Yesterday, thanks to Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, a new window opened on the facts of electronic voting.  We discovered the State of Georgia agreed to use Georgia voters as guinea pigs and Diebold's beta test of electronic voting.

We learned yesterday that Georgia's 2002 election was fraught with errors, mistakes and a massive failure of the Diebold voting system.

The 2002 General Election in Georgia was the "beta test" of Diebold's touchscreen voting system and Georgia's elected officials agreed to the test, paying Diebold $54 million dollars in taxpayer money for the "honor."

What McKinnney's office has just released is a group of documents that lend the visible evidence necessary to take this issue out of the hands of conspiracy theorists, and put it in the public purview of government officials.

Georgia's Diebold elections have been fraught with massive problems from day one and election officials have hidden the problems from the voters.

Georgia's election officials sought to protect Diebold instead of the voters.

The first document is a list of bugs and failures experienced in Georgia's 2002 election, none of which have been resolved to date, much less in time for the 2004 election.

Mr. Sam Barber of American Computer Technologies, Inc. has filed a federal lawsuit against Diebold. ACT was originally a Minority Owned Business contacted by Diebold to subcontract the Acceptance Testing of the Diebold system. When they discovered Mr. Barber really intended to test the equipment as prescribed by computer science, they threw him off the contract.

What they WANTED Mr. Barber's company to do was assemble the 2 pieces of equipment and CALL it acceptance testing. When he refused, he was dismissed by Diebold in McKinney, TX.

As we know from Rob Behler, the computer neophyte hired by ABSS, they found a company willing to do just that:

Behler: "My background is normally telecom.......

Behler: "Of course you have to have the touchscreens assembled in the warehouse, and do some testing. It turned out that there were a lot of problems that needed to be dealt with, and they simply weren't dealing with them."

Behler: "No, it's not just that. NOBODY even tested it! When I found that out -- I mean you can't not test a fix -- I worked for a billing company, and if I'd put a fix on that wasn't tested I'd have gotten FIRED! You have to make sure whatever fix you did didn't break something else. But they didn't even TEST the fixes before they told us to install them. "Look, we're doing this and 50-60 percent of the machines are still freezing up! Turn it on, get one result. Turn it off and next time you turn it on you get a different result. Six times, you'd get six different results."

Georgia activists at CountTheVote.org,  and the Voter Choice Coalition have been fighting to repair the visible problems with electronic voting for almost 3 years now; since late 2002.

At every turn, with each step, it has been the Secretary of State in Georgia who has prevented even the most basic changes to this system, including a voter verified paper ballot.  The SoS office turned out in full to lobby against our first legislative attempt to bring verification to this system - SB500.

During Ms. McKinney's press conference we learned, through the production of the documents, the SoS was well aware of the problems with this system, even as she testified to their accuracy at Senate committee hearings while lobbying against SB500.

The documents are available here.

Congresswoman McKinney plans to hold a series of press conferences to bring this issue to the voters of Georgia; to ensure the voters are informed and to call for reform to correct the problems with Georgia's voting system.
In the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the office of the Secretary of State responds:

Chris Riggall, press secretary for Secretary of State Cathy Cox, said the Diebold machines underwent "the country's most rigorous testing of voting equipment ever."

Of course he neglects to mention that the "testing" of which he speaks was during the conduct of an election. And, that the equipment FAILED the test, as evidenced by their own correspondence with Diebold!!!!

Here's just a partial list of the failures reported by the State of Georgia to Diebold:

1. Voting System shall be certified pursuant to national and state standards
   
2. TS unit screen "freeze"
   
3. Inoperable "Charging" function on TS units
   
4. TS unit Error message "Memory Critically Low" or similar message
   
5. Voters' selection of candidate on TS units improperly reflected on "Summary Screen"
   
6. Application/implication of "0808" Patch
   
7. TS units equipped with 128mb PCMCIA cards
   
8. 128mb PCMCIA card problems (attributed to manufacturing problems and architecture)
   
9. 128mb PCMCIA cards will no longer be manufactured
   
10. Full accounting of all equipment and location of equipment; Some counties reporting that all State-provided equipment not yet delivered
    
11. Defective encoder performance
    
12. Voting Units found to be defective
    
13. Staff at KSU not provided with adequate training on DRE, optical scan, GEMS/EMS software system
    
14. The preparation and printing of absentee ballots by Diebold for the 2002 General Election was severely deficient.
    
15. Design of TS unit (i.e. Absence of a readily discernible slot) led to Voter Access Cards to be inserted into an inappropriate location
    
16. Module One training deficient on optical scan system; virtually no hands on training provided; no, or incorrect guidance provided by county technicians on counting absentee ballot write-in candidates
    
17. Inadequate & inaccurate training manuals
    
18. Module One training deficient on creating and generating Election Day reports
    
19. Training on safeguards to prevent and detect tampering or theft not yet provided
    
20. TS back-up battery capacity stated to be 7 hours of continuous use; later statements suggest back-up good for only 4 to 6 hours
    
21. Offer made to address interface of system and the statewide voter registration system; no evidence provided that any work done with regard to Georgia VR system
    
22. Plan for GEMS training
    
23. At least 5 county servers failed prior to Election Day.  While server repairs were made, there is evidence to suggest that additional servers were not working properly (Example: blank cd's received from counties were supposed to contain final election results)
    
24. Optical scan "Accu-Feed" function not performing properly and interrupting absentee and provisional voting process
    
25. Diebold staff providing training to counties, in many cases, were not adequately trained themselves and at times provided inaccurate information
    
26. Technical support has virtually disappeared since Election Day and some counties have post-election tasks that were not completed by the county technician.
    
27. L & A testing did not identify possible screen calibration problems or memory error
    
28. Scroll bar function on "Summary Page" very difficult to locate and operate.
    
29. Status/Copy of "PRIM" document ("Project Review and Implementation Manual")
    
    Cynthia's Press Release For Immediate Release
    Contact: Richard Searcy, Press Secretary
    Richard.searcy@mail.house.gov

    July 17, 2005

    Congresswoman McKinney Reveals Shocking Data on Diebold and Elections in Georgia

    "I have been investigating Diebold and electronic voting as a citizen, a candidate, and a Congresswoman. We reveal the first results of our investigation today." Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney

    (Decatur, GA) .. www.house.gov/mckinney ... Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney held a press conference on Diebold and electronic voting in her District office today. With her at the event was Mr. Sam Barber, owner of American Computer Technology (ACT). Mr. Barber was a former partner with Diebold Elections Systems on the original 54 million dollar contract with the State of Georgia to provide equipment and services for Georgia elections. Mr. Barber's company was to provide assembly and testing services for the Diebold DRE machines. Together, McKinney and Barber painted a very different picture of the problems with testing, certification, and the machines themselves than the picture of an almost flawless election that has been painted by the State of Georgia.

    With internal memos between Diebold and the State of Georgia, which were acquired through open records, and Mr. Barbers testimony, it was revealed that the voting machines used in the 2002 election were not adequately tested, the training provided by Diebold for Georgia election officials was seriously flawed, and in some cases nonexistent. It appears that the election was almost completely turned over to Diebold by the State of Georgia. "We continue to focus on the symptoms of the problem, instead of focusing on the source of the problems", stated Barber. One of the documents shown to the audience and given to the press was a draft of the Georgia "Punch List", dated December 3, 2002, which was after the general election had already been held. The List contained numerous bugs and errors that were encountered during the election, but kept from the public.

    Although the State of Georgia declared that the election went smoothly and encountered few problems, the Punch List revealed problems with the memory cards running low or out of memory, defective voting units, defective encoder performance, and deficient training on safeguards to detect tampering or theft. The list states, "Diebold staff providing training to counties, in many cases, were not adequately trained themselves and at times provided inaccurate information." The list indicated that during the election, at least 5 county servers failed, and that there was evidence of failure with additional servers. Some CDs received from the counties that were supposed to contain election results were blank. There were also problems with a patch that was installed, and problems with "jumping" selections of candidates. Overall, the election was fraught with very serious problems, many of which had the potential to alter the results of the election.

    This was the first in a series of press conferences that McKinney has planned to inform the public of the danger of electronic voting without a verifiable paper trail.