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"Matthew Pascarella: Perhaps the biggest danger to the voter rights of Americans lies in the software used in voting machines, which is proprietary and cannot be tested by outside parties. A lack of independent testing allows the security flaws of the software to stand uncorrected, and potentially allows for manipulation of election outcomes. Computer scientists assessing the software of the leading voting machine manufacturer Diebold found that, “Anyone in the country—from a teenager on up—could produce these smart cards that could allow someone to vote as many times as they like” (New York Times, July 24, 2003)."
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Helping America Vote? by Matthew Pascarella
Friday, October 24, 2003
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States
or by any State on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude.” —Sec. 1, 15th Amendment
Despite differences in ethos and political ideology,
we can agree that the most fundamental and essential
aspect of the democratic process is one’s right to
vote.
The 2000 Presidential election debacle brought to
light massive problems with the way that Americans
vote. Due to mechanical problems with voting machines,
and partisan fighting, many voters were left
completely disenfranchised. In response to public
outcry, Congress adopted the “Help America Vote Act”
(HAVA) in 2002. This act, originally designed to
safeguard voter rights, in fact, contains flaws so
major that it has the opposite effect; the Act puts
one of our most basic rights in peril.
Conflict of Interest
One of the first mandates in HAVA is that older,
‘punch card’ voting systems be replaced with
computerized voting machines. These machines are
manufactured by private companies, raising the
potential for foul play due to special interests. It
would seem appropriate for companies manufacturing
voting machines to remain neutral and unbiased, but
most voting machine companies are financially involved
in political campaigns and many active and former
politicians are employed by these companies. Here are
just a handful of examples:
• In 2000, 5 of the 12 directors of Diebold, a leading
voting machine manufacturer, made donations totaling
$94,750 to predominately Republican politicians;
• Former Florida Secretary of State Sandra Mortham (R)
and Former State Election Supervisor of California Lou
Dedier (R) both have ties to Election Systems and
Software (ES&S), one of our nation’s leading voting
machine manufacturers and tabulators. Sandra Mortham
was a lobbyist for ES&S and the Florida Association of
Counties during the same time period. The Florida
Association of Counties made $300,000 in commissions
from the sale of ES&S’s voting machines;
• In Georgia’s most recent election, William Wingate,
a lobbyist for ES&S, contributed $7,000 to Gov. Roy
Barnes (D), $1,000 to Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor (D), and
$500 to Secretary of State Cathy Cox (D);
• Michael McCarthy is the Chairman of the McCarthy
Group, of which ES&S is a subsidiary. According to
Federal Elections Commission (FEC) filings, McCarthy
is also the Primary Campaign Treasurer for Republican
Senator Chuck Hagel, who (according to FEC filings) is
also financially tied to the McCarthy Group by
substantial investments (valued between one and five
million dollars). According to officials at Nebraska’s
Election Administration, ES&S machines tallied around
85 percent of votes cast in Hagel’s 1996 and 2002
senatorial races.
Occasionally, politicians have used their ties to
voting machine companies for fraud and illegal
activities:
• Former Louisiana State Elections Official Jerry
Fowler (D), is currently serving five years in prison
for charges related to taking hundreds of thousands of
dollars in kickbacks from voting machine scandals.
• Bill McCuen (D), former Arkansas Secretary of State,
pled guilty to felony charges that he took bribes,
evaded taxes, and accepted kickbacks. Part of the case
involved Business Records Corp. (now merged with ES&S)
for recording corporate and voter registration
records.
Software Imperfections
Perhaps the biggest danger to the voter rights of
Americans lies in the software used in voting
machines, which is proprietary and cannot be tested by
outside parties. A lack of independent testing allows
the security flaws of the software to stand
uncorrected, and potentially allows for manipulation
of election outcomes. Computer scientists assessing
the software of the leading voting machine
manufacturer Diebold found that, “Anyone in the
country—from a teenager on up—could produce these
smart cards that could allow someone to vote as many
times as they like” (New York Times, July 24, 2003).
Despite the software errors and other significant
problems with computerized voting machines in the 2000
election, HAVA fails to provide any type of audit
mechanism.
Many software professionals and voting experts have
called for a provision for paper printouts of each
ballot cast in order to verify the accuracy of voting
machines, however, voting machine companies are
reluctant to introduce such a measure. To ensure the
legitimacy of the voting procedure, there is vital
need for an audit trail: In Texas in 2002, Comal
County’s election supervisor found that polling and
election returns produced dramatically different
results. It was discovered that a faulty chip in one
machine’s optical reader had recorded votes
incorrectly. The chip was replaced; a new electronic
tabulation run and two recounts of paper printouts
were performed. The election results had to be
reversed.
Who is Managing the Voter Rolls?
The new HAVA requirements also fail to ensure fair
elections by requiring that the task of managing voter
rolls be centralized, and put under the control of
notoriously partisan Secretaries of State.
While the mainstream media covered the 2000 Florida
recount, they relaxed their investigative spirit (if
such a spirit still exists in modern journalism) and
tried to turn a complex story into something simple:
‘hanging chads’ and ‘stupid Floridians.’ Here is what
they failed to tell you:
In 2000, the Florida Secretary of State was Katherine
Harris (appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush), who was also the
chairwoman of the “Bush for President” campaign in
that state. In order to remove convicted felons (who
are ineligible to vote in that state) from their voter
rolls, Florida paid the private company Database
Technologies (DBT/Choicepoint) $1 million for a list
of names matching those of felons across the U.S. Even
though there were many obvious flaws in the matching
criteria (including conviction dates as far in the
future as 2007, and names barely approximating those
of actual felons), neither the state nor the private
contractor attempted to verify the accuracy of the
list. According to a study by Harvard University, 95
percent of the people denied their right to vote by
the purge were not felons, and therefore legal voters.
About 54 percent of those purged were African
Americans (an overwhelmingly Democratic group in
Florida). This led researchers to conclude that Al
Gore lost at least 22,000 votes through the purge. The
election in Florida was decided by a margin of 537.
What You Can Do
This system should not be spread nationwide as HAVA
requires, unless critical loopholes in the legislation
are closed by way of a stringent system of checks and
balances.
In order to correct the inconsistencies in the Help
America Vote Act, we urge you to join us in endorsing
the following petition by Martin Luther King III,
President of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC), and Greg Palast, BBC journalist and
author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Already,
over 48,000 people have signed the petition.
Matthew Pascarella is a student at Marymount Manhattan
College in NYC and is a staff researcher for Greg
Palast. This article was influenced by the work of
investigative journalist Greg Palast and voting
experts Bev Harris, Rebecca Mercuri, and Kim
Alexander. And oh yeah—the 12th and 15th Amendments to
the Constitution of the United States.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Petition
Stop the Florida-tion of the 2004 election
Computers threaten accountability of voting system
Join SCLC President Martin Luther King III and
investigative reporter Greg Palast in opposing the
“Florida-tion” of the 2004 Presidential election by
signing this petition, which will be delivered to
Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Dear Attorney General John Ashcroft,
Today, there is a new and real threat to voters, this
time coming from touch-screen voting machines with no
paper trails and the computerized purges of voter
rolls.
In 2002, Congress passed the wrongly named “Help
America Vote Act” which requires every state to
computerize, centralize and purge voter rolls before
the 2004 election. This is the very system that the
state of Florida used to remove tens of thousands of
eligible African American and Hispanic voters from
voter registries before the Presidential election of
2000.
The Act also lays a minefield of other impediments to
voters: an effective rollback of the easy voter
registration methods of the Motor Voter Act; new
identification requirements at polling stations; and
perilous incentives for fault-prone and
fraud-susceptible touch-screen voting machines.
We, the undersigned, demand security against the
dangerous “Florida-tion” of our nation’s voting
methods through computerization of voter rolls and
ballots. Computers were part of the problem in
Florida, not the cure. We, the undersigned, hereby
demand that no voter be purged from centralized voter
rolls without proof positive that the voter is
ineligible. We also demand a halt to further
computerization of balloting until such methods are
made unsusceptible to political manipulation, fraud,
and racial bias.
Signed,
Martin Luther King III
President, Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Greg Palast
Author, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
To sign the petition online go to www.gregpalast.com.
You can read the Help America Vote Act in full (with
special attention to Section 303) at
www.fec.gov/hava/hava.htm. For a short flash
documentary on the 2000 Florida election, check out
www.ericblumrich.com/gta.html. To request screenings
of Counting On Democracy, a documentary film about
what really happened in the 2000 Florida Presidential
Election contact Matthew Pascarella at
matt@gregpalast.com or (212) 505-8912.