The Princeton study showed that data on the memory pack could be altered by a device as small as a pack of cigarettes, or easier still a laptop or “palmtop” computer of almost any sort. Electronic alteration is simple because there is no encryption of the data in the pack – also known as an “electronic ballot box”. See YOUTUBE 07:12 minutes: Sequoia Part 5: Manipulating Sequoia Results Cartridges could be easy in Maricopa County, AZ. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bZvqTKOtjI [151]

The Diebold optical scanners are roughly the same vintage and shared the same flaw. In the HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy”, Black Box Voting and their consultant Harri Hursti went to Leon County FL and proved you could alter the contents of their memory cards, rigging them before election day so as to have negative votes for one candidate and positive votes for another yet still show “no votes entered” if you check it on election morning by running a zero tape. Such an electronically pre-stuffed ballot box will take votes from one candidate and give them to the other, while printing an end-of-day tape at the close of polls that will look correct.

In a state such as Arizona where at least a small hand-count happens, one would think this would be too risk – unless of course the county has made undetectable access to the paper ballots trivially easy....

The Diebold memory card physical format was very obscure and the BBV team had to search hard for an effective reader, buying a device online normally involved in measuring moisture in cornfields. The EEPROM technology used by Sequoia doesn't have that problem: while the connectors used for the memory pack are proprietary, the internal memory chip is a standard device. Given access to just one pack and a few minutes quality time with a screwdriver and continuity tester, it's possible to trace the pins from the standard EEPROM chip holder to the connections Sequoia creates. From there, making an adapter between a writer device for such chips and the Sequoia connector means about $10 worth of Radio Shack parts and half an hour with a soldering iron. Build just one and it could hack as many cartridges as you'd like in rapid order.

As a final insult, while state law requires these memory packs to be brought in from the field by two people (one from each party), that clause is routinely ignored. While at a receiving station watching them come in, a number of pollworkers attempted to hand these off to us. The cartridges were in plastic bags with paper seals that can be peeled open if you do it slow enough, and can be re-sealed with no evidence of tampering.

11. “TRANSPORTING THE MEMORY PACK” from Secretary of State Procedures manual page 143 Approved October 2007

In precincts where transmittal is not done by modem:

* place it in the container provided along with the tape,
* for accessible voting units with a paper receipt, place the receipt in the container
* seal the container,
* the inspector and judges sign the seal, then
* at least two designated election officials representing voters of different political parties shall deliver the container to the designated receiving site.

NO SEALS, 1 PERSON DELIVERING
Here is a video we shot that proves that the above procedure was not done: http://blip.tv/file/1437202/ [152]

12. CENTRAL TABULATOR SOFTWARE AND SEQUOIA ISSUES IN GENERAL

Sequoia has broken a number of rules regarding voting system certification in general. Some of these are specific to the central tabulator (WinEDS) and ballot preparation software (BPS). Voting system software is supposed to be reviewed at the Federal level and then in AZ again (barely) at the Secretary of State's office. Sequoia has very deliberately avoided oversight on several key components.

HERE ARE THREE KEY POINTS WHERE SEQUOIA HAS VIOLATED THE LAW:

1. Sequoia uses Windows CE ("Compact Edition") on one component (the "HAAT", "Hybrid Activator, Accumulator & Transmitter") yet didn't declare Windows CE's customized code to the Federally qualified test labs. The National Institute of Science and Technology recently de-certified one of the three original labs (Systest) and in their letter stripping Systest of the ability to test voting systems, NIST says:

The Windows CE customizing files were not reported as being reviewed as non-COTS source files. [ed: "Commercial Off The Shelf" or COTS software doesn't need full test lab review where custom stuff does.] An open question exists of how to report these files but the presence and review of these Windows CE customizing files needs to be reported to identified [sic] that they were missed.

In other words, NIST is blaming the lab for not catching on that WinCE is heavily customized by design - this "mini version" of Windows is a "kit" Microsoft puts out that the hardware vendor needs to complete rather than a complete system. However, the rules say the vendor such as Sequoia has to declare what's custom and what's not...so the sin is on both the labs for stupidity (three labs blew it in this fashion) and on Sequoia for fraud.

See also NIST's letter at: http://www.eac.gov/extlnk/lnkframehead.htm?http%3A//vote.nist.gov/NVLAP/... [153]
...on page 18 (as Acrobat numbers pages) section 5.10.1.

2. For their next trick, Sequoia has claimed that BPS is passing "software" from that uncertified system (BPS) and pumping it into a certified system (WinEDS). After our February analysis of the Maricopa operation we received a public records response to our query for the Sequoia database (including BPS data) drafted by Sequoia's vice president of certification. That letter says that the BPS data being transferred into WinEDS contains “proprietary software”. Even if you accept that BPS doesn't need certification, there's no possible way a court will support an uncertified program pumping software into a certified system. Nobody can be allowed to do that if the system is to retain any credibility whatsoever.

3. Sequoia claims BPS doesn't need cert under the 2002 federal standards . . . and so far the EAC and AZ SecState's office has backed that concept. However, that flies in the face of the federal definition of "voting system" as codified in HAVA:

SEC. 301 42 USC 15481.(6)(b) VOTING SYSTEM DEFINED — In this section,the term "voting system" means—

(1) the total combination of mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic equipment (including the software, firmware, and?documentation required to program, control, and support the equipment) that is used—
(a) to define ballots;
(B) to cast and count votes;
(c) to report or display election results; and
(D) to maintain and produce any audit trail information;

BPS "DEFINES BALLOTS" as the Maricopa County elections office knows. Given federal law in this area, and the AZ legal requirement to follow the federal standards, it seems likely a court would say BPS needs certification – which it doesn't have.

We even have some reason to suspect why BPS wasn't submitted for certification: It needs MS-Access present in order to run. Microsoft Access is well known for it's ability to get people into election databases and let them make alterations without leaving the normal “audit” lot traces . . . it's basically a burglary tool for elections. Even the worst of the test labs would have choked on having it present in the field, required to make BPS work.

13. LACK OF ACCOUNTING DETAIL BY BALLOT TYPE

True auditing of an election involves tracking where each vote and block of votes came from by category. Each category of vote (mail-in, precinct optical scan, precinct touchscreen, provisional and more) has it's own set of risks as to how it could be subverted. Knowing what the totals are for each category by date allows identification of unusual "spikes" or variances between categories.

Arizona is among the majority of Western states in which it is easy to sign up as a mail-in voter. As with other such states, the rate of mail-in voting hovers near 50% or so. If a candidate wins big at the precincts but loses big in the mail-in vote, the possibility arises that one or the other was subverted in some fashion - the bigger the discrepancy, the more attention should be paid.

Maricopa has made such analysis difficult bordering on impossible by "blending" vote categories. We consider this a serious failing.

On election night at 8:03 p.m., the county published vote totals for the mail-in vote to date. This made perfect sense as those were the only ballots scanned and processed; they had printed the "who's winning and losing" report at the first legal moment they could (one hour post polls close).

From that moment forward, no additional "mail-in vote numbers" were published, even though well over 300,000 ballots were remaining to be scanned. All of those votes were piled into the precinct totals - as were provisional votes, mail-in votes dropped off a the precinct and the military absentee votes processed through the AZ Secretary of State's site.

Jim March wrote:
“It's as if all parts of your dinner were run through a blender before being poured onto your plate. The results are about as palatable but in the case of the Maricopa elections process, the result isn't nausea: it's an inability to track what's going on and spot problems that may be related to security risks to one class of vote versus others”.

Other AZ counties including Pima break their numbers out in much more detail. Maricopa's process needs to be reviewed against that of other agencies in and out of Arizona.

14. PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER IN MARICOPA: A BLUEPRINT FOR A HACK?

All the pieces are present (and then some) to pull of the “immaculate hack” - alter both the paper and electronic records to match in a vote tampering attack that can never be detected.

A. The paper records are vulnerable due to duplicate seals, poor quality ballot boxes (or bags) and storage in insecure locations. Altering the paper records for all ballots on a county-wide race might be possible if you just “shave” ten or so votes per precinct. Doing so for a race that doesn't cover the whole county, such as one of the smaller city councils or any of the various board positions would be easier. Extra ballots are available through via one of the same printers Runbeck's “Sentio” uses, or just deliberately overvote a candidate position when the voter votes “incorrectly” for a certain candidate.

B. You wouldn't need to alter the central tabulator record at all. Best approach would be to hack the memory cartridge, print out a new results tape (unsigned same as the original) and re-feed that into the central tabulator.

C. You can do anything you want to the mail-in votes at the central tabulator, because you know which batch numbers CAN be “audited”. You'd be taking a minor risk that the scanners might have malfunctioned on the “audit” batches and the counts might not come out right – but that's OK, subverting the hand “audit” ahead of time by making sure the mail-in hand “audit” batch counts come out perfectly is child's play: find out from the computers what votes are supposed to be in the “audit” batches, open the box either with the centerpunch stunt or your handy spare seals and make sure they're right. When hand “audits” come out perfect, you can be sure nobody will dig deeper.

IT WOULD BE ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO DESIGN A SYSTEM END-TO-END THAT WOULD FACILITATE FRAUD BETTER THAN WHAT WE'VE FOUND IN MARICOPA COUNTY.

The day after the election when the parties were picking precincts and races to “audit”, we raised these concerns and asked the county to put extra seals of the “sticky” type at the four corners of the mail-in vote “audit” batches and to allow us to put additional seals on the 23 precinct’s ballot that were picked out of the 1,142 precincts. This was met with angry refusal. Link to audio excerpts of our complaints that morning are online at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oAczDmbWww [154]

At every step, this department in general and Ms. Karen Osborne in particular displayed a lack of concern for real security while ensuring that “security theater” involving metal detectors, rules about “no cellphones, no laptops” and other such silliness was the rule.

While that was going on, she actively worked to make sure she could tamper with the vote at any time. A classic example involved the mail-in vote “audit” box seals. They were always ceremoniously taken out two at a time, each individually numbered (two seals to a box) – neglecting to mention they had an additional 19 seals of each number in the back room in case they needed to get into those boxes.

That was a bitter insult to all of the volunteers from the Republican, Democratic and Libertarian parties who put in long boring hours to make sure this process went smoothly and fairly. For our effort, we were treated to a meaningless show, a Potemkin Village of an election, barred from going anywhere else in the building or inspecting what goes on behind their closed doors and layers of secrecy.

Sadly, on top of everything else, on November 4th, 16 voters out of 100 that voted at a precinct in Maricopa County (Phoenix) had to vote a provisional or a conditional provisional ballot.

15. SO WHAT'S THE CURE?

Last December 19th the headline in the Tucson Citizen read “Pima County to spend up to $10 million to improve ballot security”. That included the purchase of an entirely new voting system for about $5 million.

Immediately after hearing this Jim March and I opposed this idea due to the fact we know there is nothing else out there at this time or for the next 2 to 4 years that’s any better. We know that we’re voting on a fatally flawed system and the only solution at this time is transparency, transparency and more transparency. As I’ve stated above, as bad as that Diebold system is, it’s better than many other voting systems that exist at this time, it's better for all of us to work with the devil we know rather than the devil we don't. So please help us get more transparency.

BUT WHO WILL DELIVERER THAT TRANSPARENCY?

In Arizona we had to learn through litigation in Pima and Maricopa County that NO ONE REPRESENTS THE PUBLIC when it comes to verifying that elections are honest. We know this from our work and the deposition of Jan Brewer’s State Election Director Joseph Kanefield:

Testimony in a deposition of the Arizona Secretary of State’s office under Rule 30 (b) (6) designee was Joseph Kanefield, State Election Director, April11, 2008. Stated on the record that his office doesn't have the authority to examine election databases, how could this be?

IMPORTANT EXCERPT OF DEPOSITION:

Q. BY Attorney William ‘Bill’. RISNER: First, can we clearly establish that your office never has gone in and examined a database to see if there's been any fraud or manipulation?

A. Mr. Kanefield: Our office doesn't have the authority, under law, to do such an examination. Our -- the extent our office has oversights over a potential fraud investigation would be pursuant to the statute we discussed earlier, where a copy of the election software and database structure is filed with our office. And at that point, we would make that available to the Attorney General. THAT'S ONE OF THE REASONS IT HAS TO BE KEPT CONFIDENTIAL. So are we going in and are we examining county databases and computer programs? We don't have the authority to do that. I mean, the Secretary of State's authority is prescribed by law, AS SET FORTH IN THE CONSTITUTION, and she's been given oversight over a number of election-related activities, including logic and accuracy testing and other related issues. But when it comes to the administration of the elections at the county level, what you're talking about, if you're -- IF YOU'RE ALLEGING THAT WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING THIS AND HAVEN'T, THEN YOU'RE WRONG. We just simply don't have the authority to do that. If we were provided that authority, then, of course, we would do that. But we think that the process works and that if those allegations are made, then those with authority -- including the County Attorney, Attorney General -- can undertake such review, as was done by the Attorney General at your request.

Q. BY MR. RISNER: Are you aware of any county in Arizona that has ever conducted a post-election examination of the database for evidence of fraud or manipulation?

A. MR. KANEFIELD: I am not aware, other than what's occurred in Pima County. But that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. It's just that I'm not aware.

Q. BY MR. RISNER: Okay. So the result, then, is that the Secretary of State, because it has no authority to, does not examine and has never examined an election database after an election in any county in Arizona; correct?

A. MR. KANEFIELD: That is correct.

Two-minute video on KOLD TV Tucson 4/21/08, “WHO CHECKS THE VOTE COUNTERS?"

It is NOT the Secretary of State! Not the Attorney General! Not the County!

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=fqlefIQVkrk [155]

From the process of discovery in Pima Co. several important bodies of work have been produced that have within them the potential that could help with creating trustworthy elections. These elements are:

1. We’re making a documentary called “Fatally Flawed” to be issued as a DVD/video that will:

a. Review the nationwide implications of the precedent-setting Pima Co. court case that reaffirmed and established that the databases are public records to be available for public scrutiny.

b. William ‘Bill’ Risner Esq. will be laying out the facts of the RTA bond election and making a case to the public that election fraud is real, thus assisting us by whipping up public pressure to demand a proper criminal investigation.

c. From the examination of the databases comes the possibility to detect and verify databases manipulation. (Vote flipping and hacking) in other election.

d. Explain a number of ways the vote can be hacked or manipulated from inside the machines

1. Company preprogrammed memory cards to influence the manner that votes are counted.  
2. Use of uncertified software.  
3. Physical manipulation of the databases using the Microsoft Access program.

2. We designed a special computer program to analyze the Diebold computer logs and databases of the central tabulations to see whether manipulation has occurred.  Tampering at the memory cards may show up in this software depending on the type of manipulation.  Automated reports on patterns of voting throughout an election cycle will be part of the program and will allow for fast "sanity checks” of an election cycle in time to file legal challenges.  Currently a software program is in beta testing.

3. Maricopa Project - We have started a detailed examination of the Maricopa County election process along with the Sequoia gear it runs on.  As you know now from above there are major flaws.  A key concept that we believe will be valid in most states is "electronic voting must include effective electronic observation". When state observation laws rely on human eyeballs alone in this electronic age the ability to fully observe the process and results will never be thorough, and complete.  This concept can be used to push for reforms WITHOUT a total legislative overhaul, by taking a functional approach to existing legislation.

4. LEGISLATION TO GRAPHICLY SCAN THE VOTE --  Voting is a secret process, counting the vote is a public process. The idea that ballots can be graphically scanned and then distributed to any interested party could be the main breakthrough we need to ensure accurate elections.  A systematic model is established in each county where a certain percentage of the ballots are photo scanned with graphic scanners and put on the Internet for public transparency and scrutiny, which can be checked against a physical audit. However, at present SoS Jan Brewer is blocking it with spurious legal arguments. Sen. Johnson prepared and sponsored legislation at least allowing the scanning of ballots in standard commercial graphic scanners ("white boxes") after they come out of the standard voting machines ("black boxes").  Given this opportunity Pima will jump at the opportunity and others will follow. Graphic scanners are far cheaper than changing from one unreliable set of "black boxes" to another (Diebold to Sequoia, etc.). 

This is how it would work. On election day, 10% of the precincts shall be randomly selected by drawing. That evening as the polls close, a special group of pre-selected pollworkers will travel to those precincts with a laptop computer and small scanner and at the close of polls will scan those paper ballots plus the various end-of-day reports, printouts and the like.  

Like the larger scanners used to process the mail-in and provisional votes, these smaller systems and scanners must not have optical character recognition ability and must write the output scans to write-once media.

Copies of this media will be made available at the polling location to those interested, and made available later by the same means as the larger graphic scan collections on the Internet, marked as to the precinct they came from and method of scanning. The rest of the precinct paper vote, as it arrives at the jurisdiction's main election processing scanner, shall be scanned on the same large graphic scanners that process mail-in and provisional votes, handled in the same manner but identifiable as to precinct and scan type.

5. EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION of election personnel, legislators, and grass roots people to put the pressure on their officials and become the auditors of a transparent system that assures every vote is counted accurately as intended.  We at AUDIT-AZ and EDA work with all groups from the sincere Right and Left.

Regarding The ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION

The EAC, formed in 2002, to date still acts as if it were a steering committee with no real power to enforce security standards. This model, influenced by vendors who control the certification process, permits the establishment of voting systems like the one described in Maricopa County with no built-in security, which appears designed to allow wholesale vote-tampering. When votes are counted by insecure systems in secret, the public interest that votes be counted accurately and transparently can be easily subverted, and we no longer have a democracy.

Too much is at stake. This needs to change! A democracy must be built on transparency and verification, not blind faith.

Elections are just too important.

I thank you for your consideration.

Respectfully yours,

John R. Brakey,

Co-founder of AUDIT-AZ (Americans United for Democracy, Integrity, and Transparency in Elections, Arizona) and Co-Coordinator Investigations for Election Defense Alliance
http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/about_john_brakey [156] ?
5947 S Placita Picacho El Diablo  ?Tucson, AZ  85706?
520-578-5678
Cell 520 551 5492