No More Cameras In Columbus

Mayor Coleman proposed a new system of cameras to watch the populace of Columbus. What does this show?

Have we failed as a society in that we have to relegate our responsibility to our fellow citizen to a machine?

This is not good public policy in that we must plant the seeds to a future society where:
1. each individual is not thrown to isolation
2. where they lose perspective as to their place in our society that cause them to commit crimes of frustration and cause harm to all of us because our lack of attention.

Prevention is the best medicine.

It is better to spend this money on community support for all citizens and understanding the way to a new paradigm of social support that could set the stage for progressive community government into the next millennium.

This is generally apparent in eastern societies to some extent but even there, it needs further development and refinement.

Let's look at society as being us, we need to be healed, we need not to get bombed, we need others to bring US out of isolation.

Grace Lee Boggs Chooses Kucinich

Again, another great interview with Grace Lee Boggs. (For the full interview see http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/22/ive_never_had_this_much_hope)

 

I noticed on the DemocracyNow/Google site that she had been inteviewed several times by Amy.

Grace was also featured by Bill Moyers Journal.

 

Ms. Boggs of oriental, descent, married an Afro-american activist and was involved in the civil rights movement early on.

Grace was an amazing woman who inspires from amazing times. Though she was not close to Dr. King, she did know Malcom X and was quiet torn on the path to civil justice on whether violence was an answer. She had learned well from Dr. King because already, so much violence existed and obviously solved nothing.

 

There are many who have experienced a great deal in the "progressive" movement in the past that we can learn from.

another is Bill Mandel, another unsung hero.

 

 

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Grace Lee Boggs. She is in Detroit, Michigan. You are not usually deeply involved in electoral politics, yet here you are deeply believing in the significance of what's happening this year. What has changed? And did you ever have hope in other electoral years, in other presidential—times of presidential elections?

 

GRACE LEE BOGGS: I've never had this much hope. I've never had—because I think this one is unique. You know, policy-wise, I think Dennis Kucinich is much more on the right track. In fact, I support him. But he does not have that particular combination of a Kenyan father and a Kansas mother that can help unleash different energies. You know, sometimes—he can't help it, of course, but sometimes it takes a certain person to do that. And I don't think—it's not—to me, it's not so important, the electoral politics. How they will develop, I don't know. But when I felt that energy of young people, and I feel it around here, and I think of what Fanon said about each generation emerging out of obscurity must define its mission and fulfill or betray it. We're living at one of those tide times.

Question to Brunner Via radio show from Philly

question to Brunner Via radio show from Philly, http://mysite.verizon.net/resq4lzq/cvi/index.html

 

Ohio HB3 passed the republican legislature. This bill contained a provision that allows counties to cage votes. The republican party got caught and prosecuted for this years ago. From an article on this subject linked below:
"Litigation arising from voter caging and challenges will be discussed during the survey of state
challenge campaigns and in a detailed litigation section that follows. The Democratic National
Committee and state Democratic parties fought against illegal caging and challenge campaigns by
the GOP in state and federal courts. Two of the most important cases stemmed from GOP caging
efforts in New Jersey during the 1980's and led to consent decrees that are still in effect. Under
the consent decrees, the RNC has agreed to restrictions to bring its activities into compliance
with the Constitution and federal law. As the RNC has pointed out in subsequent lawsuits, only
the RNC is bound by the decrees, not the state Republican parties."
             
How do you plan to address this in your plans to protect the voter?

Here is a link: http://projectvote.org/fileadmin/ProjectVote/Publications/Caging_Democracy_Report.pdf 

MSNBC Exceeds Donation Limitations By Allowing The Candidates Free On Air Time

4:03:05 PM nation_of_gandhis: If MSNBC is treating the Debates as a "Private" matter, then wouldn't the air time be considered a
major donation extending beyond corporate limitations, considering the cost of commercials therein?!?!?!?

THE CAT THAT CONTROLS NEW HAMPSHIRE ELECTION PROGRAMMING

A YouTube video from Black Box Voting that you won't soon forget:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiiaBqwqkXs



THE CAT THAT CONTROLS NEW HAMPSHIRE ELECTION PROGRAMMING

John Silvestro and his small private business, LHS Associates, has exclusive programming contracts for ALL New Hampshire voting machines, which combined will count about 81 percent of the vote in the primary. And as to Super Tuesday and beyond: Silvestro also has the programming contracts for the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont.

Silvestro IS the New Hampshire chain of custody in New England -- Or at least, a very large component in it.

Last fall, with the help of citizens like you, Black Box Voting began working on "Chain of Custody" projects, in which we identified some of the areas of concern that might affect many jurisdictions at once. First on the list for the Northeast U.S. is LHS Associates, a vendor with inside access to every memory card, as well as to the chips containing the "brain" of the Diebold optical scan machines.

RARE VIDEO FOOTAGE

In an unusual confluence of available video, we obtained footage of Silvestro grappling with Harri Hursti, the master hacker who had his way with the Diebold optical scans in Leon County, Florida in the famous exploit that was showcased in the film Hacking Democracy.

The exact same make, model and version hacked in the Black Box Voting project in Leon County is used throughout New Hampshire, where about 45 percent of elections administrators hand count paper ballots at the polling place, with the remaining locations all using the Diebold version 1.94w optical scan machine. Because the voting machine locations tend to be urban, this represents about 81 percent of the New Hampshire voters.

The video shows Harri Hursti testifying on Sept. 19 before the New Hampshire legislature, attempting to explain significant vulnerabilities requiring urgent mitigations; throughout his testimony, Silvestro inserted his own comments, opinions, misstatements and speculations.

VOTING MACHINE CHECKUP

One area of disagreement between Hursti and Silvestro was the amount of expertise needed to exploit the Diebold 1.94w optical scan system. Silvestro claimed (in a strange contortion of reasoning) that he doesn't hire very skilled programmers, implying that this makes New Hampshire elections more secure.

Hursti pointed out that hiring programmers with a lack of knowledge is generally not considered a security feature, and also that an average high schooler can learn to exploit the system in two days to two weeks.

WE THINK IT DOESN'T TAKE THAT LONG

Black Box Voting purchased a Diebold optical scan with 1.94w firmware, and chose a computer repair shop out of the phone book, took it in, grabbed the first available technician. It took him less than 10 minutes to zero in on the memory card as a point of critical vulnerability -- and oh my, did he point out some other intersting things!

NEW HAMPSHIRE HASN'T UPGRADED SYSTEM SECURITY

Silvestro tries to claim that the security problems have been fixed in newer editions. Whether or not they have been, it's a moot point in New Hampshire where the upgrade is not made unless the Ballot Law Commission meets, and they have not met for ages.

Silvestro then points to extraordinary measures taken by other states to enact special procedural safeguards, but of course none of those were implemented in New Hampshire either, because the Ballot Law Commission has not bothered to meet since March 2006.

IN FACT, NEW HAMPSHIRE HAS NOT IMPLEMENTED MITIGATIONS FOR KNOWN RISKS

Not only that, they have turned all the programming over to a sole source private company, taking vote counting for 81 percent of New Hampshire citizens out of the public domain.

LHS is not subject to public records requirements, as the government is, at least, not in New Hampshire. The control over memory card contents is absolute; when cards malfunction or get lost, LHS brings the replacements.

CONTROL OVER THE "BRAINS" OF THE MACHINE: ACCESS TO THE CHIP

Since LHS maintains the machines, repairs the machines, and replaces the machines -- often on Election Day -- when they malfunction, they have intimate access to the chips, sockets, ports, communications devices and other electronic components.

Silvestro stated that the chip has "read only memory" and cannot be reprogrammed without frying it under ultraviolet light overnight.

Hursti never had a chance to examine the hardware, nor have most of the recent university studies had access. But our friendly neighborhood computer repair guy differed with Silvestro on the point of plug & play reprogramming of the guts of the machine.

After I push the button to send this message out to the media and the citizenry, I'll work on getting a short YouTube video of the Accuvote checkup by our local computer repairman. And before you say, "But wait! He's not a world class expert!" -- That's just the point.

Our local computer repairman may hit or miss on some of his analyses. You'll all be able to try your hand at second guessing him as soon as the next video is up. But if he hits even one of his ideas for how to exploit the machine to steal votes, that's all it takes. From someone who is not, certainly, a world class hacker or even a hacker at all.

I'll post the link to that in a follow up here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/71200.html?1199744175 , and invite you techs to weigh in.

Please feel free to distribute, reprint or excerpt, with link to Black Box Voting and the video link above.

Bev Harris
Black Box Voting
bev@blackboxvoting.org


* * * * *

This is the year to support Election protection actions: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
or mail to:
Black Box Voting
330 SW 43rd St Suite K
PMB 547
Renton WA 98057

Kucinich Generosity For Iowa Caucus Votes Put Obama Over The Top

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

This Is The Nail IN The 2008 Election?

from http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/v-print/story/19982.html

Posted on Wed, Sep. 26, 2007
Ohio, Florida laws could dampen Democratic voting Greg Gordon | McClatchy
Newspapers

last updated: September 26, 2007 07:19:57 PM

WASHINGTON — Ohio and Florida, which provided the decisive electoral votes
for President Bush's two razor-thin national election triumphs, have enacted
laws that election experts say will help Republicans impede
Democratic-leaning minorities from voting in 2008.

Backers of the new laws say they're aimed at curbing vote fraud. But the
statutes also could facilitate a controversial Republican tactic known as
``vote caging,'' which the GOP attempted in Ohio and Florida in 2004 before
public disclosures foiled the efforts, said Joseph Rich, a former Justice
Department voting rights chief in the Bush administration who's now with the
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

Caging, used in the past to target poor minorities in heavily Democratic
precincts, entails sending mass mailings to certain voters and then using
the undelivered letters to compile lists of voters for eligibility
challenges.

As the high-stakes ground war escalates heading into next year's elections,
Republicans have led the charge for an array of revisions to state voting
rights laws, especially in key battleground states. Republican political
appointees in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division have endorsed
some of these measures.

Over the last three years, the Republican-controlled state legislatures in
Indiana, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have passed laws
requiring every voter to produce a photo identification card — measures that
civil rights groups contend were aimed at suppressing minority voting.

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to consider a constitutional challenge to
Indiana's ID law on grounds that it unfairly affects poor and elderly
voters. Gubernatorial vetoes or court rulings have nullified legislation in
the other four states. A federal judge in Georgia, however, recently upheld
a new photo ID law that imposes fewer obstacles to obtaining one.

In Ohio, which swung the 2004 election to Bush, new Democratic Secretary of
State Jennifer Brunner said in a phone interview that an election law passed
last year and signed by former Republican Gov. Bob Taft effectively
``institutionalized'' vote caging.

The law requires that the state's 88 county election boards send
non-forwardable, pre-election notices to all 7.8 million registered Ohio
voters at least 60 days before the election. Undelivered letters are public
record, she said, meaning that effectively, ``now the counties are paying
for'' the data needed to compile challenge lists.

In addition, Brunner said, the law toughened voter ID requirements and
``took away rights of some voters to be heard about whether or not their
registration was valid.''

In the past, Ohio voters were entitled to an official notice and a hearing
before an election board could declare them ineligible, but the new law says
that the board can make that decision without notice. A disqualified voter
who shows up at the polls must demonstrate that he's fixed any eligibility
problem or opt for filing a provisional ballot that may not count.

Brunner said the new law has left her feeling ``like being in a sword fight
with one hand behind your back.'' She said she's sought, ``while working
within the framework of preventing fraud,'' to make it ``as easy as possible
for people who are eligible to participate.''

``We feel the eyes of the nation are on us, no matter what we do,'' Brunner
said.

A 2005 Florida law, approved by the Justice Department under the Voting
Rights Act, stripped the state's 10.5 million registered voters of the right
to contest challenges at the polls. Now a challenger need only swear to a
"good faith belief" that a voter is ineligible to force the voter to file a
provisional ballot.

At the same time, the law reduces from three days to 48 hours the deadline
for challenged voters to produce evidence that they're eligible to vote in
their precincts.

Another Florida law imposed a $250 penalty on voter registration workers for
every registration application they fail to turn over to county registrars
within 10 days. After the League of Women Voters sued and a judge blocked
its implementation, the legislature cut the fine to $50 per infraction.

Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for Florida Republican Secretary of State Kurt
Browning, said there has been no sign of a large caging operation.

"We don't see a significant number of challenges of voters in Florida,'' he
said.

But former voting rights chief Rich said Ohio's and Florida's new laws
``make one wonder whether there will be new efforts to have massive
challenges in the future.''

A federal court injunction has barred the Republican National Committee for
25 years from engaging in racially targeted vote caging, but it doesn't
extend to state parties.

Asked whether they might employ vote caging in 2008, Executive Director
Jason Mauk of the Ohio Republican Party and spokeswoman Erin VanSickle of
the Florida Republican Party said they couldn't discuss election strategy.

Chandler Davidson, a Rice University sociology professor who has studied
voter suppression, said the new laws are questionable because ``there has
been virtually no evidence presented that there has been wide-scale voter
fraud in the United States.''

Pointing to a Yale University study showing that mail is less likely to
reach residents of low-income neighborhoods, he said mass mailings of
non-forwardable mail will ``discriminate in a pretty straightforward way''
against poor people and minorities.

A study to be released Thursday by the liberal-leaning group Project Vote
noted that Minnesota — with bipartisan support — altered its election law in
2005.

The law prohibits political parties from bringing in challengers from out of
state and from using non-forwardable mail to compile challenge lists.

``The fundamental question,'' said Democratic Secretary of State Mark
Ritchie, ``is do you want to make sure everyone can vote, or do you want to
make sure some people can vote and other people have a harder time voting?''

McClatchy Newspapers 2007