The indispensable John Harvey is continuing his quest to stop election fixing in Shelby County.
In a press release emailed yesterday morning (not available on the web), Harvey once again spanks the local election commission for issuing false statements.
Briefly, WMC news has discovered that there are videos on the internet that clearly demonstrates the vulnerability of Diebold voting machines to vote-stealing software. The video in question is one produced by a Princeton University professor that exposed the flaw.
Shelby County Election Commissioner Rich Holden responds to WMCTV by asserting:
"People are not going to have that unfettered access to these machines," says Shelby County Election Commissioner Rich Holden. "It's not going to occur. It's not going to occur in Shelby County because you're not going to have that kind of access."
The video claims that all a hacker needs is one minute in front of the machine.
It may be true - admits Holden - but it won't happen in Shelby County because - he says - there's too much oversight.
Yet John Harvey has posted pictures of unattended Diebold machines taken just three days before an election.
But even if the machines are kept locked down, even if security is heightened to Israeli airport levels, can we really trust every night guard, every cop that transports the machine, every precinct captain that takes the machine home the night before an election? I think not.
To see how vulnerable the Diebold machines are, you can watch the entire ten minute video produced by Princeton, a three-minute Fox News clip in which the Princeton professor demonstrates his findings, or view the Princeton report in PDF format. Or you can keep reading.
Basically, this is what the professor found:
It has long been known that Diebold machines have more security holes than any random Microsoft patch Tuesday and frankly I am rather amazed that any election official would trust our votes to these machines.
In 2003, five years of Diebold company announcements, software bulletins and internal e-mails were released to the public by a hacker.
In one series of e-mails, a senior engineer dismissed concern from a lower-level programmer who questioned why Diebold lacked certification for the operating system in touch-screen voting machines. The Federal Election Commission requires such software to be certified by independent researchers.
In another e-mail, an executive scolded programmers for leaving software files on an Internet site without password protection.
In October 2005, the Diebold Accuvote 2000 Optical Scan was compromised with homemade devices, awarding 10,000 votes to a candidate without leaving any traces of the crime.
Last August, BlackBoxVoting.org demonstrated a way to compromise the Diebold ballot scanner and details how poll workers routinely store the machines and election materials at their homes the day before an election.
Also in August, the Open Voting Foundation showed how flipping a single switch can cause a Diebold machine to boot from an unverified external flash card rather than the EPROM.
Of course, even if they fix every security vulnerability on these electronic machines you could still hack the central tabulating computer or manipulate the GEM.
Can we please go back to paper ballots?
Technorati tags: Diebold Vulnerabilities, Stealing Elections, Electronic Voting.
Voter reform advocate John Harvey has found yet more possible probable fraud:
It appears that approximately 164 people have early voted in Shelby County who, according to their Tennessee Driver's License data, live outside Shelby County. I have forwarded the results of my analysis to the Shelby County District Attorney and also to James Johnson of the Shelby County Election Commission.
On another note, it also appears there are at least five people who have a voters registration in both Shelby and Fayette County.
Harvey also documents on his Voting in Memphis site that Harold Ford, Sr. (daddy to our current Democrat Senate candidate) is still registered to vote in Shelby County even though he now resides in Florida. A quick check using Harvey's Shelby County Voter Registration Database Lookup shows that Ford Sr. has voted 15 times since 1994, and as we are in the midst of our seventh election cycle since then one wonders just how many trips back from Florida Mr. Ford has made to cast illegal votes. Or do you think the election commission sends him an absentee ballot every two years?
Technorati Tags: Voting Reform, Crooked Politics, Elections, Memphis+Politics, Shelby County Tennessee Politics, Tennessee Politics.
Big Brother is watching:
Justice Department personnel will watch and record activities during voting hours at various polling locations in the city to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act. A Civil Rights Division attorney will coordinate the federal activities and maintain contact with local election officials.
Read that again: they're here to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act, not to make sure that dead people don't vote, or people don't vote twice, or ballot boxes aren't stuffed, or Diebold machines aren't tampered with, or criminals don't vote, or illegal aliens don't vote, or imaginary people don't vote, or people living in other states don't vote, or to stop any of the other things that take place when elections are stolen.
Memphis attorney Richard Fields said the monitors most likely are not coming to Memphis because of any anticipated illegal activity, and he didn't consider the announcement significant.
Mr. Fields is absolutely correct.
The Justice Department statement reads:
Each year, the Justice Department deploys hundreds of federal observers from the Office of Personnel Management, as well as departmental staff, to monitor elections across the country. In 2004, a record 1,463 federal observers and 533 Department personnel were sent to monitor 163 elections in 105 jurisdictions in 29 states. Last year for off-year elections, there were 640 federal observers and 191 Department personnel sent to monitor 47 elections in 36 jurisdictions in 14 states.
Just another day in politics as usual. Let's not ensure actual justice takes place. Like, you know, fair and honest elections.
Technorati Tags: Tennessee Politics, Shelby County Politics, Races of 2006, Election Shenanigans, Stealing Elections, Election Reform, Justice Department.
Using information available to the public (including the Election Commission), the CA found:
Using the same public records available to county officials, the newspaper identified at least 500 deceased residents still on the rolls -- many shown as active voters.One of these registered voters died in 1954!.
Moreover, John Harvey has found 575 people on the rolls over 100 years of age — including three people that are 177 years old! (I'd love to know how many of these people voted recently.)
Much of the research done by the CA was accomplished by matching the names of the county's 603,000 registered voters against National Change of Address data maintained by the Postal Service, a practice that is growing among election commissions across the country. Shelby County, of course, does not.
Republican Representative Paul Stanley sponsored a bill that would require an annual statewide NCOA search, but pulled it "because of Democrat opposition to any tinkering with voter rolls." Imagine that.
Yet by law, Tennessee's 95 county election commissions must have an address verification program in place to help keep voting rolls clean. What has Shelby County done?
Last July, the commission passed an address verification program to be done once every two years, but it wouldn't contact all voters, just those who didn't vote or update registration. Those voters are then to be mailed a card that can't be forwarded. If a card returns as undeliverable, the voter is to be deemed inactive -- the first step toward purging.That's right — Shelby County has initiated a program to purge the voting rolls of all names that haven't been fraudently used. Way to "clean up"!
Note that the CA didn't even begin to address the whole "are you a citizen" issue. I suspect there are hundreds more violations under that rock.
One final thought: Tennessee is increasingly voting Republican (and proudly gave 11 electoral votes to W instead of native son Gore in 2000). Yet because the Tennessee House has a Democrat majority, all 95 county election commissions across the state have a Democrat majority, no matter what the makeup of the county's electorate.
Here in Shelby County, Election Commission Chair Greg Duckett served as state counsel to Senator Gore and worked on the Clinton-Gore transition team. And member Maura Black Sullivan worked for US Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., was President of the Shelby County Democratic Women, and served as Vice Chair and Assistant Treasurer of the local Democratic Party.
Not exactly non-partisan supervisors of our democratic processes.
Ah, well. Life goes on and today is election day in Shelby County as the first primary of the year is being held. As the Commercial Appeal says:
It's Election Day. Get out and vote: If exercising your right isn't reason enough to vote, consider this:You might just bump into a dearly departed friend or relative casting a ballot.
Technorati Tags: Voting Reform, Crooked Politics, Dead Man Voting, Elections, Memphis+Politics, Shelby County Tennessee, Tennessee Politics.