A Letter to Ohio Sec. of State Jon Husted

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Lawsuit Filed in Ohio Over Voting Software

Ohio Sec. of State Jon Husted

From Samuel-Warde.com:

A lawsuit filed Monday, on the eve of the election by the co-chairman of the Ohio Green Party and editor of FreePress.org, Bob Fitrakis alleges that software in some Ohio voting machines makes the machines vulnerable to having votes altered after they are cast.

The lawsuit involves machines made by Election Systems and Software out of Omaha, Nebraska, alleges that software on the machines could allow vote manipulation by non-election board officials.

The lawsuit comes days after FreePress.org published a report claiming that Husted had done an “end run” around Ohio law by installing the software on the vote tabulators in the weeks leading up to to the election. According to the report, the software was installed on machines that will be used by more than 4 million registered voters, including those in major metropolitan areas such as Cleveland and Columbus.

FreePress claimed it obtained a copy of the contract for the software from a source at Husted’s office. The contract calls for the tabulation machine’s vendor to “enter custom codes and interfaces to the standard election reporting software,” the publication claimed.

The lawsuit asks the court to order Jon Husted, Ohio’s elections chief, not to use the machines Tuesday and to break state contracts with ES&S for voting machines to be used this year.

The machines are in Ohio’s 25 most populous counties, said Columbus attorney Cliff Arnebeck, who filed the lawsuit.

Another Electoral Trick in Ohio?

From Salon:

Last week, Bob Fitrakis and Gerry Bello at FreePress.org reported an important story concerning what they described as “uncertified ‘experimental’ software patches” being installed at the last minute on electronic vote tabulation systems in 39 Ohio counties.

The story included a copy of the contract [PDF] between Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office and ES&S, the nation’s largest e-voting system manufacturer, for a new, last-minute piece of software created to the custom specifications of the secretary of state. The contract itself describes the software as “High-level enhancements to ES&S’ election reporting software that extend beyond the current features and functionality of the software to facilitate a custom-developed State Election Results Reporting File.”

On Friday evening, at Huffington Post, journalist Art Levine followed up with a piece that, among other things, advanced the story by breaking the news that Fitrakis and his attorney Cliff Arnebeck were filing a lawsuit for an immediate injunction against Husted and ES&S to “halt the use of secretly installed, unauthorized ‘experimental’ software in 39 counties’ tabulators.” Levine also reported that Arnebeck had referred the matter to the Cincinnati FBI for criminal investigation of what the Ohio attorney describes as “a flagrant violation of the law.”

“Before you add new software, you need approval of a state board,” says Arnebeck. “They are installing an uncertified, suspect software patch that interfaces between the county’s vote tabulation equipment and state tabulators.” Arnebeck’s alarm is understandable...