Voter Fraud (Read)

[spiked666killer]

The writer has never been contacted and I must assume that election officials in Texas and Ohio just don't care.

The tech worked for H-I for over two years and left voluntarily because of what he believed to be "criminal fraud, extreme negligence, and a distinct and troubling pattern of failure to uphold the public trust both in violations of the spirit of its contracts [and] also in concealing problems in an industry which so crucially represents the public interest."

The technician addressed problems in Ohio, which he saw while working for H-I, and problems in Tarrant County, Texas, which is where he went to work after leaving H-I.

In Ohio, he is concerned with three main problems:

Fraudulent Acts

* The computer submitted for security testing in Ohio was not the same as the computers being actually used in the field. EVM vendors are supposed to provide "production models" of their units so that they can be evaluated by both InfoSentry and Compuware (the vendors hired by the state to evaluate the voting machines).

Fraudulent Claims

* H-I's eSlate is billed as storing vote data randomly, so as to prevent specific votes from being traced to specific people. The tech says that this is not true and that simple remedial measures which could have addressed this flaw never made.

* H-I claimed to InfoSentry that it had an "ongoing information security awareness program" which it did not.

* H-I claimed to InfoSentry that it maintained numerous documents on information security systems policy for its employees. Our tech was never able to read any of these documents or even find proof of their existance.

* H-I told the Ohio SoS that election results are not transmitted over public networks, which is not true as unofficial results were transmitted this way. A computer hooked to a public network (like the Internet) is a system vulnerable to outside attack.

Misleading Conduct

* Compuware claimed that safeguards were in place to prevent H-I computers from crashing. One would assume that such a claim was based upon information supplied by H-I. Our source says that systems crashed still occurred and that the causes were seldom revealed to the customers.

* Compuware report claims that storage cards containing vote data cannot be altered using the Windows File System. While true, there are still many other easily procured tools which CAN be used to alter the data.

* Compuware claims that error and audit entries are tracked. This is misleading because only SOME entries are tracked, not ALL.

Since Compuware was supposed to audit H-I software we are left to wonder about these misleading claims. Either Compuware failed to look closely at the system or they simply accepted claims from H-I without question.

Something Rotten in Texas

After leaving H-I, our tech took a job with the Office of the Tarrant County Elections Administrator, which had equipment from Hart-Intercivic and ES&S.

Once there, he discovered more of the same problems he had found at H-I in Ohio, along with shenanigans from repeat offender, ES&S.

What makes the situation scarier is the report of "shockingly inappropriate management decisions", "unethical decisions and erratic behavior" by Robert Parten, the Election Administrator.

According to our insider, Parten displayed a "blatant disregard for election law" and a "poor understanding of and interference with important technical aspects of the election systems".

Problems observed

* Invalid entries in the audit trail generated by H-I's election generation software. These problems could have been corrected, but Parten refused to allow the correction, meaning that any audit of the voting system would be immediately questioned due to the invalid entries.

* Public tests of the voting system were conducted improperly. When problems arose during the tests, they were corrected by altering the election database, which should have required a repeat of the public test, which was not done.

* Individuals required to be present to validate testing were not present for some or all of the tests.

* H-I sold equipment to the (card readers) to the county claiming that it was faster and would prevent corruption problems with ballot cards. In fact, internal testing showed that it did neither and seems to have been sold only to fatten H-I's bottom line.

* H-I sent a poorly trained tech in to do contract support work, which then had to be corrcted by staff techs.

H-I knew that despite its claims of "triple-redundant vote storage", problems occurred that still resulted in lost votes. Tarrant County was never told this until the problems appeared in elections. H-I then said it could recover lost votes, but that the units had to be shipped to Colorado to facilitate the repair. This was utter nonsense and the real reason was to keep the process for recovering votes secret. At this point, H-I would also reveal that the process didn't always work.

* ES&S persuaded other counties, and pressured Tarrant Co. to go along with a plan to force approval by the Texas SoS of uncertified software patches. The idea was to get enough counties asking for the patch (with the implied threat that the machines would not function correctly come election day) that the SoS would feel compelled to approve the request. This operation was personally conducted by ES&S vice president Tom Eschberger (the same Tom Eschberger who took an immunity deal for his involvement in a bribery/kickback scandal in Arkansas).

* Sensitive computers engaged in vote tabulation were left unprotected because Parten prohibited the assignment of passwords to them, claiming such changes a violation of election law.

* Sensitive computers, documentation, memory cards, and software media were not properly secured or kept track of.

* Anti-tampering devices were used improperly or not at all.

* County IT techs would routinely work on election computers, installing anti-virus software which caused the machines to crash due to incompatability with election software. Remote control software was installed on a computer containing sensitive election information.

* Tarrant county failed to perform regular and routine backups of their computers.

* H-I performed fixes of "on the fly" reports during elections, even while results were coming in.

In summing up his concerns, the tech reports being baffled by Parten's "continued work with these election companies; even after admissions of concealing software problems, inappropriate pressure, hints of backroom deals, and poor support."

I asked him further about "backroom deals" and he replied:

Both vendors would hint at discounts, extra support that might be available, ES&S drastically cut their price on a software upgrade, the one I mentioned for the FEB[ruary] election, to try to entice Tarrant to upgrade further. Nothing dramatic while I was there, but the staff reported, and other people I've worked with as a Hart employee have reported that vendors have either made or suggested things that were inappropriate, or they had heard things and had reason to believe them. I cannot be more specific here, let's just say I know for a fact it was happening in the industry, though I don't know that Hart did anything like that in any specific situation.

As you know, ES&S has repeatedly been investigated for bribery. In a competitive market, when a company like Hart loses a deal unexpectedly, let's just say you hear things. If you want some concrete example of inappropriate influence, an obvious one, look to Diebold offering to put offices in counties that bought their product. It's happened more than once.

Once again, here is a prime example of why our vote should not be in the hands of private contractors. When you mix greedy and unethical vendors with clueless or "pliable" public servants, you get a concoction toxic to democracy.

Texans and Ohioans, you need to get on the phone with your Secretaries of State and find out what they are doing about this problem





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I just saw some shit on the news like that. Wouldnt that be fucked up if it was to vote for legal marijuana in the united states. And some one got a handheld device to hold a virus with uped the votes by 600+ on every system it was uploaded on. Some of these systems dont have anti virus software. And If you know the models that dont. You can easly do this. And it would make marijuana legal.Wouldnt that be a good thing.



Im really blazed while lighting this.
And one else feal the same../

spiked666killer Reviewed by spiked666killer on 06-28-2006. Voter Fraud (Read) The writer has never been contacted and I must assume that election officials in Texas and Ohio just don't care. The tech worked for H-I for over two years and left voluntarily because of what he believed to be "criminal fraud, extreme negligence, and a distinct and troubling pattern of failure to uphold the public trust both in violations of the spirit of its contracts also in concealing problems in an industry which so crucially represents the public interest." The technician addressed Rating: 5

[amsterdam]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. What year do you live in?? Too funny.