Alameda County, CA goes back to Diebold

Diebold was out, and after they unveil new products, Alameda is back again. Do county officials think this voting bad apple is reformed? Will they succomb to Diebold's $3 million equipment credit allowance to stay with the company?

source: http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/politics/14751040.htm?source=rss&channel=cctimes_politics

Diebold machines pressed into service

By Chris Metinko

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Nearly two years after suing Diebold for faulty, uncertified voting equipment, Alameda County may cast its vote with the Ohio-based company yet again.

County supervisors are scheduled to hold a special meeting Thursday to choose a new voting system expected to be in place for this fall's election. County elections officials are recommending the board choose a "blended" voting system -- consisting of paper ballots with optical scanners, plus a touch screen at each polling place -- made by either Diebold or Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems.

Although the new system would be different from the all-touch-screen Diebold system the county embraced five years ago, it could commit the county to contracting with a company that already has left a bad taste in the mouth of voters and county officials alike.

"I am not supportive of Diebold," said Keith Carson, president of the board. "I've said that many times. And at a number of meetings on this topic, the people who speak are in overwhelming opposition to Diebold, too."

The county's relationship with Diebold started in 2001, when the company helped lead a rush to touch-screen voting after the Florida ballot-counting fiasco during the 2000 presidential election.

The county purchased 4,000 Diebold touch-screen machines for $12 million, but the move soon proved troublesome. The equipment had various glitches, including once assigning votes to the wrong candidate.

Diebold agreed in 2004 to pay the state and Alameda County $2.6 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it made false claims when it sold its equipment to the county. The settlement came after local and state officials found Diebold had installed uncertified software in the county's touch-screen machines and that its system was vulnerable to hackers.

"There certainly is a rocky history with Diebold and Alameda County," said Kim Alexander, president and founder of the California Voter Foundation. "That history certainly factors into voters' confidence and how secure the public feels with these machines."

Concerns about Diebold have not kept others from using the company's equipment. Twenty counties will use Diebold systems as the primary voting system for today's election. That includes Alameda County -- the only Bay Area county using Diebold -- which is borrowing 50 touch-screen machines and 60 optical scanners from another county since its old Diebold system did not produce a paper record and was rendered inadequate by the state at the beginning of this year.

Both Solano and Contra Costa counties use Election Systems & Software's optical scanners, an option Alameda County officials looked into, but did not recommend because of complaints about the company's support of its systems and references.

"Is there a negative reaction from some people to the name Diebold?" asked David MacDonald, the county's acting registrar. "Clearly, but people are going to have a concern no matter who the maker is."

Alameda County is anticipating buying 1,000 scanners to put at polling places in November, along with 1,000 touch-screen machines to be used mainly by the disabled. The Diebold system could cost as much as $17 million, while the Sequoia system could run as high as $13.5 million. However, Diebold will give the county a $6.1 million trade-in allowance -- stemming from the county's 2001 purchase -- if the county chooses its system. If the county goes with Sequoia, Diebold will buy back its old machines for just $3 million.

"I would hope any county looking into buying a voting system would concentrate mainly on the technology behind it, not just the past," Diebold spokesman David Bear said. "The fact is our technology is sound."

Henry Brady, professor of political science at UC Berkeley, said though many concentrate on the past problems with Diebold machines, the real problem is the lack of research and development that has gone into developing better voting systems.

"People like to say, 'No, no, the machines are flawed' and 'We need another system,'" Brady said. "But there are no perfect systems. That's the problem. There should be better systems."

Regardless of which system the county chooses, it is up against the clock.

The county can receive nearly $8.7 million in federal grant money for upgrading its system, but those funds must be used before Jan. 1, 2007. After that, federal money from the Help America Vote Act only can be used for equipment accessible to the disabled, and paper ballots and optical scanners don't qualify under such rules.

Reach Chris Metinko at 510-763-5418 or cmetinko@cctimes.com.

IF YOU GO

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors will hold a special meeting to discuss buying a new voting system at 11 a.m. Thursday in the Alameda County Administration Building, supervisors' chamber, fifth floor, 1221 Oak St., Oakland.

Money spent:

In 2001, Alameda County purchased 4,000 Diebold touch-screen machines for $12 million. Five years later, the county is anticipating buying 1,000 scanners and 1,000 new touch-screen machines because the old machines are considered inadequate by state law. The new Diebold system could cost as much as $17 million, while the new Sequoia system could run as high as $13.5 million. After trading in the old machines and using a federal grant, the Diebold system would cost the county between $1.4 million and $2.2 million, while the Sequoia system would cost $1.1 million to $1.8 million.

New security glitch found in Diebold system

It can get boring standing at a touchscreen voting system trying to decide between the least palitable candidate. Bring a thumbdrive with "PacMan" on it. There is nothing like eating pills to make you feel better about selecting people to run your government.

source http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_3805089?source=rss
New security glitch found in Diebold system
Officials say machines have 'dangerous' holes
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

Elections officials in several states are scrambling to understand and limit the risk from a "dangerous" security hole found in Diebold Election Systems Inc.'s ATM-like touch-screen voting machines.

The hole is considered more worrisome than most security problems discovered on modern voting machines, such as weak encryption, easily pickable locks and use of the same, weak password nationwide.

Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways.

"This one is worse than any of the others I've seen. It's more fundamental," said Douglas Jones, a University of Iowa computer scientist and veteran voting-system examiner for the state of Iowa.

"In the other ones, we've been arguing about the security of the locks on the front door," Jones said. "Now we find that there's no back door. This is the kind of thing where if the states don't get out in front of the hackers, there's a real threat."

This newspaper is withholding some details of the vulnerability at the request of several elections officials and scientists, partly because exploiting it is so simple and the tools for doing so are widely available.

A Finnish computer expert working with Black Box Voting, a nonprofit organization critical of electronic voting, found the security hole in March after Emery County, Utah, was forced by state officials to accept Diebold touch screens, and a local elections official let the expert examine the machines.

Black Box Voting was to issue two reports today on the security hole, one of limited distribution that explains the vulnerability fully and one for public release that withholds key technical details.

The computer expert, Harri Hursti, quietly sent word of the vulnerability in March to several computer scientists who advise various states on voting systems. At least two of those scientists verified some or all of Hursti's findings. Several notified their states and requested meetings with Diebold to understand the problem.

The National Association of State Elections Directors, the nongovernmental group that issues national-level approvals for voting systems, learned of the vulnerability Tuesday and was weighing its response. States are scheduled to hold primaries in May, June and July.

"Our voting systems board is looking at this issue," said NASED Chairman Kevin Kennedy, a Wisconsin elections official.

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"The states are talking among themselves and looking at plans to mitigate this."

California, Pennsylvania and Iowa are issuing emergency notices to local elections officials, generally telling them to "sequester" their Diebold touch screens and reprogram them with "trusted" software issued by the state capital. Then elections officials are to keep the machines sealed with tamper-resistant tape until Election Day.

In California, three counties — San Joaquin, Butte and Kern — plan to rely exclusively on Diebold touch screens in their polling places for the June primary.

Nine other counties, including Alameda, Los Angeles and San Diego, will use Diebold touch screens for early voting or for limited, handicapped-accessible voting in their polling places.

California elections officials told those counties Friday that the risk from the vulnerability was "low" and that any vote tampering would be revealed to voters on the paper read-out that prints when they cast their ballots, as well as to elections officials when they recount those printouts for 1 percent of their precincts after the election.

"I think the likelihood of this happening is low," said assistant Secretary of State for elections Susan Lapsley. "It assumes access and control for a lengthy period of time."

But scientists say that is not necessarily true.

Preparations could be made days or weeks beforehand, and the loading of the software could take only a minute or so once the machines are delivered to the polling places. In some cases, machines are delivered several days before an election to schools, churches, homes and other common polling places.

Scientists said Diebold appeared to have opened the hole by making it as easy as possible to upgrade the software inside its machines. The result, said Iowa's Jones, is a violation of federal voting system rules.

"All of us who have heard the technical details of this are really shocked. It defies reason that anyone who works with security would tolerate this design," he said.

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com.

Electronic voting switch threatens mass confusion

Those great examples of captalism, voting machine vendors such as Diebold and ES&S continue to wow everyone with their technical prowess, and integrity. Remember, it's not about doing a good job, its about winning the lucrative state contract.

And we aren't even talking about how easy the systems are to hack or execute voter fraud. This is just how poor they are at execution.

I have a better idea. Why don't we just offshore our election counting systems to China or India? It will save a alot of money and if we are going to have our heads in the sand about handing over our elections to a private enterprise, why not go all the way and give it to a private enterprise in a different country? How about Russia? I here they have very equatable elections. Only Putin is allowed to win.

Electronic voting switch threatens mass confusion
Published: May 1 2006 23:22 | Last updated: May 1 2006 23:22

source: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a1b985a4-d960-11da-8b06-0000779e2340.html

The last three election cycles in the US have been marked by controversy not only about candidates, but also about the fairness and accuracy of the voting process. And as voters head to the polls today for primaries in some jurisdictions, the coming cycle promises more of the same.

With about 8,000 separate election authorities managing approximately 175,000 polling places and perhaps as many as 150,000 different ballot forms that include choices for everyone from senator to dogcatcher, American elections are complex even when all goes well. But this cycle sees many states and smaller jurisdictions making last-minute efforts to switch to electronic voting, and early signs of trouble are appearing.

In California, the League of Women Voters has protested against a new, computerised statewide election registry that the group says is improperly rejecting registered voters, while county clerks in several Indiana jurisdictions complained that the electronic ballots programmed by the vendors of their electronic voting machines had been delivered late, were incorrect and poorly proofread.

The clerk for Marion County – the state’s most populous – said that, so far, nine rounds of “fixes” had been required; she was unsure whether the primary vote today could be held without problems, according to The Indianapolis Star.

The scramble to convert to electronic voting has spurred disputes with vendors of the new machines. Last month, Oregon filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Election Systems & Software, alleging that the company reneged on a commitment to supply the state with electronic voting machines suitable for handicapped people for its May 16 primary.

In Florida, ground zero for election disasters in 2000, the election supervisor for Leon County allowed anti-electronic voting activists to try breaching security in the county’s optical scan voting system, prompting the big three electronic voting systems companies – Diebold, Election Systems & Services, and Sequoia – to refuse to sell the county new machines. The Florida secretary of state has since opened an anti-trust investigation.

After the 2000 presidential election made “hanging chad” a sure laugh line for television comics, Congress passed the “Help America Vote Act”, or Hava.

The law promised states funding to replace old voting technology with computerised systems.

The new systems fall into two categories – optical scan systems, in which voters mark paper ballots that are read by computer scanners, and direct recording electronic (DRE) systems in which voters touch computer screens or push buttons to mark their ballots.

But delays in setting standards, insufficient funding for Hava, and lack of technical expertise among the nation’s election administrators have election experts predicting the 2006 election will not run smoothly.

Last September, the US Government Accountability Office issued a report with a litany of potential flaws in the reliability and sec-urity of electronic voting and warned that steps needed to ensure voter confidence in the integrity of the vote were unlikely to be in place in time for the 2006 election.

A principal author of the report, analyst David Powner, said in an interview that since last autumn, nothing had happened to change the report’s conclusions.

One problem is that many of the new voting machines that will be deployed are arriving from offshore manufacturing sites – mainly China – and are being rushed into service without adequate quality controls, says Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, a voting consultancy firm.

In some cases, election officials are “getting equipment three weeks before the election”.

“We’re all behind the eight ball,” says Mr Brace.

“There are going to be enough problem areas that the issue of voting will be front and centre on everybody’s plate.”

Texans who want to vote early in elections set for May 12 may be voting on paper ballots because Election Systems & Software, one of the big e-voting machine vendors, is late in providing computer coding and electronic ballots for some of the 140 counties that use the company’s machines. The company’s president went to the state last week to mollify irritated election officials.

Lawrence County Ohio gets new optical ballot scanning machines

Scanning paper ballots, that is a step in the right direction because it creates a physical piece of voting evidence that can later be recounted. However, in this style of system, the weakest point that allows fraud is the tabulator, a computer that keeps track of the votes run through the system. Now it could be constructed so that it is hard to tamper. They purchased the equipment from ES&S (see previous post) and I believe this is the model. As a computer expert, I'd have to get my hands on one to decide if I'd trust my vote to this machine. So right now, I'm unsure. The fact that the secretary wouldn't tell me the name of the CEO makes me even more wary.

source: http://www.herald-dispatch.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060426/NEWS02/604260325/1001/NEWS

New voting system goes countywide

Most voters will use optical scan balloting for first time in primary

By DAVID E. MALLOY
The Herald-Dispatch

IRONTON -- For the first time in 28 years, Lawrence County voters will not be using the punch card voting system. Voters will be using a new optical scan system when they go to the polls Tuesday.

Under the new optical scan system, voters will be given a ballot where they are being told to completely fill in an oval beside the name of the candidate they want. When they finish, voters can then scan their ballots and be able to see immediately if their votes have been counted, said Mary "Sis" Wipert, director of the Lawrence County Board of Elections.

"It is simple," Wipert said. "Voters just have to read the screen and follow the instructions. The poll workers have had up to three hours of training on the (new voting) machines."

The machines were used for the first time in February by voters in the special Ironton School levy election. The optical scan system will get their first test countywide in the primary election, Wipert said.

Mac Davis, a Republican poll worker in South Point 5 precinct, has been trained on the new system and likes it. "I think it's a good thing," Davis said Tuesday. "The primary will be a good test for the workers and voters."

"It's 2006," Davis said. "Let's move on to something better. People have a resistance to change."

There will be a little confusion with the new system, he said. Despite that, it's time for a new voting system, Davis said.

Marilyn Bradley, a Democratic poll worker in Chesapeake, is planning to get her training later this week. She said that while the new system is simple, some voters, especially older voters, will be apprehensive. "I'm anxious to see how it works," she said. "Our job is to try to help people. I thought the punch-card system was just fine."

Meanwhile, the new machines should make it easier to cast a write-in vote on the new voting machine, said Craig Allen, chairman of the county's Democratic executive committee. Voters already will have a pen in their hands to fill in the oval in front of the name of the candidate they want.

"It's a two-step process," he said. "Voters will have to fill in the oval marked "write-in," and then write in the name of the candidate they want, Allen said.

"We've used it before for the Ironton School levy and it worked fine," he said. "Everyone seemed happy with it. I think it's much better. If people are open-minded, they''ll like it."

Voters will decide on issues like state offices, including a governor's race, a primary for the congressional seat being vacated by Ted Strickland. The Ironton school levy is back on the ballot and voters also will decide on a replacement levy being sought by the Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. There also is a three-way race for the Republican nominee for Lawrence County Common Pleas judge.

Another related story: http://www.irontontribune.com/articles/2006/01/22/news/news196.txt

When elections are privatized, this is what you get for $4.5 million dollars

You'd think for $4.5 million dollars you would get quality that would last more than one election. Well, it turns out that $4.5 million get you equipment that breaks more easily than a paper ballot voting system every did. Thank goodness this election official in Summit county Ohio has the good sense to record his peoples' votes with paper ballots. As long as they don't destroy the ballots, they'll have an auditable voting system.

On the other hand, maybe I'm glad this hardware is breaking. It's too bad about the $4.5 million, though I'm sure the CEO of Election Systems & Software (ES&S) is thanking the Ohio public for making him rich. The CEO, by the way, isn't listed on the website so I tried to find out who this mysterious man is by calling Rob Palmer, the media contact of ES&S. My call rang over to the secretary. When I asked her who the CEO was, she wouldn't tell me, but that Rob would have to call me back.

Now my question wasn't difficult, I just asked for the CEO's name which any other company would be proud to say, or even promote on their website. But she wouldn't say. She kept saying "Rob would have to call me back." Imagine that? She isn't allowed to tell me this simple piece of information.

Do you want an organization like this counting your votes?

source: http://www.wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=4793756&nav=menu34_24_1_12

Election Director Expects Problems with Voting Machines
April 20, 2006 05:09 PM

AKRON, OHIO (AP) -- Malfunctioning memory cards have an elections director predicting voting machine problems May 2. Omaha, Neb.-based Election Systems & Software, however, is assuring the Summit County Board of Elections that the optical scan voting system will work properly. "We are working very hard to ensure it is a trouble free election," Jill Friedman-Wilson, a spokeswoman for ES&S said Wednesday.

The voting system uses paper ballots, marked in pen by the voter, that are fed into a scanner. The elections board has been having problems in practice runs with the machines' memory cards, which are inserted into ballot scanners to record and tabulate those votes. Some of the cards' batteries have run out and other cards have broken. "One card is physically coming apart at the seams," said elections chief Bryan Williams.

Also not working properly is the main ballot tabulator, called the election reporting manager or ERM. It's supposed to read the memory cards and report totals but has been dropping off dozens of races for Republican candidates for precinct committee members.

The machines the county purchased to accommodate disabled voters also are having problems. Those machines are supposed to have a computer say candidates' names for voters but the names are being mispronounced, or the ballot is being misread or not read at all.

Still, county officials say they have some comfort because residents vote on paper ballots, and the ballots can be counted by hand if the electronic portion of the system fails. "The bottom line is we're going to have a fair election in Summit County. The problem is we're going to have to count a lot of ballots," said Wayne Jones, a Democratic board member who said the county spent $4.5 million on the machines.

Friedman-Wilson said Summit County is the only one of the 27 Ohio counties using the system that is experiencing problems. Of 525 memory cards that will be used in Summit on Election Day, "only 11 at this point have demonstrated any issues. We're replacing those cards and putting the replacements through vigorous testing," she said.

The cards are made by Vikant Corp. and began experiencing problems when the company moved its manufacturing from Asia back to the United States. Allan Benek, vice president for ES&S, gave repeated assurances to the board at a Monday meeting that the system would work on primary day. He said the company may call for upgrades of the system as early as next year to a newer type of memory device.

That angered Republican board member Alex Arshinkoff. "If it doesn't work, we're either going to ship it back and go into litigation or you're going to retrofit it," Arshinkoff said. "The manure is going to hit the fan on this."

Benek said the company is working on the issue. "We know what's at stake here," he said. ES&S officials believe they have corrected the problems with the ERM, which appeared to be caused when information for New Franklin was reprogrammed to reflect that it is now a city, not a village.

Benek said the needed changes to the voice files for the disabled voters machines are being made and he expects it will work on Election Day. He said ES&S would have several hundred troubleshooters in Ohio on May 2 to deal with problems as they arise.

Posted by AEB

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Fixing Elections--A meeting in Seattle April 25

Fixing Elections: Who Did Your Voting Machine Vote For

April 25th, 2005 6:30 PM – 9:30 PM
HUB Auditorium on the University of Washington Campus

An exciting bipartisan panel discussion on Election Reform with Live Music and Refreshments.

Transparent elections are a cornerstone of a democratic society. Our
elections have been outsourced to private companies such as Diebold,
ES&S and Sequoia. As a result, our elections are no longer transparent
or verifiable, and the private companies claim they are not subject to
the laws that protect openness in government.

Come learn more about this
important issue and have fun doing it. Live Jazz Music and free
refreshments round out the evening.

With panelists:
Holly Jacobson, from Voter Action
Paul Lehto, attorney and nationally known voting rights activist
Toby Nixon, Washington State Representative
Richard Borkowski, computer consultant and voting rights activist

Sponsored by: Associated Students of UW, Washington Citizens for Fair Elections, and Seattle Thunder.

Ohio election workers accused of fudging `04 election recounts

Here it comes. Two years later we are finally starting to see how George W. Bush (may his name live on in infamy) won his second presidential election despite precinct polls showing that he was going to be sent packing.

It's funny how the news article makes references to irregularities then says there is no evidence of election fraud. I like how Micheal Vu, an election worker, states that they have no motive for fraud. Well, when interviewing the accused what else are they going to say. Funny. I would have thought that manipulating what precincts were used to test the election's recount criteria is exactly that--fraud.


Visit the source or read below.

Workers accused of fudging ’04 recount

Prosecutor says Cuyahoga skirted rules

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Joan Mazzolini

Plain Dealer Reporter

After the 2004 presidential election, Cuyahoga County election workers secretly skirted rules designed to make sure all votes were counted correctly, a special prosecutor charges.

While there is no evidence of vote fraud, the prosecutor said their efforts were aimed at avoiding an expensive - and very public - hand recount of all votes cast. Three top county elections officials have been indicted, and Erie County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter says more indictments are possible.

Michael Vu, executive director of the Cuyahoga County elections board, said workers followed procedures that had been in place for 23 years. He said board employees had no objection to doing an exhaustive hand count if needed, meaning they had no motive to break the law.

Internet bloggers have cried foul since 2004 about election results in Ohio, one of the key states in deciding the election. They have been tracking Baxter's investigation with online posts about the indictments.

Baxter's prosecution centers on Ohio's safeguards for ensuring that every vote is counted.

Baxter charges that Cuyahoga election workers - mindful of the monthlong Florida recount in 2000 - not only ignored the safeguards but worked to defeat them during Ohio's 2004 recount.

Candidates for president from the Green and Libertarian parties requested the Ohio recount. State laws and regulations specify how a recount works.

Election workers in each county are supposed to count 3 percent of the ballots by hand and by machine, randomly choosing precincts for that count.

If the hand and machine counts match, the other 97 percent of the votes are recounted by machine. If the numbers don't match, workers repeat the effort. If they still don't match exactly, the workers must complete the recount by hand, a tedious process that could take weeks and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But the fix was in at the Cuyahoga elections board, Baxter charges.

Days before the Dec. 16 recount, workers opened the ballots and hand-counted enough votes to identify precincts where the machine count matched.

"If it didn't balance, they excluded those precincts," Baxter said.

"The preselection process was done outside of any witnesses, without anyone's knowledge except for [people at] the Board of Elections."

On the official recount day, employees pretended to pick precincts randomly, Baxter says. Dozens of Cuyahoga County election workers sat at 20 folding tables in front of dozens of witnesses and reporters.

They did the hand and machine count of 3 percent of the votes 34 of the 1,436 precincts and when the totals matched, the recount was completed by machines.

The recount gave Kerry 17 extra votes and took six away from Bush.

But observers suspected that the precincts were not randomly chosen and asked a board worker about it, said Toledo attorney Richard Kerger. The worker acknowledged that there had been a precount.

Kerger wrote a letter to Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason, complaining and asking for an investigation. Mason recused himself, and Baxter was appointed special prosecutor. He brought elections workers before a grand jury to find out what happened.

"They screwed with the process and increased the probability, if not the certainty, that there would not be a full countywide hand count," Baxter said.

Everyone expected the recount to "be conducted in accordance of the law," he said.

Vu said the precincts were chosen as they had been in the past, by a Democrat and a Republican in the ballot department.

Because of Baxter's investigation, Vu declined to comment on whether the board's longtime procedures involve precounting precincts before the recount.

Vu acknowledged that the selection of precincts was not completely random because precincts with 550 votes or fewer were not used.

Nor were precincts counted where the number of ballots handed out on Election Day failed to match the number of ballots cast.

Vu said the board also had asked for legal opinions from the prosecutor's office before and after the election to ensure all rules were followed.

Kathleen Martin, who headed the civil division at the prosecutor's office and worked with the board on the issues, has since died.

"If Kathleen Martin was still alive, she could put so much light on this," Vu said.

Regardless, he said, the board was prepared for a full hand recount.

"Why do all that work to prepare for the election, conduct it, audit it, canvass and then not meet this last obligation?" Vu said.

"Our plan was to regroup after Christmas and just work through it."

Baxter has said he can't understand why the three people indicted all managers - continue to work at the election office. None has the same duties they had in 2004.

Kathleen Dreamer was manager of the board's ballot department. Rosie Grier was assistant manager. Jacqueline Maiden was Elections Division director and its third-highest-ranking employee. All have been charged with misdemeanor and felony counts of failing to follow the state elections law.

A May 8 trial date is set for Dreamer and Grier, but Baxter wants to combine all three cases, including Maiden's, who was indicted later.

Kerger said he was surprised by the charges.

"We wrote, not to have any criminal charges, but just to find out what happened," he said. "The special prosecutor has the ability to conduct an investigation and not file any charges."

Kerger said he believes there are two reasons, generally, why an elections board would precount before a recount. The first is to change the results of the vote, which he does not believe happened.

The second, he speculated, was that "the workers were so tired and didn't want to hassle with doing a hand recount."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

jmazzolini@plaind.com, 216-999-4563

Lobby your congress person for Verifiable Voting

Voters want the elections to be run in a fair manner whether they are Republican or Democrat. The leaders in Congress are a different matter, especially Republican's who own stock in or sit of the boards of voting machine companies. Contact your congress people and tell them that you want democracy rather than an election system which can be rigged on a large scale by any one person (regardless of party affiliation).

The public release I recieved says:

Thursday and Friday are H.R. 550 Lobby Days in Washington D.C. Since not all of us could travel to D.C. to talk with legislators, it would be a good idea if each every one of us contact our legislators and ask them if they are supporting H.R. 550. Regardless of their response, we then need to tell them that we want them to vote for H.R. 550.

H.R. 550 HR 550 would require a voter verified paper record of every vote, establish mandatory random hand counted audits to verify the accuracy of electronic tallies, and prohibit the use of secret software and wireless communication devices in voting machines.

Here are three toll-free numbers to call your Senator and House Representative. Just tell the switchboard your senator or representative’s name. 888-355-3588, 888-818-6641 and 800-426-8073

As alternative to calling, you may complete an on-line letter here.

Click here to tell your member of Congress to support HR 550! (will take you to a form on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website)

Yours Truly,

Elizabeth Walter

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." (Joseph Stalin)

"It's already over. The elections over. We won. It's all over but the counting and we'll take care of the counting." (N.Y. Congressman Pete King, 2003, referring to the upcoming 2004 presidential election, while attending garden party on the WH lawn)

Our current political leaders would suffer greatly if either house of Congress changed hands in 2006, or if the presidency changed hands in 2008. The lids would come off all the simmering scandals, from the selling of the Iraq war to profiteering by politically connected companies. The Republicans will be strongly tempted to make sure that they win those elections by any means necessary. And everything we've seen suggests that they will give in to that temptation. (Paul Krugman, NYT)