Travis County Commissioners Court
May 6, 2008
Citizens Communication
The next item is citizens communication. And this item is designed to give residents an opportunity to address the Commissioners court on anything not on the agenda. Any matter not on the agenda for up to three minute. And did we get the additional sign-in form there? Citizen number 1 is leroy nellis. Number two is jimmy castro. Number three is gus pena. Number four is vicky carp. Mr. M very pleased to introduce your new executive manager for planning and budget, mr. Rodney rhodes. He comes to us as being the director of budget and finance of collin county, the plano area since the year 2000. During his employment there, collin county's bond rating was increased to triple a, one of only four in the state, including Travis County. Rodney's involved with the government finance officers association both at the state and the national level. He's a member of the international city-county management association, the Texas city management association, urban management assistance of north Texas. He has received numerous awards and recognitions. He received the gfoa award for distinguished budget presentation while at colin. The government collectors association of Texas, he received the most innovative court collections program. I thought that was us, but I understand that was rodney. He's credited with the implementation of the video pleas in district and county courts, resulting in significant savings in the jail and transfer staffing. He implemented sb 1863 requirements for collin county court collections that have resulted in significant increased revenue. He's recommended practice recognition for work on capital project subcommittee and recognized gfoa best practices in budgeting publication. Rodney has a bachelor of arts in government and politics from the university of Texas at dallas. He has a master of liberal arts from smu university in dallas. I知 happy to present to you rodney rhodes.
>> mr. Rhodes, welcome.
>> thank you, judge, Commissioners. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here. I have to say after the first day of work yesterday, it was a whirlwind. I looked up and it was already 5:00, and I felt like I had just gotten here. So I thought all this was for me when I walked down off the elevator this morning, but I understand that the service awards will be handed out today. I just want to say it's a pleasure to be here. I look forward to working with you guys in the years ahead. Thank you.
>> when the budget cycle starts, I will see the same crowd.
>> that's what I hear.
>> [ laughter ]
>> but they'll be standing out in the hallway also.
>> I値l either be their best friend or worst enemy.
>> you've come just in time. Welcome.
>> thank you very much.
>> mr. Castro?
>> thank you, judge. Good morning, judge Biscoe and Commissioners. I知 here to speak on my own behalf. I致e also served as a former member be of the 2004 Austin independent school district bond oversight committee. I知 here to remind everyone to take the time to vote in a very important election. The may 10th Austin independent school district bond election. Early voting is from Monday April 28sth through today, Tuesday, may sixth. I知 here to speak in support of all three Austin independent school district bond propositions. If voters approve the Austin independent school district bond propositions, the money will pay for technology upgrades, science classroom innovations, campus additions, new schools and a long-awaited district wide performing arts center. Proposition 1 will include construction of a new elementary school, construction of a new early childhood center near linder lermt school, auditorium replacement and renovation at lanier and mccallum high schools, classroom additions at several elementary schools. New equipment for science programs, new technology equipment and systems at all campuses. Proposition one total amount is 1 87 million dollars. Proposition 2 will include new equipment for career training and development programs. Facilities to promote health, safety, security, including new low bus emission and fuel hybrid school buses. Proposition 2 total amount is $73 million. Proposition 3 will include a district-wide performing arts center. Land for high schools in south Austin. Classroom additions and fine art renovations at anderson high school. Proposition 3 total amount is $82 million. The total Austin independent school district bond package is $343 million. Finally, let's do the right thing and pass all three Austin independent school district bond propositions for Austin's future so every young adult can read, learn and dream because the city with dreams is a city with a future. Thank you, judge, Commissioners.
>> thank you very much. Mr. Pena is next. We will need the following three individuals to please come forward. Vicky carp, second call. Larry nelson, Karen renick.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners. Gus pena. I知 speaking on my own behalf, be not for a group or individuals. First of all, I壇 like to thank you for sum number five, approving additional money for fund fog utility assistance and other assistance for the poor and the needy and the have not's. You know that this city and cannot is not affordable. And I challenge the city council also and this body to keep it affordable and not weird. Number two, johnston high school, we have a meeting at johnston high school at 6:30. We will have senator watson and other key officials from the Texas education agency. You know we're scheduled to be closed, johnston high school, because of low performing. I think that is a slap in the face. It's criminal. We ought to keep the school open to allow the students to perform adequately and achieve a recognizable achievement. Gangs, we're going to meet with the atf, dea, f.b.i., department of justice and treasury officials. We did before last year and early this year regarding gangs. They're coming back up. We need to keep these individuals under observance and make sure they don't cause criminal activity and allow other kids to join their gangs. It's easy to be enticed to join tbangz. The homeys, I知 not going to allow them to do that and you're being observed as we speak now. Fund fog social services, I spoke about that again. The gap widens between the have not's and the have's. It's just not acceptable. It is getting worse. I don't care what anybody says. We're in a recession right now. This is not a rosie economy for us in Austin, it is not. I知 not an expert economist, but I tell you, what we all feel the pain here. We're going to meet with the h.u.d. Secretary and acting secretary of veterans affairs for housing for homeless veterans and also for housing for the poor. True affordable housing, affordable. Early voting like jimmy says ends today. Starting the primary vote, city council, school board and bonds. I would like to recognize three individual. You're going to recognize tonight with a letter of appreciation or whatever you've got a proclamation. Derek baitman, jp, john paul, I work with the district clerk's office in '91 and I jumped ship and went as a bailiff. Had I stayed here I would have been here 18 years already. Nonetheless I知 proud of what I did affairs. We need to please expand the position for summer job program for the youth. Keep them active and in some positive, out of organized crime. I spoke to the mayor and city councilmembers also trying to implement this recent issue about deleting that criminal history issue on the application. I hope to -- I pray to the good lord that we are successful because you did it, you paved the way for it. I知 going to say love as a christian. I知 going to say love y'all and I respect you for doing that. I thank you for your leadership, judge and all that soarved the committee because there were other people also. Last item, -- that's it. Thank y'all very much. Have a good day. Continue to March.
>> thank you, gus.
>> vicky carp? And is that mr. Nelson with you? And Karen renick? Is she here? Hector del toro? Morning.
>> good morning, judge and Commissioners. Thanks for letting us come and speak with you again. I am vicky carp with vote rescue and texans for real elections. Several of our member were here last week introducing the serious topic of concern that the vendor of the voting machines used here in Travis County, the hart intercivic is now the target of a federal fraud (indiscernible) lawsuit. We left packages for each of you, although judge your package ended up with the county attorney. We have one for you today. And we understand that county clerk dana debeauvoir is looking into these serious allegations made in the lawsuit by plaintiff william singer, and we are -- we have a tentative appointment to meet with her in approximately 30 days to discuss this with her, but in the meantime we are here today to continue presenting some of the evidence and information to you and to the public and for the public record about not only the lawsuit, but also information about the heart software, which has been reviewed by two stuz done, one at university of california experts who were commissioned by the california secretary of state in a study completed last year, so some of our members will be reading from that. Some will be reading excerpts from an ohio commission study. We have a technology expert, larry nelson, who will be giving a perspective from a technology standpoint. The thing to be aware of is that from our viewpoint is that these studies that we'll be reading from, and there will be some other information present understand three-minute increments. They may be out of order due to the number be of folks signing up today. Normally this software is kept secret and proprietary. Not even the election officials are allowed to review this. So we are allowed to get this sneak peek at the problems with the software only because the secretary of state of these two states commissioned these reviews. We apologize in advance if there are any acronyms or terminology used in the software. I would like to just begin with what time I may have left with just some very brief excerpts from parts of the lawsuit itself, which was filed in 2006, but was kept under seal until March of this year. Copies of the lawsuit were in packages that we delivered to you last week. So william singer was a programmer who worked with hart from November 2001 to January of 2004. And he acquired firsthand knowledge of false claims described below. I think --
>> [ buzzer sounds ] thank you.
>> thank you.
>> my name is larry nelson. I want to thank you for this time. Bear with me. I知 kind of new at this. These voting machines are basically on the level of computers and so forth. And a lot of people talk about, well, we need paper. We need a paper trail. Well, that doesn't really matter because if somebody can get in and hack the software, you can get erroneous data that can come out of these things. If you get -- I sat down with a friend of mine who works for engineering at dell, and I asked him about it. And these machines have touch screens on them. And the problem with touch screens, you have two problems. One, it works off of -- not to get too much into the technical aspect. Depending on how the software is written, you can push a button and for one candidate, and then another candidate will be enabled. Because of maybe a flaw in the software or whatever. I don't know what type of test cases they're doing on this software because as she said, there were problems with the software. And any time you work with software, you should -- they have a team of programmers that should break down the fragments of the software and there's a term called robust where they'll test that software and test it and test it and test it. And then finally the software is good and they put it altogether. If that is not happening, then I don't know. The other parts -- there's just so many things. I知 sure you've had a computer failure and so forth. These are basically on the level of computer failures. And with all the -- and I have a packet here because I did more research. This is a lawsuit that's going before the united states in every single state. Robert schultz enacted it with we the people. There's so many things. I didn't have time to prepare everything I wanted to. I will be back when I can prepare more data for you. I値l give you one example. If you have maybe a disgruntled employee or something that works for these companies and people do get laid off, they can produce -- they can make just one change in the software and it will throw off many votes.
>> [ buzzer sounds ]
>> by wait, you don't have to stop mid sentence when the --
>> I知 new to this.
>> [ laughter ]
>> we'll grant another 30 seconds for you to finish the idea you're working on.
>> if you would like copies of this, I could get it to you.
>> if you give us that one copy, we can copy and give other members of the court and get that back to you if you will like. Is that okay?
>> in addition. It's another lawsuit that's been filed against all the states.
>> all of them.
>> for the use of electronic voting machines.
>> there's tons and tons of documentation. I can prepare the entire packet for you from the start to the finish. It's probably about 500 pages, 700. Soash. It's a lot of reading.
>> now, mr. Nelson and ms. Carp, we will need those two chairs. Ms. Renick is here and mr. Del toro. Would the following please come forth, leally teth, linda green and nancy robbins. As one person finishes, I will call out a new name and if that person would please come forward, we can expedite this process. Okay?
>> my name is Karen renick and I am the founder of a group called vote rescue, and the people who are speaking today on behalf of vote rescue have been working with us for years. What I壇 like to do is just finish up very briefly with what vicky carp started to read just as a brief overview of the lawsuit. This is the lawsuit that -- it's a fraud lawsuit that has been brought on behalf of the united states government for fraud that hart intercivic allegedly committed. And hart intercivic is the manufacturer of the voting systems that we use here in Travis County as well as harris county, tarrant county and others. The failure to test the software properly. They faked certification tests. They submitted dummy reports to election officials. The audit trails had invalid entries and rendered every audit report false. They presented corrupt memory devices, memory card reading devices. And in terms of the disabled in voting on the hart intercivic machines, it was discovered in this -- it's been presented by this whis whistle blower that the disabled actually, not -- their votes are not being counted correctly. And it's ironic because the electronic vetting machines were -- electronic voting machines were brought in suppose lid to aid and help the disabled community to vote privately and unassisted. And there have been other reports done that have determined that all of the machines out there failed to meet the requirements of the help america vote act. I壇 like to now just briefly let you know what our group does just so that you have an overview of the milestones. First of all, I壇 like to briefly read what our mission is. We are a nonpartisan organization of Texas voters who demand elections that are fair, 100% transparent, and secure, with citizen access, participation and oversight to ensure an uninterrupted chain of custody, to achieve these goals. Vote rescue advocates the hand marking of paper ballots by voters. The hand counting of paper ballots in public view at the presing and the posting of precinct results at the precinct after the counting. We were founded in March of 2005 --
>> [ buzzer sounds ] thank you very much.
>> mr. Del toro?
>> good morning. I will be reading excerpts from the executive summary from the university of california red team study of the hart software. Component to component networks are pervasive in hart is tech tur. A jbc in one are more e slates were worked together for voting. Building a secure network system of this type requires adopting an attitude of defense, in depositth. It must be designed and implement understand such a way that a compromise component cannot induce misbehavior in the components that communicate with it. Our examination indicates that hart's system is not designed along these lines. Instead, the design of the components mostly assumes that any other component of the heart system or anything that appears to be one is trussable. -- trustable. Unsecure network interfaces. Network interfaces in hart system are not secured against direct attack. Voters can connect to unsecured network links in a polling place to subvert e slates as well as to eavesdrop, cast votes and to inject new votes. The impact of this is that a malicious voter could potentially take over one or more e slates in a precinct and a malicious poll worker could take over all the devices in a precinct. The subverted machines could then be used to produce any results of the attacker's choice regardless of voter input. We emphasize that these are not bugs in the hart software, but rather features intentionally designed into the system which can be used in a fashion for which they were never intended. Vulnerability of malicious inputs. Because network devices may be connected to other potentially malicious devices, they must be prepared to accept robustly any input provided by such devices. Hart software routinely fails to connect the input from other components and then proceeds to use the components in an unsafe way. This implies that an attacker to subvert a polling place by its (indiscernible) and use it to reprogram every polling device in the county. Failure to protect ballot secrecy. Hart system fails to adequately protect ballot secrecy. A poll worker or official with access to the raw ballot errors can reconstruct the order in which those votes were cast. Combined with the information about the vote thears cast their vote, this can reconstruct how each voter voted. In the case of dre used here in Travis County, it is also possible to reconstruct for each vote the order in which the votes were authorized. Combined with the information about the order in which voters were authorized, this can likewise be used to reconstruct how each voter voted. Furthermore, a voter who has temporary access to an e-slate device can reconstruct or recast the votes on that e-slate.
>> [ buzzer sounds ]
>> thank you, mr. Del toro. Could I get the following individuals to please come forward? Paul Davis and nancy rob be bins? Robbins. And ms. Le tetsz.
>> yes, sir. I知 a member of vote rescue. I知 also a Travis County elections judge. I知 going to read two sections from hart portion of the everest study in ohio. The ohio secretary of state's office said the ohio study used techting done by both researchers from academic institutions, including university of pennsylvania, pennsylvania state university, university of california at santa barbara as well as corporate security personnel firms from 69 activity labs of denver, microsoft inc. Of columbus, ohio. Researchners the ohio study had access to the computer source code provided by voting machine manufacturers as well as access to much of the equipment and documentation from the secretary of state's office said. Hart executive summary from pages 197 and 198 of the academic evaluation and validation of the election related equipment standard testing final report issued December 7th, 2007. The study evaluates the ability of the heart voting machine systems to conduct a trustworthy collection. The reviewers studied these materials in order to identify any security issues that could be exploited to affect an election. As part of that analysis, the reviewers were asked to identify best practices that may limit or neutralize the impact discovered issues. Our evaluation suggests that the heart hart system lacks the technical protections necessary to guarantee a trustworthy election under operational conditions. The vulnerabilities and features of the system work in concert to provide numerous opportunities to manipulate election outcomes or cast doubt on legitimate election activities. Such vulnerabilities and exploitable under election conditions and often require minimal physical access to the equipment or information. These vulnerabilities are a result of the following failures of the hart system's design, implementtation and practices. Failure to effectively protect election data integrity. Virtually every ballot, vote, election result and log is manipulatable by a hack we are a brief access to voting systems. This puts enormous burdens on the procedures. Failure to document unsafe documentability. There are a number of largely undocumented features in the system that are highly dangerous in a production election system, for example, existing features allow the attacker to remotely script the dre voting machines to cast votes as the attacker chooses. To allow single or photocopied voter ballot to be counted many times and to print prevoted ballots that will be accepted by voting equipment. Note that all these activities are not attacks per se, but are apparently intended for use of existing hart system features. These features are available during a live election. Failure to protect the election from malicious insiders. The protections of the hart system are intended to prevent election official, poll workers and vendors representatives --
>> [ buzzer sounds ] one last comment. The jbc machines, come overnight with me every election. I知 an honest individual. What if I weren't? What if I weren't, and it was one of your elections? Thank you.
>> thank you. And linda green is -- ms. Green?
>> hello, sir. Thank you for having us speak in front of you. I wish none of us had to be here because if we all had hand counted paper ballots, we wouldn't have to address this issue. But fortunately ohio secretary of state has done our home bork for us in many cases. There was electronic vote fraud in ohio as most people know. There are people serving time in jail for this. And this is again part of the results of the ohio secretary of state studies of the various electronic voting machines, which all texans use here. The hart, hart intercivic, di bold, now called premier systems and hardware. They say thawlt study systems presented critical failures with the result of inefficient -- they're inefficient to guarantee a trustworthy election. We cannot count on these voting machines and here's why. One insufficient security. The system's uniformly failed to address important threats against electronic data and processes. Central among these failures to adequately defend an election from insiders and to prevent viral infections of software, there by compromising entire precincts and counties, and to ensure failure to ensure cast votes are appropriately protected and accurately counted. Number two, improper use or implementation of security technology a root cause of the failures present in the studied systems, all of our voting systems, is pervasive and misapplication of security technology. Failure to follow standard and well-known practices for the use of crypttology, key and password management and security hardware seriously undermine the protections provided. In several important cases the misapplication of commonly accepted principles renders a security technology of no use whatsoever. In other words, they can pretend to have security and it can still be overrided. And you can see this in a video called hacking democracy, an hbo special. I壇 recommend everybody in this room to watch hacking democracy. And you can see how these systems can be hacked and the security of them hacked. Auditing. All of the systems exhibited a advise I believe lack of trustworthy auditing capability. And all systems, the logs of election practices were commonly forgeable and -- forgeable and erasable by the officials monitoring. The lack of secure auditing means that it is difficult to know when an attack occurs or how to isolate or recover from it when it is detected.
>> [ buzzer sounds ] again, I知 sorry that we even have to discuss this issue. Hand counted paper ballots in public view is what vote rescue is all about. And hopefully we can get to that point soon where we won't even have to have these discussions.
>> would the following three individuals come forward and join mr. Davis and ms. Rob be bins there? Karen crepes, gordon walton, and jim stutsman. And mr. Davis?
>> yes, sir. Thank you. Judge and Commissioners. This is very, very important and I know that you guys realize that. I want to speak to you from the heart. You know I知 a 39-year-old former marine veteran of the gulf war. I never knew that there could be anything more serious than in the defense of this country and the method that we go about as a military, but I知 finding out more and more that this right here is so vital to the very fabric of what this country is supposed to be about. So I hope that as we read through these reports, it sounds so dry. I can't help but wonder what people -- what people truly think in their heart about the depositth of this. So I just would like to urge you guys to realize that, that we're not just up here hollering about something that -- again like the lady spoke earlier. There's been documentaries written about this, produced about this. So this isn't something that we're just pulling up here to make an issue. Basically I wanted to read here from this report from the university of california, the study on hart software and the discussion of the threat models that deals with poll workers. I am the precinct chairman from my precinct this last election, I知 proud to say. I got to get firsthand knowledge of the possibilities of things that could happen in the polls. And this kind of highlights on that. I値l briefly read about two paragraphs here. It says depending upon county practices, poll workers may also have long-term unsupervised access to voting equipment. In some counties, voting equipment is stored in the houses or cars of individual poll workers prior to elections. And if you think that's not true, it's on youtube. You can watch some ladies that are involved in this actually trying to deal with the state Commissioner there or the clerk. I知 forgetting his exact title. Where they had thing locked in a room. Some of the protective measures were torn off. It was just ridiculous. I thought it was fake. So it goes on to say, for example, some counties provide the chief poll worker at each polling place with dre's or off scan machines to store and deliver to the polling place, even counties that deliver dre's and opt scan machines by commercial transport may provide the chief poll worker with other equipment such as smart cars, smart card activation devices, management consoles, etcetera, before the election. And even if the equipment is stored in a secured polling place --
>> [ buzzer sounds ] -- dual controls may not be in place to prevent individual poll workers who accessing the area on their own. The last sentence, this provides a number of opportunities for tampering with equipment. Again, thank you guys for everything that you do.
>> we're sitting here wondering I think what it is that you would like for us to do. So does somebody plan to ask now? We're prepared to listen to whatever you have to say, but it seems to me that at some point we need to get you with our county clerk, county attorney, other county officials and managers to try to address this issue. Part of it is public education. The other part is that at some point you would like for us to do something. We can't do it today because we're not posted to do it. We can just listen. But we've heard a whole lot. And I guess my question is should we hear more of sort of the same thing or should we try to put ourselves in a position to really address this issue? Obviously there is the other side. Do you see where I知 headed?
>> yes, sir.
>> wouldn't it be better to get a group of you, a comu of you with the appropriate county managers in the same conference room and try to discuss this issue? See what both sides are? And see what action, if any, can be taken? Does somebody plan to address that? Sorry, mr. Davis, you've used your three minutes, so you can't answer t.
>> I値l address that, sir.
>> what's your name? Have you signed?
>> yes, sir. Melissa gonzalez.
>> you were the next person I was about to call anyway.
>> counter to the point where if we can hear something new and different, it would help.
>> ms. Robbins is the next actually. Is ms. Robbins here. And then Karen crepes. Gordon walton.
>> he had to leave.
>> jim stutsman. Okay. Ms. Robbins? And melissa, you are after mr. Stutsman, who left. Ms. Robbins?
>> thank you very much for your time. My name is nancy robbins. I work with vote rescue and I would just like to make a quick comment that I have been voting in elections since I was 18 years old and eligible to do so. And to me it's very important to know that my vote is counted and that a secret count does not allow me that opportunity. And what I would like to read to you today is an excerpt or the beginning of a resolution on public rights for open and honest election in our representative democracy. For public ownership of elections and against corporate secret vote counting and private ownership of public elections. Whereas the fundamental purpose of the united states is to practice democratic self government and to ensure our government loyally sefns we the people who create it had and nothing else and to recognize all legitimate government power comes only from the people via elections. And whereas the second paragraph of the declaration of independence declares our rights, including the rights to alter or abolish our government at will, and whereas this paragraph also declares the reason government is created to, quote, secure these rights, to we the people and afirms that rights are ours by birth, proving that our government guarantees us our rights, but does not grant us our core rights, and whereas government -- and whereas it is noted that to be a free people requires us to have the ability to change elected representatives at will and whereas american rights are the most -- are most endanger when we wish to remove incumbent government officials because they also run or influence the very elections that are the only way to remove them from power. And whereas americans have seen a long dishonorable and often open and notorious history of vote suppression, including legal disenfranchise. Bylaws to vote and involvement by government officials and whereas americans have every reason to believe misconduct will be worse wherever secrecy is present. It presents accountability. And whereas since the 2000 election there's been an explosion in secret vote counts via new computerized voting machines whereby ballots are purport lid counted using invisible trons, but only results are reported and no etched or witness to the count exist or are brought to light because of claims of trade secrecy and vote counts. And non-experts couldn't understand the evidence even if it were present and produced. And whereas our government is not based on trust or maintaining public confidence in elections, it is instead based on checks and balances. Oversight and supervision, which are forms of distrust, and whereas scientific studies have shown that all computerized voting systems, both touch screen and optical scan systems, allow the unprecedented ability of a single person to alter election result fz given diseas to a single computer for a few minutes and moreover it is impossible to secure these machines against the insiders who claim to provide us with security because the power and paycheck of election official insiders completely depend on those same elections and insiders are always a high security risk.
>> [ buzzer sounds ] thank you.
>> thank you, ms. Robbins. Ms. Crepes.
>> hello. My name is Karen and I知 with vote rescue. I would like to continue reading from the university of california review of the hart software. I just also would like to comment, thank you very much, judge, for asking what you can do, because I知 hearing this and learning about all the voter fraud that is seemingly quite evident and I want to see our government leaders do something to punish those people and that I can trace my vote through a paper document that I and everybody else can review publicly. May I just ask, since I think we're all unit understand our desire for fair and transparent elections that also safeguard the confidentiality of one's vote. These lawsuits are very troubling. The information is important. We have an elected official who is charged with this who is looking into it and I understand will be meeting with those who are concerned and working through this. I知 trying to get to what nugget you can give us today that we can move forward with. I don't know that reading what we have been provided -- although it is very instructive to the public who is listening, I知 trying to figure out how we would be productive.
>> we will ask you to cut off the purse stlingz. It is our understanding that you control the purse strings. We want to educate you that this is really, really bad. My piece would have said that we cannot -- one person by taking over one machine in a matter of seconds could control many machines, not just one. These are the things we're telling you piece by piece of how bad it is. But you control the purse strings for this. And people who control the purse strings often say we ain't doing it, it's insecure, then it doesn't happen. So that's what we're doing. You.
>> just let her finish. Give her another 30 seconds.
>> I would love to see the purse springs cut and also funding given to a new more secure one. I am not educated to propose what that is. What I will tell you is that the jbc access code generator is insecure. Voter codes presented at the jbc are intended to prevent voters from registering unauthorized votes at an e-slate. These codes are predictable. Anyone who sees a single voter code can chew the sequence of all the subsequent voter codes. And the impact of that is that a hacker could predict voter codz. He could vote in place of another voter. He must wait for the next voter who would be given a voter code for the poll worker. Before he reaches an e-slate and signs in using the code, the attacker signs in on another e-slate. The attacker can now vote as he pleases whereas the legitimate voter will receive an error message indicating that his voter code is already in use. The jbc will accept votes from e slates that are not in an authorized state.
>> [ buzzer sounds ]
>> mr. Walton? By the way we need katy brewer to come forward. Jennifer gale. Melissa gonzalez. Ms. Gonzalez, you are next actually. You signed a second one?
>> I only signed one.
>> is there a second melissa gonzalez? Okay. Mr. Walton.
>> my name is jim stutsman. Gordon walton could not stay this long. You're asking for a nugget. I believe I can summarize this without taking too much time. I can feel your pain. I致e accepted this invitation to get on the record here on a black box voting by its founder, bev harris. The bottom line is it's the public counting that is the key to citizens sovereignty, not computer verification. Verification of a computer report is not the same as public counting. The people that I talk to as far as electronic voting that we don't trust it. There's no way to verify it. Technology today is good, it's a gee whiz, saves a lot of time, but there's too many things that take away from a human being's eyes on to verify and make sure that you get something right. In a nutshell, that's it. Thanks for your time.
>> thank you. Ms. Gonzalez?
>> again, one of the reasons some of us were so upset -- I知 melissa gonzalez and I知 with voter rescue, but I also spend about 20 hours a week on this issue. I edit an election reform newsletter and I moderate an election reform discussion. I sit here and do nothing but read articles on how insecure all the nches are. It takes 12 to 20 hours of my week. There's that much out there coming out every week. I wanted to give you some perspective about that. The other part is that one of the reasons we're here to talk to you is a number of us were upset because of the iraq war. So we went out and we all worked and we thought that we got ourselves some people up there who were going to say cut off the funding, that that was the way to do that. That was where the purse strings were. We were upset when that didn't get to the top. But this is Travis County, thank goodness, and people here respond. That's what we're trying to say. You guys are in charge of the purse strings. Just like we wanted the legislature to cut off the funding for the war and that was the number one issue that got people in, and why we had a majority take over who said that's what they were going to do. These machines are insecure. There's a back door with not even a piece of tape on it that anybody, like an election judge could plug in there and change the information. She could generate voter codes. If it was before the election, she could change votes and there would be no -- it wouldn't even trigger the record. That's what this particular testimony would have said to you. So we're doing instance after instance after instance of how insecure this is and we're saying folks, you're the ones in charge of the purse strings. So just cut off the funding. If you do that they will have to do something else over in the other division. So we're attacking this at all the places we can.
>> right now you could shut is down now. You could say no more funding for these machines. It's insecure. That's what we're asking to you do, stop it here. They have to do something else if you don't give them money for it. Thank you so much for your time.
>> [ applause ] jennifer gale? Another melissa gonzalez?
>> I have two slips here. Then mary crenner is our final speaker. Mary crenner.
>> hi, katy brewer. I was my precinct secretary and I recently just got involved with all these issues because I did my own research. So if you are looking for something to do, I can think of nothing more honorable than to getting behind this issue. As a county junk and as Commissioners taking this upon yourself to say, do you know what? Ike going to stand up and speak out and get behind this issue and make a difference in Texas and in treablght and start ing it here. You can imagine then the capital of Texas that these county Commissioners and county judges did this of what an impact it would make in our state and country of what we could show people. As for you wanting something to do, go up and stand up and say I want fair elections and make something happen and start speaking out, start doing something about it instead of just making us do all the work for you abled come to you, you get behind it. You go do something. You start standing up and speaking out and going to places and do that. That's something that you can do as an individual. Everything that we do in this county and we can say we want this and we want that and voting is nonpartisan so it doesn't matter if you are a republican, democrat, independent, it will all go back to the voting machines no matter what issue you are for or against. It all goes back to the voting machines. It is not fair and it only takes one person to do it. For millions and thousands of whatever people it takes one corrupt individual and there is evil and good out there. So nobody's not all good and no one's not all bad. But if you want something to do, stand up and say something and do something for yourself because I知 just a mom, right? If the county Commissioner of Travis County comes up and says it's not fair, it means something. It's going to do something. And us individuals back here, we're pleading, but it's going to take to you do it. You want something to do? Do it. Go out there and say why are all these people talking about this? Why do they feel the compassion to come up here and talk about this? What is going on? Research and read it and actually take that packet and read what it says and go, wow, if it's happening in california and ohio, maybe it's happening in Texas. Read it and do something and stand up. If you want something to do, stand up. Can you do something, make a difference.
>> you misunderstood, ms. Brewer. I知 not looking for something to do. I asked what are you asking us to do.
>> I know. But I知 saying to you as an individual and what you stand for as a person to stand up and do something.
>> as you know, for every report against the status quo, there are probably three or four or five reports in favor. I haven't spent 20 hours a week doing this. We had a paper system before. People complained about that as a result of the situation in florida.t doesn't mean we have to change it again.
>> but citizens have a right --
>>
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> citizens have a right to come down and have their say. They don't have a right for us to believe everything they say, though. But y'all have told us what you would like for us to do.
>> look into it for yourself.
>> we heard you.
>> jennifer gale is next.
>> hi, Commissioners. My Commissioner, Ron Davis. Happy mother's day sarah eckhardt. On item 10, soul source exemption and county award to the "austin american-statesman" shouldn't be given. I致e complained before this court and before the city of Austin saying they're not covering the election. I致e begged them for an interview and they're not giving me an interview. I知 also saying that we should stop spending our taxpayers money on that. The Austin independent fails to educate nearly half the students again is asking for hundreds of millions of dollars. After many years it hasn't even maintained the property it's got. Proposition 3 is catering to the elite, gifted and talented instead of teaching our children. That's why the police, fire and sheriff don't live in Austin. American latinos, african-american heritage need those sobs jobs, are incarcerated, are mentally ill. We need to stop giving them to illegal aliens. Let's work with gus pena to get veterans health care, housing that will step stabilize them. You can call congressman doggett at 916-5921. There's a long time between collecting the voting computer that the results show me the winner of place 4 haven't been easily altered. Let's use paper ballots with automatic recount. That's the problem be. We didn't recount the paper ballots. They were fine and any thought that computers would work is insane. I brought this before this Commissioners court for many, many years. There's no excuse for having something computerized and easily manipulated. Travis County Commissioners can easily win back villa muse to have a movie studio in our own backyard. We need a university of Texas medical care and have state-of-the-art medical care here, but not downtown. We need representation through weekly meetings, recognition of relationships. Our pets are bark fog a no kill pet policy. Children should be educated in english, law, chemistry, calculus. We're not doing that. Get them into college. Let's have bus routes that take us to work. Drug rehabilitation. Work for the homeless first, not last. Let's maintain our aquifer and park areas. We don't have that many parks here. I don't know what we're boasting about. Let's make sure we have voter choice. We have that through the secretary of state's office and they had neighborhood integrity is number one and we're not doing that. Thank you, Commissioners.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners] let's show our sisters some respect, understand we don't all speak the same computer high-tech language, and these things are not just hackable, they are preprogrammed, and they get paid to do this. Now from the university of california study on the heart software, jbc communication is insecure. They are in constant communication this communications channel is used for a number of purposes, including management of the east lake. Transmitting ballot information, checking validity of the voter access code. Transmitting the cvrs. This is not secured in anyway, it is allowing an attacker to access the interface. Detailed description, there is no protection for messages on the east lake jvc network and no authentication. Any attacker who can access the network can transmit any message he wishes on the interface and have it
>> [beep] have it accepted as coming from any source he chooses and he can view the messages transmitted on the network. Thank you all for your time. Please educate yourselves and please come to one of our meetings. There is a lot of good folks involved in this and some who know how to better read big words than I do.
>> thank you. That is citizen number 20 on the citizen's communication.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 8:51 PM