"The most serious thing any software company can
do is not fully test its products," William Singer told The BRAD BLOG this afternoon about the
federal fraud case he filed nearly two years ago, which has finally been
unsealed by a judge as of today.
"To release a product for important purposes that has not been tested at all
is quite shocking, I would say. Especially since it indicates that nobody can
predict what, when, or how it might fail," Singer explained about the e-voting
systems made by Hart InterCivic,
for which he worked as a technician several years ago. "It would make a mockery
of any certification."
Despite having some direct involvement in the case from the beginning, The BRAD BLOG has been unable to report any
details on it for going on two years --- we haven't even been able to offer the
names of the plaintiff or defendant in the case --- since originally reporting
that it had been filed in federal court, due to the fact that it was under seal,
waiting for the U.S. Attorney General to decide whether the DoJ would join the
suit or not.
Singer's suit is the fraud case which originally made waves when it was first
filed two years ago, with the aid of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Florida
attorney Mike Papantonio, until it then went "underground" due to the legally
mandated seal disallowing the plaintiff and his attorneys from offering any
specific details to the public.
As AP
reported today, the seal on that federal qui tam (fraud, false
claims) complaint, brought on behalf of the United States by Singer against
Hart, one of the big four American voting machines companies, has now been
lifted, and the case may finally proceed as originally filed.
The BRAD BLOG has obtained the complete
complaint and the judge's order lifting the seal...
• The full complaint may be downloaded
here [PDF, 45 pages].
• The judge's order unsealing the case as of last
night is here
[PDF, 2 pages]
The second page of the complaint, which we are still plowing through, sets
the initial grounding for the case...

[FULL DISCLOSURE: We ("Brad Friedman of BradBlog") are named in the
complaint as one of the sources to whom Singer disclosed some of his
information.]
In March of 2006, The BRAD BLOG broke
the exclusive story of the Hart
InterCivic whistleblower's letters sent to the OH and TX Secretaries of
State in 2004, before they were entirely ignored. Our coverage itself was also
almost completely ignored by the media. The complaints Singer had sent at the
time are posted in full with that original story on Singer's plight and his
fruitless attempts to notify the two state chief election officials about his
concerns, and of the criminal behavior that he alleges he was witness to.
In conversations we had with Bobby Kennedy, Jr., in the ensuing months after
our initial report, we'd explained to him what Singer had done, and ---
literally overnight --- he had set the attorneys at his firm, and that of his radio co-host, attorney Mike
Papantonio's firm, to work on Singer's case. It was soon thereafter filed in
federal district court, as we reported
at the time, in July of 2006. It has been under seal for nearly two years
since that time, waiting for the DoJ, which had asked for extension after
extension, to determine whether it wished to join the suit or not.
This week, the DoJ finally declined to join the case, which may now move
forward with the attorneys who originally brought the complaint, including
Papantonio's firm, Kennedy's firm, and attorneys in Colorado where the case was
filed.
As AP summarized the case, Singer "is alleging the company cheated the
federal government by falsifying information about the accuracy and security of
its voting system." He "alleges that Hart InterCivic lied to election officials
around the country about the reliability of its voting system in an effort to
obtain federal money allocated to the states under the Help America Vote Act of
2002."
A computer scientist who is familiar with most of America's e-voting systems
recently told us that he has come to understand that, of all of the voting
systems out there, ironically enough, Hart's systems, which have gotten far less
attention in the media than those made by Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia over the
years, may, in fact, "be the most insecure of them all" due to their particular
architecture.
How Does the Case Proceed from Here?
An attorney close to the Singer case tells The BRAD BLOG today that "the fact that DoJ
declined to join the case does not deter us for a moment."
At the time the complaint was filed, Papantonio was irate about the behavior
of the voting industry officials which he had come to learn about through his
discussions with Singer and others. "When you hear the details, when you hear
the caliber of the fraud," he explained in a radio interview in the
summer of 2006, "it'll make Americans feel like they're living in a damned
banana republic, a third world country. I have never heard such outrageous
facts."
"At the end of the day," Papantonio --- whose firm has successfully taken on
giants like the Tobacco Industry in the past --- declared in the interview,
"we're gonna shut down some of these companies...Some day these hacks are gonna
be across the table from me, and they're gonna have to answer the questions that
nobody else has been able to ask them."
With that said, however, the attorney working on the case whom we spoke to
today was quick to point out that there have been significant legal developments, most notably from the U.S. Supreme Court, which have occurred
during the time since the case was filed, while the law firms had been waiting
for a decision from the DoJ. The attorneys are currently reviewing those legal
decisions to determine how they may or may not effect their plans for moving
forward with the case from here, now that it has finally been unsealed.
Singer's Long-Ignored Song
We are still reviewing the full complaint ourselves, as mentioned. But, as
Singer expressed to us today, his initial concerns when he wrote the Secretaries
of State in Ohio and Texas in 2005 have not changed. If anything, they've
continued to grow as more and more information has come out over the years as to
the shortcuts that have been taken, the deceptive way in which the voting
machine companies have profited without accountability off American tax dollars,
and the secretive nature in which America's corporate, private voting machine
companies have taken virtual complete control over our public democracy.
Singer expressed "deep regret that the situation with Hart InterCivic had to
result in a lawsuit to try and bring about positive change. My attempts to
resolve the situation in other ways, including complaints provided to the
BradBlog in 2006, were simply unsuccessful. I have felt a personal duty to the
public interest to make voters more aware of the issues facing them. The
decision to make any part of elections, an issue of critical national concern, a
for-profit industry is certainly a questionable choice. The decision to poorly
supervise the companies involved is irrational, unreasonable, and unjustified,
as my experience shows."
"If I, a single person, can report on so many problems, so many types of
serious problems, in only one company...and if my complaints were being
systematically ignored, deliberately ignored, by every single secretary of state
and election official across the ENTIRE nation...If not one person of authority,
of any kind, asked me one single question to help them make their own decisions
about which voting machine vendor to do business with, I think any reasonable
person would be extremely alarmed."
"How many other people, other problems, serious problems, have been
concealed, 'lost', and ignored?," Singer wrote today. "If one person can report
on so many serious problems, and those problems were deliberately hidden by so
many officials for so long - how much of this iceberg is still under water? Not
just with Hart, or even Hart and I, but in the entire industry?"

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