Strong steps need to be taken to ensure fair elections in El Paso. The stakes are too high to do anything less than clean the County Elections Department from top to bottom. In addition, federal monitors should be invited by County Commissioners’ to ensure every vote is counted in May.
In the 2006 election, I voted at the San Jose Fire Station in the Mission Valley. In one race, I voted for a candidate. I had second thoughts and wanted to change my vote but was unable to do so but because I was in a hurry, I let it go.
Days later, I discovered that many people had similar experiences on the Diebold electronic voting machines used by the County. An assistant County Attorney called to tell me that he was investigating such problems.
This came as a shock to me.
Over the many years that I have been involved in politics, I have always had faith that voting in El Paso was relatively honest give or take a handful of votes.
Yes, it is true. The County Elections Department has been led by the most incompetent bureaucrats in the history of the world (no exaggeration intended). But I always believed that despite their mendacity, incompetence and slow-as-molasses counting of votes, the results were honest – until now.
The stakes are too high to do nothing.
The election in May promises to set the direction of this city for decades to come. The possibility tax and spend, forced takings ‘progressives’ will continue to set that direction frightens me more than forced sittings of SAW 1-3.
However, the fact is elections can be easily be stolen by mega-billionaire-bought computer geeks.
Hacking Democracy
A recent HBO special, “Hacking Democracy,” and a report in Fortune Magazine by Bryant Gimber suggest Diebold voting machines have a credibility problem that has arisen because of glaring security flaws found over the last few years.
One group outraged by what they found posted a video of a chimpanzee changing votes on a machine. What added to the strong discomfort was a letter from Diebold's then-CEO Walden O'Dell to Bush supporters where he committed to, "help Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President."
Confidence was so shaken by flaws in the Diebold machines that candidates for governor in Maryland advised their supporters to vote via absentee ballot rather than use Diebold machines.
A Diebold programmer wrote in 2001 the smart-card format has lax security, anyone with a copy of software and a reader could stand at the ballot station and quietly burn new voters cards all day. Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University says he discovered the software's encryption system is one known outdated and found the administrative password to all the machines was the same: 1-1-1-1.
In 2004, California decertified Diebold machines. Meanwhile, Edward Felten, a computer-science professor at Princeton University with the help of two graduate students posted a video online that showed him infiltrating and installing a virus in less than a minute. Felten found the key to the lock protecting the memory card, was one commonly used in office furniture and even hotel minibars. Once the door to the slot was open, he could slip in a virus-infested memory card and alter votes.
What alarms constitutional advocates is the possibility of stealing or "editing" votes by the bundle, in a specific precinct or at a central database.
William "Boss" Tweed, who effectively ran New York City in the mid-1800s, said that ballots didn’t dictate the results; rather, those who counted the ballots, “made the result.”
County Judge Anthony Cobos needs to look into this and clean up the County Elections Department and ensure the technology used can be trusted. The faith and trust in government institutions rests squarely on the honesty of our elections. With special interests standing to make or lose billions of dollars depending on who is elected in May, the County must be ever vigilant.
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This perspective first appeared in Border Observer, Jaime O. Perez, Editor