RIGHTOR??: (National) 11/7/2012 - AMERICA'S CLAIRVOYANT ELECTION SYSTEM - Perhaps one of the oddest moments of all during last night's live election coverage was what happened to Karl Rove on Fox Network News.

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

Black Box Voting - America's Elections Watchdog Group

blackboxvoting.org - Watch election videos: Caught on tape!

I went into polling location 073 - Harbour Place @... More -- Hi,

IDEA FOR TRANSPARENCY: My idea is a huge board on ... More -- MESSAGE FOR BEV: Hello to the Great and Wonderful Bev Harris I'm the lady who spoke with you on the phone -

When I called my local county elections office, sh... More -- On the WA state Sec of State website I was checking voter records and found several "double" entries for "General Elections". For example: "General Election of 2008" was listed twice. Since there can only be one vote per general election, does this indicate tampering to sneak more ballots into the system? (Obviously from the inside.)

... More -- Can I openly videotape in public buildings such as the DMV and Auditor's office, or do I need to hide the camera to avoid problems?

... More -- Is the 2008 tool kit going to be updated to show 2012 or can we just get it, use it, and ignore all references to 2012. So much has happened in Michigan that affects voters rights...redistricting (snakelike) designs, voter ID laws, Election Fraud with McCotter this year, a totally New Right controlled state in which Snyder claims we don't have enough $$ for the GE and polling stations being forced to close. Any help or info would be greatly appreciated Thank You!!

In Florida you can not be inside the polling place... More -- Dear Bev, Vote watchers:

I called the Pima Voting Office the day it was rec... More -- I am concerned about my new voter registration card received with the perforated seal opened as if it had been read. There was no damage whatsoever to the paper to indicate it might have occurred in transit. This is the first time this has happened to me either in AZ or in any other state in which I've lived.

First time posting here so please bare with me.
... More -- Hi,

KENTUCKY: I'm every bit as concerned as you about ... More -- Hi Bev, I live in Marshall County KY.

http://www.dailypaul.com/221831/pre-determined-ill... More -- what do you make of this?

the first thought I had was to contact you, and se... More -- Dear Mrs. Harris, I have been following your work for years, although probably not as diligently as I should, but, today, I ran across an article in our local newspaper, I though I should bring to your attention. Since this is the Republican Primary around here, I didn't think I'd see too much in the way of shenanigans, but I was wrong...ES & S is the equipment used, and technicians are violating rules, and accessing readers while voting is still in progress. I don't propose I know all the tricks and illegalities that go on in our elections, but I'm pretty sure the enclosed article will provide enough information for your perusal, to enlighten me as to what to do.

Considering all of the information that is availab... More -- USA: Have any of the experts here seen this and is there anything to it?

BBV NEWS - Black Box Voting recently obtained a se... More -- ELECTION SYSTEMS & SOFTWARE - This is transparency? ES&S voting machine log provided in Chinese. Translated, the end of the file says it is a report that "smells fishy."

BBV NEWS: This compelling video shows plain-as-day... More -- GEORGIA: "Nay" votes recorded as "Yea" votes

FROM THE MAILBAG: I am concerned about Rahm Emanue... More -- CHICAGO - received via e-mail from J.L. - Closing schools will affect were people go to vote. Most people vote at public schools. Most of the school closings are going to be in minority neighborhoods. So, the people living there will have to go across the "railroad" tracks to a part of town they might not be welcomed at to vote.
Let's put the People back into We the People!

Let's put the People back into We the People!

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(National) 11/7/2012 - AMERICA'S CLAIRVOYANT ELECTION SYSTEM - Perhaps one of the oddest moments of all during last night's live election coverage was what happened to Karl Rove on Fox Network News.

With Florida still too close to call and hundreds of thousands of votes still out in Ohio (including a large hunk of votes in Romney strongholds), and with a spread of about 100,000 votes separating the candidates in Ohio, Fox called Ohio for Obama. Karl Rove arranged to come on the Fox network to voice his rebuttal.

Now, whatever you think of Rove, I think most of us agree that he's a numbers guy. His numbers didn't support the calling of the state of Ohio at that point in time. When he explained his reasoning, the Fox anchor quickly shut him down. "It's a science" he was told.

Based not on actual votes, but on projections from a single private entity, the National Election Pool (NEP), we were all told what the election results were going to be. When Rove pulled out his notes and calculations, he was basically told "Shut up, this is a science."

But is that what your vote really is? A science project, to be viewed only by experts inside a nesting set of black boxes, completely out of public view?

If we are to have real self-governance, we need to be able to authenticate each essential step in our own elections -- without need for special expertise to explain to us what the result is. What more centralized, privatized form of declaring a result is there than to commission the NEP to provide a single set of statistics to ALL of the TV networks for a declaration of results without human eyes ever looking at a single ballot.

The media called the election in Tennessee just 11 minutes after the polls closed and by the way, exit polls had already been cancelled in Tennessee because, it was explained, everyone already knew who the winner was going to be so why bother with the expense. Even the voting machines, opaque and controlled by whatever their programmers put into them, had not yet issued results printouts. Is this the new, NEW method for pretending at democracy?

Washington State, where I live, is a forced absentee state, where 100% of the votes are now absentee ballots, which must be postmarked on Election Day. I placed my ballot in the post office at 2 pm. There are no exit polls, because there are no polling places. Apparently a few phone calls now substitute for actual exit polling (to people with land lines? That's an increasingly elderly demographic). Perhaps 40% of all ballots in Washington have not even been counted yet, but we've been told the results.

In California, typically 25% of the votes are counted after Election Day, yet results have been announced. That's a million uncounted ballots in Los Angeles alone. We have no clue what is on those ballots but we've been told not to worry about it. The stats guys have issued their verdict.

Forget voting machines, programmed by insiders to do whatever they do. Let's just skip counting the votes altogether and use statistics.

Creepy little way to run an election, if you ask me. More

(CO) 11/2012 - COLORADO SETS THE STAGE FOR A BOGUS ELECTION - Colorado election integrity and transparency is now officially out the window, with a series of corruption protection rules and new laws.

1. Let's begin with the unflappable Donetta Davidson, who collaborated with convicted embezzler Jeffrey Dean(1) to remove voter privacy, through a contract specification that required him to redo his absentee mail software in order to embed a method to tie voted ballots to the voters. This shifty business, which now includes all absentee ballots cast on Hart eSlate machines, has led to a blockade on ALL Colorado election accounting records (see #4, below).

2. Next, in a move that has most of us scratching our heads, Colorado Sec. State Gessler proposed new rules in December 2011 to remove requirements for continuous video surveillance.(2) Though billed as "cost saving," note that most video surveillance nowadays is simply piped into digital files stored on a Web site. Since cameras are already installed, there is no significant cost savings in allowing non-continuous surveillance.

3. Sec. State Gessler also decided to reduce the number of seals on voting machines,(2) to the chagrin of election integrity groups like Voter Action, whose investigations and litigation demonstrated vulnerabilities requiring the seals in the first place. The "cost savings" in this measure can be counted in pennies.

4. A number of protective accounting measures crucial for evaluating election tampering have been taken off the table though a new law to block election-related public records examination.

Donetta Davidson led the lobbying for this law. Davidson had become a commissioner of the U.S. Election Assistence Commission, then took a step down to take over the Colorado Clerks Association. In this capacity she led a fight to block the media and citizens from examining the ballots. And no wonder: She knew that due to changes made under her administration, private companies had marks embedded on the ballots enabling them to harvest data tying votes to voters.

Thanks to a lawsuit by Colorado citizen Marilyn Marks, of The Citizen Center, sponsored and assisted by Black Box Voting, the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed right to examine ballots. Marks was shocked when she discovered that identifying marks on the ballots allowed her to immediately associate every voted ballot with the voter who cast it. Marks, The Citizen Center, (and Black Box Voting) are now involved in litigation to permanently prohibit this harvesting of personal political information. In the interim, Sec. State Gessler has required that the identifiers be removed for November 2012 only.

With ballot examination affirmed to be in the public domain, Davidson's next move was to block ballot examination until after all remedies had expired. Using her clout, she lobbied successfully for the removal of ballots -- AND OTHER CRUCIAL ELECTION RECORDS, SUCH AS POLL LISTS -- from any access by election watchdogs until 45 days after the election.(3)

One telltale sign of election tampering is when thousands more votes than voters show up. But in Colorado, neither the media nor the public will be allowed to examine the poll lists or the list of names for voters said to have voted absentee, until too late to do anything about discrepancies.

5. And then there is the matter of alleged Romney ties to the second-biggest voting machine manufacturer in America. These connections are being minimized by Internet outlets like Snopes, but the straight truth is that Hart Intercivic, the firm that supplies two-thirds of Colorado counties with their voting machines, is now owned by a spin-off of Bain & Company (H.I.G. Capital).(4)

A majority of Hart's directors are now H.I.G. guys, and the directors of H.I.G. are Romney bundlers and donors who don't hedge their bets by donating to any other presidential candidate.

This isn't the first time Romney has had his buddies in charge of crucial election processes this year. Some weeks after the misreported figures in the Iowa caucus, which incorrectly cited Romney as the winner, Black Box Voting uncovered that Romney staffers had been brought in to run the Iowa Caucus, and the Nevada Caucus too. Besides heading Romney campaign functions, these guys were associated with an odious Colorado political firm which narrowly escaped prosecution for maliciously misleading political ads.(5)

And the Romney affiliation with Hart Intercivic doesn't rule out his buddies -- or Obama's buddies -- or George Soros -- or the Chinese, for that matter -- owning the other companies. Election Systems & Software (ES&S) does not reveal who its owners are, and we don't know who owns Dominion either. ES&S directly handles voting machines in three Colorado counties; it co-produces elections on the old Diebold equipment with Dominion, with ES&S supplying technicians in some U.S. locations and Dominion in others. Dominion owns Sequoia Voting Systems (or does it? No one seems to be quite sure...), used in large... More

(MA) 10/12 - VOTER FRAUD BY POLITICIAN PRO GETS SLAP ON THE WRIST - What happens when a politician personally engages in election fraud? Not much.

Former Marlborough (MA) city councilor Mark Evangelous has been sentenced to community service, with platitudes from the judge assuring us that it was "not malicious." The professional politician supposedly didn't know he wasn't supposed to forge the signature of his dead relative on an absentee ballot application.

"Voter fraud" does happen, but not by busloads of alcoholic Mexican noncitizens impersonating legit voters at the polling place, as the urban election legend goes. It's the pros, like political professionals and elections workers that do it. The impersonation takes place with absentee ballots, not polling place votes, and this is a problem that the whole voter ID controversy fails to address. "Identity theft" and "forgery" better describe the real problem.

In the Mark Evangelous case, it was onesie-twosie style fraud, just a few ballots. But with no-fault and especially automatic absentee ballot mailouts, this kind of fraud can easily become wholesale, big-ticket fraud conducted by insiders who either exploit the voter IDs of people who have not voted to insert ballots into the pool (as happened in a Louisiana association election, http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/02/another_former_official_from_h.html ), or ditch ballots they don't want (as happened in Cudahy, California elections: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/132/82162.html ).

Insiders rarely get investigated, and hardly ever get prosecuted, but when they do they get off lightly.

Here are the details on the Evangelous case:

The MetroWest Daily News - Oct. 5, 2012, by Kendall Hatch

http://www.wickedlocal.com/marlborough/news/police_and_fire/x21085671/Former-Marlborough-councilor-gets-community-service-in-voter-fraud-case#axzz28Y2 aU1X2

Former Marlborough councilor gets community service in voter fraud case.

A Middlesex Superior Court judge on Thursday continued without a finding for a year the case of a former Marlborough City Council candidate accused of forging the signature of a dead woman on a voting form.

Mark Evangelous, who lost his bid for a city councilor at large seat in the 2011 municipal election, will be on probation for a year and will have to complete 200 hours of community service. If he does not get into any trouble, the forgery and uttering charges against him will be dismissed.

Evangelous, 52, admitted to sufficient facts in Middlesex Superior Court on Thursday.

Superior Court Judge S. Jane Haggerty allowed defense attorney Anthony Cardinale’s request for the finding.

Evangelous was originally indicted in January on charges of forgery, uttering a false document and violating absentee voting laws. Haggerty in July dismissed the violation of absentee voting laws charge, as she ruled that the actions Evangelous took did not necessarily rise to an actual attempt to violate the voting laws.

Evangelous was accused of submitting an absentee ballot application to the city clerk's office on Oct. 28, 2011, days before the election. The ballot, police said, was filled out and signed in the name of Anita Kasaras.

A city clerk employee checked the name against the city voter rolls and found out that not only was Kasaras not on the list, but that she had died in February 2011. The employee notified police, who conducted a preliminary investigation before passing the matter along to the Middlesex District Attorney’s office.

According to police, officers confronted Evangelous the same day he dropped off the application and he said that Kasaras was still alive. He later told police that he had made a "name mistake" and meant to sign it as her sister-in-law, Alice Kasaras. Alice Kasaras was still alive, but was living at a rehabilitation center in West Boylston. Police said Alice Kasaras had never been a registered voter in Marlborough.

Evangelous told police he had gotten permission to sign the application from Alice Kasaras' son, Jay Kasaras - a distant relative of Evangelous - who told him he had power of attorney over his mother.

Assistant District Attorney Christopher Tarrant requested yesterday that Haggerty find Evangelous guilty and impose a sentence of five years probation along with the 200 hours of community service. The request for the longer probation period was not granted. Tarrant said the punishment was warranted because of the "fraudulent nature of the case and the perceived breach of public trust by somebody running for public office."

Cardinale said Evangelous made a mistake and genuinely believed that Jay Kasaras' assertion that he had power of attorney over his mother meant he could legally sign the application.

"He believed mistakenly that he had authority from his friend and distant cousin," Cardinale said. Cardinale said that while that wasn't an excuse, Evangelous' actions were not malicious. More

(National) - 10/12 - EXIT POLL DATA TO BE CANCELLED IN 19 STATES - The theatre that TV Election Night news coverage has become takes one more step into the absurd with cancellation of exit poll data in 19 states. The states that will be excluded from detailed exit poll coverage are: Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

The reason, ostensibly, is that these states are not in play. Many of them ARE in play, however, particularly for important battles for control of the U.S. House and Senate, and for important gubernatorial races. By removing crucial components of the exit poll data in these locations, researchers will be blocked from detailed after-the-fact analyses.

"Voters in the excluded states will still be interviewed as part of a national exit poll, but state-level estimates of the partisan, age or racial makeups of electorates won't be available as they have been since 1992. The lack of data may hamper election night analyses in some states, and it will almost certainly limit post-election research for years to come," write Washington Post bloggers Jon Cohen and Scott Clement (see below).

If you think the debates have turned into a rehearsed performing act, in which "zingers" and how a candidate positions his fingers are treated with greater gravity than substance, then also please notice that network election night coverage has become "theatre" as well.

In every major election we watch network and national cable TV pundits pretend that they are competing with other TV outlets, as they refer to "our" numbers and introduce viewers to "our analysts." In fact, they all use identical numbers and analysts, from a single central source now called the National Election Pool.

I say theatre because TV pundits "call" the race announcing winners, instead of using the more accurate term "PROJECTED winner."

And I say theatre because the single source upon which they rely, the National Election Pool, fudges the numbers midstream by entering "adjusted totals" usually accompanied by a trend change.

In addition to the numbers flowing in from National Election Pool, the AP pays state lobbying organizations and local town clerks to call them with numbers read off of the voting machine tapes. The AP makes contributions to state election official organizations in exchange for these phone calls. Sometimes, clerks call in the wrong numbers, which are entered into the fray for announcing winners. For example, in New Hampshire's 2008 primary, two town clerks called in zero votes for Ron Paul even though he had dozens of votes. Later, when caught, they just said 'oops.'

I say "theatre" because based on these projected numbers, candidates concede prematurely, as we saw in 2000 when Gore conceded privately to Bush, and was on his way to make a public concession. The 2000 network projections were flawed by a known wrong total of minus 16,000 votes in Volusia County, Florida and another 4,000-vote mistake in Brevard County.

Here's a news article with additional details on the removal of 19 states from the exit poll data:

Washington Post Blogs - Oct. 4, 2012, by Jon Cohen and Scott Clement

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/10/04/networks-ap-cancel-exit-polls-in-19-states/

Networks, AP cancel exit polls in 19 states

Breaking from two decades of tradition, this year's election exit poll is set to include surveys of voters in 31 states, not all 50 as it has for the past five presidential elections, according to multiple people involved in the planning.

Dan Merkle, director of elections for ABC News, and a member of the consortium that runs the exit poll, confirmed the shift Wednesday. The aim, he said, "is to still deliver a quality product in the most important states," in the face of mounting survey costs.

The decision by the National Election Pool -- a joint venture of the major television networks and The Associated Press — is sure to cause some pain to election watchers across the country. (For a full list of the states that won't have exit polls scroll to the bottom of this post.)

Voters in the excluded states will still be interviewed as part of a national exit poll, but state-level estimates of the partisan, age or racial makeups of electorates won't be available as they have been since 1992. The lack of data may hamper election night analyses in some states, and it will almost certainly limit post-election research for years to come.

A growing number of voters casting early ballots has added to the complexity of carrying out surveys in 50 states, the District of Columbia and nationally. In more and more states it has become crucial to supplement in-person precinct polling with relatively costly telephone interviews in order to achieve representative samples.

In 2008, only 18 states included interviews with early voters, with notable abs... More

(GA) 7/12 - ANOTHER CITY FIGHTS TO BLOCK FREEDOM OF INFORMATION - The city of Cumming, Georgia is litigating against public right to videotape open meetings. Videotaping in a freedom of information context is a crucial part of transparent elections because it lets citizens capture durable evidence in the election. Election processes are (or should be) subject to public observation, yet sometimes public officials try to block this.

Thus, if the city of Cumming were to prevail in its anti-freedom of information lawsuit, it will set the stage for all municipalities in Georgia to refuse public videotaping of election processes like poll closing and vote counting.

What triggered this lawsuit is this: The state of Georgia passed legislation this year explicitly upholding citizen right to videotape public meetings. When a Cumming citizen tried to videotape a meeting, the mayor and the police stopped her. The Georgia AG has stepped in to fight the city of Cumming.

Now this is quite relevant to elections, not just throughout Georgia but across the USA, for this reason:

I've been tracking freedom of information issues nationwide, and have noticed that municipalities are now taking the lead in fighting sunshine laws. The city of Aspen litigated against right to examine ballots (they lost), claiming that home rule exempted them from following state open records law. This is the same argument now being used in Cumming. Representatives from the association of Washington State municipalities testified against providing copies of public records in 2012 legislative hearings, claiming that it is unduly burdensome.

IN THE HOW-IT-WORKS DEPARTMENT: Our tax monies are being expended by public officials not just to carry out day to day tasks, but for expensive junkets to high priced hotels to attend association meetings for a host of quasi-governmental organizations. One such organization is the national League of Municipalities.

These quasi-governmental organizations -- I call them the quazies -- make their money in two ways: (1) They rake in our tax money, though they claim their business is private and in many states do not allow the public to attend any meetings or obtain any records; (2) They also receive money from private corporate vendors, who ply public officials with drink and persuasion in drink-up hospitality suites.

Now add to the mix the paid policy-recommenders. One such high profile entity is ALEC; there are many more, and they offer their "services" to examine public policy issues and provide advice. They even draft suggested legislation, issue policy guidelines, and offer talking points.

There's nothing wrong with public officials getting together for ongoing education and training, but they don't need to do it in resorts and they don't need to meet with vendors and lobbyists to further their professional training. These meetings provide a concentration of targets for off-the-record palm-to-palm procurement fraud with vendors, and also a target-rich environment for policy-steering entities and lobbyists.

If you wonder why cookie-cutter messaging shows up in 20 states at once, or why the same legal argument is used to fight sunshine laws in state after state, it's time to take a closer look at what's happening with the quazies.

Which vendors and policy steering groups attend League of Municipality conferences? I'm guessing that this municipality-led fight against sunshine law has some help in the wings.

The Cumming fight over the mayor blocking a local citizen from videotaping a public meeting has implications, and I'm glad to see the state Attorney General has taken it up. If Cumming wins, it will not bode well for Georgia election transparency; and if Cumming wins, we can surely expect to see copycat anti-rights litigation in other locations around the USA.

Daily Report - July 30, 2012, By Kathleen Baydala Joyner

http://www.dailyreportonline.com/PubArticleDRO.jsp?id=1202564750940&Cumming_challenges_new_sunshine_laws&slreturn=20120630095055

Cumming challenges new sunshine laws

The city of Cumming is challenging the constitutionality of the state's new sunshine laws in response to an open meetings suit by state Attorney General Sam Olens against its mayor.

Olens' suit, the first under the state's new Open Meetings and Open Records acts, alleged that Cumming Mayor Ford Gravitt and police officials barred Nydia Tisdale from videotaping a city council meeting.

House Bill 397, which went into effect April 17 — the day of the alleged incident — provides for visual and sound recordings of public meetings and authorizes the attorney general to bring civil suits against violators.

The AG's complaint cites two counts and asks the court to impose the maximum civil penalties allowed under the new laws, $1,000 for the first violation and $2,500 for each subsequent one. (Tisdale filed a separate civil rights suit in federal court in mid-June

The city responded to the AG's suit on July 19, arguing that Gravitt was presiding over the me... More

(TN) 7/12 - HOW REDISTRICTING MISMANAGEMENT DESTROYS VOTING RIGHTS -Shelby County is currently enduring yet another botched election -- perhaps the worst one yet. Under Election Administrator Richard Holden's misleadership, this time thousands of voters are being disenfranchised by giving them the wrong ballot, a result of administrative foot-dragging on redistricting-related database updates.

Based on tips I have been receiving from several US locations, precinct boundary changes caused by redistricting will be bollixed in multiple jurisdictions across the USA in November. Some -- like Shelby County -- will be of strategic importance.

ENTER THE LATEST SHELBY COUNTY SNAFU

[]
PIC: RICHARD HOLDEN

Administrator Richard Holden gummed up the redistricting process, which was belatedly finalized. Database and mapping updates needed to be expedited to get final changes safely into databases and poll lists in time for the August election. By expedited, I mean Holden needed to make certain this was well under way by March, and completed by May.

He didn't.

Holden's molasses-like management has put at least 6,000 voters at immediate risk for disenfranchisement. About 3,000 of these are already toast, having participated in Early Voting in the August election, where they were given the wrong ballot. Local campaigns and election consultants have been tracking this carefully.

As of this writing, 3,000 voters' rights can still be salvaged, with prompt action, because Election Day voting will not take place until next week. About half of all votes in Shelby County are typically cast on Election Day at the polls.

Shelby County needs to provide an option for all voters to cast legitimate votes on the right ballot on Election Day next week.

Candidates are also being treated unfairly. Many campaigns still don't have wards or precincts. School board candidates are still asking for information and can't identify their own voters for campaigning.

GOTTA BE REPLACED

And as I've said several times now, Holden needs to be replaced, and quickly. By my book, he is one of the worst election administrators in the nation.

It will take several weeks for a replacement to get up to speed in time for the November election. If Holden isn't replaced within the next two weeks, he's going to find that he himself is the story in Shelby County.

And after he is replaced, we'll need to sit on a Holden watch, to see where he turns up next. Election admins who are run out of town usually end up running an even bigger jurisdiction; King County's controversial Dean Logan now runs Los Angeles County elections; Cuyahoga County's Michael Vu now runs San Diego; San Bernardino County's Michael Trout now is Elections Director for the state of Oregon, and San Bernardino's other stinker, Scott Konopasek, ended up in Salt Lake County.

Sometimes, like convicted felon John Elder, head of ballot printing for Diebold, these election guys can't land another position. In that case, they become election consultants (like Riverside County's Mischelle Townsend, and Florida's Paul Craft).

One really has to wonder what topic they are consulting on.

HERE'S HOW REDISTRICTING MISMANAGEMENT ENDS UP DISENFRANCHISING VOTERS:

- Redistricting decisions, some bizarre, discriminatory, or overly complicated, are haggled over. For some locations, final decisions aren't made until the last minute, as one political party proposes new boundaries deemed unfair to the other; some fight it out in court; others hit resistance from the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

And by bizarre, I mean this: Sometimes you see elaborate proposals for districts that snake around voters in tortured paths, or even finger out in all four directions at once. Sometimes, as in Osceola County (FL), you even get districts carved into polka dots. It can get very odd, and sometimes illegal.

- With these changed districts, thousands of voters' precincts change, as does their polling place. Two things must happen before any election takes place.

(1) Voters need to be notified of their changed precinct and polling place

EVEN MORE IMPORTANT:

(2) The voter registration database must be updated, along with street mapping and pollbooks, to make sure every voter is put into the adjusted precinct.

Each district has a different ballot. If you live in District 9, you can't vote on District 8 representatives, and vice versa. Therefore, if voters are not correctly programmed into the newly redistricted system, their ballot will offer the wrong ballot choices, giving candidates ineligible votes and failing to allow the voter to choose the correct candidate of his choice.

PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED, WITH LINK TO http://www.blackboxvoting.org

* * * * *

Here's local coverage of the latest election scandal unfolding in Shelby County:

The Commercial Appeal - July 27, 2012, by Richard Locker

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/jul/27/no-headline---state_audit/?CID=happeningnow

State of Tennessee investigates Shelby Co... More

(MS) 7/12 - IMPOSSIBLE NUMBERS DON'T CONCERN ELECTION OFFICIALS; "IT'S A DONE DEAL" - It's useful to defog election transparency problems using short, consistent terms, like "IMPOSSIBLE NUMBERS". In Mississippi, Jackson Free Press reporter Jacob Fuller astutely details a set of impossible numbers in a Hinds County election, but readers eyes may glaze over as he explains accounting mismatches.

He also describes a less-than-dazzling, but nevertheless quite determined dance by election officials when questioned about mismatched numbers.

If this reporter learns to use two magic words, the dance of the election officials may reach star billing. These two words, "Impossible Numbers", were coined into election lingo by the articulate Richard Hayes Phillips (author of WITNESS TO A CRIME, a book detailing impossible numbers in Ohio's 2004 election).

Disappointingly, some election officials have trouble comprehending the gravity of impossible numbers in elections. Or at least, they pretend not to understand. Fuller reports that when he posed questions about impossible figures at the Hinds County Elections Commission office, he was told, "Don't come in here and open up a can of worms."

Oddly, election boards do certify elections -- that is, assert that correctness has been verified, locking in officialdom and permanence -- even when numbers can't possibly be true.

Fuller reports: "When asked about the discrepancy, Williams said she had not looked at the number of people who signed the roll. When asked who was supposed to compare voter-roll numbers to election totals, Williams said the election had been certified and she had nothing else to tell me. When I asked the question again, Williams answer was only slightly more telling.

"'...Well, anyway, I don't know anything about the people that signed the voter rolls, about their numbers or whatever,' Williams said. 'Nothing came up as a question when we were certifying, and we certified, and it's a done deal.'"

Election cheating is a game of Beat The Clock. Make it a "done deal" as quickly as you can. Elections require certain accounting checks and balances, and one of these is matching up the number of voters to the number of votes. Anyone can do it: Citizens, reporters, candidates. And it's an important part of public oversight. Someone may be counting on you NOT to match the numbers.

Impossible numbers appear when you find:

1) Phantom voters: You have more votes than voters
or
2) Vanishing votes: You have more voters than ballots cast

It is purely amazing when election officials claim there is no problem with phantom voters (votes appear without voters). It is more amazing yet that election boards and even election auditing firms certify elections containing phantom voters.

Blank votes present a more complex scenario because they aren't necessarily impossible. Blank votes -- not as many votes as voters in some races -- may just be choices the voter decided not to make. Some ballot choices seem to bore voters, like judicial races with no opposition, or races for positions deemed uninteresting.

But blank votes turn into votes that vanished altogether when you sum votes + blank votes = BALLOTS CAST, and you have significantly more VOTERS than BALLOTS CAST.

For example:
Number voters check in at polls: 100
Sheriff Race - 60 votes for Joe, 30 for Tom, 10 ballots leave sheriff race blank
That's not impossible, because although there are only 90 votes for sheriff (60+30=90), when you add in the blanks, you get 90+10=100, a match with number of voters. And by the way, electronic voting tabulators offer a reporting option to include number of blank votes in each race. Request results with blank votes included.

Now, if you have 100 voters sign in, but only 90 ballots are cast (including blank votes), you get an impossible number. Some election officials, laughably, if only it were funny, try to explain such impossibilities claiming these are "fleeing voters", explaining with straight faces that plenty of people drive to the polls, stand in line, sign in, then flee before casting a ballot. More likely: Voting machines, or people, ditched some ballots.

As you read the article linked below about the Hinds County numbers mismatch, think about how much more quickly understood this article would be by incorporating the phrase "impossible numbers" at the appropriate points:

Jackson Free Press - July 26, 2012, by Jacob Fuller

http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2012/jul/26/voter-rolls-votes-dont-match/

Ward 3 Voter Rolls, Votes Don't Match Up

JACKSON — The official numbers are in for the Ward 3 runoff election between LaRita Stokes and Joyce Jackson, but there is a discrepancy between the vote totals and the number of voters who signed the roll at Precinct 11.

No one at the city or county seems to know anything about it, and everyone wants to direct questions to another department.

The precinct, located in the Jackson Medical Mall, reported only 33 total votes, according to the official numbers from the... More

(FL) 7/12 - MALAYSIA, GAMBLING, ELECTIONS Part II - In my story last week, I described the transnational nature of today's privatized electronic vote-counting vendors, leading with a ramped-up effort to install machines into several U.S. states by Unisyn, a firm owned by Malaysian gambling behemoth Berjaya subsidiary, International Lottery and Totalizator (More: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/82176.html )

What would Malaysian gambling corporations want with American elections, you might ask. Well, clearly they want the state of Florida. Another Malaysian gambling outfit, the Genting Group, owned by another set of billionaires, had its stock price questioned when it ran into a "legislative blockage" in Florida; undaunted, this firm has now teamed up with a former Rick Scott spokesman to see if it can rewrite some of Florida's state constitution, while pushing some legislators to get new laws drafted.

Las Vegas-style casinos in Miami, here we come.

Read through the excerpts below and you'll see what I mean. This Malaysian gambling corporation is throwing money at Republicans and Democrats alike, but at a ratio of 4:1 towards Republicans. Politics is about big money.

Times/Herald - July 21, 2012, by Mary Ellen Klas

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/tourism/casino-giant-hedging-its-bets-on-gambling-expansion-in-florida/1241587

Casino giant hedging its bets on gambling expansion in Florida

" TALLAHASSEE — The Genting Group, the Malaysian casino giant, is seeding its bets across Florida's political spectrum this election year as it continues to secure the foothold it needs to build a Miami casino empire.

"The company, which bought the Miami Herald building in downtown Miami with $236 million in cash in 2011 and tried unsuccessfully to get destination resort casinos approved by lawmakers this year, has spent $1.3 million so far in the 2012 election cycle and has embarked on a two-pronged political strategy.

"Half of its money has been steered into a petition drive for a pro-casino amendment to the state Constitution that would bypass the Legislature to bring casinos to Florida. The other half of its cash so far — $486,000 to the Republican Party of Florida and $111,000 to the Florida Democratic Party — was primarily given before the legislative session and is being used to back incumbents in or political committees, according to a Times/Herald analysis of campaign reports.

...

"But, its opponents say, the size of Genting's checks to the party leaders, its cash-rich approach to business, and the emergence of a ballot initiative is changing the political game in Tallahassee.

...

"Meanwhile, Genting appears ready to overpower all those forces by going directly to voters with a constitutional amendment on the 2014 statewide ballot. The company is not revealing its plans. But as soon as the language is drafted, it could start gathering signatures at polling sites as early as the August primary or November general election.

"The current effort is still at the exploratory phase,'' said Brian Hughes, former spokesman for Gov. Rick Scott hired by Genting's political committee formed to pursue the ballot amendment, New Jobs and Revenues for Florida.

"The committee has hired Tony Fabrizio, the pollster who helped shape Scott's successful election, and he has begun testing ballot language and conducting focus groups.

"Genting has also retained constitutional law expert Bruce Rogow to write the amendment and hired a Nevada-based firm that specializes in organizing petitions.

...

"Another key question: Will Genting move forward with a ballot amendment in the same year the governor seeks re-election, potentially drawing casino supporters to the polls in a dicey election year? Whatever the company decides, observers say the threat of the amendment gives Genting added leverage against a recalcitrant Legislature and a reluctant governor in the meantime.

...

Meanwhile, Genting is keeping its cards close to the vest. The company's political and legislative strategy "is an evolving process,:" said Cory Tilley, Genting spokesman. "It will come into shape in the coming months." More

(Multinational) 7/12 - ELECTRONIC VOTE-COUNTING INCREASINGLY BY GLOBAL PRIVATE VENDORS - A press release today about the planned expansion of Unisyn into more USA locations renews attention on foreign ownership of corporations selling voting systems into the United States.

Unisyn is owned by a Malaysian gambling outfit. Another major elections industry player, Canada's Dominion, purchased the massive Diebold Election Systems division (which it shares with ES&S); Dominion also owns Smartmatic, which handles electronic vote-counting in the Philippines and Belgium. Military voting is now handled in several states by Barcelona, Spain-owned Scytl. In January 2012, Scytl acquired the largest election results reporting firm, SOE Software.

Accenture, now based in Dublin Ireland (formerly headquartered in tax-haven Bermuda), claims copyright over the massive electronic voter registration/voter history databases used in several states, including Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Colorado, Wisconsin and Arkansas. Accenture purchased its voter registration unit from Election.com, a Saudi-owned company based in the Cayman Islands.

Because a computer will only do what it's programmers and administrators tell it to do, whoever issues the commands gains ultimate control over how it receives, counts, and reports votes, voter registrations, and voter histories.

UNISYN: According to Barry Herron (formerly of Diebold Election Systems), now Director of Sales for Unisyn, "Unisyn and our business partners are actively supporting installations in the States of Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, Mississippi, and Virginia. We intend to expand into other states in late 2012 and early 2013."

Unisyn also recently made inroads into Puerto Rico. Another Unisyn election product called "Inkavote" is used in 4 million-voter Los Angeles County (Calif) and in Jackson County Missouri.

THE MALAYSIAN GAMBLING CONNECTION:

Black Box Voting exposed the Malaysian outfit behind Unisyn in 2005. Excerpts from our 2005 report by Bev Harris and Kathleen Wynne:

Unisyn is an entity set up by parent company International Lottery and Totalizator Systems (ILTS). A politically-connected Malaysian gambling outfit owns ILTS.

According to SEC filings, Berjaya Lottery Management -- a gaming subsidiary of Berjaya Group Berhad, located in Malaysia -- owns 71% of the voting stock in ILTS, the company that makes InkaVote.

InkaVote's parent, Berjaya Group is controlled by Vincent Tan Chee Yioun, a crony of Mahathir Mohamad, who was Malaysian prime minister until 2003. Mahathir's government was denounced for human-rights abuses and corporate corruption.

When Mahathir Mohamad retired two years ago, he was succeeded by the man who rushed to his side at the retirement, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, of the same party. The shareholders of Berjaya Group, the parent of InkaVote, reportedly include Mokhzani Mahathir, son of Malaysian strongman Mahathir Mohamad.

From the Berjaya Group Berhad Annual Report to Stock Shareholders, 1994: "The Berjaya Group is a large, diversified conglomerate, including seven public and about 200 private companies."

Directors of Berjaya include Danny Tan Chee Sing, one of a small group of Chinese capitalists closely associated with Malay politicians, and Jaffar Bin Abdul, the former Inspector General of Police.

Tony Yeong, Managing Director of Berjaya Group (Cayman), resigned over allegations of an attempt to bribe the Solomon Islands' Commerce, Employment and Trade Minister. Yeong insisted it was an accepted practice for a company such as Berjaya to show its appreciation to those in government who assisted the company.

The rise of key Chinese businessmen in Malaysian corporations was linked to influential politicians. It turns out that what happens to the corporations depends on whether their patrons remain in power.

More on Malaysian owners:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/4624.html
Filing (March 15 2005, for 4th qtr 2004) - shows 71% ownership by Berjaya Lottery Systems of Malaysia:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/inkavote/ILTS-SEC-doc.PDF
(pdf file, 1,041 KB)
Filing that mentions plans for selling voting machines:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/inkavote/SEC-InkaVote.PDF
(pdf file, 254 KB)

ELECTION.COM, THE CAYMAN ISLANDS, AND ACCENTURE

In Chapter 8 of my book, Black Box Voting, written in 2003, I revealed the strange history of what is now Accenture voter registration systems. Election.com, now part of Accenture, was owned by unnamed Saudi investors through a group headquartered in the Cayman Islands.

This entity was awarded a portion of the contract for military voting in the U.S. by the Pentagon. Very soon after Accenture aquired Election.com, as Accenture also aquired the Pentagon contract for SERVE. (Internet voting).

More about Saudi-owned, Cayman Islands-based Election.com, now run by Accenture:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

SPAIN-OWNED INTERNET VOTING COMPANY -- SCYTL -- AND RESULTS REPORTING FIRM -- SOE SOFTWARE

In January 2012, Black Box Voting reported that Ba... More

(CO) 07/2012 - JUDGE THREATENS GAG ORDER ON EFFORT TO RESTORE PRIVACY OF BALLOT - Don't be confused, and don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't talk about this.

TO BE CLEAR: THE PUBLIC HAS BOTH THE RIGHT TO INSPECT BALLOTS AND THE RIGHT TO A SECRET BALLOT

We have a right to BOTH. Some election officials have been conflating these two issues, claiming that if we examine ballots we can see how people voted. Now, this raises a stunning question: If this is so, that means that election officials and vendors can also figure out how you voted.

We all need to grab a cleaver and chop these two rights into the two distinct rights that they are. The right to inspect; the right to privacy.

AS FOLLOWS:

RIGHT TO INSPECT - The public, in exercising its right to self govern, and under principles of Freedom of Information, has a right to examine the original evidence (the ballots) to authenticate reported results in elections.

But Washington State has denied 21 separate requests from citizens to inspect the ballots; the state of New Hampshire secretly excluded ballots from its Right to Know law in 2003; and Colorado election officials fought all the way to the state supreme court trying to hide ballots from the public (they lost; the court affirmed citizen right to inspect ballots).

Ballots are anonymous. Or at least, that's the way it's supposed to be.

RIGHT TO SECRET BALLOT - The public also has a right to a secret, anonymous ballot.

However, now we are learning that election officials and vendors believe they have the right to know how you voted. They have authorized unique marks to be placed on some or all ballots, and they have exploited their own intrusion into your privacy to deny you the right to examine ballots.

"IT WOULD VIOLATE THE SECRECY OF THE BALLOT TO ALLOW THE PUBLIC TO EXAMINE BALLOTS" simply means: "WE CAN FIGURE OUT HOW YOU VOTED AND WE DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT"

Two lawsuits are taking place right now seeking to remove prying eyes of vendors and election officials from your vote.

Litigation led by The Citizen Center and sponsored by Black Box Voting's "Colorado Project" seeks to stop election officials from placing unique bar codes on voter ballots. Of course, the public has been mostly unaware that this is going on, so a threatened gag order from the judge on this case is a little creepy. Public education to let everyone know that political privacy is being compromised is crucial, and a gag order has no place in this fight.

In a second case, Tim White, part of a San Juan County, Washington group fighting to restore ballot privacy in White v Reed, is fighting to directly challenge the unique identifiers on ballots.

And in a third effort, not yet in court, citizens in New Hampshire have been investigating the secretive, and apparently unconstitutional, 2003 action by the state to exclude ballots from Right to Know.

One voting machine vendor, Hart Intercivic, has been especially brazen about printing unique bar codes on each ballot, a dead cinch for stripping out data on how you voted with absentee voting. Hart dominates most Colorado counties (where absentee voting is approaching 50% of all votes), and Washington State, which is now 100% vote by mail.

Though vendors and election officials claim they don't look, in the same breath they claim we can't examine ballots because they aren't private. But they can't have it both ways. There is no special class of election elites and vendors possessing the right to see how we voted!

TO REITERATE:

The public has BOTH the right to examine ballots AND to have privacy of the ballot.

Here's a link to the article on the gag order threat:
http://www.chieftain.com/news/region/judge-threatens-gag-order/article_201011b0-c592-11e1-8284-001a4bcf887a.html
JUDGE THREATENS GAG ORDER

Oh, un-gag me.

PERMISSION TO REPRINT OR EXCERPT GRANTED, WITH LINK TO http://www.blackboxvoting.org More

4-22-09: Arizona A.G. releases results ... questions linger
by Jim March, with addendum by Bev Harris

Arizona AG Releases Official RTA Results:
Election A Clean Bill Of Health, Pima County Elections...Not So Much...

THE OFFICIAL BOTTOM LINE

At a press conference today in Tucson, AZ Attorney General Terry Goddard released the results of the 2006 Pima County RTA election handcount. His office says that most ballots are present and accounted for save for less than 100, and the hand count totals match the machine count of 2006 to within .01% - variances of 300 to 500 votes between the two questions, in an election with over 120,000 votes cast.

This seems to be an end to the RTA controversy...but not quite.

WHAT ABOUT THE MISSING BALLOTS?

Former NSA computer guru Mickey Dunahoe went over the high-resolution video of the handcount this week, and managed to do his own accurate-to-the-ballot count of a precinct box. This precinct contained around 1,500 ballots – filling the 12” tall box to the brim without overstuffing. The count we had managed to perform during the election was of a box of mail-in votes, counting about 1,240 or so before box-bulging began.

This would indicate that mail-in votes were literally thicker cardstock than the precinct votes. By basing our count estimates on thicker mail-in votes, our estimates on the precinct vote were off by up to 300 votes a box (with 55 precinct boxes).

When asked about the difference, the AG's office admitted not even noticing a possible difference in paper stock for the ballots.

We'll be getting the full paper trail from this "investigation" soon, and will try to revisit this and other issues.

OTHER PROBLEMS WITH THE HAND COUNT

The AG's office made three mistakes with the handcount process.

* They didn't try and do a tally of counted precinct votes against either the original statement of votes cast (SOVC) report or against the polltapes and/or pollworker “end of day report” (also known as “the yellow sheet” in Arizona). IF the paper record was manipulated, it would be easier to fake the numbers for vote totals rather than try and get fake paper ballots lined up in the correct ballot boxes. Auditing to a precinct detail level is a barrier against paper swap or alteration frauds.

* They didn't attempt to confirm paper ballot authenticity with spot-checks under a microscope or ink age analysis, or even an informal look at why the same ballot boxes hold more precinct ballots than absentee ballots.

EASY MICROSCOPE EXAM: The newest “bal... More

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Friday, November 9, 2012

(National) 11/7/2012 - AMERICA'S CLAIRVOYANT ELECTION SYSTEM - Perhaps one of the oddest moments of all during last night's live election coverage was what happened to Karl Rove on Fox Network News.

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