Chronicling GOP vote fraud & suppression

[weemadando]

The point of poll watchers is to intimidate. If they have no authority, then their sole purpose is to try and use other methods to stop fraudulent voting (where "fraudulent voting" means "voting for someone we don't like"/"voting while not white"). The individual members may not get this, but the people who created and fund the organisation sure as shit do.

[weemadando]

The point of poll watchers is to intimidate. If they have no authority, then their sole purpose is to try and use other methods to stop fraudulent voting (where "fraudulent voting" means "voting for someone we don't like"/"voting while not white"). The individual members may not get this, but the people who created and fund the organisation sure as shit do.

[Edi]

So, two days before the elections, there are secret, undocumented, untested and unverified experimental software patches to the vote tabulation software, ordered by the republican Secretary of State in Ohio.

Link

Monday, Nov 5, 2012 11:36 PM +0200
Is the GOP stealing Ohio?
Uncertified, "experimental" software patches have been installed on machines in 39 counties of the key swing state
By Brad Friedman



Last week, Bob Fitrakis and Gerry Bello at FreePress.org reported an important story concerning what they described as “uncertified ‘experimental’ software patches” being installed at the last minute on electronic vote tabulation systems in 39 Ohio counties.

The story included a copy of the contract [PDF] between Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office and ES&S, the nation’s largest e-voting system manufacturer, for a new, last-minute piece of software created to the custom specifications of the secretary of state. The contract itself describes the software as “High-level enhancements to ES&S’ election reporting software that extend beyond the current features and functionality of the software to facilitate a custom-developed State Election Results Reporting File.”

A subsequent story at the Free Press the following day included text said to be from a Nov. 1 memo sent from the Ohio secretary of state’s Election Counsel Brandi Laser Seske to a number of state election officials confirming the use of the new, uncertified software on Ohio’s tabulator systems. The memo claims that “its function is to aid in the reporting of results” by converting them “into a format that can be read by the Secretary of State’s election night reporting system.”

On Friday evening, at Huffington Post, journalist Art Levine followed up with a piece that, among other things, advanced the story by breaking the news that Fitrakis and his attorney Cliff Arnebeck were filing a lawsuit for an immediate injunction against Husted and ES&S to “halt the use of secretly installed, unauthorized ‘experimental’ software in 39 counties’ tabulators.” Levine also reported that Arnebeck had referred the matter to the Cincinnati FBI for criminal investigation of what the Ohio attorney describes as “a flagrant violation of the law.”

“Before you add new software, you need approval of a state board,” says Arnebeck. “They are installing an uncertified, suspect software patch that interfaces between the county’s vote tabulation equipment and state tabulators.” Arnebeck’s alarm is understandable.

Since the story initially broke, I’ve been trying to learn as much as I could about what is actually going on here. During that time, a few in the mainstream media have gotten wind of the story as well, including NBC News and CNN, and have been able to press Husted and other officials in his office into finally responding to the concerns publicly. The Ohio officials have attempted to downplay the concerns, though in doing so they appear to have given misleading information which, at times, seems to conflict even with the contract itself.

I’ve also spoken to computer scientists and election integrity experts, in trying to make sense of all of this, though many of them seem to be scratching their heads as well. My own queries to the Secretary of State’s office have gone unanswered, as had Fitrakis’ and Bello’s before they published their initial story, begging the question as to why, if this software is as benign as Ohio officials are suggesting, they didn’t respond immediately to say as much. Furthermore, why did they keep the contract a secret? Why did they wait until just before the election to have this work done? And why did they feel it was appropriate to circumvent both federal and state testing and certification programs for the software in the bargain?

I’d like to have been able to learn much more before running anything on this at all, frankly. But the lack of time between now and Tuesday’s election — in which Ohio’s results are universally believed to be key to determining the next president of the United States — preclude that.

So, based on the information I’ve been able to glean so far, allow me to try to explain, in as simple terms as I can, what we currently know and what we don’t, and what the serious concerns are all about.

And, just to pre-respond to those supposed journalists who have shown a proclivity for reading comprehension issues, let me be clear: No, this does not mean I am charging that there is a conspiracy to rig or steal the Ohio election. While there certainly could be, if there is, I don’t know about it, nor am I charging there is any such conspiracy at this time. The secretive, seemingly extra-legal way in which Secretary of State Husted’s office is going about whatever it is they are trying to do, however, at the very last minute before the election, along with the explanations they’ve given for it to date, and concerns about similar cases in the past, in both Ohio and elsewhere, are certainly cause for any reasonable skeptic or journalist to be suspicious and investigate what could be going on. And so I am …



The Contract

The first 13 pages of the 28-page contract [PDF] is largely boilerplate legal stuff. The actual “Statement of Work” in the contract, signed on Sept. 18, 2012, by ES&S and on Sept. 19 by Assistant Secretary of State Scott Borgemenke — less than two months before this year’s presidential election — describes the software that is to be created for the state by ES&S, beginning on Page 17.

Here’s the beginning of the “Overview” section, describing the scope of the work, which I’ll try to unpack just below it, for non-geeks…


[SNIP PIC]


In short, the contract is for an application called EXP, which exports voting results into a specific format after the data from the central tabulator has been organized by the ES&S Election Reporting Manager (ERM). The ERM program itself directly accesses the main tabulator database and the results are then exported, by EXP, to a text-based file.

The text-based file is then sent by the county, via some unspecified means, to the secretary of state for import into its Election Night Reporting System, which is subsequently made available on the Web, where it will be viewed by the media and the rest of the world as the “results” of that day’s election in Ohio.

The unencrypted text-based file created by EXP is a simple CSV (Comma Separate Values) formatted file, which includes field names and values separated by commas, as culled from the tabulated results database. Pages 26 and 27 of the contract detail the specific format for the plain text files created by EXP. Here’s an example:





The Secretary of State’s Explanations

Last last week, a public response was finally offered to Ugonna Okpalaoka of theGrio, an African-American-centric website published in partnership with NBC News.

Okpalaoka write: “Matt McClellan, a spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office, told theGrio that no patches were installed, describing instead a reporting tool software meant to ‘assist counties and to help them simplify the process by which they report the results to our system.’”

McClellan’s reported claim that “no patches were installed,” but rather it was simply “a reporting tool software” to assist counties, seems to be in direct contradiction with the contract itself.

At the bottom of Page 17, the contract states that “the current ES&S ERM Results Export Program (EXP) product version 2.0.6.0″ will be “modified to meet the Customers request.” The contract goes on to say that it “shall be modified” into two different EXP versions, 2.0.7.0 and 3.0.1.0, to work with two different versions of the ERM software variously installed in different Ohio counties.

It’s not entirely clear how the new version of EXP will differ from the existing one, though the contract specifies the older version created XML-formatted files instead of plain-text CSV files. The new version of the EXP program is installed onto the tabulation computing systems of the Ohio counties, which use the ES&S system, so this updated version is a new version of the existing software. It is either a “patch” or an upgrade or a new installation. Distinguishing between those descriptions, in this case, seems to be a distinction without a difference made by McClellan. In either case, it’s new software being applied onto the existing central tabulation system computers, without either state or federal certification, just days before the 2012 presidential election.

By describing it as “experimental” software, it seems the state is attempting to skirt the legal requirements for state testing and certification by the Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners. But more on that in a moment.

According to Pam Smith, president of the nonpartisan watchdog group VerifiedVoting.org, her organization also sought explanations for the last-minute software changes from the secretary of state’s office.

She tells me that she was told that “the Secretary of State team installed the EXP tool” themselves in the counties that use the ES&S system. “It was not left to the counties to figure out the installation or the configuration.”

Moreover, she stressed, she was told the software “does not get installed on voting machines.”

But that makes little difference, since the software is installed directly onto the central tabulator machines, where it can affect — either accidentally, or by design — the main results of an entire county’s election. Software residing on the central tabulation systems is, in fact, far more dangerous than software on the voting systems, since it can have direct access to the entire set of county election results.

Jim March, a longtime Libertarian election integrity and software expert, as well as a member of the Pima County, Ariz., Election Integrity Commission (which serves as an official advisory body to the Pima County Board of Supervisors), and a founding and current board member of BlackBoxVoting.org, is highly suspicious of the last-minute installation of software.

In an affidavit [PDF] submitted to Fitrakis and Arnebeck for their legal case, March says he believes “that this custom software is not necessary for the conduct of elections and is in fact highly dangerous.”

March has been involved in numerous cases involving suspicious elections and election software. In 2005 he received part of a multimillion-dollar settlement from Diebold as the result of a qui tam case with the state of California, after it had been discovered that the company had secretly installed uncertified software on its voting systems in the state. The secretary of state decertified the systems as a result.

“What ES&S has chosen to do here is extremely dangerous and exactly what you’d want to do if you wanted to plant a ‘cheat’ onto the central tabulator,” March says in his affidavit.

On Saturday night, Secretary Husted himself attempted to downplay the matter during an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon, explaining that there was no danger in installing the software on the county’s tabulation systems. MSNBC’s “Ed Show” played that part of the exchange with the secretary, as well as a response to it from Democratic Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner.

As Husted explained to Lemon: “The reporting system and the counting system are not connected in any actual way. And the results that anybody can get at home on their computer are — they’re going to get them at the same time that I do on election night. So we have a very transparent system.”

The “transparency” of a system that counts votes in secret and features a secretly installed piece of software that skirted normal certification procedures aside, March’s affidavit disputes Husted’s explanation about the separation between the reporting and counting systems.

“Their custom application … would have full contact with the central tabulator database on both a read and write basis, while running on the same computer as where the ‘master vote records’ (the central tabulator database — the ‘crown jewels’ of the whole process) are stored,” he says.

“Under this structure a case of accidental damage to the ‘crown jewels’ of the election data is possible. A case of deliberate tampering of that data using uncertified, untested software would be child’s play.”

He describes the process as “criminally negligent just from a standpoint of data security.”

State Sen. Turner was similarly suspicious: “They should not be experimenting in a presidential election. You know the secretary of state had previous years to try to experiment.”

Indeed, one of the unanswered questions we sent to the secretary of state asked why they waited until Sept. 18 to begin this contract, since Husted’s been in office fore nearly two full years, and they’ve carried out many elections, of lesser import than a presidential election since that time during which this software could have had a trial run. Furthermore, we asked, how did they manage without it until now during both his tenure and that of his predecessors?

We received no reply to that and a number of other related questions.

When theGrio asked a similar question, as to why they waited until “so soon before the election” to commission the new software, they were told by McClellan: “I’m not sure the exact timeline of that, but I know we’ve been working with the counties for the past couple of months on getting these in place, testing them to make sure they work properly, and working with the vendors as well.”

There was another point reported by theGrio that seems to be in direct contradiction to the contract between ES&S and the secretary of state, and it’s a troubling one.

They report: “McClellan said the tool serves to cut down on the amount of information precinct workers would have to key in by hand by allowing the results to be output onto a thumbdrive and uploaded at once into the Secretary of State’s system.”

But the contract specifically notes at the top of Page 21 that “Automated uploading or sending of the State Election Results Reporting file” is “outside the scope” of the software called for in the agreement, and that “It is a manual process to upload or send the results file.”

That would seem to contradict McClellan’s claim that the converted file created by the EXP program is “output onto a thumbdrive and uploaded at once into the Secretary of State’s system.”

The way in which that file is sent to the secretary of state, as noted, remains unknown. Moreover, if a plain text file is sent via email, or other similar Internet transmission, it can easily be intercepted and changed before it ever even reaches the SoS Election Night Reporting System. Such an attack is sometimes described as a “Man-in-the-Middle” attack.

Verified Voting’s Smith explained that she had been told that results files from the state’s other e-voting systems made by Diebold and Hart-Intercivic already created files in the format that EXP was being modified to create. Thus, she said, all of the files would be in the same format for uniform import into the Election Night Reporting System.

Another question I’d asked of Husted’s office was, if all that EXP did was simply convert files from one simple format to another, wouldn’t it have been far less dangerous to install the software once at the secretary of state’s office and simply convert files there for the Reporting System, after they’d been sent to them by the counties, rather than install 39 uncertified pieces of software on 39 different central tabulators in 39 different Ohio counties just days before the 2012 presidential election?

I received no answer to that question either.



History and Reason for Concern

Writing in the Oct. 5, 2006, issue of Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in“Will the Next Election Be Hacked?” described a suspect election that took place in Georgia in 2002, just after Diebold’s electronic touch-screen voting systems had been deployed for the first time across the entire state.

“Six days before the vote,” Kennedy writes, “polls showed Sen. Max Cleland, a decorated war veteran and Democratic incumbent, leading his Republican opponent Saxby Chambliss … by five percentage points. In the governor’s race, Democrat Roy Barnes was running a decisive eleven points ahead of Republican Sonny Perdue. But on Election Day, Chambliss won with fifty-three percent of the vote, and Perdue won with fifty-one percent.”

To this day, Election Integrity advocates cite that 2002 election as suspect, along with the curious software “patch” they later learned was secretly applied to the state’s electronic voting system earlier that year.

In his article, Kennedy quotes Diebold contractor Chris Hood, who was directly involved in the installation of the systems across the state, as describing Diebold Election Systems Inc. president Bob Urosevich personally distributing the software “patch,” which was covertly installed on more than 1,200 Diebold touch-screen systems that year.

No one will likely ever be able to prove that the November 2002 election was rigged, but that infamous software “patch,” along with the anomalous election results from 100 percent unverifiable voting systems (which are still in use today across the state of Georgia and in many other states) has cast an everlasting cloud of suspicion over that election.

Similarly, there remains a dark cloud of suspicion over the 2004 presidential election in Ohio itself, the last one run under the administration of a Republican secretary of state, when blatant voter suppression tactics, ballot tampering, unprecedented counting room lockdowns due to phony Homeland Security “terror warnings,” criminal manipulation of the post-election recount, as well as concern about a possible “Man-in-the-Middle” hack of the state’s Election Night Reporting System have long cast a shadow of doubt over the reported results.

The BRAD BLOG was honored with an award from Sonoma State University’s 36-year old investigative reporting project Project Censored for some of our coverage of the mysterous death of Ohio-based GOP IT guru Michael Connell.

In 2004, Connell designed and created Ohio’s Election Night Reporting System for then Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. It was later discovered, ironically enough by Ohio’s investigative journalist Bob Fitrakis and the Free Press, that the results the world were watching on the Web that night, as it became clear that the winner of the Buckeye State would determine the presidency, had been diverted from Ohio down to the servers of a far right-wing company in Chattanooga, Tenn., called SmarTech in the middle of the night.

Computer analysts and security experts, including a Republican who worked with Connell, have speculated, with a fair amount of evidence to support their case, that there could have been a “Man-in-the-Middle” attack that night, in which someone changed the results of the election between the time they were tabulated at the county level and before they appeared on the secretary of state’s website later that evening, as it was then being run out of SmarTech’s servers in Tennessee.

We may never know if that actually occurred, though schematics unearthed during an election fraud case against Blackwell detailed how Connell’s system allowed for “Man-in-the-Middle” access to change the results before they were reported to the world. Despite a federal court order to retain all of the ballots from the election, some or all of them were destroyed in 56 out of 88 counties, so it became impossible to compare the reported results with the actual ballots cast during the 2004 election.

Connell can no longer discuss the matter. He was killed when he crashed near the Columbus airport in his single-engine Piper Saratoga on his way back from Washington, D.C., for his company’s Christmas party in December of 2008. One month earlier, on the Monday before the 2008 presidential election, a federal judge compelled Connell to sit for a deposition in the 2004 election fraud case in which the attorneys believed the man who created the George W. Bush and John McCain campaign websites, as well as the now-infamous secret email system for the George W. Bush administration, held the key to an alleged conspiracy to steal the 2004 election in Ohio for Bush.

Whether or not a similar scheme could be in the works in 2012 is certainly unknown. To be clear, once again, I am alleging no such thing. I am simply reporting the facts that I know, and those that I do not.

Nonetheless, questions about a last-minute secret software patch to be used across multiple counties in Ohio, one that now resides on vote tabulation systems and is said to produce easily modifiable text files to be uploaded to a very partisan secretary of state’s Election Night Reporting System, certainly have a familiar, and to some, a chilling ring just over 24 hours before the next presidential election could well be decided in the Buckeye State.

As the Free Press notes, “Government reports such as Ohio’s Everest study [PDF] [the landmark analysis of the state's electronic voting systems by world class academic and corporate computer science and security experts, commissioned by Husted's Democratic predecessor Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner] document that any single change to the system could corrupt the whole voting process.”

Late on Sunday, in a new update from Bello and Fitrakis at the Free Press, the pair describe that “The potential federal illegality of this software has been hidden from public scrutiny by the Secretary of State’s Election Counsel Brandi Seske.” They report that a Sept. 29 memo from Seske describes “de minimis changes” in the ES&S software that allowed for use of the software updates without state testing. “De minimis,” they explain, “is a legal term for minute.”

And yet, they go on to cite a memo from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, the body tasked with certifying electronic voting and tabulation systems at the federal level, dated February 8, 2012 entitled “Software and Firmware modifications are not de minimis changes.”

“Ohio election law provides for experimental equipment only in a limited number of precincts per county,” they report. “Installing uncertified and untested software on central tabulation equipment essentially affects every single precinct in a given county.”

“The method of execution chosen,” for this effort, notes March in his affidavit for the Fitrakis/Arnebeck injunction lawsuit, “is unspeakably stupid, excessively complex and insanely risky. In medical terms it is the equivalent of doing open heart surgery as part of a method of removing somebody’s hemorrhoids. Whoever came up with this idea is either the dumbest Information Technology ‘professional’ in the US or has criminal intent against the Ohio election process.”


Ernest A. Canning contributed research to this report.

Investigative journalist and broadcaster Brad Friedman is the creator and publisher of The BRAD Blog. He has contributed to Mother Jones, The Guardian, Truthout, Huffington Post, The Trial Lawyer magazine and Editor & Publisher.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ok that is more then a bit upsetting, we shall have to see how the numbers start to come out. I try not to feed into conspiracy theories, but the problem is the GOP are activily trying to defraud voters. Not just rampant speculation or fear mongering, we KNOW they have done voter fraud before... The 2004 election there was more then enough reports of voter "problems" with electronic machiens to make one wonder about the final numbers... All the polls the count, mostly 538, have Ohio as solid blue. If it ends up beign really close, well I don't know what one would do.

In a more "Light hearted" side to the news... I present to you now Praise of the fine and patriotic roll that TrueTheVote has been working at to keep our elections safe and clean!!!

HOUSTON, TX - The 2012 election will be the first in 30 years where the country will see a large organized presence dedicated to the integrity of votes cast, all thanks to voter integrity group True the Vote.

During the 2008 election cycle, Catherine Engelbrecht volunteered at the polls in Harris County, the second largest voting block in Texas. She noticed that although she was there with a small group of people to observe, Harris County had a poll watcher shortage of at least 50 percent. There weren’t enough people observing the election process to prevent fraud. Shortly after her experiences at the polls, Harris County authorities found 23,000 invalid voter registration forms that had been submitted by an ACORN operative. It was then that Engelbrecht founded True the Vote, where she now serves as president. The mission of True the Vote is simple: prevent voter fraud and uphold the law.

“We recognized there was a problem,” Engelbrecht tells Townhall. “There are raging debates about Cap and Trade and healthcare and you name it, but if the election process isn’t trustworthy, if it’s not reliable, then you know what does any of it really matter? It’s a scary thought to think about how tenuous, how fragile the process really is but it was so clear that something was not right and the quickest fix was to remind citizens that voting was not enough.”

Engelbrecht and True the Vote volunteers quickly started to identify how citizens could get further involved with the election process by looking at the process as a whole. Poll watching was an easy way to get a large amount of people involved in the election process.

“What got my attention is the simple fact that this where it all starts. If we cannot freely and fairly elect our representatives, nothing from there goes the way the citizens of the country want it to go, that’s the beginning,” True the Vote volunteer Joni Carlisle, who uses vacation time to help the organization 14 hours a day, tells Townhall. “We’re making a huge difference.”

By Election Day 2010, True the Vote had trained 1,000 poll watchers who could be used by election officials to observe polling stations in Harris County. Training of everyday citizens was then expanded across the country to further prevent voter fraud.

“We didn’t look for it to be a national thing, we just thought, ‘We see a problem and we need to fix it,’” Engelbrecht says. “We really decided we would become the boutique provider of in depth, real life training opportunities and it seemed to resonate across the country in ways that we could have never imagined.”

Bill Ouren started volunteering with True the Vote in January 2010 and is now the National Elections Director. His job is to connect citizens with their desire to ensure the freedom and fairness of elections.

“I was looking for something positive, something I thought would make a difference. There is nothing more fundamental to our democracy than our vote and the freedom and the integrity that surrounds that vote and it just appealed to me individually,” Ouren tells Townhall.

But what is a poll watcher or election observer? And is it effective? The fact is, poll watching is a time honored tradition dating back to the women’s suffrage movement and served as an important part of the Civil Rights movement. The NAACP used to support election observation because it keeps the process honest and ensures all voters are treated fairly. Poll watchers watch the election process to protect the rights of the voters. They do not watch the voters, they watch the process.

“They [poll watchers] are they eyes and ears of the Republic. They are not to talk to voters, they are to observe and report and they do that on behalf of the stakeholders they represent which is typically a party or a candidate or an issue on the ballot or in some cases like in Wisconsin, poll watchers can be self appointed citizens,” Engelbrecht says. “Observation changes things. Frankly, people want to do the right thing but it’s human nature to cut corners and you cut and you cut and you cut and before long you get to where we are and in many places across this country where the process isn’t even recognizable.”

Today, the NAACP, ACLU, SEIU, AFL-CIO, major media outlets and other far Left groups launch regular attacks on True the Vote and its volunteers, despite the organization's efforts to prevent voter fraud being non-partisan.

“They must be looking to protect some system of subversion that they’ve protected under the dark of night and they don’t want it to be exposed,” Engelbrecht says. “It’s stunning to hear these groups just deny vote fraud even exists. There’s every evidence to the contrary. It’s a known fact that it exists but yet they refuse to speak the truth.”

The catalyst for expanding from being a local group in Texas to a national organization according to Engelbrecht, was attacks by the Left because they gave True the Vote a new platform.

“Because of that platform, people from across the country began to contact us and say, ‘Hey that’s what you guys are seeing? That’s what we’re seeing too. Can we work together?’” Engelbrecht says. “Although there are many groups that want to continue to paint us into a corner, the fact is our message is one for all Americans."

Heading into Election Day 2012, True the Vote has trained thousands of people in 50 states to legally poll watch. Christian Adams, a former Department of Justice Attorney, New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case whistleblower and author says this is exactly why the Left is going “berserk.”

“I know this, there will be less crime in the election this year than there was in 2008,” Adams said. “There will be less crime nationwide than there was in 2008 because True the Vote is on the ground and that is something they deserve a great deal of thanks for.”

The True the Vote program is set up so that on Election Day in addition to volunteers conducting observations at the polls, they submit incident reports. This gives True the Vote evidence that can later be looked at, studied and used to reform broken parts in the election system to prevent fraud in future elections.

“This is not a press to go through the 2012 election,” Ouren says. “We have come a long way in two years, we will go probably that much further in another two years. We’re going to continue what we’ve been doing.”

There’s no doubt True the Vote has had an impact.

“I think we’ve changed the national debate. I think we’ve brought focus to an issue that’s been a dirty little secret of both parties for an awfully long time that everybody worries about after the election for few days and then everybody gets on with their business and it never fixes itself. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished,” Engelbrecht says. “We are doing the right thing.”

Sunday night, hundreds of volunteers gathered one last time at True the Vote headquarters before heading into Tuesday’s election. After four years of attacks and smears, they’re ready to use their training to keep our elections clean.

“We are responding as best as we know how as good stewards for our country. It’s been an amazing privilege to be part of a movement born of nothing, born of an inspiration that didn’t exist prior in this way and be part of what I think is historic,” Engelbrecht says.

[Lost Soal]

Crooks & Liars

An election worker in Oregon is facing a criminal investigation for allegedly altering multiple ballots to benefit Republican candidates.

In a press release on Monday, Clackamas County spokesperson Tim Heider said that 55-year-old Deanna Swenson had been "relieved of duty immediately after the alleged ballot tampering was discovered."

Swenson, who was registered as a Republican, was accused of filling in a Republican straight ticket on ballots where voters did not specify a choice.

Contacted by Willamette Week, Swenson tearfully insisted that it was "only the two" ballots that had been altered.

The Oregon Department of Justice began an investigation last week after an elections official reportedly observed ballots being altered.

"At this point, it is unclear how many ballots the employee at issue had access to, or what will be done with those ballots," the sheriff's office said on Monday.

At a Monday emergency meeting, officials in Clackamas County announced that the altered ballots would not be counted. Since ballots were anonymous, disenfranchised voters would not be given a chance to re-cast their votes.

Swenson has worked in elections since at least 2000, according to the Clackamas County spokesperson.

Blue Oregon's Kari Chisholm reported that the Oregon City woman's Facebook page indicated she "liked" various conservative personalities, candidates and organizations including the Republican National Committee, The Tea Party, Paul Ryan VP, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), Ann Romney and Fox News.

If convicted of a Class C felony for ballot tampering, Swenson could face five years in prison and a fine of up to $125,000.

Yup, you got it right GOP. Voter fraud sure is rampant in the US.
Too bad its never the people actually voting who are committing fraud, but never mind I'm sure you'll get it right next time.

[Edi]

AAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!

Linky

Tuesday, Nov 6, 2012 07:22 AM +0200
Anti-voter fraud group barred for possible fraud
True the Vote has been barred from operating in a key Ohio county after possibly forging signatures
By Alex Seitz-Wald

The Tea Party group True the Vote has promised to train and deploy up to 1 million poll watchers today in an effort that many progressives fear is a veiled attempt to intimidate voters and suppress turnout. The groups’ activists, often garbed in suits and armed with cameras and clipboards, make it their business to challenge, on various pretexts, the rights of voters to cast their ballots — usually, it seems, in minority precincts. This is legal (though intentionally targeting minority neighborhoods is not), but poll observers have also been accused of hovering over voters, blocking lines of people who were trying to cast ballots, harassing official poll workers, demanding personal information outside of polling places, and filming people as they enter or exit the polling place. All this, of course, in the name of combating voter fraud, which study after independent study has found to be virtually nonexistent.

But as it turns out, a rare instance of genuine voter fraud may be traceable to…True the Vote! The group reportedly forged signatures on forms necessary to place observers in African-American neighborhoods in Central Ohio. Ohio political blog Plunderbund reports that forms filed by True the Vote in Franklin County, which includes Columbus, included signatures copied from a previous set of forms filed in early October by several candidates. Six of the candidates whose names appeared on the original form “had withdrawn permission to use their signatures prior to the submission of today’s forms,” and one told election officials her named had been “forged” on True the Vote’s forms.

So this morning, the Board of Elections denied True the Vote’s request. “The Franklin County Board of Elections did not allow Election Day polling location observer appointments filed by the True the Vote group,” said board spokesman Ben Pisctelli. “The appointments were not properly filed and our voting location managers were instructed not to honor any appointment on behalf of the True the Vote group.”

The group may also face an investigation for possibly falsifying signatures, a fifth-degree felony, Elections Director William Anthony Jr. said. The Cleveland Dispatch reports that one person told the elections board that she attended True the Vote training sessions in which observers were instructed to intimidate voters at polling places with cameras and by entering their names onto tablet computers.
Close

Alex Seitz-Wald is Salon's political reporter. Email him at aseitz-wald@salon.com, and follow him on Twitter @aseitzwald.

Says it all about the GOP and it's anti- voter fraud efforts.

[Keevan_Colton]

Huffpo

A voting machine in Pennsylvania has been captured on video appearing to turn a vote for Barack Obama into one for Mitt Romney.

A video posted to YouTube on Tuesday by the user 'centralpavoter' shows a finger pressing the button to cast a vote for the president, only for it to try and register a vote for his Republican challenger.

NBC News has confirmed that the machine has since been taken out of service. The user who posted the video said that they were happy to provide the raw footage to prove it was real.

The user explained what happened: "My wife and I went to the voting booths this morning before work.

"There were 4 older ladies running the show and 3 voting booths that are similar to a science fair project in how they fold up. They had an oval VOTE logo on top center and a cartridge slot on the left that the volunteers used to start your ballot.

"I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode.

"I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney's name and started tapping very closely together to find the 'active areas'.

"From the top of Romney's button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama's name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein's button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.

"I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said 'It's nothing to worry about, everything will be OK.' and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video."

[Connor MacLeod]

Yup, you got it right GOP. Voter fraud sure is rampant in the US.
Too bad its never the people actually voting who are committing fraud, but never mind I'm sure you'll get it right next time.

The two things that leapt out at me were a.) She didn't deny altering the ballots, she only said 'it was just TWO' as if that made it better. b.) the ballots that were altered would be 'thrown out.' It really makes me wonder who those ballots had been voting for prior to being altered. And it leaves me even more disquieted, especially since there is absolutely no recourse to recasting the votes, either.

[Block]

So there was a miscalibrated machine? Hardly evidence of voter supression. The woman working there should've done something though.
edit: and according to MSNBC that machine has since been taken out of service. A Pennsylvania electronic voting machine has been taken out of service after being captured on video changing a vote for President Obama into one for Mitt Romney, NBC News has confirmed. Republicans have also said machines have turned Romney votes into Obama ones.

[bilateralrope]

So there was a miscalibrated machine? Hardly evidence of voter supression.

It's strange that all the miscalibrated machines I hear about have a miscalibration that favors the GOP. Strange enough that I want to know how these touchscreens are supposed to be calibrated.

[PeZook]

It's bloody awesome in a terrible way that the US has seen those damn things in widespread use for more than a decade now yet there are STILL issues with their software, which is doing nothing more than recording which button was pressed. Seriously, what the hell?

[Connor MacLeod]

It's bloody awesome in a terrible way that the US has seen those damn things in widespread use for more than a decade now yet there are STILL issues with their software, which is doing nothing more than recording which button was pressed. Seriously, what the hell?

That's the invisible hand providing.

[Simon_Jester]

The same machines are perfectly reliable at supermarket checkouts, or nearly so; you never hear about the machine deciding your credit card is a debit card.

I think PART of the problem is that the things are only used once a year or two; if they don't work reliably or are vulnerable to tampering, there's no constant ongoing stream of frustrated customers and complaints to identify the problem and force a fix.

[Vendetta]

So there was a miscalibrated machine? Hardly evidence of voter supression.

It was miscalibrated only in the part of the screen that recorded votes for Obama. Vote for any other candidate and it was working fine.

[Ahriman238]

The point of poll watchers is to intimidate. If they have no authority, then their sole purpose is to try and use other methods to stop fraudulent voting (where "fraudulent voting" means "voting for someone we don't like"/"voting while not white"). The individual members may not get this, but the people who created and fund the organisation sure as shit do.

Well then why the hell are they not all ejected?

[weemadando]

Because your electoral system is a hodge podge mess and while they may well be banned some places in others they're embraced.

[blahface]

So what can they really do to influence things? I'm assuming they can't a.) overtly harass or threaten voters or b.) follow them to the booth and sort of loom over them. Yes, there are ways to intimidate someone without saying a word, but those can be pretty obvious if you're looking for them, doubly so if you keep doing it. It's also hard to silently intimidate someone while communicating something as abstract as what party they should vote for without revealing your own party affiliations which, IIRC is one of the things people complain poll watchers aren't doing.

In some areas people have to wait hours in line just to vote. By challenging the voters, they are slowing down the process even more and making it more likely that people will just get frustrated and give up.

[PainRack]

Huffpo

A voting machine in Pennsylvania has been captured on video appearing to turn a vote for Barack Obama into one for Mitt Romney.

A video posted to YouTube on Tuesday by the user 'centralpavoter' shows a finger pressing the button to cast a vote for the president, only for it to try and register a vote for his Republican challenger.

NBC News has confirmed that the machine has since been taken out of service. The user who posted the video said that they were happy to provide the raw footage to prove it was real.

The user explained what happened: "My wife and I went to the voting booths this morning before work.

"There were 4 older ladies running the show and 3 voting booths that are similar to a science fair project in how they fold up. They had an oval VOTE logo on top center and a cartridge slot on the left that the volunteers used to start your ballot.

"I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode.

"I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney's name and started tapping very closely together to find the 'active areas'.

"From the top of Romney's button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama's name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein's button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.

"I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said 'It's nothing to worry about, everything will be OK.' and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video."

So, the Simpsons accurately depicted the election process, just 4 years too early?

I mean yeah yeah, its probably a machine malfunction that's just happens to go the GOP way,concidence and all that, but this incident just highlights the huge comedy the US elections has become in recent years.

[NoXion]

Don't electronic voting machines make it easier to hide shenanigans by reducing the paper trail? When I voted in the last UK election, all I did was put my X next to my choice and slot the paper into a secured ballot box.

I mean, it's not as if under American law corporations are treated like persons, so therefore they have no incentive to favour a particular candidate when calibrating the machines, right?