BlackBox voting the best way to steal a democracy
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0310/S00211.htm
"DELAND, Fla., Nov. 11 - Something very strange happened on election night
to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official in Volusia County. At 10
p.m., she called the county elections department and learned that Al Gore
was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000. But when she checked the
county's Web site for an update half an hour later, she found a startling
development: Gore's count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure
Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000--all because of a single precinct
with only 600 voters."
- Washington Post Sunday , November 12, 2000 ; Page A22

Yes. Something very strange happened in Volusia County on election night
November 2000, the night that first Gore won Florida, then Bush, and then as
everybody can so well remember there was a tie.

Something strange indeed. But what exactly? In the above report ( click for
full version), written days after the election, hotshot Washington Post
reporter Dana Milbank goes on to attribute the strange 16,022 negative vote
tally from Volusia's precinct 216 to an apparently innocent cause.

".. faulty 'memory cards' in the machines caused the 16,000-vote
disappearance on election night. The glitch was soon fixed," he wrote.

But thanks to recent investigations into Black Box Voting by Washington
State writer Bev Harris we now know this explanation is not correct. In fact
it is not even in the ballpark.

According to recently discovered internal Diebold Election Systems memos,
Global Election Systems' (which was later purchased by Diebold) own
technical staff were also stumped by the events in Volusia County/

In Chapter 11 of her new book "Black Box Voting In the 21st Century"
released early today in .PDF format at Blackboxvoting.com and here at Scoop
Ms Harris observes.


"If you strip away the partisan rancor over the 2000 election, you are
left with the undeniable fact that a presidential candidate conceded the
election to his opponent based on [results from] a second card that
mysteriously appears, subtracts 16,022 votes, then just as mysteriously
disappears."
Working in parallel with Ms Harris Scoop has also been inquiring into the
events on election night in Volusia county. Much of the material that
follows is similar to that which appears in Chapter 11 of her book.

The starting point in this shocking discovery about election 2000 came in a
series of internal Diebold ES technical support memos.

The following is an abbreviated version of the exchange concerning the
peculiar events in Volusia county. For the purposes of research the exchange
is included in full as an Appendix to this report (APPENDIX TWO). The
discussion took place in early 2001 as an audit was underway in Volusia
county into the events.


**********
(NOTE: The names below each extract link to the full text of the emails in
the appendices below.)


I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have
been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216
gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain
this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing
here "looking dumb".
Lana Hires - Volusia County Florida - January 17, 2001 8:07 AM

My understanding is that the card was not corrupt after (or before)
upload. They fixed the problem by clearing the precinct and re-uploading the
same card. So neither of these explainations washes. That's not to say I
have any idea what actually happened, its just not either of those.

The problem is its going to be very hard to collect enough data to really
know what happened. The card isn't corrupt so we can't post-mortem it (its
not mort).

Ken Clark - Diebold ES R&D Manager - January 18, 2001 1:41 PM

- the negative numbers on media display occurred when Lana attempted to
reupload a card or duplicate card. Sophia and Tab may be able to shed some
light here, keeping in mind that the boogie man may me reading our mail. Do
we know how this could occur?

John McLaurin - Diebold ES - 18 Jan 2001 15:44:50

The problem precinct had two memcory cards uploaded. The second one is the
one I believe caused the problem. They were uploaded on the same port
approx. 1 hour apart. As far as I know there should only have been one
memory card uploaded. I asked you to check this out when the problem first
occured but have not heard back as to whether this is true.

When the precinct was cleared and re-uploaded (only one memory card as far
as I know) everything was fine.