Trying to be even-handed, I looked over the recent postings to the threads I usually follow here looking for comparable excesses on the part of some conservative A2K poster. I found a number of comments that were demeaning, insulting and almost certainly in violation of the TOS. Check out Cicero's post above where he feels it necessary to make a personal attack on me personally for calling for the civil discourse we've all agreed to follow here.
Unfortunately for fair play, none of those were posted by conservatives. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, because it does ... just not in the quick review I just made. If I, or any other conservative, Republican, etc. violate the TOS then I say again, Monitors do your duty, and partisanship be damned.
We don't cheat to get to the Whitehouse, we actually do win by VOTE.
We like to think of it as DEMOCRACY.
In order for Republicans to defend there presidency they have to defend and deny voter fraud, fixed elections and corruption.
It is what they are. It is what they have chosen to become.
At least it gives the rest of us a noble cause.
We have truth on our side. On their side........LIES.
By Kim Zetter Kim Zetter | Also by this reporter
2003-10-13 22:23:00.0
Diebold Election Systems has had a tumultuous year, and it doesn't look like it's getting any better.
Last January the electronic voting machine maker faced public embarrassment when voting activists revealed the company's insecure FTP server was making its software source code available for everyone to see.
Then researchers and auditors who examined code for the company's touch-screen voting system released two separate reports stating that the software was full of serious security flaws.
Now a former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse says the company installed patches on its machines before the state's 2002 gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia election officials.
If the charges are true, Diebold could be in violation of federal and state election-certification rules. The charges also raise questions about the integrity of the Georgia election results and any other election that uses patched Diebold systems that have not been re-certified.
According to Rob Behler, an engineer hired as a contractor to work in Diebold's Georgia warehouse last year, the Diebold systems had major functioning problems.
Behler said 25 to 30 percent of the machines in one shipment to the warehouse either crashed upon booting or had problems with their real-time clocks, causing the systems to register the date inaccurately then boot improperly or freeze up altogether.
"They did not meet what I would deem standard operation," he said.
Behler said Diebold provided warehouse workers with at least three patches to apply to the systems before state officials began logic and accuracy testing on them. Behler said one patch was applied to machines when he came to the warehouse in June, a second patch was applied in July and a third in August after he left the warehouse.
Behler first informed Bev Harris, owner of the BlackBox Voting site, of the situation. Harris has spent a year investigating problems with electronic voting systems, and is the author of a forthcoming book on the technology. She said the practice of patching systems after they've been certified opens the possibility for anyone -- from Diebold employees to local election officials -- to install malicious code on a machine that could alter election results and then delete itself to avoid detection.
According to Harris, this scenario is particularly worrisome in light of what happened in the Georgia gubernatorial race, which ended in a major upset that defied all polls and put a Republican in the governor's seat for the first time in more than 130 years.
Republican candidate Sonny Perdue managed to unseat Democratic incumbent Roy Barnes with only 51 percent of the vote. It was the first time an incumbent governor had not won his second term since Georgia law allowed back-to-back terms in 1978.
Pundits have attributed the upset to dissatisfaction with the incumbent for altering a Confederate symbol on the state flag and to effective stumping by President George W. Bush on behalf of Perdue.
Harris acknowledged no proof exists that anyone rigged the election systems, but she said, "We'll never know exactly what happened in Georgia because there's no paper trail to verify the votes."
Harris and other voting activists around the country are calling for states and certifying authorities to open the election process and electronic voting systems to public scrutiny to ensure public confidence in elections.
Officials in Georgia's secretary of state's office did not respond to repeated calls for comment.
Behler was hired by Automated Business Systems and Services, a large contracting agency, to work in Diebold's Georgia warehouse from mid-June to mid-July 2002, five months before the gubernatorial election.
He was in charge of assembling about 20,000 machines for the election, testing them and shipping them to 159 counties. But, he said, the work was complicated by misbehaving machines that presented few clues to their problems.
"It's hard to track down a problem when you go out to your car and the first time it starts, the next time the headlights don't work, the next time you start it the brakes are out, and the next time you start it the door falls off," Behler said. "That's really the way they were."
Behler said Diebold programmers posted patches to a file-transfer-protocol site for him and his colleagues to apply to the machines.
Diebold did not respond to repeated calls for comment, but in an interview with Salon in February, company spokesman Joseph Richardson denied the company applied any patches to the Georgia machines.
"We have analyzed that situation and have no indication of that happening at all," he said.
Rebecca Mercuri, a computer science professor and research fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government who is an expert on voting machines, says an unregulated change to voting software would raise big concerns for her.
"Having any change to the operating system allows someone to slip in anything to the code. If (a patch) was not run through the inspection process, then there could be a violation of the Georgia state law," she said.
Indeed, Georgia law requires that companies that make changes to fix defective systems after they are certified must let state officials know about the changes and provide test documentation showing that changes do not do anything to the system other than fix the defect.
Before machines are used in an election, state election boards conduct logic and accuracy tests (PDF) on them with a mock election to make sure the machines perform properly. Academics at Kennesaw State University, led by professor emeritus Brit Williams, have a contract with the state to perform this testing.
But Behler said Diebold instructed him and his colleagues to fix problems with the machines before Kennesaw State would see them.
"If they started erring in mass quantities, Kennesaw State's going to raise a red flag, the secretary of state's going to raise a red flag and Diebold wouldn't get paid," Behler said.
He said the machines were patched not only in the Diebold warehouse, but also in county warehouses after they were shipped from Diebold.
At one point, Behler said he went to a warehouse in DeKalb County with "a high-level Diebold executive" to examine systems that were freezing up. Behler patched 1,387 machines but said, "We were still running upwards of 20 to 25 percent errors."
Diebold programmers contacted him and his colleagues and told them the patch was incorrect and they'd have to load a new one.
"JS equipment is what we were calling it at the time," said Behler. "Junk ****. Everyone in the warehouse was familiar with the term, to say the least."
Behler said the patches he applied were never certified. No third party, other than the Diebold engineers who created the patches, knew what was in the patches. And once machines were patched, they did not undergo re-certification.
When he told Kennesaw professor Williams in July that the machines were being patched, Behler said Williams told him: "Do whatever you need to do now, but you won't be touching the machines once we start our systems-testing on them."
Diebold officials, including company president Bob Urosevich, were angered that he had talked to Williams, according to Behler.
"I literally got called on the carpet and ... told that I was not to speak a word to any of the Kennesaw State people," Behler said.
Behler said as far as he knows, election officials in the Georgia secretary of state's office were never told about the patches.
"That's the last thing Diebold wanted," said Behler. "They made that very clear.... I sat around tables where (Diebold people) discussed whether they were going to tell them the truth, the half-truth or a complete lie.
"I understand if a company has information that they need to keep under tight lip. But when you sit around discussing lying to a client in order to make sure you're getting paid ... it's an ethics issue."
Williams of Kennesaw State University denies Behler ever mentioned patches to him and said, to his knowledge, no uncertified patches were applied to the machines. He said he would be very concerned if this happened.
"If they were changing the configuration of the machine, that would certainly be a concern because that would violate the certification," he said.
Williams does acknowledge, however, that a month and a half before the November election, he worked with Diebold to apply a patch to the Windows CE operating system. The voting machines run on version 3.0 of Windows CE, he said, and they patched it to correct problems they were having with the system.
But he said this patch was passed by Wyle Laboratories, the independent testing authority that originally certified the machines.
"We asked (Wyle) to take a quick look at it, but we didn't have time to do a full qualification on it. This was a month and a half before the election. To go through the full ITA qualification and state certification takes about six months. We asked them to look at it from the point of view of whether or not it would have any impact at all on the main line of the voting software."
As for other patches, Williams said, "We have no idea what Diebold or anybody else does when they go in their warehouse and shut that door."
Williams said they compare the system when it comes out of the Diebold warehouse to make sure it's the same software version that was certified by the ITAs. But he acknowledges that this does not include reading the source code.
He added, however, "We have absolutely no reason to believe that Diebold did anything in that warehouse that we're unaware of."
As for Behler, Williams said he's a disgruntled employee who was fired from the project by Diebold and Automated Business Systems and Services. ABSS, however, said this isn't true.
Initially, Terrence Thomas, ABSS vice president for the southwest region, told Wired News that Behler was dismissed for "lack of performance." But when pressed to elaborate, Thomas consulted Behler's employee file, which he said he had previously not read, and admitted there was no indication that Behler was fired or that anyone at Diebold or ABSS had been disappointed with his performance.
"He was released because his part of the project was completed," Thomas said. He repeated that it wasn't a performance issue. "Officially in my files, there's nothing to indicate that," he said.
James Rellinger, another contractor who worked in the Diebold warehouse until November, confirms that both Diebold and ABSS seemed happy with Behler's work.
Rellinger said workers were surprised when they learned Behler had been replaced and hinted that internal politics were likely the cause. Behler was replaced by a friend of an ABSS project manager, who was later hired as a full-time employee of Diebold.
Behler denies he's a disgruntled employee, saying he is going out on a limb by revealing information that could cost him future work.
"I have seven children to support," he said. "This is not the kind of thing I would say if it wasn't the truth."
To read Wired News' complete coverage of e-voting, visit the Machine Politics section.
Well, Snood, I'm a vile and profane man. You should hear me when I step barefooted on a sticker, or do more damage to my thumb than the nail. If mild profanity is offensive, then I have to either refrain from it or get a nasty wakeup call from a monitor. Somehow, I have a feeling that in terms of offensiveness I'm pretty far down the list of transgressors. Maybe not.
Most of the criticism I get is that my posts tend to be lengthy. Its a valid criticism, but I don't know how to say the samething better in fewer words. As boring as some of my postings must be, they are written to inform folks who may not have the same perspective the writer has. Skip too much of the background, and the point could easily be lost, or misunderstood. I think most of our readers have a pretty clear understanding of what I bellieve and why. Look at it this way, at least I never post really lengthy articles by partisan commentators like some do.
The other criticism, that I take everything too seriously also is probably justified. Perhaps I should post more jokes, or poke fun at the silliness I percieve in the Democratic Party's attack dogs.
From CNN:
Worries grow over new voting machines' reliability, security
Touchscreen machines not the cure-all some expected
(AP) --Doubts about the trustworthiness of electronic voting machines are growing among election officials and computer scientists, complicating efforts to safeguard elections after the presidential stalemate of 2000.
With just over a year to go before the next presidential race, touchscreen voting machines don't seem like the cure-all some thought they would be. Skeptics fear they'll only produce more problems, from making recounts less reliable to giving computer hackers a chance to sabotage results.
"I'm deeply concerned about this whole idea of election integrity," said Warren Slocum, chief election officer in California's San Mateo County. His doubts were so grave that he delayed purchasing new voting machines and is sticking with the old ones for now.
He's not alone. While the Florida recount created momentum for revamping the way Americans vote, slow progress on funding and federal oversight means few people will see changes when they cast ballots next week. And new doubts could further slow things.
In Florida's Broward County -- scene of a Bush-Gore recount of punch-card ballots -- officials spent $17.2 million on new touchscreen equipment. Lately, they've expressed doubts about the machines' accuracy, and have discussed purchasing an older technology for 1,000 more machines they need.
The concerns focus on:
Voter confidence: Since most touchscreen machines don't create a separate paper receipt, or ballot, voters can't be sure the machine accurately recorded their choice.
Recounts: Without a separate receipt, election officials can't conduct a reliable recount but can only return to the computer's tally.
Election fraud: Some worry the touchscreen machines aren't secure enough and allow hackers to potentially get in and manipulate results.
"The computer science community has pretty much rallied against electronic voting," said Stephen Ansolabahere, a voting expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "A disproportionate number of computer scientists who have weighed in on this issue are opposed to it."
Other doubters say the solution would be "voter verifiable paper trails" -- a paper receipt that voters can see to be confident of their choice, that can then be securely stored, and that election officials can rely on for recounts.
Federal election-reform legislation passed in 2002 aims to upgrade voting systems that rely on punch-card ballots or lever machines, and to improve voter registration, voter education and poll worker training.
States upgrading their equipment are looking at two systems: electronic machines, with voters making their choice by touchscreens similar to ATMs; and older optical scan machines, with voters using pen and paper to darken ovals, similar to standardized tests.
Still, North Dakota changed its plan to give officials the flexibility to go with touchscreens or optical scan machines. And the National Association of Secretaries of State held off from embracing touchscreens at its summer meeting, pending further studies.
"This is too important to just sort of slam through," said William Gardner, New Hampshire's secretary of state. In Congress, Rep. Rush Holt, D-New Jersey, has introduced a bill that would require that all voting machines create a paper trail.
Critics mistaken
Computer manufacturers and many election officials say the critics are mistaken. They insist that security is solid and machines records are examinable. They also say the sought-after improvements will create other problems, such as malfunctioning machines and violating the integrity of a voters' privacy.
Slocum figures that only about a half-dozen of California's county election commissioners share his concerns.
The complaints echo those that came up when lever machines were introduced in the 1920s, and again when punch cards came on the scene, said Doug Lewis, an expert at The Election Center in Houston, Texas.
"We were going to find that elections were manipulated wildly and regularly. Yet there was never any proof that that happened anywhere in America," Lewis said.
David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold Election Systems Inc., one of the larger voting machine makers, said "the fact of the matter is, there's empirical data to show that not only is electronic voting secure and accurate, but voters embrace it and enjoy the experience of voting that way."
This week, a federal appeals court in California threw out a lawsuit that challenged computerized voting without paper trails, finding that no voting system can eliminate all electoral fraud.
That didn't satisfy doubters.
John Rodstrom Jr., a Broward County, Florida, commissioner said local officials there wanted to upgrade to optical scan machines, but were pressured into buying more than 5,000 touchscreens.
"We were forced by the Legislature to be a trailblazer," he said. "The vendors ... they're going to tell you it's perfect and wonderful. (But) there are a lot of issues out there that haven't been answered. It's a scary thing."
Snood ... noted. I was writing with a bit of tongue in cheek as well, but who would expect the Ash to take anything lightly. Really, I think that I can tell a pretty funny story ... though those to probably are too long.
Clear ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda before 9/11.
These connections come out of the mountain of documents seized in Iraq when we liberated Iraq.
The are just now being translated and reveal Iraq's ties with terror groups.
Bush was right the left AGAIN was WRONG!
Link Here
The left should be strung up and hung for obstructing this war...
Asherman wrote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trying to be even-handed, I looked over the recent postings to the threads I usually follow here looking for comparable excesses on the part of some conservative A2K poster. I found a number of comments that were demeaning, insulting and almost certainly in violation of the TOS. Check out Cicero's post above where he feels it necessary to make a personal attack on me personally for calling for the civil discourse we've all agreed to follow here.
Unfortunately for fair play, none of those were posted by conservatives. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, because it does ... just not in the quick review I just made. If I, or any other conservative, Republican, etc. violate the TOS then I say again, Monitors do your duty, and partisanship be damned.
_________________
You are correct, Asherman. But I am sure that you know the genesis of the name calling from the liberal left. Most of the liberal left cannot debate. They can only, like Plain Ol Me and Snood and at times, Cicerone Imposter name call. This stems, of course, from their inability to try to rebut the facts laid down before them which often renders them incapable of replying in a reasonable fashion and leaves them only with a puerile type of response. I do hope that the monitors remonstrate with those who clearly violate the TOS by making personal attacks instead of commenting on the substance presented.
Asherman. If you think that the post below bothers me, you are correct in only one sense. It bothers me that the moderators are not enforcing the TOS, but I do take note that the poster has in effect declared defeat with the outrageousness of the reply:
Winning is one thing.
Lying, cheating, stealing & murdering is a whole 'nother ball game and your lying sack of repugnant schitt has done all that and then some. He has never been elected to anything and that includes the governorship of Tx.
Likewise for the GOP who "added to their edge". Most of them were not elected. They are there because of blatant fraud.
Wackos like you MasssoBernard are scum of the earth. You cheer as that despicable worm walks all over the Constitution. I fail to see where you have anything to cheer about.
Amigo wrote:We don't cheat to get to the Whitehouse, we actually do win by VOTE.
We like to think of it as DEMOCRACY.
In order for Republicans to defend there presidency they have to defend and deny voter fraud, fixed elections and corruption.
It is what they are. It is what they have chosen to become.
At least it gives the rest of us a noble cause.
We have truth on our side. On their side........LIES.
Then please explain how so many dead people in Illinois came back from the dead to vote for Kennedy for President.
mysteryman wrote:Amigo wrote:We don't cheat to get to the Whitehouse, we actually do win by VOTE.
We like to think of it as DEMOCRACY.
In order for Republicans to defend there presidency they have to defend and deny voter fraud, fixed elections and corruption.
It is what they are. It is what they have chosen to become.
At least it gives the rest of us a noble cause.
We have truth on our side. On their side........LIES.
Then please explain how so many dead people in Illinois came back from the dead to vote for Kennedy for President.
Bullshit, the dead voters were from Texas supporting landslide Lyndon.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Asherman. If you think that the post below bothers me, you are correct in only one sense. It bothers me that the moderators are not enforcing the TOS, but I do take note that the poster has in effect declared defeat with the outrageousness of the reply:
Winning is one thing.
Lying, cheating, stealing & murdering is a whole 'nother ball game and your lying sack of repugnant schitt has done all that and then some. He has never been elected to anything and that includes the governorship of Tx.
Likewise for the GOP who "added to their edge". Most of them were not elected. They are there because of blatant fraud.
Wackos like you MasssoBernard are scum of the earth. You cheer as that despicable worm walks all over the Constitution. I fail to see where you have anything to cheer about.
BernardR wrote:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Asherman. If you think that the post below bothers me, you are correct in only one sense. It bothers me that the moderators are not enforcing the TOS, but I do take note that the poster has in effect declared defeat with the outrageousness of the reply:
Winning is one thing.
Lying, cheating, stealing & murdering is a whole 'nother ball game and your lying sack of repugnant schitt has done all that and then some. He has never been elected to anything and that includes the governorship of Tx.
Likewise for the GOP who "added to their edge". Most of them were not elected. They are there because of blatant fraud.
Wackos like you MasssoBernard are scum of the earth. You cheer as that despicable worm walks all over the Constitution. I fail to see where you have anything to cheer about.
How could you possibly be bothered by remarks about a non-existent poster, I know of no one on this forum named MassoBernard even if he/she were to be the scum of the earth.
Hiya Dys.
Is there any point to this? It appears not.
I was reminded today that "Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservative." And that's a lot of votes.
It's been brought to may attention that MassoBernard (whomever that might be) as the collective intelligence of a team of Dallas junior high school cheerleaders.
"These are historic times. This is a historic moment in history, as far as I'm concerned."
--G W Bush ..............Washington, D.C., Sep. 17, 2004
