Columbus Free Press Editor and Publisher Files Suit in Federal Court to Stop Suspicious Software

[Columbus Free Press]

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/15/2012/4783

Columbus Free Press Editor and Publisher Files Suit in Federal Court to Stop Suspicious Software
by Gerry Bello
November 5, 2012
At 9am Election Day, a federal judge will decide whether untested and uncertified secret software will remain on Ohio’s vote tabulation and reporting systems in 39 counties. Bob Fitrakis, in his capacity as the Chair of the Ohio Green Party, filed suit at approximately 12:30pm on Monday, November 5 against Ohio Secretary of State John Husted and Elections Systems and Solutions for their clandestine installation of uncertified and untested software. Judge Frost, U.S. District Court Southern District Court of Ohio, agreed to the hearing to be held Tuesday, November 6.

The suit seeks immediate the injunctive relief of removing the untested, uncertified software from all county tabulators.

Should there be insufficient time or resources to remove said software from the tabulators, those tabulators will not be used and all ballots will be counted by hand if either the state or federal judge grants the injunction.

The Columbus Free Press’ investigation has discovered that the office of the Secretary of State has, at the last minute, contracted for special untested reporting software. Brandi Seske, Elections Council to John Husted, has penned legal memos justifying the skirting of federal and state elections law.

Since this story broke, the spokesman for the Secretary of State's office, Mathew McClellan, has made false and contradictory statements to the press about the nature of the software and its legality.

Husted's office has made every attempt to circumvent the law in order to suppress and now apparently steal the vote on behalf of the GOP.

Throughout this election cycle, mainstream media and the Democratic Party have been nearly silent on the issue of electronic election fraud. All this time the Free Press has investigated and reported on this issue.

On November 5, this issue moved beyond investigation and into litigation. The Columbus Free Press will keep our readers posted. Check in on us at the Free Press website or follow us on twitter at @freepressorg for updates and breaking news.

[TroyD]

1. 'the Democratic Party have been nearly silent on the issue of electronic election fraud'

How come?

[JRLeft]

2. I have no idea, but I want the software to be tested.

[The Doctor.]

14. Because the same peole that own 99% of the Republican party

own key Democratic contingents as well.

Kerry was given many heads up about Ohio. No one has explained his extreme lack of interest save for incompetence. I don't believe he couldn't understand.

[PuppyBismark]

3. Tabulation Software is at the Heart of results

It is beyond the pale that any untested and uncertified software could ever be used to process election results. These criminals need to be removed from office and prosecuted for election fraud.

This could be real true election fraud.

[sally5050]

4. I've heard Husted using the "Reporting and counting is separate" meme

in case this helps..
I have some documentation that both ES&S and Diebold rely on a database product from Imark which is an old microsoft 'jetdirect' application. My data may be a bit dated, but if so , the database is where both reporting and the counting meet and so calling the reporting and counting as separated is really not accurate because they both 'touch' the database and what we know about applications (though reporting is typically read only) the report could be written to read the opposite of what's in the database so that meme just doesn't work. I don't know the best way to counteract that for the average layman but if you need documentation on this i can include...

[JRLeft]

5. Basically you are saying it will be difficult to flip votes?

[sally5050]

11. no.. saying it's easy to flip votes

whether you modify the vote counting software or the reporting software.. it's SUPER SUPER easy so Husted saying the patch was only applied to the reporting to make it smoother for SOS reports is a RUSE.. it's still their attempt to hide putting a patch inside that will flip or modify how the votes were actually captured.

[JRLeft]

16. Thanx!

[AzDar]

6. K & R

[TroyD]

7. Why are partisan political officials allowed to be in charge of elections software?

When will the laws be changed to prevent Secretaries of State from being involved with this?

[Cha]

8. Thank you!

[pnwmom]

9. I appreciate this, but why did you wait till the last minute?

How can all those software patches be removed now, even if you could find a judge to order it?

On edit: Okay -- I see that you're asking to have the ballots counted by hand, if necessary. Good.

[JRLeft]

10. They can always hand count the ballots.

[sally5050]

12. actually it's not that easy

citizens have to pay .25 per ballot to count them and that can be prohibitively expensive

only candidates with a 3% margin can ask for a paid by state recount otherwise candidate has to pay for it.

so they win because it's too expensive for us to count them.

many election integrity folks have paid for a precinct level count and won evidence that they in NO way matched to the #'s on the machines but we have a hard time getting a court of law to do anything about it...

[PuppyBismark]

13. Just remove the new software and run what was tested and certified.

Ohio has been running electronic vote counting software for some time. So there is no need to change anything, just count votes like they did in the last election. There should (must) be a process to test and certify any changes, clearly none was followed here. The Ohio SOS is a piece of Sh*T and should be removed from office, but his GOP buddies are rather patting him on the back for doing his partisan job.

[Columbus Free Press]

15. They will claim

that there is no time.

Thus the answer will be... hand count