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How George Bush used computer fraud
to steal the election
The following facts point clearly to George Bush, Karl Rove and the
rest of his "dirty political tricksters" stealing this election:
1. Bush's History of Lying
George Bush has lied, denied the truth and has been unwilling to
take responsibility for any mistakes on the part of his
administration on numerous occasions, including weapons
of mass destruction, Medicare prescription drugs, military record
and the war on Iraq .
2. Voting Act in 2002-No Paper Trail
The Republicans passed the Voting Act in 2002 authorizing the
use of electronic voting machines in presidential elections with no
requirement that they produce a paper receipt (Paper Trail"), which
would allow an ironclad, independent assessment of whether the
Data in The Voting Machines accurately reflected the votes cast.
Tom DeLay and other top Republicans fought very hard not to
include in this bill a requirement that the electronic voting machines
be ableto generate "a paper trail". The Democrats attempted to
require this in that bill but to no avail.
3. No Recounts Possible
Without the capability of generating a "paper trail", there is
no way of having a recount of the votes which is required by law.
4. Bush Hires Diebold and DS&S to Make Voting Machines
The Bush administration then insured that the maturity of these
electronic voting machines were made by Diebold and ES&S.
ES&S and Diebold clearly dominate the field. ES&S claims that
they have tabulated "56 percent of the U.S. national vote for the
past four presidential elections", while a Diebold spokesperson
told this writer that the company processed about 35 percent of U.S.
electronic vote count in 2002.
The President of one of these companies and the VP of the other
are brothers. Both of them are staunch Republican supporters.
Diebold has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the
Republican campaign. The CEO of Diebold has been at George's
ranch in Texas on numerous occasions. The CEO of Diebold within
the last year has publicly promised to deliver the state of Ohio to
George Bush in this election.
On April 22, 2004, Jim Wasserman of the Associated Press (AP)
reported, "By an 8-0 vote, the state's (California) Voting Systems
and Procedures Panel recommended that [Secretary of State]
Shelley cease the use of the machines, saying that Texas-based
Diebold has performed poorly in California and its machines
malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election, turning
away many voters in San Diego County . . . In addition to the
ban, panel members recommended that a secretary of state's
office report released Wednesday, detailing alleged failings of
Diebold in California, be forwarded to the state attorney general's
office to consider civil and criminal charges against the company."
Interestingly, no one in the U.S. federal government seems to be
paying attention . . . as usual. There is no federal agency that has
regulatory authority or oversight of the voting machine industry—
not the Federal Election Commission (FEC), not the Department
of Justice (DOJ), and not the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS). The FEC doesn't even have a complete list of all the
companies that count votes in U.S. elections.
Once again we are witness to an "eyes closed, hands off" approach to
protecting America. The 2004 election rests in the private hands of the
Urosevich brothers, who are financed by the far-out right wing and top
donors to the Republican Party. The Democrats are either sitting ducks
or co conspirators. I don't know which.
5. Diebold DES Code Broken in 1997
No agency hired by the federal government ever issued a report
indicating that these electronic voting machines manufactured by
Diebold and ES&S were secure from manipulation.
On the other hand, Dr. Avi Rubin, currently a Professor of Computer
Science at John Hopkins University "accidentally" got his hands on a
copy of the Diebold software program--Diebold's source code--which
runs their e-voting machines.
Dr. Rubin's students pored over 48,609 lines of code that make up
this software. One line in particular stood out over all the rest:
#defineDESKEY((des_KEY8F2654hd4").
All commercial programs have provisions to be encrypted so as
to protect them from having their contents read or changed by anyone
not having the key. The line that staggered the Hopkin's team was
that the method used to encrypt the Diebold machines was a method
called Digital Encryption Standard (DES), a code that was broken in
1997 and is NO LONGER USED by anyone to secure programs.
F2654hd4 was the key to the encryption. Moreover, because the KEY
was IN the source code, all Diebold machines would respond to the
same key. Unlock one, you have then ALL unlocked.
Professor Rubin's Study was published on the Internet in February,
2004. No Bush administration officials or government agencies ever
mentioned this report which clearly states that these electronic
voting machines are not suitable to be used in the upcoming election.
Bev Harris, of Black Box Voting, was videotaped with Democratic
presidential contender Howard Dean in March, 2004. On this
videotape entitled Votergate she and Howard Dean are able to hack
into the Diebold voting software and change the vote in 90 seconds.
Why weren't eyebrows raised by anyone in the government at this
point?
6. None or Criminally Negligent Government Oversight of Voting
Machines
Your local elections officials trusted a group called NASED – the
National Association of State Election Directors -- to certify that
your voting system is safe.
This trust was breached. NASED certified the systems based on the
recommendation of an "Independent Testing Authority" (ITA). What no
one told local officials was that the ITA did not test for security
(and NASED didn't seem to mind).
The ITA reports are considered so secret that even the California
Secretary of State's office had trouble getting its hands on one.
The ITA refused to answer any questions about what it does. Imagine
our surprise when, due to Freedom of Information requests, a couple
of them showed up in our mailbox.
The most important test on the ITA report is called the "penetration
analysis." This test is supposed to tell us whether anyone can break
into the system to tamper with the votes. "Not applicable," wrote
Shawn Southworth, of Ciber Labs, the ITA that tested the Diebold
GEMS central tabulator software. "Did not test."
This is Shawn Southworth, in his office in Huntsville, Alabama.
He is the man who carefully examines our voting software.
Shawn Southworth "tested" whether every candidate on the ballot has a
name. But we were shocked to find out that, when asked the most
important question -- about vulnerable entry points -- Southworth's
report says "not reviewed."
Ciber "tested" whether ballots comply with local regulations, but
when Bev Harris asked Shawn Southworth what he thinks about Diebold
tabulators accepting large numbers of "minus" votes, he said he
didn't mention that in his report because "the vendors don't like him
to put anything negative" in his report. After all, he said, he is paid by
the vendors.
Shawn Southworth didn't do the penetration analysis, but check out
what he wrote: "Ciber recommends to the NASED committee that
GEMS software version 1.18.15 be certified and assigned NASED
certification number N03060011815."
Maybe another ITA did the penetration analysis? Apparently not.
We discovered an even more bizarre Wyle Laboratories report.
In it, the lab admits the Sequoia voting system has problems, but
says that since they were not corrected earlier, Sequoia could
continue with the same flaws. You've gotta ask yourself: Are they
nuts? Some of them are computer experts. Well, it seems that
several of these people suddenly want to retire, and the whole
NASED voting systems board is becoming somewhat defunct,
but these are the people responsible for today's shoddy voting
systems.
If the security of the U.S. electoral system depends on you to
certify a voting system, and you get a report that plainly states
that security was "not tested" and "not applicable" -- what would
you do?
7. How Diebold and ES&S Began
Once upon a time there were two brothers: Bob and Todd Urosevich.
In the 1980's, with the financial backing of the right-wing extremist
Christian billionaire Howard Ahmanson, Bob and Todd founded a
company called American Information Systems (AIS) that built voting
machines. They were also certified to count votes.
It is interesting to note that back then there was no federal agency
with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine
industry. Even more interesting is the fact that this is still true
today.
Not even the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has a complete list
of all the companies that count votes in U.S. elections.
But let us get back to our story....
In 1992 a conservative Nebraskan fellow called Chuck Hagel became
chairman of AIS as well as chairman of the McCarthy Group, a private
investment bank. This all happened shortly after he stopped working
for Bush Sr.'s administration as Head of the Private Sector Council.
In 1995 Hagel resigned from AIS and a year later ran for Senate,
with the founder of the McCarthy Group as his campaign manager.
In 1996 Chuck Hagel became the first Republican to ever win a
Nebraska senatorial campaign in 24 years, carrying virtually every
demographic group, including African American precincts that had
never voted Republican. The only company certified to count votes
in Nebraska at the time was AIS.
In 2003 the Senate Ethics Committee forced Chuck Hagel to reveal the
fact that he had $1 million to $5 million in investment in the
McCarthy Group, a fact he'd previously neglected to mention. The
McCarthy Group also happens to be a major owner of ES&S.
8. Criminal Record of Voting Machine Companies Diebold
During the 2000 presidential elections, Diebold made 16,000
presidential votes "vanish" in several Florida county.
Back in 2002 Diebold supplied the state of Georgia with brand new
electronic voting machines. That was when incumbent Democratic
Governor Ray Barnes was defeated and the Republicans won for the
first time in 134 years. The poll results showed an amazing 12-point
shift that took place in the last 48 hours.
Diebold was subsequently sued for applying a last-minute code patch
to the machines that was never reviewed. In another strange turn of
events, that code was also deleted right after the election and the
suit fell through.
Earlier this year California sued Diebold for fraud and decertified
its voting machines.
Check this out - No less than 5 of Diebold's developers are
convicted felons, including Senior Vice President Jeff Dean, and
topping the list are his twenty-three counts of felony Theft in the
First Degree. According to the findings of fact in case no. 89-1-
04034-1:
"Defendant's thefts occurred over a 2 1/2 year period of time, there
were multiple incidents, more than the standard range can account
for, the actual monetary loss was substantially greater than typical
for the offense, the crimes and their cover-up involved a high
degree of sophistication and planning in the use and alteration of
records in the computerized accounting system that defendant
maintained for the victim, and the defendant used his position of
trust and fiduciary responsibility as a computer systems and
accounting consultant for the victim to facilitate the commission of
the offenses."
To sum up, he was convicted of 23 felony counts of theft from by -
get this - planting back doors in his software and using a "high
degree of sophistication" to evade detection. Do you trust computer
systems designed by this man? Is trust important in electronic
voting systems?
Sequoia America's second largest voting corporation is Sequoia Voting
Systems. This company is owned by the British company De La Rue,
who also owns 20% of the British National Lottery. In 1995 the SEC
filed suit against Sequoia for inflating revenue and pre-tax profits.
In 1999 charges were filed by the Justice Department against Sequoia
in a massive corruption case that sent top Louisiana state officials to
jail for bribery, most of it funneled through the Mob. Sequoia's
executives were given immunity in exchange for testimony against
state officials.
9. How Easy It Is to Change the Vote
At greater risk than the individual touch screens are the Central
Voting Tabulation computers, which compile the results from many
other systems, such as touch screens and optically scanned cards.
From a hacker's standpoint, there are a couple of reasons why these
central computers are better targets:
a. It is extremely labor intensive to compromise a large number of
systems, and the chance of failure or being detected increases every
time an attack is attempted. Also, the controversy surrounding the
touch screen terminals ensures that their results will be closely
watched, and this theory has been born out in recent days.
b. If one were to compromise the individual terminals, they would
only be able to influence a few hundred to maybe a couple of
thousand votes. These factors create a very poor risk/reward ratio,
which is a key factor in determining which systems it makes sense to
attack.
c. On the other hand, the Central Vote Tabulation systems are a very
inviting target – by simply compromising one Windows desktop, you
could potentially influence tens or hundreds of thousands of votes,
with only one attack to execute and only one attack to erase your
tracks after. This makes for an extremely attractive target,
particularly when one realizes that by compromising these machines
you can affect the votes that people cast not only by the new touch
screen systems, but also voters using traditional methods, such as
optical scanning systems since the tallies from all of these systems
are brought together for Centralized Tabulation. This further helps
an attacker stay under the radar and avoid detection, since scrutiny
will not be as focused on the older systems, even though the vote
data is still very much at risk since it is all brought together at
a few critical points. This also has been born out by early
investigations, where the touch screen results seem to be fairly in
line with expectations, while some very strange results are being
reported in precincts still using some of the older methods.
10. Why Votes Do Not Match Exit Polls
There are numerous examples in Florida and Ohio where the votes
do not match the exit polls but only in those precincts where
electronic voting machines with no paper trail were being used. All
of these discrepancies are in favor of George Bush by five to 15%
despite many of the precincts having a strong Democratic majority.
In those precincts where there was a machine with a "paper trail",
the exit polls matched almost exactly the actual vote.
11. The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy --by Steven F. Freeman,
Ph.D.
"As much as we can say in social science that something is
impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between
predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground
states [Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania] of the 2004 election could
have been due to chance or random error... The likelihood of any two
of these statistical anomalies occurring together is on the order of
one-in-a-million. The odds against all three occurring together are
250 million to one. As much as we can say in social science that
something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies
between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical
battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to
chance or random error."
12. Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit
polls were rigged.
Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the first Clinton
campaign who became a Republican consultant and Fox News regular,
wrote an article for The Hill, the publication read by every
political junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of
brilliant points.
"Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote. "They eliminate
the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly
separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast
ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for
guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the
state."
He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for example, Kerry
was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and
Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network
had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10
points."
Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry
sweep, as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the
various states the election was called for Bush.
13. Pre-Election Polls Were "Unexplainably Wrong" in the
2002 Midterm Elections and the Exit Polls Became Not
Operational at the Last Minute
The 2002 mid-term elections were viewed as a grand triumph for
George W. Bush since he ostensibly "defied" the tradition that
incumbent chief executives suffer losses in such contests.
In Minnesota Democrats were united behind Walter Mondale
as a replacement for the recently deceased Senator Paul Wellstone,
who had perished in a plane crash, against Democrat turned Republican
Norm Coleman.