[ale] [OT] Update on the VoterGA Voting Rights Law Suit

[aaron]

On 2009, Oct, 22, , at 4:50 PM, Richard Bronosky wrote:

> It's really sad that you taint, what was sounding like an informative
> post, with anti-microsoft l33t speak. My brain started rejecting your
> credibility after that and I had to just give up before I finished the
> following paragraph.

Whatever.  Your loss.  I know the subject matter upside
down and inside out and you would likely have learned a
great deal from my experience by reading the entire post.

Also sorry that you're feeling the prude, but Mafia$oft
systems are wildly and notoriously and undeniably
insecure, which is the point and the context of the
appropriate derogatory references at finding them
being used in our election systems.

This is before pointing out that the message was posted to
the ALE list, where most of the readers understand that
Mafia$oft products are incompetent viral turd piles from
convicted criminal extortionists and don't get offended by
any of the many well earned names of satirical derision
that I might cleverly dream up for them. :-)

peace
aaron

"Hows that woking out for you?"
"What?"
"Being clever."
	--- Tyler Durden (both of him)



> On 10/22/09, aaron <aaron at pd.org> wrote:
>> On 2009, Oct, 21, , at 8:09 PM, Jim Popovitch wrote:
>>> On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 22:10, aaron <aaron at pd.org> wrote:
>>>> Earlier this month the Georgia Supreme Court handed down
>>>> a decision in the VoterGA lawsuit challenging the
>>>> constitutionality of Georgia's zero-evidence,
>>>> unaccountable electronic voting systems.
>>>
>>> http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/20/voting-machine-sourc.html
>>>
>>> Aaron, do you know if GA uses any of Sequouia's equipment?
>>>
>>> -Jim P.
>>
>> We don't use any Sequoia equipment in Georgia. The Diebold
>> monopoly runs the whole show in most every county, from the
>> design of the electronic and paper ballots to paper ballot
>> printing to the (Hursti Hacked) optical scanners to the
>> Zero Evidence black box vote fraud DRE touchscreen machines
>> to the vote tabulation systems (running an unsecured M$
>> Abscess database on stock windisease Xcrement Pile boxes).
>>
>> Diebold recently sold off their elections devision to ES&S,
>> but it's still all in the family.  Bob Urosevich ran Deibold,
>> his brother Todd runs ES&S.  I'd expect Bob to officially join
>> his brother Todd as another ES&S exec shortly. My recollection
>> is that there is also some executive inbreeding with Sequoia
>> as well, but I don't have specifics at hand. Together, the
>> Urosevich brothers control about 80% of the electronic voting
>> machines used in U.S. elections, which in 2008 reflected about
>> 33% of the total votes cast.
>>
>> So now there are only two corporate electronic election
>> systems manufactures running the monopoly, but nothing
>> has really changed and there is no real separation or
>> competition between the parties. All the systems are equally
>> secretive and corruptible. Regardless of manufacturer, the
>> software and inner workings of all of the electronic voting
>> systems is kept totally secret. There is no peer review of
>> the code and all of the sycophant system testing companies
>> who are supposed to "certify" the machines are locked behind
>> "non disclosure" and "trade secret" claims so we don't even
>> know what their voodoo "certification" processes are, let
>> alone any details of their "testing" results. Public auditing
>> of election results is equally abysmal, as none of the machines
>> in use produce paper ballots as evidence and, to my knowledge,
>> no statistically valid audits of election results from machines
>> that produce a paper audit trail have ever been performed.
>>
>> In the end, it may well be that there is malicious code in
>> the Diebold ES&S boxes similar to what is being discovered in
>> Sequoia's boxes with this leak, but it is nearly impossible
>> to know.  When voting rights advocates tried to examine the
>> 2004 Georgia election results with Open Records requests to
>> the county registrars for copies of the database archives kept
>> on CD, the Secretary of State shut them down using a Diebold
>> claim that the disks contained "Trade Secret" software. The
>> folks doing the Open Records requests lacked the funds to
>> file formal charges against the State officials and take
>> the issue to court, but the boing boing article in your link
>> suggests that Diebold might have been telling the truth
>> about being so grossly incompetent that they put evidence
>> of felony crimes on their election records CDs.
>>
>> It only gets worse when you learn about the origins of all
>> these companies. The company that Diebold bought up 30 days
>> before taking over Georgia's election systems, the one they
>> bought so they would actually own some voting machines and
>> thus might be able to fulfill the largest election systems
>> purchase contract in history, the company that actually
>> developed all the software and systems that Diebold dumped
>> in Georgia, was Global Election Systems (based in Texas,
>> of course). According to some investigative reports, the top
>> execs of GES, at least one of whom was a felon convicted of
>> grand larceny and tampering with computer files, admitted in
>> memos to forming the company and creating the zero evidence
>> machines with the specific intent of making it easier
>> manipulate elections. Again, reportedly, the GES founders
>> were self identified religious extremists who didn't think
>> democracy should be trusted or that the people should be
>> allowed to elect their own government.
>>
>> The loud BOOM was my head exploding. Again. I really
>> shouldn't try to answer questions about this stuff.  :-)
>> Only bright spot is my understanding that, with the
>> notable exception of Georgia, every State employing
>> electronic voting is in the process of discontinuing
>> the use of Zero Evidence style Diebold-ESS-Sequioa
>> machines.
>>
>> Felons working for GES / Diebold [/ ? ES&S ?] details
>> can be found here:
>> <http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2003/12/61640>
>>
>> peace
>> aaron