Re: Bev Harris and Sequoia

[Paul E Condon <pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This indicates an amazing level of incompetence on the part of software
people in Palm Beach County. They can't even falsify date stamps correctly!
But maybe its a bug in MSWindows that is stopping them.


On Mon, Feb 27, 2006 at 01:34:03PM -0500, Margitjo@xxxxxxx wrote:
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> What do you think? The t r u t h o u t Town Meeting is in progress. Join the 
> debate!
> Also see below:      
> Watchdog Group Questions 2004 Florida Vote    ??? 
>     Go to Original 
>     Bev Harris's Latest Claims 
>     The Booman Tribune 
>     Friday 24 February 2006 
>     Bev Harris of Black Box Voting has a new article up at her site. She also 
> diaried it at Daily Kos where DHinMI promptly went on the attack. 
>     Harris Claims: 
>     The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines 
> reveal that votes were time- and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the 
> election, sometimes in the middle of the night. 
>     Black Box Voting successfully sued former Palm Beach County (FL) 
> Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to get the audit records for the 2004 
> presidential election. 
>     After investing over $7,000 and waiting nine months for the records, 
> Black Box Voting discovered that the voting machine logs contained approximately 
> 100,000 errors. According to voting machine assignment logs, Palm Beach County 
> used 4,313 machines in the Nov. 2004 election. During election day, 1,475 
> voting system calibrations were performed while the polls were open, providing 
> documentation to substantiate reports from citizens indicating the wrong 
> candidate was selected when they tried to vote. 
>     Another disturbing find was several dozen voting machines with votes for 
> the Nov. 2, 2004 election cast on dates like Oct. 16, 15, 19, 13, 25, 28 2004 
> and one tape dated in 2010. These machines did not contain any votes 
> date-stamped on Nov. 2, 2004. 
> 
> 
> 
>     Go to Original 
>     Watchdog Group Questions 2004 Florida Vote 
>     By Brian Skoloff 
>     The Associated Press 
>     Thursday 23 February 2006 
>     West Palm Beach, Florida - An examination of Palm Beach County's 
> electronic voting machine records from the 2004 election found possible tampering and 
> tens of thousands of malfunctions and errors, a watchdog group said Thursday. 
>     Bev Harris, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, said the findings call into 
> question the outcome of the presidential race. But county officials and the 
> maker of the electronic voting machines strongly disputed that and took issue with 
> the findings. 
>     Voting problems would have had to have been widespread across the state 
> to make a difference. President Bush won Florida - and its 27 electoral votes - 
> by 381,000 votes in 2004. Overall, he defeated John Kerry by 286 to 252 
> electoral votes, with 270 needed for victory. 
>     BlackBoxVoting.org, which describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit 
> citizens group, said it found 70,000 instances in Palm Beach County of cards 
> getting stuck in the paperless ATM-like machines and that the computers logged 
> about 100,000 errors, including memory failures. 
>     Also, the hard drives crashed on some of the machines made by Oakland, 
> Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, some machines apparently had to be rebooted 
> over and over, and 1,475 re-calibrations were performed on Election Day on 
> more than 4,300 units, Harris said. Re-calibrations are done when a machine is 
> malfunctioning, she said. 
>     "I actually think there's enough votes in play in Florida that it's 
> anybody's guess who actually won the presidential race," Harris added. "But with 
> that said, there's no way to tell who the votes should have gone to." 
>     Palm Beach County and other parts of the country switched to electronic 
> equipment after the turbulent 2000 presidential election, when the county's 
> butterfly ballot confused some voters and led them to cast their votes for 
> third-party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore. The Supreme Court halted a 
> recount after 36 days and handed a 537-vote victory to Bush. 
>     Palm Beach County election officials said the BlackBoxVoting.com findings 
> are flawed, and they blamed most of the errors on voters not following proper 
> procedures. 
>     "Their results are noteworthy for consideration, but in a majority of 
> instances they can be explained," said Arthur Anderson, the county's elections 
> supervisor. "All of these circumstances are valid reasons for concern, but they 
> do not on face value substantiate that the machines are not reliable." 
>     Sequoia spokeswoman Michelle Shafer disputed the findings, saying the 
> company's machines worked properly. Sequoia's machines are used in five Florida 
> counties and in 21 states. 
>     "There was a fine election in November 2004," Shafer said. 
>     She said many of the errors in the computer logs could have resulted from 
> voters improperly inserting their user cards into the machines. The remaining 
> errors would not affect the vote results because each unit has a backup 
> system, she said. 
>     Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of State, which 
> oversees elections, said she was not aware of the report and had no comment. 
>     Harris said one machine showed that 112 votes were cast on Oct. 16, two 
> days before the start of early voting, a possible sign of tampering. She said 
> the group found evidence of tampering on more than 30 machines in the county. 
>     However, Harris said it was impossible to determine what information was 
> altered or if votes were shifted among candidates. 
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-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx