Reply #152: Febble, your citing ESI (votewatch) to support ESI (votewatch)

[autorank]

This is not allowed. You need to cite someone other than vote watch or the independent opinion of board members listed (isn't OTOH involved with them in some way? serious question). That's like citing the Bible to support the Bible.

I read their report on New Mexico. Sounded like Sunday school just off the green with the Vicar and Dean of the Cathedral, every thing in order. Then I read the Albequerque media and all the repors of shenanigans. What a mess. Are you sure they were in New Mexico and not Six Flags over Texas. How could they miss this. More importantly, how could they not mention it in their report on NM. They don't have to agree but they do have to respond.

When I was at the 1/6/05 Rally/March, I met an activist from NM who was reallyi worked up about what happened there. Of course ESI which has received Mitofsky data was there and dismissed any problems in the area they focused on, Bernalillo County. This is contrast to the reports in the Albequerque Journal and the local CBS affiliate which had stories about "phantom votes" -- machines failing, incorrect choices (when selecting Kerry).

What was ESI/votewatch "watching" while this was going on? Didn't they have access to newspapers?

E.G. From the Albequerque Journal (all quoted on Eriposte:
http://vote2004.eriposte.com/swingstates/newmexico.htm

"A Democratic attorney and an election volunteer for the party said workers disqualified hundreds of provisional ballots cast in Bernalillo County because of names that had a missing middle initial or some other minor discrepancy. They urged commissioners to reconsider the rejection of those ballots, if they could.
The commissioners, however, said they didn't have authority to question the qualification of provisional ballots. They voted 3-0 in favor of certifying the Nov. 2 election results, which were sent to the Secretary of State's Office.

Roughly half of those ballots were disqualified in the canvassing process. The most common reason was that the person wasn't registered to vote anywhere in the county.

But Democratic attorney Jim Noel said his party's observers had seen at least 330 provisional ballots rejected due to minor discrepancies. Those were cases where voters had to show identification but the ID didn't exactly match the name on the voter registration."

http://www.abqjournal.com/elex/257849elex11-13-04.htm (requires registration)

More from the Albuquerque Journal:

"Herrera's staff had been combing through 2,000 "questionable" ballots, which led to the certification of 1,400 of them.

Those that weren't certified bothered her staff. The main reason for disqualifying them, she said, was because an affidavit testifying to the voter's identity, which is supposed to be signed by a presiding judge, was not in the outer of two envelopes that are supposed to be turned in to election workers. That rule was prescribed by New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron.

Today Herrera said a Republican presiding judge in one particular precinct was in charge of several hundred bad ballots. The problem, Herrera said, was that the bad ballots, with affidavits inside, were largely Democrats. The good ones were for Republican voters.

"It made us kind of sick," Herrera said. "It was too obvious." "

Guess ESI/Votewatch missed this data in their final report

More problems reported to the Albuquerque Journal:

Kim Griffith voted on Thursday— over and over and over.
She's among the people in Bernalillo and Sandoval counties who say they have had trouble with early voting equipment. When they have tried to vote for a particular candidate, the touch-screen system has said they voted for somebody else.

It's a problem that can be fixed by the voters themselves— people can alter the selections on their ballots, up to the point when they indicate they are finished and officially cast the ballot.
For Griffith, it took a lot of altering.
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So nothing like the facts. People had problems voting in more places than would considered reasonable and, when they did in Bernilillo County NM, even the (vote)watch dogs didn't spot it.