The 2004 election revisited part 10, Florida

Revisiting the 2004 election, part 10–Florida

Today there are still gaps in federal regulatory authority and oversight of the voting technology industry. Not surprising, when you look at the standard GOP talking point about ‘regulation’ as a ‘job killer’, but it is a bit jarring that even the Federal Election Commission (FEC) had a complete list of all the voting machine manufacturers responsible for counting votes in 2004. The GOP in Congress has sustained an ongoing tactic of refusing to confirm nominees for the FEC (as for other agencies and commissions), leaving it consistently short-handed under the Obama administration.

Not that the election commissioners were exactly unleashed under the GWBush administration.

Cartoon

 

Something to remember, when GOP presidential candidates rail against ‘regulation’:

Diebold, now Premier Election Solutions, and Election Systems and Software (ES&S) made most of the electronic voting machines. The two companies, competitors, were also similar and entertwined. A former president of the company that became ES&S is Bob Urosevich. Bob Urosevich went on to become president of what became Diebold. A former vice president of ES&S, meanwhile, is his brother Todd Urosevich. Predictably, both brothers were significant GOP donors. The political ties between Diebold in particular and George W. Bush, in both 2000 and 2004, have been widely reported.

Imagine what GOPers and the Tea Party would say, if a voting machine manufacturer today had equally close ties to the Obama White House?

 

This is not to imply that problems stemmed only from the largest companies. Far from it.

The most startling and dramatic testimony on Florida’s election problems in 2004 has come from computer programmer Clinton Curtis. Curtis was an employee of Florida company Yang Enterprises, Inc. He left YEI in good standing.

 

Curtis

While at Yang, Curtis had an experience since brought to light in sworn testimony and in a startling affidavit.

In fall 2000, Curtis witnessed Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), at that time YEI’s company counsel and lobbyist, visit the company with an unusual request. In a meeting with at least half a dozen people participating, “Mr. Feeney said that he wanted to know if YEI could develop a prototype of a voting program that could alter the vote tabulation in an election and be undetectable.”

The request was not a joke. In the conversation, which involved company personnel including Curtis, Feeney “was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program,” Curtis testified. Curtis was directed to create the vote fraud software prototype and did so.

 

Feeney

Feeney, also a Florida state legislator who had run as Gov. Jeb Bush’s running mate for lieutenant governor, ran for Congress in 2002 and won. His 24th district was one of the new Florida House districts drawn after the 2000 census, while Feeney was in the Florida state house.

 

Note: When I was working on this issue after the election in 2004, I called Feeney’s congressional office. Through spokespersons, Feeney declined to comment on the affidavit, saying “We’re not making any statements on the Clinton Curtis affidavit. We haven’t made any statements about it, and we have no plans to make any statement.”

I published an article on the issue–including this flat statement that there would be no comment on the allegations, whatsoever, in future. The column ran in a small local community paper, The Prince George’s Journal. Curtis’s affidavit was not reported at the time in the Washington Post (picking a random example here). For a time, Feeney’s office attempted to pass off the allegations as a joke, Feeney laughing heartily in the occasional interview. However, the “we’re not making any statements” phase soon passed. Subsequently Feeney denied the allegations in response to questions placed by Florida newspapers. Feeney lost his race for reelection to Congress in 2008.

 

What Feeney did not comment on

Given the content of the affidavit, this was one of the more remarkable “no comments” in legislative affairs.

Curtis made his notarized statement on Dec. 6. A registered Republican, he began working for Yang Enterprises (YEI) in 1998. He became lead programmer and had daily meetings with the company CEO. In fall 2000, Curtis sat in on “at least a dozen” meetings about computer projects with Feeney, with Curtis as technology advisor.

 

Yang Enterprises

The affidavit details a chilling sequence in which the vote-altering project was developed, was handed to one of the company managers, and was then delivered elsewhere after an open statement that it was intended to control the vote in South Florida by manipulating margins and percentages in some precincts.

Feeney, the affidavit continues,

“was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program. He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be touch-screen capable, (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment, (c) the programming to accomplish this remain hidden even if the source code was inspected.”

After discussion, the company CEO agreed to try to develop the prototype. The affidavit goes on to describe the vote fraud software prototype developed.

“Hidden on the screen were invisible buttons. A person with knowledge of the locations of those invisible buttons could then use them to alter the votes of any candidate listed.”

Fairly simple, the software was also fairly easy to conceal.

“In an actual application, the user would receive no visible clues to the fraud that had just occurred. Since the vote is applied by race, any single race or multiple races can be altered. The supervisors or any voter would never notice this fraud. Additionally, the procedure could be repeated as many times as was necessary to achieve the desired results. No amount of testing or simulations would expose the fraud as its activation and process is completely invisible to everyone except the person programming the vote fraud routine.”

Vote fraud could be detected by someone looking at the source code.  But the source code would have to be provided.

Curtis’s affidavit goes on to describe other conversations in which Feeney “bragged that he had already implemented ‘exclusion lists’ to reduce the ‘black vote.’

[Update

Speaking of vote suppression tactics, today Florida seniors and others gathered in Tampa to protest legislation designed to reduce the vote. The new law reduces opportunity for early voting, creating an additional burden for seniors and Americans with disabilities who cannot stand in long lines.]

On a separate tactic for influencing the election, Curtis alleges that Feeney “further mentioned that ‘the proper placement of police patrols could further reduce the black vote by as much as 25%’.”

Curtis left YEI soon afterward and took a job in the Florida Department of Transportation. YEI threw a farewell party for him. His farewell card is posted on Brad Blog, which has done a solid job reporting this story. At the Transportation department, he found that YEI, a state contractor, was over-billing. He and another whistleblower were fired, as the affidavit narrates.

Yang Enterprises subsequently lost the contract with the state of Florida, according to Bob Clift, a supervisor in the fraud investigation unit.

 

Meanwhile, in Congress

Rep. Feeney, Jeb Bush’s running mate in the unsuccessful race for governor against Lawton Chiles in 1994, served on the House Judiciary Committee, which held hearings on the 2004 election. Curtis’s testimony was presented fairly early in local hearings convened by Conyers. (In the Judiciary hearings on Capitol Hill that I observed, Feeney did not speak much. He tended mostly to sit, red-faced.) The election hearings went nowhere under the GWBush administration. Massive counter-attacks and a DOJ investigation involving Conyers’ wife, Monica Conyers, continued to take their toll even after the 2008 election.

Feeney also served on the Committee on Science. One of its subcommittees, Environment, Technology, and Standards, shared oversight with the full committee on issues regarding voting standards. Their press person stated that the subcommittee and full committee have both been “very active” on vote issues.

Feeney was also a member of Judiciary subcommittees on Commercial and Administrative Law; the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security; and the Subcommittee on the Constitution.

The 2004 election revisited, part 4: Ohio

Rep. Conyers

Revisiting the 2004 election. Part 4–Ohio.

Heading toward the new year, following up previous 2004 election entries. This history may become newly relevant.

GWBush and his ‘brain’

On Election Day 2004, the close states were hit hardest: Voters in some areas in Ohio, Florida, Iowa and New Mexico suffered significant problems casting their votes successfully. Most of the problems were not widely reported, although subsequent efforts in Congress to address the situation did draw some media attention.

Ad hoc committee on election abuses 2004

Anecdotal evidence bears out the thesis presented by statistical researchers, posted previously, that the problems were indeed widespread.

Take for example Mercer County, Ohio, where following the election the information below was relayed to me.

At the time, Washington Journal had just run an article titled “How the Bush camp won Ohio,” remarking that “in some small conservative counties which have experienced net job losses nearing 10% of business payrolls, Republicans still lined up for the president. In Mercer County, which has lost 5% of its jobs in the last four years, residents voted 3-to-1–15,022 to 4,924–for Mr. Bush, a sharp increase over his winning margin in 2000.”

The none-too-subtle subtext here seems to be either that voters in Ohio were peculiarly dumb or, putting the same idea more charitably, that Team Bush successfully persuaded people to vote against their own interest.

book: What Happened in Ohio?

The voter on the ground in Ohio offers a rational second opinion, noting that “this is very peculiar since over 4,800 people voted in this year’s Democratic primary” in Mercer County. So “Mercer County has over 30,000 registered voters and yet Kerry was only able to pick up a measly 87 additional votes compared to the March primary”?

Not only did Kerry allegedly receive only 87 votes above the total cast in the Democratic primary, but Gore had over 5,200 votes in 2000 (when there were 6,227 fewer registered voters in Mercer County).

The reader provides some relevant numbers:

Mercer County, Ohio:

Year 2000:       25,079 registered voters; 18,285 votes cast

Bush 12,485

Gore 5,212

Ralph Nader 392, Howard Philips 13, John Hagelin 24, Pat Buchanan 125, Harry Brown 43

Year 2004:       31,306 registered voters, 20,058 votes cast

Bush 15,022

Kerry 4,924

Other 112

The same reader adds that people might think “this is a conservative county and that many voters may have switched to Bush especially with gay marriage on the ballot. But with 5 percent of the people losing their jobs in the past four years in this county, I think people are far more concerned about putting food on the table and meeting mortgage payments than worrying about gay people getting married.”

Be it noted that Mercer County, Ohio, is among the places where turnout increased in 2004 over 2000. As the researchers previously quoted point out, higher turnout historically favors the challenger, not the incumbent. Voter registration also increased from 2000 to 2004 in Mercer County, by 6,227.

Rampant problems voting in Ohio

Many Americans saw the video footage of voters patiently waiting in line to vote in Ohio, in 2004. Mercer County was by no means the whole story, and the previously indicated statistical anomalies were amply reinforced by anecdotal report from around the state.

Readers and other correspondents sent me an ongoing and growing list of anomalies, deceptions and intimations of vote fraud in Ohio. Part of the list follows.

Discrepancies:

  • Returns certified by officials recorded that all but 10 registered voters in the Miami County, Ohio, town of Concord voted on Election Day. So far, the election challenge team has identified more than 10 registered Concord citizens who did not vote.
  • About 580 more absentee voters were certified in Mahoning County than election board officials identified.
  • Cleremont County was among the counties with challenges to contested returns. In December 2004 a team of volunteer attorneys pored over election records at the Cleremont County Board of Elections, with the Board’s cooperation.
  • In Lucas County, four elections officials were suspended after mistakes or worse in the election.
  • In Cuyahoga County, a third of all provisional ballots cast were thrown out because of alleged registration irregularities.
  • The Associated Press reported a difference of over 17,000 votes in Kerry’s favor after the election more than in the initial vote tallies.
  • In December 2004, Rep. Conyers and Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee asked Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell to respond to inquiries about voting irregularities.

Problems with voting-machine technology:

  • In Mahoning County, election observers have testified under oath, more than a dozen voting machines switched Kerry votes to Bush votes repeatedly, while voters watched.
  • Citizens in Trumbull County using electronic machines, who voted for Kerry, saw their votes register as votes for Bush. Subsequent hearings in Trumbull County, as elsewhere, partially brought to light further possible election fraud.
  • A public hearing at the Warren Heights and Trumbull Library, in Mahoning Valley, where the vote count went to Bush, recorded thousands of complaints of voting irregularities.
  • Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus pointed out that more than half the votes cast in Ohio and the nation were recorded on electronic voting machines owned by Republicans, with no audit trail. One voting machine company, Diebold, also manufactures ATMs (automated teller machines) that do provide a paper receipt for transactions.

Low-tech old-fashioned vote suppression:

  • In Franklin County and other counties, largely Democratic precincts suffered a shortage of voting machines. All the precincts where voting machines were short and lines were long were Democratic precincts. Voters in more affluent neighborhoods reported no shortage of voting machines and no problem with long lines.

Obstruction and failure to investigate by public officials:

  • In December 2004 a legal team partly comprising volunteer attorneys issued subpoenas to top election officials in ten counties where vote-count fraud was suspected.
  • The subpoenas, a first step in interviewing people under oath, were rejected by the Ohio Secretary of State, Republican Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell served as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.
  • Ten depositions were served by the election challenge legal team; the other side filed a motion to stop the process; the challengers responded.
  • A lawsuit was filed at the Ohio Supreme Court, charging that a fair vote count would give the state and the presidency to John Kerry rather than to Bush. Notice of depositions was sent to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to appear and give testimony in Moss v Bush et al. The election challenge lawsuit was filed Dec. 17. Blackwell, the Bush-Cheney campaign, and Ohio’s Republican electors had ten days to respond. Each side then had 20 days for discovery or to gather additional evidence, plaintiffs going first. The Bush-Cheney team moved as slowly as possible, to run out the clock until the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Company logo

Subsequently, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee found that one precinct in Youngstown, in Mahoning County, recorded a negative 25 million votes. Back in Mercer County, Judiciary found that only 51 votes were recorded for one voting machine showing that 289 people cast punch card ballots president–a loss of 248 votes. The county’s website reported that 51,818 people cast ballots but only 47,768 ballots were recorded in the presidential race, including 61 write-ins, meaning that approximately 4,000 votes, or nearly 7%, were not counted for a presidential candidate.

Problems with Triad GSI voting technology company in Ohio reported on the Internet, not in print

Problems with vote technology in Ohio were not restricted to Diebold. Some concrete information is provided below, involving another major voting machine company, Triad GSI, based in Xenia, Ohio.

The following is a 2004 affidavit by the Hocking County, Ohio, deputy director of elections, Sherole Eaton. It deserved wider dissemination than it received. Ms. Eaton deserved not to be fired for being a whistleblower.

[Text follows:]

  “On Friday, December 10 2004, Michael from TriAd called in the AM to inform us that he would be in our office in the PM on the same day. I asked him why he was visiting us. He said, “to check out your tabulator, computer, and that the attorneys will be asking some tricky questions and he wanted to go over some of the questions they may ask.” He also added that there would be no charge for this service.

He arrived at about 12:30PM. I hung his coat up and it was very heavy. I made a comment about it being so heavy. He, Lisa Schwartze and I chatted for a few minutes. He proceeded to go to the room where our computer and tabulation machine is kept. I followed him into the room. I had my back to him when he turned the computer on. He stated that the computer was not coming up. I did see some commands at the lower left hand of the screen but no menu. He said that the battery in the computer was dead and that the stored information was gone. He said that he could put a patch on it and fix it. My main concern was – what if this happened when we were ready to do the recount. He proceeded to take the computer apart and call his offices to get information to input into our computer. Our computer is fourteen years old and as far as I know had always worked in the past. I asked him if the older computer, that is in the same room. could be used for the recount. I don’t remember exactly what he said but I did relay to him that the computer was old and a spare. At some point he asked if he could take the spare computer apart and I said “yes”. He took both computers apart. I don’t remember seeing any tools and he asked Sue Wallace, Clerk, for a screwdriver. She got it for him. At this point I was frustrated about the computer not performing and feared that it wouldn’t work for the recount. I called Gerald Robinette, board chairman, to inform him regarding the computer problem and asked him if we could have Tri Ad come to our offices to run the program and tabulator for the recount. Gerald talked on the phone with Michael and Michael assured Gerald that he could fix our computer. He worked on the computer until about 3:00 PM and then asked me which precinct and the number of the precinct we were going to count. I told him, Good Hope 1 # 17. He went back into the tabulation room. Shortly after that he (illegible) stated that the computer was ready for the recount and told us not to turn the computer off so it would charge up.

Before Lisa ran the tests, Michael said to turn the computer off. Lisa said, “I thought you said we weren’t supposed to turn it off.” He said turn it off and right back on and it should come up. It did come up and Lisa ran the tests. Michael gave us instructions on how to explain the rotarien, what the tests mean, etc. No advice on how to handle the attorneys but to have our Prosecuting Attorney at the recount to answer any of their legal questions. He said not to turn the computer off until after the recount.

He advised Lisa and I on how to post a “cheat sheet” on the wall so that only the board members and staff would know about it and and what the codes meant so the count would come out perfect and we wouldn’t have to do a full hand recount of the county. He left about 5:00 PM.

My faith in Tri Ad and the Xenia staff has been nothing but good. The realization that this company and staff would do anything to dishonor or disrupt the voting process is distressing to me and hard to believe. I’m being completely objective about the above statements and the reason I’m bringing this forward is to, hopefully, rule out any wrongdoing.”

This dramatic material was ignored by the larger media outlets. It was followed up in the online Free Press, by Ken Hoop here and by Victoria Parks here. Investigation by the House Judiciary Committee found copious indications of problems with Triad GSI. Daily Kos pointed out that the Rapp family behind Triad GSI was headed by a longtime contributor to the Republican Party.

The Judiciary Committee’s analysis stated,

Based on the above, including actual admissions and statements by Triad employees, it strongly appears that Triad and its employees engaged in a course of behavior to provide “cheat sheets” to those counting the ballots. The cheat sheets told them how many votes they should find for each candidate, and how many over and under votes they should calculate to match the machine count. In that way, they could avoid doing a full county-wide hand recount mandated by state law. If true, this would frustrate the entire purpose of the recount law–to randomly ascertain if the vote counting apparatus is operating fairly and effectively, and if not to conduct a full hand recount. By ensuring that election boards are in a position to conform their test recount results with the election night results, Triad’s actions may well have prevented scores of counties from conducting a full and fair recount in compliance with equal protection, due process, and the first amendment. In addition, the course of conduct outlined above would appear to violate numerous provisions of federal and state law. As noted above, 42 U.S.C. §1973 provides for criminal penalties for any person who, in any election for federal office, “knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by . . . the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held.” Section 1974 requires the retention and preservation of all voting records and papers for a period of 22 months from the date of a federal election and makes it a felony for any person to “willfully steal, destroy, conceal, mutilate, or alter” any such record.398 Ohio law further prohibits election machinery from being serviced, modified, or altered in any way subsequent to an election, unless it is so done in the presence of the full board of elections and other observers. Any handling of ballots for a subsequent recount must be done in the presence of the entire Board and any qualified witnesses.399 This would seem to operate as a de facto bar against altering voting machines by remote access. Containers in which ballots are kept may not be opened before all of the required participants in are attendance.400 It is critical to note that the fact that these “ballots” were not papers in a box is of no consequence in the inquiry as to whether state and federal laws were violated by Barbian’s conduct: Ohio Revised Code defines a ballot as “the official election presentation of offices and candidates…and the means by which votes are recorded.” OHIO REV. CODE § 3506.01(B) (West 2004). Therefore, for purposes of Ohio law, electronic records stored in the Board’s computer are to be considered “ballots.” Triad’s interference with the computers and their software would seem to violate these requirements.”

[emphasis added]