Reply #11: Report on Sacramento hearing -- serious stuff going on

[rightfoot]

This is the report on the June 16 meeting from BBV
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/6700.html

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The growing split between government and taxpayers was evidenced at the California voting systems hearing on June 16. There were many first timers at the public hearing, a sign of revival for our Democracy. Hundreds of ordinary citizens filled the generous-sized auditorium to standing room only. Connie McCormack, Los Angeles County Registrar of Elections, and Deborah Hench, San Joaquin County Registrar, showed up to chastise taxpayers (McCormack) and praise Diebold (Hench).

Partisanship problems

The meeting got off to a contentious start when the assistant secretary of state began with a political statement attacking former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. The crowd shouted at him, waving their agendas, and several citizens expressed outrage at this attempt to turn a nonpartisan voting system meeting into a partisan speechmaking opportunity.

Gamesmanship to reduce expert testimony

New California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson committed several procedural gaffs. His department announced that the expert testimony provision normally followed under public meetings law would not be allowed, and he also changed the public meeting procedures to prohibit "time waiving" to allow citizens to give their own speaking time to experts or others.

This "no expert testimony" rule was reversed just before the hearing opened, too late for experts to rearrange their schedules in order to attend and make presentations. Panel members began the meeting 30 minutes late and then, after finally allowing experts to speak, chided them for taking too long to speak, urging the last-minute and hastily assembled experts to finish before lunch.

Even though we knew that the panel intended to block expert testimony, Black Box Voting brought expert Harri Hursti over from Finland to deliver his devastating presentation to the panel.

Hursti testimony derails Diebold security claims

Hursti did no speechmaking, simply stuck to the facts, which leave no doubt that Diebold built a stunning tamper-friendly design into their voting system. This mind-boggling design -- which Diebold does not seem to consider to be a "flaw," but rather, an intended architecture -- sacrifices security for "flexibility." (Read: Tamperability.)

Hursti's no-nonsense testimony, while heavy going for the crowd, was put into the record in such a way as to invoke a fiduciary duty on the California officials to take it seriously or take the consequences.

Hursti was surprised, upon reading the release notes for the new 1.96 series optical scan machine, that the newer versions are even less secure, making it easier to get into the memory card without inside access.

Recent testing by Black Box Voting and Hursti, proved that Diebold optical scan systems use a simply appalling mechanism which makes vote tampering relatively easy to do, yet very difficult to detect. This design is so obviously inappropriate that it should never should have been certified. It's ITA seal of approval and NASED certification indicates that the "experts" are either slipshod or not very expert.

The California voting systems panel asked not a single question of Hursti.

The Diebold damage control man, Marvin Singleton, who works for Public Strategies, a public relations firm handling crisis management PR for Diebold, seemed more interested than the VSPP panel in finding out what Hursti might know. He peered over Hursti's shoulder to look at Hursti's communication device, and tried to engage him in conversation.

California technical expert David Jefferson is no longer on the panel, but is now in the background on an advisory panel. We hold out some hope that, now that he is aware just how crippling the design is to voter integrity, he will perhaps step up to the plate and inform California officials that they must not use this system again. We will watch what he does, after the technical report comes out.

Citizen courage

Dozens of citizens spoke, many prefacing their statements with admissions that they hate doing public speaking, but feel the issue is too important to stay silent on.

Diebold, by the way, pretty much left the building after the first two hours. They sent few representatives and those individuals seemed uninterested in hearing any public remarks.

More BBV testimony

Kathleen Wynne testified about Diebold's habit of paying large sums to grease the procurement railroad, pointing to Cook County's Juan Andrade's $20,000 per month paycheck from Diebold, for lobbying which he has failed to file disclosure documents on.

Bev Harris testified very briefly, trying to salvage the two minutes alloted to her while working around repeated interruptions from the panel. Her testimony went about like this:

"Voting is a public trust. Therefore, the ethics of any vendor purporting to sell a trusted voting system must be examined. What must be examined here is what Diebold Inc. knew, and when-

(Interruption from the panel)

"In 2001, Diebold Inc. made an offer to acquire Global Election Systems. Soon after this offer, the purchase price offered by Diebold appeared to have been heavily discounted -- 25 percent, then another 25 percent, then 50 percent. It appears that Diebold acquired Global almost for free. What was happening while all this discounting was taking place?

"Typically what happens is that due diligence takes place. During due diligence, for a company making products with software, there is an examination of the software by an outside expert. Now, it becomes very important to know what Diebold knew and when, in order to determine whether California should do business with this company at all.

"There are only three possibilities:

"(1) Diebold did not do due diligence on the software. If this is the case, the company is negligent and California should not do business with it-

(Interruption from the panel)

"(2) Or, Diebold did due diligence-

(Interruption from the panel)

"(2) Or, Diebold did due diligence, found the design flaws, but chose to sell the products anyway. If this is the case, the company is negligent and California should not do business with it.

"(3) Or, Diebold found the design flaws, and wanted them in there. If this is the case, California must not do business with this company."

Jim March shot a heads up to the panel, listing problem after problem that had been proven with Diebold. He ended with a question on the odds -- "we are not going to stop looking into this," he said. "and if you certify, you are betting that Diebold will never lose a single round with us." All it takes is ONE investigation dealing a knockout punch, and Diebold Election Systems will be gone.

Committing taxpayer money on Diebold may not turn out to be a good bet.

(side note): When one government official placed a request to have Black Box Voting board member Jim March's motorcycle towed, another official pulled him out of the meeting to rescue his cycle. Perhaps what was objected to was not its parking, but its freedom of speech: On March's motocycle, paid for with the proceeds of a Diebold Qui Tam (false claims lawsuit), are the words "Paid for by LieBold."

More procedural problems

Another gaff committed by the California government was this: The report from California on new systems must come out within 30 days after examining the system. They examined the new systems on April 1, making May 1 the deadline for their report. However, they did not publish the report until June 10 -- one day AFTER the deadline for written public comment, which was June 9. This problem was caught by Black Box Voting board member Jim March.

At the meeting June 16, the deadline for written public comment was extended until the end of the month. Therefore, the Black Box report (technical report on memory card tamperability) will get into the public record.

In addition, Jim March and Bev Harris submitted formal requests invoking a California statute to require a special examination of all memory card programming for all Diebold voting systems, touch-screen and optical scan, old and new, in the state of California.

The history of the memory card vulnerability is interesting. A source code review seems to indicate that this problem was created about the time that Bob Urosevich moved to Global Election Systems. Urosevich had earlier co-founded Election Systems & Software. March and Harris have also requested a formal California review of the ES&S memory card structure.

Restructuring?

There seems to be some scurrying around in the background to restructure the California Voting Systems and Procedures Panel. The panel did not vote at the public meeting, withholding their votes until later. It is unclear whether Secretary of State McPherson will be taking more control personally, or whether there will be another public meeting for the VSPP vote.

It has become clear that the certification and approval process is either incompetent or a sham, and ordinary citizens are standing up to be counted.

A growing disconnect between the citizenry and their government

Theme for the government and vendor: Recertify a slew of new Diebold products. Theme from the citizenry: Decertify Diebold and invoke the California law banning Diebold from doing business in the state for three years.

Many citizens expressed astonishment that Diebold is even allowed to bid in California nowadays. California officials didn't do their job to decertify this stuff in the first place -- either because they lacked the skill to understand the design flaws, lacked the integrity to take action, or lacked the courage to resist political pressure.

When public officials ignore evidence, give the public two minutes to speak (while granting for-profit vendors hours in private behind closed doors); when public officials steamroll ahead with decisions to certify products from a company with a history of ethics violations -- when public officials do this despite the efforts of those who pay their salaries, then force THE PEOPLE to foot the bill for something we don't want, never asked for, and aren't consulted about -- it starts to become personal.

In fact, the continuing lack of accountability shown by public officials on these matters is bringing THE PEOPLE much closer to uttering three devastating words:

"Taxation without representation"

The size of the crowd and the volume of shouted objections will only grow if the government continues to fail to listen to the will of the people.

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