News » July 17, 2006

Blowing the Whistle on Diebold

Diebold’s electronic voting machines fraught with problems and conspiracy theories

By John Ireland

In the wake of HAVA, voters increasingly face electronic voting machines at the polls.

On July 13, the Pensacola, Fla.-based law firm of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed a “qui tam” lawsuit in U.S. District Court, alleging that Diebold and other electronic voting machine (EVM) companies fraudulently represented to state election boards and the federal government that their products were “unhackable.”

Kennedy claims to have witnesses “centrally located, deep within the corporations,” who will confirm that company officials withheld their knowledge of problems with accuracy, reliability and security of EVMs in order to procure government contracts. Since going into service, many of these machines have been linked to allegations of election fraud.

In the wake of alleged vote count inconsistencies and the “hanging chad” debacle of 2000, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002. HAVA appropriated $3 billion to replace voting equipment and make other improvements in election administration. Diebold, Election Systems & Software and Sequoia Systems secured the lion’s share of nearly half that sum in contracts to purchase EVMs. All 50 states have received funds and many are hurriedly spending it on replacing lever and punch card machines in time for November.

According to the Election Assistance Commission, more than 61 percent of votes in the 2004 presidential election were cast and/or tallied by EVMs. Election Data Services, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, estimates that the figure will jump to 80 percent by November, which will see elections for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives.

Matt Schultz, an attorney with Kennedy’s law firm, Levin Papantonio, describes the process of competition for HAVA’s contractor funds as “a race to the bottom.” “There is no question in my mind that these companies sacrificed security and accuracy, mass-producing a cheap product to cash in on tons of federal money,” Schultz says. “It’s an industry-wide problem.”

Qui tam lawsuits stem from a provision in the Civil False Claims Act, which Congress passed in 1863 at the behest of President Abraham Lincoln to respond to price gouging, use of defective products and substitution of inferior material by contractors supplying the Union Army. The provision allows private citizens to file a suit in the name of the U.S. government charging fraud by government contractors and other entities that receive or use government funds.

Long known as “Lincoln’s Law,” it is now commonly referred to as the “Whistleblower Law.” Since the mid-’80s, qui tam recoveries have exceeded $1 billion, mostly after exposing medical and defense overcharging.

Mike Papantonio, partner in the law firm and co-host with Kennedy on “Ring of Fire,” a weekly radio show on the Air America Network, explains the value of the qui tam approach. “The problem with injunctive relief, or [a writ of] mandamus, or prohibition-type writs, is it all comes down to politics. … How do you bring injunctive relief with [Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth] Blackwell? How do you get [Florida Governor] Jeb Bush to do anything? They won’t. You have to move outside of that political realm.”

In 2004, Blackwell was in charge of implementing state and federal election laws, while, at the same time, co-chairing the state’s 2004 Bush/Cheney Campaign. Under his watch, election officials neglected to process registration cards from Democratic voter drives, purged tens of thousands of voter registrations and distributed EVMs unevenly, leaving some voters waiting up to 12 hours. According to Kennedy, “at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted.” Ohio was decided by 118,601 votes.

The contents of the suit could be under judicial seal for at least 60 days while the U.S. Department of Justice considers whether or not to join the suit. If U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales decides not to join the suit, Levin Papantonio may approach individual state attorneys general. If no one joins, the firm is free to, as Papantonio puts it, “stand in the shoes of the Attorney General and fight on behalf of the taxpayers and the nation.”

“The single greatest threat to our democracy is the insecurity of our voting system,” warns Kennedy. “Whoever controls the voting machines can control who wins the votes.”

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• Reader Comments

  i am surprised it took this long for someone to stand up & do someting about this

  Posted by freejoehieronymus on Jul 17, 2006 at 4:32 PM

  Litigation is a slow process.

  My fear is that by the time this reaches the Supreme Court, the 2008 elections will be over and they’ll declare it moot.

  We have to remember that the current Supreme Court is even worse than the one that stopped the Florida recount in 2000.

  I’m happy to see this case filed

  I live in San Diego and in November I took our Registrar of Voters to court, alleging that the machines were hackable and the chain of custody was not secure. I lost. Now that everything I alleged has been proven correct, I often wonder what that judge is thinking—if judges think. Maybe they just play golf and let their clerks do the thinking.

  Posted by mymarkx on Jul 17, 2006 at 7:32 PM

  Well…it looks good on paper…we .will just have to what and see….
  My question is…” How do you stop the next guy   ? “........

  Posted by Redhorse on Jul 17, 2006 at 9:48 PM

  The initial value is as a “shot across the bow.” Just making the injustice visible goes a long way toward stopping the election thieves.

  Better would be for the Dem “leadership” to announce that they’ll be spending millions on hyper-accurate polling this time around.

  The truth is that while the Blackwells and Harrises get most of the attention (mainly because they got caught) the bulk of the stealing happens in local areas controlled by the neofascists. These people are not part of some larger conspiracy. They just know what they can get away with and do it.

  If it’s made clear that their “o-fishy-l” result will be challenged and investigated, they’ll simply chicken(hawk) out.

  And another good preventative measure would be to make election fraud a capital crime (yes, really - we can commute the death sentence). Doing so would make it clear that an election is not a contest or competition—rather, it is a survey of what the consent of the governed is at a given time.

  Posted by thedeanpeople on Jul 18, 2006 at 9:00 AM

  Mymarkx,
  Well Done for attempting it ,  you Pathfinder.

  Thedeanpeople
  Crazy system when you can get 17yrs for an eggcupfull of cocaine, and zero or tiny for election fraud.
  I’m against capital punishment, but it would sure be a headline-grabber .  Maybe we could settle for 20yrs on a chaingang, with a referendum to choose which State has the very worst , most inhumane, most privatisedly profitable to fascistical fatcats,  penal system .

  Now there’s an ideea with legs…................

  I was going to ask WHY this took so long to come up, too . But maybe because so much so wrong, difficult to decide what to do first .... maybe people just waiting for someone else “higher up” the political spectrum to act….. and then realising , at last, that they were just sitting on their hands, with thumbs firmly entrenched you know where, and minds in neutral .

  No time for more, just marking the spot to come back.

  Posted by frog on Jul 18, 2006 at 9:57 AM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 28 posts.

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