Prepared by STAFF for Why War?
Note: Due to high bandwidth, the location of the documents may change. You can download the archive (or here). BitTorrent users should get the archive here. You can now browse (or here) and search the memos.
Alert: We need your support! Because the Diebold memos are currently being hosted on the Swarthmore College computer network, we need messages of support for this action of civil disobedience. Please e-mail Dean Bob Gross (rgross1@swarthmore.edu) to support Why War? and SCDC’s action. We will be meeting with him Wednesday, October 22, and your emails will make a huge difference. Remember to be nice and please cc your e-mails to info@why-war.com
Why War? believes that what we are doing is legal; though we see it as an issue of electronic civil disobedience we believe it is Diebold which is abusing copyright law in an attempt to shut down free speech and the democratic process. The four criteria of “fair use” copyright law are the purpose of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the substantiality of the portion used and the effect of the use upon the potential market of the copyrighted work. We believe the publication of these documents is integral to the function of the democratic process. The memoranda themselves are not marketable products, and in this case we believe the nature of the work, which threatens elections occurring in 37 states, outweighs the need to selectively excerpt portions of the documents. If there is anything the American people have a right to know, it is how their votes are being counted.
Press Release
For Immediate Release: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 [plaintext]
DIEBOLD TARGETED WITH ELECTRONIC CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
Swarthmore, Pa. — Defending the right of a fair, democratic election, Why War? and the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons (SCDC) announced today that they are rejecting Diebold Elections Systems’ cease and desist orders and are initiating a legal electronic civil disobedience campaign that will ensure permanent public access to the controversial leaked memos.
Earlier this week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced that it will defend the right of Online Privacy Group, the Internet service provider for San Francisco Indymedia, to host links to the controversial memos. Going one step further, Why War? and SCDC members are the first to publicly refuse to comply with Diebold’s cease and desist order by continually providing access to the documents.
“These memos indicate that Diebold, which counts the votes in 37 states, knowingly created an electronic system which allows anyone with access to the machines to add and delete votes without detection,” Why War? member Micah explained.
Although the reasons for individual engagement in the civil disobedience vary, the consensus between the two groups is that the public availability of these documents must be protected at any cost — they are crucial to the functioning of democracy.
Thus, through active, legal electronic civil disobedience, Why War? and SCDC will bring to light the usually silent acts of suppression and censorship. The result will be a permanent and public mirror of the memos: documents whose public existence challenges the assumed presence of democracy in America.
The documents are currently available here:
http://why-war.com/memos/
More information about the campaign of electronic civil disobedience:
http://why-war.com/features/2003/10/diebold.html
Electronic Frontier Foundation press release:
http://www.eff.org/Legal/ISP_liability/20031016_eff_pr.php
Media inquiries: media@why-war.com
About Why War?:
Why War? is an incorporated educational nonprofit organization in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Formed over two years ago by Swarthmore College students, Why War? is one of the most innovative new-movement organizations on the Internet. Why War’s members and writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian (UK), the San Francisco Chronicle, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Nation, among other places. It can be reached online at why-war.com.
About the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons:
The Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons is a digital freedom group dedicated to preserving the free and open exchange of information both on and off the campus of Swarthmore College. It has been written about by the Seattle Times and other news media, and can be reached online at scdc.emegaweb.net.
Excerpts from the Diebold Documents
“Elections are not rocket science. Why is it so hard to get things right! I have never been at any other company that has been so miss [sic] managed.” [source]
“I have become increasingly concerned about the apparent lack of concern over the practice of writing contracts to provide products and services which do not exist and then attempting to build these items on an unreasonable timetable with no written plan, little to no time for testing, and minimal resources. It also seems to be an accepted practice to exaggerate our progress and functionality to our customers and ourselves then make excuses at delivery time when these products and services do not meet expectations.” [source]
“I feel that over the next year, if the current management team stays in place, the Global [Election Management System] working environment will continue to be a chaotic mess. Global management has and will be doing the best to keep their jobs at the expense of employees. Unrealistic goals will be placed on current employees, they will fail to achieve them. If Diebold wants to keep things the same for the time being, this will only compound an already dysfunctional company. Due to the lack of leadership, vision, and self-preserving nature of the current management, the future growth of this company will continue to stagnate until change comes.” [source]
“[T]he bugzilla historic data recovery process is complete. Some bugs were irrecoverably lost and they will have to be re-found and re-submitted, but overall the loss was relatively minor.” [source]
“28 of 114 or about 1 in 4 precincts called in this AM with either memory card issues "please re-insert", units that wouldn't take ballots - even after recycling power, or units that needed to be recycled. We reburned 7 memory cards, 4 of which we didn't need to, but they were far enough away that we didn't know what we'd find when we got there (bad rover communication).” [source]
“If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.” [source]
“I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb".” [source]
“[...] while reading some of Paranoid Bev’s scribbling.” [source]
“Johnson County, KS will be doing Central Count for their mail in ballots. They will also be processing these ballots in advance of the closing of polls on election day. They would like to log into the Audit Log an entry for Previewing any Election Total Reports. They need this, to prove to the media, as well as, any candidates & lawyers, that they did not view or print any Election Results before the Polls closed. However, if there is a way that we can disable the reporting functionality, that would be even better.” [source] (emphasis added)
“4K Smart cards which had never been previously programmed are being recognized by the Card Manager as manager cards. When a virgin card from CardLogix is inserted into a Spyrus (have tried CM-0-2-9 and CM-1-1-1) the prompt "Upgrade Mgr Card?" is displayed. Pressing the ENTER key creates a valid manager card. This happens in Admin mode and Election mode.” [source]
Read the Diebold memos or try searching them.
SCDC’s Position
The Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons is committed to exposing the misuse and perversion of intellectual property law to suppress information that is critical to the public welfare. If there’s anything that the public has a right to know about, it’s how their votes are counted. However, although the SCDC's actions are part of Swarthmore's Quaker tradition, and we bear witness against injustice and speak truth to power, it must be clear that this is NOT civil disobedience in a classical sense: we believe are not breaking any laws. In fact, we believe this is fair use. We see Diebold as abusing copyright law in order to afford them power that copyright law is not meant to grant. The problem here is not the intellectual property law itself, but an abuse thereof. "Copyright infringement"? Is this what Congress intended copyright law to be used for, silencing free speech and suppressing information vital to preserve democracy? Are these memos a creative work that needs to be protected, so that Diebold has an incentive to create more of them? Goodness, no! May no voting machine maker ever create more memos like this again! This has nothing to do with "protecting the artists". Diebold is abusing the law. We are following it.
Micah’s Position
“[I am] committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year.” Walden O’Dell, CEO of Diebold [source]
“A quiet revolution is taking place in US politics. By the time it’s over, the integrity of elections will be in the unchallenged, unscrutinised control of a few large — and pro-Republican — corporations.” Andrew Gumbel, Independent, Oct. 14, 2003 [source]
More fundamental than the right to vote is the right to a free and fair election. It is a necessity that forms the center of democracy. Without fair elections the state loses its legitimacy and democracy crumbles. Today Why War? and the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons begin an active electronic civil disobedience campaign to draw America’s attention back to the center of democracy — for it is crumbling.
We have in our possession the internal memoranda of Diebold Elections Systems, the company in charge of the electronic voting machines in 37 states, and we intend to share them. These memos prove that Diebold knowingly produced an electronic election system that contained absolutely no security against voter fraud. In fact, the lead engineer from Diebold wrote over two years ago that anyone could change votes without leaving a trail: “Right now you can open GEMS' .mdb file with MS-Access, and alter its contents. That includes the audit log.” GEMS stands for Global Election Management System and is the central computer in each county on which the votes are stored after the election.
Diebold has filed cease and desist orders against anyone who has attempted to share these memos with the public. They have taken down hosts all over the world, including the personal website of the very journalist who broke this story, Bev Harris. We refuse to comply. We refuse to allow the suppression of evidence that proves a Diebold machine registered 16,022 negative votes for Al Gore in Precinct 216 in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. We refuse to comply with a company whose CEO has given $9,965 to Bush and the Republican National State Elections Committee since 2001, while declaring that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year.”
And we are asking you to refuse as well.
Our strategy to combat Diebold is simple. Through active, legal electronic civil disobedience we can bring to light the usually silent act of suppression. The result will be a permanent and public mirror of the memos — documents whose public existence strengthens democracy.
One journalist in Seattle has written that Dean Logan, director of records, elections and licensing services in Seattle, “decided election security was a ‘legitimate issue’ after internal company e-mail was posted on the Internet and discussed in a Salon.com article Monday.” Our goal is to force these documents back into the sunlight.
Logan should be alarmed — the depth of Diebold’s deceit extends far beyond what most Americans are comfortable believing. In fact, there are already allegations that Diebold was responsible for the highly questionable results from the 2002 election in Georgia. Andrew Gumbel writes in the Independent:
Something very odd happened in the mid-term elections in Georgia last November. On the eve of the vote, opinion polls showed Roy Barnes, the incumbent Democratic governor, leading by between nine and 11 points. In a somewhat closer, keenly watched Senate race, polls indicated that Max Cleland, the popular Democrat up for re-election, was ahead by two to five points against his Republican challenger, Saxby Chambliss.
Those figures were more or less what political experts would have expected in state with a long tradition of electing Democrats to statewide office. But then the results came in, and all of Georgia appeared to have been turned upside down. Barnes lost the governorship to the Republican, Sonny Perdue, 46 per cent to 51 per cent, a swing of as much as 16 percentage points from the last opinion polls. Cleland lost to Chambliss 46 per cent to 53, a last-minute swing of 9 to 12 points
Why War? believes that the mere possibility that the core principle of democracy — a fair election — is under attack demands action. We believe we are afforded the right to publication of these documents because of the integral part they play in the counting of votes in America. When such action is met with legal threats, we believe the conscientious path is to engage in open, democratic, and legal electronic civil disobedience. Thus, we encourage you to read, download and distribute Diebold’s internal memos.