hacking the presidency - tom flocco

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Hacking The Presidency

A dishonest presidential election sets aside the future economic, social and military will of the American people. There is substantial evidence that electronic voting machine corporations and political forces in some states could turn aside the electoral wishes of the U.S. populace on November 2 by means of election fraud.

by Tom Flocco

Philadelphia -- October 30, 2002 -- TomFlocco.com -- A series of curious election upsets in 2002, allegedly linked to untraceable vote fraud, could well have set the stage for another November presidential legal conundrum.

This, as certain proprietary software secrets inherent in electronic voting machine technology--supervised in some cases by a criminal element, are engendering a growing public outcry for enforceable â??paper-trails,â?? properly certified software, but also a complete separation of campaign contributions and private investment ties from those companies that count American votes.


According to Beverly Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century, a manipulation technique she found in Diebold Elections Systemsâ?? AccuVote central vote tabulator is able to read totals from an untraceable bogus vote set within its software.

"By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created; and this set of votes can be changed in a matter of seconds, so that it no longer matches the correct votes," said the voting activist.

Election industry officials say their voting systems are secure because they are protected by passwords and tamperproof audit logs; but Harris says the passwords can easily be bypassed and the audit logs can be changed--even without the county election supervisor knowing about it.

Covering up vote fraud?

Harris appeared before the California Voting Systems Panel (CVSP) on April 21, 2004, presenting a smoking gun Diebold internal memo proving the company had not corrected Dieboldâ??s Global Election Systems (GEMS) software flaws even though it had updated and upgraded the GEMS program. She also showed Democrat Howard Dean how to fraudulently alter the GEMS system on CNBC-TV.

In a convened August 11, 2004 CVSP meeting, member Jim March formally requested a demonstration of the double set of books in GEMS; and while the short 3-minute demonstration had been scheduled, the panel refused to watch it and would not look at Harrisâ?? presentation.

Curiously, the panel met privately afterwards with Diebold officials--but without informing the public or issuing a report about the potential for vote fraud this fall.

Harris and her associate director Andy Stephenson, along with computer security expert Dr. Hugh Thompson and former King County, Washington elections supervisor Julie Anne Kempf, met with members of CVSP and the California Attorney Generalâ??s office to demonstrate the double set of books in the GEMS system.

The Secretary of Stateâ??s office stopped the meeting, called in the general counsel for their office and a defense attorney from the California Attorney Generalâ??s office--refusing to allow Harris and Stephenson to videotape their own GEMS demonstration, while also prohibiting any audiotape and specifying that no notes of the meeting could be requested in public records (Freedom of Information Act--F.O.I.A.) requests.

Harris told us that Diebold knew about the problem too--or should have known--because the company issued a "cease and desist" action against her website when she originally reported the problem in 2003. Harris also offered to show the problem to Marvin Singleton, Dieboldâ??s damage control expert and other Diebold executives; however she said they refused to look at it.

The state of Maryland commissioned its own report regarding Dieboldâ??s system from Science Application International Corporation (SAIC) of California, with Diebold allowing SAIC to examine the system using its touch-screen source code.

Consistent with Black Box Voting assertions of election accuracy risk, SAIC also said the Diebold system was subject to "several high risks of vulnerabilities."

Curiously, Maryland went ahead anyway and purchased $55 million worth of the Diebold electronic touch-screen machines--despite the evidence in their own report.

The stateâ??s recently hired computer experts have been able to hack the Diebold machines with ease; and they were able to change the vote counts directly on precinct machines--but also by using a modem. Again, these machines count 50% of the presidential vote in 37 states! And there are still no legal challenges regarding the vulnerability of the machines.

In a move with likely far-reaching ramifications for the whole country, the presidential battleground state of Ohio cited the same security risks that Maryland found. But curiously, Ohio also gave its counties the ok to purchase electronic systems, despite the demonstrated ease of vote fraud: Diebold (40 counties), ES&S (11), Hart InterCivic (7), and Sequoia (4). Again, no one has promulgated litigation--despite prior evidence and knowledge of voting security risks.

Stealing a presidential election?

"The Diebold Global Elections System voting software, which runs on a Microsoft Access database, can read election vote totals from a false vote set," says Harris, who added that Diebold purchased Texas-based GEMS in 2002.

GEMS stores the votes in a ledger built in Microsoft Access; but while accounting firms have programs which only allow one set of books, Dieboldâ??s GEMS system contained three sets of "books," according to Harrisâ?? findings.

The Secretary of Stateâ??s office stopped the meeting, called in the general counsel for their office and a defense attorney from the California Attorney Generalâ??s office--refusing to allow Harris and Stephenson to videotape their own demonstration

The Founder of Black Box Voting explained further: "The elections official never sees the three sets of books. All that is seen are the reports that can be run, such as election summary (county-wide totals) or a statement of votes cast (totals for each precinct)," adding, "the official has no way of knowing the GEMS system uses a different set of data for the detail report (used to spot-check) than it does for the election totals."

Why? "Because the GEMS interface draws its data from an Access database which is hidden," said Harris, offering further, "On the programs we tested, the Election summary (totals, county-wide) come from the vote ledger 2 instead of vote ledger 1; and ledger 2 can be altered so it may or may not match ledger 1."

Harris continued, "The Access database, which contains the hidden set of votes, canâ??t be seen unless you know how to get in the back door--which takes only seconds. Two sets of books can easily allow fraud to go undetected, especially if the two sets of books (votes) are hidden from the user."

"Using Dieboldâ??s GEMS system, one can type in a two-digit code into a hidden location and decouple the books so that the voting system will draw information from a combination of the real votes and a set of fake votes, which can be altered any way one sees fit," she said.

"...Two sets of books can easily allow fraud to go undetected, especially if the two sets of books (votes) are hidden from the user."

Harris expanded her short lesson in potential November vote fraud by revealing, "when you put a two-digit code into a secret location, you can disengage the vote tables, so the tampered totals table doesnâ??t have to match precinct by precinct results. This way, it will pass a spot check--even with paper ballots--but it can still be rigged."

The Black Box founder clarified the issue: "You want the report to add up on the actual votes. But unbeknownst to the election supervisor, votes can be added and subtracted from vote ledger 2. Official reports come from vote ledger 2, which has been disengaged from vote ledger 1. If someone asks for a detailed report for some precincts, though, the report comes from vote ledger 1. Therefore, if you keep the correct votes in vote ledger 1, a spot-check of detailed precincts (even if you compare voter-verified paper ballots) will always be correct.

Harris also deals with the issue of bypassing the passwords: "The manual on Dieboldâ??s "ftp" website tells that the default password in a new installation is "GEMSUSER." Anyone who downloaded and installed GEMS can bypass the passwords in elections. One can overwrite the "admin" password with another, copied from another GEMS installation."

She continued: "The password will appear encrypted; no worries, just cut and paste. We saved the old "admin" password so we could replace it later and delete the evidence that weâ??d been there. An intruder can grant himself administrative privileges by putting zeros in the other boxes, following the example in "admin."

According to Black Box Votingâ??s website, "(Microsoft) Access encourages those who create audit logs to use auto-numbering, so that every logged entry has an un-editable log number. Then if one deletes audit entries, a gap in the numbering sequence will appear. However, we found that this feature was disabled, allowing us to write in our own log numbers. We were able to add and delete from the audit without leaving a trace."

On August 26, 2004, Beverly Harris wrote that "some locations removed the Microsoft Access software from their GEMS computer, leaving the back door intact, but essentially removing the ability to easily view and edit the file."

"However, you can easily edit the election, with or without Microsoft Access installed on the GEMS computer. As computer security expert Hugh Thompson demonstrated at the August 18, 2004 California Secretary of State meeting, you simply open any text editor, like â??Notepad,â?? and type a six-line Visual Basic Script, and you own the election," said Harris.

Harris also discussed the issue of hacking the election results on the GEMS central tabulator through telephone lines: "Mohave County, Arizona, for example, has six modems attached to its GEMS computer on election night. King County, Washington state has up to four dozen modems attached at once," she said, adding, "most counties say they do not hook up GEMS to the internet--they remove the disk from the GEMS computer and physically take it to another computer from which the internet feed comes."

But Harris clarifies: "You can access a computer through phone lines as well as through the internet. If you have dial-in number, itâ??s possible to get at GEMS computers from anywhere, using RAS. The dial-in protocols are given to poll workers, many people in Diebold have them, lots of temp workers have them, and the configurations have been sitting on the internet for several years."

"We asked who was allowed to access the central tabulator, after it was already turned on, and who is given a password and permission to sit at the terminal," Harris continued, "Several officials told us they donâ??t keep a list. Those who did gave us the names of too many people--county employees, Diebold employees, and county database technicians all get access to GEMS. Print-shops who do the ballots also have some access."

"Whether one votes by absentee ballot, touch-screens or â??fill-in-the-bubbleâ?? optical scanning machines, all votes are ultimately brought to the â??mother ship,â?? the central tabulator at the county level, which adds them up and creates a results report," said Harris.

"The central tabulator is far more vulnerable than the touch-screen terminals," she said, adding, "if you were going to tamper with an election, would you rather tamper with 4,500 individual voting machines, or with just one machine, the central tabulator which receives votes from all the machines in the county."

The accurate vote crusader says "at present, not a single location in the United States has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks."

Dieboldâ??s â??GEMSâ?? found in most states

Since 1,000+ of Dieboldâ??s â??GEMSâ?? software systems are currently used in electronic voting machines in 37 states--each of which will count up to two million votes at once--questions can be raised as to the vulnerability and accuracy of Tuesdayâ??s presidential vote tally--let alone Senate, House and local races.

"...if one deletes audit entries, a gap in the numbering sequence will appear. However, we found that this feature was disabled, allowing us to write in our own log numbers. We were able to add and delete from the audit without leaving a trace."

Harris told TomFlocco.com, "Much of this information has been corroborated by formal studies and by 13,000 internal Diebold memos and emails written by the companyâ??s own programmers."

The memos were leaked to Harris in September, 2003, revealing that a top Diebold engineer had been aware of security flaws for a lengthy period of time.

Andy Stephenson visited the Washington state attorney generalâ??s office in February, 2004 to inform them of the problem; but nothing has been done to inform that stateâ??s election officials, and safeguards have not been implemented.

"At present, not a single location in the United States has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks."

Interestingly, Governor Arnold Swarzenegger (R-CA) recently froze funds allocated by Secretary of State Kevin Shelley which would have paid for increased scrutiny of the voting system in California, according to Harris.

Early warnings of national vote fraud

At the outset of her crusade, Beverly Harris said she was intrigued by an article written by freelance investigative reporter Lynn Landes which said direct-recording electronic voting systems (DREâ??s) had become hot, but also highly profitable commodities in the wake of the controversial 2000 presidential vote recount in Florida and the push for â??chad-freeâ?? elections, according to Vanity Fair (April, 2004).

The vote activist thought Landesâ?? DRE findings were troubling; and after some research, Harris found a disturbing pattern of Republican election upsets as well as instances of malfunctioning software and machines related to certain brands.

The Vanity Fair piece recounts a series of curious Senate races which Harris questioned as highly suspicious:

1. In the fall of 2002, Georgia became the first state to replace all its voting machines with DRE electronic models. A poll by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put Democratic Senate incumbent Max Cleland five points ahead of his Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss--just two days before the election. Chambliss won by 7 percent--a 12-point shift in 48 hours!

Rob Behler, a short-term Diebold employee from the ABSS Temp firm, shared some staggering inside information about the 2002 Georgia election to Beverly Harris in a phone interview ( "Georgia--on California's mind" )

2. In another 2002 senate race, Minnesota Democrat Walter Mondale led in two of three polls on election day in a state using many optical scanning electronic voting machines where paper ballots are read and recorded electronically. But Republican Norm Coleman won by 3 percent that day.

3. Colorado Republican senate incumbent Wayne Allard was running neck and neck with Democrat Tom Strickland in 2002, but won by 5 percent on election day--helping to turn power of the U.S. Senate, all committee chairmanships and control of the Americaâ??s political agenda over to Republicans.

4. Seven Republicans competed for a vacant state representative seat in the spring of 2004 when Connie Mack IV resigned to run for Congress. Nebraskaâ??s Election Systems & Software (ES&S) touch-screen electronic voting machines were used by the county to tally the votes. 10,000 Broward citizens signed in at the polls; but the electronic touch-screen voting machines indicated that 134 of them failed to vote after showing up at the polls to sign in. This is important because the individual who came in second in the race only lost by 12 votes! Floridaâ??s touch-screen machines have no paper trail, so there was no way to facilitate a recount to validate the election. Case closed. 134 votes just turned up missing.

5. In November, 2002 Democratic governor Roy Barnes lost to Republican challenger Sonny Perdue--the first time in 134 years that a Republican had won the governorâ??s seat. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll had shown Barnes leading Perdue by 11 points just two days before the election: a 11%+ shift in 48 hours! Another victory for electronic touch-screen machines?

"...you can easily edit the election, with or without Microsoft Access installed on the GEMS computer. As computer security expert Hugh Thompson demonstrated at the August 18, 2004 California Secretary of State meeting, you simply open any text editor, like â??Notepad,â?? and type a six-line Visual Basic Script, and you own the election," said Harris.

Vanity Fair said Diebold wiped clean the machines used to tally Georgiaâ??s upset votes, raising questions as to whether the company was covering up evidence of election tampering. But no one complained or brought litigation to subpoena either public testimony or evidence.

Such examples indicate a serious omen for the Bush-Kerry election--not to mention critical senate, house and gubernatorial races; and this time Democrats may not roll over and concede so easily "for the good of the country" if President Bush is reelected to a second term--given the 2000 Florida recount fiasco and Supreme Court litigation.

Thieves, thieves -- tramps and thieves?

Harris traced the implementation of the double set of books to October 13, 2000, not long after embezzler Jeffrey Dean became Dieboldâ??s senior programmer. Dean was hired as Vice President of Research and Development in September, 2000, adding that Deanâ??s access to the companyâ??s programs is well documented through internal memos from Diebold.

Immediately after Dean joined Diebold, according to corporate memos, another Diebold programmer, Dmitri Papushin, flagged bogus votes appearing in vote tables; but after a dozen changes before the November 2000 election, all the changes retained the new hidden vote tables! And this has continued up to the present, according to Harris, who says anyone can use or sell the information.

BlackBoxVoting.orgâ??s associate director Andy Stephenson obtained the court records of Jeffrey Dean which noted that the King County, Washington prosecutor was after him for over $500,000 in restitution.

10,000 Broward citizens signed in at the polls; but the electronic touch-screen voting machines indicated that 134 of them failed to vote after showing up at the polls to sign in. Floridaâ??s touch-screen voting machines have no paper trail, so there was no way to facilitate a recount to validate the election.

Dean told prosecutors (whose offices were on the ninth floor of the King County courthouse) that he was unemployed, when in fact he was working for Diebold who afforded him with 24-hour access to Dieboldâ??s King County. Washington GEMS central tabulator, according to Stephenson. (Dean worked on the GEMS tabulator on the fifth floor of the same King County courthouse!)

Unfortunately, New York Attorney General Elliott Spitzer is not employed by the state of Washington.

Stephenson says that Jeffrey Dean (by his own admission) is subject to blackmail; but more critically, his embezzlement charges in the police record indicate he was involved in " â??sophisticatedâ?? manipulation of computer accounting records," and that "he was embezzling in order to pay blackmail over a fight he was involved in, in which a person died."

"So now we have someone whoâ??s admitted that heâ??s been blackmailed over killing someone, who pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement, who is given the position of senior programmer of the (Diebold) GEMS central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 cercent of the votes in the (Bush-Kerry) election, in 30 states, both paper ballot and touch screen," said Stephenson.

Harris and Stephenson talked to Jeffrey Deanâ??s partners and others who worked with the embezzler: "we got descriptions such as â??sophisticated, cunning, very bright, highly skilled and a con man,â?? " the two said.

The Diebold internal memos leaked to Harris and Stephenson also revealed that "Dean was sent the passwords to the GEMS 1.18x files months after Diebold took over the election company. Diebold clearly did not examine the GEMS program before selling it, or, if it did, chose not to correct the flaws. And after exposing this problem in 2003, Diebold still failed to correct it," according to both activists.

Before Diebold purchased Texas-base GEMS, one of its directors, Michael K. Graye, was arrested in 1996 in Canada on tax-fraud and money-laundering charges that involved $18 million; but before he was sentenced, the U.S. indicted him for stock fraud, after which he spent 18 months in Canadian and U.S. prisons before pleading guilty to tax fraud in Canada, according to Vanity Fair.

Harris found out that Jeffrey Deanâ??s friend John Elder--a convicted cocaine trafficker who served nearly five years in the same prison where Dean was incarcerated--joined Dean at Dieboldâ??s GEMS operation not long after Dean signed on with the company.

"So now we have someone whoâ??s admitted that heâ??s been blackmailed over killing someone, who pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement, who is given the position of senior programmer of the (Diebold) GEMS central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 cercent of the votes in the (Bush-Kerry) election, in 30 states, both paper ballot and touch screen," said Stephenson.

Dieboldâ??s newest ex-con came aboard to oversee the printing of paper ballots and punch cards produced for elections in several states; and Dean had by this time become a consultant.

Diebold says Dean is no longer with the company; but as of April, 2004, John Elder remains with Diebold as manager of the companyâ??s printed-products division.

Good men coming to the aid of their party?

Diebold Election Systems, based in the key battleground state of Ohio, is headed by Chairman and CEO Walden Oâ??Dell, a George W. Bush pioneer, raising more that $100,000 for Dubyaâ??s election war chest.

Wide reports also reveal that Oâ??Dell helped organize and raise $600,000 for Bush-Cheney 2004 at a fund-raiser attended by the Vice-President on June 30, 2003. Shortly thereafter, the Diebold CEO sent a letter to Ohio Republicans, reiterating his commitment to "help Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

In 2001 and 2002, Diebold, Inc. gave nearly $100,000 to the Republican National Committee and zero to the Democrats. This, while Diebold director W. R. Timken Jr. raised $200,000 for Bush-Cheney and 11 other Diebold executives gave added $22,000 to Timkenâ??s beneficence--according to the New York Times. Thatâ??s over $1 million from Diebold to Republicans--if anyone is counting.

We ran into Harvard computer scientist and acknowledged electronic vote expert Rebecca Mercuri at a presentation in Philadelphia last year. Mercuri was adamant about making secret proprietary software available for public inspection since "the country has so much riding on an honest vote count."

Mercuri added that all e-voting machine companies refuse to open up their software for public viewing, while the certification of their machines is also kept secret. When combined with substantial campaign contributions to one party by a company that counts 50% of the votes in 37 states, many citizens could ask whether a fix could be in for November 2--especially if the vote is as close as expected.

If the polls keep certifying the presidential race as deadlocked, it would follow that Americans may likely be more inclined to accept a close win by either Bush or Kerry--say 51-52% to 49-48%--despite clear evidence of possible vote fraud.

Elections Systems and Software (ES&S), a Nebraska-based touch-screen company whose machines counted the Spring, 2004 Broward-Palm Beach primary election which could not account for 134 missing votes in a race won by only 12 tallies, used to be American Information Systems (AIS) whose former chairman was none other that current two-term Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel.

Hagel won a surprise victory--one of the countryâ??s major 1996 upsets for the Republican party; but curiously, his AIS electronic optical-scan machines counted some 85% of the votes in his senate race--what some would consider an outrageous conflict of interest.

Vanity Fair said throughout his first senate term, Hagel retained an indirect investment of at least $1 million in AIS through the McCarthy Group; but since AIS became ES&S, McCarthy kept its minority interest in the newly named company, and Senator Hagel still has his share in the McCarthy Group.

In another incredible conflict of interest, if not bravado, McCarthyâ??s chairman, Michael McCarthy, also served as Hagelâ??s treasurer in his 2002 U.S. Senate re-election as Congress looked the other way, permitting Hagelâ??s campaign treasurer to own the company which counted most of Senator Hagelâ??s electi0on votes!

Some would consider it strange that both GEMS and Austin-based Hart InterCivic are both based in the Lone Star state. But not when one considers that Hart is backed by wealthy Republican Texas investor Tom Hicks of Stratford Capital Partners.

Hicksâ?? primary investment company Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst coordinated the 1998 purchase of Major League Baseballâ??s Texas Rangers from George W. Bush and his partners, in which Dubya pocketed a $14.9 million profit from his original but controversial $1 million Harken Energy stock sale just days before Gulf War I hostilities commenced.

A common thread running through most electronic voting machine companies seems to be total and all-out secrecy regarding software--despite multiple protective U.S. intellectual property laws, but also large financial contributions to the Republican Party--from backers, owners--and a U.S. senator tied to the same e-voting corporations.

But no one ever institutes litigation to test the laws regarding political conflicts of interest related to holding public office while retaining a financial interest in the company which counts the candidate's votes. How is it that U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) is permitted to hold office--encumbered with such a brazen conflict?

Beverly Harris offers some final thoughts as to what the American people might expect during the 2004 Bush-Kerry election: "We found that you can melt down an election is six seconds, simply by using the menu items in GEMS. You can destroy all data with two mouse clicks, and with four mouse clicks, you can destroy the configuration of the election, making it very difficult to reload the original data."

"According to testimony given before the Cuyahoga Elections Board, the Microsoft Access database design used by Dieboldâ??s GEMS program apparently becomes unstable with high volume output. This problem, according to Diebold, resulted in thousands of votes being allocated to the wrong candidate in San Diego County in March, 2004.

For her part, the Founder of Black Box Voting warns candidates: "Donâ??t concede the election. Make a statement about voting without auditing. Hold off on your concession until the canvass is done. Wait until audits and records can be examined. If your county melts down into litigation, hold officials accountable if they chose to ignore warning and failed to mitigate risks with preventive actions--like disconnecting all telephone modems."

Harris warns election officials: "Disconnect those modems NOW. If you donâ??t. You have to be replaced." For reporters: "Some election officials will lie to you. Show your kids what bravery looks like. Be courageous. Report the truth."

As public awareness and more knowledge generates increased activism during November--perhaps in the form of multiple protracted lawsuits, the American people may ultimately ask to go "home where we belong," i.e. elections with carefully certified and audited paper ballot trails.

A dishonest, fraudulent election is nothing more than a coup d' etat--a non-violent overthrow of the United States government. Traceable, certifiable paper ballots are much safer and will cost far less in the long run when an election necessitates a vote recount. But dare we vote on it first?

Beverly Harris and Andy Stephenson may be contacted at
www.BlackBoxVoting.org