How to Rig an Election the G.O.P

REPORT

how to rIg an electIon The G.O.P. aims to paint the country red By Victoria Collier

t was a hot summer in 1932 when tion to the defendants. Election rig- By the beginning of the last centu- LouisianaI senator Huey “Kingfish” ging, Long might have quipped, ry, however, sentiment had begun to Long arranged to rig the vote on a had become downright ex- shift. In 1915, the Supreme Court number of amendments to his state’s hausting. But it worked. ruled that vote suppression could be constitution that would be advanta- federally prosecuted. In Terre Haute, geous to his financial interests. Long rom the earliest days of the repub- Indiana, more than a hundred men was no stranger to rigged votes. This lic,F American politicians (and much of had already been indicted for conspir- time around, however, the fix deliv- a cynical populace) saw vote rigging as ing to fix the 1914 elections for mayor, ered by his machine was blatant and sheriff, and circuit judge. The incum- sloppy: his favored amendments won bent sheriff and judge went to jail for unanimously in sixteen New Orleans five years, and Mayor Donn M. Roberts precincts and garnered identical vote spent six years in Leavenworth. totals in twenty-eight others. Roberts and his gang, declared the Eugene Stanley, the incorruptible New York Times, had failed to grasp district attorney for Orleans Parish, that “what is safe and even commend- presented evidence of fraud to a able one year may be dangerous and grand jury. Louisiana’s attorney gen- reprehensible the next.” Almost over- eral, the less morally encumbered night, commonplace corruption had Gaston Porterie, stepped in to sabo- become unacceptable, and vote rigging tage the case for Long. Nonetheless, a serious crime. It took a strongman two judges demanded a recount, at like Huey Long to remain an exception which point Governor O. K. Allen to the rule. But the overall trajectory obliged Long by declaring martial seemed to point toward reform, ac- law. Intimidated jurors found them- countability, and security. In 1920, the selves sorting ballots under the super- Nineteenth Amendment was passed, vision of National Guardsmen, who seventy-two years after Elizabeth Cady stood by to “protect” them with ma- Stanton first demanded women’s chine guns. suffrage—the right that would, in When this effort failed, another a necessary evil. Since the opposition Stanton’s words, “secure all others.” By grand jury was convened. Their even- was assumed to be playing equally the 1960s, Northern Democrats aban- tual finding of a massive conspiracy dirty, how could you avoid it? Most doned their Southern allies and pushed led to the indictment of 513 New Americans would probably have con- to end the mass suppression of black Orleans election officials. Once again, fessed to a grudging admiration for votes below the Mason–Dixon line. Long used his famous powers of per- New York City’s Tammany Hall ma- With the Voting Rights Act of 1965, suasion. At his behest, the Louisiana chine, which bought off judges, politi- many Americans began to believe that legislature modified the state’s elec- cians, and ward captains, ensured the the bad old days of stolen elections tion law, giving ex post facto protec- suppression of thousands of votes, and might soon be behind us. Victoria Collier is a writer and election- controlled Democratic Party nomina- But as the twentieth century came to integrity activist living in Mexico. tions for more than a century. a close, a brave new world of election

Illustration (detail) by John Ritter REPORT 33

(33-41) Collier Final 5 CX.indd_0925 33 9/25/12 3:13 PM rigging emerged, on a scale that might dents favoring each candidate. David since a state law specified that recounts have prompted Huey Long’s stunned Moore, who was then managing editor had to be conducted using the very admiration. Tracing the sea changes in of the Gallup Poll, told the paper, “We same “vote-counting device” that was our electoral process, we see that two can’t predict the outcome.” used to begin with—in this case, the major events have paved the way for Hagel’s victory in the general elec- ES&S optical scanners. this lethal form of election manipulation, invariably referred to as an “up- Meanwhile, the new millennium, far tion: the mass adoption of computerized set,” handed the seat to the G.O.P. for from delivering a democratic promised voting technology, and the outsourcing the first time in eighteen years. Hagel land, presented Americans with the of our elections to a handful of corpora- trounced Nelson by fifteen points. debacle of the 2000 presidential elections that operate in the shadows, with Even for those who had factored in the tion, whose fate hung absurdly on little oversight or accountability. governor’s deteriorating numbers and “hanging chads”—the little pieces of This privatization of our elections a last-minute barrage of negative ads, punched-out ballot so contentiously has occurred without public knowledge this divergence from pre-election poll- examined during the monthlong re- or consent, leading to one of the most ing was enough to raise eyebrows count. Few Americans knew (and many dangerous and least understood crises across the nation. still do not know) that a faulty com- in the history of American democracy. Few Americans knew that until puter memory card triggered this fiasco. We have actually lost the ability to shortly before the election, Hagel had Late on Election Night, Al Gore’s total verify election results. been chairman of the company whose in Volusia County, Florida, suddenly The use of computers in elections computerized voting machines would dropped when one precinct reported began around the time of the Voting soon count his own votes: Election Sys- 16,000 negative votes. Fox News was Rights Act. Throughout the 1980s and tems & Software (then called Ameri- immediately prompted by Florida gov- 1990s, the use of optical scanners to can Information Systems). Hagel ernor Jeb Bush to call the election for process paper ballots became wide- stepped down from his post just two his brother. On his way to a 3 a.m. spread, usurping local hand counting. weeks before announcing his candidacy. public concession, Gore changed course The media, anxious to get on the air Yet he retained millions of dollars in when a campaign staffer discovered that with vote totals, hailed the faster and stock in the McCarthy Group, which he was actually ahead in Volusia more efficient computerized count. In owned ES&S. And Michael McCarthy, County by 13,000 votes. the twenty-first century, a new tech- the parent company’s founder, was But the damage was done. Gore was nology became ubiquitous: Direct Hagel’s campaign treasurer. cast as a sore loser in a hostile media Recording Electronic (DRE) voting, Whether Hagel’s relationship to environment. His effort to obtain a which permits touchscreen machines ES&S ensured his victory is open to recount was described by Sean Hannity and does not require a paper trail. speculation. But the surprising scale of on Fox News as an attempt to “steal the Old-school ballot-box fraud at its his win awakened a new fear among election.” Meanwhile, George W. Bush most egregious was localized and lim- voting-rights activists and raised a dis- invoked his duty to get on with the ited in scope. But new electronic voting turbing question: Who controls the business of running the country. The systems allow insiders to rig elections new technology of Election Night? rest, as they say, is history. on a statewide or even national scale. “Why would someone who owns a We are now in the midst of yet And whereas once you could catch the voting-machine company want to run another election season. And as guilty parties in the act, and even for office?” asked Charlie Matulka, a November 6 approaches, only one dredge the ballot boxes out of the Democrat who contested Hagel’s Sen- thing is certain: American voters will bayou, the virtual vote count can be ate seat in 2002. Speaking at a press have no ability to know with cer- manipulated in total secrecy. By means conference shortly before the election, tainty who wins any given race, from of proprietary, corporate-owned soft- he added: “Is this the fox guarding the dogcatcher to president. Nor will we ware, just one programmer could steal henhouse?” A construction worker know the true results of ballot initia- hundreds, thousands, potentially even with limited funding and name recog- tives and referenda affecting some of millions of votes with the stroke of a nition, Matulka was obviously a less the most vital issues of our day, in- key. It’s the electoral equiva- formidable competitor than Nelson. cluding fracking, abortion, gay mar- lent of a drone strike. Still, Hagel won an astonishing riage, GMO-food labeling, and elec- 83 percent of the vote—among the toral reform itself. Our faith-based ymbolically speaking, this era was largest margins of victory in any state- elections are the result of a new Dark inauguratedS by Chuck Hagel, an wide race in Nebraska’s history. And Age in American democracy, brought unknown millionaire who ran for one with nearly 400,000 registered Demo- on, paradoxically, by tech- of Nebraska’s U.S. Senate seats in crats on the rolls, Matulka managed nological progress. 1996. Initially Hagel trailed the popu- to scrape up only 70,290 votes. lar Democratic governor, Ben Nelson, Hagel had never actually disclosed he spread of computerized voting who had been elected in a landslide his financial ties to ES&S, and hasT carried with it an enormous poten- two years earlier. Three days before the Matulka requested an investigation by tial for electronic skulduggery. In 2003, election, however, a poll conducted by the Senate Ethics Committee. His Bev Harris, a citizen sleuth and the the Omaha World-Herald showed a request was rejected. Equally futile was author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tam- dead heat, with 47 percent of respon- his call for a hand count of the ballots, pering in the 21st Century, made a

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(33-41) Collier Final 5 CX.indd_0925 34 9/25/12 3:13 PM shocking and game-changing discov- ers gain access to the system after only easily replicated keys—the same kind ery: Diebold, then one of the primary one had logged in, but unencrypted used on jukeboxes and hotel mini- manufacturers of voting machines, had audit logs allowed any trace of vote bars—to open the machines them- left the 40,000 files that made up its rigging to be wiped from the record. selves. In 2005, the nonpartisan Global Election Management System The public unmasking of GEMS by Commission on Federal Election (GEMS) on a publicly accessible web- an average citizen (who was not a pro- Reform, chaired by Jimmy Carter and site, entirely unprotected. Diebold was grammer herself) served as a belated James Baker, stated unequivocally that

never able to explain how its proprie- wake-up call to the world’s leading the greatest threats to secure voting are tary tabulation program ended up in computer-security experts, who finally insiders with direct access to the such an exposed position. Harris turned their attention to America’s machines: “There is no reason to trust downloaded the files, and programmers most widely used voting systems. Damn- insiders in the election industry any worldwide pounced, probing the code ing reports have since been issued by more than in other industries.” for weaknesses. “The wall of secrecy,” researchers from Johns Hopkins, As recently as September 2011, a said Harris, “began to crumble.” Princeton, Rice, and Stanford Universi- team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s GEMS turned out to be a vote rig- ties, the Brennan Center for Justice, and Argonne National Laboratory hacked ger’s dream. According to Harris’s the Government Accountability Office into one of Diebold’s old Accuvote analysis, it could be hacked, remotely (none of them institutions hospitable to touchscreen systems. Their report as- or on-site, using any off-the-shelf ver- “tinfoil hat” conspiracy theorists). Ex- serted that anyone with $26 in parts and sion of Microsoft Access, and password perts describe appalling security flaws, an eighth-grade science education would protection was missing for supervisor from the potential for system-wide vote- be able to manipulate the outcome of an functions. Not only could multiple us- rigging viruses to the use of cheap, election. “This is a national security

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(33-41) Collier Final 5 CX.indd_0925 35 9/25/12 3:13 PM issue,” wrote the Argonne team leader, the agenda of the voting-machine in- inability to trust the technology that Roger Johnston, using the sort of lan- dustry. One election supervisor claims we use,” he added. “And if we were guage that would normally set off alarm that Diebold went so far as to send him another country being analyzed by bells in our security-obsessed culture. Yet threatening letters after he sought out America, we would conclude that this his warning has gone unheeded, and the less expensive alternatives to service the country is ripe for stealing Accuvote-TSX, now manufactured by disabled, even when these machines elections and for fraud.” ES&S, will be used in twenty states by were compatible with Diebold’s systems. more than 26 million voters in the 2012 This was not the only deception sur- he sheer unreliability of this new general election. rounding the rollout of these electoral technologyT is only half the problem. Johnston’s group also breached a sys- Trojan horses. In a 2007 Dan Rather The other half is a series of mergers and tem made by another industry giant, exposé, The Trouble with Touch Screens, acquisitions that have further central- Sequoia, using the same “man in the seven whistle-blowers at Sequoia ized the voting-machine industry over middle” hack—a tiny wireless compo- charged that company executives had the past decade or so. Election Day is nent that is inserted between the display forced them to use inferior paper stock now dominated by a handful of secre- screen and the main circuit board— for ballots during the 2000 election. tive corporations with interlocking which requires no knowledge of the What’s more, said the whistle-blowers, ownership, strong partisan ties to the actual voting software. The Sequoia they had been instructed to misalign the far right, and executives who revolve machine will be used in four states by chads on punch cards destined for the among them like beans in a shell game. nearly 9 million voters in 2012. Democratic stronghold of Palm Beach Bob and Todd Urosevich are hardly Why did a physicist choose to hack County. “My own personal opinion was household names. Yet the two brothers into voting machines? “This was basi- the touchscreen-voting system wasn’t have succeeded in monopolizing Amer- cally a weekend project,” Johnston told getting off the ground like they would ican election technology for decades me, expressing his amazement at the hope,” said Greg Smith, a thirty-two- through a pair of supposedly competing meager funding available to examine year Sequoia employee. “So, I feel like corporations: the Ohio-based Diebold America’s voting systems. “We did it they deliberately did all this to have and the Nebraska-based ES&S. The because a lot of people looking at the problems with the paper ballots.” latter was founded by the Urosevich machines are cybersecurity experts and Such blockbuster allegations are brothers in 1979 and is headquartered programmers—and when you have a perhaps unsurprising given the group in Omaha, where it has an Ayn Rand– hammer, everything looks like a nail. of Beltway insiders who helped to flavored corporate address on John Galt They were largely looking at sophisti- pass HAVA. One central player was Boulevard. It is also, let us recall, the cated, cyber-based attacks. But there former Republican representative same company that may have won are simple physical attacks, as we Bob Ney of Ohio, sentenced in 2006 Chuck Hagel his Senate seat. proved, that are easier to do and hard- to thirty months in prison for crimes Diebold became the most infamous er to prevent.” connected with disgraced lobbyist name in the industry in 2003, when its The voting-machine companies Jack Abramoff—whose firm was paid CEO, Walden O’Dell, a top fund-raiser never responded to the Argonne re- at least $275,000 by Diebold. for George W. Bush, made a jaw- ports. “That’s not unusual,” says John- HAVA’s impact has been huge, ac- dropping public promise to “deliver” ston. “The manufacturers seem to be celerating a deterioration of our elec- Ohio’s electoral votes to Bush. The in denial on some of these issues.” toral system that most Americans following year, California banned Die- Why the denial? There are at least have yet to recognize, let alone under- bold’s touchscreen system, and Secre- 3.9 billion good reasons. In 2002, stand. We are literally losing our tary of State Kevin Shelley blasted the George W. Bush signed the Help Amer- ballot—the key physical proof of our company as “fraudulent,” “despicable,” ica Vote Act (HAVA), offering states power as citizens. and “deceitful.” O’Dell stepped down $3.9 billion in subsidies to modernize Even a former major elections offi- in 2005, right before the filing of a their election administration and equip- cial has heaped scorn upon H AVA’s class-action suit that accused Diebold ment, purportedly in response to Flori- mission. DeForest Soaries was appoint- of fraud, insider trading, and slipshod da’s hanging-chad fiasco of 2000. ed by George W. Bush to head the quality control. HAVA mandated that every polling Election Assistance Commission Concerned about its tarnished brand, place provide at least one voting system (EAC), which HAVA created to over- the company removed its label from the that allowed disabled people to vote see security standards for new voting front of voting machines. Then Diebold with the same “privacy and indepen- devices. Soaries stepped down in 2005, went one step further and changed the dence” accorded to nondisabled voters. calling his office a “charade” and name of its voting-machine division to Thanks to confusing language in claiming that he had been deceived by Premier Election Solutions. HAVA itself, and even a misleading both the White House and Congress. In 2009, Diebold, which makes ATMs report issued by the Congressional Washington politicians, Soaries de- and other security systems, got out of the Research Service, one might easily clared in a 2006 radio interview, have elections business altogether, selling Pre- assume that the mandate called for the apparently concluded that our voting mier to ES&S. Here was a windfall for purchase of DRE machines. In this way, system can’t be all that bad—after all, the Urosevich brothers in more than the blind and visually impaired were it got them elected. “But there’s an one sense: Bob had decamped to Die- unwittingly used as pawns to advance erosion of voting rights implicit in our bold in 2002, when the company bought

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(33-41) Collier Final 5 CX.indd_0925 36 9/25/12 3:13 PM Global Election Systems, where he then vice president of sales administration victories that range from unexpected to served as president. Todd, meanwhile, and strategies at Sequoia. implausible, and that have frequently remained at ES&S. This cozy arrange- One high achiever actually got his been accompanied by technical failures ment was disrupted by a Justice Depart- start in prison. Jeffrey Dean’s vote-by- and anomalies, which are swept under ment antitrust intervention, which mail software—developed while Dean the rug as rapidly as possible. forced ES&S to split ownership of Pre- was serving a sentence for twenty- In 2002, the G.O.P. regained control mier with Dominion, the next big name three counts of embezzlement—came of the Senate with such victories. In in election technology. A month later, to dominate the U.S. absentee-voting Georgia, for example, Diebold’s voting the deck was shuffled once again with market. Once out of prison, Dean machines reported the defeat of Demo- Dominion’s purchase of Sequoia.1 launched his own ballot-printing com- cratic senator Max Cleland. Early polls Between them, Dominion and pany with narcotics trafficker John had given the highly popular Cleland a ES&S now count the majority of Elder. They later sold it to Global Elec- solid lead over his Republican oppo- American ballots. There are, of course, tion Systems, where, readers will nent, Saxby Chambliss, a favorite of the newer technologies in development, recall, Bob Urosevich served as presi- Christian right, the NRA, and George including Web-based voting. This lat- dent and COO, before the company W. Bush (who made several campaign est innovation is being peddled by the was sold to Diebold. appearances on his behalf). As Election Spanish-owned Scytl, which named This leads us to a crazy-making Day drew near, the contest narrowed. Bob Urosevich managing director of realization. Although many felons (and Chambliss, who had avoided military its Americas division in 2006. prior felons) can’t cast a ballot in service, ran attack ads denouncing One would think (or hope) that a America—an estimated 6 million Cleland—a Silver Star recipient who private industry entrusted with Amer- citizens will be disenfranchised in 2012 lost three limbs in Vietnam—as a trai- ica’s votes would require the highest due to felony convictions—these par- tor for voting against the creation of the degree of personal integrity from its ticular felons are apparently free to Department of Homeland Security. employees. As it happens, many of the design and manage our Two days before the election, a Zogby key staffers behind our major voting- entire elections industry. poll gave Chambliss a one-point lead machine companies have been ac- among likely voters, while the Atlanta cused or convicted of a dizzying array ince the American Revolution, Journal-Constitution reported that Cle- of white-collar crimes, including con- electionS fraud has been attempted by land maintained a three-point advan- spiracy, bribery, bid rigging, computer every major political party, with fre- tage with the same group. fraud, tax fraud, stock fraud, mail quent intraparty allegations, such as Cleland lost by seven points. In his fraud, extortion, and drug trafficking. the claim of Ron Paul delegates that 2009 autobiography, he accused com- In 2001, for example, a grand jury the rules were rigged against them at puterized voting machines of being indicted Philip Foster, Sequoia’s south- this year’s Republican National Con- “ripe for fraud.” Patched for fraud might ern regional sales manager, for malfea- vention. To say that Democrats haven’t have been more apt. In the month lead- sance and conspiring to launder money. committed their fair share of what were ing up to the election, Diebold employ- During the previous decade, he had once quaintly called “shenanigans” ees, led by Bob Urosevich, applied a facilitated a kickback scheme that fun- would be disingenuous. Huey Long was mysterious, uncertified software patch neled payments to a Louisiana elec- a Democrat, as was virtually every can- to 5,000 voting machines that Georgia tions official, who purchased Sequoia didate ever floated by Tammany Hall, had purchased in May. equipment while winking at millions not to mention Lyndon Johnson— “We were told that it was intended of dollars in overcharges. The scheme, whose election to the U.S. Senate in to fix the clock in the system, which it which also involved Foster’s brother-in- 1948, according to Robert Caro’s didn’t do,” Diebold consultant and law and fellow Sequoia employee Means of Ascent, relied on flagrant vote whistle-blower Chris Hood recounted David Philpot, was hardly an adver- tampering. Still, the main beneficiary in a 2006 Rolling Stone article. “The tisement for the company. Yet Foster, of recent trends in election stealing curious thing is the very swift, covert who gained immunity for his testimony seems to be the American right. way this was done.... It was an unau- against the elections official, not only This is no accident. As the twenty- thorized patch, and they were trying to avoided jail time but was promoted to first century unfolds, American politics keep it secret from the state. .. . We 1 At the time of the purchase, Dominion ab- continues to veer precipitously to the were told not to talk to county person- sorbed some key staffers from Sequoia, right, even as the demographic base for nel about it. I received instructions among them Edwin B. Smith, who now such a shift—older white conservative directly from [Bob] Urosevich. It was serves as Dominion’s vice president of certi- males—keeps shrinking. The engine of very unusual that a president of the fication and compliance. In 2008, Smith this seismic movement is a strategic company would give an order like that threatened legal action against two computer scientists hired by an association of New alliance of corporate interests promoted and be involved at that level.” Jersey election clerks to examine malfunc- by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. em- Two years later, of course, John Kerry tioning Sequoia touchscreen machines. The pire and orchestrated by Karl Rove and lost the presidency in Ohio. In this key following year, in a farcical conflict of inter- the Koch-funded American Legislative swing state, election monitors were est, he was appointed to the EAC’s Techni- cal Guidelines Development Committee, Exchange Council. And meanwhile, besieged by complaints of G.O.P.- which helps determine which specific voting the American right has in recent years orchestrated voter suppression, intimida- machines should be certified for use. been empowered by a slew of upset tion, and fraud. Myriad voting-machine

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(33-41) Collier Final 5 CX.indd_0925 37 9/25/12 3:13 PM anomalies were reported, including British journalist Simon Worrall. “We known. Still, Election Day exit polls “glitches” that flipped votes from Kerry identified Connell as a key witness, as make a compelling case that somebody to Bush. A phony terror alert in Repub- the implementer for Rove.” On Novem- may have been tampering with the lican Warren County (the FBI later ber 3, 2008, he took a sworn deposition presidential vote count, in Ohio and denied issuing any such warning) al- from Connell, who had repeatedly tried elsewhere. lowed officials to move ballots illegally to quash Arnebeck’s subpoena. Late on Election Day, John Kerry to an auxiliary building and count them Initially Connell denied any role in showed an insurmountable lead in out of public view. Presiding over the choosing SmarTech to host the mirror exit polling, and many considered election was the Republican secretary of site. Questioned further, he admitted his victory all but certified. Yet the state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a fiercely that he “may have” made use of the final vote tallies in thirty states devi- partisan fundamentalist Christian who Tennessee servers, but denied any ated widely from exit polls, with dis- also served as co-chair of Ohio’s Com- knowledge of whether the mirror site crepancies favoring George W. Bush mittee to Re-Elect George W. Bush. had even been activated in 2004. His in all but nine. The greatest dispari- The exhaustive evidence of voting job, he insisted, was simply to display ties were concentrated in battle- irregularities in Ohio was documented vote counts, “taking the public results as ground states—particularly Ohio. In in a 2005 report commissioned by Rep- they are currently being reported and one Ohio precinct, exit polls indicat- resentative John Conyers, “Preserving aggregating them into totals.” ed that Kerry should have received Democracy: What Went Wrong in In fact, the SmarTech site went into 67 percent of the vote, but the certi- Ohio.” At the time of that report, how- action at 11:14 p.m. on Election Day. fied tally gave him only 38 percent. ever, a major piece of the puzzle was At this point, Arnebeck believes, the The odds of such an unexpected out- still missing: the role of G.O.P. com- data being routed to Tennessee was come occurring only as a result of puter guru Michael Connell. used by G.O.P. partisans to target sampling error are 1 in 867,205,553. Connell was the Bush campaign’s Ohio counties that were ripe for vote To quote Lou Harris, who has long chief IT strategist. He was also a zeal- tampering. “The SmarTech people been regarded as the father of mod- ous anti-abortion activist whose two may have been guiding the manipula- ern political polling: “Ohio was as Ohio-based companies built websites tion of paper ballots in places like dirty an election as Amer- and email systems for the Republican Warren County,” Arnebeck told me. ica has ever seen.” National Committee, Swift Boat Vet- Others argue that SmarTech’s role erans for Truth, and many of the most was far more insidious and involved he statistically anomalous shift- powerful figures in the G.O.P., includ- partisan control of the total vote count. ingT of votes to the conservative right ing Karl Rove, Jeb Bush, and Jack Stephen Spoonamore, an IT specialist has become so pervasive in post-H AVA Abramoff. It was one of Connell’s web- (and Republican) who has consulted on America that it now has a name of its sites that reported the surprising (ma- cybersecurity for Boeing, MasterCard, own. Experts call it the “red shift.” ny say unbelievable) surge of votes in the Navy, and the State Department, The Election Defense Alliance Ohio that handed George W. Bush has studied the electronic “architecture (EDA) is a nonprofit organization spe- the White House for the second time. map” used by Ohio during the 2004 cializing in election forensics—a kind In 2004, Connell was hired by Black- election. He speculates that SmarTech of dusting for the fingerprints of elec- well to design a website that would post might have been able to use Connell’s tronic theft. It is joined in this work by Ohio election results to the public. interface to gain access to and modify a coalition of independent statisti- Connell’s contract also required that he vote totals. In a sworn affidavit, Spoon- cians, who have compared decades of create a “mirror site” that would kick in amore said that the “variable nature of computer-vote results to exit polls, to display the vote totals if the official the story” and “lack of documentation tracking polls, and hand counts. Their Ohio servers were overwhelmed by available” would, for any of his banking findings show that when disparities Election Day traffic. For the latter por- clients, provoke “an immediate fraud occur, they benefit Republicans and tion of the job, he turned to SmarTech, investigation.” right-wing issues far beyond the bounds a little-known company headquartered Arnebeck hoped to have Connell of probability. “We approach electoral in Chattanooga, Tennessee. SmarTech testify in open court against Rove. But integrity with a nonpartisan goal of was as partisan as Connell himself, and the prospective witness died on Decem- transparency,” says EDA executive the company’s servers hosted hundreds ber 19, 2008, at age forty-seven, when director Jonathan Simon. “But there is of high-profile Republican websites his single-engine Piper Saratoga, which nothing nonpartisan about the pat- (and, later on, an assortment of anti- he was piloting alone, crashed en route terns we keep finding.” Simon’s verdict Obama websites). from Washington, D.C., to Ohio. The is confirmed by David Moore, a former Four years later, Ohio attorney (and circumstances of his death were viewed vice president and managing editor of former Republican) Cliff Arnebeck with suspicion by his family and close Gallup: “What the exit polls have con- began gathering evidence to file a rack- friends and sparked a firestorm of con- sistently shown is stronger Democratic eteering claim against Karl Rove, spiracy chatter on the Internet, but no support than the election results.” which included the charge that Rove criminal investigation was launched. Wouldn’t American voters eventu- had masterminded the theft of the Whether Rove and his collaborators ally note the constant disparity between 2004 election. “We detected a pattern orchestrated the electronic theft of the poll numbers and election outcomes, of criminal activity,” Arnebeck told the 2004 election will likely never be and cry foul? They might—except that

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(33-41) Collier Final 5 CX.indd_0925 38 9/25/12 3:14 PM polling numbers, too, are being quietly shifted. Exit-poll data is provided by the National Election Pool, a corporate- media consortium consisting of the three major television networks plus CNN, Fox News, and the Associated Press. The NEP relies in turn on two companies, Edison Research and Mitofsky International, to conduct and analyze the actual polling. However, few Americans realize that the final exit polls on Election Day are adjusted by the pollsters—in other words, weighted according to the computerized-voting- machine totals.2 When challenged on these disparities, pollsters often point to method- ological flaws. Within days of the 2004 election, Warren Mitofsky (who in- vented exit polls in 1967) appeared on television to unveil what became known as the “reluctant Bush re- sponder” theory: “We suspect that the main reason was that the Kerry voters were more anxious to participate in our exit polls than the Bush voters.” But some analysts and pollsters insist this theory is entirely unproven. “I don’t think the pollsters have really made a convincing case that it’s solely meth- odological,” Moore told me. In Moore’s opinion, the NEP could resolve the whole issue by making raw, Thomas Frank • Lewis H. Lapham David Samuels • Ken Silverstein unadjusted, precinct-level data avail- FORKINDLE able to the public. “Our great, free, and DEMOCRACY open media are concealing data so that DEMOCRACY 101 it cannot be analyzed,” Moore charges. Their argument that such data is proprietary and would allow analysts to 101 deduce which votes were cast by specific individuals is, Moore insists, “spe- cious at best.” He adds: “They have a communal responsibility to clarify A new Kindle eBook whether there is a vote miscount going featuring political essays on. But so far there’s been no pressure on them to do so.” political essays from the from the pages of Harper’s Some argue that the Democratic pages of harper’s magazine Magazine, including victories in 2006 and 2008 disprove the existence of the red shift. Howev- er, this may be a misinterpretation of complex political upheavals that oc- Thomas Frank Lewis H. Lapham curred in each of those election years. • While Democrats won a majority in the House of Representatives in 2006, 2 Exit polls, of course, are designed to ana- David Samuels • Ken Silverstein lyze demographic patterns as well as to predict outcomes. It makes sense to adjust for demographic data, but this process troublingly obscures the raw numbers, masking the often wide distance between AVAILABLE NOW! exit-poll results and final vote tallies. www.amazon.com/kindle

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(33-41) Collier Final 5 CX.indd_0925 39 9/25/12 3:14 PM and the White House in 2008, post voting technology. According to the Wisconsin Supreme Court would be of election analyses did in fact suggest EDA, in all seventy one locations where crucial importance. The election was extensive redshift rigging. But in both ballots were counted by hand under ultimately decided by Waukesha county election cycles, these efforts simply public observation—more than 65,000 clerk Kathy Nickolaus, who “discov failed to overcome eleventh hour events ballots in all—Coakley beat her oppo ered” 14,300 votes on her computer late so negative that they drastically under nent by 2.8 percent. Their analysis also on Election Night. This windfall hand cut the projected wins for the G.O.P. showed that computercounted com ed the victory to the conservative in In 2006, it was the exposure of Re munities were more Democratic by reg cumbent, Justice David Prosser, for publican representative Mark Foley’s istration and historically less likely to whom Nickolaus had worked for seven sexual advances toward male congres support Republican candidates. years. Prosser later joined the court’s sional pages, and the long standing In Florida, Rick Scott was elected majority in upholding Walker’s union cover up of his behavior by G.O.P. lead governor in November after an his busting legislation, stripping workers of ership. The scandal swirling around the torically close race with his opponent, their collective bargaining rights in the outwardly homophobic Foley broke in Alex Sink. Scott, a millionaire and birthplace of the Progressive movement. a very ugly and public way, engulfing Tea Party favorite, squeaked through There is, finally, South Carolina’s the entire party and causing a free fall with a 1.15 percent margin of victory, 2010 race for U.S. Senate, which Repub in its polling numbers. The Democratic representing just 61,550 votes, after a lican Jim DeMint won with 78 percent margin in the Cook Generic Congres number of Dominion machines in of the vote. What is mysterious is not sional Ballot poll, which had been at Hillsborough County failed to upload the ultimate outcome, but the Demo 9 percent in early October, jumped to results. In the wake of what was de cratic primary that preceded it, which 26 percent by the week of the election. scribed as a memory card glitch, elec tossed up a fairly fortuitous opponent for The collapse of Lehman Brothers tion workers manually rescanned about DeMint: Alvin Greene, an unemployed months before the 2008 elections had a 38,000 earlyvoting ballots, without thirtytwo year old accused sex offender similar effect on John McCain’s num any supervision by the public or the living in his father’s basement. bers. Preelection polls showed that the press. Sink, who needed only 35,000 Greene, often described as “incoher American public blamed the Republi more votes to trigger a mandatory re ent,” ran no campaign: no website, no cans for the imploding financial mar count, conceded the following day. appearances at Democratic events, not kets. “These political sea changes Further darkening Florida’s elec even a yard sign. Yet he miraculously swamped a red shift that turned out to toral atmosphere was Scott’s record of beat his opponent in the Democratic be undercalibrated,” argues Jonathan legal travails. He had narrowly avoid primary, former judge and four term Simon, who speculates that Barack ed indictment in the late 1990s for his state legislator Vic Rawl, by an 18 per Obama actually won by a historic land role as CEO of Columbia/HCA, a cent margin. Voters and campaign slide, driven by an overwhelming back private healthcare company. HCA workers reported that the ES&S lash against the policies of eventually admitted to substantial touchscreen machines “flipped” votes the Bush Administration. criminal conduct and paid a record to Greene all day long. Meanwhile, the $1.7 billion to the federal government. absentee ballots—which were counted y 2010, the electoral map was Whistle blower lawsuits alleged that by hand—told a different story. In half onceB again littered with upset victories HCA engaged in a series of schemes of the state’s fortysix counties, there that tipped the balance of power in to defraud Medicare, Medicaid, and was a 10 percent disparity between America back toward the right. In TRICARE, the military’s health absentee ballots and those counted by Massachusetts, it was Tea Party candi insurance program. machine; in Lancaster County, Rawl date Scott Brown who achieved what Scott left the company unscathed, won 84 percent of the absentee vote. the New York Times called an “extraor with a reported $300 million parachute, Greene denied accusations (or, some dinary upset” in his race for the late then spent $73 million of his own mon would say, observations) that he was a Ted Kennedy’s seat—and thereby ey running for office. Two years later, he G.O.P. plant, while declining to ex erased the Democrats’ filibuster proof targeted 180,000 registered voters in an plain where he got the $10,400 needed supermajority in the Senate. A little attempt to purge noncitizens from Flor to file as a candidate. Rawl lodged a more than an hour after the polls ida’s voter rolls. Many of the state’s sixty formal protest and requested a new closed on January 19, the Associated seven county election supervisors re primary. That was quickly knocked Press declared that Brown had defeat fused to carry out the purge. Leon down by the executive committee of ed Attorney General Martha Coakley, County supervisor Ion Sancho called it the South Carolina Democratic becoming the state’s first Republican un American behavior. “This is an ex Party—and DeMint sailed senator in thirty years. ample of partisan manipulation of the to a rout in November. By most accounts, Coakley, who was process to try to affect the outcome,” he initially favored to win, ran a lackluster told me. “It’s sad but true.” n the weeks following the South campaign. And her opponent was riding In Wisconsin in 2010, the new Tea CarolinaI spectacle, the press engaged a wave of populist discontent with the Party governor elect, Scott Walker, un in round after round of analytic Twister, Obama Administration. Yet even veiled a violently corporatist agenda avoiding the most obvious question: Brown’s victory, widely predicted by destined for legal challenge—ensuring Had another extremist just gained fed January 19, raised some questions about that the 2011 race for a seat on the eral office on the basis of a rigged

40 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / NOVEMBER 2012

(33-41) Collier Final 5 CX.indd_0925 40 9/25/12 3:14 PM election? Their silence, however, was U.S. Supreme Court nearly a decade setts have limited his ability to rally nothing unusual. after its passage. Ptashnik believes the activist base. Consequently, even In his 2011 paper “To the American that election rigging remains an un- a weakened Obama may prove too Media: Time to Face the Reality of touchable phenomenon in American powerful an incumbent to rig out of Election Rigging,” Jonathan Simon politics. “Very few leaders are willing the White House. accuses the press of maintaining a to fight it, which is probably why Ker- But if the Republicans gain complete Mafia-style omertà on the subject. “The ry backed off in 2004. But the evi- control of Congress, they can probably gruesome truth,” he writes, “is that dence is piling up. Democrats have to render Obama toothless for his second American elections can be rigged, and get their heads out of the sand and term and blame him for the economic are being rigged, because the American realize we’re looking at our worst upheavals that are sure to come in the media treats election rigging as some- nightmare: Karl Rove’s projected forty- next four years. Their focus, then, will thing that—all evidence notwith- year G.O.P. dynasty.” probably be on the Senate, where Dem- standing—could never happen here.” Ptashnik speaks with particular ocrats still hold a precarious edge. Few people know this better than bluntness about the state of American No matter how cynical we may have NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller, democracy. “Today, Karl Rove and the become about our elections, doing noth- whose books Fooled Again and Loser Koch brothers are pushing a corporat- ing to secure an accurate vote count is Take All document a wide assortment ist, anti-union agenda,” he says, “cyn- not an option. It may be too late to of G.O.P. vote-stealing tricks in every ically allying with anti-immigrant completely prevent vote rigging in the major election from 2000 to 2006. nativists and Christian fundamental- 2012 election. But the spotlight of in- When the books were published, he ists.” He compares the situation to creased public scrutiny may deter the told me, “I got no interviews and al- that of Germany during the 1930s, most brazen acts of fraud—and perhaps most no reviews, despite the wealth of when anticommunism drove industri- dissuade those who believe that shifting evidence I’d gathered. The corporate alists and much of the working class votes by minuscule percentages in the media was silent. But the left-wing into the arms of fascism. electronic dark will go unseen. press was hostile.” It is Germany, however, that has Where paper ballots still exist, we Indeed, his colleagues on the left now become the standard-bearer for can demand that local election clerks seem most reluctant of anyone to grap- clean elections. In 2009, that nation’s allow them to be counted by hand ple with the concept of large-scale constitutional court upheld the basic before they leave the precinct. Orga- election tampering. “I know Michael principle of the public nature of demo- nizing citizen volunteer groups to Moore, Noam Chomsky, Rachel Mad- cratic elections. By ruling that the vote count them may be necessary. Sheila dow,” Miller says. “I’ve tried for years to count must be something the public Parks, who founded the Center for get them to concede that possibility, can authenticate—and without any Hand-Counted Paper Ballots, has also but they won’t do even that. There’s specialized expertise—the decision urged citizens with legal standing to clearly a profound unease at work. directly challenged the use of comput- file injunctions to impound ballots, They just can’t go there.” ers in elections. memory cards, and even voting ma- Why? No doubt the fear of being Ireland followed suit in June 2012, chines after the polls close. “This pre- branded a conspiracy theorist inhibits sending all its electronic voting ma- vents tampering with any of these many—that term having long served chines to the scrap heap. Minister for items after an election,” she told me, as a cudgel to suppress discussion of all the Environment Phil Hogan called the “and gives us access to them with a sorts of crimes against democracy. As computerized voting system a poorly secure chain of custody.” Miller puts it, “There is no more ex- conceived, scandalous waste of money Staring at the outside of a black- quisite method of silencing dissent, or and said he was “glad to bring this sorry box voting system and attempting to shutting down inconvenient inquiry, episode to a conclusion on detect fraud, however, will not ulti- than to charge someone with con- behalf of the taxpayer.” mately produce clean elections. It is spiracy theory.” an exercise in futility if we do not Like their counterparts in the media, he November elections will be a take the next steps now. In prepara- Democrats in office today appear unwill- Twatershed for American democracy. A tion for the 2014 election, we must ing to defend what matters most. They handful of contested Senate seats demand that our representatives pass stand in complicit silence as improbable stand between a right-wing juggernaut comprehensive election reform, results are spat from the innards of unac- and a moderate-progressive counter- including publicly financed races and countable voting machines. force. A few battleground states— a secure, transparent vote count. A “For Democratic legislators and notably Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and privatized, secret ballot count must candidates, openly questioning the Wisconsin—hold the key to the presi- be viewed as a violation of our civil integrity of American democracy feels dential election, which may determine rights. Once that principle is clear, as like committing political suicide,” says the ideological balance of the Supreme it is now in Germany and Ireland, the Ben Ptashnik. A former Vermont state Court for decades to come. rest will naturally follow. If we the senator, Ptashnik ran for office in 1996 Mitt Romney is regarded tepidly by people do not feel the outrage, or specifically to spearhead the state’s the right wing of his own party. His lack the courage to fight for this Clean Elections Act—whose provi- Mormon faith and the moderate posi- most basic right of American self- sions were largely struck down by the tions he took as governor of Massachu- governance, who will? n

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