Election news

Daniel Hopsicker is being sued by a leading figure within the giant voting machine firm ES&S:

A vice president of election giant Election Software & Services who figures in two separate controversies currently raging over the way American elections are run and American votes counted, has accused the MadCowMorningNews of slandering him in a recent article, and announced plans to sue in Federal Court in Washington, D.C.

Gary Greenhalgh was instrumental in bringing electronic touch screen voting to Katherine Harris' Congressional district. He sold $4.5 million worth of electronic voting machines to the Republican Election Supervisor of Sarasota County in Florida which are suspected of undercounting as many as 18,000 votes in the closely-contested Congressional election there "won" by the Republican candidate by a few hundred votes.

In addition to that brouhaha, Greenhalgh two decades ago helped establish the system of certification of U.S. electronic voting systems under increasing suspicion in a drama working its way out now concerning CIBER, Inc., a company which tests voting machines. He founded and later was President of The Election Center, a murky private non-profit based in Houston whose ill-defined quasi-public role in "certifying the certifiers" is at odds, say many computer experts, with the funding it has received from the very companies whose testing it approves, including CIBER.

I suppose I'm breaking no confidences in revealing the Brad Friedman says he feels left out. Hopsicker and BBV have been sued, but not Brad.

Hopsicker also broke a story about stock dumping by CIBER Chairman Bobby G. Stevenson. Seems he got rid of 25,000 common shares of stock just before the news came out concerning the rotten way they've been certifying machines.

John Gideon at BradBlog has a powerful story on the still-unreleased CIBER report -- which does exist, even though the Election Assistance Commission says it doesn't.

The Florida 13 race STILL ain't over: Michael Collins has the important story of Democratic candidate Christine Jennings' fight to overturn the fisher-than-a-sushi-bar results of last November's race in that district.

The election contest was filed with noted Miami attorney Kendall Coffey as lead counsel. His web site notes that he specializes in high stakes and high profile cases. He represented Al Gore in the 2000 Florida recount and before that, Cuban child refugee Elian Gonzalez.

The Jennings case as presented relies on four key arguments.

(1) The evidence available from voting in the 13th district and other parts of the state plus the known security vulnerabilities of the ES&S iVotronic touch screen voting machine show that there is “no possibility” that 14.9% of the voters in Sarasota County intentionally withheld votes.

(2) The evidence gathered by extensive voter testimonials demonstrates that there were significant numbers of voters who wished to vote for candidate Jennings but encountered problems with the iVotronic touch screen voting machine.

(3) There is a strong correlation between the date iVotronic touch screens were prepared for voting and incidents of undervoting.

(4) Statistical analysis shows that incremental reductions of in undervotes would result in a Jennings victory beginning with just 2000 fewer undervotes

There are supporting points as well, including a discussion of the Jennings case in Florida Court to open up ES&S computer source code for examination

The conclusion drawn from the evidence is simple: the election should be held null and void, there should be a new election, and no one should be sworn in or seated in Congress until after the new election.

The event which may blow the current election controversies wide open will be a paper ballot revote with results differing markedly from the compu-vote.

I quite agree with Collins' closing argument:

Who created the problem and why? Are we hearing testimonials or seeing statistical analysis showing that the undervotes had a negative impact on the Buchanan campaign? How many close races have there been over the past six years involving voting machine malfunction where a Democrat wins by small margins? Was the 2005 Paul Hackett, Dem. - Jean Schmidt, Rep. special election in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional district the prototype for subsequent photo finishes?

Computers do not produce consistent errors by accident.