Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Florida vote-rigging; election "steroid" use Republican style
Pump me up mister programmer...
Via Blue Lemur
Thanks to The Dark Backward for the heads up on this story.
UPDATE: More details from Wayne Madsen
UPDATE2: Yang family $$$ contributions to Feeney campaign - 2004:
[1] Yang, Tyng Lin Yang Enterprises Inc./president 1,250 06/23/2003 Merritt Island FL 32952
[2] Yang, Li-Woan Yang Enterprises Inc./ceo 2,000 03/23/2004 Merritt Island FL 32952
[3] Yang, Li-Woan Yang Enterprises Inc./ceo 2,000 09/05/2003 Merritt Island FL 32952
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Via Blue Lemur
In sworn affidavit, programmer says he developed vote-rigging prototype for Florida congressman; Congressman’s office silent. [corrente ed note: Republican Tom Feeney's office]
In a sworn affidavit (pdf file) Monday, a former programmer for a NASA contractor said that he developed a vote-rigging prototype at the request of a then-Florida state representative who is now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
RAW STORY acquired the affidavit from The Brad Blog, which has been in contact with the programmer in Washington.
[...]
The programmer, Clinton Curtis, said that he was told the program needed to be "touch-screen capable, the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment, [and that] the programming was to remain hidden even if the source code was inspected."
In the vote fraud prototype that I created things are not what they seem. Hidden on the screen are invisible buttons. A person with knowledge of the locations of those invisible buttons can then use them to alter the votes of everyone before them. By clicking the correct order of invisible buttons the candidate selected by the user is compared to other candidates within that same race. If the candidate they selected is leading the race nothing happens. If the other candidate is leading the race the vote totals are altered so that the selected candidate is now leading the race with 51% of the vote. The other candidates then share the remaining 49% in exact proportion to the totals they had previously. In the prototype supplied to Feeney the vote totals show on the screen. In an actual application the user would receive no visible clues to the fraud that had just occurred. Since the vote is applied by race, any single race or multiple races can be altered. The supervisors or any other voter would never notice this fraud since no visible sign would appear. Additionally, the procedure could be repeated as many times as was necessary to achieve the desired results. No amount of testing or simulations would expose the fraud as its activation and process is completely invisible to everyone except the person programming the vote fraud routine.
The same procedure could be automated to activate without any user intervention whenever the machine detects a certain pattern of voting. The algorithm could also be altered from hidden keys or triggers that would allow the fraudulent user to manipulate both the margins and percentages of any particular race. In most national elections it is not necessary to win every area. - Clinton Curtis
Thanks to The Dark Backward for the heads up on this story.
UPDATE: More details from Wayne Madsen
UPDATE2: Yang family $$$ contributions to Feeney campaign - 2004:
[1] Yang, Tyng Lin Yang Enterprises Inc./president 1,250 06/23/2003 Merritt Island FL 32952
[2] Yang, Li-Woan Yang Enterprises Inc./ceo 2,000 03/23/2004 Merritt Island FL 32952
[3] Yang, Li-Woan Yang Enterprises Inc./ceo 2,000 09/05/2003 Merritt Island FL 32952
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