Bradblog : Another E-Voting Whistleblower comes forward

Following in the footsteps of Stephen Heller in California and Ion Sancho in Florida, Bradblog reports that yet another E-Voting Whistleblower has come forward, this time in Texas (and Ohio).

During last Tuesday's Primary Election in the state of Texas, scores of "computer glitches" -- as voting officials and electronic voting machine vendors like to refer to them -- were revealed occurred across the state. Many of those "glitches" occurred on electronic voting equipment manufactured and supplied to various counties in Texas by the Hart InterCivic company.

One such "glitch" occurred in Texas' Tarrant County, which encompasses Fort Worth. That "glitch" resulted in some 100,000 votes being added to the result totals across the county's paperless Hart-Intercivic "eSlate" touch-screen voting system.

The BRAD BLOG can now report, however, that according to a Hart InterCivic company whistleblower -- who also happened to have later worked as an "election programmer" in Tarrant County -- the problems with Hart InterCivic's systems in Tarrant County, Texas and elsewhere are not new at all. Not by a longhorn long shot.

Letters sent by William Singer of Fort Worth, a former Hart InterCivic "technical specialist" and Tarrant County election worker, to state officials back in July of 2004 warned of exactly such problems. The letters, obtained and published here for the first time exclusively by The BRAD BLOG, reveal that serious problems and concerns of possible election system meltdowns were already apparent with the Hart machines in Tarrant County long ago. However, the warning letters were all but ignored by both election officials and even state law enforcement officials.

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A review of several notarized letters sent by Singer to officials in both Texas and Ohio in 2004 warned of fraudulent activities, buggy software and hardware, dysfunctional testing and development procedures, unsecured working environments and possible criminal behavior by both Hart InterCivic and Election Workers in both states.

The mention of Ohio should come as no surprise to anyone who remembers the statistically improbable exit polls results of the 2004 election.

From Singer's July 2004 for letter to Texas Secretary of State Geoffrey Connor (Word Format), following irregularies in the Texas Primary.

Some of those irregularities, which involved by Hart and ES&S Machines, included --

-Invalid Entries in the Audit Trail

-Faking the Public Tests

-Corrections of improper work performed by untrained technicians

-Votes lost when disabling the units

-ES&S pushing to use unapproved software for election day

-No Password assigned for critical path systems

-No Physical Security (Locked Doors)

Singer also sent another letter (on the same day) to Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell (Word Format) in which he pointed out problems as well as the potential of criminal fraud by Hart.

I have been fervently hoping that Hart would decide to step forward and do the right thing; to break the industries habit of silence and concealment, and admit to wrongdoing and apologize for their mistakes.
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Had this been a handful of rare incidents, where the repercussions were indeed minor, I could have continued to believe that Hart as a company was doing the right thing. I eventually left Hart Intercivic because it became clear to me that the company's silence had little to do with "rare" incidents but instead revealed a number of potentially serious problems which appeared to be systematically hidden or ignored largely for the sake of corporate profits. While at Hart I had evidence of what I believed to be criminal fraud, extreme negligence, and a distinct and troubling pattern of failure to uphold the public trust both in violations of the spirit of its contracts, but also in concealing problems in an industry which so crucially represents the public interest.

It should be pointed out, as noted by bradblog, that Singer left out of his letter the most egregious violations as they were protected by a Non-Disclosure Agreement. In this way, Singer has been able to avoid the legal blowback that has fallen on Stephen Heller (Who has been charged with 3 Felonies for sharing Diebold documents which revealed that their machines were in violation of California Election Regulations with the CA Secretary of State and Attorney General).

Bradblog has more details....

Vyan