Bev Harris
Black Box Voting
January 7, 2008

UPDATE JAN 9 9am PST: TOWN OF SUTTON CONFIRMS RON PAUL TOTALS WERE 31, NOT ZERO.

I just got off the phone with Jennifer Call, Town Clerk for Sutton. She confirmed that the Ron Paul totals in Sutton were actually 31, and said that they were "left off the tally sheet" and it was human error.

This is not an acceptable answer, especially because one of the most common forms of fraud in a hand count system is to alter or omit results on the reporting sheet. Hand count is lovely, transparent. They then fill out another reconciliation sheet, often in front of witnesses, and it looks fine. Then they provide a summary or media sheet with the incorrect results.

A Web site here: http://www.wheresthepaper.org has more on fraud techniques with hand counted paper ballots. You’ll have to dig for it — or Google, and the excellent research on this is Theresa Hommel from the state of New York.

* * * *

Comma delimited database: NH municipalities hand count vs use Diebold machines: http://www.bbvdocs.org/NH/state/Jan-08-votingsystems-NH.txt

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

John Silvestro and his small private business, LHS Associates, has the exclusive programming contracts for all New Hampshire voting machines, which combined will count about 81 percent of the vote tomorrow.

Silvestro IS the New Hampshire chain of custody

Or at least a very large component in it.

Last fall, with the help of some New Hampshire citizens, Black Box Voting began working on a "New Hampshire Chain of Custody" project, in which we identified some of the areas of concern that might affect many jurisdictions at once. First on the list is LHS Associates, a vendor with inside access to every memory card in New Hampshire, as well as to the chips containing the "brain" of the Diebold optical scan machines.

LHS Associates programs all the memory cards in New Hampshire and Connecticut; about all of Vermont’s voting machines, and has a lock on almost all of Massachusetts as well.

RARE VIDEO FOOTAGE

In an unusual confluence of available video, we obtained footage of Silvestro grappling with Harri Hursti, the master hacker who had his way with the Diebold optical scans in Leon County, Florida in the famous exploit that was showcased in the film Hacking Democracy.

The exact same make, model and version hacked in the Black Box Voting project in Leon County is used throughout New Hampshire, where about 45 percent of elections administrators hand count paper ballots at the polling place, with the remaining locations all using the Diebold version 1.94w optical scan machine. Because the voting machine locations tend to be urban, this represents about 81 percent of the New Hampshire voters.

The video shows Harri Hursti testifying on Sept. 19 before the New Hampshire legislature, attempting to explain significant vulnerabilities requiring urgent mitigations; throughout his testimony, Silvestro inserted his own comments, opinions, misstatements and speculations.

VOTING MACHINE CHECKUP

One area of disagreement between Hursti and Silvestro was the amount of expertise needed to exploit the Diebold 1.94w optical scan system. Silvestro claimed (in a strange contortion of reasoning) that he doesn’t hire very skilled programmers, implying that this makes New Hampshire elections more secure.

Hursti pointed out that hiring programmers with a lack of knowledge is generally not considered a security feature, and also that an average high schooler can learn to exploit the… More

1-4-08: Eh? Iowa Republicans STILL missing 65 precincts in results
It isn’t even a skillful magic show.

The Republican caucuses usually take only half as long as the Democratic caucuses, due to simpler procedures. Yet the Republicans are lagging behind the Democrats now by over TEN HOURS in having all their results in. Results delays are a red flag.

Alert CSPAN watchers caught TV screen shots of Giuliani vote totals going down by a couple thousand votes midstream in, I believe it was, Linn County. That needs a confirm; screen shot images were posted on various blogs, but if anyone recorded the coverage and can corroborate those screen shots, please let us know.

As many of us know, vote totals that go DOWN during the middle of the count can be an error, but also can signal an election theft tactic whereby votes from a candidate finishing very low in the pack are skimmed off and given to a favored candidate higher in the pack. If corroborated, the vote total shift will be another red flag.

And with the Republican race, I wouldn’t look first at fraud in the number one position. I’d look for it in the area of repositioning candidates in the second through sixth spot.

- The delay in results is a red flag.
- The vote totals going down during the count is a red flag.
- The failure to release county results in live time, as promised in a Republican Party press release on Jan. 2, is a red flag.
- The failure to release precinct totals at all is a corrupt procedure. Note that the day before the caucuses, after much pressure, the Republicans did (belatedly) promise to release the precinct results on election night. They didn’t.

In addition: I’m trying to get information on whether the public was kicked out of the room during hand counting in all locations, or just some.

I will be publishing some reports by caucus attendees in the "Front Lines" section later today.

There is absolutely no reason to consider any of the Republican caucus results to be credible.

I’m not saying they are wrong, I am saying the breakdown in checks and balances was stunning enough to call it not a magic show, but a bad magic show.

Bev Harris More