Bwahahahaha.  Okay, sorry, wiping off the spittle.  Here we go.

This could be what we have to look forward to.  A tightening race once again tipped by electoral fraud.  

Stephen Spoonamore, considered one of the top cyber security experts in the world, with a resume that includes working for credit card companies, the Secret Service, the Pentagon, and the FBI, and who is a lifelong member of the GOP, stated in an interview way back in 2006, and which is just surfacing, thanks to Velvet Revolution, and Alternet charges that

1. Diebold is stealing elections.

2. George W. Bush did not win in 2004.

Links to video of the interview & transcript below the fold:

Dianne Feinstein has, with Republican Robert Bennett, introduced perhaps the worst bill yet drafted on the issue of electronic voting. Meet S.3212, the Bipartisan Electronic Voting Reform Act.

S.3212 does not require a voter-verified paper record,  paper ballot, or paper anything.  The bill allows "independent records" of ballots which could be electronic, audio, video, pictorial, or "other independently produced record." The bill is so crappily written that it seems these independent records don't necessarily have to be seen by the voter before she casts her ballot. The bill places a representative of the voting system industry on the federal committee that drafts voting system guidelines (not an unheard of practice in the federal government, but the voting system industry just ain't ready for this kind of role, to put it kindly).

Click here to sign VerifiedVoting.org's action alert opposing S.3212.  More on the flip.

We're up against 3 formidable independent forces in this election: a complacent (or complicit) media pushing pro-McCain, anti-Obama stories, 527 groups that are waiting to attack, and voting machine problems.

We tell ourselves "never again" about 2000 and 2004 - these three forces were in large part to blame for the losses in those years.  What are we willing to do to ensure that "never again" do we repeat 2000 or 2004?  In other words, how can we, independent of the Obama campaign's machinery, overcome these forces?  How much of a vote margin do we need to give Obama to overcome these 3 forces?

Read on to see why I believe we must recruit 198,000 new volunteers who will garner 9.9 million new votes.

***Passing along a note from the Broward Democratic Party.  Enjoy the spot!

A few days ago, the Broward Democratic Party released a lighthearted television commercial, "Touchscreen" designed to increase voter awareness of the party and of the new voting machines which will (finally) be providing a verifiable paper trail. We are publishing the 30-second spot online, and asking supporters such as yourself to help us raise funds to air it on cable prior to the primary election in August.

Concerned that the election of 2008 may turn out to be once again "problematic"?  It is time all Kossacks saw an expose of the 2004 election which argues and presents evidence which leads one to the probable conclusion that the 2004 election also and not just the 2000 election in Florida was stolen.

So Guam had a close caucus vote this weekend, and they did a recount.  

But a recount, or an audit of the vote tallies, will not be possible in Indiana, because a majority of votes in the Indiana primary will be cast on paperless electronic machines. And of course, I have to remind folks that the Brennan Center Task Force on Voting System Security concluded that a statewide election run on paperless electronic machines can be manipulated by as few as one to four people (p. 50-59)

From the Verified Voting Foundation:

57 counties, with over 2.5 million registered voters, use only paperless DREs [direct-recording electronic machines]at the polls on election day. In at least some of the counties, paper ballots are an option in early voting.

See the rest of the above article for a rundown of the specific systems used.

Right now there's a diary up on the rec list at Daily Kos that has some truth to it, but in the end fails to nail the real reason why Obama lost. The diary claims it's the media's fault, and a lot of Kossacks are yammering away in the comments, claiming the loss is also race related.

Didn't thousands of people show up to hear Obama? What attendance was his biggest event? When thousands of people show up to see a candidate, they don't lose because of the media. They lose because The Vote is counted by private corporations.

http://www.opednews.com/...

I don't have much to add to the machine today.  However, I am interested in KOSers expectations regarding the story of the PA primary.  

UPDATE: I forgot to include some information about the voting system used in Philadelphia, the Danaher Shouptronic.  The Shouptronic was one of the machines that recorded very high undervotes in the 2004 Presidential in New Mexico, which undervote rate went down considerably in 2006, after the state switched to a paper ballot/optical scan system. - Midwest Millian

So it's hard to see how the Pennsylvania primary could be more important. Even the difference of a few points in the margin of victory could prove crucial in determining the course of the Democratic primary campaign.

It's also hard to see how the Pennsylvania primary could be less verifiable. Of the state's 8.3 million registered voters, over 85% live in jurisdictions that use only paperless e-voting at the polls.

A good emergency bill to fund verifiable voting systems has been smacked down. From Rep. Rush Holt's media release:

"This bill would represent a real step forward in our effort to protect the accuracy, integrity and security of the November elections," Holt said. "The bill that the House leadership scheduled for a vote today is the same one that passed two weeks ago without the objection of a single Committee member.  There is no reason why this should be a partisan issue but the Republicans evidently have chosen to make it so. The White House issued a statement opposing the bill and 176 of 203 Republicans voted that way."

Two security experts have demonstrated that the most popular voting machines can be easily hacked. Even worse, there is no way to tell if the votes have been tampered with.

http://www.pcworld.com/...

Not mentioned in this article is that these same insecure voting machines are being used in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary.

Many thanks to the folks who put this issue on the diary rescue last week. Many more thanks to the Kossacks who have signed on to the action alert.

To recap: New Jersey's legislature passed a law in mid-2005 that required voter-verifiable paper records on voting machines by January 2008.  The Division of Elections chose to recommend retrofitting aging, unreliable Sequoia Advantage machines with printers, instead of purchasing a more reliable system of paper ballots, optical scanners, and ballot markers for voters with disabilities. Guess what? The printers don't work, and the Legislature extended the deadline to June of this year. Then a couple of weeks ago, the Legislature extended the deadline again to January 2009. Almost three years of delay and dysfunction, culminating in 15 more unverifiable electoral votes. There is something you can do: urge Governor Corzine to veto the delay legislation, A2229. Follow the flip for links.

UPDATE: Mercer County Superior Court Judge has ordered that proposed testing by independent computer scientists proceed - see here. There will also not be a full trial to determine the reliability of the machines until May 19.

What's wrong with New Jersey? The state passed a law requiring voter-verifiable paper records in July of 2005. Now, unless Governor Corzine vetoes legislation passed last week, the Garden State will have an unverifiable Presidential election, cast on insecure, unreliable electronic voting machines. And the nation will have 15 more electoral votes dependent entirely on ones and zeroes.

InfoWorld is reporting that Sequoia Voting System's website was hacked last Thursday.  Web site hacks and defacements are nothing new; there have now been so many that the folks at Zone-H (which maintains one of the largest archives of such sites) have publicly raised the question of whether it's still worth the effort to catalog them.

So it would be easy to dismiss this as just one more incident in a very long  line of incidents encompassing sites of every description from all over the planet.  But that would be a mistake -- a serious mistake.  This incident speaks volumes about the core competency of Sequoia Voting Systems, and what it says is very disturbing.

Would you buy a pocket calculator that told you 15+20+25=61?  Would you buy one sold by someone referring to you as a member of the "Democrat Party"?  How about buying one from someone who threatened you if you tried to find out why that result is 61 instead of 60?

If you've answered "yes" to all these questions, then by all means, get on the first plane to New Jersey where your help will no doubt be gratefully accepted by election officials who've already done all three. Oh, and of course they used the taxpayer's money to do it, and of course they used these systems in actual real live elections and of course they signed off on the obviously-wrong results.

First, the caveats. This proves no fraud. Of course, the below offers nice reinforcement to the already-nailed case against the Diebold (Premier) TSX, the touch screen used in DuPage County. From the Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago newspaper:

Justin Major, a voter protection lawyer for the Foster campaign, observed that the word "Republican" flashed on a touch-screen voting booth at Pioneer School at 615 Kenwood in West Chicago as though it was a primary election. The ballot was normal otherwise and the word came up only on the screen. Paper ballots were also available, and no problems were reported with the use of paper.

United Technologies makes the Blackhawk and other various pieces of military tech, as well as being a huge election contributor. They launch a hostile takeover of Diebold, one of the largest manufacturers of voting machines and ATMS. The United Technologies CEO holds a seat on the Board of Directors of Citi Group. Citi Group's largest individual interests are the Abu Dhabi goverment and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia.

What could possibly go wrong?