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Will “Push And Pray” Voting Prevail In 2012? The Private Companies behind The Curtain: The Great And Powerful Advocates Of Faith-Based Electronic Voting

Bob Fitrakis

April 11, 2012

The Private Companies behind The Curtain: The Great And Powerful Advocates Of Faith-Based Electronic Voting

In this election year, the most important companies to watch are two you’ve probably never heard of — Smartech and Triad.

In the 2004 presidential election, Averbeck worked closely with the late Michael Connell, the CEO of New Media Communications. Connell was Karl Rove’s IT guru before his untimely death in a suspicious plane crash. As the FreePress.org has previously reported, then-Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell contracted with Averbeck to provide back-up computer services to report Ohio’s official election results.

Ohio Secretary of State’s office claimed they were unable to tabulate Ohio’s votes within the state in real time because their computers had a supposed “denial of service” attack in the wee hours of the morning after the 2004 Election Day. Vote tabulations were then shifted to the Old Pioneer Bank building in Chattanooga, Tennessee where Averbeck ran his internet service company Smartech. (See New court filing reveals how the 2004 Ohio presidential election was hacked)

Averbeck’s Airnet Group, Inc., doing business as Smartech, is a key company in the private, well-connected Republican world of electronic election systems. According to Airnet Group’s website it is a “…a leading of advanced Internet hosting, network and application solutions for business, delivery services via secure state-of-the-art Internet Data Centers.”

Airnet started as a staffing firm in 1994. The Chattanooga Times Free Press quotes Averbeck as saying he “…backed into political work” when he was hired to solve the Republican National Committee’s internet problems in the 2000 presidential election.

During the 2004 presidential election, Averbeck told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that his company had dedicated six web servers to handle his political business and was “negotiating for more broadband capacity to handle the growing demand for electronic political information.” In August 2004, Smartech hosted the Republican National Convention’s website as well as the Bush-Cheney campaign website – www.georgewbush.com.

The GOP paid Smartech $2.3 million in the 2004 election cycle, according to SourceWatch.

Prior to emerging as owner of the premier internet hosting company for Republicans in the United States, Averbeck had been affiliated with Pathway Press, the publishing arm of the Church of God in Cleveland, Tennessee. “Pathway provides award-winning magazines, books, and innovative discipleship curriculum materials for the Church of God and to the wider Evangelical and Pentecostal community,” according to its website.

In 2006, Smartech earned even more money, $3.3 million, from the Republican Party.

Averbeck and Connell not only teamed up in Ohio during the controversial 2004 election in Ohio, but also worked with notorious political operative Paul J. Manafort on the 2004 campaign of Viktor Yanukovych in the Ukraine. The U.S. State Department accused Yanukovych’s campaign of rigging that election. Only a massive outcry by the Ukrainian people reversed those election results.

In 2010, with Connell deceased, Averbeck and Manafort once again worked on Yanukovich’s campaign. Allegations of election rigging emerged once again. This time, despite the charges of an election fix, Yanukovich was declared the winner.

While Connell’s New Media designed the Ohio election reporting system in 2004, Smartech hosted the back-up vote tabulation. The maintenance on the electronic voting machine maintenance in Ohio was done by primarily by a third secretive right-wing company, Triad. The Rapp family owns Triad Governmental Systems, also known as Triad GSI and the following companies: Rapp Systems, Corp.; Psephos Corp.; and Odyssey Online.

Connell, Averbeck and the Rapps — or New Media, Smartech and Triad — were all heavily committed to the Right-to-Life movement and far-right Republican politics.

The Rapp family, led by patriarch Tod A. Rapp of Xenia, Ohio, emerged in the public eye in 2000 after it was revealed that Psephos Corp. designed the infamous butterfly ballot in Florida. Tod Rapp started his first company, Rap Systems Corp. in 1979. In 1983, Tod Rapp and David E. Snoddy incorporated Triad Governmental Systems, Inc. Its stated purpose was “…to develop, promote, sell, distribute, market and service computer systems, software, and hardware and to consult with federal, state and local government authorities and private industry.”

During the recount of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, allegations were made that the Rapp family was aiding in rigging the recount for George W. Bush. Triad Governmental Systems maintained the computers in 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties, mainly in southern rural counties. In the last statewide election, public records indicate that Triad now services the computers in 57 of the 88 counties. Following their notoriety in the 2004 elections, Triad Governmental Systems started marketing itself as Triad GSI.

The Rapp family is well-known in the Greene County Right to Life movement. In Triad GSI’s website, the company says “It is our desire to develop the highest quality election software and hardware systems available in the elections business.”

In September 2011, Averbeck announced he was planning to build new data centers in Ohio and California but is committed to staying in his highly secured site in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Averbeck, the Rapp family, Smartech and Triad — these are the private, far-Christian Right companies that will be counting the vote on Election Day 2012 in the Buckeye State.

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Originally published by https://freepress.org

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The Free Press uncovers one million voters purged in Ohio

Bob Fitrakis
April 15, 2012

The Free Press obtained public records from all 88 of Ohio’s county Boards of Elections (BOE) documenting that 1,092,392 voters were removed from the voting rolls since the last presidential election.

Cuyahoga County, which includes Democratic-rich Cleveland, led the Buckeye State with 267,071 purges. Franklin County which includes the capital of Columbus, removed 93,578 voters. Franklin County went 58% for Obama in the 2008 election. Hamilton County which includes Cincinnati removed 65,536 voters, for a total of 426,185 from these three Ohio counties. Once again, a few rural Ohio counties reported no purges. These include Hancock, Huron, Sandusky, and Wood counties.

The National Voting Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 mandates that each state make a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official voting rolls. Some voters were purged for legitimate reasons such as those who are deceased and voters who moved out of the county or out of state. But, the Act also allows BOEs to remove voters who have not voted in two consecutive federal election cycles. BOEs are allowed to mail to registered voters who can be purged if they don’t respond to the mailing – even if they still live at their registered address.

These discretionary mass purges concentrated primarily in Ohio’s urban centers could be the key to whether Obama wins the nation’s most controversial swing state in this year’s election. A similar study by the Free Press during the 2008 year revealed 1.25 million voters purged. After the 2004 Ohio election debacle and recount, the Free Press discovered that between the 2000-2004 election cycles 305,000 voters had been purged in the state.

In 2008, the grassroots activist group ACORN and other groups re-registered many of Ohio’s purged voters before the November election. After Obama’s victory, an obviously concentrated effort by the Right targeted ACORN and succeeded in shutting it down. Without ACORN or a similar operation in place, what will happen in Ohio in 2012?

We could follow the actions of the ACLU in 2008, that won a lawsuit in Michigan halting the mass purging of voters in Detroit. Michigan officials purged an estimated 30,000 voters per year based on their failure to respond to the voter registration material sent to their house. Justice Stephen J. Murphy of the U.S. District Court ordered Michigan to “immediately discontinue their practice of canceling or rejecting a voter’s registration based upon the return of the voter’s original voter identification card as undeliverable.”

Perhaps the ACLU or another organization will step up in Ohio to remedy or eliminate these purges In the meantime, Ohio voters should check their registration status before heading to the polls this November.

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Fight Back on WCRSFM.org March

Fight Back March 25, 2012

Submitted by fightback on Sun, 03/25/2012 – 8:13pm

Bob Fitrakis talks about rift within the Tea Party

30:00 minutes (27.46 MB)

Fight Back March 1, 2012

Submitted by fightback on Fri, 03/09/2012 – 7:31pm

Bob Fitrakis, Connie Gadell Newton and Connie Harris on the Occupy the Statehouse regional action #1

30:00 minutes (27.47 MB)

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Fitrakis: Fight Back radio with Victoria Collier-Occupy Rigged Elections

Bob’s Talktainmentradio.com show with Victoria Collier-Occupy Rigged Elections
Listen & Call-in to my radio show tonight! Wed., Jan. 25, 7-8pm EST
Go to: www.talktainmentradio.com – “Listen Live”
Victoria Collier is the editor of www.votescam.org. Daughter and niece of James and Kenneth Collier, authors of “Votescam: The Stealing of America,” Victoria continues to educate the public on her family’s groundbreaking 25 year investigation into how elections are centrally rigged using computerized voting machines.

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Has America’s Stolen Election Process Finally Hit Prime Time?

Prime Time

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
December 29, 2011

It took two stolen US Presidential elections and the prospect of another one coming up in 2012.
For years the Democratic Party and even much of the left press has reacted with scorn for those who’ve reported on it.
But the imperial fraud that has utterly corrupted our electoral process seems finally to be dawning on a broadening core of the American electorate—if it can still be called that.

The shift is highlighted by three major developments:
1. The NAACP goes to the United Nations

In early December, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the largest civil rights organization in America, announced that it was petitioning the United Nations over the orchestrated GOP attack on black and Latino voters.

In its landmark report entitled Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America, the NAACP directly takes on the new Jim Crow tactics passed in fourteen states that are designed to keep minorities from voting in 2012.

The report analyzes 25 laws that target black, minority and poor voters “unfairly and unnecessarily restrict[ing] the right to vote.” It notes “…a coordinated assault on voting rights.”

The Free Press has been reporting on this coordinated assault since the 2000 election, including the heroic struggle of voters in Ohio to postpone the enactment of the draconian House Bill 194 that was the most restrictive voting rights law passed in the United States. (See Voting rights activists fight back against new Republican Jim Crow attack in Ohio)

The NAACP points out that this most recent wave of voter repression is a reaction to the “…historic participation of people of color in the 2008 presidential election and substantial minority population growth according to the 2010 consensus….”

It should be no surprise that the states of the old Confederacy — Florida, Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina — are in the forefront of repressing black voters. Three other Jim Crow states with the greatest increase in Latino population — South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee — also implemented drastic measures to restrict minority voting.

The report documents that a long-standing tactic under fire since the 1860s — the disenfranchisement of people with felony convictions — is back in vogue. This has been coupled with “severe restrictions” on persons conducting voter registration drives and reducing opportunities for early voting and the use of absentee ballots complete these template legislative acts.

Most of these new Jim Crow tactics were initially drafted as model legislation by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a secretive and conservative corporate policy group whose founder, according to the NAACP, is on record in favor of reducing the voting population in order to increase their own “leverage.”

The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that the 25 laws passed in these 14 states could prevent as many as 5 million voters from voting, a number easily exceeding the margin of victory in numerous presidential elections.

Ohio’s HB 194, which awaits a 2012 referendum vote, would disenfranchise an estimated 900,000 in one of our nation’s key battleground states.

An important statistic in all the legislation is that 25 % of African Americans lack a state photo identification, as do 15% of Latinos, but by comparison, only 8% of white voters. Other significant Democratic constituents — the elderly of all races and college students — would be disproportionately impacted.

Ohio voters have just repealed a draconian anti-labor law passed by the GOP-dominated legislature and the state’s far-right governor John Kasich. Whether they will do the same to this massive disenfranchisement remains to be seen. But the fact that it’s on a state ballot marks a major leap forward. Ohio activists are also drafting a constitutional amendment that includes revamping the registration, voting and vote count procedures.(Can we transform labor’s Buckeye victory into a new era of election protection?)

2. The Justice Department awakens

On Friday, December 23, 2011, the U.S. Justice Department called South Carolina’s new voter ID law discriminatory. The finding was based in part on the fact that minorities were almost 20% more likely than whites to be without state-issued photo IDs required for voting. Unlike Ohio, South Carolina remains under the 1965 Voting Rights Act and requires federal pre-approval to any changes in voting laws that may harm minority voters.

The Republican governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley denounced the Justice Department decision as “outrageous” and vowed to do everything in her power to overturn the decision and uphold the integrity of state’s rights under the 10th Amendment.

The US Supreme Court has upheld the requirement of photo ID for voting. Undoubtedly the attempt by US Attorney General Eric Holder to challenge this will go to the most thoroughly corporate-dominated Court in recent memory. The depth of the commitment of the Obama Administration to the issue also remains in doubt.

3. The EAC finally finds that voting machines are programmed to be partisan

Another federal agency revealed another type of problem in Ohio. On December 22, 2011, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) issued a formal investigative report on Election Systems & Software (ED&D) DS200 Precinct County optical scanners. The EAC found “three substantial anomalies”:
• Intermittent screen freezes, system lock-ups and shutdowns that prevent the voting system from operating in the manner in which it was designed
• Failure to log all normal and abnormal voting system events
• Skewing of the ballot resulting in a negative effect on system accuracy

The EAC ruled that the ballot scanners made by ES&S electronic voting machine firm failed 10% of the time to read the votes correctly. Ohio is one of 13 states that requires EAC certification before voting machines can be used in elections. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported in 2010 that the voting machines in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County had failed during testing for the 2010 gubernatorial election. Cleveland uses the same Republican-connected ES&S ballot scanners — the DS200 opti-scan system. Ohio’s Mahoning County, home of the Democratic enclave of Youngstown, also uses the DS200s. The same opti-scan system is also used in the key battleground states of Florida, Illionois, Indiana, New York, and Wisconsin.

Voting rights activists fear a repeat of the well-documented vote switching that occurred in Mahoning County in the 2004 presidential election when county election officials admitted that 31 of their machines switched Kerry votes to Bush.

But a flood of articles about these realities—including coverage in the New York Times—seems to indicate the theft of our elections has finally taken a leap into the mainstream of the American mind. Whether that leads to concrete reforms before another presidential election is stolen remains to be seen. But after more than a decade of ignorance and contempt, it’s about time something gets done to restore a semblance of democracy to the nation that claims to be the world’s oldest.

—
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books on election protection, including How the GOP stole America’s 2004 election, at Free Press, where Bob’s Fitrakis Files are also available. Harvey Wasserman’s History of the United States is at Harvey Wasserman.

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Fight Back: Dr. Fitrakis Interviews Richard Charnin Statistician On Exit Polling And Election Irregularities

Bob Fitrakis on “Fight Back”: With the 2012 election fast approaching, is the U.S. election system designed for election fraud?
Bob interviews election fraud expert Richard Charnin discussing the importance of exit polls and evidence of election irregularities from past elections.
Richard Charnin (“TruthIsAll”) began his career as a numerical control engineer/programmer for a major defense/aerospace manufacturer. In 1976, he moved on to Wall Street as manager/developer of corporate finance quantitative applications for three major investment banks. For the 2004 presidential election, he projected that Kerry would win 337 electoral votes and 51.8% of the two-party vote, closely matching the unadjusted exit polls.

Listen and call in this Wednesday, November 30
7 – 8 PM
http://talktainmentradio.com
Call 877-932-9766
*************************
Here’s how to call in to the LIVE INTERNET radio show:
(on your computer – not on your broadcast radio dial)
On Wednesday nights at 7:00 pm
Go to: http://talktainmentradio.com
Click on “Listen Live”
Call 877-932-9766

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Free Press FREE Movie: Pricele$$

Free Press FREE Movie: Pricele$$
Tuesday, November 22• 7:30pm – 9:00pm
From Emmy-nominated Habitat Media (Empty Oceans Empty Nets and Farming the Seas) comes PRICELE$$, a film exploring the consequences of an electoral system that can obligate our leaders to the special interests bankrolling their election campaigns. The filmmakers follow a river of money through two national policies that affect the everyday lives of most citizens: agriculture & energy. In addition to time spent with farmers and an unusual group of Iraq War veterans, the filmmakers visit seasoned lawmakers, lobbyists and some dauntless citizen watchdogs. A classroom full of savvy civics students help provide comic relief. PRICELE$$ also takes a behind-the-scenes look at Arizona’s road-test of an electoral reform that some observers believe can free Congress from the corrosive influence of big-money donors and lobbyists. Narrated by filmmaker Steve Cowan, PRICELE$$ was made on location in Washington D.C., New York, Iowa, Arizona, California and Oregon. Winner of the Columbus Institute of Contemporary Journalism Award and the Silver Chris Award.
Drexel Theater, 2254 E. Main St., Bexley — 253-2571 — truth@freepress.org

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The Crisis In Capitalism Speaker Monday Night With Bill Barclay

Monday, November 14th, 2011, 7:00 PM.
The Crisis in Capitalism. A Program with Bill Barclay

Bill is a DSA member and founder of the Chicago Political Economy Group (CPEG). He has also been active in the Oak Park Coalition for Truth and Justice. He worked for 22 years in financial services before retiring in 2004. For more information on CPEG – see http://www.cpegonline.org/aboutus.html

This event is jointly sponsored by the Franklin County Green Party and the Democratic Socialists of Central Ohio. Free and open to the public.

Location: Northwood Building, room 100, 2231 North High St. (corner of Northwood and N. High St.), parking available in visitor spaces behind the building. For more information, please contact smorgen@juno.com or website www.dsco.org

GREAT Occupy Movement Song: http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=11208667

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Can We Transform Labor’s Buckeye Victory Into A New Era Of Election Protection?

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
November 12, 2011

The crushing defeat Ohio’s working people dealt 1% politicians this week has critical implications for a whole other issue—election protection.

In a voting process that might otherwise have been stolen, a concerted effort by citizens committed to democracy—NOT the Democratic Party—guaranteed an official Ohio tally that finally squares with reality. The defeat of millionaire Republican Governor John Kasich’s union-busting Issue 2 by more than 20% actually squared with exit polling and other reliable political indicators.

In the 2008 election, Richard Charnin has demonstrated how there was a more than 5% shift towards the Republican presidential candidates John McCain than predicted by the highly accurate exit polls, the gold standard for detecting election fraud. In Ohio’s 2010 election, exit polls revealed a 5.4% unexplained “red shift” towards the Republican Party. The shift led to the defeat of Democratic Governor Ted Strickland as well as Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray.

But both of those elections were administered under a Democratic governor and secretary of state. This year’s reasonable vote count on Issue 2 came under Republican Secretary of State John Husted and Republican Governor John Kasich who had a strong interest in seeing the opposite outcome. For those of us in Ohio, that was the REAL groundshaker of Issue 2’s defeat.

The most shocking news from Ohio’s 2011 election was the inability of Franklin County Board of Elections officials to post election results at the precinct level due to faulty software programming. In a close election, this could have been pivotal in allowing electronic election fraud. See: Election night computer software meltdown in Franklin County

Can we now build on this to bring reliable vote counts to the entire nation? See the proposal below.

But first understand: Since 2004, Ohio has been the poster chlld for the art and science of stealing elections. When Karl Rove and then-Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell flipped a 4%-plus victory for John Kerry into a 2%-plus victory for George W. Bush, they forged overnight a new frontier of high-tech election thievery. See New court filing reveals how the 2004 Ohio presidential election was hacked

The fraud was carried out with a stunning array of techniques. More than 300,000 likely Democratic voters were knocked off the registration rolls. Grassroots registration efforts were intimidated and shredded. Voting machines were shorted, manipulated and flipped. Voters were misled and misguided. Whole bags of ballots disappeared. Electronic screen tallies jumped from Kerry to Bush. Polls closed illegally and often. You name it, the GOP did it….and then some. In our HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION….we documented well over a hundred different ways the Republicans robbed the process to give George W. Bush a second term.

Not only did John Kerry and the Democrats said nothing about it. Kerry conceded with nearly a quarter-million votes uncounted, then used a Republican law firm to attack election rights activists’ attempts to reveal what had been done.

Then, in 2005, Blackwell and Rove outdid themselves. A grassroots-based election reform referendum ran right up to voting day with a 25-plus margin of victory. It mandated extended voting access for all Ohio citizens and a range of other reforms. With clear benefit to the vast majority of Ohio voters, all major polls showed that year’s Issue 2 passing with ease. See Has American Democracy died an electronic death in Ohio 2005’s referenda defeats?

But somehow, on election day, it went down in flames. Ohio’s electoral process remained a thieves’ paradise.

In 2006, amidst massive GOP scandals and Blackwell’s impossible run for the statehouse, the Democrats swept in. They oversaw Obama’s victory in the Buckeye state, a key to all presidential elections.

They did virtually nothing to reform the structure of Ohio’s electoral process. But the grassroots strength of those committed to democracy became established.

This year, democracy advocates were again out in force. Independent monitors showed up at polling stations throughout the state, sponsored by the Free Press’ Election Protection project and Green Party observers were active as well. A careful eye was kept on electronic voting machines. Ballot custody was tracked and potential fraud was challenged. Numerous pollworkers contacted the Free Press when they were unable to post precinct-level results.

And thus this critical election was not stolen, as well it might have been. Labor’s critical victory was preserved, and perhaps a new era has opened in our national politics, aimed at rolling back the reactionary tide of corporate personhood and its minions of mammon.

But it cannot proceed without election protection. Our voting process is non-transparent, inherently corrupt, unfair and prone to theft by the highest briber.

So we are now in the process of drafting a constitutional amendment. It can go state by state, and nationwide. Language will vary and evolve. We hope you will join the process and use it to define the electoral process in years to come:

AN ELECTION PROTECTION AMENDMENT FOR THE STATES AND NATION:

1. All citizens shall be automatically registered to vote upon turning 18 years old. Registration is lost only upon revocation of citizenship or death.

2. A legal signature, accurately provided under penalty of felony law, shall be sufficient to procure a ballot.

3. Voting shall take place by mail, as prescribed by local officials, and at voting stations open on a designated four-day period including Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

4. All ballots shall be printed on recycled paper.

5. All ballots shall be hand counted, and preserved for at least ten years after every election.

6. All polling places shall host exit polls conducted by independent agencies under the supervision of an independent non-partisan agency.

An informed, committed citizenry will still be needed to guarantee fair elections. Reform of the financial aspects of election campaigns also needs to be addressed.

But in terms of guaranteeing an accurate vote count, we believe these six measures are key. We are sure these reforms will come over a long, difficult process.

But paper ballots are used in Germany, where vote counts square to within 0.1% of exit polls, and in Japan, Switzerland, Canada and elsewhere. Elections on paper can certainly be stolen, but it’s a lot harder to do than with the absurdly corruptible electronic voting machines and non-transparent hardware and software manufactured by partisan corporations.

No system is flawless. But think about where America would be right now if the 1% had stolen Ohio’s labor law and destroyed its public unions.

Our survival as a nation depends on establishing a fair, reliable voting process. We believe this is a start. Won’t you join us?

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Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books about election protection. Bob’s Fitrakis Files are at Freepress.org, where this article was first published. Harvey Wasserman’s History of the US is at HarveyWasserman.com, along with Solartopia! Our Green-powered Earth.

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Election Night Computer Software Meltdown In Franklin County

Dr. Robert Fitrakis
November 11, 2011

On election night 2011 during the evening and into the next morning, Franklin County pollworkers contacted the Free Press telling the paper that they were unable to make the electronic voting machines print out precinct-level results as required by law. This prevented pollworkers from posting election totals at the polling sites at the end of the night.

One pollworker of 35 years reported that “programming errors” had prevented “many precincts” in Franklin County from being able to print their totals for display on the windows of the voting locations.”

A concerned citizen also wrote that he was aware of “an unknown number of Franklin County precincts which could not print out their precinct totals last night, due to a ‘glitch.’ These precincts included mine, where the results were not posted inside the window of the shelter house, as has been customary every preceding election I’ve lived here.”

The Free Press has obtained a Veteran’s Day email to polling officials, including precinct judges in Franklin County. In the email, the Franklin County Board of Elections admits to programming software problems that made it impossible to print out precinct result tallies at the end of election night.

The email explained that “In error the programmers for this election inadvertently specified two (2) ‘Zero Tapes’ and zero (0) ‘Results Tapes.'”

[The entire email is posted below this article]

Were this a close presidential election, Ohio’s largest city would have lacked any way to verify precinct level tallies. Official vote totals are electronic and come from the memory cards collected from each voting machines, sent to five regional county centers and run through central tabulators to determine the results. The voting machine print-outs provide the only way to check if the county central tabulators are reflecting the actual precinct-level vote by the people. Without exit polls in this year’s election, there is no way to know in many Franklin County precincts that the county vote totals are correct.

By posting and storing the printed election results, the Board of Elections provides checks and balances on the election results. If electronic computer votes are being tampered with at a county or state level, the precinct level print-outs serve as a check as to their accuracy.

A pollworker also noted that “The “programming errors” at the Windermere Elementary School went well beyond not being able to print the totals at the end of the day. We also had problems opening the machines at the beginning of the day and closing the machines at the end of the day. The “master” Personal Electronic Ballots [PEBs] [an electronic device about the size of a hockey puck that is inserted into the machines only when opening them at the beginning of the day and when closing them at the end of the day] been not been “recognized” by several of the machines that we had been attempting to open and close.”

The pollworker went on to write: ‘We had been able to open all machines in the morning after having figured out which of the machines would recognize which “master” PEB; at the end of the day, however, we had been unable to close three of the machines because they would no longer “recognize” the “master” PEB that had opened them.”

One Green Party election observer also found that at the Columbus City Preparatory School the pollworkers had trouble with their PEB’s when opening the polls in the morning.

The Franklin County Board of Elections needs to explain to their voters why this electronic computer “glitch” occurred and what they plan to do to guarantee that the necessary checks and balances on the vote totals are in place to prevent electronic theft of the 2012 presidential election.

An electronic voting machine programming “glitch” of this magnitude should give voters pause over the upcoming presidential election. As we know from the 2000 presidential election results in Florida, in a close election those who claim victory first – or are projected the winner regardless of the actual vote count – end up winning the election.

It was a so-called “computer glitch” shifting an estimated 20,000 votes from Gore to Bush that allowed Fox TV News to proclaim George W. Bush the winner of Florida’s electoral votes and hence, the U.S. presidential election. ——————————–

Bob Fitrakis led the Election Observer project this year in Ohio, and in the years 2005-2010.

If you have any information about voting irregularities or voting machine glitches this Election Day, please contact the Free Press at truth@freepress.org or 614-253-2571.

——————————–

EMAIL FROM FRANKLIN BOARD OF ELECTIONS:

November 11, 2011

Dear Polling Official:

On Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at about 7:45 p.m. the machine trouble phone bank suddenly became overwhelmed with calls reporting that you, our poll workers were unable to print results tapes from the last voting machine for the voting locations once all voting machines had been closed. Once we started taking the calls about being unable to print results tapes it took several minutes (an eternity) to determine the cause of the problem, discuss how to most efficiently address the problem to get results reporting and get all operators informed on a backup plan so they could better answer your calls and relay the information. The next problem was that while we were trying to assess the issue, the calls in the queue grew and unfortunately many of you were still waiting for answers.

In the hour from 7:45 to 8:45 p.m. over six hundred calls came to the machine trouble call center and many of the locations probably tried multiple times to get their call through. Our thirteen operators were able to answer three hundred sixty calls and inform the polling officials to pack up their supplies and deliver them to the warehouse without results tapes. In that same period two hundred seventy two calls were abandoned. A robo call was made to all of the Board’s PEO cell phones about an hour into this situation.

Let us explain the reason for the problem. As each election is begun there is an election preferences page where the programmers define how voting machines will function for the current election. There are choices on this page for each jurisdiction using the voting system to define. Two of the items on that page that the programmer are to address is whether “Zero Tapes” and “Results Tapes” are to be printed for the election. To have a tape or tapes printed the programmer insert the number of tapes needed in the space provided next to the tape type. Some of you may remember that in past history, the board required two “Zero Tapes” printed as the polls were opened in the morning and two “Results Tapes” as the polls were closed. We eliminated the opening zero tape several years ago and retain the practice of printing results tapes (one to post and one to be returned) with supplies. In error the programmers for this election inadvertently specified two (2) “Zero Tapes” and zero (0) “Results Tapes”. The values entered should have been reversed. During the programming and testing of our database settings we open polls on a few machines, put test votes on machines and print results tapes to insure all aspects of the system work. However because we do this testing up to five weeks prior to election day, we use an override pass code rather than the actual process a poll worker would follow to generate the results tape since the date and time on the voting machine is set to a date and time other than 7:30 p.m. (polls closing time) on the date of the election.

We apologize for the mistake that caused this frustration as the end of a very long day. Let me assure you that additional procedures will be implemented to insure that these setting are set properly for future elections. Let me also commend you on the exemplary way you dealt with this challenge and finished out your duties the best that you could. All Franklin County election returns had been checked in, were processed and unofficial results for 324,515 voters were posted by 12:21 a.m.

We thank you for your service to the voters of the county and your understanding in this matter.

Sincerely,
William A. Anthony, Jr., Director
Nathan D. Burd, Deputy Director
Karen S. Cotton, Manager of Election Operations

—
Article originally published by The Columbus Free Press, https://freepress.org.

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