Various News Reports —2002
Various News Reports —2002| EJF Home | Where To Find Help | Join the EJF | Comments? | Get EJF newsletter |
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| Chapter 8 — Voting Problems In The 2002 Elections |
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Arkansas Secretary of State pleads guilty to taking bribes in computer voting equipment case
Sequoia vice president indicted in elections kickback scheme in Louisiana
Touch screen voting machines lose unknown number of votes in Dallas
Conflict probe launched in California's voting machine buys
Absentee ballot requests seized in Marion County, Indiana; probe launched
© 2002 The Baton Rouge Advocate
Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
February 5, 2002 — Arkansas Secretary of State Bill McCuen pleaded guilty to felony charges that he took bribes, evaded taxes and accepted kickbacks. Part of the case involved Business Records Corp. [now merged into Election Systems & Software ] , a Dallas company that sold Arkansas computerized systems for recording corporate and voter registration records.
Arkansas officials said the scheme involved...then-BRC employee Tom Eschberger...Eschberger got immunity from prosecution for his cooperation. Today, he's a top executive of ES&S.
Stealing Elections by John Fund (p. 123)
In 2001 Phil Foster, a regional vice president of Sequoia Voting Systems, was indicted in an alleged elections kickback scheme in Louisiana. He was accused of selling machine parts at inflated prices and taking more than $500,000 in kickbacks. In April 2002, however, a Louisiana judge ruled that because Foster was granted immunity by Louisiana law enforcement for his testimony against others in the scheme, he could not be charged in the case. Law enforcement officials told the media that Sequoia was not involved.
© 2002 Dallas Morning News
Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
October 23, 2002 — "We don't know if we lost 10 votes, 100 votes, 1,000 or 10,000," said Susan Hays, chairwoman of the Dallas County Democratic Party.
The touch-screen machines — made by Election Systems & Software — have been used in more than 90 Dallas County elections in the past four years and have an outstanding record overall, Mr. Sherbet said...
Ms. Hays said it appears that the problem was with the voting equipment, not county elections personnel. "This is a vendor's problem," she said. "They need to prove to us that voters' votes are being cast as they want."
Some voters who wanted to vote a straight Democratic Party ticket instead had votes assigned to all Republican candidates, the court filing says.
Voter Kate Kettles told The Associated Press that she tried to vote for all Democratic candidates but that the computer highlighted Republicans all the way down the ballot. She said that an election official moved her to another machine but that it took several tries to get the correct candidates selected.
© 2002 Associated Press
Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
October 26, 2002 (AP) — Secretary of State Bill Jones said he will investigate whether the employee in charge of evaluating voting machines in California improperly took a job with a voting machine manufacturer.Louis Dedier, the state's director of voting systems the last two years, left this month for a job with Omaha, Neb.-based Election Systems and Software
by Vic Ryckaert
© 2002 Indianapolis Star
Reproduced under the Fair Use provisions of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, educational use.
November 01, 2002 — The Marion County [Indiana] prosecutor's office seized dozens of suspicious absentee ballot applications Thursday as it launched a criminal probe into possible election fraud.
"If people are forging signatures on absentee ballots, that's a crime, and it is our job to investigate it," Prosecutor Scott Newman said in a written statement.
Workers in the Marion County clerk's office reported irregularities in 78 absentee ballot applications for Tuesday's election.
The problems include signatures on applications that do not match those on file with the voter registration board, applications in which the voter's name is misspelled, and correction fluid used to change voters' addresses.
The Marion County Election Board on Wednesday held an emergency hearing on those suspicious applications. It voted to send the ballots to those listed on the applications. But members of the board also made it clear that those absentee ballots will be scrutinized closely on Election Day. [presumably without regard to a secret ballot]
Republican County Clerk Sarah M. Taylor, a member of the Election Board, welcomed the criminal investigation.
"Some violations of election law do cross into criminal matters and are punishable," Taylor said.
She said she found ballot requests for three different voters that appeared to be signed by the same individual. She said it is likely that someone who did not understand the law was trying to help senior citizens or a relatives cast legitimate votes.
"In some cases, people have misunderstandings about their ability to get an absentee ballot on somebody else's behalf," she said. "Until the appropriate people can review it, we're really not sure what we have on our hands."
Vic Ryckaert can be reached at (317) 635-7592.
© 2003 Scoop
Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
Wednesday, February 5, 2003 — Yesterday, technicians and programmers for Diebold Election Systems, the company that supplied every single voting machine for the surprising 2002 results in the state of Georgia, the company that is preparing to convert the state of Maryland to its no-paper-trail computerized voting, admitted to a file-sharing system that amounts to a colossal security flaw.
"Technology transfer for updates!" This is among the benefits in the Diebold PowerPoint sales presentation given to the State of Georgia. Easy updating — too easy, apparently.
In Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century, author Bev Harris examines the integrity of current electronic voting systems. She recently installed a whistleblowers page at her web site. "We've been getting about four new whistleblower reports a day," says Harris, "and some of them are quite serious."
| EJF Home | Where To Find Help | Join the EJF | Comments? | Get EJF newsletter |
| Vote Fraud and Election Issues Book | Table of Contents | Site Map | Index |
| Chapter 8 — Voting Problems In The 2002 Elections |
| Next — 2002 Elections: Republican Voting Machines, Election Irregularities, and "Way-Off" Polling Results by Lynn Landes |
| Back — The Re-Election of Jim Crow: How Jeb Bush's Team is Trying to Steal Florida Again |