New Hampshie ballot boxes tampered with?!

[swskeptic]

http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/for...954/71404.html

Apparently some, if not all of the ballot boxes from New Hampshire were tampered with.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, not in the least bit. But uhhh, shouldn't this be looked into a bit more?

I mean, when I see a ballot box with an 8 inch slit in it I'd be a little worried something that wasn't supposed to happen, did.

Any thoughts?

[defaultdotxbe]

from the forum:

Quote:

the slits are not "through the box" in the sense that they are in the middle of the cardboard. They deliver the ballots in a variety of cardboard boxes. The lid of the cardboard box is taped and has various seals on it, some old, from using the box before, some new. The slits cut through any tape or seals. They don't cut into the cardboard itself, and I'm going to edit the post above to clarify that.

apparently they are waiting on the sole source of this info to post pictures

[SDC]

Why would anyone care about primary votes in Cow Hampshire?

[swskeptic]

Originally Posted by SDC

Why would anyone care about primary votes in Cow Hampshire?

Because if the votes are being tampered with right now, what makes you think they won't be tampered with on Nov. 2nd?

It doesn't matter though, I call BS on the story, especially considering the only photo that they have shown of a box that had been "slit open" (found here) is from a photo set on Flickr from the recount of the votes.

I must admit though, for how easy it is to hack a Diebold machine, why are we still using them?

[Unsecured Coins]

the NWO hasn't found a more diabolical way of rigging elections yet

[defaultdotxbe]

Originally Posted by swskeptic

I must admit though, for how easy it is to hack a Diebold machine, why are we still using them?

has anyone demonstrated hacking a diebold machine on the current software revision? im assuming updates have been made in the past 2-3 years

[ktesibios]

Originally Posted by defaultdotxbe

has anyone demonstrated hacking a diebold machine on the current software revision? im assuming updates have been made in the past 2-3 years

If you go to the California Secretary of State Web site here, you can read the public reports filed by investigators from the University of California as part of the top-to-bottom review of electronic voting and vote-counting systems, which led to the decertification of many such systems for use in California. These tests were conducted in July 2007.

Basically, the answer to your question is "yes". The "red team" penetration tests found multiple serious vulnerabilities in systems from all of the vendors- not just Diebold, and in a very limited time period.

This is not the sort of thing that can be smugly dismissed out of hand as woo.

The situation seems to be somewhat like Micro$oft's history of security problems. If a system isn't designed from the ground up with security and integrity as a high priority, you're likely to wind up with a system that's going to pop up new vulnerabilities as fast as you patch the old ones. That the vendors don't seem to have been serious about security, in software, the physical realm or in designing procedures for the use of their systems doesn't help.

There seems to be some confusion between "touch-screen" electronic voting machines and the optical scanners used to read and count paper ballots, as in New Hampshire. As the SOS's decertification order notes, tampering with electronic counting machines is inherently detectable by the simple expedient of hand-counting the original paper ballots. Even the clucks who get their training at the NWO Correspondence School know better than to try to pull off a conspiracy that inevitably creates incontrovertible evidence to bust them with.

The recounts in New Hampshire appear to be turning up some technical problems, like scan machines that misread write-in votes as votes for candidates with check boxes or which missed counting some marks (remember those machine-scored fill-in-the-bubble test answer sheets back in school, and how they always told you to fill in the bubble completely with the right kind of pencil?), but so far no evidence of genuine tampering nor errors that would seriously impact the outcome of the election. All of the candidates have had their votes adjusted as a result of the recounting.

[ktesibios]

Originally Posted by defaultdotxbe

has anyone demonstrated hacking a diebold machine on the current software revision? im assuming updates have been made in the past 2-3 years

If you go to the California Secretary of State Web site here, you can read the public reports filed by investigators from the University of California as part of the top-to-bottom review of electronic voting and vote-counting systems, which led to the decertification of many such systems for use in California. These tests were conducted in July 2007.

Basically, the answer to your question is "yes". The "red team" penetration tests found multiple serious vulnerabilities in systems from all of the vendors- not just Diebold, and in a very limited time period.

This is not the sort of thing that can be smugly dismissed out of hand as woo.

The situation seems to be somewhat like Micro$oft's history of security problems. If a system isn't designed from the ground up with security and integrity as a high priority, you're likely to wind up with a system that's going to pop up new vulnerabilities as fast as you patch the old ones. That the vendors don't seem to have been serious about security, in software, the physical realm or in designing procedures for the use of their systems doesn't help.

There seems to be some confusion between "touch-screen" electronic voting machines and the optical scanners used to read and count paper ballots, as in New Hampshire. As the SOS's decertification order notes, tampering with electronic counting machines is inherently detectable by the simple expedient of hand-counting the original paper ballots. Even the clucks who get their training at the NWO Correspondence School know better than to try to pull off a conspiracy that inevitably creates incontrovertible evidence to bust them with.

The recounts in New Hampshire appear to be turning up some technical problems, like scan machines that misread write-in votes as votes for candidates with check boxes or which missed counting some marks (remember those machine-scored fill-in-the-bubble test answer sheets back in school, and how they always told you to fill in the bubble completely with the right kind of pencil?), but so far no evidence of genuine tampering nor errors that would seriously impact the outcome of the election. All of the candidates have had their votes adjusted as a result of the recounting.

[dudalb]

I think that people are mistaking a buggy electronic voting system with some kind of vast evil conspiracy.
Is there evidence that the voting machines are very buggy? Yes.Lots.
Is there evidence this is part of some vast conspiracy to steal an election.No.

[proxywar]

http://votingmatters.wordpress.com/2...rimary-or-not/

Any word on the recount results?

[swskeptic]

How do we explain the missing memory cards and 100 vote discrepancies between the diebold machine count and the hand count? I'm not even sure what the entire story behind that is. Is it between counties that used the diebold machine, and ones that hand counted? Or did they all use the diebold machine and the "hand count" is from the recount? I hope someone can clarify this up for me.

Either way, I'm not sure I'm liking this situation, why the hell can't we just go back to regular paper ballots and more secure boxes... It worked juuuust fine before!

Also, if anyone has any more information about this, especially about what happened back in 2000 between Gore/Florida/Bush Jr. and why that was all messed up. I hope to turn this into my next Youtube video.

Have a great day!

[defaultdotxbe]

Quote:

How do we explain the missing memory cards and 100 vote discrepancies between the diebold machine count and the hand count? I'm not even sure what the entire story behind that is. Is it between counties that used the diebold machine, and ones that hand counted? Or did they all use the diebold machine and the "hand count" is from the recount? I hope someone can clarify this up for me.

i believe the diebolds ae entirely digital, so theres nothing to hand count, the discrepancy seems to be that certain candidates won in counties diebold machines, but lost in counties using paper ballots, im not sure of details though

diebolds werent used in florida, the voting issue there was butterfly ballots (among other things, but the actual voting-method issue was the ballots) and i think it was the confusion over the butterfly ballot that led to a lot of counties buying the diebold machines
http://www.asktog.com/images/palmballot.jpg

[ktesibios]

Originally Posted by defaultdotxbe

i believe the diebolds ae entirely digital, so theres nothing to hand count, the discrepancy seems to be that certain candidates won in counties diebold machines, but lost in counties using paper ballots, im not sure of details though

Umm, not quite. There were no electronic voting machines involved; all of the votes were cast on paper ballots marked by the voter. The issue is the accuracy of counts done by optical scan machines which read the marked ballots versus counts done by people using the Mk I eyeball.

Quote:

I should emphasize here that, contrary to some reports in the blogosphere, the controversy is not about electronic voting machines (i.e., paperless touch-screen voting machines), since New Hampshire doesn't use such machines. New Hampshire passed a law back in 1994 requiring all voting machines to produce a paper trail, a decade before the controversy over paperless touch-screen machines even became an issue. Instead of touch-screen machines, New Hampshire uses only old-style paper ballots and optical-scan ballots. In the case of the latter, voters mark a paper ballot with a pen before officials scan it through an electronic reader and tabulate the results via computer.

Source

Now here's an interesting post on Ars Technica in which the writer appears to get the point of why concerns about the use of electronic voting, counting and tabulating systems are important:

Quote:

From my perspective, this is what's really at stake in the ongoing e-voting controversy: the government's inability to fulfill its obligation to prove to the public that our elections are fair makes our democracy so much more fragile, and so much more susceptible to cracking under the shock of a major election controversy.

I agree with this. In my view, our voting systems need to meet a "Caesar's wife" standard of security, accuracy and integrity. It's not enough for them simply to be honest and accurate, they need to be known to be so accurate and honest (and contain sufficiently robust means of detecting and correcting errors to guarantee an accurate outcome under worst-case conditions) that the public can regard them as above suspicion.

The electronic systems we have now fail in two ways. There are enough real, demonstrated problems to keep them from ever reaching that standard of confidence and they have a proven propensity for attracting conspiracy theories the way the annual NWO Beer Bash and Owl Roast attracts bugs.