After the 2004 U.S. presidential election there were allegations of data irregularities and systematic flaws which may have affected the outcome of the presidential and local elections. Issues range from allegations of voting machine impropriety to complaints voting was not made accessible to all citizens (long lines, disenfranchisement). The unofficial result of the election has been publically accepted by John Kerry in favor of George W. Bush. However, some groups and individuals (including the media, independent candidate Ralph Nader, Green Party candidate David Cobb, Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, electronic voting machine criticism organization BlackBoxVoting.ORG, Kerry's brother and legal advisor Cameron Kerry, members of the House Judiciary Committee and citizen bloggers) are currently offering their data analysis and investigating.

These preliminary data analyses, reports and observations have been made by a variety of commentators ranging from computer scientists to voting rights organizations. One preliminary analysis from Caltech, which has been challenged on methodological grounds [1] (It is alleged to have studied figures pre-adjusted to the official returns), states "there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electronic voting machines were used to steal the 2004 election for President Bush". [2] (PDF) Another preliminary analysis by a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania calculates the chance the discrepancy of exit polls vs actual results being due to chance is less than 1 in 100 million. [3] (PDF)

There were reports of problems with and controversy over electronic and optical-scan voting machines. There were also reports of problems relating to abnormally high voter turnout (in some precincts, more votes were reported than there were registered voters) and the fact the exit poll discrepancies only seemed to show up in swing states. There may have been voter access limiting due to long lines at polling locations; particularly in high-population areas and in closely contested states. Another issue is the perception of a discrepancy between party registration statistics and results in some Florida counties. The procedure for counting provisional ballots is another controversial issue in many states.

Examples of issues

• The reliability and accuracy of electronic voting machines has not been established. In some cases they were designed without capability for paper trail or auditability, and cited expert computer scientists state that these machines had a very high potential to be tampered, citing such possibilities as the machines being reprogrammed on election day, fundamental design flaws, gaps in security logs and the like. The election incident reporting system (EIRS) has received many reports from voters and election officials of votes for Kerry being recorded as votes for Bush. Electronic voting machines are not generally designed to produce a paper audit trail, if there is a doubt as to whether the machine has accurately represented and counted votes, there may not be a way to independantly verify the election results. [4] Because of this, some encourage the use of open-architecture voting machines.
• At least one voting machine began counting back down to zero when it reached 32000 votes; manufacturer ES&S are said to have known about (but not rectified) this issue for two years since the same problem had arisen in a previous mayoral election. (Broward Co., FL) [5]
• Voter suppression, intimidation, lost ballots, efforts to discredit citizens that may be validly registered. This has the aim of reducing turn out for people believed to support the other side.
• Untoward disagreement between exit poll data and actual results, especially in swing states (apparently not matched by similar discrepancies in most non-swing states or other election matters). A Republican pollster called such differences "incredible" adding that exit polls are regarded within his profession as highly accurate.
• Disagreement between party affiliation registration statistics for counties and results for that county, especially in swing states. For example, in one Florida county where 77 percent of registered voters are Democrats, Bush received 77 percent of the vote.
• Current voting incidents: Over 33,500 incidents reported (minor errors through to large scale direct voter intimidation, mishandled absentee and provisional ballots, malfunctioning or inaccurate machines and/or apparent hacking and vote tampering) (Source [6] description of incidents [7]). There are currently 10 states of the Union with more than 1000 incidents reported:

AZ: (1299 Incidents), CA: (2368), CO: (1380), FL: (4235), IL: (1389) NJ: (1458), NY: (2381), OH: (2805), PA: (4106), TX: (2252) (Source: EIRS)

• Internal emails from voting machine manufacturers from 2001, and formal certification reports of those voting machines, shows that the manufacturers concealed even basic security issues since 2001, and that the ultimate certifying company (Ciber Inc) recommended the machines as passing certification in both of two sample cases, without in fact testing core firmware, and without attempting to verify any of the crucial security aspects of the voting machines. #Certification of voting machines. Internal emails at the manufacturers stated that they do not password protect the voting data files so that these can be manually edited, adding that "I know our dealers do it. King County is famous for it" and (regarding Federal Certification) "if you don't bring this up you might skate through ...". These positions were justified by saying that "perception is reality". See section below on #BlackBoxVoting.org investigations for details. (Side note - King County is also the location referred to above where 3 hours of security audit data is missing from the WA Primary in Sept 2004).
• Machines are supposed to not lose votes in a power outage. Voters cannot tell whether vote integrity was in fact maintained as intended when power goes down, as happened at least in one polling station (Dekalb Co. GA, 15 minutes powerout)
• Unless exceptionally well designed, computers can be "cracked" and manipulated in an undetectable manner by experts #Expert testimony on quality of current voting machines
• Irregularity, confusion or possible malfeasance in official handling of ballots with address errors, missing birthdates or other discrepancies, where such handling has been alleged to be contrary to standing law [8], [9], [10],[11],[12],[13], [14],[15]

• Errors in the results tabulation which although found and corrected, are noteworthy in their scope or root cause [16]

Controversial or irregular aspects of the 2004 election

Voting machines

In many cases there were concerns as to whether votes were fairly, reliably, and accurately recorded and reported by the electronic machines involved. The charts below demonstrate this.

Voting machine companies with partisan ties to political parties

In 2003 Walden O'Dell CEO of Diebold said in a letter to Ohio Republican officials that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President". [17] Diebold is the company which makes electronic touch screen voting machines used in Ohio and other states, most significantly Florida. Ohio and Florida were two of the "swing" states critical to the 2004 election. It is important to note that punch card (not electronic) voting took place in 68 of Ohio's 88 counties, including three of the four most populous, which include Cleveland, Dayton, and Cincinnati.[18]

Diebold’s political ties are not limited to Republicans. Mark Radke (Director of Marketing for Diebold Election Systems) "has an exclusive Democratic donation history"..."including the legal limit of $2000 to John Kerry in the recent campaign" [19].

Chuck Hagel, the previous chairman of ES&S, another major manufacturer of voting machines and still a $1m stock-holder in McCarthy & Co which owns a quarter of ES&S [20], became a Republican candidate. Hagel's Democratic opponent made a formal protest to the state of Nebraska over the conflict of interest.

According to the company’s own figures, 42 percent of all registered voters in the United States voted on ES&S equipment on Election Day. ES&S, a private company, provides voter registration, printing of ballots, the programming of the voting machines, the counting and tabulation of the votes and the final reporting of the results for 60 million Americans in 47 states. [21]

Several foreign and domestic corporations are involved in the U.S. vote counting business. ES&S and Diebold represent a majority of this market. ES&S claims that they have tabulated "approximately 50% of the U.S. national vote for the past four presidential elections" [22].

Bob Urosevich is currently president of Diebold. Todd Urosevich (his brother) is vice president of ES&S. In 1999, American Information Systems (AIS), purchased Business Records Corporation (BRC) to become ES&S. AIS (1980) was formerly Data Mark (1979). Both AIS and Data Mark were founded by the Urosevich brothers. In 2002 Diebold acquired Global Election Systems. Global was founded 1991, which itself acquired the AccuVote system the same year. Bob Urosevich is a past president of Global.

AIS was initially funded by Howard Ahmanson [23]. Ahmanson is a member of the Council for National Policy, a “steering group” linked to the Bush administration [24],[25],[26],[27],[28] and has holdings in ES&S. Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, former CEO of AIS, had significant AIS holdings when the company counted the votes for his surprise election victory in 1996. Hagel has been scrutinized by the Senate Ethics Committee over his investments in the McCarthy Group. ES&S, which counted the votes when Hagel was re-elected in 2002, is a subsidiary of the McCarthy Group, according to The Hill. [29],[30]

As noted elsewhere #Specific issues relating to ES&S, when Hagel stepped down as head of this company to compete for the Senate, he became "...the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska, nearly all on unauditable machines he had just sold the state ... including many largely black communities that had never before voted Republican". (Source [31])

(Sources: [32], [33],[34])

Specific issues relating to Diebold machines and practices

• Unreported faults and problems known to manufacturer

Oct. 27, 2004 -- The state of California has ordered that 15,000 brand new touch-screen voting machines not be used in next week's presidential election. These electronic machines were manufactured by Diebold Inc., a North Canton, Ohio-based company that also specializes in automated teller machines and electronic security.

"Of course we would have wished the situation would not have happened, but it did," Rapke told ABC News. "There was back up available. But again, with additional familiarity with the system, again, this problem would not have happened." But a former Diebold technical worker, James Dunn, told ABC News the company was aware of the software and electronic problems before the election, and never reported them. "The machine would lock up or lose its software load. A very uncommon thing and not a good thing," said Dunn. "And once that machine's locked up you're unable to produce voter cards, which means you're unable to open the election voting machine and people can't vote. But they shipped it anyway."

California election officials say there are serious flaws with the machines and that Diebold repeatedly misled the state about them. "[Diebold] literally engaged in absolutely deplorable behavior and, to that extent, put the election at risk, jeopardizing the outcome of the election," said California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. [35],[36]

• California: State Voting Systems and Procedures Panel, April 2004 [37] (AP):

"By an 8-0 vote, the state's [California's] Voting Systems and Procedures Panel recommended that Shelley cease the use of the machines, saying that Texas-based Diebold [Diebold Election Systems, an affiliate of Diebold Inc, OH] has performed poorly in California and its machines malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election, turning away many voters in San Diego County."

"Panel member Marc Carrel, an assistant secretary of state, said he was 'disgusted' by Diebold, which has "been jerking us around." The company, he said, has disenfranchised voters in California and undermined confidence in the new and developing technology of touch-screen voting."

"A secretary of state's report on the March 2 elections found that 573 of 1,038 polling places in San Diego County failed to open on time because Diebold voting machines malfunctioned. Voters were told to go elsewhere or come back."

"California panel members ... cited a litany of alleged problems with Diebold in recent months, including its sale of machines to the four counties without federal and state certification, last-minute software fixes before the March election and installation of uncertified software in voting machines in 17 counties."

"In addition to the ban, panel members recommended that a secretary of state's office report ... be forwarded to the state attorney general's office to consider civil and criminal charges against the company."

• Poor security against cracking and other electronic fraud

The same source also claims that

"Experts have raised questions about the machines' security features, which some say can be easily defeated, making it possible to manipulate the actual vote count.

"In all of my consulting work and all of my work in industry I've never seen a system that I thought was this vulnerable to abuse," said Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, who, along with other security experts, analyzed Diebold's source code for the electronic voting machines."

In at least one case it appears a voting machine was cracked during a primary election in King County Washington and a warning was issued to disconnect all voting machines from the internet. But this would not prevent the effects of cracking totally [38].

Nov. 12, 2004 : "Computer Science Professor Avi Rubin of John Hopkins University analyzed Diebold's 47,609 lines of code and found it uses an encryption key (56-bit DES) that was hacked in 1997 and no longer is used in secure programs. The Digital Encryption Standard 56-bit encryption key used can be unlocked by a key embedded in all the source code, meaning all Diebold machines would respond to the same key. Rubin said Diebold has said it repaired the security flaws in subsequent programs, but that the company has not produced the code for analysis. Rubin, his graduate students and a colleague from Rice University found other bugs, that the administrator's PIN code was '1111' and that one programmer had inserted, 'This is just a hack for now.' The implication is that by hacking one machine [one] could have access to all Diebold machines. Diebold did return a call for comment." (Source: Washington Times/UPI)

• Recent historical voting anomalies

March 5, 2004 : "[Election reform activist Bev] Harris has also posted a post-mortem [of the 2000 election] by CBS detailing how the network managed to call Volusia County for Bush early in the morning. The report states: "Had it not been for these [computer] errors, the CBS News call for Bush at 2:17:52 AM would not have been made." As Harris notes, the 20,000-vote error shifted the momentum of the news reporting and nearly led Gore to concede.

What's particularly troubling, Harris says, is that the errors were caught only because an alert poll monitor noticed Gore's vote count going down through the evening, which of course is impossible. Diebold blamed the bizarre swing on a "faulty memory chip," which Harris claims is simply not credible. The whole episode, she contends, could easily have been consciously programmed by someone with a partisan agenda. Such claims might seem far-fetched, were it not for the fact that a cadre of computer scientists showed a year ago that the software running Diebold's new machines can be hacked with relative ease. The crackers posted some 13,000 pages of internal documents on various web sites -- documents that were pounced on by Harris and others. A desperate Diebold went to court to stop this "wholesale reproduction" of company material."

(Sources for this section: 1) ABC News [39] and 2) [40])

Voting Machine problems (including Diebold): Electronic voting#Problems with electronic voting

• "Libel Chill"

[41], an US online encyclopedia similar to Wikipedia covering "people, issues, groups and the public agenda" describes the position under the title "Libel Chill" as follows:

On the above issues, most journalists within the media establishment have been silent. Given Diebold's history of libel chill and the Rathergate issue, it's not hard to guess why, though political motives may also be involved. There has been a report from a MMOB member on a 'lockdown' on covering the story, coming from executive levels within the media. However, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann featured a good story about the vote discrepancies on his Nov. 8th show."

"Libel chill in this case is highly strategic since there is only a short time window - from November 2, 2004 to December 13, 2004 - to contest the results."

"In such a legally and politically charged situation, accurate verifiable data is hard to come by. Bev Harris and her team at blackboxvoting.org [42] have filed the largest number of FOIA's - Freedom of Information Act requests - in history. She is asking 3,000 counties for the internal audit logs of their voting machines , which are public records, as well as for other key data."

From :LA Weekly: ...At the same time, the internal memos reveal that Jones Day lawyers were exploring strategies to fend off legal challenges ... Legal machinations were eventually cited as a strike against Diebold. The company "raised frivolous legal objections to providing many [requested] documents and provided other documents in an untimely manner," according to a Secretary of State’s Office report on Diebold.

• Knowingly misrepresenting voting machines as certified and tested:

LA Weekly reports (April 2004) that Diebold knowingly used uncertified voting machines in many elections, and misrepresented this to the State.

"Diebold has conceded that it violated California regulations by using uncertified software in the March 2 election. This misstep occurred even though the Diebold internal memos had previously warned the company precisely of this problem. These memos also talk of greater legal culpability if the company knowingly violated California election law. The documents offer a potentially damning indictment of a company that failed to fly right despite in-house warnings ... a former Diebold technician ... depicted a company that was running behind schedule, making untested, last-minute fixes and conjuring solutions on the spot.

The state report said Diebold "marketed and sold the TSx system before it was fully functional, and before it was federally qualified," "misrepresented the status of the TSx system in federal testing in order to obtain state certification" and "failed to obtain federal qualification of the TSx system despite assurances that it would." In addition, the company allegedly "installed uncertified software on election machines in 17 counties" and "jeopardized the conduct of the March primary." The secretary of state’s advisory panel noted that some voters were turned away when poll workers could not get machines started on time in San Diego and Alameda counties.

The internal memos plainly confront the possibility of "multimillion-dollar liabilities". As one memo puts it, "Issue: Whether the use of an uncertified voting system is illegal? Short answer: Yes." The same memo then deals with whether the company had violated its contract with Alameda County. "Issue: Whether Diebold breached the Agreement if it provided Alameda County with an uncertified voting system? Short answer: Mostly likely ... If Diebold materially breached the Agreement, Alameda County can terminate the Agreement and sue for damages."

Specific issues relating to ES&S machines and political links

Thom Hartmann stated in CommonDreams.org (Nov 4 2004, [43]):

"About two years ago [Jan 2003], I wrote a story for these pages, "If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines," that exposed how Senator Chuck Hagel had, before stepping down and running for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska, been the head of the voting machine company (now ES&S) that had just computerized Nebraska's vote. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska, nearly all on unauditable machines he had just sold the state."

(The same author also notes in respect of audit trail that "Congressman Rush Holt introduced a bill into Congress requiring a voter-verified paper ballot be produced by all electronic voting machines, and it's been co-sponsored by a majority of the members of the House of Representatives. The two-year battle fought by Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay to keep it from coming to a vote, thus insuring that there will be no possible audit of the votes of about a third of the 2004 electorate, has fueled the flames...")

Evidence of electronic voting bias

Note: As with all statistics, it is very important to consider other causes of apparent anomalies, and to provide verifiable and neutral source data that can be checked in a neutral way by third parties. All the information and sources below appear prima facie to be statistically reasonable in terms of both analysis and assumptions, and to be based upon verifiable public data.

1. An analysis of Florida counties with 80,000 - 500,000 registered voters concluded (with a few caveats of a usual kind) that machine type (E-Touch vs Op-Scan) was a "significant predictor" of vote at the p < 0.001 level (less than one chance in a thousand of this degree of anomaly happening by chance) [44],[45],[46]Source data and calculations [47]. Contrarily, the New York Times ran a story stating that "...three political scientists, from Cornell, Harvard and Stanford... [pointed out] many of those Democratic counties in Florida have a long tradition of voting Republican in presidential elections". [48] All these analyses show Bush with a higher percentage of the vote in areas using optical scan ballots (as opposed to touch screen machines).
2. An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus according election officials. [49] Franklin county was the only Ohio county to use this particular electronic voting system. [50]

   One thread on the "democraticunderground" website discusses the results in Gahanna, Franklin Co. Ohio and notes that:

   • Gahanna has some 20,000 people elegible to vote and the reported turnout was around 70%. On a casual reckoning approximately 14,000 people voted, and yet nearly 21,000 votes were reported by voting machines.
   • The 3,893 extra individuals who are said to have queued to vote for Bush, and were therefore presumably Republican, did not appear to vote on any other matter bar the Presidency. (These other matters included the Senate race, County Commissioner, several County and State officials, and the infamous Gay Unions vote, issues of great importance in the election.)

   Source: [51], source data from govt website pdf

3. An analysis reported in the New Zealand press looks at the differences between exit polls and reported voting in more detail. It identifies that in a selection of non-swing states, the exit polls and final results match. However in a large proportion of what were identified before the election as key swing states (Wisconsin, Pennysylvania, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, etc.), the exit polls and final votes do not match.
4. The error was in each case a statistically anomalous and electorally critical 4 - 15% swing (change between exit polls and electronic voting) and furthermore the anomalies were not random. In each of the above swing states, this variation between what voters said they voted and what the machines reported was in favour of Mr. Bush. Source [52], article discussing here, graphs here.

   An article comments that:

   • Exit polls into the evening of Nov. 2 actually showed Kerry rolling to a clear victory nationally and carrying most of the battleground states, including Florida and Ohio, whose totals would have ensured Kerry's victory in the Electoral College.
   • The exit polls covered both the Presidential and Senate races. The votes reported by voting machines for the Senate races were in line with the exit polls for the Senate race, however the votes reported by the same voting machines for the Presidency often significant disagreed with the exit polls for the Presidency.
   • It also comments that "Democratic suspicions also were raised by Republican resistance to implementing any meaningful backup system for checking the results on Diebold and other electronic-voting machines."

5. There were additional reports of significantly large data irregularities with the "optical scan" type voting machines in at least Florida. In one county using optical scan voting machines for example, election records showed 77% registered democrats but Bush received 77% of the vote.
6. Wired Newshas examined this issue and reports that, "...according to academics, the internet pundits are reading the data out of context. Demographic figures and vote trends over several years show the numbers to be consistent with previous elections. According to University of California at Berkeley political scientist Henry Brady, the Republican vote share has been going up in Florida's rural optical-scan counties for years."

   Wired further reports that, "[t]hree professors of government also examined the numbers after being pressured by many people, including lawyers for the Democratic Party, and concluded the same thing."

Certification of voting machines

blackboxvoting.org obtained information and documents on the certifications performed on two voting machines by Ciber, Inc. (formerly known as 'Metamor'). Source: [53]

The Law

Source: FEC Voting System Standards (Word format)

Certification Authorities:

"The national testing effort is overseen by NASED’s Voting Systems Board, which is composed of election officials and independent technical advisors. NASED has established a process for vendors to submit their equipment to an Independent Test Authority (ITA) for evaluation against the Standards. To date, Wyle Laboratories, Inc., CIBER, Inc., and SysTest Labs are certified by NASED to serve as program ITAs for the testing of hardware and the examination of software."

(At this time, NASED comprises 9 US state or federal election officers, FEC representative, 3 software consultants, and one representative from each of IEEE, Wyle Laboratories, SysTest, and Ciber)

Revised Standards:

"In 1997, NASED briefed the FEC on the necessity for continued FEC involvement, citing the importance of keeping the Standards current in its reflection of modern and emerging technologies employed by voting system vendors."

"Audit Trails - Performance requirements for audit trails are strengthened to address the full range of election management functions..."

"Error rates - errors introduced by the system and not by a voter’s action ... applies to specific system functions, such as recording a vote, storing a vote and consolidating votes into vote totals ... each location where a vote may be entered represents a ballot position ... the Standards set two error rates: Target error rate: a maximum of one error in 10,000,000 ballot positions, and Testing error rate: a maximum acceptable rate in the test process of one error in 500,000 positions ... This system error rate applies to data that is entered into the system in conformance with the applicable instructions..."

"Overall capabilities - ...apply throughout the election process. They include security, accuracy, integrity, system auditability, election management system, vote tabulation, ballot counters, telecommunications, and data retention."

Quality Assurance:

"In the Standards, quality assurance is a vendor function with associated practices that confirms throughout the system development and maintenance life-cycle that a voting system conforms with the Standards and other requirements of state and local jurisdictions."

Test process:

"The qualification test process is intended to discover errors that, should they occur in actual election use, could result in failure to complete election operations in a satisfactory manner."

"The testing process involves the assessment of: (a) Absolute correctness of all ballot processing software, for which no margin for error exists; (b) Operational accuracy in the recording and processing of voting data, as measured by the error rates [above]; ... (c) System performance and function under normal and abnormal conditions."

"System-level qualification tests address the integrated operation of hardware, software (and telecommunications capabilities where applicable) to assess the system’s response to a range of both normal and abnormal conditions in an attempt to compromise the system."

Security overview:

"Security standards - this section describes the essential security capabilities for a voting system, encompassing the system’s hardware, software, communications, and documentation. The requirements of this section recognize that no predefined set of security Standards will address and defeat all conceivable or theoretical threats. However, the Standards articulate requirements to achieve acceptable levels of integrity, reliability, and inviolability. Ultimately, the objectives of the security Standards for voting systems are to:

• Establish and maintain controls that can ensure that accidents, inadvertent mistakes, and errors are minimized;
• Protect the system from intentional manipulation and fraud;
• Protect the system from malicious mischief;
• Identify fraudulent or erroneous changes to the system; and
• Protect secrecy in the voting process.

These Standards are intended to address a broad range of risks to the integrity of a voting system. While it is not possible to identify all potential risks, the Standards identify several types of risk that must be addressed, including:

• Unauthorized changes to system capabilities for defining ballot formats, casting and recording votes, calculating vote totals consistent with defined ballot formats, and reporting vote totals;
• Alteration of voting system audit trails;
• Altering a legitimately cast vote;
• Preventing the recording of a legitimately cast vote,
• Introducing data for a vote not cast by a registered voter;
• Changing calculated vote totals;
• Preventing access to vote data, including individual votes and vote totals, to unauthorized individuals...

Software, Firmware and Telecomms security (Extracts):

The system shall meet the following requirements for installation of software, including hardware with embedded firmware:

• If software is resident in the system as firmware, the vendor shall require and state in the system documentation that every device is to be retested to validate each ROM prior to the start of elections operations;
• To prevent alteration of executable code, no software shall be permanently installed or resident in the system unless the system documentation states that the jurisdiction must provide a secure physical and procedural environment for the storage, handling, preparation, and transportation of the system hardware;
• The system bootstrap, monitor, and device-controller software may be resident permanently as firmware, provided that this firmware has been shown to be inaccessible to activation or control by any means other than by the authorized initiation and execution of the vote-counting program, and its associated exception handlers;
• Voting systems that use telecommunications to communicate between system components and locations are subject to the same security requirements governing access to any other system hardware, software, and data function.
• Voting systems that use electrical or optical transmission of data shall ensure the receipt of valid vote records is verified at the receiving station. This should include standard transmission error detection and correction methods such as checksums or message digest hashes.
• Verification of correct transmission shall occur at the voting system application level and ensure that the correct data is recorded on all relevant components consolidated within the polling place prior to the voter completing casting of his or her ballot.
• Voting systems that use public telecommunications networks may become vulnerable, by virtue of their system components, to external threats to the accuracy and integrity of vote recording, vote counting, and vote consolidation and reporting processes. Therefore, vendors of such systems shall document how they plan to monitor and respond to known threats to which their voting systems are vulnerable.

Security testing procedures:

[ITAs] shall not rely on vendor testing as a substitute for software testing performed by the ITA.

"The ITA shall design and perform test procedures that test the security capabilities of the voting system against the requirements defined in Volume I, Section 6. These procedures shall focus on the ability of the system to detect, prevent, log, and recover from a broad range of security risks as identified in Section 6, and system capabilities and safeguards claimed by the vendor in its TDP [documentation] that go beyond [these] risks and threats..."

"Regardless of system design and risk profile, all systems are tested for effective access control and physical data security"

"The ITAs shall conduct tests to ensure that the system provides the necessary identity-proofing, confidentiality, and integrity of transmitted data. These tests shall be designed to confirm that the system is capable of detecting, logging, preventing, and recovering from types of attacks known at the time the system is submitted for qualification."

"The ITA may meet these testing requirements by confirming proper implementation of proven commercial security software ... [or] at its discretion, the ITA may conduct or simulate attacks on the system to confirm the effectiveness of the system's security capabilities."

"For those access control features built in as components of the voting system [as opposed to external policies], the ITA shall design tests to confirm that these security elements work as specified. Specific activities to be conducted by the ITA shall include ... specific tests designed by the ITA to verify the correct operation of all documented access control procedures and capabilities, including tests designed to circumvent controls provided by the vendor. These tests shall include ... (2) Performing tests intended to bypass or otherwise defeat the resulting security environment. These tests shall include simulation of attempts to physically destroy components of the voting system in order to validate the correct operation of system redundancy and backup capabilities. This review applies to the full scope of system functionality".

"For systems that use telecommunications to transmit official voting data, the ITA shall review, and conduct tests of, the data interception and prevention safeguards specified by the vendor ... The ITA shall evaluate safeguards provided by the vendor to ensure their proper operation, including the proper response to the detection of efforts to monitor data or otherwise compromise the system. For systems that use public communications networks the ITA shall also review the vendor’s documented procedures for maintaining protection against newly discovered external threats..."

Ciber's Certification Report Overview

Statement of purpose:

"The primary purpose of Software Qualification Testing is to demonstrate compliance with levels of design, performance, and quality claimed for them by manufacturers. The tests are also intended to demonstrate that the system meets or exceeds the requirements of the FEC Voting System Standards. The scope and detail of the requirements for qualification have been tailored to the design and complexity of the software submitted by VoteHere for testing. The qualification test procedure is intended to discover defects in software design and system operation which, should they occur in actual election use, could result in failure to complete election operations in a satisfactory manner. The tests have been designed to evaluate system compliance with the requirements of Sections 2 through 6 of the FEC Voting System Standards."

Functional testing and verification scope:

Software verification - "All software (including firmware) for all voting systems shall include measures to prevent access by unauthorized persons and to prevent unauthorized operations by any person..."

(Firmware is the built-in programs (BIOS) of the computer. The job of the BIOS is the fundamental unsupervised control over access to network, hard disk drives, and other built in systems of the computer)

Security and Penetration testing and verification scope:

"The vendor shall provide a penetration analysis relevant to the operating status of the system and its environment. This analysis shall...identify all entry points and the methods of attack to which each is vulnerable ... the penetration analysis ... shall be part of the escrow deposit"

(The requirements as stated by Ciber do not require any verification of this penetration report, nor any indepenedent vulnerability or penetration security testing of voting machines)

Cipher Labs Certification of Diebold GEMS 1-18-15

System:

GEMS program, ODBC compliant database, Crystal Reports, ABasic, VCPRogrammer, Java, AccuVote-Optical Scan" running on a Dell P2 and Dell P3 using Windows CF.3.0,8/09102 firmware 4.3.13, and Windows NT 4.0.1381.

Functional tests:

Software testing and verification - "Firmware not reviewed"

Security testing and verification - "Not applicable, not reviewed"

Ciber conclusion:

"The functional testing included testing against the functional, overall system performance, software, security ... and audit requirements as specified in the FEC Voting System Standards ... After completing final functional testing, CIBER concludes that GEMS 1-18-15 meets the functional requirements provided by the FEC ... It has been demonstrated through the TDP review, source code review, and functional testing that the GEMS Software ... successfully meets the required acceptance criteria of the FEC Standards for ... Electronic Voting Systems, January 1990. CIBER recommends to the NASED committee that GEMS ... be certified and assigned NASED certification number N0306001 1815."

Source GEMS Certification report page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4

Cipher Labs Certification of VoteHere Election System 3.0.0.33

System:

VoteHere Election System 3.0.0.7 program running on Linux RedHat 7.1, MySQL 3.23.36, Apache 1.3.12, Mozilla 0.8, CryptoF, 4.1, Libxml 2.2.1I, Zlib 1.1.3, OpenSSL 0.9.5a, STLPort 4.0, Various Active X controls, on a ProLiant ML330e platform.

Functional tests:

Software testing and verification - "Firmware not reviewed"

Security testing and verification - "Not applicable, not reviewed"

Ciber's conclusion at end of this testing:

"After completing final functional testing, CIBER concludes that VoteHere Election System Version 3.0.0.33 meets the functional requirements provided by the FEC ... It has been demonstrated through the TDP review, source code review, and functional testing that the VoteHere Software ... successfully meets the required acceptance criteria of the FEC Standards of January 1990. CIBER recommends to the NASED committee that VoteHere Election System ... be certified and assigned NASED Certification Number N03080030033."

Source VoteHere Certification report

BlackBoxVoting.org investigations

Source for section: blackboxvoting.org

1. In a public records request to the Elections Board dated November 2, 2004 Bev Harris [54] summarises the security on Diebold's central voting servers:

   All Diebold central voting servers are "...installed on unpatched, open Windows computers and use RAS (Remote Access Server) to connect to the voting machines through telephone lines. Since RAS is not adequately protected, anyone in the world, even terrorists, who can figure out the server's phone number can change vote totals without being detected by observers. The passwords in many locations are easily guessed, and the access phone numbers can be learned through social engineering or war dialing. Under some configurations, attacks by remote access are possible even if the modem appears to be turned off."

2. The Washington voting system which lost 3 hours of audit trail is referred to earlier:

   Report here, audit log copy here, summary reports signed with date and time by King County elections chief now found to be missing from audit log here.

   (The audit log is a computer-generated automatic record similar to the "black box" in an airplane, that automatically records access to the Diebold central tabulator. The central tabulator audit log is an Federally (FEC) required security feature. The kinds of things it detects are the kinds of things you might see if someone was tampering with the votes: Opening the vote file, previewing and/or printing interim results, altering candidate definitions - a method that can be used to flip votes)

   Three hours between 9:52 pm and 1:31 am is missing altogether from the Sept. 14 2004 Washington State primary, King Co. WA. During this period, 4 summary reports were produced, each of which should have appeared in the audit log if complete and correct. According to King County records the log was complete, and as the article points out, "The audit log is 168 pages long and spans 120 days, and the 3 hours just happen to be missing during the most critical three hours on election night."

   A 2001 internal memo at the manufacturers cited below is referring to a vote or audit or similar database held on a voting machine when it says:

   "Jane ... did some fancy footwork on the .mdb file in Gaston recently. I know our dealers do it. King County is famous for it. That's why we've never put a password on the file before."

3. According to blackboxvoting, "Diebold's own internal memos show they have known the audit log could be altered since 2001"

   Diebold internal email memos:

From: owner-support@gesn.com On Behalf Of Nel Finberg
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2001 11:32 PM
Subject: alteration of Audit Log in Access
 
Jennifer Price at Metamor (about to be Ciber) has indicated that
she can access the GEMS Access database and alter the Audit log
without entering a password.  What is the position of our development
staff on this issue?  Can we justify this?  Or should this be anathema?

To: <support@gesn.com> 
Subject: RE: alteration of Audit Log in Access 
From: "Ken Clark" <ken@gesn.com> 
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 09:55:02 -0700 
In-reply-to: <ODEFIJCCLAAIGHHAOEJIKECACCAA.nfglobal@earthlink.net> 

...Its a tough question, and it has a lot to do with perception. 
Of course everyone knows perception is reality...

I've threatened to put a password on the .mdb before when
dealers/customers/support have done stupid things with the GEMS 
database structure using Access.  Being able to end-run the database 
has admittedly got people out of a bind though.  Jane (I think it was
Jane) did some fancy footwork on the .mdb file in Gaston recently.  
I know our dealers do it.  King County is famous for it.  That's why
we've never put a password on the file before.

Note however that even if we put a password on the file, it doesn't 
really prove much.  Someone has to know the password, else how 
would GEMS open it.  So this technically brings us back to square one:  
the audit log is modifiable by that person at least (read, me).  Back to 
perception though, if you don't bring this up you might skate through
Metamor.

There might be some clever crypto techniques to make it even harder
to change the log ... We're talking big changes here though, and at the 
moment largely theoretical ones.  I'd doubt that any of our competitors 
are that clever. Bottom line on Metamor is to find out what it is going 
to take to make them happy.  You can try the old standard of the NT 
password gains access to the operating system, and that after that point 
all bets are off...

I sense a loosing battle here though.  The changes to put a password on
the .mdb file are not trivial and probably not even backward compatible, 
but we'll do it if that is what it is going to take.

Followup

• No enhancement took place, as Ciber signed off security on the system as presented;
• King County suffered an audit trail loss for 3 hours in the September primary election.

"Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action [3000 requests] in history." [55]

Expert testimony on quality of current voting machines

1. Testimony of Dr. Aviel D. Rubin to U.S. Federal Election Assistance Commission, on Electronic Voting Systems, May 2004:

   (Witness credentials: Professor of Computer Science, Technical Director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, served on SERVE security peer review group for Dept. of Defense, member of National Committee on Voting Integrity, and 2004 election judge in local county)

   • There is no way for voters to verify that their votes were recorded correctly.
   • There is no way to publicly count the votes.
   • In the case of a controversial election, meaningful recounts are impossible.
   • With respect to the Diebold Accuvote TS and TSx, we found gross design and programming errors, as outlined in our attached report. The current certification process resulted in these machines being approved for use and being used in elections.
   • We do not know if the machines from other vendors are as bad as the Diebold ones because they have not made their systems available for analysis.

   "On the spectrum of terrible to very good, we are sitting at terrible. Not only have the vendors not implemented security safeguards that are possible, they have not even correctly implemented the ones that are easy. If I had more time I would debunk the myth of the security of the so-called triple redundancy in the Diebold machines. I would explain the limitations of logic and accuracy testing in an adversarial setting, I would explain how easy it would be for a malicious programmer to rig the election with today's DREs [voting machines], and I would describe the seriousness of the security flaws that we and others have found in the Diebold machines. These are all things that I could have done and would have been happy to do, before anybody started purchasing and using these DREs. But nobody asked."

   "Since our study came out, three other major studies ... all cited serious security vulnerabilities in DREs. RABA, which is closely allied with the National Security Agency, called for a "pervasive rewrite" of Diebold's code. Yet, the vendors, and many election officials ... continue to insist that the machines are perfectly secure. I cannot fathom the basis for their claims. I do not know of a single computer security expert who would testify that these machines are secure. I personally know dozens of computer security experts who would testify that they are not." (Source: [56])

2. "...Experts said the company designed the machines and software so that vote totals could easily be altered without leaving a trace. Losing candidates in one race charged that when the computer acted up on election night, a CES employee inserted control cards into the machine. The plaintiffs sued to retrieve the source code, and the court, for once, consented. When computer experts examined the software, they determined that CES had changed the computer's instructions for tallying votes on election night. But because the program lacked adequate auditing mechanisms to track the nature of those changes, no one could determine if the company had rigged the election." (Source: [57])

Exit polls

Exit polls have been used successfully in other countries to determine election fraud. [58] Because final published exit polls in America are matched to vote counts, they cannot be used to determine election fraud. However, in the 2004 election, pre-matched exit polls were leaked onto the internet. The exit poll results of one major consortium of news organizations, the National Election Pool ("NEP"), were based on interviews with voters in 49 states (omitting Oregon because its system of voting by mail eliminated the traditional polling place). The NEP results available during the day on Election Day showed Kerry leading Bush. These discrepancies led to charges that the exit polls were more accurate than the official counts, for various reasons. The co-director of NEP, Warren Mitofsky, said he suspected that the difference arose because "the Kerry voters were more anxious to participate in our exit polls than the Bush voters." [59]

(Reliability of Exit Polls as a predictor of election popular vote is discussed below #Reliability of Exit Polls. They are said to be consistently very accurate, often within fractions of a percentage point, across many elections and many countries, including USA)

Result plots - Florida

See http://www.ustogether.org/election04/florida_vote_patt.htm , http://ustogether.org/election04/mitteldorf/Liddle.htm , and http://ideamouth.com/voterfraud.htm

Discrepancies map

Voting locations that used electronic or other types of voting machines that did not issue a paper receipt or offer auditability correlate geographically with areas that had discrepancies in Bush's favor between exit poll numbers and actual results. Exit polling data in these areas show significantly higher support for Kerry than actual results (potentially outside the margin of error). From a statistical perspective, this may be indicative of vote rigging, because the likelihood of this happening by chance is extremely low. A study of 16 states by a former MIT mathematics professor places the likelihood at 1 in 50,000. [60]

File:2004 us popular vote2.gif^{[dubious – discuss]}

Exit polls vs. machine tallies, by state (9 states)

^{[dubious – discuss]}

Supporting the same conclusions of the maps above, here are bar graphs indicating the differentials between Exit Polls and Machine Tallies for nine e-voting and paper ballot states. The discrepancies appear to affect the e-voting states to a significantly greater degree than they affect the Paper Ballot states.

File:Exit poll small.jpg Source and background discussion are listed here: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00000893.htm

Source data and analysis: http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm http://ustogether.org/election04/mitteldorf/Liddle.htm

Corroborating data and analysis: [61]

Other sources have provided explanations for these discrepancies. See for example the MIT-Caltech Voting Technology Project analysis which can be found here:

In summary, they argue that these discrepancies are "not new or unique," but are within the expected margin of error.

Challenging this conclusion is an analysis which argues that the MIT-Caltech study contains several serious methodological problems, including: "[...] the CalTech/MIT report used the "corrected" exit poll data now available online at CNN.com [...]. 'They are NOT [the] unweighted, end-of-day poll results that have been the object of all the speculation, the ones that showed Kerry doing better in most states than he did in the actual count"

It also states that CalTech/MIT appear to have analysed and compared the corrected exit poll figures (not the raw ones), which CNN's website showed had been weighted to agree with official results.

The analysis highlights results from three states as exceptions: "the CalTech/MIT researchers probably grabbed results for [Rhode Island, Oklahoma and New York] before NEP got around to weighting them to match actual results"

The analysis concludes that Caltech/MIT were probably comparing exit data which was adjusted to fit with official figures, against the same official figures:

"Thus, the charts in the CalTech/MIT report don’t really tell us much. They are essentially analyzing rounding error ... More important, as noted here before, the analysis ... could be done with far more precision and power using the raw exit poll data. The exit polls track type of voting equipment down to the precinct level ... [so] this would be a very easy theory to 'debunk'. Unfortunately, NEP officials are so far reticent to discuss their data."

Misrepresentation of exit poll data

^{[dubious – discuss]}

The following tables compare final exit poll data with penultimate exit poll data, note the large swing of support towards Bush, with Kerry losing votes, which is impossible if votes are only being added. National Election Pool, the consortium which conducts exit polls, has stated that the early data was inaccurate due to regulations preventing pollsters from approaching voters, legal barriers, and their belief that Democrats are more willing to answer exit polls. The consortium dismissed the possibility that their early exit poll was accurate and that vote counts were wrong, due to the reasons they provided. The early exit poll data was not meant to be released to the public. The data that was meant to be released to the public was intended to be weighted by the actual vote count. Exit polling companies claim this is standard procedure. Critics argue exit poll data should never be weighted by final results and have requested access to the raw data.

Direct links to screenshots and data: CNN website 12.21am CNN website 1.41am, [62], [63], [64], [65]

At least one academic analysis of the exit polls which attempts to be rigorous states:

"The data I use for this analysis was available apparently only because a computer glitch allowed apparently "uncalibrated" data (not yet "corrected" to conform to announced vote tallies) to remain on the CNN website until approximately 1:30 AM election night.⁵ At that time, CNN substituted data "corrected" to conform to reported tallies. I have attempted to obtain the raw exit poll data from AP, Edison Media Research, Mitofsky International, and the NY Times, but have as yet received no response ⁶" ([66])

It is also said that:

"...the raw data is under the control of the organizations -- ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, NBC and the Associated Press – that collectively own it. In past years they have deposited the raw data at the archives of the Roper Center [AKA Roper Centre for Public Opinion Research], where it is available for analysis to the general public ..."

CNN screenshot #1:

12.21 am, 1963 respondents so far

Total vote: Male 47% , Female 53% of which:

	Male - Bush		47% x 49% x 1963		452
	Male - Kerry		47% x 51% x 1963		471
	Female - Bush		53% x 47% x 1963		489
	Female - Kerry		53% x 53% x 1963		551
	TOTAL - Bush				941
	TOTAL - Kerry				1022

(rounding: estimates of voters in each category accurate within +/- 10)

CNN screenshot #2:

1.41 am, 2020 respondents so far (57 more than above)

Total vote: Male 47% , Female 53% of which:

	Male - Bush		47% x 52% x 2020		499
	Male - Kerry		47% x 47% x 2020		451
	Female - Bush		53% x 50% x 2020		535
	Female - Kerry		53% x 50% x 2020		535
	TOTAL - Bush				1034
	TOTAL - Kerry				986

(rounding: estimates of voters in each category accurate within +/- 10)

The addition of an extra 57 voters at this station was therefore reported as +93 votes for Bush by AP and CNN at least, and voters monitoring the exit polls were told authoritatively that Bush had now taken a lead from Kerry.

Note that the counts for Kerry under Male voters changed in a negative direction after additional voters were included. The net subtraction of 20 votes from the Kerry total after adding new voters seems to reflect an adjustment process.

Reliability of exit polls

1. The same US online encyclopedia cited above ([67]) states that

   "Exit poll data - asking voters which way they voted as they leave the polls - are used around the world as excellent predictors of actual vote counts, usually accurate within a fraction of a point. Exit polls in this election seemed to match the vote tallies, as usual, except in those areas using touchscreen voting machines (like the Diebold Accuvote) or other software or modem-mediated electronic systems (like those from ES&S) with no paper trail - used by approximately one third of voters, many in swing states. 80% of all US voters [emphasis in original article] use some kind of voting machine from one of these two companies."

2. Dick Morris, a career pollster (Republican), states in the Hill News that the Election Night pattern of exit polls versus popular vote in six battleground states - Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Iowa - was "virtually inconceivable":

   "Exit polls are almost never wrong ... So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries. … To screw up one exit poll is unheard of. To miss six of them is incredible."

   (Speculative material alert: The article goes on to state that these differences demonstrate that the differences were due to "more than honest error". However it then proceeds directly to assumptive hypothesis as follows: "...To miss six of them is incredible. It boggles the imagination how pollsters could be that incompetent." Readers should note that this further hypothesis of pollster error is not in fact supported by a quoted source, nor is any explanation given to justify it, and for Wikipedia purposes is presently an unverified statement. The article has not in fact made any attempt to analyse or justify this assumption as to where the errors lay, but presumes the machine votes were correct and therefore the exit polls necessarily "bogus". However this does not cast doubt over the statement as to general accuracy of exit polls per se, which agrees with information from other sources. [68]

3. Thom Hartmann states that in Germany, [69]

   "... people fill in hand-marked ballots, which are hand-counted by civil servants, watched over by volunteer representatives of the political parties. ... It's totally clean, and easily audited. And even though it takes a week or more to count the vote ... the German people know the election results the night the polls close because the news media’s exit polls, for two generations, have never been more than a tenth of a percent off."

4. Students at BYU have been conducting Utah exit polls (see "Navigation" links) since 1982. They write:

   "... [the] results are very precise; In the 2003 Salt Lake County mayoral race, the KBYU/Utah Colleges Exit Poll predicted 53.8 percent of the vote for Rocky Anderson and 46.2 percent for Frank Pignanelli. In the actual vote, Anderson carried 54 percent of the vote to Pignanelli’s 46 percent ... In the Utah presidential election, for example, they predicted Bush 70.8%, Kerry 26.5%. The actual was Bush 71.1%, Kerry 26.4%. Consistently accurate exit poll predictions from student volunteers, including in this presidential election, gives us good reason to presume valid data from the world’s most professional exit polling enterprise."

Professor Steven F. Freeman's study of the exit poll discrepancies

From University of Pennsylvania Professor Steven F Freeman's analysis, "The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy" pdf web

Source of data:

"All of the 2004 exit poll data that I use here is unofficial, not meant to be released directly to the public. It comes from exit polls conducted for the National Election Pool, a consortium of the major television networks and the Associated Press, by two respected polling firms, Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, whose founder Warren Mitofsky is credited with having invented the exit poll ... Caveats aside, the data appears to be good."

The author states "Quoting Jonathan Simon, a former political survey and exit poll analyst, "his methodology was, as the night wore on, to mix in actual tabulation data with the initial pure exit poll data in such a way that by the time the full vote count was in, the `exit poll’ would conform very closely to the `actual’ vote"... (Internet correspondence Nov 6, 2004). He notes that the data may have already been adjusted to match counts, but were probably still pure. If they already had been adjusted, it means that the pure poll numbers favored Kerry to an even greater extent."

Analysis of Official Reasons:

• "The New York Times tells us that they obtained a report issued by the pollsters that debunked the possibility that the exit polls are right and the vote count is wrong, but does not explain beyond that declaration how the possibility was 'debunked.' In fact, no evidence at all is presented of skewed survey data or any problems at all with the polls except that 'uncorrected' data was released to the public."
• Accessibility to voters and sampling error, observation: weighting and overzealous officials atre a usual issue for sampling, and there is not yet any convincing reason to believe that such samples were massively skewed consistently on one directly.
• "Moreover, the issue of male/female ratio is irrelevant. CNN and others released data presenting male and female preferences separately, thus automatically weighting sex appropriately. Other potential imbalances are part of normal sampling error. A random sample would result in the poll precision and confidence intervals that I reported. Under such conditions, Republicans, westerners, etc., are equally (un)likely to be over- or under-represented. Imprecise representation is incorporated within the margin of error."
• Reliability of exit polls - as covered elsewhere in this article.
• "Kerry voters apparently were much more willing to participate in the exit poll than were Bush voters ... The problem with this 'explanation' or even ... the possibility that absentee/early voters disproportionately favored Bush, is that it is not an explanation, but rather a hypothesis. It’s apparent that 'Kerry voters were much more willing to participate in the exit poll than Bush voters' only given several questionable assumptions." [italics authors]

Results: File:Kerry 2004, predicted vs actual.gif

File:Kerry 2004, ohio voting bell curve shwoing confidence intervals.gif

The author states that barring some usual assumptions related to simple random sampling, "[The above graph] depicts a normal distribution curve probability density showing the relative likelihood, given this poll result, of the actual percentage of the vote he would be expected to receive in the state. The black lines below the curve indicate the poll’s statistical margin of error, the corresponding zone of 95 and 99 percent confidence. In this case, given that the exit poll indicated Kerry received 52.1% of the vote, we are 95 percent sure that the true percentage he received was between 49.8% and 54.4%. And because half of the 1 in 20 cases that fall outside the interval would be high rather than low, we’re 97.5 percent sure that the true percentage he received was at least 49.8%. We are 99.5% sure that sure that the true percentage he received was at least 49.2%. It turns out that the likelihood that he would have received only 48.5% of the vote is less than one in one thousand (.0008)"

"Conducting the same analysis for Florida, we find that Kerry’s 47.1% of the vote is likewise outside the 99% confidence interval. The likelihood of his receiving only 47.1%, given that the exit polls indicated 49.7%, is less than three in one thousand (.0028). Kerry’s count is also outside the 99% confidence interval in the third critical battleground state, Pennsylvania. Although he did carry the state, the likelihood of his receiving only 50.8% given that the exit polls indicated 54.1% is less than two in one thousand (.0018)"

"The likelihood of any two of these statistical anomalies occurring together is on the order of one-in-a-million. The odds against all three [including Pennysylvania] occurring together are 250 million to one. As much as we can say in social science that something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error."

Conclusion:

"I have tried to demonstrate that exit poll data is fundamentally sound, that the deviations between exit poll predictions and vote tallies in the three critical battleground states could not have occurred strictly by chance or random error, and that no solid explanations have yet been provided to explain the discrepancy."

"The unexplained discrepancy leaves us with two broad categories of explanations: the polls were flawed or the count is off. The most important investigations concern verification of the tallies and allegations of fraud on one side; and examination of the exit poll’s methodology and findings on the other. Some useful statistical analyses would compare the "shift" in battleground states vs. non-battleground states, and in states, counties and precincts where safeguards are strong vs. those where they are suspect. Obviously, if the polling consortium would release their data, that would allow us to do more definitive analyses."

"Given that neither the pollsters nor their media clients have provided solid explanations to the public, suspicion of fraud, or among the less accusatory, "mistabulation," is running rampant and unchecked. That so many people suspect misplay undermines not only the legitimacy of the President, but faith in the foundations of the democracy."

"Systematic fraud or mistabulation is a premature conclusion, but the election’s unexplained exit poll discrepancies make it an unavoidable hypothesis, one that is the responsibility of the media, academia, polling agencies, and the public to investigate."

Vote suppression due to long lines

Long lines at voting stations are suggested by some as a way in which voting was selectively suppressed. By making it more time consuming to vote, voting is claimed to have been deterred more in some locations than others, and that the impact was to selectively deter voters in high-population areas which were known to be principally Democratic.

Long lines, though seemingly benign, were a problem with the 2004 election. In many places, lines were over 6 hours long. Two causes contributed to this:

• Precincts being given sufficient ballots.
• Precincts being allocated enough voting machines.

These two factors influence the saturation point of voting stations. Number of machines * Max. votes per hour per machine * hours poll is open = max. number of votes precinct is able to process. Every voter over this limit is effectively disenfranchised as the precinct runs out of voter-time-slots. Most polling places stayed open to accommodate all voters who were in line as of the official closing time, but large numbers of voters were unable to wait the many hours before they could cast their vote, and many who had attended to vote ultimately left without voting for this reason.

Although low population precincts were allocated relatively many voting machines and were well within the limits of processing capacity, high-population centers often were not "Is there inner-city election suppression in Franklin County, Ohio?":

"Document reveals Columbus, Ohio voters waited hours as election officials held back machines. One telling piece of evidence was entered into the record at the Saturday, November 13 public hearing on election irregularities and voter suppression held by nonpartisan voter rights organizations. Cliff Arnebeck, a Common Cause attorney, introduced into the record the Franklin County Board of Elections spreadsheet detailing the allocation of e-voting computer machines for the 2004 election. The Board of Elections’ own document records that, while voters waited in lines ranging from 2-7 hours at polling places, 68 electronic voting machines remained in storage and were never used on Election Day. The Board of Elections’ own document records that, while voters waited in lines ranging from 2-7 hours at polling places, 68 electronic voting machines remained in storage and were never used on Election Day ... An analysis of the Franklin County Board of Elections’ allocation of machines reveals a consistent pattern of providing fewer machines to the Democratic city of Columbus, with its Democratic mayor and uniformly Democratic city council, despite increased voter registration in the city. The result was an obvious disparity in machine allocations compared to the primarily Republican white affluent suburbs."

"The ... Republican enclave of Upper Arlington has 34 precincts. No voting machines in this area cast more than 200 votes per machine. Only one, ward 6F, was over 190 votes at 194 on one machine. By contrast ... 17% of Columbus’ machines were operating at 90-100% over optimum capacity while in Upper Arlington the figure was 3%. In the Democratic stronghold of Columbus 139 of the 472 precincts had at least one and up to five fewer machine than in the 2000 presidential election. ... 29% of Columbus’ precincts, despite a massive increase in voter registration and turnout, had fewer machines than in 2000. In Upper Arlington, 6% had fewer machines in 2004. One of those precincts had a 25% decline in voter registration and the other had a 1% increase. Compare that to Columbus ward 1B, where voter registration went up 27%, but two machines were taken away in the 2004 election. Or look at 23B where voter registration went up 22% and they lost two machines since the 2000 election, causing an average of 207 votes to be cast on each of the remaining machines ... Thus, in four years, the ward went from optimum usage to system failure."

Precincts sometimes had less than half the machines requested and were well outside the limits of processing capacity, effectively disenfranchising an undetermined number of voters. For example, approx. 17% of voting machines in Columus were operating at 190%-200% "optimum capacity".

This may explain the discrepancy between expected voter turnout in high-population areas and counted voter turnout in these areas. Since high-population areas are predominantly Democratic, this would primarily affect the Democratic constituency, and appear on the surface to reflect inefficacy in the Democratic get-out-the-vote effort.

941 incidents of this type have been reported, 263 of which are from Ohio [70], and 151 of which are from Florida [71]. 140 such incidents (over 1/7 of the national total) are from Cuyahoga County, Ohio [72]. This amounts to an average of 0.098 per precinct, over eight times the avg. outside of Cuyahoga of 0.012 per precinct. Likewise, reported long line incidents in Cuyahoga per person is more than eight times as high as outside of Cuyahoga. Voter turnout in Cuyahoga compared with the rest of the state was 4.5% less than usual.

25 incidents have been reported in Franklin County, Ohio, an avg of .032 per precinct. Franklin County has sparked particular attention because the long lines were disproportionately in poor and african-american communities, and largely due to machine shortages in those precincts, in posssible violation of the Equal Protection Amendment.

In democratic counties in Ohio with at least three reported long line incidents, counties with higher voter turnouts have more long line incident reports per registered voter. Statewide voter turnout is 69.86%, whereas in said counties, which make up 34.34% of registered voters in Ohio, voter turnout averaged 66.01%, and elsewhere it averaged 71.87%, for a difference of 5.85%.

Racial discrimination in the 2004 election

• Specific concerns were raised in the course of the election in respect of votes from key minorities, such as blacks [73] or Cuban Hispanics.
• There have been reports that efforts to challenge voters were targeted towards blacks, the 'challenge lists' apparently containing an overwhelming percentage of blacks relative to population [74], [75], [76], [77]. Jesse Jackson, prominent African-American activist and founder of the Rainbow Coalition, remarked on Election Day: "Suppose 500 black folks came into a white neighborhood to challenge votes. It would be totally unacceptable. We will not surrender in the face of this madness." [78].
• In August 2004, the NAACP and other civil rights leaders charged that the Republican Party was mounting a campaign to keep African Americans and other minority voters away from the polls in November. Officers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which reports to Florida Governor Jeb Bush, were dispatched to investigate allegations of voter fraud that came up during the Orlando mayoral election in March. Source: [79]
• Florida 2004: in a repeat of the highly problematic "scrub list" of the 2000 election, the state ordered the implementation of a "potential felon" purge list to remove voters from the rolls. The state abandoned the plan after news media investigations revealed that the 2004 list also included thousands of people who were eligible to vote, and heavily targeted African-Americans while virtually ignoring Hispanic voters.[80]
• Summer 2004: Michigan state Rep. John Pappageorge (R-Troy) was quoted in the Detroit Free Press as saying, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election." African-Americans make up 83 per cent of Detroit's population. [81]
• South Dakota, June 2004 primary: native American voters were prevented from voting after they were challenged to provide photo IDs, which they were not required to present under state or federal law. Source: [82],[83],[84]

International election monitoring

A small team of internation election monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were invited to monitor the election. The OSCE observers were granted access to polling stations in a number of states, however sometimes only in specific counties. They have released a preliminary statement (or see press release). As of 17th November they still have to release their full report. The monitors criticised partizan election officials and the long lines at polling places, but said that electronic voting machines generally worked well.

Press comment by International Monitors:

"International monitors at a polling station in southern Florida said Tuesday that voting procedures fell short in many ways of the best global practices. The observers said they had less access to polls than in Kazakhstan, that the electronic voting had fewer fail-safes than in Venezuela, that the ballots were not so simple as in the Republic of Georgia and that no other country had such a complex national election system. Two-member observer teams fanned out across 11 states and included citizens of 36 countries, ranging from Canada and Switzerland to Latvia, Kyrgyzstan, Slovenia and Belarus."

As for electronic voting, Gould said he preferred Venezuela's system to the calculator-sized touch pads in Miami. "Each electronic vote in Venezuela also produces a ticket that voters then drop into a ballot box," Gould said. "Unlike fully electronic systems, this gives a backup that can be used to counter claims of massive fraud." The United States is also nearly unique in lacking a unified voter registration system or national identity card, Gould said, adding that he would ideally require U.S. voters to dip a finger in an ink bowl or have a cuticle stained black after voting. "In El Salvador, Namibia and so many other elections, the ink was extremely important in preventing challenges to multiple voting," Gould said. "In Afghanistan it didn't work so well, because they used the dipping ink for the cuticles, so it wiped right off."

(Source: International Herald Tribune [85])

Other irregularities

One article [86] alleges that Democratic results were apparently withheld until Republican results had moved ahead:

"Kerry's results were deliberately withheld in order to create the illusion that he was actually losing. While Bush’s results came in thick and fast, Kerry's came in painfully slowly. Listening to the CBC's (Canadian Broadcasting Commission) election coverage, I found that Kerry was stuck for a long time on 112 electoral college votes while Bush’s total continued to rise. After what seemed an inordinately long time, Kerry's figures rose to 188, but only after Bush had gone to 200. Kerry then stayed on 188 while Bush climbed to 204, then 210, then 238! At no stage were results released in an order that would lend the least credibility to the idea of a Kerry victory. While Democrats agonized over the strategic delays, the Republicans turned on miracles in two states which at best looked like being extremely close, Florida and Ohio. In the case of Florida, the results from the most heavily Democratic counties came in last. By reporting only the results for the other counties, the illusion was created of a pro-Bush trend."

Please see the 'In the news' section for a list of reports detailing reported irregularities and unresolved aspects of the election.

Official viewpoints and investigations

File:2004 us fraud2.jpg

State and Federal government agencies

Master list of Election-related litigation [87]

New Mexico Board of Elections

• Presidential Race Still Undecided in New Mexico [88]

"On Friday, all of New Mexico's counties had to complete a count in their regions, but one rural county still had problems and did not meet the deadline. 'I will not be declaring a winner until Nov. 23,' said New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron."

California's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel

Special Interest and fair Voting bodies

Blackboxvoting.ORG

source: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

Nov 13:

• Florida Black Box Voting has launched a fraud audit into Florida. Three investigators (Bev Harris, Andy Stephenson, and Kathleen Wynne) are in Florida right now requesting hand counts on selected counties that have not fully complied with blackboxvoting.org's Nov. 2 Freedom of Information request by Monday (Diebold counties) or Tuesday (other counties).

• Ohio We have reports that both David Cobb (Green Party) and Michael Badnarik (Libertarian Party) will be filing for official recounts in Ohio. Black Box Voting is also launching a fraud audit in Ohio. Accuses Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell of failing to properly account for provisional ballots, and refusing to allow citizens to see the pollbooks.

• New Mexico Black Box Voting is implementing fraud diagnostics on the state of New Mexico. Information we recently received is indicative of widespread vote manipulation. Has yet to be publically released.

• Georgia Indications of corrupt voting processes in specific county, with possible criminal actions by local officials.

• Arizona Black Box Voting is launching a fraud investigation on Pima County Arizona.

• Nevada Black Box Voting is launching a fraud investigation on the state of Nevada. Multiple irregularities.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Electronic Frontier Foundation contends that:

Electronic voting machines have "serious security problems that aren't being addressed. Most of the machines use "black box" software that hasn't been publicly reviewed for security. Almost none provide voter-verifiable paper ballots to detect fraud. A recent analysis by several academic researchers outlines the many and varied ways that anyone from a technically proficient insider to an average voter could disrupt an e-voting system to defraud an election"

They have filed numerous lawsuits concerning voting irregularities. Their most recent lawsuit against State of Louisiana elections officials alleged many low and moderate income citizens were denied the right to vote when polling places failed to open on time or provide enough provisional ballots.

The Election Protection Coalition

Hearings were held Saturday 13 November at the New Faith Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio (An additional hearing will be held Monday, November 15, 2004, 6-9 PM, in the Franklin County Court House, also in Columbus, Ohio). The hearings were organized by the Election Protection Coalition. The hearings allowed citizens to enter their concerns into the public record, for possible review by the Ohio State Legislature.

• For three hours, burdened voters, one after another, offered sworn testimony about Election Day voter suppression and irregularities that they believe are threatening democracy. The hearing, sponsored by the Election Protection Coalition, was to collect testimony of voting troubles that might be used to seek legislative changes to Ohio's election process. The organizers chose Ohio because it was a swing state in the presidential election as well as the site of numerous claims of election fraud and voter disenfranchisement. [...] Many of the voters who testified were clearly Democrats who wonder if their losing presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry, was able to draw all the votes that were intended for him." [89]

Lynn Landes' investigation of AP exit polls reporting

States that the AP is the "sole source of raw vote totals for the major news broadcasters on Election Night" and that they have refused to explain where this information will be sourced, and "refused to confirm or deny that the AP will receive direct feed from voting machines and central vote tabulating computers across the country."

She notes that if so, a remote computer could also access these same machines (the manufacturers already requested they not be connected during some elections, see above), that the manufacturers pride themselves on "accessibility" and that many of the AP executive have Republican ties and as a sole source may not be as non-partisan as is belived. (Source [90])

Candidates and political parties

Democratic Party

• Several Democratic members of the House Committee on the Judiciary have written to the GAO requesting a formal investigation. Their first letter was written three days after the election, on November 5 [91], and this was followed by a second letter on November 8 listing further matters which had since come to light [92].

House Committee website for later information

Indiana Democratic Party

• The Indiana state Democratic Party requested a recount on November 12, 2004 in the 9th District congressional race that Rep. Baron Hill lost by fewer than 1,500 votes [93]. Filing just before the deadline, the request comes amid questions about whether optical-scan voting systems used by some counties recorded straight-party votes erroneously. In the Nov. 2 election, Republican Mike Sodrel defeated Hill, a three-term Democratic incumbent from Seymour, by a margin of 1,485 votes out of more than 287,000 cast, according to preliminary results from the Indiana secretary of state's office.

Green Party

• Green Party Candidate David Cobb, in conjunction with his Libertarian opponent, has completed their fundraiser for recount of the Ohio state presidential vote. A recount request is pending. [94], [95]

Libertarian Party

• Libertarian candidate Badnarik has joined the effort with Green party candidate David Cobb to recount the Ohio state presidential vote. [96], [97]

Ralph Nader

Nov 5:

• New Hampshire Ralph Nader filed a request for a recount of the votes with that state's Secretary of State. Nader's request cited "irregularities in the vote reported on the AccuVote Diebold Machines in comparison to exit polls and trends in voting in New Hampshire" and added: "These irregularities favor President George W. Bush by 5 percent to 15 percent over what was expected." [98] As one of the candidates on the ballot, Nader has the right to demand a recount, but is required to pay for it (because he lost by more than 1 percent of the vote). The state Attorney General's office initially responded that Nader's request was not valid because, although the request was submitted by the deadline, it was not accompanied by a check for the expenses. [99] Thereafter, however, the Nader campaign conveyed a down payment. The state agreed to begin a partial recount.

Nov 12:

• New Hampshire Ralph Nader to audit Diebold machines in New Hampshire. According to Nader, the current situation with voting machines warrants investigation. Several elements make voting machines "probative" for investigation, according to Nader, a consumer affairs lawyer: proprietary ownership, secret code, vested interests, a high-value reward, and lack of any real consequences, or likelihood of getting caught, for vote manipulation. "We are told that shenanigans are just politics," said Nader at a press conference on Nov. 10. "Well, it's not politics. It's taking away people's votes."

Republican Party

None yet.

Related Articles

• U.S. presidential election, 2004
• Voting machine
• Electronic voting
• Gerrymandering
• Voter suppression
• Electoral fraud
• Vote-rigging

(NPOV note: the presence of any link above is for those seeking further information on election irregularities in general. It is not an opinion on this specific election)

External links

Petitions

• A Petition to Congress requesting an investigation into the Presidential Election of 2004 [100]

Useful sources for data

• Roper Centre for Public Opinion Research Home page Election 2004, some data and analysis, also acts as a depository for polls and data from previous elections.

(Note - degree of prior adjustment (if any) of data held is not established)

Organizations

• Better World Links on Election Fraud 2004
• blackboxvoting.ORG
• blackboxvoting.COM

(Note, these two websites are not affiliated with each other, however both carry web pages relevant to this article))

• blackboxvoting Articles and voter field reports
• Institute for Public Accuracy
• truthout.org
• votergate.tv
• verifiedvoting.org
• disinfopedia.org especially an article on the alleged fraud using Diebold systems
• VotersUnite.org Database of E-Voting Problems
• EIDS Database of Voting Incidents
• News and Articles
• Findlaw Legal Database - Election 2004
• Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe especially their Preliminary statement on US election

Other

• [101] Expert testimony as to procedures needed to make electronic voting secure
• [102] article written by the founder and CTO of Counterpane Internet Security Inc., on Electronic Voting.
• [103] Article by The Economist
• [104] e-voting experts' website and weblog, large amount of information and expert discussion (panellist credentials provided)
• Keith Olbermann's blog
• 11/08/04 Olbermann segment online , [105]
• [106] Voters Unite Listing of All Reported Irregularities
• [107] Tom Paine's article
• [108] Democratic Underground discussion board on the topic
• Common Dreams report
• Voting reopened in NC because of mistake
• 60,000 (5%) of Absentee Ballots go missing, undelivered to voters in Broward County, FL [109], [110]
• 268,159 more votes than voters in florida
• Public hearings are scheduled in Ohio the weekend of Nov 13-14, sponsored by Dean for America.
• 47 State Exit Poll Analysis Confirms Swing Anomaly [111]
• Electronic Voting information by Rebecca Mercuri, Ph.D.

In the news

November 2004

Nov. 3:

• Votes Lost in Cyberspace - DeShaunta Bullock, WCNT [112]
• 37 votes may be lost in Palm Beach glitch - USA Today [113]
• E-voting irregularities raise eyebrows, blood pressure [114]

Nov. 4:

• Infernalpress.com. Alleges that Republicans suppressed votes and voting machine companies committed fraud and tampered with election results, "How George W. Bush Won the 2004 Presidential Election" [115]

Nov. 6:

• Gwin, Harold. "Democrats' leader decries voting glitches." The Vindicator (OH). November 6, 2004. [116]
• Glitch Found in Ohio Counting [117]

Nov. 5:

• CNN. Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio [118]
• Rutenberg, Jim. "Report Says Problems Led to Skewed Surveying Data." New York Times. [119] - Outlines alleged problems with the early exit poll data.
• Book, Sue. "Election problems due to a software glitch." Sun Journal (NC). [120]
• Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes [121]
• Palm Beach Post article about their situation
• Rutenberg, Jim. "Report Says Problems Led to Skewed Surveying Data" The New York Times[122]
• Solvig, Erica. "Warren's vote tally walled off." The Enquirer (OH). [123]
• 22 voting machines have less-than-intact seals New York Newsday [124]
• Recount officials in Volusia County, FL wary of fraud - [125]
• Johnson, Mark. Winner so far: Confusion; agriculture, education races change as counties fix vote-tally errors. The Charlotte Observer. [126]

Nov. 7:

• Fitrakis, Bob. "None dare call it voter suppression and fraud." The Free Press (OH). [127]
• Voting Problems in Ohio Set Off an Alarm [128]

Nov. 8:

• Equipment glitch delays Escambia County vote tally [129]

Nov. 9:

• Officials, printers examine flaws that slowed vote count [130]
• Voter fraud uncovered in New Mexico [131]
• Carteret ballots are gone forever Daily News [132]

Nov. 10:

• Wired. Florida E-Vote Fraud? Unlikely. [133]
• Salon.com. Was the election stolen? The system is clearly broken. But there is no evidence that Bush won because of voter fraud. [134]
• Fitrakis, Bob. "And so the sorting and discarding of Kerry votes begins." The Free Press (OH). [135]
• Bronis, Jason. "Ballot counting turns into legal fiasco." News 14 Charlotte. [136]
• Cincinatti Enquirer. Warren Co. defends lockdown decision, FBI denies warning officials of any special threat [137]

• Cuyahoga board deflates vote suspicions Plain Dealer Reporter [138]

Nov. 11:

• If it's too bad to be true, it may not be voter fraud. [139] - "Most statistical enigmas in recent election have logical explanations, despite Web rants"
• AP. Democratic lawyers on "fact finding" mission in Ohio. http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/politics/index.ssf?/base/politics-1/1100164141194251.xml&storylist=politics]</small.>