Possible voting machine fraud exposed

The ranking Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, is requesting the FBI and a county prosecutor in Ohio investigate "inappropriate and likely illegal election tampering" in an Ohio county by voting machine company employees. At a hearing this week on vote irregularities in Ohio organized by Conyers, Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb testified that an employee of Triad Systems, a major supplier of punch card machines and the computer systems that tally these ballots, engaged in what appeared to be tampering with voting counting machines in Hocking County, Ohio, prior to a recount there:

“Mr. Chairman, though our time is limited, I must bring to the committee's attention the most recent and perhaps most troubling incident that was related to my campaign on Sunday, December 12, about a shocking event that occurred last Friday, December 10.
“A representative from Triad Systems came into a county board of elections office un-announced. He said he was just stopping by to see if they had any questions about the up-coming recount. He then headed into the back room where the Triad supplied Tabulator (a card reader and older PC with custom software) is kept. He told them there was a problem and the system had a bad battery and had "lost all of its data". He then took the computer apart and started swapping parts in and out of it and another "spare" tower type PC also in the room. He may have had spare parts in his coat as one of the BOE people moved it and remarked as to how very heavy it was. He finally re-assembled everything and said it was working but to not turn it off.
“He then asked which precinct would be counted for the 3% recount test, and the one which had been selected as it had the right number of votes, was relayed to him. He then went back and did something else to the tabulator computer.
“The Triad Systems representative suggested that since the hand count had to match the machine count exactly, and since it would be hard to memorize the several numbers which would be needed to get the count to come out exactly right, that they should post this series of numbers on the wall where they would not be noticed by observers. He suggested making them look like employee information or something similar. The people doing the hand count could then just report these numbers no matter what the actual count of the ballots revealed. This would then "match" the tabulator report for this precinct exactly. The numbers were apparently the final certified counts for the selected precinct.
“Triad is contracted to do much of the elections work in this county and elsewhere in Ohio. This included programming the candidates into the tabulator, and coming up with the rotation of candidates in the various precincts (that is, the order of which candidate is first changes between precincts). They also have a technician in the office on election night to actually run the tabulator itself.
“Triad also supplies the network computers on which all of the voter registration information and processing is kept for the county.
“It was unusual for the computers to be taken apart. At least one member of the Board of Elections was told the tabulator was in pieces when he called to check on the office.
“The source of this report believes that the Triad representative was "making the rounds" of visiting other counties also before the recount. This person also stated they would not pass on the suggestion of the "posted" hidden totals, and would refuse to go along with it if it were suggested by the others in the office at the time.”

The "3% recount test" referred to is that 3 percent of a county's ballots must be recounted by hand. Then those ballots are fed into the tabulator. If the results match, the rest of the ballots are counted by the machine; if not, the entire county's ballots must be recounted by hand.

Since Cobb testified, the whistleblower, Hocking County deputy director of elections Sherole Eaton, has written and signed a sworn affidavit confirming Cobb’s account. Conyers attached the affidavit to his letter to the FBI Special Agent in Charge in Ohio and the Hocking County prosecutor requesting investigation.

Triad supplies the voting machinery and tabulations software for dozens of Ohio counties, so the issue could spread beyond Hocking County. Triad is owned by Tod Rapp, who, according to Democratic Underground, has donated to the Republican Party and the George W. Bush campaign.

A group calling itself Contest the Vote is circulating a petition to ask Senator Barbara Boxer to contest the election prior to the inauguration. By law, at least one member of the House and one senator must support such a challenge for it to go forward. In 2000, no senator would support the request of House members for an investigation of the presidential election (as viewers of Fahrenheit 911 will recall). I’m not clear why Barbara Boxer is the target. Perhaps it’s because she is a relatively senior senator with a safe seat in a populous and Democratic-leaning state. Meanwhile, Progressive Democrats of America is asking people to contact the Chairman of the House Administration Committee, Bob Ney (R-OH), who stated publicly that he would hold bi-partisan hearings on the 2004 Election early next year. The Progressive Democrats demand that he hold hearings before the vote is certified in January. Rep. Conyers is reportedly asking that emails in support of investigation and immediate hearings be sent also to Democrats on the committee.

Lawyers working on legal challenges to the Ohio election are requesting tax-deductible donations for the cause.

One month after the Washington Post published a snide article dismissing critics of the election as “the bloggers and the mortally wounded party loyalists and the spreadsheet-wielding conspiracy theorists,” the paper has published an article confirming that there were indeed serious problems with the election in Ohio. The article recounted the tale of one woman who stood in line for four hours at her polling place in a majority Democratic, black neighborhood of Columbus, watching dozens of voters leave without casting a ballot, then drove to her mother’s house in a white, Republican-majority suburb to learn that it had taken her mother 15 minutes to vote. Other heartbreaking stories included old ladies leaning on walkers in the rain while waiting for hours to vote; long-time voters purged from the rolls; provisional ballots tossed because voters had come to the right polling place but were directed to the incorrect precinct by poll workers; and insufficient voting machines in Democratic polling places, even though it was common knowledge turnout would be high. The explanation of this last item was telling: "Does it make any sense to purchase more machines just for one election?" asked Michael R. Hackett, deputy director of the Knox County board of elections. "I'll give you the answer: no."

The article concludes on a painful note: "A lot of people left in the four hours I waited," recalled Thivener, the mortgage broker from Columbus. "A lot of them were young black men who were saying over and over: 'We knew this would happen.'
"How," she asked, "is that good for democracy?"

The same article noted the study by grad students at Cal Berkeley that found at least 130,000 extra votes were delivered to Bush by faulty voting machines in Florida. The study received confirmation from skeptics. Charles Stewart III, a voting expert at MIT, which together with Caltech issued a study dismissing criticism of the election, “ran the numbers and came up with the same result [as the Berkeley study]. "You can't break it; I've tried," Stewart said. "There's something funky in the results from the electronic-machine Democratic counties."”