Posted on 05/16/2014 3:33:35 AM PDT by wolfpat
Just spoke with a rep from the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Citizens of any state where less than 15% of its population votes gets Exactly what it deserves. But No citizens of Any state deserve state-wide "glitches," with very little information about them, other than their Executive Director saying that she "regretted" that they happened—and then saying that all of the glitches were "fixed," but does not say how.
So the morning after the NC Primary, I sent the Executive Director, Kim Strach an email--and cc'd the message to 14 other high-ranking officials throughout the NC Board, asking to meet with her about it.
Why not?
We are tax-paying citizens, and they all work for us, right?
After not hearing from them for a few days, I sent them all a friendly reminder--which gave them the opportunity to try to assuage any concerns we may have that The North Carolina State Board of Elections is fraught with corruption, is outrageously untrustable, or is run by a nest of thieves so noxiously bent on bastardizing The American Way and our election process that countless thousands have fought and died to protect, they no longer even Try to cover their mistakes, or regard them in any way, other than to say that they "regret" them. Their Public Information Officer, Joshua Lawson returned my email, asking me to send him my phone number so he could call me. No face-to-face meetings with anyone—just a phone call.
Important points are often lost in telephone conversations, especially when they can come unexpectedly—at any time—and I had very specific questions as to the "glitches" that occurred in all 100 counties throughout the state.
I decided to meet him half-way. I wrote only five questions for him, and asked him to simply answer them via email, so there would be no confusion or misunderstanding on either end. I cc'd that message to everyone as well.
The questions were: 1). Exactly what were the “glitches?” 2). When were they first discovered? 3). Who discovered the glitches, and to whom were they reported? 4). What was done to “fix” the glitches? And 5). What is being done to prevent glitches from occurring in the future?
Joshua responded with an email asking me to deal directly with Him instead of everyone--and he asked me for my phone number again. Okay, I thought. We'll see what happens...
A few minutes ago, I got off the phone with Joshua. He told me in pretty decent detail, what happened that horrible night…
The office includes a very large room, where IT employees and members of senior leadership gather to monitor the returns. The room is full of screens that display results from every county. Some of the screens are tuned to local news stations, so they can monitor what the public sees.
In the room among them last Tuesday night was the Information System Director, Marc Burris. Approximately ten minutes after the polls closed, the screens jumped to life as returns poured in.
Burris is credited with first realizing the impossible numbers on every screen throughout the room—not only from every county, but from Every Precinct in every county. He jumped for his cell phone.Moments later, murmurs of, "No way," and "That's impossible!" were heard, as people began to realize their darkest nightmare--The System was Failing.
Iceberg.
In every election, the first returns to be reported are absentee ballots and those of early voting. Those ballots are already registered before polls open to the public. Those returns can often indicate how elections will turn out, because they are usually small samples from every precinct. If Joe Someone receives 87% of 1% reporting, he can pretty much expect to have an enjoyable evening.
Unfortunately, the results they were seeing, (first from less populated areas, like Cherokee County, and then later from more populated areas, including Mecklenburg County) were reported as coming from 100% of the precincts. The numbers of votes were believable, but No One believed they could represent 100% of the individual precincts—or that 100% of anything could be reported so quickly.
Even more unfortunate, was that the results were wired directly to the NC State Board of Elections web site—from which media outlets, television stations, radio stations, etc., were gathering their information.
From 2006 until 2013, The NC Board employed SOE Software Corp at a cost of $6.8 million for the results system and other election-related software. When SOE could not adhere to their own contract by providing certain products, the NC Board decided to establish its own "in-house" system at a huge savings. The ends seemed to justify the means—until election night, when ten minutes after the polls closed, every telephone in the entire building was ringing with angry callers—many of whom were media representatives from all major television networks, various other media outlets and individual voters and even candidates, all demanding answers.
Many media outlets had to pay representatives from the Associated Press to physically visit county boards of elections to gather information. This is very expensive and time-consuming, especially when a rep who is sitting comfortably at home in front of his television, well into his third glass of wine, is expecting to hunker down and watch the fun—but is suddenly jerked out of his chair by a phone call from his boss who is hysterically demanding that he drive 80 miles to physically meet with reps of various distant county boards of elections, who were at that time, frantically physically counting votes. While all of that was unfolding, live television and radio talent had to fill time, with no idea as to How Long they would have to blabber vacuous, rehashed reports—while not knowing if the very numbers they were reporting were even remotely accurate.
In time, the IT crews at the NC State Board were able to get a handle on exactly how many precincts were reporting, county-by-county. In the mean-time, media talent across the state were becoming more and more confident that what they were reporting was actually true, rather than being forced to clarify that they weren’t sure.
As it has happened, “hand/eye audits” have taken place across the state. A hand/eye audit includes physically seeing and counting ballots from random precincts in every county.
“If the numbers match, we’re good,” said Jason. “And every number matched.”
This week, the NC State Board conducted more tests and audits of their own system as well as established “top/down reviews” of their own communications networks, as well as the employees who are tasked with making sure everything runs smoothly.
They are confident that between now and November, they will have it all figured out.
They have ballots and can actually audit a precinct? Beats the crappy system we have here in GA.
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I told him specifically where I was going to post this. So he sent me a copy of what he wrote with his grammatical errors corrected so I could post a clean copy.
Okay. Thanks.
Warning--any person and/or institution and/or Agent and/or Agency of any governmental structure...
Is Free Republic a "government structure"?
Is Free Republic a "government structure"?
What are you doing cherry picking this early in the day? How long have you been here that you'd even ask?
LOL!
I think it’s more like a Government DEstructure.
This appears to be an attempt to find a conspiracy where none exists.
The results of the absentees were showing as 100% because something was programed wrong. They fixed that glitch. It did not affect the actual returns that were in the process of being counted. The nice thing about having primaries is you can test equipment before the big show in November.
All of this is really moot as every jurisdiction and state reviews their data the next day or during sometime following an election and then certifies the results. Election night results always have the caveat that they are unofficial.
So now vote fraud is called a “glitch” ?
Thanks for posting and thank your friend for chasing this mess.
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