Systematic problem statewide in Georgia confirmed

Drudge Report ^ | 11/5/02 | Matt Drudge

[LBGA]

Just received this email:

Dear xxx,

We have received preliminary reports from voters across the State of Georgia who have indicated that when placing their vote, and touching the screen for a Republican candidate, the box is incorrectly checked for the Democrat candidate. Another similar situation is occurring when the review screen comes up and previously marked Republican votes are showing as Democrat votes.

As you vote throughout the day it is important that you review how your vote was tallied and ensure that it is recorded accurately. If you experience a problem contact a poll worker and immediately request a recalibration of the machine before submitting your vote. If that does not correct the problem or if poll workers do not provide recalibration of the machine, please inform the Georgia Secretary of State's Office.

If you experience this problem please make sure to call the Georgia Legal Task Force Hotline at the Georgia Republican Party Headquarters, at 866-251-4966. When calling the Hotline, callers should ask for Vernadette Broyles, Chief Deputy Legal Counsel.

Sincerely,
Jack Oliver
Deputy Chairman
Republican National Committee

[mikegi]

No problems here in south Forsyth county. It's such a Republican county that none of the local races had opposition. The new system worked well although I would change the color and icon of the selected choice. Right now, a black "X" on a red background appears and on the LCD screens it is muddy looking. I would prefer a black checkmark on a green background.

[Peach]

Florida voters were claiming a similar problem this morning, but Fox News reported a half hour ago that it was a hoax.

[LTCJ]

Checked my review page and didn't see any problem.

Being somewhat computer savy, an all electronic process does make me somewhat nervous, though. If I wanted to commit massive vote fraud, it would be my approach of choice.

[Surge-on]

Your information is what I was afraid of when I posted the article and is the reason that I posted it. The only way to confront Demorat voter fraud is with accurate information and it apprars that the Georgia Republican Party is appealing for such information. This kind of fraud could spell the difference in the Georgia Senate race.

[FreedomFriend]

There were some crazy amendments on the ballot. So much of it was left-wing garbage and lunacy, I couldn't believe that they were actually considering such.

[babyface00]

What would be ideal, IMHO, would be for the machine to print out the results of your vote twice; once under a glass on a continuous roll of paper and again on a tape that you take away as a receipt. Both numbered and date-stamped. You could verify that your tape matches the tape of record before leaving the booth, and that both matched the electronic summary displayed before casting.

It wouldn't be all that difficult to have special paper that, like currency, was unavailable to the public. The BOE knows how many people are registered, so they could order a good estimate of the amount of special paper they'd need, perhaps with a security thread or tape (like currency).

They could get immediate electronic results that were then pending validation of the tape. Hours or days later, they could assure the tapes matched the electronic counts. Then, if they published the tapes in the paper, anyone could compare their receipt to the published results. Everyone would then be certain that the vote they thought they made was recorded.

Of course, this doesn't stop dead people from voting if the registration process is flawed.

[Carry_Okie]

Electronic voting should not even be attempted. It's too easy to defraud.

[Carry_Okie]

It wouldn't be hard to fix the machine to print one thing and transmit another. I don't care how many ASICS they use; electronic voting is too easy to defraud and can't be physically audited by poll watchers.

[demosthenes the elder]

well, here in Quitman, the machines seemed to be working just fine. I triple checked everything, and all looked right, down to the special tax bracket initiative votes and the castration license plate vote.
this is the first I have heard of this

[demosthenes the elder]

well, here in Quitman, the machines seemed to be working just fine. I triple checked everything, and all looked right, down to the special tax bracket initiative votes and the castration license plate vote.
this is the first I have heard of this

[OrangeDaisy]

Touch screens (or any scheme not paper-based) is a bad idea.

I've been voting since 1978 in Tennessee and never used paper. I would think I had returned to the dark ages if someone handed me a paper ballot. For years we used the 2 ton lever machines, but these days we use something that lights up when we press a button by the candidate's name. I still think it records the vote mechanically, not electronically, though.

[Tazlo]

No problems up in Cherokee County. Actually, there was a problem. There were so many people voting (11 AM! in driving rain!) that I couldn't find a parking place.

Buh-bye Cleland!

[princess leah]

I think the media has nothing to do until the polls close and they just make up this stuff to upset us!

[LinnieBeth]

I heard one woman complain about this on our local talkshow, and another man with same complaint;

However...the Sec of State office said that this problem had not been reported to their office, and that they (SoS) were getting few reports of problems or irregularities.

I'm inclined to think that this is an isolated case, and may have been voter error. At least the gentleman that called in said that he 'might' have miss 'touched' his screen; The woman's real problem was that in trying to backtrack to change her vote, the ballot was "Submitted", and then she could not re-vote.

[BubbaJunebug]

No problem here in East Cobb...other than a massive amount of Republican voting...and smiles

[supercat]

What would be ideal, IMHO, would be for the machine to print out the results of your vote twice; once under a glass on a continuous roll of paper and again on a tape that you take away as a receipt. Both numbered and date-stamped. You could verify that your tape matches the tape of record before leaving the booth, and that both matched the electronic summary displayed before casting.

For a variety of reasons, it is necessary that it be impossible for anyone to prove how they voted. Protection of vote-recording media against tampering is thus essential.

There are both mechanical and electronic ways of providing verifiable tamper-resistance. Two key requirements I've not seen incorporated in any of these systems are:

• Every vote cast must permanently (unreversably) alter an item which cannot be surruptitiously replaced.
• Every ballot cast during an election must cause the same number of such alterations.

For a mechanical voting tabulator to meet these requirements, it must have counting registers which physically cannot be counted down nor reset. Instead, before each election, officials from all interested parties would inspect the machine and note the states of all registers. Additionally, in every "vote for one" race, the machine must have a counter for the number of voters who didn't select any candidate; in every "vote for two" race, the machine must have counters for how many candidates didn't select any, and how many selected only one, etc. Without such counters, a corrupt person with access to the machine could advance the counter for his preferred candidate; with such counters, such a person couldn't do so without causing the machine to record more votes than voters.