Posted on 08/20/2004 1:31:20 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON — The disputed presidential recall referendum in Venezuela offers ominous lessons about the use of electronic voting machines in U.S. elections this November, critics of the process are warning.
Venezuelan opposition leaders are refusing to accept the results of the e-voting and won't even participate in a partial audit of the results overseen by international observers led by former President Jimmy Carter.
The losers charge that some of the nearly 20,000 electronic voting machines made by Smartmatic Corp. of Boca Raton, Fla., were rigged to limit the votes in favor of ousting President Hugo Chavez in Sunday's referendum.
And they say the Venezuelan machines' system of giving every voter a paper record similar to an automated teller machine receipt, which allows an audit of the electronic totals, can't be trusted to catch fraud.
Smartmatic defends the results, contending the referendum used "the most transparent, secure and auditable system available," said Mitch Stoller, a company spokesman.
After monitoring the election and verifying Chavez's victory, Carter and the Organization of American States volunteered to audit 150 polling stations, comparing paper receipts that have been certified by voters to the results on the machines.
But opposition leaders charged that the paper receipts had been tampered with by the machines' military guardians.
The recall "was a massive fraud against Venezuelans' will," opposition leader Enrique Mendoza said in a nationally televised news conference. "The opposition will not accept the audit."
"It would be impossible" for the scenario outlined by the opposition to have happened, Stoller said. He said the opposition was involved in approving the system before the referendum.
"We welcome further audits," he said, noting that the Smartmatic machines produce the paper trail that critics charge is lacking in U.S. e-voting.
Nearly 50 million Americans — including all Georgians — will vote in November on touch-screen electronic machines, said Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, which provides electoral consulting services to state and local governments. Most machines will not provide paper receipts.
That compares to 53 million voters who will use optical scan systems, 22 million who will use punch cards, 22 million who will use lever machines and only 1 million who will cast paper ballots.
The disputed election provides some guidance for use of electronic voting machines in the United States, say those skeptical of the technology.
"The first lesson from Venezuela is that without paper ballots, there is no recourse for a disputed election," said Avi Rubin, a computer-science professor at Johns Hopkins University. "The second lesson is that paper ballots are useless unless they are verified by voters and stored in a secure manner.
"Finally, it is important to count the paper ballots in many precincts and also to compare the final results to exit polls," he said.
Rubin has analyzed software on the voting machines and believes they are not protected from hackers.
The critics say a statistically significant sample comparison of paper and electronic ballots that all parties could agree to should be part of the election process.
In Venezuela, opposition leaders dismissed the "quick count" audit that the country's National Electoral Council did on 199 of the 19,800 machines.
"You have to make these decisions to conduct an audit before you know the results of the election," explained Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Project, a nonpartisan group seeking reforms in e-voting.
"Whether you're talking about the U.S. or Venezuela or Brazil, election officials are in over their heads with this equipment and haven't thought through" all the possible ramifications, she said. "You can't make this up as you go along."
To even make such an audit possible, "a voter-verified paper trail for every voter and every machine" is needed, said Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who has introduced legislation to require such receipts.
The foundation of democracy is faith of the citizenry that every vote counts, the critics of e-voting point out.
If election results this fall are questioned and e-voting results cannot be verified, the whole system is shaken.
"I fear that will be the case," Holt said. "If there are a lot of irregularities observed, it will be a victory for cynicism and a defeat for democracy."
— The Associated Press and Knight Ridder Newspapers contributed to this article.
The Venezuela opposition believe the leftist line in the US hook, line and sinker. They equate the Marxist Chavez with Bush and say Bush will steal the election too.
Its very sad to see them reject the only allies they will find on Earth.
We must avoid computerized voting at all costs! Voting systems must be simple enough for 90% of the population to comprehend from step "A" to step "Z". It was bad enough trying to justify why pregnant chads, dimpled chads, and dangling chads weren't counted. Can anyone imagine the food fight if the votes are computerized and deviate drastically from exit polling? Hot debates between computer programmers and specialists who are talking way beyond most peoples' comprehension? It would not only tick people off, it would be scary as sin.
But there is something rotten in Venezuela. Chavez and his buddy Jimmy Carter had no intention of letting his "peaceful" revolution falter.
If there is touch screen voting in your state, you may want to insist on an absentee ballot. Then there's a paper trail. As for a paper copy needing to match a computer vote, then what if all the Bush votes get transferred into Kerry votes? Then all the Bush votes are negated. KISS isn't good enough. When it comes to voting counts, KIVVVVVSS [Keep it Very Very Very Very VERY Simple, Stupid].
Bump!
I live in ¤Ãا෾æ (Krungtepmahanakon.../ Bangkok) so an absentee ballot is a must, but if I was in the states I wouldnt trust the touch screen thing.
| I have some comments and observations about your blog and some of those who post their comments on it. Some of them continue to refer to George Bush as illegitimate and say he 'stole' the election. This shows that many of the so-called 'anti-Chavez' supporters of the site are woefully ill-informed on American politics. I have also seen posters say that Bush is like Chavez and will 'steal' the election. Of course he will not have to, because he is very popular. They, and even you, seem to have pinned a lot of hopes on Jimmy Carter as a fair observer. This is far from the truth, he is a socialist who supports socialism around the world. The left in the United States support Chavez and his ideals in the same way they support Castro and had supported the old Soviet Union. They were never and are not in favor of freedom or democracy. Some in Venezuela are shocked that the New York Times would tell your opposition to shut up and go away. Yet this is predictable bile from a far left newspaper. Our media is very one-sided in favor of socialism. Yet this same leftist media admit that Bush won the election, the media were allowed to go and count the votes themselves during the attempt by the so-called Democrats to steal it in the courts. The leftist Democrats in the US are signing up foreigners and criminals in prison to vote illegally in this years election. They will still likely lose and have retained 6,000 lawyers to file challenges all over the country. The amazing thing is that even with the media, 99% of it, against Bush and with the leftists outspending Republicans by a margin of 20-1, they know that they will have to go to the courts. Our elections are local affairs, the county officials do the counting. In 2000, all of the 'disputed' counties had nothing but Democrat officials in charge of the count. If the pro-freedom forces in Venezuela are so ill-informed that they think the far left in the US are their freinds and that conservatives are their enemies they are starting to believe the leftist media. That includes all the major newspapers and the AP, by the way. Judging from history, I would say that Chavez -should he retain power- will create a country almost identical to Cuba. Cuba with oil. The opposition leaders will be killed and arrested, opposition supporters silenced and repressed. The church will be bullied (our left hates religion too) into silence. Chavez will nationalize the media very quickly, and I think your media know this. There will soon be no free enterprise, no private business, no private property (except for the top Chavistas of course). The very fact that the opposition in Venezuela seems to think that socialists in the US are their freinds says a lot of bad things. You have to know who your allies are around the world. Let me put it very bluntly. American socialists like Carter, Kerry and the major media see nothing wrong with Chavez. They saw nothing wrong with Stalin, they still do not. They have even rejected the idea of 'truth' as something foreign. The pro-freedom Americans who wish you well are shocked to see what some in the Venezuela are saying. It is very sad to see them rejecting the only allies they are likely to find. Floyd G Looney |
A paper trail is a must.
Disputes over electronic votes would be in the courts for years...
"Finally, it is important to count the paper ballots in many precincts and also to compare the final results to exit polls," he said.I caught a little thing on FOX News yesterday regarding this. They said that there were 20,000 people polled in exit polls and that the discrepancy between the exit poll results and the election results was MAJOR. A sample of 20,000 is a VERY LARGE sample that would result in a small margin of error. It sounds to me like this arsehole Chavez really did pull off a major coup in hijacking the election.
He did indeed.
That is an outstanding letter!
They could, if there were all the time to review and check the paper trail, and it could be counted that the reviewers would be honest. If the election needs to be certified by and OSCE observer, or Jimmy Carter, in 24 or 48 hours, it ain't gonna make any difference.
A Floriduh company. Who'd've thunk it?
Abort the senate 'gentleman's' filibuster - give us the real thing back! I want to hear Ted Kennedy defend his blockage of Federal Appeal court judges and holding back Americas energy needs to liberal ideals.
Oh brother!
A Bush landslide could give him a mandate.
Thanks
I was reminded this week of how Castro so artfully used Mr. Carter when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez took a page from his Cuban mentor's playbook. On Monday, the Carter Center along with the head of the monumentally meaningless Organization of American States, Cesar Gaviria, endorsed Chávez's claims of victory in the Venezuelan recall referendum, rather too hastily it now seems.
The problem was that the "observers" hadn't actually observed the election results. Messrs. Carter and Gaviria were only allowed to make a "quick count"--that is, look at the tally sheets spat out by a sample of voting machines. They were not allowed to check this against ballots the machines issued to voters as confirmation that their votes were properly registered.
If there was fraud, as many Venezuelans now suspect, it could have been discovered if the ballots didn't match the computer tallies. The tallies alone were meaningless. The problem was clear by Tuesday but it didn't stop the State Department spokesman Adam Ereli from chiming in. "The people of Venezuela have spoken," he proclaimed.***
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