Virginia's close races especially low-cred

[Bev Harris]

Virginia is in a tight governor's race today. An FYI on Virginia:

Virginia is the last state to allow the use of the flawed, security-horrific
WinVote voting machines. I ran the numbers today -- they are used in locations
that total, statewide, 1.5 million registered voters.

This machine was found to be illegal in the state of Virginia in Black Box
Voting investigations, where we found that
a) Virginia requires federal certification
and
b) The Advanced Voting Solutions WinVote could not be proven to be certified by
the EAC or its predecessor, NASED. Uh, they just couldn't find the paperwork.

Following our investigation, the WinVote machines were soundly thumped by the
federal testing lab iBeta. Also, the WinVote machines were found to have
substituted a whole new set of hardware calling it the same as a completely
different set.

Following all this, the WinVote machines were booted out of Pennsylvania, the
only other state to use them (except for one county in Mississippi), and their
certification was stripped by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. When a
Pennsylvania county sued to get their money back, the manufacturer, Advanced
Voting Solutions, didn't even show up in court and was unreachable by phone.
The judgment was over $1 million, I believe. (Is AVS even still in business?)

In addition, a Virginia elections official interviewed by our organization
confirmed that he had tested the system and found the WinVote machines to be in
live wireless communications mode during Election Day.

Therefore, I was shocked to see that Virginia is STILL using them. Any location
using the WinVotes has no possible way to claim that its election results are
credible.

WINVOTE MACHINES:
Accomack County 21,915
Appomattox County 9,542
Arlington County 131,627
Botetourt County 22,165
Brunswick County 10,601
Buckingham County 16,178
Caroline County 17,064
Craig County 3,722
Dinwiddie County 17,161
Fairfax County 628,033
Floyd County 9,801
Fluvanna County 15,947
Goochland County 14,745
Greensville County 6,513
Henrico County 185,995
Henry County 34,831
Highland County 1,770
Lunenburg County 7,681
Mecklenburg County 20,630
Middlesex County 7,462
Montgomery County 52,137
Orange County 20,441
Powhatan County 17,314
Roanoke County 63,857
Southampton County 11,617
Spotsylvania County 72,303
Warren County 21,747
Bedford City 3,623
Fairfax City 14,130
Richmond City 110,430
TOTAL 1,570,982

Source for voting systems: Virginia State Board of Elections
http://www.sbe.virginia.gov/cms/Election_Information/Voting_Systems_Ballots/Index.asp

Source for voter reg statistics:
http://www.sbe.virginia.gov/cms/documents/2009_Statistics/Sep/Registrant_Counts_By_Locality_COB.pdf


Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

* * * * *

Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The
people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right
to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to
know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over the
instruments of government we have created.



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