Secret Flawed Electronic Voting Software Discovered - Any Wisconsin Connections?

The Latest Update On Electronic Voting Machine News

From Bev Harris at BlackBoxVoting.Org

June 21, 2012

Permission to republish granted

I have found and posted the actual voter list software used widely throughout the USA (TN, WI, PA, CO, KS...) for Accenture voter registration and voter histories. I located the files on a magnetic backup tape of the hard drive of a county elections IT employee, part of a 120-gig set of discovery files.

The Accenture voter registration / voter history software is highly problematic, and has been reported switching voter parties in Colorado, and losing voter histories in Tennessee. Although it is now widely known that Accenture voter list software gets it wrong, just WHY the program misreports voter information so often has never been explained. I am hoping that by releasing this software to the public, it may shed light on what's really going on with our voter registration systems.

I also posted a Tennessee file with work orders and release notes which shows the Accenture software has a history of tripling votes in certain ("random")voter histories, going back to 2004. Except it is not random: Other files I discovered prove it is with primarily suburban Republican precincts that votes are somehow being recorded twice and sometimes three times for certain voters in the voter history report, and this didn't just happen in 2004; it also happened in the 2008 presidential primary and in May and August 2010, and according to election ommission notes in Shelby County, also in the 2012 presidential primary.

Computer buffs, have at it. Much source code exists within the tructure because it is built on MS Access. I do not read source code, though I can see some structural problems with the software (for example, it allows political party ID to be set differently from one precinct to another).

Here's the download link - http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/7659/82111.html

As a followup on our last story: The issue of 11,000 disappearing voter

histories in Tennessee has now been assigned to a special master for

investigation, and the state of Tennessee has officially announced that it has halted further voter purges.

To support the absolutely unique and highly effective investigative reporting by Black Box Voting, please consider making a generous donation, or (even better!)a monthly sponsorship:

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html

Or mail to:

Black Box Voting

330 SW 43rd St Suite K

PMB 543

Renton WA 98057

Does this article have any bearing on the recent election in Wisconsin?  No, not directly, of course.  But in Wisconsin, as in other states in recent years, there were serious disparities between exit polls and official vote tabulations.  It is my understanding that such large discrepancies were once uncommon.  Much has been written on the subject.  Between BlackBoxVoting.com and the links below, anyone interested can begin to learn more about the vulnerability of our electronic voting systems.

Here is one bloggers take.  http://www.uppitywis.org/blogarticle/wisconsins-faith-based-voting-machines-attract-more-notice

'It's not the people who vote that count; it's the people who count the votes' -- Josef Stalin

Submitted by Man MKE on Mon, 06/18/2012 - 10:51pm

Last Friday we blogged here about the need to stop thinking about how progressive and Democratic electioneering has failed us, and think harder about how the disloyal opposition has been busy tinkering with our elections. And perhaps not just by suppressing and de-legitimizing voters.

I'm now indebted to the Motley Cow blog http://the-motley-cow.blogspot.com/ for a great online find. Bob Fitrakis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Fitrakis and http://fitrakisforcongress.org/bobs-election-integrity-work/, a Green Party congressional candidate in Ohio, also happens to hold a doctorate in statistics. After Wisconsin's disastrous recall election, Fitrakis posted on his campaign blog about the urgent need to investigate the rigging of voting machines, here and in other states.

According to Fitrakis, the discrepancies in the ultimate reported vote totals and exit polling in Wisconsin and elsewhere simply have been too broad and widespread to discount the possibility that someone has been tampering with voting machines to rig outcomes.

It's hard to get traction on this, because even though skeptics and experts have been sounding the alarm for much of the past decade, it just sounds too much like a bad spy movie, too outlandish and over the top. But science and mathematics in particular force no other conclusion. Fitrakis:

One of my favorite mathematicians is Richard Charnin http://richardcharnin.com/  who on his website using readily available public information, calculates the odds of the so-called ‘red shift” occurring from the 1988 to 2008 presidential elections. The red shift refers to the overwhelming pick up of votes by the Republican Party in recorded votes over what actual voters report to exit pollsters.

In Charnin’s analysis of exit poll data, we can say with a 95% confidence level – that means in 95 out of 100 elections – that the exit polls will fall within a statistically predictable margin of error. Charnin looked at 300 presidential state exit polls from 1988 to 2008, 15 state elections would be expected to fall outside the margin of error. Shockingly, 137 of the 300 state presidential exit polls fell outside the margin of error.

What is the probability of this happening?

“One in one million trillion trillion trlllion trillion trillion trillion,” said Charnin.

More proof of Republican operatives and sympathizers is found in the fact that 132 of the elections fell outside the margin in favor of the GOP. We would expect eight.

Say you have a fair coin to flip. We would expect that if we flip that coin there would be an even split between heads and tails – or in this case, Republicans and Democrats. Election results falling outside the margin of error should be equally split between both parties. Yet, only five times, less than expected, did the extra votes fall in the direction of the Democratic Party.

So what are the odds? According to Charnin, of 132 out of 300 state presidential elections exceeding the margin of error in the direction of the Republicans – one in 600 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.

The corporate-owned media does not want to mention that the problems with the exit polls began with the ascendancy of the former CIA Director George Herbert Walker Bush to the presidency in 1988. It is also that year when the non-transparent push-and-pray voting machines were introduced in the New Hampshire primary by Bush ally John Sununu. Bush, who rigged elections for the CIA throughout the Third World did unexpectedly well where the voting machines were brought in.

Sound to you too much like a crackpot? But he's got his facts straight; now we're down to just arguing causes. And there must be a causal factor besides sheer statistical chance, or, if you're a Republican, fantastically beneficial blind luck.

Much more at: http://fitrakisforcongress.org/wisconsin-none-dare-call-it-vote-rigging/

Fitrakis is only the latest in a growing chorus of voices concerned about voting machine integrity. Black Box Voting has been working on this and other election integrity issues since the early days following the 2000 presidential election fiasco. Seehttp://www.blackboxvoting.org

A major presidential election looms. Concerned progressives need to start hammering on this issue, writing their local newspapers, contacting their elected officials, and talking to neighbors. Oh, transmit your concerns to the US Department of Justice, which oversees the Voting Rights Act.

You could also contact the federal Election Assistance Commission, which in theory oversees the certification and reliability of election machines used in federal elections, but some observers have their doubts. Truth is, only a voluntary federal certification for voting machines is part of federal law, and each state has ultimate jurisdiction over certification.

The statistical evidence is alarming. That's not enough to pull the red emergency lever, but it's more than enough to demand that our public officials and the news media -- who sponsor the exit polling that increasingly seems out of synch with what final vote tallies show -- pay closer attention to this potential and existential threat to democracy.

For more on how electronic voting machines are serviced and maintained in Wisconsin, read this eye-opening piece: http://wcmcoop.com/members/meet-command-central-the-people-in-charge-of-wisconsin-voting-machines/