GOP Urges Investigation of Voting Machine Performance

ABC News ^ | January 10, 2004

[GregD]

The server HD will give the same tally exactly every single time, while the cards will vary slightly.

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That is the exact point - there is no means to conduct a meaningful recount to check. That is why we are pursuing this.

NOTE: THIS IS NOT AN ENDORSEMENT, JUST WANTED TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING

http://www.vogueelection.com/products_automark.html

This is an interesting approach. You use the computer to configure the election, and to cast the votes. It then prints a ballot, which is then run through a scanner. You still need to inspect scanner code, and the code that combines the precinct totals, but at least there is a paper backup.

[GregD]

The greatest threat to military voting is SERVE. When was the last time you heard about an Internet hack. SERVE is Internet-based voting. We oppose that without question - it is not safe and will not be for the forseeable future.

[LPM1888]

Bump for later. This is a critical subject.

[longtermmemmory]

Broward county just "lost" 132 votes in a speical election where the winner was only 16 votes up.

There is a red flashing button you have to press.

If the button is not flashing you don't know to press it. It would not take much, just pull the bulb in heavy conservative areas and those votes will be irretrivably lost.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Well if you are really honest about fighting voting fraud, you'll fight to clean up your own party. You say both parties engage in vote fraud. While in one way that is true, that is like saying if a Republican gets a speeding ticket and a Democrat has 20 convictions for fraud, theft, extortion, robbery and rape, that 'Both parties have had trouble with the law.' Technically true, but completely misleading, devoid of perspective or context.

Sorry, but AT LEAST 80% of vote fraud cases that I've run across have been Democrat schemes. Systematic corruption, most prevelant in big cities or single-party dominated areas, which are almost always dominated by the Dems.

Don't get me wrong, I hate corruption, no matter what the party. If I were in New Jersey I'd be pretty bummed. But as a whole, vote fraud is the domain of one party, and that party's current leadership seems intent on entrenching more fraud schemes. Which party has fought tooth and nail against cleaning up voter rolls(purging the names of the dead and moved)? Which party has fought tooth and nail against photo id's for voting, or any other measure that reduces the ability to vote using a false name? Which party has fought tooth and nail to give licenses to illegal immigrants, while simultaneously weakening the safeguards that would prevent them from illegally voting? Which party routinely sends its operatives through nursing homes, 'assisting' mentally incompetent residents with their vote?

Which party was Becky Red Earth working for when she was arrested for running a vote fraud scheme on Indian reservations in the critical 2002 South Dakota Senate race, where lo and behold, several reservations had 'counting malfunctions', only delivering there totals after all the other counts were in, and just so happening to put the Dem, who had been trailing in the Senate race, over the top to win by a couple of hundred votes? Which party controls politics in San Francisco, where in 2000 ballot boxes(complete with ballots in them) were found floating in SF Bay? Which party's candidate did college students in Wisconsin vote for, when they bragged that they voted multiple times in the 2000 election(Gore won WI by only 6000 votes)? Which party had an operative busted in Milwaukee for handing out cigarettes and other goodies to the homeless to get them to vote? Which party had a hack judge of the Clay machine issue an order to keep the polls open after hours in heavily Dem areas of St. Louis during the 2000 election(where Ashcroft lost the Senate race by just a few thousand votes), apparently pre-planned because black-oriented radio stations were running ads the day before the ruling saying the polls would be open late? Which party designed the butterfly ballot? Which party ran the election commissions in almost every Florida county that had problems in 2000? Which party dominated the precinct in Houston where an election official was caught on camera climbing into a limo with a ballot box and driving several times around the city's beltway freeway before finally hours later delivering the ballots to the counting headquarters? Which party in 2000 had Richard Daley(you know, of Chicago, legendary for its systematic corruption and vote fraud) in charge of its candidates campaign? Which party screamed over, cried racism, and fought the removal of Miriam Oliphant in Broward County, who botched several elections, and refused to implement reforms?

All of the above are examples of systematic vote fraud schemes, and all employed by Democrats. You do realize that one of the findings coming out of the media recount in Florida was that the group(by far) most likely to have had their vote nullified by overvoting were GOP votes in black precincts run by Democrat election staff. 50 TIMES MORE LIKELY. OBTW, overvoting is an easy way of vote fraud with punch card ballots(which were used in those cases), because you simply grab a stack, punch through them with some type of pin, and bingo, you've invalidated plenty of votes for your opponent. Systematic vote fraud. And which party usually gets a pass from the media when their schemes are exposed?

So perhaps you can understand my extreme skepticism that a) The GOP would engage in systematic vote fraud
b) The GOP would even consider that it could get away with such
c) That the GOP would actually get away with such, given such media bias and scrutiny
d) That there is any problem with electronic voting that will purposefully benefit the GOP


But hey, if there really are problems, lets fix them. I care not a whit what your ideology is, as long as you are honest and don't turn a blind eye towards one side. But when it comes to vote fraud, so far it has been almost completely a one party problem. Clean up the Democrat party. And OBTW, if Howard Dean really is bringing in outsiders to the Iowa caucuses, then he is no outsider, just another Dem con man. If you want real reform in the Democratic party, if you really want to clean it up, look to men of integrity, such as Sam Nunn or Clark Howard(google his name and WSB in Atlanta, from what I hear he is a Dem, but an honest one).

[Eva]

I didn't see any of the threads about how Philadelphia and Montgomery County hired a man who had served time in another state to write their computer programs for Ed Rendell.

[GregD]

A shame, because he makes some great points, but if you're going to post your own vanity, just post your own vanity, and don't hide it.

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OK, I'd like to discuss that. For starters, this is my first post and if I somehow failed to observe site ettiquite I offer my apology.

Now, if I were here to sell something, or otherwise personally benefit, perhaps the condemnation that I was "promoting my website" would be an appropriate concern. If that were the case, I would expect to be nuked.

But the fact is that I came here because we have a National crisis in the works. It is small now, and we can get our arms around it, if I can engage people and get them to help. Do you really want to deal with another botched election, this time perhaps in multiple states? Because that is exactly what is at stake here.

I'm not doing this work for personal benefit (other than my personal prayer for our country.) Indeed, I have abandoned a perfectly successful web development business because I feel this is tremendously urgent, I recognized the need for someone to step forward, and I did it.

There are a bunch of young men and women fighting on behalf of the US in Iraq and other places as we sit here in our comfortable homes. I saw a need to serve the nation, and basically "drafted" myself. Since I never served in the military, this is my opportunity to serve the US in another meaningful way.

I NEED (NO, SKIP THAT) AMERICA NEEDS REPUBLICAN SUPPORT FOR LEGISLATION THAT WILL ALLOW US TO RETAIN CONFIDENCE (HOW ABOUT "REGAIN CONFIDENCE") THAT OUR ELECTIONS ARE FAIRLY COUNTED.

So if you want to pull the thread, have at it. I am trying to express alarm about an urgent issue, and to discuss it in a non-partisan and respectful manner.

Many others, Democrats and Republicans alike, have tried to frame the electronic voting issue as a partisan debate. One fact is that there is an abundance of individual who own (or are elevated members of management) that are Republican campaign contributors. Another fact is that in VA and FL, Republicans were the ones that got hosed as a result of the absence of a paper trail. Did Democrats somehow cause this to happen? Of course not! The freaking systems somehow screwed up, in whatever manner, and because they don't have some sort of a physical backup the intent of the voter could not be verified.

Did I select a news article that would gain your attention? You bet I did. Does that really matter? Probably not, since most of the recent e-voting screwups impacted Republicans, and I need to gain your support for legislation that will benefit us as a democracy, as a nation.

[HiTech RedNeck]

134 votes were not counted by the touchscreen machines.

There is no excuse for this. When the voter leaves the machine it should always show one more ballot cast (even if he or she cast a completely blank ballot).

[GregD]

Personally, I have called my local legislators and have been interviewed on a few radio programs. But it is not about me making those calls - it is about tens of thousands of us DEMANDING a solution.

We presently have around 6000 volunteers in our database.

To make this problem get solved, we need the issue to be a daily topic of discussion. If you can help get it into newspapers, TV, radio - that is the sort of help we need (besides the obvious acts of speaking to legislators).

There has been overwhelming mis-information given to people who influence these decisions. We need people who see this issue as clearly as many contributors to this thread to communicate this to the masses and help them understand how much a paper-trail solution makes sense.

[GregD]

I'll let you pursue the consulting opportunity.

As for me, when I get done with this, I'm going fishing.

[GregD]

A couple points about absentee voting

Read this article: http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3

In counties that use Diebold, absentee ballots are frequently counted using Diebold scanners. The same GEMS software which is the source of the controversy (Google: diebold GEMS) which is used for counting the touchscreen votes, and has been revealed to have so many security flaws, is used to count scanned ballots.

Moral of the story 1 - Until we get better control of the overall system, voting by absentee ballots is not the complete solution we wish it to be

Moral of the story 2 - Voting by abssentee in overwhelming numbers could send a message to the elections officials that people demand a reliable, voter-verifiable solution

[GregD]

Yes, that is my understanding. And I also am told this was a wealthy district, with informed and educated voters, who still failed to operate the machines correctly.

A voter-verifiable solution could involve producing a printed ballot, which must be surrendered before leaving the polling place, eliminate this "undervote" problem, and produce the ability to perform a recount whenever necessary.

A voter-verifiable solution would have allowed Florida to comply with their own laws concerning a mandatory recount in the event of a (less than) .25 percent win.

[Ingtar]

I appreciate the courage it must have taken to approach this site. If a computer system is used, I agree that some hard copy record must be made. Digital theft is too easy if there is no verification.

What makes me the most afraid, and this might offend you, is to see this rush to computer voting coupled with the tactics used by the Democratic Party in the past. Florida in 2000, and many Illinois elections have been suspicious, at the least. Even though punch cards were thought to be the wave of the future, at one time, they became a vehicle for fraud.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The original meaning of "ballot" was NOT "little bit of paper." It was "little ball." The voter was given two balls, one black and one white, and he had to put a ball of a particular color in a box for a yea or nay; the other went into a discard box and the counts of the two had to match up at the end of the voting.

E-votes may be troublesome, but we also need hanging chads like we need a hole in the head. Something where the action is obvious and atomic, like the original "ballote," is needed.

[kingu]

You probably missed the follow on discussion with the sidebar moderator, as well as my own take on the issue. I agree with you; this is an issue that transcends party lines, and gets to the heart of the political system. If you can't trust the process of gathering the votes, everything else becomes suspect.

Yes, it's possible to play with the tabulation software that counts the votes - but you have the source material to check at a future time, the votes themselves.

These electronic voting devices that do not print the ballot skip the creation of source material, which means if there is a bug or outright fraud at any point in the process, the entire vote has been corrupted. You can't re-count the votes, verify them at a later date, or anything.

[The_Eaglet]

Bump for further review

[luvbach1]

People too dumb to vote are going to be too dumb to vote come what may. Computer systems won't help.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Could there be a way of registering the same vote on two or more independent counting machines.

[GregD]

Thank you Mod. I want nothing more than friendly and polite discussion of a topic that affects all of us. We have too much at stake on this one.

[kingu]

Could there be a way of registering the same vote on two or more independent counting machines.

Sure, if a voter wants to commit fraud, it's not all that difficult. Look at the senate election in North(?) Dakota recently where several people found, when they went to vote, that they were marked down as having received an absentee ballot. When I was a poll monitor recently, I could have easily have voted at each polling place here in California, because we don't require identification.

Actually, as a poll monitor, it would have been supremely easy. I had a list of people registered to vote who do not normally make it out to the polls, and part of the Get out the Vote program was to see if they did vote, and if they didn't, to go put a vote reminder on their door.

I had their name, their address and could easily have voted for at least one or two of them at each polling place. Electronic voting systems aren't built to prevent voter fraud, but to ensure that an accurate tally is made.

My view is that if the machine prints out a ballot, I can see if the machine recorded my votes right, and that ballot should go into a box so that there is source material to examine if the vote is called into question.