From: Todd Lockwood
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 10:31 PM
Subject: Digest #092b

Just in.  Go to this website and have a look around. I'm still trying to
think of a way that a small, fairly inbred group of internet activists can
raise enough of a cry to get this problem noticed. Sean? Anyone?  Time is
running out, and these machines are already having an adverse impact on our
Republic.  We have to do something:

http://www.tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9

Election-Fraud Website Removed Before Tuesday Recall Vote


Voting Machine Memos Suggest Suspect California Election, As Domain Register
Company Refuses To Allow Blocked BlackBoxVoting.org To Move To New Internet
Server Until After today's Electronic Vote-Count. Site's Explosive Book &
Memos Raise Serious Ballot-Count Questions. By Tom Flocco

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON -- October 7, 2003 (TomFlocco.com) -- "The results of 
Tuesday's California recall election should be challenged in the courts,"
said Beverly Harris, advocate of honest voting and owner of
BlackBoxVoting.org, in a phone interview yesterday.

The vibrant 52 year-old activist-grandmother told us that internet service
provider Advance Internet Technologies (AIT) notified her that
BlackBoxVoting.org--devoted to exposing election fraud in America--had been
flagged for ten to fourteen days, effectively blocking the site and its
damaging information from public view until after the California
recall/gubernatorial election ballots are counted.

At issue is the controversial contents of Harris' website and potential
candidate vote-count challenges that could result after today's
election--regardless who wins. "At the website, there is analysis of
internal memos and actual files from Diebold Corporation's Global Election
Management Systems (GEMS), maker of both touch-screen and optical-scan
voting machines to be used in 14 California counties on Tuesday--including
the two largest minority and ethnic--Los Angeles and Oakland-Alemeda,"
Harris said, adding "the memos indicate possible end-runs around the
integrity of the voting system in California's recall election."

[Introduction: Chapters from Beverly Harris' new book, Black Box Voting,
will be an astonishing read for all citizens who worry about the integrity
of the election process, what with so many recent, yet curious national and
state-wide election results. Also, in light the Golden State's imminent
recall vote, it is Chapter 7 (linked and reprinted below with permission)
which is going to draw widespread attention--let alone possible county and
statewide voting machine product liability concerns, potential civil
challenges from losing candidates who have been (or soon will be) paying off
campaign loans, but also the ire of substantially more than a
quarter-million Texas citizens who never knew that much of their personal
privacy has previously been compromised.

It's all there on Harris' curiously blocked website (BlackBoxVoting.org);
and it will eventually become quite clear why unknown individuals with
high-placed authority and connections seem to be striving mightily to
prevent volatile information in her website files and book from reaching
mainstream media and general public awareness throughout the country.
Indeed, much like a pogo-stick, Beverly Harris' website has lately been up
and down--online and offline.

But California recall or not, Americans may want to consider why Harris says
"our current (voting) certification system is fundamentally broken. The
system is secret, relies on a few cronies and is accountable to no one.
Worse, the certifiers have clearly given a passing grade to software so
flawed that it miscounts, loses votes and invites people to come in the back
door to make illicit changes to anything they want." Accordingly, this piece
will endeavor to engender continued citizen interest and inquiry into the
current potential for fraudulent election behavior and its long-term effects
upon citizen trust in vote-count veracity. This, as competently qualified
candidates are probably still contemplating the role that electronic voting
played in many questionable election losses. For the integrity of our
democracy demands such scrutiny; and there is an ethical obligation for
Harris' work to be reported--despite undisclosed machinations to the
contrary.]

BlackBoxVoting.org contains stories, files, and memos about election
wrongdoing, plus sample chapters from Harris' new book by the same title
which describe how elections can be fixed, with articles and analyses of
voting machine company systems. However, Harris' revelations regarding how
Diebold Election Systems, Inc. allowed personal information about 310,000
Texas voters to be left open and un-password-protected on it's internet site
may ultimately raise the most legal questions and public relations problems.
Harris told TomFlocco.com that "the unprotected statistics left out on the
worldwide web include the Texas voter names, street addresses, apartment
numbers, birth-dates, school districts, political party registration, and
voting habits (early walk-in or absentee)," adding that "ninety-five
thousand people from Plano are in the unprotected file, and a couple hundred
thousand more from Richardson, McKinney, Wylie, Dallas, and surrounding
areas." (Black Box Voting, Bev Harris, Plan Nine Publishing, 2003, Chapter
7, page 149)

"This private information--with citizen voting propensities of 310,000
Texans--was left totally unsecured; and the legal implications are
enormous--let alone how this information may have affected the election of
Governor George W. Bush back in 1998," said Harris. Interestingly, Bush was
the only winning Republican running statewide in the 1998 Texas race--as the
Lone Star state has been traditionally governed by Democrats.