We can talk all the trash we want to about Mexico but at lease they are standing up for themself's, they held and election and it looked like it was held here but the thing is they refuse to let there votes be tossed out unlike us.


Why Democrats don't count: lessons from the un-Gore of Mexico

by Greg PalastJuly 16, 2006

The Exit polls said he won, but the "official" tally took his victory away. His supporters found they were scrubbed off voter rolls. Violence and intimidation kept even more of his voters away from the polls. Hundreds of thousands of ballots supposedly showed no choice for president -- like ballots with hanging chads. And the officials in charge of this suspect election refused to re-count those votes in public. Everyone knew full well a fair count would certainly change the outcome. You've heard this story before: Gore 2000. Kerry 2004. But Lopez Obrador 2006 is made out of very different stuff than the scarecrow candidates who, oddly, call themselves "Democrats." For six years now, I've had this crazy fantasy in my head. In it, an election is stolen and the guy who's declared the loser stands up in front of the White House and says three magic words: "Count the votes." This past Saturday, my dream came true. Unfortunately, it was in Spanish -- but I'll take what I can get. There was Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, presidential challenger, standing in the "Zocalo" -- the square in front of Mexico's White House, telling the ruling clique inside, "Count the votes!" Most important, his simple demand was echoed by half a million pissed-off, activated voters chanting with him, "Vota por vota!" -- vote by vote. And you know what? I think they are going to have to listen. I suspect that the rulers of Mexico, a vicious, puffed-up, arrogant elite, may well have to count those votes. But, for that to happen, someone had to ask them to do it -- in no uncertain terms. Traveling the USA, I'm asked again and again 'Why don't Democrats stand up when their elections are stolen?' The answer: for the same reason jellyfish don't stand up... they're invertebrates. I'm beginning to find that answer a bit too glib (though darn funny). Because it's not about electoral cojones; it's about a devotion to democracy deep in the bone. Yet weirdly, candidates that call themselves "Democrats" seem kind of, well, indifferent to democracy. Why? Elections are the radical tool of the working class -- the great leveler of the powerless against the too-powerful. But the candidates themselves, both Republican and Democrat, tend to come from the privileged and pampered class. Votes are just the surfboards on which their ambitions ride. Right now in Mexico's capitol, nearly a million ballots sit in tied bundles uncounted. That's four times the "official" margin of victory of the ruling party over Lopez Obrador. Supposedly, they're "votos nulos" -- null votes, unreadable. But, not surprisingly, when a few packets were opened, the majority of these supposedly unreadable votes were Lopez Obrador's. If you think that's a Mexican game, think again. Because that's exactly what happened in Florida and Ohio. In Florida, 179,855 ballots supposedly showed no vote for President. A closer look by the US Civil Rights Commission statisticians showed that 54% of those Florida "votos nulos" were cast by African-Americans. Did Black folk forget to vote for President, couldn't make up their minds or, as one TV network implied, were too dumb to figure out the ballot? Not at all. Machines can't count some ballots. But people can. For example, several voters wrote in, "Al Gore," which the machines rejected as his name was already printed on the ballot. The write-in could fool a machine but a human has no problem figuring out that voter's intent. The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago reviewed all 179,855 "uncountable" votes and found the majority attempted to choose Gore. And they would have been counted -- but Florida's Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, ordered a halt. So Bush was elected not by counting the votes but by preventing their count. And he was reelected the same way in 2004 when a quarter million votes were nullified in Ohio. But why fixate on Florida and Ohio? Here's a nasty little fact about voting in the Land of the Free not reported in your newspapers: 3,600,380 ballots were cast in the November 2004 presidential election that were never counted. In 2000, the uncounted ballots totaled just under two million. And where were the Democrats? In 2004, behind the huge jump in uncounted votes was a mass challenge campaign aimed at poor, Black and Hispanic voters by the Republican Party -- pushing these voters, mostly Democrats, to "provisional ballots." They could have been counted, if someone had fought for it. Hundreds of lawyers were on stand-by but the head of the biggest legal team told me in confidence -- and in frustration -- that the Kerry campaign told them to stand down. Recently, Al Gore was asked if the election of 2000 was stolen. "There may come a time when I speak on that, but it's not now," said the beta dog. (I suspect that if Al Gore were found bleeding in an alley, he'd answer the question, Who shot you? with "There may come a time when I speak on that..."). Lopez Obrador is of a different breed. At the rally last Saturday in Mexico City, he played video and audio tapes of the evidence of fraud on a screen eighty feet tall. Imagine if Gore had projected the "scrub sheets" of purged Black voters on a ten-story-high screen in front of the White House. Lopez Obrador put political force behind his legal demands by calling on voters from every state in Mexico to march to the capital. Two million are expected to arrive this Sunday. The result: the word among the political classes is that the election may be annulled. Even the conservative Financial Times has warned Mexico's elite not to "fool itself" by ignoring the demand for a full vote count. North-of-the-Border Democrats just don't get it. The Republican Party is pushing "provisional" ballots, pushing voter ID requirements, compiling secret challenge lists, scrubbing voter registries and selling us vote-nullifying ballot boxes: they get it completely. The GOP knows the key to their electoral domination is not in winning over their opponents' votes, but in not counting them. The un-Gore of Mexico City has a lesson for the Blue-party gringos. Either the Democrats demand that all votes count, or the Democrats will count for nothing.



BBV: Unredacted Hursti Diebold reports, photos released

by Bev HarrisJuly 4, 2006

States and local jurisdictions did not take sufficient action to mitigate risks. Black Box Voting has provided the following to VoterAction.org for its litigation. This will become a public record via the litigation filed by Lowell Finley. Because public officials who have received the unredacted reports have failed to take this risk seriously and arrange for appropriate mitigations, and because Black Box Voting believes this information is of critical public interest for pending litigation and citizen actions, we are releasing it publicly now. HERE'S AN INFORMAL SYNOPSIS OF THE UNMITIGATED RISKS IN THE DIEBOLD TSX: A huge risk to the integrity of elections is a contaminated bootloader. Here's why: If you own the bootloader, you own the machine. The source code for the TSx, along with the technical data package, have been publicly released since 2003. Estimates are that it would take approximately three months for a reasonably skilled programmer to design a working malicious bootloader. You cannot clean a maliciously designed bootloader with the mitigations performed so far by state officials (replacing programs via memory cards). HERE ARE SOME SPECIFIC PROBLEMS WITH THE DIEBOLD BOOTLOADER: 1) It appears not to have been examined by the Independent Testing Authorities (ITAs). Therefore, we don't even know whether the original bootloader contains malicious code. 2) There appears to be no authentication procedure when installing "clean versions" to ensure that the code is the same as that which was examined by the ITAs (and in this case, the ITAs didn't even examine it). 3) There is no forensic test that will reveal a malicious bootloader 4) Because of the design of the Diebold TSx machine, a malicious bootloader can be installed at any time from factory installation to the election itself. Once a bootloader is contaminated, it can control the machine permanently. A contaminated bootloader, especially in combination with other security issues in the TSx, has the potential to allow manipulation on an election-by-election basis, at any time during the election cycle and even years in advance of the election. 5) The Diebold TSx machine's motherboard contains a JTAG connection which can be used to take control of the motherboard. Although you cannot reliably clean a malicious bootloader by reinstalling it with a memory card, you can install a pristine version using the JTAG cable. However, there appears to be no pristine version of the bootloader, since it has never been examined by the ITAs. 6) Unfortunately, the JTAG connector can be used to overwrite a so-called authentic and proper bootloader with a malicious one. Thus, even if a so-called pristine bootloader is installed via the JTAG connector, the same connector can be used to replace that one with a new one at any time. 7) In order to access the JTAG connection, you must pop open the case to the TSx tablet. Unfortunately, the case on the TSx is designed with no security. You can open it by unscrewing 8 standard phillips head screws, access the JTAG connector, replace the bootloader and control the machine for the rest of its life, despite L&A tests, reinstallations of "clean" copies via memory cards or network connections, etc. 8) TSx machines in California -- 10,000 machines in San Diego alone -- were sent home for "sleepovers" with poll workers in back in 2004, when they were used for the March primary election. Over 1,000 machines originally used in Solano County, Calif, are now being used in Johnson County, Kansas. The TSx machines are now being used throughout the states of Mississippi, Utah, in dozens of Ohio counties, and in many high-population California counties. A case can be made that the Diebold TSx machine will dictate control of the U.S. congress in November. The sleepovers broke chain of custody. The combination of unsecured cases with the ability to quickly alter the bootloader using the JTAG connector means these machines cannot be considered "trusted" until proper mitigations are done. PROPER MITIGATIONS: - The "official" bootloader needs to be sent to the ITAs for examination, as well as provided to state voting machine examiners. - An authentication device needs to be used to make sure that this bootloader code, once examined by test labs, is the authentic version of the code - Once this is done, each of the cases needs to be opened and an authentic clean bootloader installed using the JTAG cable. - After this is done, the cases need to be sealed with tamper-evident mechanisms. Note that "tamper evident" tape is quite different from "tamper resistant" tape. Tamper evident tape should leave an indelible mark if removed. Note that the TSx tablet is stored inside a case, and is also seated in the case during elections. It may be difficult to observe whether the tablet has been opened -- even with tamper evident mechanisms -- unless it is removed from the case. - Due to the severity of this security defect, and the deceptiveness with which Diebold Election Systems has handled this situation, all citizens who vote on these machines should be able to see for themselves that the proper mitigations were done and that the case has not been opened. This means: a. The ITA review of the bootloader code should be done immediately and the report should be made public. b. The authentication methodology should be identified to the public. c. The opening of the case and the installation of authentic, approved bootloaders should be publicly announced and viewable by the public. This process should be performed by public officials, not by Diebold Election Systems. d. The sealing of the case should be publicly viewable. e. The case should be sealed in such a way that poll workers and the public can verify that cases have not been opened when the machines are deployed on election day. IN A SANE WORLD, THESE MACHINES WOULD BE RECALLED. According to recent PBS coverage, the reason NASED and/or the EAC have given for failing to require a recall of the Diebold TSx is that it would involve a lot of litigation and trouble. It would not, of course, require litigation if Diebold initiated it. OTHER ISSUES Also, when you pop the tablet casing open, you can also pop out the modem and install another device in place of the approved modem. You can also insert an SD card wireless card in the slot. Problems with sealing the case after delivery: - Elections officials don't know if the legitimate modem or a wireless modem is inside the case - Elections officials don't know if there is an SD wireless card in the slot - The only way to find out is to open the case, which invalidates the warranty HERE ARE THE UNREDACTED HURSTI REPORTS: http://www.bbvdocs.org/reports/BBVreportIIunredacted.pdf http://www.bbvdocs.org/reports/BBVreportII-supplement-unredacted.pdf HERE IS THE CONFIGURATION GUIDE: http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/Wildcat-Software-Configuration- Guide.doc HERE IS THE SOURCE CODE (Diebold will claim it is "old" of course) http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/Wildcat_BSP_Source.zip LOCATOR GRID http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-motherboard-GRID-LOCATION- GUIDE.JPG JTAG closeup (Section E4) http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-motherboard-E4.JPG Closeup of SD card slot: http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-motherboard-SD-MMC-closeup.jpg Closeup of modem (underneath it are piggyback connectors, unfortunately we did not get a photo of them) http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-motherboard-modem-closeup.JPG HERE IS THE FIRST BATCH OF PHOTOGRAPHS: Small versions will be uploaded in a day or two and will be appended to this. http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/accessibility-keypad-being-plugged- in.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/accessibility-keypad-plug-on-tsx.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/accessory-keypad-installed.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/polltape-printer-under-vvpat- printer1.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/polltape-printer-under-vvpat- printer2.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-assembled-without-vvpat.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-base-station.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-base-station-carrying-handle- 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pcmcia-2.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-showing-audit-log-segment.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-side-view-with-button.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-sideview-with-smartcard- reader.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-smartcard-reader.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-view-of-voter-accessible- button.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/512meg-USB-flash-loaded-on-GEMS.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/back-of-GEMS-server-Dell-Xeon -1800.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/GEMS-box-closeup-of-slot-area.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/GEMS-closeup-of-motherboard- ports.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/GEMS-closeup-of-removeable- drives.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/GEMS-smartcard-writer-RS232.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/GEMS-smartcard-writer-RS232-back.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/GEMS-smartcard-writer-RS232- 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closeup.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-motherboard-ROM-closeup.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-motherboard-SD-MMC-closeup.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/Keypad-and-headset-kit.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/Paper-rolls.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/PCMCIA-and-CF-Ethernet-card1.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/PCMCIA-and-CF-Ethernet-card2.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/PCMCIA-and-CF-Ethernet-card3-sm.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/Rack-of-TSx.jpghttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/Spryus-card-programmer-front-and- back.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/Supervisor-card.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/Voter-access-card.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-connector-flaw-closeup-1.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-connector-flaw-closeup-2.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-connector-flaw-top-view.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-loose-power-plug-closeup-with- 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progress2.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-VVPAT-paper-jam-in-progress.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-VVPAT-without-fresnel-lens.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-with-VVPAT-door-up.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/TSx-with-VVPAT-installed.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/Ethernet-PCMCIA-card.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-misc1.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-misc2.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-misc3.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-misc4.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-misc5.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-misc6.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-misc7.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-misc8.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-misc9.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-misc10.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-misc11.JPGhttp://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/tsx/tsx-misc12.JPG


House passes Voting Rights Act renewal

Southern conservative efforts on amendments fail

Thursday, July 13, 2006; Posted: 7:27 p.m. EDT (23:27 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House voted Thursday to renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act, rejecting efforts by Southern conservatives to relax federal oversight of their states in a debate haunted by the ghosts of the civil rights movement.
The 390-33 vote sends the measure to the Senate. The act bans discrimination in voting, including through poll taxes and literacy tests, and requires some states, mostly in the South, to clear proposed changes in voting procedures with the Justice Department.
Southern conservatives had complained that the act punishes their states for racist voting histories they say they've overcome.
"By passing this rewrite of the Voting Rights Act, Congress is declaring from on high that states with voting problems 40 years ago can simply never be forgiven," said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Georgia Republican and one of several lawmakers pressing for changes to the law to ease its requirements on Southern states.
The House overwhelmingly rejected amendments that would have shortened the renewal period from 25 years to a decade and would have struck its requirement that ballots in some states be printed in several languages.
Supporters of the law as written called the amendments "poison pills" designed to kill the renewal because if any were adopted by the full House, the underlying renewal might have failed.
Supporters used stark images and emotional language to make clear that the pain of racial struggle -- and racist voting practices -- still stings.
Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis displayed photos of civil rights activists, including himself, who were beaten by Alabama state troopers in 1965 as they marched from Selma to Montgomery in support of voting rights.
"I have a concussion. I almost died. I gave blood; some of my colleagues gave their very lives," Lewis shouted from the House floor, while the Rev. Jesse Jackson, another veteran of the civil rights movement, looked on from the gallery.
"Yes, we've made some progress; we have come a distance," Lewis added. "The sad truth is, discrimination still exists. That's why we still need the Voting Rights Act, and we must not go back to the dark past."
The very debate over changes to the act is testament to the influence of Southern conservatives, even over their own GOP leaders, who had hoped to pass the renewal as a fresh appeal for support from minorities on Election Day.
With rare bipartisan support among leaders of the House and Senate, the renewal was widely expected to sail through Congress and on to the White House for President Bush's signature.
Republican leaders, however, were forced to cancel a House vote last month when conservatives rebelled during a closed meeting against provisions they contended singled out Southern states for federal oversight despite civil rights progress they had made in recent years.
Unable to satisfy the dissenters and eager to pass the bill this week, Republican leaders announced late Wednesday they would allow the House to consider amendments, none of which passed.
The amendment that would have extended the act for a decade, rather than the 25 years in the bill, was rejected 288-134. The proposal to strike requirements in the law that ballots in districts with large populations of non-English speakers be printed in other languages failed 238-185.
"What unites us? It's our language, the English language," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican of California. Without the amendment, the act is "hurting America by making it easier not to learn English."
Democrats made clear early in the day they would vote against the renewal if any of the amendments were added.
"Any one of them would be a weakening of the Voting Rights Act," Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said.
The White House also weighed in during the debate, saying in a statement that the Bush administration "supports the intent" of the renewal. The statement did not take a position on the amendments proposed by lawmakers who represented the GOP's conservative base.
Their objections to the renewal already were being echoed by some Senate colleagues from the same states.
Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma noted that the act doesn't expire until next year.
"It's 13 months away, and we're creating a political situation that doesn't need to be created," Coburn said in an interview. He said changes such as those proposed by the House amendments needed time for consideration.
Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat, called lawmakers who wanted to loosen the requirements in the law "ideological soul mates" of lawmakers who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
"For them, this is not a debate about fairness, it is about ideology. Ideology has no place in today's debate," Hastings said. "We should do this not for the partisan benefit but because, as John Kennedy said, it is right."
The states identified in the bill as still in need of federal oversight are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.



Activists sue to block electronic voting
By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP National Writer
Thu Jul 13, 2:34 PM ET

Computerized voting was supposed to be the cure for ballot fiascos such as the 2000 presidential election, but activist groups say it has only worsened the problem and they've gone to court across the country to ban the new machines.
Lawsuits have been filed in at least nine states, alleging that the machines are wide open to computer hackers and prone to temperamental fits of technology that have assigned votes to the wrong candidate.
Manufacturers say their machines are more reliable than punch cards and other traditional voting technologies.
But they face a determined opponent in Voter Action, which has filed lawsuits in Colorado, California, Arizona and New Mexico. Similar bans have been sought by voters in Texas, Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. On Thursday, a coalition of groups filed a lawsuit in Georgia.
"The designers of video games have built far more sophisticated security into their systems than have the manufacturers of voting machines," said Lowell Finley, co-director of Voter Action, a nonprofit and nonpartisan group based in Berkeley, Calif. "The biggest problem is security against tampering."
About 80 percent of American voters will use some form of electronic voting in the November election, where every seat in the House of Representatives is up for re-election, as are 33 Senate offices and 36 governorships.
New York University's Brennan Center for Justice released a one-year study last month that determined that the three most popular types of U.S. voting machines "pose a real danger" to election integrity.
The survey examined optical scanners, which electronically read ballots, and touch-screen machines, which operate like ATMs. Some produced paper receipts, others didn't.
More than 120 security threats were identified, including wireless machines that could be hacked "by virtually any member of the public with some (computer) knowledge" and a PC card; the failure of most states to install software that could detect outside attacks; and the failure of many states to audit their electronic systems.
Voter Action's lawsuits target the most popular machine manufacturers: California-based Sequoia Voting Systems, Nebraska-based Electronic Systems & Software, and the biggest of them all, Diebold Election Systems of Ohio, a subsidiary of giant ATM maker Diebold Inc.
Diebold spokesman David Bear said his company's technology "has proven to be more accurate" than punch cards, and most Americans prefer to vote electronically. He also dismissed recent studies that showed computerized systems were vulnerable to hackers, saying "those are what-if scenarios."
The company's former CEO, Wally O'Dell, authored a 2003 Republican fundraising letter that promised, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
As it turned out, Ohio did push
George Bush' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> George Bush over the top, but only after problems at voting precincts — including malfunctioning Diebold machines — prompted lines as long as 11 hours. Diebold denied any wrongdoing, as did the other machine makers, who say e-voting problems are coincidental, reflecting expected glitches in new technology.
The jump to electronic voting was spurred by the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which reworked election standards and encouraged states to get rid of punch-card systems by making $3.9 billion available to states for upgrading election equipment.
Manufacturers of touch-screen machines and optical scanners touted their young technology to election officials as the best way to get those funds, and to avoid the chaos caused by punch cards in the 2000 election.
But according to voters' rights groups, much the money was disbursed well before a mandated HAVA committee published its stringent new election standards.
Bear said there has been no evidence in any election of hackers breaching electronic security measures and manipulating votes. However, Finley said Voter Action has documented other problems with e-voting.
"We had dozens of affidavits from voters in New Mexico who said they touched one candidate's name, but the machine picked the opponent," he said. In the state's biggest county, home to Albuquerque, touch-screens machines purchased from Sequoia lost 13,000 votes, Finley said.
In the end, Voter Action agreed to drop its New Mexico lawsuit when the state stopped purchases of the machines and reverted to paper ballots that would be electronically scanned for results.
Other states had similar problems during the current primary season. In Arkansas, for example, one county's results were delayed for four days because of faulty software, machines that wouldn't boot up and a shortage of technicians to fix the $15.9 million system recently purchased from ES&S.
The company's machines also drew complaints from officials in Indiana, Oregon and West Virginia, where Secretary of State Betty Ireland blamed ES&S for "vast delays" and "broken promises" and reported the firm to the Federal Election Assistance Commission.
Finley says there is an easy solution to the problems.
"The best and simplest way is to have voters vote on paper," he said. "You can use modern technology — like scanners — to verify the vote," he said. "But you always have the assurance that you can go back and hand count those ballots."


The 2004 Election

Kennedy report ignites controversy
During a White House press briefing on June 8th, a tough question caught Tony Snow off guard. "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has written an article in Rolling Stone which revisits the Ohio vote in 2004," a Baltimore radio reporter asked Bush's spokesman. "Does the president believe Kennedy has raised any new evidence of voter fraud?"
Snow tried to deflect the question with a joke, suggesting that the reporter should serve as Bush's "emissary from Rolling Stone." But many citizens, journalists and elected officials are taking our four-month investigation of vote-rigging in Ohio far more seriously ["Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" RS 1002]. The debate began online, where the story set off a firestorm. More than 700,000 people logged on to rollingstone.com to read the story, and thousands of bloggers posted heated entries about Kennedy's report.
The online furor caught the attention of some in the mainstream press, which has long downplayed the evidence of vote tampering. In The New York Times, Bob Herbert devoted an entire column to our investigation, concluding that John Kerry "almost certainly would have won Ohio" if Republicans had not blocked so many of his supporters from casting ballots. And The Seattle Post-Intelligencer blasted the media for its "deafening" silence on Kennedy's report. "In terms of bad news judgment," the paper observed, "this could turn out to be the 2006 equivalent of the infamous Downing Street memo" -- evidence that the Bush administration falsified intelligence on WMDs to justify invading Iraq -- "that was initially greeted by the U.S. media with a collective yawn."
Even Democrats who have been slow to question the election results were convinced by Kennedy's exhaustive report. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who serves as the party's chief deputy whip, took the extraordinary step of admitting her mistake. "I apologize for not taking seriously enough the allegations that the 2004 election was stolen," she confessed in a speech on June 14th. "After reading Bobby Kennedy's article in Rolling Stone -- 'Was the 2004 Election Stolen?' -- I am convinced that the only answer is yes." Schakowsky promised that the Democrats would move aggressively "to ward off a repeat performance."
Kennedy, meanwhile, is preparing to up the ante on those he believes abetted the GOP's electoral theft. In July, the outspoken attorney plans to file "whistle-blower" lawsuits against two leading manufacturers of electronic voting machines. According to Kennedy, company insiders are prepared to testify that the firms knowingly made false claims when they sold their voting systems to the government -- misrepresenting the accuracy, reliability and security of machines that will be used by 72 million voters this November."This is a unique way to try and stop these vendors," Kennedy tells Rolling Stone. "In both cases, our whistle-blowers are familiar with security problems that were well known by the vendors but concealed from election officials during the bidding process. Because we're relying on 'inside' knowledge, it is a far more frightening prospect to the company than a traditional lawsuit might be. And if we prove our case, we will hit the corporations the only place they feel it: in their pocketbooks."