MONKEY BUSINESS - A look at vote-counting mischief and the potential for

[helderheid]

MONKEY BUSINESS
A look at vote-counting mischief and the potential for more

by Miriam Raftery

On Election Day, will your vote be counted accurately?

According to a CBS/New York Times poll, only 35 percent of people surveyed had “a lot” of confidence that their votes would be properly counted.

Nationwide, a movement to reform election procedures and protect against electronic-vote tampering and other forms of voting fraud is gaining force.

CityBeat interviewed San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre regarding complaints raised by local and national election-reform activists over alleged violations of election law in San Diego’s recent mayoral race.

“I share some concerns about the integrity of the electoral system,” Aguirre said.

In the course of that interview, Aguirre learned of allegations that the county Registrar of Voters failed to take adequate precautions to prevent hackers from tampering with memory cards in voting machines and illegally connected the county’s central tabulator to the Internet on election night.

Informed that Jim March, a nationally known election-reform activist from the group Black Box Voting, was arrested and charged with a felony for trying to watch the tabulator count votes at the Registrar’s office, Aguirre replied, “You’re kidding.”

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http://www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=3674

[helderheid]

1. I know people are really excited about Plame

but this needs to stay on our radar :)

[don954]

5. the big problem is

is that there is so much caca flying, its hard to keep track of it all!

[ray of light]

7. Republicans know fraud happened. It's up to us to make them care!

What about the phrase, "America deserves better than corruption at every turn." Then lay out names, "Frist...Delay...Cheney...Rove...Libby Scooter...Blackwell...Noe"

Drum it now and drum it often!

[ray of light]

2. everything needs to stay on the radar. kick/nom!

[FreedomAngel82]

3. I think it's good more people

are speaking up about this. Hopefully the truth will be known.

[ray of light]

6. can you nom this too?

[helderheid]

8. be my guest! :)

I know it was a request :)

[helderheid]

4. thanks!

[Cults4Bush]

9. K&R'd! oh yes indeedy....

Thanks Helderheid.

[helderheid]

10. thank you too! :)

[helderheid]

11. more

Also, in recent tests, 20 percent of printers for the systems jammed, causing California’s new Secretary of State, Bruce McPherson, a Republican, to deny re-certification.

And March said an incident that occured during a 2002 primary election in San Luis Obispo provides further cause for concern. A tally of absentee votes was uploaded to File Transfer Protocol (FTP) website operated by Diebold before the polls closed, making it possible for someone to use that information to influence voting during the remainder of Election Day.

In late 2003, roughly 13,000 internal Diebold e-mails were leaked by a company employee. After copies of damning e-mails wound up on the Internet, Diebold filed cease-and-desist orders, alleging copyright violations. (A judge ultimately ruled against Diebold, saying the company misused copyright law.)

“That’s like a crook telling the cops, ‘Hey, that’s my crack pipe,’” March quipped. “There’s all kinds of damaging stuff in there. They laughed about security concerns.”