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I finally found the article that I was looking for regarding a Venezuelan software firm with no experience in elections being involved in the last election fiasco in Venezuela. I suppose it was only a fiasco if you voted against Hugo Chavez. The point of this article was that two software engineers got a loan from the Venezuelan government and started a voting software company called Smartmatic. This company subsequently bought a US voting machine manufacturer called Sequoia. I don't know how to automatically link to the article above, (Tim Golden,NYT,29OCT06), but it goes into much more detail.

{SNIP} This lawsuit alleges that the voting machines used for years in the majority of New Jersey counties – Sequoia’s AVC Advantages - are inaccurate, insecure, and unreliable – and thus unconstitutional for use in New Jersey. Sequoia categorically denies this allegation and has provided material to the contrary. {SNIP} “Throughout our report response, we show how simple, established, and previously used accuracy and security protections - removed from the Advantages studied in the report published by the plaintiffs - make the items in their report next to impossible,” said Edwin Smith, Vice President of Compliance and Fulfillment for Sequoia...

Allegheny County cannot verify the software in its touch-screen voting machines is what the state certified when it allowed paperless voting machines, county officials say, because the state provides no mechanism for such an audit.

"...vanishing votes, breakdowns, malfunctions and increasing evidence that the devices were vulnerable to hackers..."

"...E-voting systems have to be completely redesigned with security in mind, McDaniel says. In the short term, this means adding more thorough vote-auditing capabilities so that discrepancies can be investigated. "The elections systems should have the same quality, the same reliability, the same testing and the same certification requirements as financial systems," he says. "If the systems used by banks, which have to report to the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], had this level of quality, no one would put their money in the bank."..."

Arguing that the current electronic voting systems across the U.S. are fundamentally flawed and, worse, being gamed for political gain, "Stealing America: Vote by Vote" functions as an organizing tool for people worked up about the important issue, but is hardly suitable as a commercial doc release. Pic's classroom-style presentation and wooden filmmaking can be ignored by eager activists, but will surely bore audiences in theaters (a limited rollout began Aug. 1). Homevid sales, though, look to enjoy a boomlet close to election season. Director-producer Dorothy Fadiman summons a large group of experts, observers and activists (and no less a...

"...The results produced some remarkable anomalies, such as 21 counties showing no Republican voters and three counties showing no Democratic voters..."

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- United Technologies Corp., continuing to broaden its security business and expand its presence in China, said Sunday it has made an offer to buy Diebold Inc. for $2.63 billion. United Technologies, parent company of jet engine-maker Pratt & Whitney, Otis elevator and Sikorsky Aircraft, said it made the unsolicited offer Friday after trying to negotiate a deal with Diebold for two years. Diebold, based in Canton, Ohio, makes ATMs, business security systems and voting machines. The $2.63 billion purchase price represents United Technologies' offer of $40 per outstanding share, about two-thirds higher than Diebold's closing stock...

MEXICO CITY — This year, for the first time, expatriate Democrats can cast their ballots on the Internet in a presidential primary for people living outside the United States. Democrats Abroad, an official branch of the party representing overseas voters, will hold its first global presidential preference primary from Feb. 5 to 12, with ex-pats selecting the candidate of their choice by Internet as well as fax, mail and in-person at polling places in more than 100 countries. Democrats Abroad is particularly proud of the online voting option — which provides a new alternative to the usual process of voting...

COLUMBIA, S.C. - As many as 90 percent of the electronic voting machines in one coastal South Carolina county did not work when polls opened in Saturday's Republican primary and officials also worried that snow forecast for the northern part of the state could impact voter turnout. Lisa Bourcier, a spokeswoman in Horry County, which is home to Myrtle Beach, said 80 percent of the roughly 400 machines that failed to function were up and running by noon and that technicians were working on the rest. She said officials had heard reports of voters being turned away because of machine...

CONWAY, South Carolina (CNN) – Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign called on supporters in South Carolina Saturday to make sure that their votes are counted, as voting machines in an eastern county malfunctioned on primary day. "We have received reports from Horry County that voters are being turned away from the polls, because electronic voting machines are not working and paper ballots are not available,” Buzz Jacobs, McCain’s South Carolina state director, said in a statement. “Some voters say they are being instructed to return at a later time. We are disturbed by these reports and hope that this issue...

Could someone have messed with the vote in New Hampshire? That is what some people are wondering, after looking closely at the totals in the votes for surprise Democratic primary victor Hillary Clinton, and for Barack Obama, who placed instead of winning as all the polls had predicted he would. And thanks to candidate Dennis Kucinich, we are likely to find out. Kucinich today filed a request, and a required $2000 fee, to order up a manual recount of the machine ballots cast in the state. Polls taken as late as the day before the Tuesday vote showed Obama up...

Jennifer Call's eyes searched the office for nothing in particular. Her arms waved and her fear spilled out. "This is where I grew up," Sutton's town clerk said yesterday. "This is my hometown, this is where my family is, and all of sudden, my name is being splashed across the internet as this horrible person. And the frightening part is, I don't know these people and they don't know me." Call wants the nationwide army of boisterous Ron Paul supporters, believers in more conspiracy theories than Oliver Stone, to know that she's committed no crime. Not treason, as the dozens...

Westech writes "Multiple indications of vote fraud are beginning to pop up regarding the New Hampshire primary elections. Roughly 80% of New Hampshire precincts use Diebold machines, while the remaining 20% are hand counted. A Black Box Voting contributor has compiled a chart of results from hand counted precincts vs. results from machine counted precincts. In machine counted precincts, Clinton beat Obama by almost 5%. In hand counted precincts, Obama beat Clinton by over 4%, which closely matches the scientific polls that were conducted leading up to the election. Another issue is the Republican results from Sutton precinct. The final...

This is popping up ALL over the Leftist Blogosphere right now, showing a large discrepency between DIEBOLD vote counts, and those counted by hand in New Hampshire. "I used the Comma delimited database: NH municipalities hand count vs use Diebold machines from BlackBoxVoting.org to see if there was a deviation between the results from precincts which used hand counts and those which relied on Diebold machines. The results were astonishing. : Updated: 5:05 AM (EST) - Results tallied for 209 out of 236 of the municipalities. By Percentage Method Hillary Clinton Barack Obama Diebold Machines 53.23% 46.77% Hand Count 47.47%...

Colorado's top election official decertified electronic voting machines used in many of the state's largest counties Monday, calling into question equipment used in past elections in a move he said could have national implications. Electronic voting machines used in Denver, Arapahoe, Pueblo, Mesa and Elbert counties cannot be used in the next election because of problems with accuracy or security, Secretary of State Mike Coffman said. A number of electronic scanners used to count ballots were also decertified, including a type used by Boulder County as well as more than three dozen small to mid-size counties around the state. His...

Earlier this year, California found all sorts of problems with e-voting machines used in the state. Now, Ohio, home to some of the more controversial stories surrounding presidential elections, has also found serious flaws in every e-voting machine used in the state. It's the usual stuff that has been pointed out for years: it was easy to pick locks on the machines, introduce fake votes, and load up dangerous unauthorized software onto the machines. Not much new there -- just another confirmation. What's much more interesting is the reaction of the firms involved. First up is "Premier Election Solution," who...

Earlier this year, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen established strict new standards for electronic voting machines, requiring independent code audits, Red Team security testing, and support for paper records. The Red Team testing process primarily involves subjecting the machines to review by security experts who attempt to hack the software and bypass the physical security mechanisms. Recent Red Team tests of ES&S voting machines have uncovered serious security flaws. Previous Red Team tests commissioned by the state of California revealed significant vulnerabilities in devices sold by Diebold and Sequoia. At the time, ES&S declined to participate in the testing,...

Election fixes stir worries on ballot security Some fearful computer codes are vulnerable Johnnie German admitted he was nervous as he used high-security codes to tap into the Harris County elections computer system last week and change some of the results manually. The system was in good hands as the votes were counted from the sprawling Nov. 6 contests. German is the county's respected administrator of elections, and there were witnesses present as he corrected the vote totals on a sales tax referendum for a fire/ambulance district in the Cypress-Fairbanks area of northwest Harris County. But German's late-night deed, said...

Paper trails aren't enough to ensure accurate vote counts, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. ITIF said this week that paper trails increase costs and can actually reduce the chances a voters' choices are accurately counted. Congress is considering a "Voter Confidence and Increased Accountability Act of 2007," which would mandate "voter-verified" paper audit trails. The bill, H.R. 811, aims to increase the security and reliability of electronic voting. It is similar to legislation that several states could pass as well. ITIF plans to release a report next week, stating that paper audit trails have "serious limitations that...

What: This Tuesday, DAN RATHER REPORTS presents conclusive evidence of the failure of touch screen voting machines across the country. The episode, “The Trouble with Touch Screens”, is an entire hour devoted to new information on this story. From scientists involved in testing the equipment, to manufacturers in third world countries who shipped these defective voting machines to the United States DAN RATHER REPORTS will present new information showing that these defective machines may have altered the outcome of multiple elections. A screener clip from this controversial episode is now available at the following link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1826549866685179676&hl=enWhen: Dan Rather Reports “The...

DES MOINES, Iowa -- This weekend's Republican straw poll is being challenged by a national group that is threatening legal action over the voting machines that the Republican Party of Iowa is using. A supporter of candidate Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who is not connected to the campaign, made the legal threat, Des Moines television station KCCI reported. The Iowa GOP said the straw poll is fraud-proof. At a Creston restaurant, Paul greeted people Wednesday and hoped some of them would vote for him at the Ames straw poll. "It's pretty important and if we do well, we'll certainly send...

Late Friday, in an atmosphere of total chaos -- with a midnight deadline looming, county election officials waiting anxiously by their phones, and videographers and reporters clamoring outside — Secretary of State Debra Bowen moved to decertify electronic voting machines used by 9 million voters. The decision to decertify leaves county voting officials scrambling once again. They must either find replacement voting equipment that will satisfy the state elections chief before the Feb. 5 presidential primary or upgrade security in systems they do have. The new systems and/or new security measures required must be acquired, tested, installed and workers trained...

California’s top election official on Friday decertified three voting systems widely used in the state but said she would let counties use the machines in February’s presidential primary if extra security precautions were taken. The official, Debra Bowen, the secretary of state, said she made the decision in response to studies showing that the machines could be hacked.

Diebold Election Systems Inc. voting machines are not secure enough to guarantee a trustworthy election, and an attacker with access to a single machine could disrupt or change the outcome of an election using viruses, according to a review of Diebold's source code. "The software contains serious design flaws that have led directly to specific vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit to affect election outcomes," read the University of California at Berkeley report, commissioned by the California Secretary of State as part of a two-month "top-to-bottom" review of electronic voting systems certified for use in California. The assessment of Diebold's source...

"...the team was able to bypass security in every machine they tested..."

"...Florida’s optical scan voting machines are still flawed, despite efforts to fix them, and they could allow poll workers to tamper with the election results..."

An Allentown man who smashed an electronic voting machine because he didn't trust it and believed that election results could be altered was convicted Wednesday of summary offenses of disorderly conduct and criminal mischief. After a Lehigh County nonjury trial, Michael C. Young, who represented himself, was sentenced to 180 days of probation and was ordered to pay $2,910 for replacement of the touch-screen machine. Young, 43, of 375 Auburn St., admitted that he went to a polling place at the Good Shepherd Home at Sixth and St. John streets, Allentown, on Nov. 7. He testified that he struck the...

California: All Vote Machines Tested Are Hackable (CBS) SACRAMENTO, Calif. California Secretary of State Debra Bowen released the first part of her review of the state's voting systems Friday, seven days before she must decide whether to decertify any of the systems for the presidential primary It found that computer experts were able to breach all the systems they studied and change the machines' results. But the experts did that under artificial conditions, with unimpeded access to the equipment, a situation that ordinarily would not occur. Matt Bishop, a computer scientist at the University of California, Davis, who led the...

SACRAMENTO - California's secretary of state is considering decertifying an "essential" new part of Los Angeles County's voting system because a vendor missed a deadline to provide key information about it. Decertification would be a blow to the county, leaving it struggling to comply with federal regulations for the state's first February presidential primary. Secretary of State Debra Bowen said the action comes as her office reviews voting systems statewide, and the vendor repeatedly refused to provide the source code for software used in Los Angeles County's InkaVote Plus system. Bowen spokeswoman Nicole Winger said decertification "is in the range...

"HARRISON COUNTY --The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Monday to revert back to the old paper ballot voting methods here, dumping the new electronic voting machines after just a few elections. "We've had a lot of problems with the machines... the costs, I was real concerned about the problems we had last time and it was going to cost us a lot," said Harrison County Circuit Clerk Gayle Parker, who recommended scrapping the high-tech machines after problems during the November elections. Dozens of Mississippi counties reported problems with the new machines. Poll workers had trouble getting the machines to work....

A Berkeley lawyer who has fought electronic voting in California and a half-dozen other states has been tapped by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen as her deputy in charge of voting machinery. Lowell Finley, co-founder and co-director of the election-integrity group Voter Action, has pulled out of lawsuits against elections officials in California, Florida, Ohio and other states in order to accept a post of deputy secretary of state. Bowen, who was sworn in Monday, still is figuring out the management structure for the office, but she expects Finley to have a lead role in her promised "top-to-bottom review"...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - A judge ruled Friday that congressional aspirant Christine Jennings has no right to examine the programming source code that runs the electronic voting machines at the center of a disputed Southwest Florida congressional race. Circuit Judge William Gary ruled that Jennings' arguments about the possibility of lost votes were "conjecture," and didn't warrant overriding the trade secrets of the voting machine company. Democrats in Congress meanwhile, said they'd allow Republican Vern Buchanan to take the seat next Thursday, but with a warning that the inquiry wasn't over and that his hold on it could be temporary. The...

"WASHINGTON Paperless electronic voting machines in widespread use across the country may be vulnerable to errors or sabotage and cannot be made secure, a draft report by a federal agency said. The report by researchers at the influential National Institute of Standards and Technology said the paperless voting machines - essentially notebook computers programmed to display ballot images and record voter choices - "in practical terms cannot be made secure." "Many people, especially in the computer engineering and security community, assert that the (voting machines) are vulnerable to undetectable errors as well as malicious software attacks," the report said..."

Programming error miscounts votes in south Texas Election official catches electronic voting maching problem DALLAS — A programming error by a widely used Nebraska-based election system company Tuesday appears to be isolated to Hidalgo County in South Texas, election officials said. The county's top election official discovered the mistake when early voting results in House District 28 put long-shot Constitution Party candidate Ron Avery ahead of popular Democratic incumbent Henry Cuellar by almost 2,000 votes with roughly 2,200 tabulated. "We knew there was no way that could be correct," said Teresa Navarro, Hidalgo County elections administrator. The problem was not...

Sequoia touch-screen is California's most widely used Days before the election, state officials have learned that California's most widely used electronic voting machines feature a button in back that can allow someone to vote multiple times. Several computer scientists said Wednesday that the vulnerability found in all touch-screen machines sold by Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems was not especially great because using the yellow button for vote fraud would require reaching far behind the voting machine twice and triggering two beeps. "If the machine beeps loudly and someone has their arms wrapped around the machine, the poll workers are going to...

WASHINGTON – Just 10 days before Americans vote in midterm congressional elections that could result in a historic shift of power, the federal government is investigating whether anti-American Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez may control the company that operates electronic voting machines in 17 states. Many questions have been raised about the reliability of the new machines, which leave no paper trails for the purposes of recounts. But now federal officials are investigating whether Smartmatic, owner of Sequoia Voting Systems, is secretly controlled by the Castroite revolutionary leader of Venezuela who denounced President Bush as Satan in his most recent United...

Cheryl Kagan, a former Maryland Democratic legislator, was shocked when she opened her mail Wednesday morning. Inside, she discovered three computer discs. With them was an anonymous letter saying the discs contained the secret source code for vote-counting that could be used to alter the votes cast through Maryland's new electronic voting machines. "My understanding is that with these disks a malicious person could skew the outcome of an election," Kagan said. Diebold, the company that makes the voting machines, told ABC News, "These discs do not alter the security of the Diebold touch-screen system in any way," because election...

SACRAMENTO – Normally ho-hum, the campaign for secretary of state could be seen as a referendum on whether Californians trust new, federally mandated electronic voting systems and how they feel about requiring identification at the polls. The Nov. 7 election also is the first chance voters have to judge appointed incumbent Bruce McPherson, who was forced to spend most of his early tenure cleaning up a political and fiscal quagmire left by his predecessor, Kevin Shelley, a Democrat who resigned under pressure. PROFILES Bruce McPherson RepublicanAge: 62 Residence: Santa Cruz Background: Appointed secretary of state in March 2005 to fill...

Pa. Sued Over Electronic Voting Machines Voter advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to stop Pennsylvania counties from using "paperless" electronic voting machines, saying that such systems leave no paper record that could be used in the event of a recount, audit or other problem. The suit asks the state's Commonwealth Court to decertify machines used in 58 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. The other counties use optical scanning systems, in which voters fill in bubbles on paper forms that are counted in scanning machines; the plaintiffs say such systems should be in use statewide. "Whatever the initial promise may have...

Rep. Cynthia McKinney, in her first public appearance since losing her re-election bid last week, said Tuesday that the black community needs to oppose electronic voting machines, which she warned can be used to steal elections. McKinney also said the state of Georgia should prohibit crossover voting among political parties in primary elections and end its system of runoff elections. You won't know who won as long as we have those electronic voting machines, with the problems that have been manifested by them,'' she said, criticizing Georgia officials for not requiring that paper records be kept of all votes. She...

McKinney rails against electronic voting By KATE BRUMBACK, Associated Press Writer 21 minutes ago Rep. Cynthia McKinney, in her first public appearance since losing her re-election bid last week, said Tuesday that the black community needs to oppose electronic voting machines, which she said are designed to steal elections. McKinney also said the state of Georgia should not allow crossover voting among political parties in primary elections. The fiery Democratic congresswoman who scuffled with a Capitol Hill police officer earlier this year and has accused the Bush administration of having advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks said she considers...

Late Wednesday afternoon, a "Manual Hand Count Request under the Election Recount Provision" was filed at the San Diego County Registrar of Voters office by CA-50 voter Barbara Gail Jacobson. The request is for a full manual hand count of all paper ballots and paper trails in the recent June 6th Busby/Bilbray special U.S. House election in which programmed, election-ready Diebold voting machines were sent home with poll workers for days prior to the election in apparent violation of new laws and provisions by both state and federal authorities. As California state election code requires that a candidate be named...

Brad Friedman Added to homepage Sun 18th Jun 2006, 09:43 AM No Confidence in the Busby/Bilbray Election I don't know how else to put it, but every voting machine used in last week's special election run-off for the U.S. House seat vacated by the disgraced Randy "Duke" Cunningham in California's 50th congressional district was illegal. By federal standards, rules and provisions and by California state rules, laws and provisions. And now, by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters own admission. More Discuss this topic (22 comments) · Posted by Wilms

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...

One of the first counties in the state to embrace electronic voting is headed back to paper -- and it's not the only one. Alameda County residents going to the polls June 6 will be asked for the first time in five years to fill in ovals on paper ballots rather than casting their votes on costly touch-screen machines. "It's a little bit of back to the future," joked Elaine Ginnold, the county's acting registrar of voters. The decision to go back to paper stems from changes in state law that toughen requirements for touch-screen machines and render the county's...

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. says he now supports requiring Maryland's voting machines to produce paper receipts. And while that's a good idea, it's a shame the governor's endorsement is a day late and probably millions of dollars short. Elections officials believe the state would have to scrap its current touch-screen system and spend as much as $65 million to bring in replacement machines to do this. And that's not even the worst of it. [snip] Nevertheless, the politicians in Annapolis need to take some deep breaths and calm down before voters start taking their rhetoric seriously. Yes, paper receipts...

California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson gave conditional approval Friday for counties to use two voting machines produced by Diebold Election Systems that he had previously questioned. McPherson's office said in December that the Diebold machines failed one of the 10 criteria he established for voting machines because the source coding, or computer language, on their memory cards was not reviewed by independent investigators. The coding performs two critical tasks — securing ballot entries and later providing instructions to election officials on how to access and tally the votes. Since then, Diebold submitted the machines to further testing by University...

California lawmakers on Wednesday debated the use of open-source software in the state’s electronic voting systems in hopes it might build public confidence in the nascent technology. Sen. Debra Bowen (D-California) called the hearing, citing successful use of open-source software—programs based on widely published code—by large companies including Amazon, AOL, and IBM. No action was expected to be taken. The hearing was scheduled more in the interest of expanding discussion of open-source alternatives, said a spokesperson for Sen. Bowen. California has already taken steps toward using such software throughout the state. In 2004, the California Performance Review strongly recommended the...

ATTENTION DUMMIES! WE OWN ALL YOUR DIEBOLD MACHINES!!! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO VOTE! DO NOT ENTER THE POLL BOOTH!!! VOTING WILL DO YOU NO GOOD BECAUSE ALL DIEBOLDS ARE PRE-SET TO VOTE REPUBLICAN! YOUR PARTICIPATION IN ANY FUTURE ELECTION IS ALREADY DOOMED TO FAILURE SO SAVE YOURSELF THE FRUSTRATION BY STAYING HOME ON ELECTION DAY! THIS PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOU CARE OF YOUR FRIENDLY VAST RIGHTWING CONSPIRACY!!! And if you think the DUmmies don't buy into the preceding statements then I urge you to check out this THREAD titled, "I don't understand why Diebold can't...