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that, we've got a situation where everything inside the machines is secret, we're not allowed the see how they count the votes. So this is not an acceptable situation.
SMYTH: You put all three of those things together and I think it's really starting to worry people. I mean I'm getting hundreds of Emails and telephone calls of people out there saying, you know, it just doesn't sound right. And our secretary of state here has said, well as soon as this judge takes the gag off of me I'm going to be able to show exactly how fair and open this process has been. But no one has actually contradicted the fact that Walden O'Dell and others within the field, but certainly he has a C.E.O. is out front being invited to Bush strategy meetings and then coming home and raising money.
Now one of the things that the Ohio Republican party said--it was their fundraiser, that he invited folks to at his home--they have said well, we approached him, he has a very nice house and he holds a lot of civic functions there and that he really shouldn't be faulted simply because he offered his home.
But O'Dell himself has not really come to the phone on this and I do know that he has also recently been appointed to the Ohio State University board of trustees, by our governor who is also a Republican and is doing a fine job of helping the Republican party here in Ohio.
GONZALEZ: Bev Harris, I'd like to ask you more about--could you summarize how the tampering can occur with Diebold system?
HARRIS: Sure. There's actually several different methods that we've been looking at. One of the things that's the most concern and what you do when you look at, by the way, any kind of fraud, one of the first things do you is look what they tell you not to look at. Well what Diebold says not to look at always is we don't have modems, we don't have remote communications, we only sometimes use modems, well we have a wireless card but we don't really use it.
There's this massive, 'look over here, don't look over there.'
We've known for some time that this is one of the weakest areas because you see if you have remote communication
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into the system at all, that gives you access without physical access and that's very dangerous.
Now we just yesterday have uncovered a file--it was on the Diebold site among the 40,000 files and this is an actual election file containing actual votes on election day from San Luis Obispo County, California, and this file may very well be the smoking gun that brings this thing down because it is impossible for this file to have existed if there wasn't some sort of illicit electronic communication going on for remote access.
What happened specifically is--now it's against the law to start counting the votes before the polls have closed. But this file is date and time stamped at 3:31 in the afternoon on election day, and somehow all 57 precincts managed to call home add them themselves up in the middle of the day. Not only once but three times. If you have no electronic communications between the polling places and the main office, how does that happen? Because what would you literally have to do is you would have to shut down the polling place in 57 places at once and get in a car and drive this card into the county office. That's not going to happen.
GONZALEZ: If I can interrupt you, technically that means that it is possible for someone who have access to that to have an idea how the vote is going in an election.
HARRIS: Exactly.
GONZALEZ: Then take--adopt tactics to be able to overcome let's say a losing situation.
HARRIS: Worse than that. Because, you see, a modem is always two way. If you can pull the information in, you can also push it back through the pipeline the other direction. So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines.
GOODMAN: Well Bev Harris I want to thank you for being with us, author of "Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century and Julie Carr Smyth, State Government reporter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer.You are listening to Democracy Now! back in a minute.
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