I’m externalizing the vote-switching software thread into its own category.
I don’t want this category to get bogged down in a vote switching software controversy.
Yet, the controversy is interesting, and worth tracking.
So there it is. Look here for stories about this from now on.
This just in from R.U. Sirius:
Does transhumanism suck? Will humanity be transformed in 2012? Are
smart homes stupid? Should the editor of a webzine be interviewed by
his publisher about his own book if that book is a history of counterculture?
NeoFiles Vol.1 Num.11
This was emailed to me today.
PLEASE CALL TODAY TO KEEP ANTI-IMMIGRANT PROVISIONS OUT OF THE 9/11 INTELLIGENCE BILL!!
Take Action: Call the White House at (202) 456-1111 and Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) at (202) 225-2976
It appears that the anti-immigrant groups like FAIR have mobilized and are calling Congressional offices 5 to 1 in favor of the anti-immigrant provisions. PLEASE CALL TODAY!
When you call, the key messages are :
-Keep the anti-immigrant provisions out of the intelligence reform bill.
-The compromise bill closely tracks the recommendations of the 9/11 commission without adding on extraneous immigration measures. No more compromising.
-The compromise already includes tough border measures and federal standards for driver’s licenses which make licenses more secure and make us safer, but does not needlessly scapegoat all immigrants.
-Enact the real recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, not the agenda of House immigration restrictionists. The immigration provisions Rep. Sensenbrenner wants would not have prevented the terrorist attacks and will not make us safer.
Startling new revelations highlight rare Congressional hearings on Ohio vote
by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman of the Free Press
Startling new revelations about Ohio’s presidential vote have been uncovered as Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee join Rev. Jesse Jackson in Columbus, the state capital, on Monday, Dec. 13, to hold a rare field hearing into election malfeasance and manipulation in the 2004 vote. The Congressional delegation will include Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, and others.
Taken together, the revelations show Republicans
My peeps are sending me great links and lots of them. I’ll be trying to catch up tonight and tomorrow so just keep em coming as events progress.
Basically:
1) It’s time for the electoral college to officially cast their votes in Ohio
even though
2) the recount has just started
and
3) Rep. Conyers held a congressional hearing last week on the matter and
4) He just held another on in Ohio State today
meanwhile
5) The vote switching software allegations are being investigated. The programmer has testified to Conyers and the Judiciary Committee Democrats holding hearings this morning in Columbus, Ohio on Election 2004 Voting Irregularities.
More Questions for Florida
By Kim Zettner for Wired News.
(via
Brad Blog)
A government watchdog group is investigating allegations made by a Florida programmer that are whipping up a frenzy among bloggers and people who believe Republicans stole the recent election.
Programmer Clint Curtis claims that four years ago Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Florida) asked his then-employer to write software to alter votes on electronic voting machines in Florida…
He said his employer told him the code would be used “to control the vote” in West Palm Beach County, Florida. But a fellow employee disputed the programmer’s claims and said the meetings he described never took place…
Curtis said Feeney asked for code that could go undetected on a voting machine and be easily triggered without any devices by anyone using the machine. Curtis had never seen source code for a voting machine, but in five hours, he said he designed code in Visual Basic that would launch if someone touched specific spots on the voting screen after selecting a candidate.
Once the code was activated, it would search the machine to see if the selected candidate’s total was behind. If it was, the machine would award that candidate 51 percent of the total votes recorded on the machine and redistribute the remaining votes among the other candidates in the race.
Curtis said he initially believed Feeney wanted the code to see if such fraud were possible and to know how to detect it. The programmer told Feeney that such code could never be undetectable in source code, and he wrote a paper describing how to look for it. But when he gave the paper and code to his employer, Yang told him he was looking at it all wrong. They weren’t looking at how to find code, Curtis said she told him. They needed code that couldn’t be found…
Many questions have been raised about Curtis, the 46-year-old programmer, who said he doesn’t know if anyone ever placed the prototype code on voting machines. But this hasn’t stopped frustrated voters and bloggers from seizing his story. Daily Kos mentioned the allegations, and Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog has written extensively about them.
Staff members for Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) met with Curtis last week to discuss the election allegations. Representatives for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida) inquired about other allegations from Curtis that his former company spied on NASA.
In September 2000, Curtis was working for Yang Enterprises in Oviedo, Florida, a software design firm that contracts with NASA, ExxonMobil and the Florida Department of Transportation, among other clients. According to Curtis, Feeney met with him and Lee Yang, the company’s president, to request the voting software.
At the time, Feeney was Yang’s corporate attorney and a registered lobbyist for the company as well as a member of Florida’s legislature. A month later, he would become speaker of Florida’s House of Representatives. In 2002 he was elected to Congress.
Protesters Urge Delay for Ohio Electors
By John McCarthy for the Associated Press.
As it has done for 200 years, Ohio’s delegation to the Electoral College is to meet Monday to cast ballots for president and vice president – but this time, there are demands that the electors wait until after a recount. A demonstration was held Sunday as about 100 people gathered outside the Ohio Statehouse to protest the delegation’s vote.
The Electoral College’s vote in the Ohio Senate chamber is expected to be accompanied by demonstrations outside the Capitol sponsored by groups who don’t accept that President Bush won the key swing state by 119,000 votes, guaranteeing his victory over Democrat John Kerry.
This goes with this post.
There has been a bit of a tinfoil hat alert with regard to the story I posted the Repubs hiring a programmer to write “vote switching” software.
I still have not personally had a chance to investigate the article, but Bev Harris had this to say on her blackboxvoting.org website, and it seemed important to take her stance into consideration while reading the article.
While MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and I had a run-in recently, I agree
with Olbermann’s earlier critique of the Madsen homeland security
story, and this new Madsen story is just as weak. Most of both Madsen
stories are bait and switch. Madsen wanders all over the place,
recapping unrelated information from real news agencies, piggybacking
onto their credibility, with only the most tenuous ties to what he is
actually trying to prove. The work done on BradBlog is much more
focused, and Brad seems to be a responsible researcher.
========================================
In my original critique, I raised questions about the Feeney
vote-manipulation story; some of them related to Madsen’s work. Brad
Friedman, the author of BradBlog and the primary researcher for more
credible work on Curtis, answered my original questions here. I have
updated this section.
1. Madsen’s article implied that Curtis’s vote-rigging program was
used in elections. Brad Friedman correctly points out that the Clint
Curtis affidavit explains that he designed a prototype and did not put
it into machines. (Many people have written vote-rigging prototypes,
and the writing of a program doesn’t prove anything about the
integrity of the 2004 election.) The issue then becomes: Are Curtis’s
allegations about Tom Feeney correct?
– Documents do confirm that Curtis worked for Yang Enterprises, and
that Feeney was involved with Yang. Documents do not confirm that
Curtis met with Feeney and discussed vote-rigging. Curtis names
witnesses in his affidavit, which is a good sign. The witnesses have
not confirmed the story, yet.
Oopsy. Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell promised America that he would not interfere with a recount. Now his office has instructed employees that Ohio voting records are not considered “public records.”
That means that Kenneth Blackwell has been caught in a big fat lie. And I’ve got the proof (I provide video and a transcript):
Last week, he promised in an interview with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann that he wouldn’t do anything to interfere with the recount. He said he would consider it “yet another audit of the voting process.”
Here’s the story detailing Blackwell’s “lockdown” of the Ohio voting records:
Blackwell Locks Out Recount Volunteers
By Ray Beckerman.
On Friday December 10 two certified volunteers for the Ohio Recount team assigned to Greene County were in process recording voting information from minority precincts in Greene County, and were stopped mid-count by a surprise order from Secretary of State Blackwell
Update: this post now goes with this one. (Bev Harris weighing in on this story.)
Texas to Florida: White House-linked clandestine operation paid for “vote switching” software
By Wayne Madsen for the Online Journal.
According to a notarized affidavit signed by Clint Curtis, while he was employed by the NASA Kennedy Space Center contractor, Yang Enterprises, Inc., during 2000, Feeney solicited him to write a program to “control the vote.” At the time, Curtis was of the opinion that the program was to be used for preventing fraud in the in the 2002 election in Palm Beach County, Florida. His mind was changed, however, when the true intentions of Feeney became clear: the computer program was going to be used to suppress the Democratic vote in counties with large Democratic registrations.