This is from an article in my hometown newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, about manual adjustments made to electronic voting machines after the vote totals were supposedly complete on November 6. Today, I heard that some citizens are starting a push for an investigation.
Johnnie German, the administrator of elections used high-security codes to tap into the Harris County elections computer system on November 6 and change some of the results manually. Witnesses present as he corrected the vote were Beverly Kaufman, Harris County's Clerk (Repub) and John R. Behrman, a computer expert and longtime election observer representing the Democratic Party.
German corrected the vote totals on a sales tax referendum for a fire/ambulance district in the Cypress-Fairbanks area of northwest Harris County. Officials said this was a first-time event in the six years Harris County has used the eSlate voting system, but has rekindled the debate about whether the newest electronic methods for counting votes should be trusted.
German demonstrated that with the proper physical and informational access, one person can alter the results of an election. This is what happened. A tax proposal was ommitted on ballots in parts of three precincts and discovered by a voter. Harris County Clerk Beverly Kaufman's staff was able to get the tax question on the right ballots for Election Day — but it was too late to have those votes recorded on the main computer. The votes were recorded separately and later added to the totals. Voters in the emergency district, never were notified that some of them missed the referendum during early voting or that Election Day votes were segregated. The county Web site already showed that all precinct totals had been counted; and three sheriff's deputies who guarded the counting process on the fourth floor of the County Administration Building in downtown Houston had been sent home.
Behrman said he was shocked when he saw German use a series of passwords and an "encryption key" — a series of numbers on a nail file-size computer memory storage device — to reach a computer program that said "Adjustment." "A hundred percent of precincts reporting, and everything had been distributed to the press," he said. "Then and only then did I see how they were going to do this, and frankly I never thought it was possible.
"Basically it turns out, without regard to any ballots that have been cast, you can enter arbitrary numbers in there and report them out in such a way that, unless you go back to these giant (computer) logs and interpret the logs, you wouldn't know it has been done." It took two hours to enter the 326 segregated votes and make and correct keystroke errors, Behrman said. The "encryption key" code could be extracted from voting equipment at each precinct, according to a elections computer expert, Wallach, who studied Hart InterCivic systems in California.
County officials and Hart InterCivic, which also provides its state-certified voting equipment in Fort Bend County and Austin and Fort Worth, said the system merits public confidence because it has multiple layers of secret access codes. "You have to have a system that is flexible enough to deal with those errors," Hart InterCivic spokesman Peter Lichtenheld said. Either way, county voter registration official Ed Johnson said, "There are always little bitty problems in every election."
I personnaly worked elections for many years and 2000 and 2004, were the worst because were many instances where voters would seek assistance because they noticed their presidential choice had not registered along with all other choices when they voted "straight tickets". I warned everyone about to vote that if they were doing "straight ticket" voting to make sure they reviewed all choices at the end. Truthfully, the only instances were if you voted "straight ticket Democratic. In Harris County, where all of the elected election officials are Republican, they have fought tooth and nail against adding paper results to the machines even though the cost is neglible. Additionally, they said adjustments like this could not be done. Liar, liar.