Diebold CFO resigns over SEC warning

Columbus Dispatch, 3-26-09

NORTH CANTON, Ohio

Diebold CFO resigns over SEC warning

ATM maker Diebold Inc. said yesterday that its chief financial officer, Kevin
J. Krakora, stepped down after receiving a "Wells notice" from the Securities
and Exchange Commission staff related to a probe of how the company had been
reporting revenue.

A Wells notice indicates that the agency's enforcement division might
recommend that the SEC take legal action against those receiving it. Recipients
of such a notice can respond to the enforcement division before it makes a
formal recommendation to the SEC.

The company said it thinks the notices are related to issues addressed in
restated financial statements that it had filed.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/business/stories/2009/03/26/biz_briefs_0326_ART_03-26-09_C9_54DBSCO.html?type=rss&cat=&sid=101&title=NEWS+BRIEFS

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Diebold Chief Financial Officer Kevin Krakora steps down after
receiving SEC notice

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Janet H. Cho

Plain Dealer Reporter

Diebold Inc.'s chief financial officer has stepped down in the wake of a U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into possible violations of
federal securities laws.

Kevin Krakora, 53, who also stepped down as executive vice president, will
remain in a nonfinancial reporting capacity until the matter is resolved,
Diebold said Wednesday in a filing with the SEC.

The SEC's Division of Enforcement notified Krakora on Friday in what is known
as a "Wells notice" that it may recommend that the commission pursue a civil
case against him, the company said.

http://www.cleveland.com/business/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/business-12/1238056525145310.xml&coll=2

VoteRescue Radio New Hampshire Recount

Here are the Archive links.

Sun., February 17, 2008: Playlists: M3U | RAM (Individual MP3s: Hr1 Hr2 )

found here

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_vickie_k_080216_voterescue_radio_2_2f1.htm

Hello from Radio Land!

This Sunday, February 17, from 2-4pm Central time, VoteRescue Radio will be focusing on a New Hampshire recount update and we are proud to announce we will have as our guest ALBERT HOWARD, the Republican Presidential candidate who is responsible for filing and paying for the statewide recount which just completed there last Monday the 11th. On New Hampshire Primary Election Day, January 8th, Albert watched his totals go FROM 178 votes DOWN to 44 votes; this began his commitment to find the truth of what really happened on Election Day.


We will also be talking with BOB SCHULZ, founder of We the People Foundation and instigator of the 50 state NCEL (National Clean Election Lawsuit) which was filed against every Secretary of State or Board of Elections in the nation for allowing electronic voting machines to be used, counter to the Constitution; Bob spent considerable time at the recount and gathered relevant data comparing final results of ballots that had originally been counted by hand to those counted by Diebold optical scan counters; he is about to complete this report and will share them during the show.

WALTER REDDY, founder of Liberty Broadcast Network, (an election results reporting website and source for election affidavits) who was present in New Hampshire both on January 8th for the Primary, and for the entire Republican recount; Walter played various roles there, from citizen videographer; to observor of the actual counting, to providing moral support and assistance to Albert; to following/chasing the van and police car driven by "Butch and Hoppy" which retrieved the boxes of ballots from the various towns and brought them back to the State Archive Building in Concord to be counted. He and Massachusetts election reform activist Carolyn Sharpe (another dedicated volunteer who helped organize the recount observors and who videotaped events there) were present on Friday to film Albert Howard filing the Appeal with Secretary of State William Gardner

We'll also be talking to ABBE WALDMAN DELOZIER, Co-Editor with Vickie Karp of "HACKED! High Tech Election Theft in America", Board Member of Election Defense Alliance (EDA) and PR Director for Coalition for Visible Ballots, and SALLY CASTLEMAN , co-founder and National Chair of EDA , both of whom, along with Vickie, co-authored the Petition for Appeal of the recount (with assistance from Nancy Tobi, Jonathan Simon, Bev Harris, and others) which was filed this past Friday, February 15th, with 30 minutes to spare from the 5pm Eastern deadline.

The New Hampshire recount has been a dramatic and critical piece of evidence gathering on chain of custody issues, well-documented by BEV HARRIS of Black Box Voting and others; the challenge to this recount will allow more time for yet more evidence to be discovered and publicized.

Other primary election updates and evidence gathering in Florida and around the country will be covered!

The show can be heard on the radio in the Austin area at 90.1 FM; is streaming live on www.wtprn.com (for "We the People Radio Network"), AND, can be heard OVER THE PHONE at 512/485-9010!

This is a CALL-IN show The call-in numbers are: 1-888-202-1984, and in the Austin area, or if you have unlimited long distance, the number is 512-646-1984. Not sure how many calls we'll be able to take on this show with all the interviews, but we'll do our best!

Hope to "see" and hear you "On the Air" on Sunday!

WE ARE WINNING--because of citizens like YOU!!

With thanks for your support,

Vickie and Karen
karp@mail.com
karen@voterescue.org

Quarantine That Machine! Citizen Action To Take Back Our US Elections

The Ohio Election Justice Campaign Announces
Quarantine That Machine!
Citizen Action To Take Back Our US Elections


If the voting machine you use, behaves in an illegal manner, it should
be treated as part of a crime scene. The theft of your vote is a crime by the voting machine & its vendors against YOU. Treat it as such.

What should I do, you ask?

If the touch screen voting machine you vote on in 2008, or at any time in the future, is behaving in a manner that appears illegal, it should be investigated.

What to look for, including but not limited to:
Vote Hopping – This is when you vote for a candidate or an issue, and your vote hops and goes to another candidate or issue on the screen. We are generally told it is a calibration problem. For the voter, this means your vote is not recorded for who or what you intended. You have been robbed.

Paper Tape records other than what you voted – Please take the time to read the paper tape when you vote. If you find that the tape prints something other than what you voted, remember…there are many problems with the machines counting our votes in secret. There is no way to verify that the machine counted your vote as you see it on the screen, nor as the paper tape reads. Yet, if there is a recount audit, the paper record is the voting record. Your vote will be counted as the paper trail reads at such an audit. The paper tape should read the same information as what you voted. If you wear glasses, bring them, some tapes are printed very light, and therefore are hard to read.

Take Action!
Tell the Poll Worker / Election Judge what happened. Let them know you want the voting machine pulled from use in the election. IMPORTANT! Do not harm or manipulate the machine. It needs to bet in the “same condition” for any forensic investigation. Tell the poll worker not to manipulate the machine in an effort to correct the problem. The most important step of taking action is then filing a police report with local law enforcement to document this possible case of election fraud. The statistics later will document how widespread the problem is.

Typical reflexes to expect to your complaint:
The reflex action of a typical judge when told that a voting machine is malfunctioning is to try to help the voter to get the machine working properly. But, when the malfunction is a mismatch between the faceplate and the paper trail, the normal “be-helpful” response many result in the destruction of evidence in a crime scene.

Let us say that a voting machine had been reprogrammed to flip every twentieth vote from candidate XX to candidate YY. Such an occasional “malfunction” would not provide an easy-to-detect pattern. Further, it would be reasonable to assume that such a reprogrammed machine would also be set to discontinue using the flipping subroutine when someone tries to correct the apparent “malfunction” by, for example, canceling and re-voting.

Therefore, it seems reasonable for Poll Workers and Election Judges to be trained on how to react when a voting machine has a mismatch between the faceplate and the paper trail, or for a vote that hops.

(a) Have the voter move away from the machine. Thank the voter for catching the discrepancy, and explain to him/her what just happened.
(b) Place an OUT OF ORDER sign on the machine and report the “malfunction” to independent law enforcement and notify the Board of Elections or election officials in your state of the problem. Then treat the problem voting machine as evidence in a possible crime scene.
(c) Restart the voter on another machine, or on a paper ballot that will be counted, not a provisional ballot that “may” be counted.

Empowering the Voters and Poll Workers for Detecting Possible
Election Fraud and Demanding Legal Investigation

A Special Note for Poll Workers and Election Officials
You are the public guardians of our elections. Please quarantine any machine for which a voter tells you of problems, asks for it to be quarantined, or any that you are aware is malfunctioning in a suspicious manner; regardless of whether the voter knows that they may request this. Please treat voters with respect if they ask to Quarantine The Machine, and do not push the buttons, or manipulate the machine in any way. Treat the machine as part of a crime scene. Contact Law Enforcement to pick up the machine and investigate it, and write it up. Let the Board of Elections, or other proper election officials above you know what has happened. A forensic examination of the machine is needed, to study why it malfunctioned. It is our hope that law enforcement will confiscate these machines as possible evidence and assist the public to get such a study done. These machines should not be returned to your local election officials but rather quarantined by independent investigative authorities. We realize that there is going to be a huge problem. How do you get the existing votes out of such a machine? It is our hope, that you will let them sit, and wait for the needed investigation.

In Ohio on December 17th, Michael W. Deemer, Chief Deputy Attorney General for Government Affairs of the Ohio Attorney General’s office, and two other legal staff members were informed of the Quarantine The Machine program. His phone number is (614) 728-5462. They were asked to put something in place across the state of Ohio, and across the nation via the other state Attorneys General, to prepare for this program. A prepared written plan for law enforcement is needed, and has been requested. These proper authorities should have qualified individuals available to investigate the voting machines that are quarantined on election night.

If the state of Ohio is not ready to deal with the citizen action of Quarantine That Machine, and the nations law enforcement has not been warned, you might want to call Chief Deputy Deemer and ask why. As of this date, February 4, 2008, and according to his office staff, nothing is in place now. They have informed the OEJC they will only prepare law enforcement if the Secretary of State requests them to. The Attorney General's office has been advised by the OEJC to prepare Ohio, and to let the other Attorneys General across the nation know this is coming. Prepare your Attorney General in your state, they may not know.

For questions and press inquires, contact Paddy Shaffer, Director,
The Ohio Election Justice Campaign, paddy@columbus.rr.com (614) 761-0621 http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/OEJC , http://www.wakeupandsaveyourcountry.com/oejc.html

IF IT'S BROKE, DON'T FIX IT

January 29, 2008 at 11:49:52

Headlined on 1/29/08:
IF IT'S BROKE, DON'T FIX IT

by Teresa Blakely (Posted by Victrola) Page 1 of 1 page(s)

http://www.opednews.com



Crony Capitalism and the Demise of Our Democracy
The final chapter?

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's EVEREST study has demonstrated how badly the Ohio taxpayers were ripped off by dishonest voting machine vendors and complicit Board of Election Officials. Brunner has been forced to act decisively ahead of the presidential election to address a crisis of election integrity that she inherited from former Secretary J Kenneth Blackwell and former Ohio Republican Party Chair and Director of Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Bob Bennett. Bennett's "kill the messenger" attack on Brunner is a way to divert blame for the consequences of years of corrupt and incompetent "bad old boy" election management. Bennett remains true to his crony constituency, the voting machine vendors, by refusing to address the dangers posed to our democracy by notoriously fraud-friendly touchscreen voting machines. Push a button, accept the computer output, no audits, no questions asked. A most excellent way to choose the next leader of the free world.



It boggles my mind that Bennett, can tell reporters that he had not seen the EVEREST report yet claim there is nothing wrong with the voting machines. This sort of willful ignorance is what contributed to the purchase of inadequately tested, fraud-friendly electronic voting machines in the first place. Secretary Brunner does not want to have insecure, defective voting machines in use in Ohio for the next presidential election. Any attempt to thwart this goal is suspect.

--What confidence crisis?

The following Republicans have not conducted themselves in a manner that inspires trust in their judgment and integrity in managing our elections. Jack Abramoff represented Diebold at the time when the House Government Operations Committee, chaired by Bob Ney, was establishing rules for electronic voting systems. Diebold contributed at least $275,000 in lobbying fees to Jack Abramoff's law firm, Greenberg Traurig. Former Ohio Congressman Bob Ney, another convicted felon and the lead sponsor of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA)strongly opposed legislation requiring a paper audit trail[1]. Ney spearheaded the hasty move to electronic voting machines [2]. Diebold's then CEO Wally O'Dell, who promised to deliver Ohio votes to George W. Bush [3], resigned amidst securities fraud litigation [4]. Ken Blackwell was Secretary of State while co-chairing the Bush/Cheney campaign[5]. Now chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers' report on "What Went Wrong in Ohio" described massive and unprecedented voter irregularities in 2004 caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Blackwell [6]. Mitch Given, a Diebold lobbyist contributed $10,000 to Blackwell's gubernatorial campaign. [7] Looking back to the early 1990's, convicted computer fraud felon Jeff Dean programmed what became Diebold's optiscan software.[8] In 2004 Franklin County Board of Election Director Matt Damschroder accepted $10,000 from a Diebold intermediary and donated it to the Franklin County Republican party. [9] Remarkably, in 2007 Damschroder was unanimously elected President of the Ohio Association of Election Officials.[10] In 2006 the Republican dominated Ohio Legislature removed the HB-3 requirement for a random audit of the electronic voting machine tallies. Ethically challenged individuals will always be drawn to high stakes political endeavors. This is precisely why our method of vote counting must be above reproach.

-- Read the Report. I call this broken.
( The following section was previously posted by this author to OP ED news on 1/6/08)[11]

EVEREST like the countless credible, critical, reviews of electronic voting machines that preceded it, found numerous serious security vulnerabilities in basic electronic voting machine system design and implementation. The academic reviewers on the EVEREST team describe the electronic voting system put in place under Ken Blackwell as possessing "critical security failures that render their technical controls insufficient to guarantee a trustworthy election." As part of the EVEREST project, MicroSolved, Inc. (MSI), performed penetration tests of three voting machines systems in use in Ohio: Premier (Diebold), ES &S and Hart Intercivic. MSI's Executive Summary report concluded that all three vendors had failed to adopt, implement and follow "even the most basic set of information security guidelines" used in other industries.

MSI uncovered a myriad of common vulnerabilities and weaknesses many of which have been known for several years and still exist in the system components. They reported that many components lacked basic security controls such as firewalls, antivirus and other mechanisms for protecting system integrity. [12]

Princeton computer scientist Ed Felten considered the EVEREST report to be the scariest e-voting security report yet. He questioned how the ES&S iVotronic touchscreen voting machine ever got certified, noting that a machine with so many design errors must be susceptible to misrecording or miscounting votes due to ordinary glitches that plague computer systems. He considered the iVotronic too risky to use even if all poll workers and voters were angels. Among the many potential touchscreen security breaches that alarmed Felten was an undocumented backdoor function that allows a voter or poll worker to alter vote totals using a magnet and a personal digital assistant. [13]

-- Expensive. What's an honest election worth?

How is it that the cost of moving to a more secure accountable method of vote tabulation is now too expensive? In 2003 Blackwell was moving full speed ahead to purchase Diebold DRE's that he explicitly did not want to have a paper trail. Blackwell issued this directive in January of '05, the same month in which it was discovered he had acquired Diebold stock worth almost ten-thousand dollars. [14] Blackwell and company could not spend 100 million fast enough when purchasing incompetently designed electronic voting machines from disreputable vendors. Ask Ken Blackwell what sort of election official opts for voting technology that is unaccountable in the first place. How does one explain the expenditure of $100 million of taxpayer money on voting machines that are so insecure as to be untrustworthy in our elections? Ohio still has never had a complete accounting of how Blackwell spent HAVA money in 2005. What we see here is unregulated, partisan, crony capitalism from the Federal Election Commission all the way down to our County Boards of Election.

It would be a serious mistake to continue to use DRE voting machines that are extremely fraud friendly in a time when it is widely known how insecure these voting machines are. When a DRE voting machine is corrupted or malfunctions on election night, votes are irretrievably lost. If our election outcomes are to be decided by competing hackers or election insiders who infect electronic voting machines with computer viruses then our democracy is history.

References:

[1] Abramoff-Diebold connection: http://coloradovoter.net/bcv-archive/msg03062.html
/>
[2] Ney opposes audit trail for DREs: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2262
/>
[3] O'Dell fundraising letter (2003): http://rawstory.com/printstory.php?story=1570
/>
[4] O'Dell securities fraud litigation: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5468
/>
[5] Blackwell co-chairing Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign: http://www.thesentinel.com/283370491126756.php">href="http://www.thesentinel.com/283370491126756.php">http://www.thesentinel.com/283370491126756.php/>
[6] Massive and unprecedented irregularities in 2004: Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff (Rep. John Conyers, Jr.), January 5, 2005. Page 4:

[7] Diebold lobbyist donates to Blackwell: http://www.wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=5012724/>
[8] Jeff Dean: http://www.defendersofdemocracy.com/drupal/node/54
/>
[9] Damschroder: $10,000 donation: http://www.thesentinel.com/283370491126756.php
/>
[10]Damschroder OAEO: http://vote.franklincountyohio.gov/boe/assets/pdf/press-releases/PR-03092007.pdf
/>
[11] Blakely: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_teresa_b_080106_everest_3a_the_truth_a.htm
/>
[12]Ohio SOS Everest Executive Summary>http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/info/EVEREST/04-Microsolved--Comprehensive-ExecSummRpt.pdf
/>
[13]Felton's comments: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1236
/>
[14]Blackwell buys Diebold: http://www.dispatch.com/live/contentbe/dispatch/2006/04/04/20060404-A1-01.html
/>
[15]Blackwell can't account for how all HAVA money spent;
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/081905Madsen/081905madsen.html

Petition To Recoup Election Machine Financing

Categories: Consumer and Worker Protection, Economic Fairness and Security, Honest and Ethical Government, Election Reform
Dear Friends,

I have just read and signed the petition:

"Ohio Secretary of State, Sue Voting Machine Vendors for Product Liability".

Please take a moment to read about this important issue, and join me in signing the petition.

It takes just 30 seconds, but can truly make a difference. We are trying to reach 1000 signatures - please sign here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/help-save-Ohio-voting

Once you have signed, you can help even more by asking your friends and family to sign as well.

Thanks,

OEJC

Reference http://www.progressohio.org/page/community/post/OEJC/C3gS

Excerpts quoted here:

"Representatives from Boards of Elections (BOE) plagued by election irregularities, such as failing to preserve their 2004 ballots in violation of federal court order, are now sitting in review of the state's electronic elections systems, courtesy of a lobbyist."
....

"Of the twelve election officials, nine come from BOEs that disposed of 2004 election records protected by court order in King Lincoln v. Blackwell (S.D. Ohio), http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/klbna.php, four of the nine serving as BOE Director in 2004. Two of the nine disposed of their records before certification of the 2004 election; and another three have not submitted the requested explanation to the SOS for their missing records."

see also:

http://www.ohiodems.org/index.php?page=blog&full=311

It is wrong to assume

It has been said that to "assume" is to make an "ASS Out of You and ME." Fair enough. That being said, I believe it also fair to say that there are certain things in life that one is reasonably allowed to assume, like if it can go wrong, it eventually will—a saying attributed to a guy named Murphy; that absolute power corrupts absolutely, for example. There are other universal laws like what goes up must come down, like Bush's disasterous approval ratings; that waterboading is in fact, torture, no matter what one calls it; that if voting machines are tested for reliability in one state and fail miserably, that they would perform similarly in another state—like, say Ohio?—especially when HAVA funds to the tune 1.8 million dollars have been spent to prove otherwise regarding the exact same voting machines?

The People's elections are supposed to be transparent and accountable, therefore, is it unfair to assume that when the results of the Project Everest testing are published on the Secretary of State's website on December 14th, that the machines will have failed miserably like they did in California? Is this presumptuous of me? No, it could be assumed. Was it not our Founder Ben Franklin who said, "Insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting different results"? He was a wise man.

Therefore, to assume that the Project Everest will prove that the machines are OK is illogical. If these tests, the testers and the Voting Rights Institute observers, do in fact find the machines are OK, for the sake of the truth then, it is necessary that one talk about the actual tests that have been performed.

What everyone is talking about:

So far, no one is talking about the tests. In fact, folks involved in Project Everest are also not talking about the non-disclosure forms all Project Everest observers were required to sign which (legally?) keeps them from talking about what they observed until 2017. Wow. Mum's the word. That must have something to do with that "secret source code" that vendors say they can't talk about with the People. They are also not talking about Aaron Ockerman, a registered lobbyist with ES&S, being charged with choosing those who got to observe the Project Everest testing in the first place.

In October of 2007 before the Project Everest testing began, SoS Brunner spoke at a lobby day at the Vern Riffe Center at which time she requested those attending submit their questions to her on paper. Unfortunately my question was not chosen but we were all promised her office would commit to answering all questions submitted. Well, I have called Secretary Brunner's office to get an answer to the question I submitted that day, "Will Certified Ethical Hackers" be performing tests in Project Everest?" Sadly, no one from the Secretary of State's office has called me back, and now, the testing is over.

I ask the Voters of Ohio, is it fair to assume the testing has been rigorous? Fair? We will all know on December 14, 2007. If the machines are not found infallible then it is fair to question the tests and those who conducted those tests. I await the results of the Project Everest tests with eager anticipation.

Victoria Parks
Ohio Election Justice Campaign