.


My impression is that the machines are essentially Pcs using standard PC motherboards – and if so
putting a chip “in line” is not doable. IMO the software would need to be looked at most carefully. And of course an easy test would be to set the machine date to election day (if it even has a date internally) and then start inputting data. Any irregularity would be picked up immediately. My grandma could do the test - she is 88.

And by the way the companies that make the machines are in it to make money and would not be likely to participate in any “conspiracy” to fix their machines. Machines (PC based) are used to select lottery numbers with payouts of many millions per year. Certainly we can make a computer that is secure. And I have no problem with printing a copy to be kept as a backup.

even if PC's I have previously posted a link that our federal government has awakened. They notified all federal agencies that classified information CAN NOT BE used on computers made in (I think China). So this is an absolute as I have mentioned a chip even a standard "looking" chip can have what ever I put in it. and you will never know what that chip has in it.

It costs from what I have heard several hundred thousand dollars to take a chip apart gate by gate. So in other words if you do this to 30% of the machines again the cost is too high to test and who is going to do the analysis honestly? this is destructive testing.

You again completely missed my hooks I put in. Any person can put in any date they please for testing that is so basic/obvious to us (us engineers as you have stated you are one to) it is not worth a comment.

To date no one has done a 8 hour test of a voting machine with simulated real time voting patterns. Until you hit this level and as I said I would only do this on say 30 percent of machines. and only every presidential election. you do understand it is not humanly practical to test all machines this way don't you. And lets say you test one machine, the probability of catching the bad machine is only 30%. And if you do so what, you just think you have a bad machine, there are many machines that acted improperly on election day. As an example I have mentioned this is how they cheat gas pumps, they know what the state weights and measurements measure, say 5 gallon calibrated cans, so the cheating kicks in at 5.5 gallons. This is what they do. so if the weights and measurements moves up to 6 gallons they put a chip to 6.5 gallons.

wow what an implied statement, in essence this company is there to make money so they would never break the law....... tooo funny, they have even hired a guy who was convicted of many felonies having to do with putting in back doors. geeeeeeeeee why.... see if you can get a job in that company in the ATM division with a felony conviction........ NOT same with the programmers in the companies that make slot machines. do you think they hire convicted felons... NOT.... I am from Nevada and have had Engineers that worked for me in Illinois work for some of these companies... and you have to be sparkling clean.. But not at Diebold's election machine. It only takes one person with the present system to steal an entire election.

Come on please all you need to do is know who made the motherboard. And yes it was China and we are not speaking of classified info being transmitted anywhere are we.






Come on please. The machines are NOT connected to the internet. They can be told that it is any date one wishes and I would assume this would be part of the program. I agree that a through test is required for the design verification. Once the design is verified and a parts list is known the chance of someone “altering” a chip on a motherboard without anyone knowing it is not great.





I doubt that “one person” could get away with anywhere near what you describe. The “one person” gets all the motherboards out of stock and away from the production folks. Alters them, in a way that is undetectable and gets them back into the locked cage and so into the devices. I don’t buy it. I would worry much more about the software guys.

Can you tell me if anyone has EVER found a voting machine that has been altered in any of the ways you describe? Let me answere - NO

Ted you said and can you tell me of one single instance that has ever occurred where the Chinese ever put in any hooks in a chip that would warrent no classified information on these computers? NO also... Gee if it that easy to tell why don't they test every chip?

Lets see maybe 10-40 chips on a motherboard? just to test one unit several million dollars. Gee that tells us a lot we can not even afford to test one voting machine....

again you are missing the point... the code it does not take external input for it to execute just this one way I have proposed. You are aware our presidential election dates are known for the next 40 years in all practicality...

I will say just this one way there are probably 100 time more ways to put in hooks. Exactly how many viruses are out there right now? as an example of innovative ways that the programmers did not envision how to stop. I also mentioned I could put in a chip that will accept a cell phone frequency code to activate. Thus a programmer could call various numbers and activate it. And yes I know people that could design an ASIC that could do my proposed theft by date. And yes they could do it all by themselves without any assistance from another person. I also know firmware programmers that this would also be a simple task for a single person. How many people try to write viruses vs how many are capable of doing so? 100 to 1?

And as far as this not being classified information so not important to safeguard, I would think the theft of democracy is right up there with importance. It certainly is in my book.

HI!


Deomcrats, Republicans, and Fringe Lunatics alike: how can single one of us not be actively calling machines that provide a paper trail?

The way it should work, I believe, is this:

You vote electronically, the machine produces a receipt saying who you are, who you voted for, etc: then, on the way out, you put that receipt into some kind of secure lockbox- excuse the Gore nostalgia the phrase invokes.

After the elections, good-intentioned organizations go over the receipts and verify/publish results. If that was the system, I wouldn't care if Jeb Bush's face was embalmed onto every space bar in the country.

Why not?

drewyorktimes the problem with it is it does allow buying votes and companies to then to use punitive measures like fire employees. I have been denied employment before because I am a liberal, I scored if I remember upper 5% of engineers in their testing. Got along great with their upper engineering staff who wanted to hire me. so I can say without a doubt they would fire a person for voting for a democrat. Do you remember the girl who was fired for having a AAR sticker on her cars bumper.

You ask why? should we not have printed receipts... there is really only one intellectually honest answer from someone knowledgeable in this area.. But lets see what some will say.

Test every chip for what? Do you know how complicated a PC motherboard is? Do you think you could “change a chip” especially one that would do what you describe and the motherboard would still work – even if you could get away with it.



You obviously haven’t seen a motherboard lately. Go to Here - Motherboard. Now which chip would you change and how would it do as you said? How would you get into the plant in Taiwan and change the chip? That is if they even knew which of the 300 motherboards out there were selected???? Which one would you "put the chip into"?

As I said – software is far more likely to be where the “fix” would be but I am sure we could test before using – perhaps the government should look at a couple of random samples – would that make you feel better – or are they “in on it”????



Hard to believe – hey come here to Mass. They fire conservatives here!

Ted thank you backing up my claim to the 10-40 chips with the photo. I could visually see about 18. thanks much for the documentation. yep again the federal government as I pointed out has a clue for once. Sorry they completely agree with me.

and yes I agree the software or the bios is where I would do it as a lone programmer. But if I was a group of individuals, NSA, a government agency, or contacts in the white house like the group that was involved in jamming democrat phones I would go for the chip level. because it is virtually undetectable and even if found one could never prove anything.

In fun... If they fire conservatives out there that is because they are in the bottom 5% of aptitude......

Are you a software engineer? Must be. First of all you need to know that a modern PC motherboard is 16-22 layers with blind and buried vias, critical line lengths and impedances and lots of chips. True the control chips are fewer and that is why you chip idea is so ludicrous.


Here is some basics for you regarding the “chip(s) that would have to be changed in order to do what you envision.
The system chipset and controllers are the logic circuits that are the intelligence of the motherboard. They are the "traffic cops" of the computer, controlling data transfers between the processor, cache, system buses, peripherals--basically everything inside the computer. Since data flow is such a critical issue in the operation and performance of so many parts of the computer, the chipset is one of the few components that have a truly major impact on your PC's quality, feature set, and speed.
What exactly is a "chipset"? It sounds like something very complex but really is not, although many of the functions it performs are. A chipset is just a set of chips. (He ducks to avoid the flying vegetables. :^) ) At one time, most of the functions of the chipset were performed by multiple, smaller controller chips. There was a separate chip (often more than one) for each function: controlling the cache, performing direct memory access (DMA), handling interrupts, transferring data over the I/O bus, etc. Over time these chips were integrated to form a single set of chips, or chipset, that implements the various control features on the motherboard. This mirrors the evolution of the microprocessor itself: at one time many of the features on a Pentium for example were on separate chips.
• The system chipset itself.
• The keyboard controller, which manages not only the keyboard but also the integrated PS/2 mouse
• The "Super I/O" chip, which handles input and output from the serial ports, parallel port, floppy disks, and in some cases, the IDE hard disks as well
• Additional built-in controllers that are normally found in expansion cards: video, sound, network and SCSI controllers being the most common.
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/chip/


Now the chip sets are made by folks like PLX, nVidia etc. and work closely with the processor. To “forge” a single chip so that it would do what you envision and still work in every other way is virtually impossible. You do not “add” a chip to a motherboard and have a working product.
The only way this could be done is to build, from scratch, a motherboard that had the extra chips to do (whatever). Could this be done – maybe but it would not pass scrutiny. Try to explaine why on the BOM you have a custom made motherboard, which would cost 500K minimum to develop, instead of the $85 MB. Needless to say the software would have to be designed as well to used the modified device(s).

As I said – the software needs to be looked at line by line and tested. Hardware can be looked at as well and if a commercial MB is used it can be assumed top be “safe” as tampering with a MB to do what you describe is IMO not possible or practicle. – even for the VRWC (vast right wing conspiracy) you are so afraid of.


http://www.interfacebus.com/Specialized_chipsets.html

Ted, First and foremost the government has completely agreed with me. They have stated that the computers from china can not be used for classified purposes. That alone is the answer to the hardware question of it can be done.

I have been VP of engineering as well as director of R&D of a northern cal area tech company before I went out on my own with my own products, I have won for my products several international awards. My first job was in computers during 6502, my first computer invention was within 1 month of the real world job. I had at least one patent pending in computer devices within a couple years of working. after 3 years of full time experience I was hired by a company as VP of engineering. There I had directed about 20 engineers and techs. We were a microcontroller based product company. And yes I have written software as well as firmware for embedded applications myself.

As I have said this voting machine project is a very simple task for me to do, in fact I could make one all by myself without one other engineers help. It is very simple to me. In fact I would do it with a microchip microcontroller.

Next if you are saying the low costs you listed for modifying the chip sets vs what some fanatics have spent, like Olin who spent 300 or so millions on making sure liberals were stopped Now again any one good engineer in any of the companies could put in his hooks as the product is being designed at virtually no increased cost. And as we know we have no idea what NSA or the CIA does with their money do we. Even the CIA has been known to hire at least 400 reporters in the media. As we know congressperson Feeney had a company he was involved with write a program to steal elections. As we know he never reported this, and he won his first federal election shortly after.. As we know the programmer did it in one day. As we know this programmer has testified to this under oath and congressman Feeney would not.

As we agree in software this election can be tweaked to win an election. Your concept of line by line code verification can not be done, you realize this is the real world. First from what I remember the companies will not release it. From what I have read they argue it is intellectual proprietary material, which is hogwash. (a voting system is not rocket science it is a simple tabulating device) Diebold or others have sent in changes to some states machines the day before the election. and who is going to do this line by line verification, your 88 year old grandmother again? As we know a virus could be designed by the programmers to easily change the elections.

Inventor - Yes for a PC designed and built completely in China. I am speaking of commercial motherboards and NO the government does not agree with you that theses products could be used to make “fixed” voting machines. I am a now obsolete EE but as a Mkt. exec have headed up SBC development (PCI and cPCI) and understand what it takes to make a motherboard or SBC (Single Board Computer). And I agree with you that if you want to make a custom MB you could have it do whatever you like. It would be harder to have it do what you like, at the time you want it to but I agree not impossible.

What I an saying is that IMO most “voting machines” use off the shelf (COTS) hardware which cannot be “altered”. So if the government wants to look at a product all they need to do is get one and look at it and the commercial parts. I also agree that a printed copy should be given to the person.

So lets drop it. I agree machines can be made by (liberals) or anyone else to fix elections and many states don’t have experts with the brains to catch them all. IMO the government should certify a design just as the NSA certifies that a crypto board does exactly what it was intended to do and nothing more.


How about Sorous?

Are you aware of how much money Soros spent to make communism collapse? Now can you tell me exactly how much Sorros has spent in US politics? and is that the best you can do.

Here is a good list of conservatives who spend big time to stop specifically liberals which may be willing to make sure republicans are elected with phony machines, Exxon and all oil companies, all pharma companies, basicly all medical health related, all credit card and banks, all defense related, almost all insurance related, the Coors kid, Walmart Kids, Olin Kid, T Boone Pickens, Hearst Kids, Hunt kids, Mellon kid "richard Mellon Scaife", Lord Black, Bradleys, and so on. again we just start with the olin kid, something like 300 million started spending 30 years ago.

and you have sorros using it for partisan ways, he spent much on stopping communism in the rest of the world. so please inform me of how much he spent vs just Olin.

Soros Funds Fight to Overturn Legal Services Program Reforms

George Soros, billionaire businessman and liberal donor, is best known for spending $27 million of his personal wealth in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat President Bush in the 2004 election. But Soros is also very active in protecting the federal Legal Services Corporation (LSC) and its network of 143 grantees.

It’s not surprising that Soros strongly supports the legal services program as it is rife with liberal activists who for years have used taxpayer dollars to advance their ideological agenda.
http://www.nlpc.org/view.asp?action=viewArticle&aid=792
The take-over is now complete.
Radical Billionaire George Soros has poured millions into the liberal attack machine MoveOn.org. They now say that they own the Democrat party.
The evidence seems clear – MoveOn.org did buy the Democrat Party.
http://www.myfef.org/agenda.htm

Hey and I could really care less about him frankly.
Any of the companies you name (as part of the VRWC) own a voting machine company? Are you saying that theses companies could be “bought” and that the staffs are all right wing “fix election” fanatics? Are you serious? This type of conspiracy would be nearly impossible to cover – you know that don’t you.
And many of the companies you list, en mass, do just fine under Dems including oil, and pharma. If you disagree show we how your buddy Bill punished them.

Awwww Ted...it's not that difficult. You just have to invent some chip that would integrate with all the other hardware on a standard WinTel motherboard and write a driver for it that nobody would ever try to figure out what it did. Then after that, you simply take this election machine - that one day is voting for school levees, the next day for city dog catcher, and the next day a presidential election - to all precincts all over the nation and have it flip votes for republicans.

Everytime I read crap like this in these threads, I feel my IQ dropping a few points. Inventing something is one thing. Getting it to work and deliver results is another matter. Which is why most people who call themselves inventors are poor.

The sad reality as I see it is the simple example in Florida. Politics is as much a team sport and about winning as its about anything else. The Florida incident took about a second before politics moved in over the desire to figure out the vote. IN context to the debate question I severely doubt people would be so trusting of machines used to tally votes if they were made by groups maybe you don’t trust? That’s the crux of the debate. Anything with hardware and software in the modern world is open to corruption and or hacking in a multitude of ways. A group of kids at Stanford in a mock run actually hacked an election, so its not only possible its a reality everyone should be looking to destroy really. Then again its hard to care about an issue, more so when possibly its in your favor not too...

Ted,
First one was a highly right slanted source. second link did not work. but could go to their home, funny you cite a swifty like organization to attack sorros, seems circular. can you tell me who were the funders of this 502 group. Certainly was not sorros was it. Seems their initial start was going after hillary and healthcare. So can we guess at that time the health care industry may have been doing a bit of funding.

Ok from what you posted just one partisan righty who donated every penny his family gave him gave in 30 years, 300 million so not even taking net present value we have 10 to one the liberals are out spent. Now the point being the money is readily available by so many on the right who have a preponderance to fund right wing partisan objectives and you name your top dog for the liberals and it is just one tenth of one on the right. Again what will people do to keep their billions that daddy gave them? Will they buy media to influence people, will they fund swifty types, will they fund paula jones lawsuit, will they fund a job of dean of a university that was a independent council, will they fund Nixon's things like plumbers, will they fund people to jam democrat phone lines, will they fund a programmer to write code to change an election? Ok everyone one of the above has happened. so we have motive, we have demonstrated willingness to break the law, we have one inheritor willing to spend every penny of hundreds of millions to stop democrats. Now that says a lot.

Now buddy Bill as you put it did try to go after pharma, and it is funny the source you picked to go after sorros was started to stop Hillary on healthcare. If I remember correctly the Harry and Louise commercials we were bombarded with at that time of Harry sayng ge Louise do we want the government in charge of our health care? If I remember they set a record back then with ads to the tune of about 60-100 million the single largest expenditure for ads other than for political office of the president at that time.
http://www.nlpc.org/about.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_and_Louise
http://jhppl.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/26/6/1325
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072300-02.htm
gee now that sounds fair... yep and those ads were certainly not political are they. just like the oil company ones before elections of gee how an I going to get to work if there is no gas, we need dr deep to drill.

I will address this bolded part, It is too funny, as noted I have been VP of Engineering and director of R&D. and you???????????? I have been paid to work in those positions because I do not know what I am doing. I have been responsible for over 40 products from concept to production in my career. As I noted I have won several international awards for my technologies/products that are in production. And these are major international shows. gee I must have fooled all of them with my inventions that do not work. one was about 30 judges from 30 different countries who are in the industry. boy but you know so much more than I, and more than the government who has banned pcs from china for classified work. and of cource I have gone out on my own with my inventions. I have sold several and one for over 7 figures. I will say I have used that money to make more in real estate, they say money makes money it does. gee that company was so stupid in your book. The one I am working on now I expect to hit the 8 figures in a few years...

I have made the offer to anyone I will bet 1 million or so in assets that I can make a voting machine that is equivalent to today's machines and no one will be able to stop me from fixing the election with the testing done by today's standards. Since you seem to be a doubting thomas with a vocal ability without any facts to back up your argument, would you like to take me up on it? out of curiosity DR do you work for one of these companies, have them put the money up.

Also if you have the background I will start a thread on an invention that i have come up with that is very advanced. If you have the where with all you will know what level I am just with that disclosure. In fact a professor has won an edison type award for a part of it. I came up with it about 4 years after he did, otherwise I would have applied for the overall patent. Mine solves the human factors of real word use, whereas the part he did is good but not suitable for the 95% of the other need, and again I am not saying what he came up with is not the sign of a genius. this one is too expensive for me to develop until I sell my present one, so putting it in the public domain. But before I do that I need to know you have the math physics engineering to understand it.

Hey I never said big Pharma was not political. They are supported by BOTH parties and if you think you Dem buddies have clean hands – think again.


Note that I did not post the bolded part or the lines above it. Dayton Rocker did so save the rancor for him please.




How many times do I have to agree with you before you get it? YES you and 10,000 other engineers could make a custom machine that could do as you like. But my contention is that most if not all machines are made from COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) mass market, standard, well known, and widely sold motherboards (if you know differently - tell us please). Now I do NOT believe you if you tell me you could take one of these motherboards and alter it to do as you say – in hardware. Software obviously can do anything. Are we clear now?

And then there is the problem of getting away with this conspiracy in a real company. It would have to involve, IMO more then a few people and would be impossible to cover if anyone got suspicious and looked closely at the hardware.

Ted, I think our debate part we disagree on is the partisan funders. You and I are on the same page basically on the chips are hackable and it is only DR that is entering saying otherwise. That part between you and I think is over. I had brought in Olin as a potential partisan big time funder to do these things, I think 300 million not in present day dollars qualifies him a s a good example.. You countered the dems have Sorros, who gave about one tenth, so I then upped it to several more if not hundreds in the right side have motive and have spent significantly more than the only person you can find that has spent big money on the dem behalf.

Your point of the companies spend on both side is what I am differing with. Yes on the record they only typically give 50-30 percent more to republicans in general. the one part is what I am coining is the "TROJEN HORSE" giving to dems. In reality they may give dems 100k-300k and give twice as much to republicans but they do as I have shown in the healthcare which they consider not political donations to a party. And spend in that year more than any presidential candidate spent to run for president. And this is just one industry attacking the democrats. If added in it would be about 10 to one money goes to republican issues attacking democrats. And further why I call it the trojan horse is like murdoch of FOX in a year donated more to dems by 100k or so. But lets see how much an ad on his network costs for 1 minute, is that 100k. So the dems in a year can afford 1 minute of advertising on fox from what ruppy gives the dems in differential.... And he has partisans on his networks attacking dems 24/7/365, add up that time and what is the values of that. Same thing with ABC blasting those partisan right shows on the radio without one partisan liberal at all on the line-up. So my point is the right is well funded and spend 10s-100s of millions to attack dems in just one industry. if they can cut their costs and make sure their boy wins for 1-5 million dollars total what does a business do. Again just showing motive.

And I did not say there was a conspiracy that is always those on the right argument, and funny how they seems to be convicted of them, Nixon's watergate, Reagans arms for hostages, Bush, top level convicted of jamming democrat phone lines, Libby outing a CIA agent cover-up. All were convicted in a court of law and they were involved with many others.. so if you are saying the republicans are above having more than one person involved in criminal activities I say you are just mistaken, history backs up my side.

Certainly Corporate America supports Republicans over Dems for obvious reasons. Although I disagree on you Trojan Horse idea. Certainly Dems can and do effect business and it would be silly to alienate them.

Take a look at where the soft money comes from – PACs and 527. Here we see labor is heavily behind democrats as are liberal orgs. Line MoveOn, and Service Employees INt. In fact it is quite obvious government workers heavily support Dems over Repubs.

So what is your point.

http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtes.a...&cycle=2004

And Dems have the TOP PAC:
http://www.emilyslist.org/newsroom/releases/20070201.html

http://www.fec.gov/press/press2004/2004083...831pacstat.html

In general I agree with, and applaud Inventor and his topic! We are a bit different though, so:



I agree, but the issue is exactly the technical guaranteeing of "no connection (read no manipulation paths) to/from the outside". My reason is only my personal experience in that I have been amazed at the many inventive and nefarious ways that this has been done in all kinds of systems, and I feel it is easier in IC's, low currents and low voltages, than it is in electromechanical (I mis-wrote when I said "only mechanical" earlier because I would include relays, et al), high currents and high voltage designs.



I agree that statistical sampling, etc., are great tools and can provide important information. My concern is that using it during the voting process gives later voters, and heaven forbid, vote manipulators different information when they vote than earlier ones have, so it is "not an equal information" fair vote. Which, I guess I am saying is something I beleive we really want more than anything we would gain gain. We will soon have access to the full real vote, and I know of nothing that we gain by sampling during voting, except increasing TV add time costs.



I'm not hared over on any design, what I'd like is a better requirements definition for voting "equipment", multiple designs attempting to meet them and an open "fly-off" amongst them all, with the allowance of coming up with a hybrid design from this set.



I fear that the ID problem is part of the vote fraud problem, and that it is indeed much bigger too. I truly hope you turn out to be correct that it is not a big part.

First, I think it is highly unlikely you or anyone could pull this off. These systems are neither created or maintained in a vacuum. In a multi-developer environment, there is nothing in a system that goes unnoticed. So, even if you managed to insert a chip onto a standard Windows CE system and installed drivers, it would never get by somebody like me. So, I'm not saying you don't have the technical skills to create a hackable device like this. I'm saying you can't implement it.

Your conspiracy would have to include all your co-workers (unless you think local, state, and the federal government are going to award contracts to some propeller head in a garage) so your nefarious plan could be implemented.

Then, you'd need to activate this trojan at each precinct. These machines are used for all types of elections. You would need to activate them to swing votes for whichever issue you want to favor.

So, assuming you got all these people to help you commit this large scale federal offense, it would have to swing votes while never touching audit votes that happen repeatedly through an election at every precinct. In other words, it would have to work perfectly during audits (completely random and unknown to you), but swing votes all other times.

Inventor, I don't care if you were a VP of engineering or whatever - I guarantee you I would figure this out before it ever left the door and there are people way, way smarter than either of us that would never let this happen either.

Again, my point is not technical ability - it's implementation. You idea(s) are too farfetched to have any plausible chance of success.

When the government starts awarding voting system contracts to one-man operations in basements, I may be willing to revisit portions of my stance. Until then, it's completely wacky on several orders of magnitude.

DR,
I have to again say no conspiracy is needed. you seem to harbor on that direction. Which is fine for you but do not assume I need one when I have told you many times I can do it and now I will tell you I know that the majority of Engineers I know would also have an easy time with it.

as far as your teamwork of these companies, we know as a fact they hired and had working for them republican leaning with various felony convictions. If I remember correctly one had about 20 or so and he was hired at a top level. there were other felons also working there. what a quality team we had there. again these or one of these guys was convicted of putting in backdoors to steal before.

Next point just to show how incompetent or how corrupt the people in these companies are in their so called team...a programmer Clinton Curtis was asked by a representative of Florida
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Curtis
tom Feeney to write a program to steal votes. If I remember correctly Curtis said or testified he did it for Feeney in one day. now that must have slipped by you and your team that it is that easy to steal an election. one day... and what did this Feeney do did he notify congress? the FBI? law enforcement? the media? no he ran for election and won his first federal position. gee how bout that...

we also know how inept these people ( I refuse to call them engineers as they can not be to be this inept) at these voting machine companies are because as we now virtually anyone can flip the votes on these machines even today with minimal instruction. That is strange that one could conclude there is some kind of expertise with these companies years later that these incompetent inept idiots can not secure a simple closed system in 8 years....

implementation seems to be darn easy to this date with these incompetent fools... some of which are convicted felons in the group.

I had not heard this. Can you post the details?

Also I still feel a printed sheet that the voter looks at and hands in – and is kept for a check, would solve most concerns.



as far as your teamwork of these companies, we know as a fact they hired and had working for them republican leaning with various felony convictions.


So you feel it would be republican tampering and not Democrat?? Why??

I have seen the clip where howard Dean I think he flips the vote in 60 seconds on TV. I saw it on utube but could not find it on Utube here is another source.

http://sunmt.org/votelinks.html


http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3719



http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm


http://www.votefraud.org/

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVtsxstudy.pdf
http://news.com.com/New+fears+of+security+...amp;tag=nl.e703

you ask why,, why republican
Diebold Facts - From a Dkos Diary


here is a certifier...

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.htm...DA80894DF404482
January 4, 2007, Thursday
By CHRISTOPHER DREW; IAN URBINA CONTRIBUTED REPORTING. (NYT); National Desk

You lost me.

Tabulator, hackable via modem, in seconds - None were connected via modem.

Show me machines that were in place with tampered hardware or software. I have no doubt it could be done but hasn’t been – so the conspiracy sites as not interesting to me. Nothing I see proves a thing about the Diebold machines.

Yes machines can be “hacked” – But in transport?? How is that – and would be undetectable later?

And again you seem to avoid the question of how you conclude Republicans are doing this to Democrats and not the other way round.


Has anyone anywhere found a "hacked" voting machine that did not work correctly? Can you show me a picture of that machine(s) - certainly there are plenty ount there.

No they haven't and they never will.

For every nutjob willing to go to prison, there are a thousand that would not allow it. For example, if you worked at a company that you rely on for a paycheck that pays your mortgage, car payment, etc, would you look away while a co-working was making efforts that if caught, would put your company out of business and out you of a job?

Do you beleive that republicans are smart enough to pull this off without a trace and never getting caught while democrats are too stupid to figure something to easy to find out?

You'd have to beleive all this crap to beleive stuff being spouted here.

inventor uses sources such as Clint Curtis. This guy claimed he had a meeting with some congresscritter that asked him to write software that would fix votes. The company he worked for said that meeting never happened. The guy at Brad Blog is trying to find his Drudge/Monica moment and hung his hat on the word (because nothing else physically exists) on Clint Curtis.

Now, let me give you a couple technical details of how Curtis claimed to do this. First, he used Visual Basic - the most bloated application development software you can use. Don't get me wrong - I love Visual Basic and write software using it everyday. But trying to hide that on a system is like trying to hide an elephant in your living room. I'm pretty sure Diebold's software was written in VB, so all the runtimes would be there. But one cursory glance of the task manager would show something that doesn't belong. On a dedicated system with limited access, this would take about 2 seconds.

So, someone would need load this software and make it run on startup -without nobody knowing. Then, after touching a few areas on the screen, it needs to redistribute votes for what I can only assume, a hard-coded candidate. Meaning it could only work for one election because these machines are used over and over for many issues. Then, because the database is a double entry system, it would need to alter the database in a way that made it undetectable.

But here's why I know Curtis is exagerrating his skills: he claims to have done this using string arrays. That is the most cumbersome method you could use to deal with lots of records. String data is the slowest data to deal with. Any credible programmer would use a hash table such as a CMap (in C++) or a collection data object (class objects). Nevermind that a real programmer would never have used VB to try to steal something, but also use novice programming methods to do it.

To give him credit, Brad Blog offered me the opportunity to publish my rebuttal to Clint Curtis' claims on his website, but I don't have the time to fend off the legion of followers who wouldn't believe the truth if it fell on their foot. Everytime some thinks they've found a problem, this is what always follows.

And lastly, Clint Curtis never claimed he wrote software that was undetected. In fact he has been quoted as saying what I've said: code that alters votes could never be hidden in existing source code.

Again, if contracts were awarded to lonely guys living in their mom's basement, this discussion would be different. But that's not how it works. People much smarter than me or inventor look at this code and make sure it is right because they need to keep their jobs. Face it, software devleopers aren't in high demand anymore and software jobs are a lot harder to find. Then the election commission brute tests the software and validates the results. THEN, they audit the machines constantly during the day to make sure their audit votes get cast correctly. So, inventor and Clint Curtis' systems would have to cast votes incorrectly as needed but work perfectly during audit votes.

Oh yeah, and all this would need to run across all precincts to affect the outcome. This is implausible on so many levels, it's unbelievable. But people beleive it because they don't know technical details like some of us engineers do. Could voter fraud happen? As I've stated many times before, of course. People have been stuffing ballot boxes since democracy began. Locally, crap happens all the time. But on a systematic scale that affects the outcome of an election? Not possible. Republicans aren't that smart and democrats aren't that dumb.

So as asked, yes - I know all about Clint Curtis, Bev Harris, Andy Stephenson, and the whole litany of people that make ("made" in the case of Andy) their living exposing vote fraud that they have yet to prove.

What's next inventor? You going to use Bev Harris as a source? lol Dude, I have the diebold software, have gotten pretty familar with it, and have studied this issue as much as anybody. You have along way to go if you want to make a credible argument with the mainstream thieves (Bev Harris has since sued a precinct and pocketed the money). I'd stick with your hidden hardware on an off the shelf motherboard idea. It's almost as absurd, but it is a new idea and you get bonus points for that...

edited to add:
I forgot to mention that even the mainstream kooks don't beleive the voting machines can be meaningfully hacked systematically any longer. They've moved their argument to the central tabulators that compile all the results. This is an entirely different debate that although extremely unlikely (smart republicans - dumb democrats), isn't entirely absurd.

I agree. To have the “ability” to do something and finding willing participants who can keep their mouths shut is another story.




And this is the point isn’t it. Like the WTC Tower theories the proof is always out there- and you may be able to make a system do anything with enough alteration – but hiding it is another matter. And lets remember the machines are not returned to the maker but kept. If there is a question of wrongdoing the machines can be examined and the truth, as you say, would come out.

There was a recent Numbers TV episode on this subject – did you see it?

That was my original point - implementation. A invention isn't worth $.02 if you can make it work. And trying to fix an election on a systematic scale is next to impossible because nobody is smart enough to get something over on many,many, many very intelligent people looking for this type of stuff. And even if this were somehow possible, more than one person would have to know to make it work. That's the deal breaker if the first point isn't enough for you.

You would have to look elsewhere for more plausible areas to fix an election and that would be somewhere in the reporting process. There are less people involved there.


Nope - never saw it. Is that the show where Bernard from the Santa Clause movies plays in? What was their analysis?

It was about a plot to alter machines that involved changing the operating system (lots s luck there!). Of course they got caught.


And I agree with you – most conspiracies that would require more than a couple of people cannot be kept secret. The recent story about secret trucks leaving Iraq for Syria before the invasion is an example. Few people were involved and none (thet have talked) know what was in the trucks – but the story came out. Could have been the WMD move.

Dayton Rocker. Your conspiracy insinuations of area 51ish are getting old. Do you know there is a area 51. Again there was a conspiracy by Nixon to silence his enemies, there was a Watergate. In a recent election cycle three high level republicans were convicted of jamming democratic phone lines, because they kept their mouths shut it took how long to convict them and we still do not know who they were calling in the white house for some reason... And they had 20 or so calls to the white house that the white house will not reveal the person who was answering that line. Gee over a minor phone election jamming scheme.

But more importantly this can also be done via one person, I was not hired as VP of Engineering of an electronics company, have a Engineering degree, have been Director of R&D of a northern Cal tech company, sold patents in the 7 figure area, because I am not technically compitent. I say I can do it and you say it can not be done, hmm just because you do not have the expertise does not mean it can not be done. The fact is people have demonstrated it can be done with existing systems.

Again I have challenged you and/or the company making the machines to put up or shut up. I can with the present verification system steal any election without being caught and am willing to put up about 2 million in assets/funds to prove it. Using the exact same methods used today of verification I will make my own machine change the vote by the same percent as has been changed now. And you will not be able to stop it with using today’s used verification procedures.

The fact that machine manufacturers had convicted felons on their payroll is telling, one with software backdoor theft backgrounds. As I have told you I have friends that have worked for companies that make machines for the casino industry, they can NOT have felons working for them. Are our voting machines less important than what casinos demand in security?

As far as Bev Harris goes as being a source, it is interesting. Considering she has no technical training what so ever it is telling that this lady who probably could not operate a computer 10 years ago can go in on many systems and steal an election without being caught with the present system in place. Now that says volumes about the security of our election systems… Do you have the expertise to steal votes? you claim it can not be done so no you don't... an election? Well she has and does. So who is the better source you or her. Hmm one who says it can not be done or one that has demonstrated it. Kinda shows you do not know what you are talking about.

Now another issue is the companies making states sign non-disclosures. This is not done in any industry I am aware of, from what I have heard they say because they do not want their systems intellectual property competitive advantage removed. This is laughable. Vote count software is so simple it is ridiculous. It is simply put info in a display and take input from the user and count. Calculators have been able to count for more than 40 years. All this does is prevent problems from being aired/discussed. Why do they not want the problems aired.

Also I did not see one company allowing full disclosure to the dems when they held the hearings. In fact they had the opportunity to testify under oath but they just were no shows…. We are talking about democracy here. Something I would consider important. Curtis showed up and testified under oath, did not see his detractors doing the same. That is quite telling. Yes love those people who make claims publicly attacking people but when they have the same chance to testify under oath seems the critics run and hide under the rocks.

DR in the essence of intellectual honesty of this subject, can you tell us if you or a relative receive any money form anyone in the voting machine companies or a political party of any kind. I do not and I do not donate money to any that I can remember. (Ie it is possible I gave 20 bucks 20 years ago). I do go out on vote drives and go house to house and give voter registration forms to any person whether republican, democrat, or other.

I don't like the idea of foreign made computers (be they made in China or Scotland) being used in our electoral process. However, for any tampering to happen regardless of where the machine was made, it would have to get past our own human controls.

I am curious, How can this vote tampering happen under our current system, when you consider how election authorities are usually setup? For example, in St. Louis County Missouri, from top to bottom there is a equal number of declared Republicans and Democrats and everything is done there with them looking over each other's shoulders. For tampering to happen, one political side would have to allow it to happen for the other. I don't think that is very likely.

I understand there are various ways any computerized piece of equipment can be altered to do almost anything. However, to accept that this is happening in my county, I'd have to accept that both major parties are complicit in it at every level from pre-election testing to polling place election judges, to post election results gathering. I Just don't see one party allowing the other to get away with it.

I assume it's possible that not all areas handle their election authorities the same way, but at least in my area I can't see this happening.

I volunteered to be an election judge and was asked "are you Democrat or Republican" to which I answered neither, and was told then I could not be one. Though I have issues with this (and that's a potential topic of it's own) it supports the idea that they pair up Democrats and Republicans every step of the way, as that was the explanation as to why I had to be one or the other. Also, I've know a few people who volunteer during elections. It was amusing to hear that several new folks asked if one goes for a smoke, or a potty break would someone from the other political side have to go with them.

So, though there are technologies out there that could manipulate election results, how do those technologies get past the human factor at our election authorities? Though you could possibly put a +5 on one candidate and a -5 on another in the programming but when the board tested the machine pre-election, and cast 10 votes for each only to discover one had 15 and the other had 5 they would call in the Calvary immediately.

I am pretty sure this has been described in detail on other pages here is a quick overview.

Very simply there are no serious federal guidelines to give manufacturers any forced guideline for these machines that would or could stop fraud. Even right now the manufacturers will not give out their source code to experts the dems want to see it. also there are software/firmware changes implemented by the manufacturers in machines the day before elections. these are also not verified by any objective means.

and in a very simple case do you know of the program minesweeper that comes with windows. did you know there is a backdoor in minesweeper. most people do not. well anyone who knows of this backdoor can cheat. So how does one learn about backdoors? Only from the backdoor maker/programmer. So if the backdoor maker does not tell the dems what it is can the dems use the same backdoor. Absolutely not feasible. Hitting a string of inputs like windows key, "h", f1, home is not going to be discovered by any testing that goes on by independent companies as done by todays standards.

lets use some logic or common sense. Now we know as a fact the manufacturers have refused to put on printed human readable and machine readable receipts. It has been known in this industry for over 20-30 years of this issue of potential vote fraud without them. Yet they refuse to make these machines print these receipts, I have posted links that these printers have been in ATMs, gas pumps for 20-30 years and I have linked to one that costs about $30.00 that is used in gas pumps. We also know one can buy a printer at a computer store now for $100.00. So why would one not put in printers. easy because they do not want verified elections. there is absolutely no reasonable reason not to have them. I invent and lead design teams and make products, this is simply not overlooked by accident. no one is that much of a moron, only theives would purposly leave them out.

You may not have read but I am an Engineer, have been VP of Engineering and I can tell you there is NO way for anyone to verify any electronic vote system with any high reliability of confidence. anyone who says there is a way I can tell you does not have a real engineering background.

I have proposed that the universities write the software for the elections and the machine prints it out. then all parties to the election bring their own scanners and these votes are scanned and deposited in a lock box. all tallies the university one, the various parties, green, purple, dem, republican, militia party all have to match on the spot. If not we have a manual vote recount on the spot. these votes are computer print outs and have only the voted for on it like GORE, thus no interpretation so counting votes is then simple. also each party stamps the back of the ballot after they scan it with a special stamp they brought and an ink color that is decided on by their respective parties in a sealed envelope that is brought to opened at the election by the representative party. This system will save us a ton of money...

inventor, while your background as an engineer and patent holder and multi-millionaire is indeed fascinating. could you please actually respond to what DaytonRocker and others have posted, rather than your tangential rants. Specifically, I'd really like to hear what you have to say about how it would be possible to pre-program a voting machine for one specific issue / candidate, when that machine is used many times in multiple elections, audited throughout election day, etc.

For instance, when I vote for my alderman in a run-off next Tuesday, we will use the same machine that we used in the primary and the general election. How would that machine be programmed for the 3 different elections, plus the next one in 2 years / 4 years, etc.?

Also, maybe you can show us where Bev Harris used her minibar key and stole multiple elections without being caught, because then we can put her in jail.

Thanks.

Inventor, perhaps I am missing something. I accepted that the machines could be tampered with, as can any machine.

What I was asking was how would that tampering be effective when Election Boards made up of Democrats and Republicans oversea pre-election tests, election operation, and post election results tabulation.

With both sides looking over each other's shoulders, how would someone effectively manipulate the results?

Also, once my Election Board purchased the machines, they keep them in their secure storage and their personnel (again with pairs of democrats and republicans) add the candidates, ballot issues, etc each election. So how would any manufacturer tampering be able to manipulate the results.

In my area, municipal elections are non-partisan, so no one claims to be a Democrat, Republican or Other. Other elections with parties involved list the candidates alphabetically, not by party, so members of one party are not always in the same position over or under the other on the ballot. So again, how could you add or subtract weight to a favored party before you knew who was running and where they would appear on the ballot ?

For me the question is not if the machines can be manipulated or not as I think it is safe to say that any machine can be. The real issue IMHO is if that manipulation could go on under the scrutiny of the bi-partisan election boards, and how it could be done after the first election the machine were used in.

BTW: In Missouri, only electronic voting machines that have a paper printed record can be used.

Because people believing in this nonsense would have to concede 100% of the republicans involved in this felonious endeavor are smart enough to pull this off without anybody getting caught while 100% of democrats looking for this are too stupid to figure it out/let it happen.

Avi Ruben (from John Hopkins) took Diebold to task showing how it could be done. Diebold responding by asking him how many elections he has worked because there is no way he could have.

The answer was ZERO.

Avi Ruben, followed by Bev Harris, took this ball while ignoring every election control that is in place. Finally, Avi Ruben worked an election and actually conceded many of his fears couldn't happen because of those controls.

By the way, these machines have no external input devices. No mouse, keyboard, etc. You'd need to activate some trojan via the screen. And that software would have to run without a process handle AND without causing the blue screen of death when it conflicted with the OS stock drivers fighting for the same resources.

But I'm sure nobody is smart enough to get a task count (number of process handles) and do CRC checks to make sure the kernal hasn't been touched. Because we'd never be smart enough to figure that out.

for your first question I do not care if you have 100 PhDs in EE sitting over the machine I can get anything past them.

Again I gave a great example of the code kicking in on only presidential election years (gee do we know these years by any chance) (oh we do know there is a republican and democrat in the race and they are designated as such) and only when the voting rate is for 10 hours straight at a certain x rate. again there is no testing done for such a hook. I would do this on about 20% of the machines for example. I would vary the percentages of the change also. so please do tell me the probability of you catching this. oh you can not.... too funny no human input needed for this to execute. and gives a false sense of security during other elections. That is just one way it can be done.

As far as your assumption there are people looking over shoulders that is just not how it is done. You are aware of I think in Ohio in one precinct they claimed that there was a notification by homeland security and they took all the equipment and did not allow any independent viewing. Then it was asked of homeland security was there a terrorist threat. and low and behold there was none. geeeee.

and someone who believes touch screens can not have hooks because there are not keyboards is not understanding what input is. That is an input and I can have three taps on the top right with 2 on the bottom left kick in a backdoor. BTW my fist product I designed out of college 20 years or so ago was a touch tablet device, basically that is how todays touch screens work. That was from scratch... pun intended...

Now as far as printed receipts go, I was very clear, the voter needs to get it in his hand and verify it is what he voted for and then several scanners scan his vote and only he deposits it in the always watched locked box. In my state of Nevada we now have printed receipts on all of our machines, and I could easily steal the election because the machine can spoil a vote and the voter does not remove it.

Again my simple less expensive method is basically the best that can be done, it is less costly. Close to that has been proposed by some think tanks, I added the extra scanners brought in by the respective parties and the marking the back of the ballot by the both parties and the person that gave the voter the initial ballot for a virtual elimination of machine fraud. again one can reason the only reason these companies will not make or do this is for sinister reasons. It is less costly by far.

DaytonRocker
I have disclosed I have no conflicts of interest here, I get no money or any kind or my relatives from any vote machine interest company what so ever. I have asked you to disclose if you have such a or any conflict of interest. Can you do me a favor and do so here. You do not have to disclose the specifics if you do not want to obviously. But if you do I am done answering your questions till that company puts up that couple million in a bet. If they are willing I am sure I can find several others to up the amount, my friends would love to double their money. As this would be the easiest bet I have ever made. Again I will make a machine several and we will have a state do a test and a mock election just like is done today and you will not be able to stop me from stealing the election. again only the exact same verification as used today. and needless to say the above method I posted will make me lots more money...

I work for Diebold and I'm getting a kick out of these replies....oh wait. Wrong website.

No - I don't work for any evoting machine company or have ever worked at any company like that. I don't consult with them, don't talk to them, and wouln't know anybody there if they dropped a voting machine on my foot. Your paranoia runs pretty deep.

Tell me again how you will get into multiple precincts and multiple machines to tap your screens into felonious bliss? You'd need to do that to a lot of them to swing an election.

Darn, I wanted to make some easy money, this having to do a ton of marketing to sell patents takes time.

anyway you paranoia seems to me to be getting old. If I were you I would suggest you keep your term to yourself.

Now, reread my last post. I gave you a algorithm that will steal elections that is not detectable by present inspections and will work for every presidential election.. If you still can not figure it out I will email it as posted to several programmers and see if it is my explanation. I think is is simple from a tech position... again this program can be written by one programmer and I bet in one day. do you have significant assets to make it worth my while.

So, your 'hook' code will be able to work only in presidential years, before you know the candidates' names (who wins the primary), before you know what "punch #" is assigned to the candidates (who are drawn in random order), before you know how many third parties will be in a given election (varies from year to year). It will work in multiple precincts and wards, even though those precincts are shifted from year to year, as cities re-map their wards. It will not activate during municipal or special elections, it will not be detectable as the machines are audited throughout election day. Fantastic.

So, I guess the question is - how are YOU going to fix the election? How are you going to gain access to the hardware and software?

this is very easy already disclosed. If I am one programmer at the company making the unit all I have to do is spend one day. And yes I think I am smart enough to know what the exact day for the election is for the next 10 years. what is it the second Tuesday every 4 years. Whatever it is it is set. Is that that hard for anyone to understand. OK then how do I know which candidate is which, OK sorry I did not explain, in the tech industry this is very easy to understand, I generally assume everyone had to take a programming class at some point, but that also means I should not assume people remember it..

Vote machines are simple in the fact that we can use either databases, spread sheets, arrays and so on for use for the future/multiple use. IE we do not throw the machine away after every election so we have fields you fill in.

So one would be enter the data in a prescribed format like president is chosen, then it asks for how many entries. Then it may ask for first position on the screen, name, then it would ask for PARTY.... ta da.......... yes you have to enter party....

and because the programmer knows where this is data is stored it can be looked at any point by the software/firmware. In other words if you have on the screen the name and political party when voting it is available for any logical conditions for the programmer to use for these conditions.. This machine does not care if it is used in the north pole or NYC it can be activated only when I say on these certain days every 4 years. Other than that the loop is skipped.

Now this is just one example that can not be stopped with the present way a machine is verified. again we can not afford to monitor all the machines anyway. and this is just one way and there are many more... just like there are so many viruses out there there are just as many ways to cheat when you are the manufacturer of the machine. this is done when the machine is manufactured. IE if cheating I would hire a felon with experience in backdoors to cheat also.

so what is the argument from the opposing side on why we should not do the university system with print out?? and each party has their own scanner? that costs less money is almost impossible to cheat specially in massive ways.

Inventor, you have no idea what you are talking about. There's no other way to say it.

Whether you can design some component to act in a way is one thing. As I said at the beginning of this debate, implementing it is another matter.

You have no idea how a Windows CE based system works from a software/driver/hardware interface standpoint. You have no idea how databases are designed. These are not trivial matters.

In one post, you reject my conspiracy requirements and then in another post you say you'll simply tap the screen in some secret sequence and the election is hacked. Even if the election commission allowed you to work in a vacuum and you were able to make one machine count votes anyway you want, one machine cannot affect an election - especially a presidential election. This would have to be to many, many machines. And this is why it can't happen. Republicans aren't that smart and democrats aren't that dumb. The scrutiny these machines recieve from people much smarter and more technically capable than either of us would never let this happen. And if you think you can just waltz into any voting precinct anywhere in the country and start tapping screens without notice, then there's not much point in debating this issue any further from you.

All "vulnerabilities" shown by any of the black box voting groups completely ignore controls in place that would never allow this to happen. You and the rest of these groups act as if you can do whatever you want in a vacuum and nobody would ever pay attention.

As I said before, target the machines that compile/report results. At least your ideas get within the realm of abstract plausibility.

And you never said how your hacked machine that switches votes would be able to accurately record the audit votes that happen throughout the course of the election on all machines in all precincts. I'm waiting...

I do not dispute and never have that such a machine could be made – but not by one person and if done it would be a conspiracy involving numerous people. Also IMO there is no way to make a machine that would falsify a vote and be undetectable later. The machine would not hold up to scrutiny and would not be returned to anyone to be “fixed” such that the fraud could not be discovered. Do you have a story or picture of a “fixed” voting machine?



Non-disclosures imply “proprietary” information is to be passed on. What exactly