Nancy Dobson
VOTE FRAUD - Does Your Vote Count?
Mon Apr 21 14:47:34 2003
208.152.73.25

VOTE FRAUD - Does Your Vote Count?
http://www.booksofthelamb.com/Vote.htm

By Nancy Dobson

On October 29, 2002, President Bush signed the Voting Act that provides $3.9 billion to the states so they may switch to paperless touch screen computerized voting machines. On November 20, 2002 USA Today reported that "Feds Flunk Another Computer Security Review," saying that 15 out of 24 of the largest departments and agencies in the federal government had "pervasive weaknesses" in their supposedly secure computer systems. The truth is, it is impossible to create a completely secure computer system, but this is what the federal government wants us to use to cast our votes.

Even the Department of Defense (DoD), which spends hundreds of millions of dollars on computer security design and management, admits that "there is hardly any way to prevent" vulnerabilities in computer code that allow hackers to access their systems. (Arthur Money, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command Control Communications and Intelligence, in December, 2000.) In 1999 the DoD detected 22,144 attempts to probe, scan, hack into, infect or disable its computers. About 200 of these succeeded. It is entirely possible that more sophisticated hackers broke in but were not detected. The DoD cannot positively verify that its classified information has not been broken into by computer hackers. Unless hackers make themselves known, it is impossible to verify that they have not accessed a system. Computer analyst, Jim Reavis, founder of SecurityPortal.com says, "As many veterans of the computer security industry will say, you cannot prove security, only insecurity."

For as long as computers have been used to tabulate vote counts, computer experts have denounced the system because election computers are wide open to tampering both by the programmers who create the source codes the computers use and by hackers who gain access to them.

Howard J. Strauss, Director of Advanced Computer Applications at Princeton University, said on a Dan Rather (CBS Evening News) program, "When it comes to computerized elections, there are no safeguards. It's not a door without locks, it's a house without doors." Roy G. Saltman, retired computer consultant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Computer Systems Laboratory caught significant counting errors in twenty-eight percent of the election computers in a test he conducted in Illinois. With one punch card Wayne Nunn, Ph.D., a project scientist for Union Carbide, added 10,000 votes to the total of one candidate in a mock race for President when he tested an election computer. Other experts also have found vulnerabilities when testing the systems.

Here are some of the problems. Over eighty percent of the voting machines used in the United States are controlled by three vendors. Neither state nor federal governments require background checks on the owners or employees of these companies. (Indeed, the company with the largest share of the U.S. election market (over 56%), Election Systems & Software, is privately owned and the owners' names are not available.) No one outside of these respective companies is allowed to examine the computer programming instructions that tell the computers how to count the votes since these codes have been designated as proprietary information. There are more than 20,000 lines of program code in an average election computer and countless ways to hide instructions that would change the vote count. Instructions also can be given to tell bogus counting instructions to erase themselves after use or if someone probing the computer would detect them. Modern election computers, for which there is no paper trail, are fitted with modems which transmit the vote count over a phone line to a central computer where the precinct votes are totaled. Modems make it easy for hackers to access election computers using satellites or telephone lines.

Some encryption companies hold contests and give money prizes to encourage hackers to find the vulnerable aspects of their systems. In January, 1999 it took Distributed.Net, a coalition of computer operators, only 22 hours to break the 56-bit Data Encryption Standard algorithm widely used by the federal government. In November, 2002 a 109-bit key was broken in 549 days by a single Notre Dame researcher, Chris Monico. As fast as the technology to create complex encryption advances, so also does the technology to break its codes, enter systems undetected and steal or change computer information. Obviously not everyone who breaks a code will publicize the fact. Pradeep K. Kosia, Dowd Professor of Engineering and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University told a reporter recently, "There will never be one hundred per cent security. This is not one problem but a continuous problem." Hackers have broken into banks and stolen millions of dollars. They have broken into airport control tower systems and shut them down for hours. They have broken into countless corporate and government "secure" systems and committed many acts of vandalism and pranksterism. And those are just the ones whose actions have been discovered. There is no telling how much computer crime is going on that is undetected.

Check out the vote fraud issue using your favorite Internet search engine and you will find a wealth of information. The web site www.votefraud.org  is maintained by Jim J. Condit, Jr., president of Citizens For A Fair Vote Count. The site offers tapes of interviews and copies of out of date reports and articles, among other things. A copy of the affidavit of the whistle blower who testified in the vote fraud court case brought by Mr. Condit (#A8108370 in the Court of Common Pleas, Hamilton County, Ohio) also can be found at his Web site.

Another source of information is "Votescam: The Stealing of America," by journalists, Kenneth and James M. Collier, which documents 25 years of computer vote fraud in America. It is available from Victoria House Press 1-866-280-9090 the ISBN is 0-9634165-0-8. (See www.votescam.com ).

Many legal cases have been brought concerning computer vote fraud, but it is extremely difficult to prove computer tampering. In addition, in some cases where proof existed judges blatantly ruled against the evidence.

The companies that build election computers do not spend hundreds of millions of dollars designing security technology for them, like the military does theirs. Any knowledgeable teenager with a computer could hack into an election computer and change the vote count, and no one would ever know. During every election there are many reports of malfunctioning machines and lost votes.

But besides hackers, the biggest problem with computer voting is that citizens are forced to trust a handful of anonymous programmers and technicians to create and maintain totally unbiased election computer programs. Sequoia, owned by De La Rue of England, another voting systems company with a large share of the U.S. market, also manufactures casino slot machines and prints over 150 different national currencies. Ransom Shoup II, former president of Daneher Controls, was once convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of justice concerning a vote-fixing scam discovered in his lever voting machines used in Philadelphia.

We have to come to grips with the fact that it will never be possible to have secure elections when computers count the votes. Britain, Canada, India, Israel, and Switzerland all count paper ballots by hand. Canada counted 13 million ballots in four hours in a recent election. The only way we can insure a verifiable election is for Americans to use paper ballots. They should be counted at each precinct immediately after the voting has ended there, using a projector to show each ballot on a screen so all who want to stay for the count (even our young citizens) can see and verify the count. Then the totals should be written down, the signatures of the citizens who verified the count added, and the totals posted outside the precinct and faxed to a central place where they are posted on the Internet and added together. If anyone has a complaint, there should be a form on which they may write it out and submit it. If anyone disrupts the vote count, they should be required to leave. Voting is the linchpin that holds our democracy together. It is our responsibility to make sure our votes are counted accurately.

One last note. One reason a group may want to control our elections is to protect the usury economic system, by which they build their fortunes. For a 12 page professional review of the dangers of the usury economic system see an article by Wayne A.M. Visser and Alastair McIntosh which was published in "Accounting, Business & Financial History" in July 1998 in London (also at http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/articles/1998_usury.htm ).

If everyone in each precinct donates one dollar, their precinct easily can buy the necessary equipment to insure a fair vote count. Why don't you organize with your neighbors to change the vote counting system in your neighborhood? You can research this issue yourself to better understand it. And you can copy this highlights sheet for your election officials, family, friends and neighbors. Let everyone know the dangers of computerized voting and insist on a verifiable system that uses paper ballots. Don't let our freedom slip away. If we act now it is still possible to salvage our representational form of government.

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I am offering a 1509 word (7858 character) article, which can be printed in arial narrow on two sheets of paper as a handout, to several alternative press companies. I hope all will publish it and help get the word out about this attack on our Constitutional and democratic rights. I am not charging for publication, but offer the article free in the spirit of good citizenship.

If you would like to post the article on your web page, please find an html copy at http://www.booksofthelamb.com/Vote.htm  (remember to capitalize Vote). If you see any other articles at my web page that you would like to publish (though most of them are religious, not political), or if you have any questions about "Vote Fraud -- Does Your Vote Count?" please contact me at thisisnd@hotmail.com . It is also attached as a MS Word 7.0 document.

Thank you for your consideration.

Best regards,
ND (Nancy Dobson)