The Myth of Unbreakable Brazilian Electronic Voting Machine

Since the problems in 2000 US elections, that lead to a recounting procedure in Florida and a huge wave of criticism over US election rules and the manual voting system, brazilian electronic voting system has been praised as a new standard to clean and fair elections all over the world.

Here I am trying to stablish what´s real and what´s hype in this matter.

I am a participant of the election process here in Brazil since 1982 -as elector - and for the third year as drafted worker. Since 2000 I have been called to work on the elections. And since 2000 we have the electronic process goin on. The first time - 2000 - I was just the first secretary, the other two times - 2002 and 2004 - as voting section president for the thirdsecond time, this year. Yes, we have elections here too!

Just let me explain the brazilian rules:
- We vote in each 4 year
- The winner is decided by numbers of votes, there´s no electorate college envolved
- We have first and second round elections: if the winner of the first couldn´t get more than 50% of all valid votes, there´ll be the second roundm with only the first and the second ranked in the first round
- Voting is obligatory for everyone over 16 and behind 75 (I think..). Those who doesn´t vote or justify no-vote are charged by legal procedures.

Bueno, let´s go ahead.
We are in just the in-between days from the first round to the second round. This year we are electing new mayors for our city. My city - Porto Alegre - is one of three cities that´s the second turn is about to happen. It will take place on 10/30. Just two days before US presidential elections...

We are using thins voting machine (see figure above) since 2000. You can "test" our electronic process using this link to a Voting Machine Simulator.

The process of electronic voting is - briefly like this:

Before the procedure:

a) We start the voting machine and print the "zero" listing, that´s prove that has no vote inside the machine or floppy before the election process is started.

The procedure:

b) The voter enters the section and presents his election ID.
c) We find his ID in election book listings. If the ID and the listing are ok we can proceed.
d) Voter signs the election book; We keep the election ID card
e) The president of the section vote (me) put the voter´s code into the terminal to authorize the vote. If the number is not there, the vote is not authorized.
f) The voter can go to the voting machine site to vote.
g) After finishing we return the voter´s ID and the election ticket.

Finishing voting process.

h) Me as president, print all the voting listings with the number of votes for each candidate, the parties overseers check and sign any of the printings copies, they can keep some of them; I took off the floppy from the voting machine, put into an envelope and delivers it to the electoral ruling department with further documents..
i) All the floppies are loaded in a locar server, from where - through some automtized FTP process - it is uploaded to the central server in Brasilia, where the sum of all votes from all floppies are done in another automated way.
Finished.

From my experience and from talks with people from electoral ruling department I can realize this.

Brazilian Voting Machine is trusty from the perspective of use: very few has problems during the election day. They have made to last. If some problem appeared, we have to return to manual process
The use of floppy is somehow very weak. But they assure that all the data in it are cryptographed, and there´ll be no practical time to modify th data.. (hummm - see that the section voting president - a regular citizen - is in charge to bring all the documents + floppy in secure hands, it´s a tremendous responsability..)
The automated FTP and summing process is the most weak link of the process. This process is not audited by any of the parties overseers. Its all in the hands of technicians. You can easily created an automated routine that takes valids votes from one candidate and to summ it to another in a % basis. The personnel told that it´s safe because the technicians from the IT department have far different political views and preferences each other and they don´t let any of them commit such crimes. But they agreed with me that to rely all the confidence of the process in the hands of few technician is a high risk....

Just for historic accuracy in 1982 election there was a huge IT-robbery-vote in RIO. Former exiled governor Brizola was losing the election in votin counting numbers but not in the last polls. He went to the biggest TV network from Brazil - Globo - and dennounced it on air. The journalist laughed at him, but a investigation procedure iniciated. The day after it was proved that the IT company in charge of putting the votes into the computers was changing null votes to the Brizola´s oponent. People involved was put in jail, there was a recounting round and Brizola get elected - a bad luck of all inhabitants of RIO...

Another warning was given by the vote fraud in recent Venezuela elections. It was reported that the fraud was made in the summing process, not in the voting machine itself , but just the by the way described above. Carter didn´t care for it. The process of auditing a totally automatized voting process must be very different from the old process. Nobody is prepared for it.

My final thought on this is: if the election results differs far from last polls aired, take care, my dear elector. Someone is trying to steal the election....
Machines are trusty, men are not. Our vote could not be guaranteed by only a few technicians without an extensive and detailed oversee process by the authorites, people and parties.
And recountinf capabalities...

FT.com / World / Americas - Brazilian government urged to reveal files

Financial Times is informing about the new battle of the government:

Brazil's left-leaning government on Monday sought to contain political fallout from renewed demands for a full investigation into torture and killings under the 1964-1985 military dictatorship. During the past week, the Roman Catholic church, the national bar association and several congressmen have called on military leaders to reveal its classified files on political dissidents.

The demands came in response to photographs published last week of alleged regime prisoners seen naked in a cell.

The army caused further outrage when it sought to justify its treatment of political prisoners during the dictatorship as legitimate in the face of “violence by those who rejected dialogue and chose radicalism and illegality”. The statement, subsequently retracted under pressure from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said the army had acted against subversives “in response to public clamour”.

The real true is this: The photos are a totally faked. On monday, 17 news paper "Correio Braziliense" show some "exclusive" and "never seen" before photos that showed a naked prisioner hiding his face from the photographer. "Correio" tried hard to prove that the photos were from Vladimir Herzog, a leftist journalist that committed suicide after an interrrogatory procedure in 1975. His widow - a poor useful idiot - confirmed the photos supposed to show her deceased husband.
But was not him. The day after the leakage, various websites and newsgroups dennounced that it was a fake. The truth is that the photo was from a leftist catholic priest, caught during a sex intercourse with a nun, in 1972.

The photo was taken by the informatin office during the "dictatorship".

But the armie´s first statement was right: journalist Vladimir Herzog had connections with the a web of terror groups that did kill hundreds of innocents victims. And it´s a lie to blame the "dictatorship" as the source of terrorism and guerrila: our exception regimen started as a reaction from a pre-revolutionary environment that got worse when leftist president Jango took power in 1962. Illegal activities of Cuban and Chinese trained agents started back in 1962. In 1964 they were ready to attempt to install a totalitarian regime in Brazil. Our brave army engaged themselves in a war to keep Communism hand´s off Brazil. That´s all. Theyre not "democrats", they are just crazy radicals tried to act like Che Guevara...

And the leftist government of Lula da Silva is trying to create an "electoral fact" to help his comrades on the next sunday election.

At least we have the internet to make the truth to come to the surface....

Ann Coulter, Hanitty: Why they will never be successful if they were brazilians

The more I read Ann Coulter, the more I admire - and sometimes laugh at - her observations about the political world.

I sincerely miss this kind of talk around here.

Brazilian conservatives depend only in themselves. They need to raise funds to launch their own websites and try to gain some audience. Just after this the investors will appear.

The major newspapers here in Brazil are extremely dependent of public advertising money to pay their bills. It becomes a coin-of-trade: the government give public licenses to new media enterprises and give money to them to show public advertising. The result is that only "friendly" newspapers, TV networks, receive these funds.

This is the reason we don´t have any Coulters, Hannities down here. We just have Drudge-like ones, as Diego Casagrande , Polibio Braga or Gilberto Simões Pires - two web-journalists that only started their web-careers because they got fired from major leftist-biased-newspapers here in my state. But they could go into any other right-wing newspaper, didn´t they? No. There´s no such right-wing newspapers down here.

That´s our tragedy...

But returning to the starting point: Here are some examples of Coulter´s new book "How to speak to a liberal"

**** The Iraq war and the Democrats: "John Kerry has said that we need to
'de-Americanize' the war -- I guess on the theory that the
'de-Americanizing' process has worked so well for the Democratic Party."

**** Gay marriage: "Gays usually bring up the argument about all the
straight couples living in 'sham' marriages, but I see no point in dragging
the Clintons into this."

**** Modern anti-Christian bias: "There is no surer proof of Christ's
divinity than that he is still so hated some 2,000 years after his death."

**** Hillary's memoirs: "Hillary has already gotten a record $8 million
advance from Simon & Schuster for the book -- reportedly the most anyone has
ever received for rewriting history."

**** The New York Times's war coverage: "Apparently, the Times's stylebook
now requires all reports of violence anywhere within 1,000 miles of Iraq to
be dated from Bush's speech declaring an end to 'major combat' operations."

**** The parties: "Both parties run for office as conservatives. Once they
have fooled the voters and are safely in office, Republicans sometimes
double-cross the voters. Democrats always do."

Constantine Menges' Letter on Atomic Energy and Brazil

Another example of correctness of Mr. Constantin.
First is a letter sent to philosopher and columnist Olavo de Carvalho in 2002, BEFORE Lula da Silva´s election:

"Very important is Lula’s statement on September 14 opposing Brazil’s continued participation in the Nuclear Noproliferation Treaty. I am enclosing that in Portuguese as well as a just-published O Globo story saying the truth that Lula supports Brazil’s having nuclear weapons – a fact that seems virtually unknown to most voters in Brazil".

Compare it to this headline from 2 days ago. It was published in thursday's issue of the journal Science, three days after United Nations experts visited the plant in an effort to resolve a dispute over non-proliferation inspections.
"Brazil's new Resende nuclear plant has the potential to produce enough enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs every year, U.S. researchers said yesterday, an assessment Brazil denied."

Comment: After all, there´s a large portion of people that insists to believe in the role "peace and love" performed in 2002 by Lula to win the elections. He was even considered to receive a Peace Nobel. It´s terrible. That´s why a feel like "swimming against the red tide" in Brazil.

Freedom of Speach and Brazil´s government

For anyone that thinks that a constitutional emendment could guarantee "freedom of speech" without further explanations, read this article.
It shows that, in Brazil, a government with a hunger for power could transform "law" in just a rock-in-the-shoe for "weak" governments. Real "democratic" governments just know what´s best for the people...
Read some examples of this kind of logic below:

For (Brazilian president) Lula's chief policy strategist, Luiz Gushiken, “nothing is absolute, not even freedom of the press”. And Labour Minister Ricardo Berzoini goes on to suggest that the state has 'urgency' to establish an 'efficient body' with power to punish 'bad journalists' who do not behave 'adequately'.

Despite all the "economic pragmatism" of this government when such totalitarian non-sense like this are spoken, reminds me the real nature of leftist governments: A Wolf in lamb´s disguise...

Warning of Castro-Chávez-Lula alliance

Dr. Constantine Menges, investigator of the Hudson Institute, professor of George Washington University and Ex-National Security Advisor to the president of the United State Ronald Reagan, passed away in july, 2004.
His precises analisis of what really was happening in Latin America will be missed. Read his thoughts about the real nature of Brazil presidency under Lula da Silva.
Warning of Castro-Ch�vez-Lula alliance: "The political effects of an eventual victory of the leftist Workers Party in Brazil, in the elections next October, could be worse than the economic effects, being that a Castro-Chávez-Lula axis would be formed capable of pushing other South American countries to the left and of establishing a dangerous strategic alliance with communist China, as well as with Iran and Iraq, two terrorist countries', warned Dr. Constantine Menges, investigator of the Hudson Institute, professor of George Washington University and Ex-National Security Advisor to the president of the United State."

Comment: He was absolute right! Excluding Iraq (because of war), all the rest is right. But Saddam deserved a brazilian exile offer from our government.
Can we have a new Constantin Menges to spread what is going on round here?

Foro de Sao Paulo -The Snake's Egg

Finally!
The best site with the best conservative / anti-leftist content in Brazil has its english version.
You must read this!

This article shows the influence of the Foro de Sao Paulo in AL politics... And future...
Mídia Sem Máscara "Some bits of the history of the Foro de Sao Paulo
by Carlos I.S. Azambuja on may, 25, 2004

Resumo: What is the Foro de Sao Paulo (Forum of Sao Paulo)? Learn all the details about this body created in 1990 as an International Meeting summoned by the Worker's Party with inspiration from the Cuban Communist Party.
"

Corruption remains the same in Brazil ?

While Washington Times says that Corruption remains the same in Brazil - (United Press International): "The administration of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been plagued by corruption scandals in recent months including a former aide accused of receiving illegal gambling funds connected to the bingo industry to fund certain candidates' campaigns from his ruling Workers' Party during the 2002 election."

Our perception is even worse - far worse - compared to with former presidente Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Why? Because Worker's Party has a deep sense of controlling the society. When it took control fo the country's administration it gave all the public or confident jobs in the hands of the party.

Given that the party's rows had no strong abilities for managing even a dairy, imagine what happened to the public administration ib the hands of a bunch of socialist militansts. It was chaos..

In the most important hospital for cancer disease care in Rio, a senior medical managing team was changed by partisans. People died because of lack of essencial medicines. According to health (?) minister Humberto Costa, it has to be done because you cannot give a prominent public job to a "enemy".

"According to Dr. Tabak,a renowned oncologist who had been director of the BMT service (CEMO) at INCA for the past 16 years, due to the inexperience of the hospital director, the hospital was thrown into total chaos, has run out of many medicines, and is not able to treat patients properly."

Let's point it clear: Brazil is a country where the public jobs are being fullfilled by partisans and they are chosen to it because of their political influence, not by their skills. If this is occurring in the health field, with many deaths envolving, try to realize what is going on in the other areas of public administration.

Weekly magazine Veja has estimated that more than 20.000 public jobs are been fullfilled by militants.

That's the way the Worker's Party is taking control over the brazilian society - using corruption and lies.

Some reviews....

I found out that I am getting some audience to my simple blog. Here is one of the opinions:

A WESTERN HEART: "Conservative Brazilian blogger Luis Afonso has started a blog in English here. The English is a bit fractured but is perfectly understandable. He wants people to know of the 'Red Tide' that is washing over Brazil at the moment."

That´s bad!! I thought that my english was ok, but it´s "fractured".. OK, here I go again into my third level english book course again... Eheheh.
But thanks for understanding. Some posts are fractured by my rsuh to publish them without any revision...

Let´s go on, there´s a lot to say about this piece of soil on earth...

Rio: the city of cocaine and carnage

This article was first publisheb by the british "The Indenpendent" and had many - bad - reviews down here.

It is not a question to agree or not. It is reality.
Belfast Telegraph: "With fierce turf wars igniting around Rio, many now fear the city is staring into the abyss. Rio de Janeiro has the highest rate of gun-related deaths in the country. Between 1980 and 2000 there were 600,000 murders in Brazil against 350,000 during Angola's 27-year civil war. Earlier this year a stash of eight landmines and 161 hand grenades were discovered in the Coreia favela, in Rio's west."

Comment: This is the result expected of two policies.
The "decriminalization of poor", a socialist euphemism that lead to "decriminalize" crime at all. It was a hard-core policy that was implemented by the first socialist governor of Rio, Brizola - a world acclaimed member of international socialist- during his first period way back 1982. He not allowed to the police to get into favelas to protect the innocent by putting criminal behind bars.
The second one is newer: the ban gun emendment that turned a simple gun ownership into a crime.

That´s the tragedy of this country - as Oscar Wilde said about US , tha went "from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between". We improved the process!! We make it run in reverse, from decadece to barbarism, directly.

Brazil and North Corea: fade away and radiate

It´s been informed in Brazil´s source "Correio Braziliense" that North Corea will open an embassy in Brazil.

It shows how our middle-of-the-road-socialis governmente perceive the world: in black and red.

North Corea is a criminal regime. It´s been accused by illegal use of atomic energy by US. But Corea becomes Brazil´s darling only because of her angry feeling towards US.

This is what Brazil´s foreign policy is all about:priorities of our foreign policy are taken off the US-black-list. It´s simple.

Last year Lula da Silva even uttered such non-sense: He tried to give Saddam a brazilian exile "to avoid war".

I don´t know what is the real purpose of this but I am afraid that given that the americas socialist circle is closed (Cuba, Venezuela & Brazil plus some special guests like Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador) this little evil empire are tried to attempt an outside link.
That´s pure logic.
The goal? "To recover in America what was lost in Eastern Europe"

General blames Kerry for Haiti's rising violence

JB Online - O primeiro jornal brasileiro na internet

Brazilian general blames Kerry

BRASILIA - Brazilian general Heleno Ribeiro Pereira, in charge of UN task-force in Haiti, criticized the support given by John Kerry to the former president of Haiti Jean Bertrand Aristide, it was informed friday by a brazilian news source.

Ribeiro considered that this support, occurred in a last march's speech when Aristide resigned in the middle of a deep political crisis, was one of the reasons of the rise of violence in the caribbean island.

On that occasion, Kerry said to NYT that president Bush had sent a "terrible message" on not sending troops to backing Aristide's presidency
Kerry said that he'll be "prepared to send troops immediatly".

Comment: For those who doesn't know, brazilian president Lula da Silva decided to help UN by sending brazilian troops to Haiti (in reality just to look more "multiculturalist" and "UN obedient" in despite of US).
It appeared that it has its fallbacks: it suggest the Bush position was the right position. And this general is very brave and has guts to call things by its name.
Kerry is on the toplist of the "darlings" of brazilian biased media and is not used to be a "good thing" to say bad things about him. Not even "Unfit for Command" will be plublished in Brazil (while there are dozens of Bush haters books on the brazilian's shelves).
And this fact reveal the true motivation of this "useful idiot". Clinton had moved mountains to keep Aristide (a marxist-leninist) with his presidency during the 90 and was clear that Aristide has a strong appeal to democrats.
But it's a pitty that this general is there and not here in Brazil where people like him are missed this days.

Maskless Media: Cuba is worst than Abu Ghraib

Old people suffers in Cuba

See how Cuba's health model treat her old ones: it's more disgusting than those photos from Abu-Ghraib, but none talks about.
Cuba regimen has s strong support by liberal, socialist and social-democrat parties all over the world.
It can be explained by the "embargo"???
This was published first on a swede newspaper http://www.dn.se/.

Socialism: A Highway to hell...

Note: special thanks to John Ray that translated it from the original in portuguese..Thanks!

For over a century Marxism, Communism & Socialism have continued to exert an allure, even on new generations as they come up. It seems that the acolytes don't care about the millions of human beings that have been sacrificed on the altar of these ideologies, rather the ideologies continue to inspire good feelings of humanism and solidarity in millions of young around the world. What is the key to this enigma? How might we open their eyes?

The first thing to be clear about is that the refutation of socialism (from now on I will use the generic term "socialism" to refer to any of the ideologies concerned) via arguments based on economic rationality simply do not work. These arguments do not make any dent in socialist feelings. Socialism has something like a "Teflon effect", ensuring that nothing sticks to it - and its utopian appeal never dies. This nature of socialism was explained by Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho in his memorable debate with Alaor Caffe: "You can see that Marxism is a philosophy, is a economic theory, is an ideology, is a revolutionary strategy, is a political regimen, is an ethical-moral system, is a cultural criticique, is a
militant political organization. It is all that at the same time" (Marxism, Right and Society "). It is hard to topple such a row of attributes effectively. Socialism finishes up running away from the debate. It slips between your fingers....

How did we get to this point? Perhaps a good hint, one of the best things produced on the subject comes from John Maynard Keynes (1934): "Communism is not a reaction against the failure of the nineteenth century to organize optimal economic output. It is a reaction against its comparative success. It is a protest against the emptiness of economic welfare, an appeal to the ascetic in us all... It is the curate in [H. G.] Wells, far from
extinguished by the scientist, which draws him to take a peep at Moscow...The idealistic youth play with communism because it is the only spiritual appeal which feels to them contemporary".
What Keynes was driving at was to say that, after the 19th Century had killed God at Darwin's hands and offerered the human salvation associated with him, the scientists had entered the scene. And they started to transform a scientific theory into the only feasible utopia for today. And it had been accomplished by the blood-stained hands of these "social" scientists: The new scientific vision nailed to a new vision of universe.

According to the book "The Sacred Earth" by Brian Leigh Molyneaux the world was born of a "great cosmic explosion" and it has to come to an end -- if man himself does not ruin it first -- in a way described as "to implode, becoming a ball of flames". On the other hand, any of the various utopias had origins in the divine promise to recoup the "lost paradise" for humanity.

Until the 19th century, the world had been created by and for God. And His promises for the human race would be fulfilled, including recovery of the "lost paradise". John Milton (English poet of the 17th century) believed that the "Paradise Lost" was here on earth, not in heaven. For this
purpose, God had created Earth to be a paradisiacal home for humanity. The Paradise had been lost, but it would be recovered by a redentor that "would prize the multitude of the right ones", and Milton concluded that "the Earth has to be a Paradise". This lost hope of one "paradise" to be recovered here on Earth, in a new "golden age" of man, derived from the belief that God
gave to the human race an assurance of it. After 19th century, however, we did not have the same God or the same concept of paradise. We did not have an old paradise to recover anymore, so the Earth would one day be transformed fatally into a cold, barren planet without life. Without God,
with only the material world surrounding us and with economic liberalism having created great economic progress, 20th century man went in search of the "spiritual" and "transcendent" with the help of the same social engineers created by materialism. Thus the communism/socialism becomes the new utopia, substituting the old religiously-based utopias . Everything became based on "transforming" man. Man would have a "new soul" under socialism. It became the "new paradise".

From that moment on, then, it did not matter how many gulags, expurgations, hunger, genocides, forced collectivizations, re-education programs, mass murders there were. Nothing will erase the strong utopian appeal of socialism to the human being. So we have the inherent solidarity of the
socialist utopians. One necessity of the utopian dream, the visionary and the perpetual search of "lost paradise", is a pressing need for human beings to champion the cause of the weak. That the cause might be better served by economic liberalism rather than socialism liberals do not even dream.

Liberalism is not a culture, nor a religion. No liberal -- even those believe in God - assumes to find a "pot of gold" in the end of the rainbow. Humanity will not be recreated or "recovered" by liberalism. No utopia will result from liberalism. Man will continue the same as from the beginning, neither better and nor worse. This lack of climax to the liberal journey it
is what is its tragedy in the eyes of the young socialist dreamers. But also it is what redeems liberalism and places it in its proper context as human. Nothing created by man could be bigger than himself. It is man - the individual - that must have the power to control the process of
progress. No king or prince will be able to do it in his place.
The human dimension of the debate between liberalism and socialism must be found and shown. Keeping in mind the "pseudo-spiritual" dimension of socialist speech is the key to refuting its arguments. Thus we will be able to prove (with some poetical license), that instead of a "stairway to heaven" socialism is a "highway you hell" ...

First Post

Hi all!
I decided to start a new blog - in english - just to show to the world the real nature of the government of brazilian president Lula da Silva.
I was surprised by the warm way he's been greeted and cheered all over the world as a poor's defender from the Third World.
He is not what it seems. Is another leftist president whose main task is to recover in the America what was lost in east Europe.
He is the president of a group called "Foro de Sao Paulo" that was formed in 1990 to rethink the left's strategy against "neo-liberalism" all over America. Cuba's Castro is the godfather of this group and some participants are FARC , from Colombia, FMLN from El Slavador and other terrorist groups.
Among other things, one is clear: It is not a debate group....
Read here full-documented website on the subject

Hope you enjoy!!