SOME VOTING MACHINES CAN BE EASILY USED FOR MULTIPLE VOTING

BRAD BLOG - It seems there's a little yellow button on the back of every 
touch-screen computer made by Sequoia Voting Systems, that allows any 
voter, or poll worker, or precinct inspector to set the system into 
"Manual Mode" allowing them to cast as many votes as they want.

Concerns about the flaw were first reported some thirty days ago to 
California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson's office by Ron Watt, a 
Tehama County, CA precinct inspector who has been a poll worker in the 
county for the last fifteen years. And yet, as recently as a radio 
interview last Tuesday, McPherson ­ who has been crowing about having 
the country's most stringent security process for voting systems ­ 
denied he was aware of any security issues with Sequoia systems. . . 

The complete sequence to override the system and enter manual voting 
mode, along with the Sequoia booklet received via Watt's public records 
request, is now posted at BlackBoxVoting.org. . . 

Sequoia's voting machines are perhaps the most widely used in 
California, in some 19 different counties, including both Tehama and 
Riverside, which is known as the "Home of E-Voting" as it was the first 
county in the nation to deploy such systems. But identical Sequoia 
machines are also used in dozens of other states around the country 
including Florida, Illinois and elsewhere.

It is now confirmed that all such systems are completely vulnerable to 
virtually anyone who wishes to cast as many votes as they please. "I can 
do it in 18 seconds," says Watt. "I can train you to do it in 3 minutes. 
Just push the yellow button, wait 3 seconds and it chimes. Push the 
yellow button again, wait 3 seconds and it chimes again. Then it's all 
on the screen prompts. You're asked 'Do you want to enter manual mode?' 
and you push 'Yes'. . . And then you're on your way."

"You can then vote as many times as you want. You won't ever have to 
stop until someone physically restrains you from voting," he explained.

"But wouldn't someone hear the chime?" we asked…

"No, it's barely audible. Quieter than the beep on your computer when it 
boots up. The systems are usually kept up against the wall to be near a 
power outlet and away from the poll workers for privacy. Plus, if you 
really wanted to pull it off, just come in with a friend and have them 
talk to the poll workers to distract them. Nobody would ever know."

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3714

BLACK BOX VOTING - [The California Secretary of State] had Sequoia 
demonstrate the process which, in effect, allows any citizen to cast 
multiple votes 

Sequoia agreed it could be done, but claimed it would be difficult to do 
unnoticed (they focused more on voters doing it than the idea of an 
insider doing it). 

The Secretary of State contacted every California county that uses 
Sequoia and confirmed with them that they were indeed aware of this 
feature. 

California counties are to inform all their poll workers of this and 
instruct them to be very vigilant during the Election Day to anyone 
spending too much time in the booth, or reaching around to the back of 
the machine where the button is located. Poll workers are supposed to be 
instructed to listen for a beeping sound made when the yellow button is 
pressed. 

The Secretary of State is reportedly going to require increased signage 
regarding criminal penalties for tampering with voting equipment are to 
be prominently displayed on every machine. 

http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/44823.html


BRAD BLOG has obtained an exclusive partial transcript from a recent, 
unaired interview by a major broadcast network with former U.S. 
Elections Assistance Commission chair Rev. DeForest Soaries. Soaries was 
appointed by George W. Bush as the first chair of the commission created 
by the federal Help America Vote Act in the wake of the 2000 
Presidential election Debacle. In the interview, available here for the 
first time, Soaries excoriates both Congress and the White House, 
referring to their dedication to reforming American election issues as 
"a charade" and "a travesty," and says the system now in place is "ripe 
for stealing elections and for fraud."

Having resigned from the commission in April of 2005, Soaries goes on to 
explain that he believes he was "deceived" by both the White House and 
Congress, and that neither were ever "really serious about election 
reform."

. . . In the unaired interview, conducted last August, Soaries says 
there are "no standards" for voting systems and that Congress and the 
White House "made things worse through the passage of the Help America 
Vote Act."

. . . Due to underfunding and lack of attention to the EAC and the 
Election Reform it was supposed to oversee, Soaries says we now have an 
"inability to trust the technology that we use" to count votes in our 
American democracy, even as "we're spending a billion dollars a week in 
Iraq."

. . . "Someone has got to be able to say, no one in America should use 
machine 'A' ever again," he says, in reference to the EAC's failure to 
decertify electronic voting systems even after they have been proven to 
be easily vulnerable to hackers and tampering. "And if it's not EAC," he 
continued, "it's got to be someone. Someone in America has got to hold 
America accountable for protecting the most fundamental right in a 
democracy and that is the right to vote."

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3491

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