/16/01 $500.00

VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE

12/17/97 $1,000.00

VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE

6/30/00 $1,000.00

DEWINE FOR US SENATE

 

Eric J. Roorda

Former Chairman, Procomp Amazonia Industria Eletronica, S.A.

W.R. Timken Jr. (2,3,4)

Chairman , The Timken Company

6/23/00 $50,000.00

RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE

6/8/01 $100,000.00

2001 PRESIDENT'S DINNER - NON-FEDERAL TRUST

3/14/01 $10,000.00

RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE

8/19/99 $15,000.00

RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE

11/3/00 $15,000.00

RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE

2/22/02 $1,000.00

RELY ON YOUR BELIEFS FUND

6/12/02 $1,000.00

OHIO'S REPUBLICAN SALUTE

Corporate Officers

Walden W. O'Dell

Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer, Diebold (See above)

Wesley B. Vance

Chief Operating Officer

8/16/01 $500.00

VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE

Michael J. Hillock

President, Diebold International

11/18/97 $500.00

FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998

David Bucci

Senior Vice President, Customer Solutions Group

11/18/97 $500.00

FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998

James L.M. Chen

Vice President and Managing Director, Asia-Pacific

Warren W. Dettinger

Vice President, General Counsel and Assistant

Secretary

11/18/97 $300.00

FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998

1/30/97 $250.00

DEWINE FOR U S SENATE (2000)

Donald E. Eagon, Jr.

Vice President, Global Communications & Investor

Relations

11/18/97 $300.00

FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998

Charee Francis-Vogelsang

Vice President and Secretary

Larry D. Ingram

Vice President, Procurement and Services

1/30/97 $250.00

DEWINE FOR U S SENATE (2000)

11/18/97 $300.00

FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998

 

Dennis M. Moriarty

Vice President, Customer Business Solutions

11/18/97 $300.00

FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998

 

Anthony J. Rusciano

Vice President, National Accounts

11/18/97 $300.00

FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998

--- Hey Tony! Listing yourself as “retired” and using

your vacation home address to avoid campaign donation

limits is a tad naughty don’t you think?

 

Charles B. Scheurer

Vice President, Corporate Human Resources

11/18/97 $300.00

FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998

 

Ernesto R. Unanue

Vice President and Managing Director, Latin America

 

Robert J. Warren

Vice President and Treasurer

11/18/97 $300.00

FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998



Yoo Hoo You know who: http://www.bartcop.com/diebold.htm

Which Party did all the Campaign Bribes go to?

Think Ann Coulter is interested in this story?

Another good nuget, thanks C&D

I still think HAND COUNTED Paper Ballots is the only reliable means of ensuring a relatively honest election.