Noam Chomsky - Deterring Democracy: $100,000 Reward

King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell
all court documents: http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/klbna.php

New lawsuit alleges ballot tampering in 2004 election

Group says ballots in Democratic precincts were pre-punched, negating Kerry votes

Friday, September 01, 2006 . Jim Siegel

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

A coalition of critics of the 2004 election is insisting it has uncovered new evidence of ballot tampering in Ohio that caused a number of John Kerry?s votes to get tossed out.

The group filed a federal civilrights lawsuit yesterday, asking U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley to declare that Ohioans? voting rights were violated in 2004 and to appoint a special master to ensure fairness in the 2006 election.

The lawsuit alleges that Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell and others conspired to deprive Ohioans of their right to vote. Prior election-related lawsuits by those affiliated with the coalition have been dismissed by various judges.

Richard Hayes Phillips, a Canton, N.Y., resident working with groups such as the Ohio Honest Elections Campaign, said he has examined thousands of punch-card ballots cast in heavily Democratic inner-city precincts that were tossed out because of over- or under-voting in the presidential race.

Phillips said he found that on more than 1,900 ballots in six urban counties, there was a vote for President Bush or Sen. John Kerry and a second vote for one of the two independent candidates. In such cases, no presidential vote is counted.

The problem was so prevalent and seemingly concentrated in every fifth precinct that he concluded the ballots in the urban areas were pre-punched.

Someone, he said, punched the slot for an independent candidate beforehand, so a vote for Bush or Kerry was invalid. The problem, he said, impacted Kerry far more.

"I find it difficult to believe that in every fifth precinct, voters are really stupid and are more prone to make this kind of error," he said.

John Williams, director of the board of elections in Hamilton County, one of the areas where Phillips said he suspects tampering, said such a conspiracy would have to involve both Democratic and Republican elections workers.

"It?s virtually impossible for anything they?re talking about to be true," he said. "There are over-votes in every precinct. If you limit it to certain precincts, you can adjust figures any way you want."

Overall, 93,000 presidential votes went uncounted in Ohio?s 2004 election, fewer than in 2000 and less than President Bush?s margin of victory.

John S. Marshall, attorney for the group of critics of the 2004 election, including the King-Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association in Columbus, said he also plans to ask the court to order county boards to preserve all ballots and data from the 2004 election so further analysis can be completed.

The group already has asked Blackwell and the attorney general?s office to require counties to preserve the 2004 election data. Blackwell said he is willing to ask the boards not to destroy ballots, but the decision ultimately is a local one.

Blackwell acknowledged yesterday that there were problems in the 2004 election, but said no one has proven there was massive fraud that would have changed the outcome.

Blackwell said the allegations are being raised in part for partisan political reasons because he is the Republican candidate for governor this fall.

"I would suggest to you now that there are those who are using the court system for what the election arena should be used for, and that is to advance political agendas," he said.

10/1/08: Former Diebold Contractor Blows The Whistle On Election Manipulations

VR has an exclusive interview with former Diebold contractor Chris Hood which talks about many disturbing actions by Diebold during prior elections, including illegal, uncertified and unreported patches, and improper feeding of tabulation results by Diebold Chief Bob Urosevitch. This interview was prepared for a major news program special that was supposed to air two weeks before the 2006 midterm election. At the last moment, however, the special was killed by the corporate media. Check out this important ten minute interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKnIghBsU58

Declaration of Stephen Spoonamore
740 Quinby Ave.
Wooster OH 44691

1. I am a recognized expert in the field of electronic data security and digital network
architecture.

2. I have agreed to serve as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the case of King Lincoln
Bronzeville Neighborhood Association before the United States District Court in
Columbus, Ohio.

3. I have served as the CEO and/or CTO of companies engaged in the design and
development of digital systems. Including: CPR Group Inc., Cybrinth LLC, DuosTech
Inc., SWN Communications, FreePlay Inc. and GSP inc.

4. I have served in industry leadership positions in a number of professional organizations
in the field of electronic data security and commerce, including but not limited to: Board
Member of the AFEI (Association For Enterprise Integration) and Task Force Chairman,
NECCC (National Electronic Commerce Coordination Commission) to establish digital
identity rules for State Government Systems.

5. Digital Systems I have designed or consulted upon are currently serving to secure
elements of: MasterCard, American Express, Chubb insurance, Bloomberg, Boeing,
NBC-GE, NewsCorp, the US Department of Energy, The US Navy, The US Department
of State and Other Government Agencies.

6. Because of my interest in data security and in democracy, I have followed with interest
the security issues involved with electronic voting in United States. My understanding of
the vulnerabilities of American elections to fraudulent manipulation is based upon
conversations with professionals in election administration working within state
governmental structures as well as information technology specialists working in private
industry on a contract basis for state governments.

7. I have agreed to function as an expert resource and witness for plaintiffs' counsel and the
King Lincoln case in federal court in Ohio.

8. The opinions expressed below are held by me to a reasonable degree of certainty as
understood within my professional area of expertise in the detection and prevention of
fraud in data processing systems.

In regard to the system set up to tabulate the vote in Ohio in 2004.

1) The vote tabulation and reporting system, as initially designed, was supposed to allow each
county central tabulator (Computer A) to add up local information locally, and then, via a lightly
encrypted system, send the information to the Sec. of State statewide tabulator (Computer B).
This system, while using public Internet and public information carrying capacity, could be
compromised at the level of one county (Computer A is hacked) or in the transmission of any
one county to the central state tabulator (Computer A talking to Computer B). However, it
would only be possible to compromise the vote on a statewide basis by a compromise at the state
level tabulator (Computer B is hacked). Alternately I have been told that these processes were
replaced at the last minute by fax transmitted results. It is relatively simple to establish if the
security of the transmissions, whether sent by fax, or by electronic transmission, by reviewing
the network architecture as operated on election night, and review the session logs of the
secretary of states central tabulation computer to determine the IP address and times of
communication by other machines to the the Secretary. The variable nature of the story of what
occurred, and lack of documentation available, would be cause to launch an immediate fraud
investigation in any of my banking clients.

2) The vote tabulation and reporting system, as modified at the direction of Mr. Blackwell,
allowed the introduction of a single computer in the middle of the pathway. This computer
located at a company principally managing IT Systems for GOP campaign and political
operations (Computer C) received all information from each county computer (Computer A)
BEFORE it was sent onward to Computer B. This centralized collection of all incoming
statewide tabulations would make it extremely easy for a single operator, or a preprogrammed
single "force balancing computer" to change the results in any way desired by the team
controlling Computer C. In this case GOP partisan operatives. Again, if this out of state system
had ANY digital access to the Secretary of States system it would be cause for immediate
investigation by any of my banking clients.

3) If scenario #2 described above is true, Computer C, was placed functionally in a central
control position in the network, for Computer C to have even updated instructions for various
tabulators at the county level (Computers A) to change their results at the county level. If this
had happened, in order to cover up this fact, the hard drives of the county level tabulators would
have to be pulled and destroyed, as they would have digital evidence of this hacking from
Computer C. The efforts by the company in charge of these computers to pull out hard drives
and destroy them in advance of the Green Party Recount from the 2004 election is a clear signal
something was deliberately amiss with the county tabulators (Computers A). If even the
presence of such a Computer C was found in a banking system, it would be cause to launch an
immediate fraud investigation.

-This computer placement, in the middle of the network, is a defined type of attack. It is called a
MIM (Man in the Middle) Attack. It is a common problem in the banking settlement space. A
criminal gang will introduce a computer into the outgoing electronic systems of a major retail
mall, or smaller branch office of a bank. They will capture the legitimate transactions and then
add fraudulent charges to the system for their benefit.
-Another common MIM is the increasingly common "false" website attack. In this MIM, errors
in the computers that feed the Digital Name Service are exploited directing an unsuspecting user
to a site that looks like the one they wished to visit, but is in fact an "evil twin" which then
exploits them for various purposes for a portion of the time, and then in many cases passes them
on the CORRECT web site they wanted. Once passed on, the operators of the evil twin site may
continue to exploit the user, or later duplicate the session and exploit them in another manner.

-Any time all information is directed to a single computer for consolidation, it is possible, and in
fact likely, that single computer will exploit the information for some purpose. In the case of
Ohio 2004, the only purpose I can conceive for sending all county vote tabulations to a GOP
managed Man-in-the-Middle site in Chattanooga BEFORE sending the results onward to the
Sec. of State, would be to hack the vote at the MIM.

IN REGARD TO THE DIEBOLD SYSTEMS, Formerly Global, DESI and now called Premier.

In my opinion, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to make a secure touch screen voting system.
None. Secure systems are predicated on establishing securely the identity of every user of the
system. Voting is predicated on being anonymous. It is impossible to have a system that does
both. It is possible to design relatively secure optical scan machines, but even these can be
hacked in even the best of cases. In the case of optical scan you have the ability to recount
manually the paper ballot itself, and the ability to spot check the machines for errors against a
sample of hand recounting.

Even considering no secure system for touch screen machines can be designed, ever, the Diebold
system is riddled with exploitable errors. The SAIC report on the system architecture,
commissioned by Maryland Gov. Erlich, outlined over 200 concerns. Many of these concerns
are almost comical from the perspective of a computer architect. One example of this: The
existence of negative fields being possible in some number fields. Voting machines as custom
built computers which should be designed to begin at the number Zero, no votes, and advance
only in increments of 1, one vote, until they max out at the most possible votes cast in one day.
Perhaps 3000 voters could use a machine in one day, but more realistically 400 or so. There is no
possible legitimate reason that NEGATIVE votes should ever be entered. And yet these
machines are capable of having negative numbers programmed in, injected, or preloaded.

IN REGARD to Mr. Mike Connell.

Mr. Connell and I share a mutual interest in democracy building, freedom of speech and religion
worldwide. We have mutually participated in activity to forward this goal. At a meeting in
London last year, and again at a Lunch in Washington, DC, Mike and I briefly discussed voting
security. While he has not admitted to wrongdoing, and in my opinion he is not involved in
voting theft, Mike clearly agrees that the electronic voting systems in the US are not secure. He
further made a statement that he is afraid that some of the more ruthless partisans of the GOP,
may have exploited systems he in part worked on for this purpose. Mr. Connell builds front end
applications, user interfaces and web sites. Knowing his team and their skills I find it unlikely
they would be the vote thieves directly. I believe however he knows who is doing that work, and
has likely turned a blind eye to this activity. Mr. Connell is a devout Catholic. He has admitted
to me that in his zeal to 'save the unborn' he may have helped others who have compromised
elections. He was clearly uncomfortable when I asked directly about Ohio 2004.

I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.

Executed this 17th day of September 2008

9/30/08: Ohio Lawsuit Proceeds, Stay Lifted, Depositions Ordered, Connell Subpoenaed, Connell Stonewalls

There have been many new twists and turns the past few days in the Ohio federal case to protect the 2008 election by exposing those who have been accused of manipulating past elections. On September 22, the federal court lifted the stay in this case and ordered depositions to begin, starting with Bush IT Expert Michael Connell. (See Order in PDF) A few days later, Connell was subpoenaed and ordered to produce documents. He hired three high powered GOP-connected attorneys and filed a Motion to Quash (See Motion in PDF)and an affidavit stating that his information is confidential. (See Affidavit in PDF) His attorneys have refused to make him available for deposition and have indicated that they will not let him testify unless forced to by the court. Attorney Arnebeck intends to secure a court order to enforce the subpoena.

So Connell is using the Rove playbook of stonewalling to cover-up his possible criminal conduct in election manipulations. Fortunately, the Ohio federal courts will do everything necessary to protect this election so Ohio is not again the laughing stock for running an election suited for the third world. Moreover, there will be others subpoenaed who will talk rather than hide behind lawyers and fallacious assertions of confidentiality. Sorry, Mike, but you can’t hide by asserting that work you did for federal and state governments is confidential. You can’t hide by asserting that you possess trade secrets when you are covering up criminal activity. The time has come for accountability.

9/26/08: New Spoonamore Interview - E-voting Machines are a National Security Threat

Last week, VR interviewed GOP Cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore about the upcoming election and his testimony in the new Ohio litigation to take depositions of Karl Rove and others.

The video is posted in full below with ten short clips for You Tube viewing. This interview is so important and explosive that we urge everyone to watch it. Spoonamore says that the GOP wanted e-voting to steal elections but now foreign governments will be hacking and the winner will be determined by the best hackers. He says that if the GOP wins the hacking competition, McCain will win 51.2 percent with three electoral votes over Obama, and it will be a stolen election.

Spoon makes valid points about the people who have been implicated in much of the election thefts such as, “they are religious extremists.” He names those who know about stolen elections and he insists that the only way to protect this election is with paper ballots, hand counted. Check out this extraordinary interview here. >

http://www.velvetrevolution.us/prosecute_rove/images/SpoonIntvw3.wmv

10/2/08: VR Offers $100,000 Reward For Information About Michael Connell’s Election Manipulations

Today, VR offered a $100,000 reward for information from whistleblowers who have knowledge of election related criminal activity by Michael Connell, Randy Cole, Karl Rove and others. The full ad will be published this week in the Akron newspapers and you can see it here. The information must result in a conviction.

See a larger version

9/1/08: Candidates Nationwide Called Upon to Challenge Suspicious Elections

'If You Want Our Votes, We Want Your Pledge'

VR has launched its newest campaign at StandingForVoters.org, calling on candidates across the country to pledge to challenge elections when necessary.

In recent elections, we have witnessed targeted disenfranchisement of voters, non-transparent, unverifiable electronic voting systems, and many other assaults on the election process. However, for various reasons, election challenges have been few and far between. In the upcoming election, let's make democracy the winner by ensuring that all candidates that have standing can challenge suspect elections!

Our new campaign allows candidates to sign the Standing For Voters Pledge or Super Pledge, stating that they will not concede and will challenge suspect elections. Candidates of any party, for any office, in any state, can sign. StandingForVoters.org helps to educate candidates about the problems with elections, the types of election challenges available, and how to decide when to contest an election. It asks voters to participate by getting their candidates to sign the pledges.

Print out the pledge card http://www.standingforvoters.org/PDF/StandingForVotersCard.pdf and get it to every candidate for signature. Here are more tips http://www.standingforvoters.org/voters.html:

Attend candidates' nights or other campaign activities, make a statement about the importance of election integrity and ask the candidates publicly to sign the Standing for Voters pledge.
Call radio shows where candidates are being interviewed and ask the candidates on the air to sign the pledge.
Write letters to the editor and op-ed pieces in your local newspapers urging candidates to pledge. You can also encourage the paper only to endorse candidates who have made the pledge.
Visit candidates' websites and send them emails asking them to sign the pledge. Include a link to StandingForVoters.org.
Talk to your local political clubs. Find out who has direct contact with candidates and enlist their help.
Once one candidate for a particular office has signed on, call their opponents and ask them to match that pledge.

Visit StandingForVoters.org and see who has taken the pledge so far! And then help us make that list much, much longer!

8/27/08: Diebold Coverup-Stephen Spoonamore Confronts MD Board of Elections With Unredacted SAIC Report

We have been asserting for years that Diebold (now Premier Elections Systems) makes voting machines that don’t work, are unreliable and that have flipped elections. Just last week, Diebold was forced to admit that software in its machines has for a decade been dropping votes. These machines are being used in 34 states in the upcoming election.

Two years ago, The Brad Blog broke the Pentagon Papers of E-Voting stories about the SAIC report on the vast problems with Diebold vote machines. In short, Diebold had issued a 40 page redacted version of the SAIC report which whitewashed the problems. Computer cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore got a copy of the 197-page unredacted report which listed hundreds of serious problems, and he released that report to us.

Well, Spoonamore did more than that – he took the report to the Maryland Board of Elections and confronted them with it at a public meeting. He told them that if he were handed such a report in the private sector, he would “shut down the system and open a fraud investigation.” The elections officials expressed shock that they had not ever seen the same unredacted report. And when the meeting was over, Spoonamore, with a concealed microphone, personally confronted the officials. And what did one of them say to him –that him having the report was “a security risk.” Following the confrontation, Spoonamore was contacted by law enforcement officials who demanded to know how he got the report. We can say now that the report came from a high official in the Executive Branch who wanted to expose Diebold.

We have this all in an exclusive video now posted on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8EeaFyY4y4 This exclusive report was prepared for a major news program but was killed prior to the mid-term elections. Why was it killed, and why did we have to wait another two years before Diebold was forced to admit that its voting machines are unreliable?

There must be transparency in the election process and this report underscores why these machines should be investigated from top to bottom by independent investigators before even being considered for use in an election. The lesson is clear – we cannot trust the vote machine companies and we need paper ballots for all votes cast.

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Noam Chomsky - Deterring Democracy

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

$100,000 Reward - US election fraud

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