For those that think voting machines can be compromised

[DefenseLawyer]

(I happen to be one of those people) is there a consensus as to who is or could manipulate the results? Is it a local or state party? Is it Karl Rove and the Diebold Bushies? Is it the Koch Brothers or some other behind the scenes rich guy? I worry a lot about seeing something bizarre like I saw in Ohio in '04, but then again I think that if it was the Bushies that manipulated the outcome then, would they actually want Romney to win (are they already printing Jeb '16 signs?) now? If you think it's all grassy knoll stuff, fine. But I wonder if there is a consensus among those who think it's a real issue.

[SubgeniusHasSlack]

1. The vote flipping happens in the central tabulators

and is programmed into them by the company that makes them.

[DefenseLawyer]

2. I'm not talking about "how" it's done

I'm asking who calls the shots.

[Voice for Peace]

11. I'm only speculating but my guess is all of the above.

A pervasive insidious mindset that there's nothing wrong
with cheating and lying.. this has been growing and festering
for years, decades, even centuries. In that darkness small
minds use their limited creativity to deceive & create
traps and propaganda, and when they can, they will
organize to brainwash others.

It's like terror cells, methinks. Nobody's exactly in charge,
nobody quite knows who the mastermind is, or if there
is one; but everyone knows what to do. It's reinforced
from every direction in both subtle and obvious ways.

[DefenseLawyer]

12. But they don't all necessarily have the same goal

Look at Chris Christie this week. Think he wants to cheat for Romney? Same with Jeb and the Bushies. That's where the whole thing gets interesting. Much is made, and rightfully so, of the Diebold/Bush connection; but I'm not sure the Bushes want Romney to win.

[sofa king]

13. I was just writing about that.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=197998

The short version is this: Pollsters and media have an interest in toying with their numbers to keep the race close... for a while.

But if the pollsters blow the call on the eve of the election, they risk losing out entirely in subsequent elections.

Suddenly, the President's numbers are jumping outside of statistical ties in many of the battleground states. (One doesn't have to blame poll manipulation on that, though I do; it can also be explained by his competence shown this week in dealing with Sandy.)

That, in turn, has lifted the skirt of the electronic election thieves, who appear to me to mostly work within the margin of error in the polls. If the race is a statistical tie, they can game the machines to produce the result they wish without fear of discovery.

But if it isn't a statistical tie, the thieves risk being caught by producing an anomalous result, which is in none of their interests.

And that, I think, is why Ohio is suddenly issuing an "experimental" patch for their voting machines. Not because they're trying to steal it, but because, all too suddenly for them, they realize that they can't steal it, and now they have to un-steal it or risk being caught.

If I am correct, we can expect to see something similar happen in Virginia today or tomorrow, because the President also threatens to break out of a statistical tie before the election in Virginia.

Virginia uses multiple different types of voting machines, so the circumstantial kicker would be a series of "experimental" patches across multiple platforms, rather than machines made by just one manufacturer.

[DefenseLawyer]

14. Who is they?

That's what I'm asking.

[sofa king]

20. "They," in this case...

... would be comprised of a number of different people. Probably the most relevant example is the election theft in Ohio in 2004, so I'll name some people involved in that.

There would have to be conspirators within the Board of Elections (or its analog in states other than Ohio), like Thomas Noe's wife 2004. The Noes both served as Chair of the Republican Party in their county in Ohio. Mrs. Noe oversaw the elections in her district, which were fraught with trouble and which produced some pretty clear evidence of election manipulation. Thomas Noe was also a thief, a money launderer (election theft is probably expensive), a forger, and an illegal campaign contributor. The Noes are inextricably tied to both the supposedly the impartial Board of Elections and the Republican Party. Today's election thieves almost certainly maintain similar contradictory relationships.

Those individuals would have to have close ties to techies who can pull off the actual mechanics of the theft, like Mike Connell, who conveniently died in a small plane crash during the investigations of the Ohio theft.

Evidence that Connell was coerced by Karl Rove exists, though Rove has never been implicated in Connell's actual death. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Rove works through a series of cut-outs, or intermediaries who deliver and receive messages for the central coordinator. So there are errand-boys involved, too.

But the fix also has to be in within other areas of state government, including law enforcement. We can see that at work with Thomas Noe right now, as Ohio refuses to release its final report in Noe's Coingate scandal before the election.

So there is the general outline of whom "they" are: There must be election workers tied to both the election process and the GOP. There must be IT professionals tied to the GOP. There must be a central coordinator, probably within the Romney campaign, someone in a position to know who is doing what so that they can later be protected or murdered, as necessary. There must be a sympathetic criminal conspiracy across numerous branches of state government, to delay or evade prosecution.

That's who I think "they" are.

[DefenseLawyer]

23. I'm not disagreeing with you by the way

I just wonder if "they" want Romney to win.

[sofa king]

27. Oh, I didn't think you were!

I'm not disagreeing with you, either. As mentioned above, Romney's "momentum" lasted only as long as the interests of the media, the pollsters, and the Romney campaign coincided.

Once those interests diverged, it all started to fall apart, and it will continue to fall apart up to election day as the various different interests all scramble to best protect themselves--and potentially expose others in doing so.

Personally, I don't think the Bush people want Romney to win, but I don't think they were ever worried about him winning, either.

The Bush people have a powerful interest in controlling the White House after President Obama leaves office, because the next President has the option to throw open the books on what the Bush Administration was really doing.

They're not going to allow that to happen, and they wouldn't allow Mitt Romney to gain leverage over them by getting into the White House before a Bush returns, so I'm sure they would have spiked Romney's campaign if they felt they needed to cut him down to size. But Romney is an incompetent schmuck, and I doubt they feel they have to do anything at all to ensure that Romney is going to lose.

He's doing a good job of ensuring that all by himself.

[marions ghost]

17. Yep they can't bump it for Rmoney this time

but they can still do it for other close races.

As the NSA guy argued and it seems plausible--10% is the amount of bump that can't be easily contested. They just disappear the Dem votes and nudge the Rethuglicon candidate across the finish line...

"experimental patches" -- why do we put up with this crap?

[marions ghost]

15. Agree...

Santa's little helpers all do their part --*wink wink*

(I hate to imply that Santa is a Fat Cat Rethuglicon but in this analogy, he is...)

"Terror Cells" seems more current than the old Mafiosi way of doing things--a bit more sophisticated.

Good, fair, upstanding people don't want to believe this is true, natch. Blinders.

[librechik]

3. It's the Republicans (campaign and local officials) and they are everywhere

especially in larger urban districts, where vote shaving and adding is less noticeable.

[slackmaster]

4. There are only two possibilities IMO...

A) A conspiracy so vast and pervasive that its participants aren't even aware that they are rigging elections, or

B) A tiny cadre of super geniuses who control all of the machines from a secret hideout.

[Lefta Dissenter]

7. Ummmm,

In Wisconsin, the majority of the machines are programmed by "Command Central." Know where Command Central's office is? In the same little strip mall in Minnesota where Michelle Bachman has her office.

[drm604]

9. Or one person at each of the affected companies who has access to the update server.

Or one person or small group who's managed to hack into the update servers of the affected companies.

Still a stretch but not near as unlikely as the two scenarios you posted.

[flamingdem]

5. Ohio is vulnerable

See freepress.org

and several threads about Ohio on DU from yesterday

[katanalori]

6. Here is the link to article flamingdem refers to:

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4766

[marions ghost]

28. Also at that link by Bob Fitrakis:

Why Romney has already won this electronic election, unless…
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
October 26, 2012

"Despite an almost total blackout from the corporate media, the Romney family has a personal ownership (through the investment firms Solamere and H.I.G. Capital) in Hart Intercivic, which owns, maintains, programs and will tabulate alleged votes on machines in the critical swing states of Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Colorado. Despite various official disclaimers, the election could be decided on Hart machines producing "vote counts" with little connection to how 18 million people actually voted. (NC also has these machines).

• It is inconceivable that the Romney chain of ownership in Hart Intercivic will not influence how that goes. The story has gotten widespread circulation on the internet, but has been ignored or dismissed by most of the corporate media and attacked by the Democratic Party. Petitions at Moveon.org and elsewhere call for a Department of Justice investigation. Tens of thousands of citizens have signed on. But there is no legally binding way by which a professionally rigged electronic vote count can be overturned or even definitively discovered except through the use of unabridged but legally inconsequential exit polling.

• Scytl, a Barcelona-based e-voting company, has been contracted to count votes in 26 states through the easily rigged Federal Overseas Voting Program. FVAP is ostensibly geared to let military and other overseas Americans vote absentee by electronic means. But Scytl is positioned to intercept and redistribute such overseas electronic votes as needed through its spyware sister company, CarrierIQ. In a close race, these "votes" can be distributed at will to make the difference in critical swing states.
(snip)

• Republicans hold the governorships in the nine critical swing states of Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico and Arizona. They also hold the secretaries of state offices in all of those states but Wisconsin. Electronically flipping the vote count in any or all of them, with Hart Intercivic, Scytl, Dominion or other technologies, can be done quickly, simply and invisibly, with no public recourse.


http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4760 (more at link)

[stillcool]

8. In one of those studies that was done..

about the vulnerabilities inherent with electronic voting machines, different methods of changing vote tallies were identified..such as how many people would be needed, who would have to be involved, etc. I think the study was either the Brennan School of Justice, or the UConn one.

[stillcool]

10. here is a link to the study..

http://brennan.3cdn.net/a56eba8edf74e9e12e_r2m6b86s2.pdf

and there is way more information at the site:
http://www.brennancenter.org/

[Democratopia]

16. I suggest Karl Rove suggests to candidate creative ways to win an election

Last edited Thu Nov 1, 2012, 07:34 PM - Edit history (3)

Actual hacking can be done at a corporate level, either collectively by a small group of individuals, at the tabulating stage, at a maintenance stage or by anyone who has access. Which is easiest? To break into lots of buildings to access thousands of individual machines or to bribe hundreds of officials? Or perhaps, to add a file into the program centrally that will be installed in all machines, or a "software patch" for machines that are already out there?

I imagine that Karl Rove has a little chat with the chosen one - the man who would be king, long before the primaries and suggests how it can be done, never getting his own hands dirty. He might suggest that the easiest and safest thing to do is for a candidate's family member (example Bush's cousin or Romney's son) to invest heavily in a voting machine company, then install many of his own hand-picked bent executives (obviously Republicans), who are also personal friends.

Those executives should know what they need to do, or to be sure they could be explicitly told what they need to, or to avoid the candidate being personally involved in a conspiracy give them ambiguous direction, for example: "We hope you are able to successfully deliver results that will put the company in a position where there is confidence to continue our investment and allow the business to expand." They need one bent software guy who can write the code and add it to the program and one person who is responsible for software security to keep the dirty little secret from other employees.

In 2003, the chief executive of Diebold, based in Ohio, wrote a letter to wealthy Republicans asking for funds and stated: "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." This is by the same man counting the votes.

That Mitt Romney has followed the example of Bush, and there is pretty solid evidence the primaries were fixed for Romney to win makes it seem likely they are planning to steal this election if they are confident they will get away with it.

[marions ghost]

18. it's a small network

applying the patches here and there...

Team loyalty, y'know.

[DefenseLawyer]

19. If Jeb wants to run in '16

and the Diebold guy is a Bush cousin, why would Diebold cheat for Romney this time?

[marions ghost]

22. Hart InterCivic is the newly reconfigured "Diebold"

"Hart InterCivic is a national provider of election voting systems that are used in swing-states Ohio and Colorado, as well as in states we don’t really care about so much because we already know how they’ll turn out (e.g., Texas, Oklahoma, and Hawaii). Private equity firm H.I.G. Capital, LLC bought out a “significant” portion of Hart in July of 2011, and now the majority of Hart’s board directors are employees of H.I.G. (It’s not entirely clear how much of the voting machine company H.I.G. owns, but the financial advisors responsible for the transaction state that “Hart Intercivic was acquired by HIG Capital.”)

The Daily Dolt goes on to provide helpful links to all H.I.G.’s board of directors, helpfully pointing out which are former Bain employees and which are current Romney bundlers. (All of them, Katie.) So we’re not saying H.I.G. is going to steal Colorado for good old Miffed Romney. We’re just saying what the fuck was wrong with paper ballots? "

http://wonkette.com/486698/meet-your-new-diebold

Hope this gives you a hint. I'm sure you can research it more to get up-to-date.

[Democratopia]

25. Many reasons

Diebold may not be involved in the cheating this time, but if they were:

Diebold people are Republicans.

They prefer any Republican to Obama.

Obama would see a much improving economy in his second term and that would put Hillary in a strong position for 2016 - a opponent with very high public approval.

The Republican party could be at war with itself if Obama wins.

Obamacare would be hard to repeal once millions are actually receiving its full benefits - politically hard to take away people's healthcare once they have it.

The politics of the nation would have moved more to the left, against the Republican ideology.

[Melinda]

21. Wiki entry on Black Box Voting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box_voting

[pwb]

24. I hope we can do the same. We have good computer people too.

Anonymous said he would interfere if any side tries to steal it. I think elections are stolen in the red states often. Being red makes it seem logical so nobody looks at them.

[libertypirate]

26. It is best hidden through a cascade

of what could be accepted by many as categorical "glitches". The problem is it happens a very "little bit at a time", and at every possible point. I don't think they would place all their eggs in one basket. The more divided and fractional the changes the harder it becomes to see large manipulations in the count.