Article from Canada's Globe&Mail on electronic voting

[bones_7672]

"NO ONE CHEATED (BUT THEY COULD HAVE)"

"WASHINGTON — Almost three weeks after his apparent resounding victory, the blogosphere is awash in claims that President George W. Bush stole the election.

''Kerry Won,'' declares investigative journalist Greg Palast, who argues John Kerry should never have conceded the key state of Ohio, insisting that tens of thousands of votes remained uncounted and that the Bush victory can still be overturned.

"It's okay to say the F word," says the website BlackBoxVoting.org, which alleges that only massive fraud delivered victory to Mr. Bush.

In Ohio, a non-profit group called Justice Through Music has gone so far as to offer a $200,000 (U.S.) reward to anybody who can provide "conclusive and verifiable evidence that the results of the 2004 presidential election were not correctly tabulated."

At first glance, the allegations are preposterous. While Al Gore actually won the popular vote in 2000, this time around Mr. Bush attracted 3.3 million more votes than Senator Kerry, which would mean stuffing a forest full of paper into American ballot boxes.

But in a country where 30 per cent of the votes were cast using touch-screen electronic voting machines that leave no verifiable paper trail, there are bound to be suspicions..."

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20041122.gtvote20/BNStory/Technology/

[anamandujano]

1. When did John Fund write a book on voter fraud?

Just in time to be a talking head on the subject?

from the article--

"Critics say the conspiracy theorists are simply poor losers. "You can always tell a losing party by the number of people in the fever swamps who come up with elaborate conspiracy theories to explain the fact that the real problem is that they lost the election," said John Fund, a Wall Street Journal columnist and author of a book on voter fraud."


Another rehabilitated repuke dirtbal from the moral values crowd.

(edit to add--the title of the article makes in sound like nothing fraudulent happened but the article is equally weighted with both sides, maybe somewhat more information stressing possiblity (over probablity) of fraud.)

[TexasLawyer]

2. Or as Chuck Herrin says...

"Enron was a conspiracy theory, too. Were their whistleblowers Crackpots?
Were the people who lost their retirements to those corporate criminals just "sore losers"?"

Chuck Herrin, CISSP, CISA, MCSE, CEH
(Computer security expert)

http://www.chuckherrin.com

[s-cubed]

3. Send a letter to Globe & Mail

Something along the lines of:

Subject: Fraud in US 2004 Election

Thanks for the article by Alan Freeman on voting irregularities in the 2004 Election. As he wrote, there were many, many problems, and the e-voting systems are remarkably unstable, unreliable, insecure, and very hackable. Many organizations and many individuals are working hard to expose the issues, but our mainstream press is not reporting them at all, Pressure from the foreign press will help, so please keep up the good work: you will have to live with Mr. Bush, too, not just us.

It's more effective if you don't just cut & paste.

[TexasLawyer]

4. I did...

I've been trying to give positive enforcement to any writers on the voting issue, and to encourage follow up stories and investigations.

Here is the letter I wrote to the Globe & Mail:


to: [email protected]

I wanted to thank you for your article on the fraud risk posed by paperless e-voting machines. The article, by Alan Freeman in today's Globe and Mail, was very timely and well written.

It would be much appreciated if your paper would continue to look at the potential voter fraud issue, particularly as it may have affected the November 2, 2004 presidential election. Our domestic press here in the US seems to be missing in action on the entire story.

Half of the US now votes on electronic voting machines that lack a paper trail. The US electorate is asked to trust the results, even though those results are not verifiable, the results reflect troubling statistical anomalies, and the votes were collected on machines whose manufacturers are hard-wired to the Republican party. There were many such anomalies (e.g., exit poll figures at variance with the final vote tally) in the 2004 election that deserve closer investigation. I hope that you can pursue them, since the foreign press seems to be the only media covering the story.

I have attached a very interesting question and answer session with Chuck Herrin, who is a former computer hacker and is now a computer security expert. I think a newspaper article that centers around some of Mr. Herrin's insights and experiences would open up a few eyes. The article is posted at http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm

Again, thanks very much, and I look for more of the same.

[kitp]

5. my email

I also support any articles about the issue, but I take exception to flat statements that the concept is preposterous because Bush received so many more votes than Kerry.

Here's my email to them:

I am writing in response to the article "No one cheated (but they could have)" by Alan Freeman.

As Mr. Freeman states in this article, there are many problems with the voting system here in the U.S. We have been struggling to uncover all of the errors, glitches, crashes and miscounts that occurred during this election. There are so many that it will take time to discover them all.

We have had very little support in this effort from our own media and therefore I wish to thank you for this article. The more discussion there is about the obvious problems, the more we can do to fix this broken system.

A few comments I would like to make in response to the following:

"At first glance, the allegations are preposterous. While Al Gore actually won the popular vote in 2000, this time around Mr. Bush attracted 3.3 million more votes than Senator Kerry, which would mean stuffing a forest full of paper into American ballot boxes."

Perhaps to Mr. Freeman the allegations are, at first glance, preposterous. I am familiar, though, with computers and aware of how easy it would be to modify the outcome of an election in which machines, running hidden software, calculate the vote totals. Were one so inclined, one could 'skim' votes all over the country to inflate a popular vote total without triggering alarms in the eyes of the public.
The fact that it can be done so easily coupled with the fact that the victorious party fought hard over the last two years to eliminate any paper receipt for votes makes allegations of fraud extremely plausible to me. Why would one party work so hard to defeat measures to ensure a paper trail of votes if not to hide a manipulation of vote totals?
This fact alone causes me to suspect their motives.
Add to this the fact that all of the voting machine companies are very strong supporters of the victorious party.
Actually, at first glance, I would assume fraud until evidence was presented otherwise.

Also, one does not need to stuff any amount of paper into ballot boxes, one only needs to change a few numbers in a database.

Finally, it is incorrect to look at the popular vote. As mentioned, Mr. Bush did not win the popular vote in the 2000 election. It is only necessary to look at the electoral vote. In that light, Mr. Bush's 'huge' lead amounts to only a couple of hundred thousand in Florida and less than that in Ohio. Were either race to change by that amount, John Kerry would be president.


Thank you again for printing this article.