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Anybody know anything about "Ghost Precincts"? Excerpted:

Is this the "Smoking Gun"?

According to the leading computer voting expert in the USA, Rebecca Mercuri, Some areas have (for years) included "ghost precincts" that [they say] are used for sub-tallies, or for absentee and military ballots.

Vigilance required of elections officials and candidates: If such precincts are listed, require a detailed explanation of the sources for any votes tallied there and the necessity for each extra precinct. Make sure that
these votes are legitimate and also not counted more than once.

In my report "How to Unbezzle a Fortune" I describe the common use of "dummy bank accounts" to balance the books when stealing money.

I am very concerned about the existence of any "ghost precinct" in a vote-counting machine. I can see no legitimate reason for it, no matter what the "reason" given. If it is used for absentee votes, create an Absentee Vote section. Voting Machine Company programmers, and election officials:

A "phanton precinct" or a "ghost precinct" is one that exists on the vote-counting machine but does not exist in the county. For example, your county might have precinct #124, #345, #199, and #354 but if your vote-counting machine has an "extra" precinct -- whatever it calls it -- that would be a "ghost precinct."

With dummy bank accounts (see my report, "How to Embezzle a Fortune" at Talion.com) here's what typically happens -- note that phantom precincts can function identically:

Actual deposit is $10,000, (or votes, 10,000) but embezzler only wants $6,000 (or 6,000 votes, matching the sign-in sheet) reflected in the official reports. So, he creates a dummy bank account -- deposits the $10,000 into it, then transfers $6,000 to the corporate bank account and keeps $4,000 for himself.

Because the dummy bank account is "off the books" and the corporate directors are unaware that it exists, they never know that $10,000 came in, not $6,000.

Applied to voting, a ghost precinct could be used to fix the totals when more votes come in than there are voters. In one election on my "election mistakes" page (www.talion.com/election-mistakes.html) there were 800 votes counted but only 500 were cast. If the programmer used a ghost precinct, though, they could keep the votes they wanted and dump the extra 300 into the ghost precinct. No one would know.

I saw two reports here at VoteWatch that indicated people could vote more than once using the electronic key, because apparently there is not one key per voter, but the keys are used over and over again. I called ES&S to clarify, but they did not return my call. The report indicated that people would walk up to the table, where there are a pile of keys, grab one and vote -- and that some people stayed behing the curtain a long LONG time.

If you have overvoting and your counting code uses a ghost precinct, you could dump just the votes you want into the official count, and the number of "votes cast" would match the "votes counted" because the votes in the ghost precinct would be hidden.

Added to this is a repeating problem I'm seeing in many different states with machines "forgetting" to add absentee ballots. The explanation given by some election officials about the "ghost precinct" is that it stores absentee ballots and military ballots and so forth.

One documented "ghost precinct" case went to court: March 23, 1993, city election in St. Petersburg, Florida. For an industrial precinct in which there were NO registered voters, the vote summary showed 1,429 votes for the incumbent mayor (who incidentally won the election by 1,425 votes). Officials explained under oath that this [ghost] precinct was used to merge regions counted by the two computer systems, but were unable to identify precisely how the 1,429 vote total was produced.

(Follow up interview with Rebecca Mercuri, author of the article cited above)

Here are more details from Mercuri, which she says can be found in the court transcripts:

The judge asked for specifics as to why an industrial precinct with NO voters showed votes. The answer was that they used this non-voting precinct to subtally intermediate results from 3 precincts. But then the judge asked, "which three precincts." The defendants named three precincts, but the judge found they did not add up to 1,429. So he asked again; they gave him a different three precincts. It still didn't add up. So finally, they said, well it's not three precincts, we are adding up five. They named the five precincts. But those didn't add up either.

What happened? Ultimately, nothing. The judge never pursued it to determine what that ghost precinct was actually used for.

I just got off the phone with computer voting expert Rebecca Mercuri, who notified me that reporter Patty Paugh of the Star-Ledger in New Jersey described going in to the precincts, seeing precincts that have no voters, with votes listed in them. I have a call into this reporter to verify this information.

After staying up all night on election night watching the election results come in at the Palm Beach County web site, noticed they kept changing up until about 3 a.m., then stopped, then at midday the following day, all the numbers had changed. Found a precinct there that doesn't exist. There's an extra precinct -- in other words, one more precinct was being counted than precincts that exist!

Actually did get one guy working with the election to follow up on it. He said "it's the precinct we're using for absentee ballots." But that's bull, absentee ballots are counted within precincts.

My congressman is Bob Ney. Is there any voting fraud in his district? If there is I would like to know so I can torture him with if and maybe even get it into my worthless Gannet owned small newspaper.

I think that Bob Ney was one of the politicians who advocates these new machines that don't have paper trails.

MORE DOCUMENTATION ON NEW JERSEY "GHOST PRECINCTS"

I just got off the phone with the reporter in New Jersey. Bona fide members of the press: I'll provide contact information to you privately if you want to pursue this story.

The final printout shows 104 precincts where only 102 exist. Other discrepancies were noted curing the counting -- for example, the computer screen with the running tallies showed 100 percent of the precincts counted when some had only three or four votes. When the reporter asked about this, she was told it was just how the computer worked. "Then how do you know which precincts are actually counted?" she asked. "Oh, we have a different computer system," was the answer. She was not allowed to see the other system.

The machines in question for the ghost precincts are ES&S iVotronic, with no paper trail. Correction, they are calling a printout that takes place after the fact, a "paper trail." A meaningful paper trail is one verified by the voter at the time of voting, for example, a receipt printed by the machine, voter verifies that's how he voted, deposits the receipt in a sealed ballot box.

Two reporters are now working on this story, and a few explanations have been offered, one being that military votes are stashed in the ghost precincts (though absentee and military ballots are supposed to be counted in the precincts where they occur). Another explanation was that the ghost precincts were used to reconcile overlapping congressional districts (but accounting for votes must be labeled accurately, with transparent accounting so everyone can see how voting machines arrived at the totals; making up fake precincts does not qualify as transparent accounting.)