Former DIEBOLD technician CHRISTOPHER HOOD explains the EASE with which then DIEBOLD PRESIDENT BOB UROSEVICH had his technicians install "software patches" into critical vote-counting machines on the eve of the 2002 and 2004 elections:
AS we contemplate the possibility that Democrats might take enough Republican "red state" senate seats this 2007 election to gain a FILIBUSTER-PROOF majority in the US Senate, we hate to sound like back-biting complainers, but THE ENTIRE OUTCOME of ELECTION 2008 DEPENDS ON ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES that ARE KNOWN to be vulnerable to HACKING and VOTE-RIGGING... but after TWO YEARS of having a virtual dictatorial congressional majority in the US House (a "dictatorial" winner-take-all majority that is the inherent nature of the US House of Representatives), SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI has DONE EXACTLY NOTHING to address this critical issue at the core of America's democracy.
And, Ms. Pelosi's PRETENDED IGNORANCE to the contrary, THIS IS _NOT_ A COMPLICATED ISSUE: Using PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE designed, built, tested, run, AND ADMINISTERED by REPUBLICAN-OWNED vote-machine companies, IT IS FAR TOO EASY to SWIPE THOUSANDS, or TENS OF THOUSANDS, of votes, AND LEAVE NO TRACE.
We here at DemNationUSA have a cell-phone with a built-in 1.3 megapixel camera, with a 1 gigabyte SD card solid-state "flash" memory card that was purchased separately and installed in the camera's easy, slide-in SD card port. That SD card carries approximately 1,000 1-megapixel photographs. IF someone were to leave such a cell phone sitting on a bar while went to dance for a few minutes, it only take another person at the bar two or three moments - a few seconds - to flip the phone's SD port cover open with a fingernail, depress the SD card one-tenth of an inch, have it pop out and remove it. IF the camera's owner came back to the bar, they would find the cell phone sitting right where they left it. It would still function perfectly, it would still have all its phone numbers saved in the camera's built-in memory, and the camera function of the cell-phone would still work, saving a limited number of photos to the phone's same internal memory. But the 1,000 photos and sound-clips you had saved to the phone previously , would now be gone... VANISHED.
Computer memories work the exact same way, and of course you do not have to physically remove a computer's hard-drive or flash ("chip," or "solid state") memory to wipe out ALL the files stored in that memory... you can simply ERASE those stored files by deleting them, overwriting them, or re-formating the memory.
THAT is EXACTLY what DIEBOLD, ES&S, and SEQUOIA voting computers have done in the past 4 national - presidential and congressional - elections. In EVERY instance of THOSUANDS of "DISAPPEARED" votes and SWITCHED vote outcomes, the outcomes have ALWAYS BENEFITTED Republican candidates. The statistical likelihood that these suspicious voting outcomes would ALWAY benefit one part - the Republican Party - with NOT ONE INSTANCE where a Republican candidate has ever had any reason to file complaint about vote-swiping vote tallies benefiting Democratic candidates, is statistically a huge number, a MILLION-to-ONE _against_ the propabability that this was a random outcome.
The above three paragraphs are EXACTLY THE IMPROBABLE, million-to-one against voting outcomes that SPEAKER PELOSI, Senate Majority 'leader' HARRY REID, and the ENTIRE 'Democratic' "Leadership" PRETEND NOT TO NOTICE!
And now, on the eve of election 2008, we have DOZENS of WITNESSES - SIGNED witnesses UNDER OATH - coming out of the past 8 years of election rigging, testifying to what they know and have seen about those RIGGED, MANIPULATED, and ALTERED voting outcomes.... AND STILL Speaker Pelos and the 'Democratic' "leadership" PRETEND NOT TO NOTICE!
This is "LEADERSHIP" by INCOMPETENCE! This is VOTE-RIGGING on a MASSIVE scale!
This is the "Democrat" Party _ENABLING_ the Republican Party to ASSAULT and DISENFRANCHISE _TENS OF THOUSANDS_ of Democratic voters!
The above process of COMPUTUERIZED ELECTION-RIGGING was EASY to explain using the cell-phone camera & SD card analogy. Of course a truly determined hacker could not merely steal you cell phone's SD chip, but they could REPLACE it with another SD card, one that had 1,000 OTHER photos on it. Heck, if that replaced memory-chip card had child pornography photos on it, you could now be ARRESTED and SENT TO PRISON merely for being in possession of your own camera-phone!
The process of SECURING digital, computerized election results is ALMOST AS EASY TO EXPLAIN. For ALL of us ASSUME that there are STRINGENT STANDARDS of COMPUTER NETWORK SECURITY on our BANKING and FINANCIAL accounts. And indeed THERE ARE stringent, relentlessly enforced, relentlessly investigated standards for NETWORK SECURITY in the banking and financial industries, because, as is portrayed in James Bond and other drama and crime movies, there is a huge temptation for criminals to swipe thousands, millions, or tens-of-millions of dollars from one account, and transfer them to another account where the counterfeiter or hacker can withdraw the funds.
AT NO TIME have America's VOTING MACHINE COMPANIES _EVER_ HAD TO DEMONSTRATE NETWORK SECURITY and resistance to hackers that financial networks have to demonstrate every day.
Indeed, there is an every day precedent for the need to safeguard against SOFTWARE HACKING that would enable altered election outcomes: America's GAMBLING INDUSTRY. State regulators in Nevada and other states that permit slot machines exercise RIGOROUS MACHINE CODE INSPECTIONS of EACH and EVERY slot machine, because of the inherent temptation to INSERT A FEW LINES OF CODE INTO THE computerized gambling machines, would would allow the software hacker to __SKIM__ a portion of the machine's proceeds to an invisible file.
This process or technology is NOT "theoretical" - already state regulators in Nevada, going over machine code (software) for computerized slot machines, HAVE found lines of code inserted that DIVERT some portion of some machine's take, or allowed the hacker to operate the machine in a manner which would trigger a winning pull of the handle.
Below, more video testimony of the EASE with which America's CRITICAL VOTING MACHINES can be HACKED by the companies that produce those machines... WITH ALMOST NO government oversight, and certainlY NO government oversight of the machine's PROPRIETARY, "private" machine code.
The Democrats have been completely behind the eight-ball of a full decade of the world's rush in to the COMPUTERIZED, PC, tele-COMMUNICATIONS, and electronic VOTING era. CRITICAL ELECTIONS at the mercy of private, Republican affiliated companies is NO SAFEGUARD on the right to vote which undergirds America's democracy.
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Stephen Spoonamore testifies to the EASE with which COMPUTERIZED VOTING TOTALS can be HACKED, and winning voter margins CAN BE SWITCHED to the LOSING candidate, stealing elections from the winning candidate and their voters.
More on Mr. Spoonamores NETWORK SECURITY GROSS VULNERABILITY of America's proprietary voting machines TO HACKING and company VOTE-RIGGING....
http://www.alternet.org/democracy/94895/republican_computer_security_expert_explains_why_electronic_voting_can_never_be_trusted/
