Officials Were Warned

Brad Friedman of bradblog.com runs down the run-up to and aftermath of the New York State Op-Scan pilot program and the November '09 elections. Reprinted from The Gouverneur Times.

Officials Were Warned

Northern NY News

Written by Brad Friedman

Friday, 11 December 2009 07:09

Following the recent November election, the Operation Director for New York's State Board of Elections, Anna E. Svizerro declared the experiment of testing new, uncertified voting systems on live voters in a real election to be "very successful." The Watertown Daily Times reported Svizerro's comments, nearly verbatim and wholly uncritically, on Nov. 13th, despite serious concerns that had already emerged about the equipment used in the NY-23 Special Election for the U.S. House, and the errors discovered in its reported results. Many of those problems, machine failure, inaccurate results, and the difficulty or impossibility of verifying them as accurate following the election, have been reported on in aggressive detail by The Gouverneur Times over the last several weeks. But concerns about the dangers and pitfalls of New York's pilot program were voiced long before the questionable election of November 3rd. State officials were warned about those dangers via a virtual blizzard of letters sent to them over the past year by state and national election integrity organizations and advocates recommending modifications to the pilot program to ensure voters would not be disenfranchised. Indeed, many of the very same groups who have supported the state's move from mechanical lever systems to computerized secret vote counting were nonetheless extremely critical of the way in which voters were to be used "as guinea pigs" to test uncertified hardware and software in both the primary and general elections this year as part of the pilot program. The concerns of the election advocates now seem to have been quite prescient, even as they appear to have been largely ignored by state and federal officials. As early as April 2009, the League of Women Voters of New York State (LWVNYS) - who describe themselves as "a multi-issue, nonpartisan political organization which... has been a supporter of... the replacement of lever voting machines in New York" - had sent a letter [PDF] to both federal attorneys and state election officials urging them to reconsider their proposed pilot program to test machines in this year's elections. The letter from LWVNYS President Martha Kennedy to Brian F. Heffernan in the U.S. Attorney's office, and CC'd to six different New York State Board of Elections officials, found "merit" in a pilot deployment of the state's new Sequoia/Dominion optical-scan voting systems, but disagreed with the way they were to be prematurely forced upon voters during real elections. "We cannot support pilot projects using uncertified machines throughout the state," Kennedy wrote, "unless it were coupled with a mandated 100% hand count of the paper ballots which would become the official count." No such mandate was instituted and, instead, uncertified results tainted by the failing and flawed secret vote counting computers were used to install Democratic Party candidate Bill Owens to the U.S. House of Representatives shortly thereafter. Kennedy also expressed her concern about the "disenfranchisement of many voters because proper and complete testing of equipment and adequate training of election workers would not be possible within an abbreviated time frame." Two months later, in June, the LWVNYS was joined by the election integrity group New Yorkers for Verified Voting (NYVV) and the public advocacy organization New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) to issue a press release [PDF] about the groups' joint concerns about the pilot project. The release highlighted a report [PDF] from NYVV's Bo Lipari who represented the League on the state's Citizen Election Modernization Advisory Committee. Lipari, as quoted from his report in the press release, warned the pilot program, as then planned, "gives insufficient regard to the scale of the project, the need for independent verification of results, the potential for problems arising, or a plan for how to learn from and apply the result. In the press release, Aimee Allaud, Election Specialist with the League also slammed the state's proposed pilot for "using real voters as guinea pigs in the upcoming elections." "Elections should be transparent, secure and inspire public confidence," NYPIRG's Neal Rosenstein also chided in the release. "Unfortunately, the Board's plan to have over 900,000 voters use new uncertified voting systems this year without requiring meaningful audits of results undermines the credibility of the election and sets a dangerous precedent for the future." Days later, the three groups were joined by still more election integrity experts and advocacy groups sharing their concerns with the State Board of Elections. On June 10, representatives from LWVNYS, NYVV and NYPIRG, along with representatives from the Catskill Center for Independence, Citizens' Union, E-Voter Education Project and the Task Force on Election Integrity sent an "urgent" plea to state officials to amend the pilot program. In their letter "Re: Urgent steps toward election integrity with the 2009 Pilot Program," [PDF] the groups decried the state's "Failure to modify the current plans for the pilot use of uncertified scanners," and noted - correctly, as it turns out, given the uproar following voting equipment failure on Election Day - that it "could lead to a decrease in the public's confidence in the results. The six organizations - several of which were in opposition to each other on the point of using computerized optical-scanners at all, some preferring the state's continued use of what they regard as more transparent mechanical lever systems - came together to urge the state "to fill these gaping holes in your plan to deploy uncertified ballot scanners," and asked again that they follow the recommendations of Lipari, a retired software engineer and a longtime advocate for the state's new op-scan voting system. "We believe these corrections of inadequacies in the planned program are essential and quite realistic," they wrote. They urged, among other recommendations, that the state ask counties to "limit deployment of the new machines to 10% of registered voters, even if they earlier agreed to do a full county wide implementation." That recommendation would not be heeded, and their letter would go unanswered by officials. In July, after failing to receive a response from either federal or state officials over the previous month, LWVNYS and NYVV tried again, following up their June 3 letter with an "Open Letter to the New York State Board of Elections" [PDF] about the "serious weaknesses of your published 'Pilot Plan' for the deployment of uncertified scanners in the primary and general elections of 2009." In the wake of a resolution adopted by the Board during their June meeting, the organizations excoriated what seemed to be a "direct repudiation" of their earlier request that the state allow counties to reduce their participation in the pilot program to just 10% of registered voters, as Lipari and the others had called for during the previous month. "You thus ignored the fact that experts recommend a 10% limit on the size of deployments of new technical equipment, even when nothing as important as votes are involved," they wrote. While they lauded the Board for taking steps to lay out procedures for the post-election "audits" of results, as they had also recommended, they were highly critical at the Board's failure to revise those protocols "in the direction recommended by experts so that New York would have statistically meaningful risk-limiting audits." The following week Common Cause of New York, Yad HaChazakah - The Jewish Disability Empowerment Center, Inc. and national election integrity watchdog VotersUnite.org would join with several of the other groups to send yet another joint letter to federal officials at the U.S. Attorneys office as well as to state elections officials, trying yet again, ultimately in vain, to see changes made to the ill-fated pilot program - ("ill-fated", at least as many voters undoubtedly saw it, if not officials such as Svizerro who would, implausibly, declare it a success) - even as the primary and general election drew near. In their four page letter [PDF] on July 15, detailing ten recommendations "to correct inadequacies in the planned pilot program and to ensure compliance with New York's Election Laws as well as the [federal] Help America Vote Act," they echoed unanswered concerns originally expressed by the NY State League of Women Voters three months earlier, back in April. "The New York State Board of Elections is now planning a pilot of uncertified optical scan voting systems to be used by up to 1.4 million voters in 46 counties in the upcoming 2009 Primary and General elections," they wrote. "These new systems have not yet been used in real elections anywhere in the country, and still have not completed either New York State or Federal EAC [Election Assistance Commission] certification tests." "Therefore, voters who use these systems cannot be assured that their votes will be counted as cast. We believe the failure to make meaningful changes to the pilot will raise serious questions about the results of these elections," they said, before detailing their recommendations "incorporating the work of Bo Lipari" and averring that "implementation of the... proposals will greatly reduce the possibility of voter disenfranchisement raised by the planned pilot program and by the use of scanners in future elections." Virtually all of those repeated warnings, from all of those often disparate groups, sent across several months, seem to have fallen on deaf ears, before voters were both disenfranchised and have likely come to lose confidence in results in the wake of the various failures in the pilot program voting system, many of which have been reported by this news outlet, and others, in the wake of the election. So why didn't election officials heed the dire, repeated and often "urgent" warnings of both local and national election experts? At this point, we don't know. Calls and emails seeking comment from the New York State Board of Elections co-chairs Douglas Kellner and James Walsh, as well as to Jeffrey Dvorin in the office of the Asst. Attorney General in Albany, NY have so far gone unreturned. Additional research by The Gouverneur Times' Nathan Barker and Howard Stanislevic of the E-Voter Education Project. Brad Friedman is an investigative reporter, blogger, election integrity advocate and expert, and the creator and publisher of The BRAD BLOG. He is a broadcaster and contributor to the UK's Guardian, Huffington Post, Computer World and other periodicals, a Fellow at the Commonwealth Institute, and a frequent guest on radio and television outlets from Air America to Fox News. In addition to offering expert testimony on these matters to a number of federal and state electoral oversight commissions, he recently contributed a chapter on the disaster for voters that was the 2008 Election for the book Censored 2010: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008-2009 and co-wrote an investigate report on the illegally certified Sequoia touch-screen voting machines, still in use in Nevada, for Mark Crispin Miller's book, Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008. This year his work on the mysterious death of Republican IT guru Mike Connell was cited with an award for "Excellence in Investigative Journalism" by Sonoma State University's 33-year old "Project Censored" organization

State Moving Toward Certification of Concealed Vote-Counting Systems Even As Reports of Failures in November's Election Mount

The State Board of Elections is scheduled to certify several optical-scan electronic voting systems at their meeting in Albany on December 15. Yet as that day approaches, serious problems with the use of these systems in the November 3 election are emerging.

Most glaring so far are irregularities in the NY-23 special congressional election. NY-23 happens to be the home of Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D., nationally renowned election fraud investigator. His rapid investigation into the November 3 election reveals election results Phillips says are "impossible," including more votes than voters, negative totals, and the like. His early findings are published in two online articles, "Impossible Numbers in NY-23," and "First the Impossible, Now the Improbable in NY-23."

"Given the mess in CD-23, certification of the scanners at this point would be a travesty," testified Ulster Park's Susan Holland at the Monday hearing before the State Senate Standing Committee on Elections in Albany.

At least one election official, Dem-EC Virginia Martin of Columbia County, has testified that she would refuse to certify an election where she could not verify the count. With optical scan voting systems, vote counting takes place inside a computer where it cannot be seen by observers, candidates, or election officials.

"Voters may never again see a lever voting machine in a NY polling place, but that's not the biggest thing that would be missing from our elections," according to Andrea Novick, attorney and founder of the Election Transparency Coalition. "If the levers disappear, so do our voting rights, because we'll never again know if the votes have been counted accurately." ETC is preparing to file a lawsuit against the state of NY to have the new optical scan voting machines declared unconstitutional because they conceal vote counting from public view. Over 200 years of case law protecting the public's right to transparency in its vote-counting processes would be obliterated by the new voting system. "Even when optical scanners appear to be performing smoothly, there is absolutely no way to know that their secret software has not been corrupted."

The Association of Towns and 20 counties appealed to the State Legislature to repeal the Election Reform and Modernization Act, the law mandating the changeover from NY's current transparent voting system to the optical scan system, yet the State appears determined to certify the new machines apparently regardless of whether or not they are trustworthy.

Oppose Certification of Optical Scanners! Attend State BoE meeting 12/15 in Albany!

Let's fill the room and show the State Board of Elections that the public cares about our elections and insists on constitutional, transparent election systems.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Noon
State Board of Election Offices
40 Steuben Street, 4th Floor
Albany, New York
http://www.elections.state.ny.us/

The Plunging Pilot Project: Impossible Vote Totals in NY-23

Re-posted from our "Levers" site

Last night, on the eve of Thanksgiving, election fraud investigator Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D. published an article in the Governeur Times revealing Impossible Numbers Certified in NY-23. Phillips is best known for his book, Witness to a Crime: A Citizens’ Audit of an American Election, detailing the investigation he led of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio. But he actually lives in St. Lawrence County, NY. So when questions began being raised about the vote counts in the special Congressional election earlier this month, Phillips was quickly on the case.

His article released last night reveals, “The election results certified by the St. Lawrence County Board of Elections for New York’s 23rd Congressional District contain some numbers that are mathematically impossible.” The article goes on to detail the negative numbers included in certified vote totals. Read it. It reveals important information everyone concerned about democracy should know.

St. Lawrence County was part of the State’s “pilot project,” an early rollout of the optical scan voting technology that will be required to replace lever voting systems by our next election — if not stopped by legal action. The Election Transparency Coalition is preparing to file litigation to have concealed vote counting — such as the counting that takes place inside optical scan voting systems — declared unconstitutional.

St. Lawrence County’s now-certified election results cannot be accurate. The true vote count cannot be known. And while other counties involved in the early rollout of electronic vote-counting systems may have produced possible vote totals, their true vote counts are no more knowable. Only with a system where the public has access to meaningful observation of every step of the vote-counting process do we have a basis for confidence in election results.

This is why Virginia Martin, Democratic Election Commissioner from Columbia County, recently testified that she would refuse to certify an election in which she could not verify the accuracy of the vote count.

Richard Hayes Phillips joins ETC in supporting NY’s time-tested and transparent lever voting system. The reasons for his support are detailed in his article, “In Defense of Lever Voting Machines,” published on his own website, and reiterated in the Gouverneur Times piece.

While the pilot project is clearly in a nosedive, the State is proceeding with its plan to certify the very electronic voting system responsible for the impossible numbers in the NY-23 race. This certification would be meaningless and would lead to elections that are just as meaningless. As Phillips says, “How can we have a democracy if we cannot know if the vote count is accurate? If election officials cannot know, and if the candidates cannot know, and if the voters cannot know that the official results are true and correct, why even have an election?”

Please join us in our work to stop the abandonment of NY’s working, affordable, trustworthy voting system and its replacement with systems that keep the true vote count secret from the voters themselves.

by Emily Levy

Emily Levy is the Election Transparency Coalition project coordinator.

—–

On this Thanksgiving, we at ETC are thankful for the work of Dr. Phillips, Commissioner Martin and all those who dedicate themselves to the constitutional principles of transparent democracy.

Problems Seen with New Voting Machines Are Tip of The Iceberg

Electronic Voting Machines Sell Tammany Hall Repackaged as “Modern”

Breakdowns of new electronic voting machines have already made news in St. Lawrence, Fulton and Lewis Counties. Official results in some races may not be known for a week or more, frustrating NY voters accustomed to results on election night. But fury may have been their response had they fully understood that with the state's new optical scan technology, the genuine results of NY's elections will never be known.

The optical scan machines mandated to replace all lever voting machines by next year count paper ballots electronically using concealed software that can undetectably alter the outcome, whether intentionally or unintentionally. "What you don't know can hurt you," said Andrea Novick, attorney and founder of the Election Transparency Coalition (ETC). "The problems seen by voters and election workers Tuesday are nothing compared to the problems that are invisible. In the counties participating in the state's early rollout of the optical scanners Tuesday where machines broke down, election officials are at least aware that there was a problem. Where the scanners appeared to run smoothly, election officials, candidates and voters are led to believe everything is fine. But either way, whether the optical scanners appear to be functioning properly or not, the true count is unknowable."

Because the working parts of a lever machine are visible, elections officials and observers can witness all critical steps and know the machine’s count is accurate. But under ERMA (the Election Reform and Modernization Act) the certainty of the election night count is replaced with an unreliable electronic count, subject to verification if a subsequent 3% manual count matches the computer tally. “We are abandoning our transparent, secure system for knowingly exploitable vote-counting computers,” explained Novick.

State Elections Commissioner Douglas Kellner confirmed the new computers’ untrustworthiness, stating, "The system in New York is not to rely on the machines, but to rely on the paper," referring to ERMA’s post-election night hand count of some paper ballots. Historically, NY, learned not to trust any step taken outside of public view after repeated Tammany Hall style elections. Now ERMA mandates reliance on paper ballots that have been removed from the public eye. "If we don't stop ERMA," says Novick, "elections will from this day forward become what a New York court has already declared to be 'a useless formality.'" The ETC is preparing to file suit to stop the changeover to electronic vote-counting on constitutional grounds.

# # #

NY: Election Official Would Refuse to Certify Electronic Vote Count

Columbia County Election Commissioner Testifies at Public Hearing

New York City, Oct. 23, 2009 --

What might have been a quiet hearing of the State Assembly's Standing Committee on Election Law today became instead a public altercation as speaker after speaker criticized the State's move to electronically counted ballots. The change is slated to take effect next year, as outlined in the Election Reform and Modernization Act (ERMA), which outlaws the state's time-tested and widely trusted lever voting machines.

Speakers took issue with the new voting systems on multiple grounds including cost, accuracy, and dependability. Concerns about votes counted in secret and the ease of manipulation of election results with the new system abounded.

Columbia County Democratic Election Commissioner Virginia Martin testified that "the mandated transition to electronic voting and vote-counting will likely prevent me as commissioner from doing my job, which is to certify to the accuracy of election numbers."

While she praised some of the State's actions to comply with new election law, she said the new computerized voting systems are poorly made and break down often, in contrast to the dependable lever voting systems currently in use. "If Columbia County starts using software to count votes, I will not certify an election unless an appropriately designed audit of the paper ballots is conducted. So far, the State Board [of Elections] has not mandated an audit that audit experts agree will expose inaccurate counts."

Commissioner Virginia Martin Testifying (Photo by Russell Branca)

Exorbitant costs are also of concern to Martin. "Boards [of Elections] across the state have encountered enormous resistance from their counties when they have tried to get the funds these unfunded mandates would have us incur. I know of two cases in which county budgets have tripled."

The panel was surprised to know that Commissioner Martin has an understanding of how the lever machines work. "I believe it’s critically important that commissioners and poll workers across the state understand how the machines work," Martin said. "In the case of lever machines," she added, "it’s simple."

More photos and testimony are available here.

NYC Never Sleeps! Village Independent Dems Opt Out of Op Scan

Keep-the-Levers Resolution passes after informed public debate.

The more you know about lever voting machines, the more you want to stay with them. This experience - that an informed public prefers lever voting over the vagaries of electronic vote scanners - was demonstrated once again on July 9th at a debate at St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery in Manhattan. The event was sponsored by the Village Independent Democrats, a 53-year-old organization established to provide a constant and rigorous examination of local and national issues in the light of independent, liberal Democratic principles. True to their goals of promoting measures designed to serve all the people and to further the interest and participation of all citizens in the civic affairs of their community, the VID presented "The Threat to Voting in New York and What to Do About It" featuring Douglas Kellner, Co-Chair of the New York State Board of Elections, New York University Professor Mark Crispin Miller, renowned author of "Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform" and attorney Andi Novick, founder of the Election Transparency Coalition.

The pros and cons of computerized vote counting, paper ballots, and lever machines were discussed in a well-structured format that, while strictly controlled by the moderator, eventually allowed everyone to participate. For perhaps the first time in a public forum, the hard questions about computerized vote counting were asked -- and at least partially answered.

Among the public participants during the energetic question and answer period, were Columbia County Democratic Election Commissioner Virginia Martin; Teresa Hommel, Chair of the Community Church of New York's Task Force on Election Integrity; and E-Voter Education Project Founder Howard Stanislevic. The experiences of these professionals added an even broader perspective to the information presented by the invited speakers and elicited by audience questions.

Highlights of the evening have been distilled into the following 15-minute video. With additional commentary explaining the precedents established by the rulings of New York's highest court, this video demonstrates concisely how New York's new election law will violate the inalienable right to self-government. We urge all New Yorkers and voters everywhere to watch it:

IT'S TIME TO TAKE A STAND FOR OUR DEMOCRACY from Andrea Novick on Vimeo.

Professor Miller discussed the culpability of vendors in the punch card debacle that brought us the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida, paving the way for the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the resulting rush to more electronic vote counting. Miller also spoke of the relative lack of media coverage regarding such events, and the questionable results of more recent optical scan elections. He said that such negligence leaves the majority of the public unaware of the extreme hazards of e-vote counting both here and abroad.

Commissioner Kellner agreed with, and in fact was the first to promulgate, the position of Andi Novick and the ETC that lever voting machines are allowed under HAVA and that it is ERMA -- the New York State legislation -- which mandates the replacement of the lever machines with electronics. But the Commissioner then confused the issue by declaring that New York is under federal court order to replace the levers, as if the federal court had determined HAVA required the levers' replacement. But it is New York that entered into a voluntary agreement with the Department of Justice and federal court judge to replace the levers, as mandated in ERMA. The court 'so ordered' that agreement of the parties. The court never made a ruling that the levers had to be replaced. No one asked for such a ruling. The State was agreeing to comply with its own state law. As Andi Novick explained, the state law is unconstitutional, and an agreement based on unconstitutional law is void and unenforceable.

Although Commissioner Kellner stated that elections should never be decided on faith and trust, he was unable to respond when it was made clear by other speakers that New York would not be relying on the paper ballots to determine the outcomes of elections, but would in fact be trusting the computers. Commissioner Kellner is a conscientious administrator and, in all fairness, it should be noted that his equivocation is a reflection of the extreme duress our election officials are under to institute a fatally flawed system.

It was obvious and understandable that the State Board of Elections is ill-prepared to run elections on computerized voting systems. For example, Kellner, who routinely consults with computer experts, seemed unaware of the difference between source code and object code (the latter being the software that actually resides in optical scanners and the Election Management System PC that programs them). He incorrectly claimed that computer scientists, and presumably even election officials, could tell that the code running on the machines was the correct "source code." Notwithstanding his confusing source code with object code, however, the fact remains that no one can verify that correct software is running in a computerized voting system on election day. With such a misunderstanding prevalent, it's no wonder that election officials are willing to trust our votes to computer code and the vendors who write it.

Kellner finally admitted that New York will not be trusting the electronic machines after all, but instead, will be relying on the paper ballots. But this was clearly wishful thinking on his part. While Kellner seemed to imply that recounts could be had more or less at the drop of a hat, he offered no examples other than recounts of relatively few absentee ballots.

Novick insisted that the State's highest court has repeatedly declared post-election-night counting of ballots already counted at the polls to be far too dangerous to be used to determine correct election results. Only absentee, emergency and disputed ballots are counted post-election, she said, leaving the vast majority of paper ballots to be counted only by computers.

Columbia County Election Commissioner Martin asked Kellner about the costs of replacing levers with scanners. Kellner said the Federal government gave New York about $50-million to replace the levers, but he explained that it would cost closer to $200-million to finish the job. This is consistent with independent cost studies that have shown that all the Federal money provided to the State under the Help America Vote Act will be depleted after only one year of lever replacement by scanners.

Howard Stanislevic commented on the State Board of Elections' lack of action to beef up New York's future post-election auditing. The state will only verify 3% of scanner tallies -- barely enough to confirm the winners of landslide elections in gerrymandered districts -- despite many calls for stronger auditing requirements for over a year by good government groups such as NYPIRG, Common Cause/NY and the League of Women Voters.

After the forum on July 9th, the Village Independent Democrats joined over twenty counties, several labor unions, the Association of Towns of the State of New York, individual towns, villages, good government organizations and thousands of New Yorkers in passing resolutions in favor of retaining lever voting machines. When the public is given the facts, they make the right decisions.

Statement of Support from National Election Integrity Experts

It is essential to the maintenance of a democratic society that every critical component of the electoral process be subjected to contemporaneous public scrutiny in order for the people to retain control over those who are our public servants. We, the undersigned, have been working toward this end, many of us full time and at little or no compensation for many years. Together we have a broad and deep range of knowledge and experience.

We understand that New York's statutory and judicial law has upheld these constitutional requirements, mandating a transparent election process in which authorized observers have the responsibility to witness and verify each step of the canvass before it is completed, resulting in a demonstrably accurate and certain count on election night, arrived at under conditions of uninterrupted public scrutiny.

We consider the New York litigation to be one of the best opportunities the nation has for serious judicial consideration of the constitutional implications of concealed vote counting. We encourage all who are dedicated to the constitutional principles of democracy to offer whatever help they can to achieve this breakthrough ruling.

Bev Harris, WA - investigative reporter, founder and executive director of Black Box Voting, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century.

Abbe Waldman DeLozier, TX - co-editor, co-author Hacked! High Tech Election Theft in America-11 Experts Expose the Truth.

Nancy Tobi, NH - founder Democracy for New Hampshire, Chair of the Fair Elections Committee (NH), and Legislative Coordinator of Election Defense Alliance.

Dave Berman, CA - co-founder Voter Confidence Committee of Humboldt County, California.

Sally Castleman, MA
- Co-founder and first National Chair, Election Defense Alliance.

Judith B. Alter Ed.D., CA - Emeritus UCLA Professor, Director, ProtectCalifornia Ballots.

Emily Levy, CA - election integrity advocate who has worked on crucial projects in New Mexico, Ohio, California, and NY, as well as projects of national scope.

Jonathan Simon, MA - co-founder of Election Defense Alliance, former political polling research analyst and author numerous papers addressing statistical anomalies and other evidence of computerized election fraud.

Joan Brunwasser, co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) and the Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews. Her own articles also appear at RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.

Mark Crispin Miller, NY - Professor of Culture and Communication at NYU, author of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy andFooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform.

Dr. Victoria Lovegren, Ohio - Ohio Vigilance, governing board member; Computer Science, Systems Analysis, Data Analysis, Decision Science, Mathematics

Mary Ann Gould, PA - Executive Director of Coalition for Voting Integrity, host of "Voice of the Voters.

Richard Hayes Phillips, NY- professor, researcher, Author of Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election.

Bruce O'Dell, MN - E-commerce security consultant; co-founded US Count Votes and founding member of Election Defense Alliance.