Huntsman’s abandoning Utah Sticks Us with What He Didn’t Want to Notice

Since 2005, advocates for fair elections with all votes counted have been trying to get Jon Huntsman’s attention, but he has always deferred to the Lt. Governor, the designated executive director of Utah Elections. Huntsman, who appeared to be a Governor of both courage and conscience when he stood up against the Divine Strake Test and in favor of Civil Unions for gays, nonetheless, kept his eyes above and his nose clean when it came to the issue of his Lt. Governor and the hackable Diebold Voting Machines we are stuck with in Utah.

While others concerns about Lt. Governor Herbert becoming Utah's governor are focused on his conservative views, the failure to even discuss Herbert's most bullying policy -- because most people are blind to it -- shows how successful the man is at misinforming and intimidating at the most important levels.

It's this simple: Lt. Governor Gary Herbert is the one person who unilaterally decided, against the advice of computer science experts, to purchase the Diebold Touch Screen Voting Machines for the State of Utah, to comply with the 2005 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the law primarily authored by the since-imprisoned Congressman Bob Ney, under the influence of the $275,000 in funds Diebold paid in 2005 to the since-jailed-lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s company.

When Bruce Funk, the veteran Emery County Clerk, received the Diebold machines for his county and dutifully performed the “acceptance testing”, he found absurdly elementary defects that could wreak havoc on an election day: crooked paper feeds, open memory card bays, flimsy parts that got stuck or loose. A closer look brought the discovery of inexplicable anomalies in the memory cards.

A responsible election official for over twenty years, Funk had paid attention to issues of the reliability and security of these machines. He read in December 2005, Finnish computer security expert Harri Hursti and Dr. Herbert Thompson of Security Innovations, Inc. had demonstrated for Leon County, Florida election Ion Sanchez the hackability of the Diebold Optical Scan voting machines which could change election outcomes (see HBO’s documentary, Hacking Democracy, October 2006). That same day, the CEO of Diebold, who’d infamously pledged to secure Ohio for George Bush in a 2003 memo, suddenly resigned.

So, when Funk couldn't get sensible answers to his questions about the memory cards from Diebold, he contacted Bev Harris at BlackBoxVoting.org, who had arranged for the demonstration in Florida. In March 2006, Harri Hursti and Dr. Thompson from Security Innovations Inc. came to Utah to address the Bruce’s questions.

After examining two Diebold touch screen machines, documented on videotape, and a second series of testing by both Hursti and Security Innovations, Hursti explained to Funk that in addition to simplistic design flaws that presented electrical safety hazards, the machines’ architectural design included two critical security holes which enabled hacking and then efficiently covered up evidence of the hacking. Hursti’s written report was released on May 6, 2006.

But Bruce Funk didn’t wait for the report. On March 23, 2006, he courageously announced that security experts had found dangerous security flaw in the Diebold Voting machines and so he would not use the machines in Emery County.

Diebold immediately claimed their warranty contract had been violated and that it was fining Emery County $40,000 to recertify the two examined machines. Michael Cragun, Lt. Governor Herbert’s Utah Election Director, immediately ordered the locks changed on the room in which the machines were stored, so Funk was barred access to them.

Cragun quickly arranged a special closed-door meeting with the Emery County commissioners, and on March 27th flew to Emery County with the Lt. Governor’s Chief of Staff, Joe Demma, legal counsel from the Utah Attorney General’s office, and the sales rep and a technician from Diebold. Neither Funk nor the public could attend. After the meeting, Funk was ordered to use the Diebold machines, period. A comment from Funk made in frustration was taken as an irrevocable resignation and the courageous election official, himself an elected officer, was locked out.

The Lt. Governor’s Office thus intimidated Utah’s election officials and personnel into compliance and silence, regardless of what problems are witnessed. While Thad Hall from the University of Utah, with ties to the voting machine industry, argues down concerns reported in the national media about the hackability of electronic voting machines, the Utah Elections website, part of the Lieutenant Governor’s website, eliminated the word “Diebold” even before Diebold renamed itself Premiere Election Systems.
At this point, Diebold has been decertified in multiple states across the country, most notably in California, after the Secretary of State conducted an intensive multi-level testing of the machines, and found Diebold to be not only hackable, but uncooperative. In March of this year, Diebold/Premiere admitted that flaws in their machines’ audit system could result in undetectable deleted votes.

Meanwhile, Lt. Governor Herbert had most recently been in the news, before the announcement of Huntsman ambassadorship, as being unwilling to enforce the new Utah campaign contribution reporting law. He’s protecting the lobbyists – not the voters.

With Herbert in charge, the Governor’s Commission on Strengthening Utah’s Democracy, announced by Huntsman in January, will continue to keep Utahns unaware and docile. Jon, if only you’d noticed. . .

SHAME ON YOU RALPH NADER

Since 2000, when he claimed there was no difference between Republicans and Democrats, Ralph Nader has had blood on his hands.

By his own admission, on Sunday’s Meet the Press, pollsters indicate that 39% of the votes he received in Florida in 2000 would have gone to Gore, with only 25% to Bush. He fails to follow the math to its conclusion, though -- a clear Gore win in Florida by 13,111 votes – if Nader had not run.

Nader didn't mind because he got what he wanted in 2000 -- party clashes.

In the August 2000 issue of Outside Magazine, it was reported that when Nader was asked if threatened with a gun to his head, who would he vote for – Gore or Bush – he immediately said, “Bush.” Why? “If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win.”

Nader’s agenda is no longer the well-being of Americans. His agenda is a complete disruption of majority rule. Nader wants a multiple choice, multiple party democracy – but this would often leave Americans with a leader that the majority of the people, split into two or more parties, voted against.

With almost 4000 American military dead, to say nothing of the multi-fold more disabled, poorly cared for, often with ruined marriages and families, together with estimates between 88,000 to almost a million Iraqi citizens, leaving a dangerously angry generation of uneducated orphans – all as a result of the Bush administration’s determination, beyond reason, to oust Saddam Hussein and control the future of the oil-rich land – there is a lot of blood that has been shed. In a war that was a phony response to 9/11.

Al Gore would not done this to Iraq – or to Americans. Therein lies a huge difference.

When Nader ran again in 2004 – despite Bill Maher and Michael Moore publicly dropping to their knees before their former hero, on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher”, and begging him not to run – he claimed it was because he alone was willing to end the war in Iraq – the war his ego facilitated.

Nader’s 2004 run was largely unsupported and pathetic, especially when he knowingly accepted – and defended – donations from top Republicans aiming to split the democratic vote.

Now, in 2008, Nader claims he must run again, this time to take on corporate control of the government. Again he seeks to fix what he made worse. It was his interference in majority rule that put the U.S. government in the hands of the most corporate-friendly President in history – the man who filled Cabinet posts with the lobbyists who had fought federal agency oversight.

Al Gore would not have populated the entire executive branch with industry lobbyists aiming to censor scientific evidence. Another major difference.

Whatever Gore's flaws, these unarguable differences have had significant, deadly consequences.

If Ralph Nader were the man he once was – the crusader for American consumers – he would put his energy into the important voting issues that have been rampant since 2000 - the Help America Vote Act (written by the corrupt and jailed Congressman Bob Ney under the influence of Diebold money transferred by Jack Abramoff), the hackable voting machines, the illegitimate purging of voter registration lists, the uncounted ballots, the corporate intimidation of election officials. There was an important role for Nader to play.

Instead, Ralph Nader has forsaken us. And “We, the People” are worse off for his betrayal.

We owe it to our selves, our families, and to the world, to see this 2008 candidacy for what it must be: empty, without value, and over.

Bruce Funk is an American Hero

Support Emery County Utah Clerk Bruce Funk. Click Here To Send an Email to the Emery County Commissioners.

Mr. Bruce Funk, Emery County Clerk, should be thanked, not attacked, and his story told accurately.

Bruce Funk is a responsible elected official who has paid attention to problems in other states, he recognized the danger to democracy if we depend on the accuracy of machines that break down easily or can be hacked into, altering votes. That is why he brought in the Finnish computer security specialist Harri Hursti, and an expert from Security Innovation, Inc., a company whose clients include McAffee Security, Symantec Security, the Department of Defense, and Microsoft to examine the Diebold TSx voting machines that his county had been required to purchase by the state of Utah.

Currently, there is an effort to strong-arm Mr. Funk out of office. Last week, following Mr. Funk's announcement that he would not use the Diebold machines, Lt. Governor Herbert's Chief of Staff Demma, Utah elections officer Cragun and legal counsel from Utah Attorney General's office flew into Emery, accompanied by a representative and a tech man from Diebold who threatened the county with punitive actions for testing their equipment.

No one seemed concerned that the integrity of Utah voting is at risk.
The Utah State officials, along with the County Sheriff, County Commissioners, and County Attorney - and Diebold representatives - met behind closed doors - especially closed to Funk - and then told him they were sticking with Diebold. When he told them he was not comfortable with this decision, he was told he should consider retiring. Exhausted and fed up, Funk agreed to think about it for May 1 or June 1, but they pushed for April 1, paid through June 1. Funk said he'd sleep on it. That's all.

The next morning the County claimed that Bruce Funk had resigned, which he immediately denied. When I called there on Friday, I was told, rather gruffly, that Bruce Funk resigned in a public meeting (I guess they call it that because after their private meeting they opened the doors to tell Funk their decisions), and that his resignation is in the minutes to be posted after the next meeting!

Bruce Funk is not the first victim of Diebold's punitive response to being hacked. In December, Ion Sanchez of Leon County, Florida also filmed a demonstration of a mock election in which 2 "yes" and 6 "no" votes on a Diebold were altered by Security Innovation hackers from a short distance to 7 "yes" and 1 "no". That same day the infamous Republican Ranger CEO and Chairman of Diebold promptly resigned.

Since then, Ion Sancho has been blacklisted by the voting machine companies which refused to furnish machines in time for upcoming elections. A rally of support and evidence of the companies' collaboration has resulted in the announcement this week of the Florida Attorney General's investigation into Diebold Election Systems, Inc., Election Systems & Software, Inc., and Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc., their marketing, and their joint refusal to sell to Leon County.

Meanwhile, Maryland and New Mexico are moving away from touchscreen voting machines, and primaries in Illinois and Texas have revealed lost tabulation memory cards and impossible totals. Evidence is building nationwide that these private corporate voting machines will lead to more questionable elections, false mandates, and leaders who do whatever they want.

That is not what this country is supposed to be.