DIEBOLD ADMITS TO THE GEMS DEFECT (VIDEO CLIP)

On Oct. 17 2005, an ordinary citizen in Cleveland, Mr. Wright, asked what may turn out be the most important question of the year. What is Diebold's explanation, he wanted to know, for the VBA Script hack of the GEMS central tabulator performed by Dr. Herbert Thompson?

Here is the videotape showing Diebold Election Systems Chief Engineer Pat Green admitting that Diebold knew of the defect since 2004: http://www.bbvdocs.org/videos/GEMSDefect.mpg (8,860 KB)

Black Box Voting has learned that the August 18, 2004 CompuWare Report was hidden from the public by Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Here is the tampering risk assessment, which Blackwell had in his hands BEFORE the Nov. 2004 election, but withheld from both the public and the Election Assistence Commission (the federal oversight committee charged with ensuring the security of elections in all states, not just Ohio): http://www.bbvdocs.org/reports/GEMS-RISK.pdf

(full report: http://www.bbvdocs.org/reports/diebReasses081804.pdf)

This leads to the crucial question: If Diebold knew, and if Ken Blackwell knew, why wasn't the Election Assistence Commission told, why were no other secretaries of state told, why didn't Blackwell tell the Ohio election officials using GEMS, and why weren't the mitigations deemed necessary by CompuWare ever implemented?

FEC TO INVESTIGATE RAPPER "P. DIDDY" SEAN COMBS
But Ignores Blistering GAO Report on Insecure Voting Machines
-- No Scrutiny of Election Violations --

According to a press release (http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/13160.html) issued by the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a conservative "ethics" watchdog group that specializes in filing complaints against progressive politicians and groups, the FEC has notified the NLPC that it will take up a complaint against rapper Sean Combs for his 2004 "Vote or Die Campaign." The NLPC Web site says the case has been assigned "Matter Under Review number 5684." The NLPC hypes the so-called investigation, though the FEC letter itself appears more tepid, almost a form letter: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/FECCombs.pdf

Black Box Voting, a minority-governed nonpartisan elections watchdog, says the FEC has better ways to spend its time and your dime. The FEC claims they are not staffed for many investigations. If that's the case, why is a P. Diddy investigation on their priority list at all?

The FEC is not investigating Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell who withheld critical security information. Public records requests submitted by Black Box Voting have revealed that neither Blackwell nor Diebold corrected the GEMS defects before the 2004 election. These defects remain uncorrected in nearly 800 jurisdictions.

The FEC is not investigating the findings of the General Accounting Office voting system security report, released Oct. 21, 2005, which cites multiple security problems with the voting systems currently in use. Among the problems cited by the GAO Report: flaws in voting system security, access, and hardware controls, weak security management practices by vendors, and multiple examples of failures in real elections.

Full GAO report: http://www.bbvdocs.org/reports/GAOReport_ElectionSecurity_102105.pdf

The Help America Vote Act allocated $4 billion to buy voting machines that taxpayers never asked for, many of which have turned out to be defective. The FEC is not investigating.

A false claims lawsuit filed by Black Box Voting founder Bev Harris and investigator Jim March recovered $2.6 million for California taxpayers from Diebold Election Systems because of its poor voting machine security and improper testing and certification. The FEC never investigated whether such false claims affect any of the other 31 Diebold states, even after the California secretary of state requested a criminal investigation, citing Diebold's lies to state authorities.

More on false claims suit: ( http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/6738.html)

In October 2005, Black Box Voting revealed documents showing that in 2002, Diebold made misrepresentations to the Georgia secretary of state. (http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/GA-falsehoods.pdf).

In August 2005, Diebold submitted a letter to the Arizona secretary of state (http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/AZ-sos-moreland.pdf) which contained serious misrepresentations pertaining to a security problem called "the GEMS defect." One would think that making false claims to three secretaries of state in four consecutive years (2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005), might represent a concern, but the FEC is not investigating this.

(Full Georgia sales presentation: http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/GApresentation.pdf)

The FEC is investigating Sean Combs for allegedly flying in a private jet while conducting a "get out the vote" drive. The complaint alleges that people who spoke at his rallies made statements beneficial to a candidate (John Kerry). What the FEC has never investigated is Republican Senator Chuck Hagel's $5 million stake in Election Systems & Software, the company that counted Hagel's votes (http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-3.pdf) when he ran for office in 1996 and 2002. Nor has the FEC investigated Wally O'Dell, the Diebold CEO who promised to "deliver the votes to Bush in 2004."

VOTING MACHINE PROBLEMS AND PROCEDURAL VIOLATIONS HIT HARD NOV. 8

2005 elections, casting doubt on Ohio and Detroit elections and revealing civil rights violations in Los Angeles.

On Nov. 8, 2005 in Texas, new touch-screens could not choke out a result, so technicians for a vendor "manually retrieved" the votes from inside the computer. The FEC has asked no follow up questions about why a vendor's technicians are handling votes at all, since they are not certified or sworn elections officials, nor has the FEC inquired how touch-screens with no paper ballots that can't find their own votes managed to pass testing and certification, or how a technician can reach into a touch-screen to "retrieve" votes. http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/13130.html

In Ohio, the Nov. 8, 2005 election produced staggeringly impossible numbers, but the FEC is not investigating why more votes showed up than voters, nor why the election reform ballot issue voting machine results were exactly opposite of the pre-election polls. http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1559

In Detroit's Nov. 8, 2005 election, procedures broke down in 26 precincts causing nine electronic ballot boxes to go missing. These were not all recovered until two days later. At that time, thousands of other bogus votes were counted. However, the FEC is not investigating. http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/13139.html

Los Angeles citizens aren't permitted to watch their votes being counted, a clear violation of California law. Black Box Voting was told the results "came out the same as expected" so we should not be concerned. Regardless of whether the votes "come out right," hiding crucial vote-tallying processes is a civil rights violation, and powerful Los Angeles County Elections Registrar Conny Drake McCormack has a history with minority vote suppression and rights violations.

Before taking the position in Los Angeles County, Registrar Conny Drake McCormack was the target of a Texas legislative effort referred to as the "Get Conny Drake bill,"(See footnote 1) an unsuccessful effort to find a way to fire elections officials who engage in voting violations targeting minorities. She had allegedly been withholding ballots in African-American districts. On another matter, regarding voting machines, she was found by the Department of Justice to have violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. She was also subjected to a two-year election fraud probe by Texas attorney general Jim Mattox on another matter. While still under investigation in Texas, Conny Drake McCormack took over elections in San Diego (replacing Ray Ortiz after he was indicted), then became elections chief in Los Angeles County, where she has arranged for votes to be counted on a customized, home-brewed tallying system, hidden from public view.

On Nov. 8, Black Box Voting observed Los Angeles County election workers conducting a bait and switch. http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/13095.html)

While the press and the public were instructed to look in a window to a room containing optical scan machines, results actually came out of a different set of computers in another room, which was hidden from view. The press was told that the system is certified and tested, but Black Box Voting cannot find that the Los Angeles tallying system, customized under Conny Drake McCormack, was ever examined by federal testing labs or the state of California as required by law. Though she is now the most powerful elections official in California -- and one of the most influential in the nation -- the FEC is not investigating Conny Drake McCormack.

For more information on things the FEC is not investigating, see investigations (