http://www.thelandesreport.com/VotingSecurity.htm
The Case For Open Voting
Democracy demands transparency, not trust. Sign up and be counted!
There is no transparency to our current voting system. Congress has legalized election fraud by allowing, if not mandating, non-transparent voting systems that prohibit direct access to a paper ballot and meaningful public oversight:
• ABSENTEE VOTING (1870’s)
• SECRET BALLOT (1880’s)
• VOTING MACHINES (1890’s)
I believe that there should be only one standard of voting for both our political representatives and voters. I believe that all voting should be open and public - no machines, no absentee or early voting, and no secret ballots. Secret ballots are really an anonymous ballots that corrupt election officials can count any way they want.
Why one standard of voting for politicians and another for the public?
Under current circumstances, the only thing candidates and voters can do to find out how citizens really voted is to conduct their own CITIZEN AUDITS.
Lynn Landes
SUMMATION: This is how, for all practical purposes, America’s voting process became completely nontransparent and highly vulnerable to vote fraud by a relatively small group of people.
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Voting is the linchpin of democracy. And democracy demands transparency, not trust. Yet, there is no real transparency to the way Americans vote today. While our politicians are required to vote publicly and openly, we citizens are held to a different standard - a lower standard. We vote remotely, privately and anonymously by machine, absentee, early, and secret ballot. It's an invitation to massive and undetectable vote fraud. Things weren't always this way.
BEFORE the Civil War, voting was a completely transparent process. It was only AFTER the Civil War, as the right to vote expanded to African Americans, that the voting process itself began to recede from public view and meaningful oversight. It started with absentee voting in the 1870’s, secret ballots in the 1880’s, and voting machines in the 1890’s. Today in America, 50% of all voting is by absentee or early, 95% of all votes are machine-processed, and 100% of all ballots are secret and anonymous. For the sake of convenience and 'alleged' voter protection, Congress has destroyed the transparency, verifiability, and integrity of America’s voting process.
Making matters worse, our public voting system has been privatized and outsourced to a handful of domestic, foreign, and multi-national corporations, most of whom have close ties to the right wing of the Republican Party. Just two companies, ES&S and Diebold, started by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich, electronically process (using touchscreen machines or optical scanners), 80% of all votes. Their employees are in a perfect position to rig elections nation-wide. And evidence is mounting that elections in America have been computer programmed to prefer conservative candidates of both political parties.
In America, less than 1% of votes are hand-counted-paper-ballots at the polls on Election Day. Neither government-controlled audits nor official recounts (both can occur days or even weeks after the election) provide sufficient transparency to detect widespread election fraud by voting machines companies and/or election officials. Moreover, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ), under the 38-year reign of Craig C. Donsanto, refuses to seriously investigate or prosecute electronic vote fraud.
Can't we detect vote fraud through exit polls? The major news networks refuse to report on vote fraud and may be implicated in it. Exit polling is conducted by one organization, currently called the National Election Pool (NEP), that is hired by the major news networks and the Associated Press. Since they first started "projecting" election night winners in 1964, at the same time computerized ballot scanners came into use, the major news networks have never provided any 'hard' evidence that they actually conducted any exit polls, at all. In other words, the major news corporations broadcast their own pre-election surveys based on anonymous sources, collect vote totals on Election Day in a manner they refuse to disclose, and back-up those results with their own exit polls based on more anonymous sources. The late authors of the book, VoteScam: The Stealing of America, James M. Collier and Kenneth E. Collier, concluded that some of the major news networks, including the polling organization that they hire for election night reporting, have been complicit in vote fraud.
Under the U.S. Constitution and case law, qualified citizens have two constitutional rights: 1) to vote, and 2) to have their votes counted properly. For that right to be enforced by federal and state authorities, the voting process must be observable.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:
1 Is there any evidence that voting machines have been rigged? Yes. Lots of it. An extensive history of voting machine irregularities can be found in the following:
◦ Election 2004-Voters Unite.org
◦ The Conyers Report - Read Excerpts
◦ Black Box Voting, Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century (Chapter II) by Bev Harris (2003)
◦ Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying, by Dr. Roy Saltman (1988), irregularities list
◦ my own list
◦ Check out Florida in 2004 - does anyone really believe that so many Democrats crossed over to vote for George Bush?
2 Has anyone confessed to rigging voting machines? Yes.
◦ http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/ Also see: Programmer Built Vote Rigging Prototype at Florida Congressman's Request- Clint Curtis affidavit
◦ Conyers Report excerpts - how Triad technicians reset computers to cheat a recount of votes
◦ Cincinnati Bell security supervisors ordered wire-taps installed on county computers before elections in the late 1970s and early 1980s that could have allowed vote totals to be altered, a former Bell employee says in a sworn court document. Leonard Gates, a 23-year Cincinnati Bell employee until he was fired in 1986, claims in a deposition filed Thursday in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court to have installed the wire-taps. (1989) Pandora's Black Box & http://www.votefraud.org/expert_strunk (contains case number)
3 The easiest way to rig elections nationwide is for voting machine company-insiders to program the firmware (permanently installed software in touchscreens and ballot scanners) to favor one political party over another. That way they don't need to know the candidates' names nor their position on the ballot. They can even rig the top of the ticket only, in which case the winning candidate can claim a crossover vote in a opposing party's district, as may have happened in Florida 2004 - See Lynn's data table
4 Don't some voters need these machines, such as non-English language voters and disabled voters? No. Voters who want a ballot in their own language should be able to order such a ballot in advance of any election. Secondly, voting machines present the same violation of voting rights for disabled voters. And contrary to popular belief, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) does not require election officials to purchase electronic voting machines. Besides, anecdotal evidence suggests that these machines are difficult for the disabled to use. Election officials and voting machine companies admit that it takes the sight-impaired voters ten times longer to use a touchscreen machine than able-bodied voters. However, there is a way for the sight-impaired to vote privately and independently. They can use tactile paper ballot with audio assistance. Tactile ballots are used around the world and in some states such as Rhode Island. Unfortunately, many disabled voters are unaware of these kinds of ballots. That may not be an accident. Two organizations for the blind, The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) and The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), are ardent supporters of paperless touchscreen voting machines. They also have received over $1 million dollars from the voting machine industry, according to news reports.
5 Can you conduct Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) using paper ballots? First, I do not support IRV or proportional voting because they are unnecessary, complicated, and cannot be easily observed. But, yes, Britain, Ireland, and Australia have used paper ballots to conduct Instant Run-Off Voting. However, some advocates of IRV are aggressively promoting the idea that voting machines are necessary. Regarding proportional voting, it is the wrong answer to the obvious problem presented by "at-large" elections where the winners take all. Instead, political entities (such as townships) should be divided into voting districts (which many already are), thereby allowing the development of Democratic, Republican, etc. strongholds which could result in more equitable representation.
6 Aren't machines faster than a hand count and isn't that important? They should be, but often they're not. Machines breakdown routinely, thereby taking longer to report election results. In Maryland in the 2004 election, 9% of machines observed by a voting rights group, broke down. Essentially, a speedy hand count is based on a sufficient number of poll workers per number of registered voters and the length of the ballot. Canada uses 2 election officials per approximately 500 registered voters. In addition, election officials don't need to depend on volunteers. Citizens can be drafted to work at the polls on Election Day, as is done routinely with jury duty. The right to direct access to a ballot and meaningful public oversight of the process supersedes the perceived convenience of voting machines.
7 What about states that have really long ballots, including initiatives and referendum? Most countries keep their ballots brief. For instance, in America state and local judges could be elected by legislative bodies instead of the voters. But, there are other issues. The initiative/referendum movement is called Direct Democracy. However, it is really an end-run around the legislature. Some activists think this is a good idea, but others disagree. California's ballot has become a nightmare. Clearly, those with the money get their issues on the ballot. And consider this. The initiative/referendum movement allows those who control the voting machines to also control which candidates win and what legislation gets passed.
8 Aren't voting machines more accurate than a hand count? There is no way to know. There is no way to test the accuracy of voting machines during the actual voting process on Election Day. Citizens vote in secret. The machines count those votes in secret. If ballot scanners are used, then election officials can run an audit to check accuracy. But, few states require audits. Even with an audit, election officials decide where and when the audits occur. Public participation and oversight is not meaningful. Any test done prior or after an election cannot ensure that during the election the machine did not manipulate votes, either by accident or design. The accuracy of voting machines is often correlated with the number of overvotes and undervotes it records. One could have nothing to do with the other. There is no way to know the intention of the voter, or if a voting machine is filling in votes that the voter deliberately left blank. Although a lever and touchscreen machine can prevent overvotes, all in all, "The difference between the best performing and worst performing technologies is as much as 2 percent of ballots cast. Surprisingly, paper ballots—the oldest technology—show the best performance." This is the finding of two Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) political science professors, Dr. Stephen Ansolabehere and Dr. Charles Stewart III, in a September 25, 2002 study entitled, Voting Technology and Uncounted Votes in the United States.
9 Which is more expensive, voting by machine or paper? For legitimate elections, expense can never be a consideration. That said, paper is cheap and requires no special servicing, storage, or trained personnel, while a single voting machines can cost thousands of dollars and require servicing, storage, and trained personnel. Furthermore, election officials never need to rely on volunteers to staff the polls. Citizens can always be drafted as they are for jury duty, at little or no cost to the tax payer.
10 If someone wins by a large enough margin, isn't that a sign that the election wasn't rigged? No. It only stands to reason that if someone is going to rig an election, it will be done by a sufficient number of votes to avoid triggering a recount. Otherwise, this could happen: In August of 2002, in Clay county Kansas, Jerry Mayo lost a close race for county commissioner, garnering 48% of the vote, but a hand recount revealed May won by a landslide, earning 76% of the vote.
11 If the voting machines are being used at my polling precinct, is it better to vote by absentee? Most absentee ballots are not counted by hand, but instead scanned by computers. The same corporations (ES&S, Diebold, Sequoia, etc) that dominate the touchscreen market, also control the ballot scanners. In addition, some counties, like King County Washington, have even outsourced the mailing of their absentee ballots to private industry.
12 Can't elections be rigged by stuffing ballot boxes, as well? Yes, but it is a detectable kind of vote fraud, whereas voting by machine, early or absentee is nearly impossible to detect. The problem of stuffed ballot boxes may be more fiction than fact. In his book, The Right To Vote, The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, Alexander Keyssar, of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, writes, "...recent studies have found that claims of widespread corruption were grounded almost entirely in sweeping, highly emotional allegations backed by anecdotes and little systematic investigation or evidence. Paul Kleppner, among others, has concluded that what is most striking is not how many, but how few documented cases of electoral fraud can be found. Most elections appear to have been honestly conducted: ballot-box stuffing, bribery, and intimidation were the exception, not the rule."
13 Doesn't the federal government regulate the voting machine industry? No. There is no federal agency charged with regulatory oversight of the elections industry. There are no restrictions on who can count our votes. Anyone from anywhere can count our votes. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) doesn't even publish a complete list of all the voting technology companies whose business it is to count Americans' votes. see: voting companies info
14 Can a voting machine company be owned by foreigners and run by felons? Yes. Sequoia is the third largest voting machine company in America and is owned by a British-based company, De La Rue. Diebold is the second largest voting machine company in the country. It counts about 35% of all votes in America. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states. Jeff Dean, Diebold's Senior Vice-President and senior programmer on Diebold's central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree. Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years. see: fraud & irregularities
15 Isn't that a threat to national security? Yes.
16 What was the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) all about? It established the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to distribute billions of dollars to the states to upgrade their voting systems, but failed to mandate any meaningful standards. http://www.eac.gov/law_ext.asp
17 Doesn't the federal government certify the voting machines? No. The federal government has a loose set of technical guidelines for voting machines that are voluntary and may be actually harmful. The Federal Voting Systems Standards (FVSS) used by the three NASED's approved Independent Test Authorities (ITA) to "certify" companies are outmoded guidelines and voluntary, and not all states have adopted them. According to industry observers, the FVSS guidelines allow one in ten machines to fail. There is no enforcement of these guidelines, such as they are.
18 Who, then, certifies the nation's voting machines? The FEC coordinates with the industry-funded National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), a private non-profit group, to have machines inspected certified by industry-funded private contractors. NASED selects and approves the testing laboratories. Only prototypes of the machines and software are available for a very superficial inspection. The inspection is conducted by three private companies who are not themselves subject to any regulation. Technical Issues & Standards "An unelected person named R. Doug Lewis runs a private non-profit organization called "The Election Center."
Lewis is possibly the most powerful man in the U.S., influencing election procedures and voting systems, yet he is vague about his credentials and no one seems to be quite sure who hired him or how he came to oversee such vast electoral functions. Lewis organized the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS, now heavily funded by voting machine vendors); he also organized the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) and, through them, Lewis told (author Bev) Harris he helps certify the certifiers." "Wyle Laboratories is the most talked-about voting machine certifier, probably because it is the biggest, but in fact, Wyle quit certifying voting machine software in 1996. It does test hardware: Can you drop it off a truck? Does it stand up to rain? Software testing and certification is done by Shawn Southworth. When Ciber quit certifying in 1996, it was taken over by Nichols Research, and Southworth was in charge of testing. Nichols Research stopped doing the testing, and it was taken over by PSInet, where Southworth did the testing. PSInet went under, and testing functions were taken over by Metamore, where Southworth did the testing. Metamore dumped it, and it was taken over by Ciber, where Southworth does the testing. Here is a photo of Shawn Southworth:" scoop.co.nz
My advice to "losing" candidates:
1 Don't concede. American elections (due to mechanical and computerized voting machines) have no legal foundation because there is no effective manner to monitor the election for fraud, nor verify the results. See: Lynn's federal lawsuit against non-transparent voting systems (2004-2006)
2 Request a new election using only paper ballots and hand counts at local polling precincts.
3 Audit the "official" results. Establish an online voter audit that includes the voter's choice for president, plus their name, address, and email (optional) and compare those results to "official" vote tallies by polling places. It's not perfect, but it encourages people to go public with their votes and demand that their votes are counted accurately. Learn more about "open voting" below.
4 Sue the state government for holding an illegal election (if voting technology is used) (I tried and failed, but others may have better results).Lynn's federal lawsuit against non-transparent voting systems (2004-2006)
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