Friday, 19 March 2004
From: http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/853
The subject line on yesterday’s email read: ''Another mysterious
accident solves a Bush problem. Athan Gibbs dead, Diebold lives.'' The
attached news story briefly described the untimely Friday, March 12th
death of perhaps America’s most influential advocate of a verified
voting paper trail in the era of touch screen computer voting. Gibbs,
an accountant for more than 30 years and the inventor of the TruVote
system, died when his vehicle collided with an 18-wheeled truck which
rolled his Chevy Blazer several times and forced it over the highway
retaining wall where it came to rest on its roof.
Coincidence theorists will simply dismiss the death of Gibbs as a
tragic accident – the same conclusion these coincidence theorists came
to when anti-nuclear activist Karen Silkwood died in November 1974 when
her car struck a concrete embankment en route to a meeting with New
York Times reporter David Burnham. Prominent independent investigators
concluded that Silkwood’s car was hit from behind and forced off the
road. Silkwood was reportedly carrying documents that would expose
illegal activities at the Kerr-McGee nuclear fuel plant.
The FBI report found that she fell asleep at the wheel after
overdosing on Quaaludes and that there never were any such files. A
journalist secretly employed by the FBI, and a veteran of the Bureau’s
COINTELPRO operation against political activists, provided testimony
for the FBI report.
Gibbs’ death bears heightened scrutiny because of the way he lived
his life after the 2000 Florida election debacle. I interviewed Athan
Gibbs in January of this year. “I’ve been an accountant, an auditor,
for more than thirty years. Electronic voting machines that don’t
supply a paper trail go against every principle of accounting and
auditing that’s being taught in American business schools,” he
insisted.
“These machines are set up to provide paper trails. No business in
America would buy a machine that didn’t provide a paper trail to audit
and verify its transaction. Now, they want the people to purchase
machines that you can’t audit? It’s absurd.”
Gibbs was in Columbus, Ohio proudly displaying his TruVote machine
that offered a “VVPAT, that’s a voter verified paper audit trail” he
noted.
Gibbs also suggested that I look into the “people behind the other
machines.” He offered that “Diebold and ES& S are real interesting and
all Republicans. If you’re an investigative reporter go ahead and
investigate. You’ll find some interesting material.”
Gibbs’ TruVote machine is a marvel. After voters touch the screen,
a paper ballot prints out under plexiglass and once the voter compares
it to his actual vote and approves it, the ballot drops into a lockbox
and is issued a numbered receipt. The voter’s receipt allows the track
his particular vote to make sure that it was transferred from the
polling place to the election tabulation center.
My encounter with Gibbs led to a cover story in the Columbus Free
Press March-April issue, entitled, “Diebold, electronic voting and the
vast right-wing conspiracy.” The thesis I advanced in the Free Press
article (http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/834) is that
some of the same right-wing individuals who backed the CIA’s covert
actions and overthrowing of democratic elections in the Third World in
the 1980s are now involved in privatized touch screen voting.
Additionally I co-wrote an article with Harvey Wasserman that was
posted at MotherJones.com
(http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html) on
March 5, 2004. Both articles outlined ties between far right elements
of the Republican Party and Diebold and ES&S, which count the majority
of the nation’s electronic votes.
As I wrote in the Free Press article, “Proponents of a paper trail
were emboldened when Athan Gibbs, President and CEO of TruVote
International, demonstrated a voting machine at a vendor’s fair in
Columbus that provides two separate voting receipts.”
In an interview on WVKO radio, Gibbs calmly and methodically
explained the dangers of “black box” touch screen voting. “It
absolutely makes no sense to buy electronic voting machines that can’t
produce a paper trail. Inevitably, computers mess up. How are you going
to have a recount, or correct malfunctions without a paper trail?
Now, the man asking the obvious question, and demonstrating an
obvious tangible solution is dead in another tragic accident, a week
after both articles were in circulation.
When I called TruVote International to verify Gibbs’ death, I
reached Chief Financial Officer Adrenne Brandon who assured me “We’re
going on in his memory. We’re going to make this happen.”
Every American concerned with democracy should pledge to make this
happen. To beat back the rush for state governments to purchase
privatized, partisan and unreliable electronic voting machines without
verified paper trails.
Gibbs’ last words to me were “How do explain what happened to
Senator Max Cleland in Georgia. How do you explain that? The Maryland
study and the Johns Hopkins scientists have warned us against ‘blind
faith voting.’ These systems can be hacked into. They found patches in
Georgia and the people servicing the machine had entered the machines
during the voting process. How can we the people accept this? No more
blind faith voting.”
Dr. Bob Fitrakis is Senior Editor of The Free Press
(http://freepress.org), a political science professor, and author of
numerous articles and books.
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