OMG. This is the problem we face!

[garybeck]

I got copied on an email that was going to leaders of the Democratic Party in Vermont. I did a "reply to all" and asked what the VT Dems are going to do about the problems with our election systems. FYI, we have no DREs here but we have LOTS of Diebold OpScan. I got a reply from Jon Copans, the Executive Director of the VT Democratic Party:

"...it is my understanding that there are no electronic voting machines in the entire state. Everyone votes with some sort of paper ballot, whether they are counted by hand or by the "scan-tron" machines. I agree that this is an important issue in other states, but fortunately we don't have to worry about it here."

FOLKS!!

people are falsely convinced that if there are no DREs, there are no electronic voting machines, and there is no problem. OpScans are the answer to all the trouble!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Folks, don't fall into the trap that we did in Vermont. Don't spend all your energy fighting against DREs if you're just going to wind up with Diebold Scanners instead. You'll be back at square one, and even worse, everyone in your state will be lulled to sleep thinking that they have a secure system because the DREs are all gone.

Any attempts to enact legislation must be multfaceted. Don't settle for a baby step in the right direction. We have to enact legislation that bans unverified vote counting. If there's going to be opscan, there needs to be audits at the minimum.

I left a phone message on Mr. Copan's phone. I'll let you know if I make any progress with him.

Gary

[vanboggie]

1. Same thing in MI

Carl Levin of all people thinks Michigan votes are secure because we are totally optical scan now. I sent explanations of why that is not true, but do not know where he now stands. Thank you for reminding me - time to get in touch with his office again.

[napi21]

2. Please tell me what your problem is with the opti-scanners?

I undrestand tricks can be played with any electronic device, but you HAVR the original source document to count if you feel there's a problem.

You have to understand, the US will NEVER go back to hand counting ballots! It's way too slow, and there is just as much chance for hanky-panky with "people" counting as there is with someone tampering with machines. The machine count IS the best answer, you just need the source doc. to go back to if there is a problem, or even if you suspect there is.

[shraby]

4. You have the original document but there

has to be a narrow margin for them to be recounted, or the losing party has to foot the bill which is getting to be prohibitivally expensive..and that's if "conditions" are met. Remember Ohio?

[napi21]

6. Why is it so expensive?

What's wrong with having "volunteers" from each Party do the damn recount? As far as "conditions", those are set by laws that can be changed.

I've been an accountant for 40+ years, and I've given lots of thought to the blackbox voting problem. I've heard all the excuses, like: people use ATM's all the time, or every company has a computer system to keep it's books, and no one screams that the machines have been altered! There is ONE difference between all those other systems and the electronic voting system. SOSURCE DOCUMENT! It's a secret ballot, so you can't attach any identity to an actual vote. If the system fails, there's NOTHING to go back to as a comparison.

The best answer I heard was that the machine would print out a receipt that the voter could verify was correct and then deposit it into a collection box. It's doable, but cumbersome and expensive.

The scanner really is a good solution, and the recount cost & laws would be much easier to get done!

[shraby]

7. I don't know why so expensive, but New Mexico

wanted a super exorbitant amount to do a recount. It was too much for the Green Party to muster up. Somewhere around a million if I recall.

[garybeck]

10. how do you EVER KNOW if there is a problem?

when the machines are counting the votes on proprietary software, the results are UNVERIFIED. There is no way to know if there is a problem. When the votes are counted on secret software, there is NOTHING to show that they were counted correctly. In that scenario, EVERY candidate in EVERY election should ask for a hand recount. So what did the first machine count accomplish? NOTHING.

You must realize, there is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between a DRE and an Opscan in terms of the actual vote counting, which is what matters more than anything. Both take a real vote, whether from the voter in a booth, or from a piece of paper that the voter filled out, and convert it into an electronic vote which is used for counting. There is nothing, zippo, nada, in the system that ensures that the vote was converted correctly.

In other words, when you are feeding those paper ballots into the scanners, votes for for candidate A could be changed to votes for candidate B and you would NEVER KNOW. Only if the candidate asked for a recount would they ever catch it. And they only do that if the official results are very close.

Opscans without audits are no better than DREs. Technically the exact same process is going on when the votes are counted. A real vote is being converted into an electronic vote. Nothing to tell you it was done correctly. Nothing. It's all the same. Secret vote counting. It's all the same.

[kster]

11. ,,

:thumbsup:

[vanboggie]

14. Central tabulators

I was under the assumption that optical scanned ballot counts still go to a central tabulating computer - am I right or wrong on that?

[garybeck]

16. you are correct, BUT

the central tabulator is not the only problem

FOLKS, it's not that complicated!

Just imagine taking a paper ballot, which you just scanned the ovals on and picked your votes. You insert it into the Diebold scanner.

NOW WHAT?

What happened to your vote? Was it switched? Was it counted correctly? It doesn't matter what happens at the central tabulator. Right at the scanner, a computer program reads the ballot and converts your vote to an electronic vote. Did it do it correctly? Did it nullify your vote, change it to the other candidate? How do you know?

As long as there is proprietary software on the scanners, you have NO IDEA what happened to your vote.

As long as there are no audits on the system, you have NO IDEA who won the election.

I don't care if there's central tabulator or not. You still have proprietary (secret) software counting your votes. Anyone who has taken just one introductory course in computer programming knows how easy it would be to mess with the vote counting. Here's a simple one - every 4th vote for the Democrat, change it to the Republican. This could be done with 2 lines of code, and no one would ever know. This is the real problem.

[vanboggie]

19. Thanks for getting me back on track

Hubby told me that in the beginning and I veered from the basic idea. Thanks.

[NMDemDist2]

29. Arizona's scanner troubles-- 489 votes "found" in recount

The District 20 recount has been marred by controversy and unusual, if not suspicious, actions since September 2004, when Anton Orlich defeated John McComish by four votes in the Republican primary for a seat in the state House of Representatives. The narrow margin of victory automatically triggered a recount in which the 489 additional votes suddenly appeared. McComish won the recount by 13 votes.

Nearly all of the new votes that appeared in the District 20 recount came from early ballots that voters cast at home and mailed to the county elections department. The county used Optech 4-C scanners to count early ballots in the primary and used the same type of machine to conduct the recount. But the Optech 4-C used in the recount, known as Machine No. 5, detected an 18 percent increase in votes from early ballots.

Orlich filed a lawsuit seeking to block the recount, claiming the elections department mishandled the ballots between the primary and the recount and that it appeared one of the county's voting machines failed to accurately count votes.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Eddward Ballinger upheld the results of the recount after an extremely hostile and unusual hearing in which a key witness who worked for the manufacturer of the election machines failed to appear in court despite receiving a subpoena.

Thomas' investigation later determined that the witness, Tina Polich, was instructed to "lay low" during the hearing by county officials and her employer, Election Systems and Software Incorporated, who did not want her to testify about the possibility that the voting machines malfunctioned.

According to County Attorney Thomas' investigation, it appears that several county officials deliberately misled Judge Ballinger during the court hearing when they told him that they didn't know how to contact Polich.

Judge Ballinger expressed serious concern about Polich's failure to appear at the hearing and about the county's ability to accurately count early ballots.

Nevertheless, he went ahead and certified the recount as valid.

Elections department director Karen Osborne has repeatedly said in published statements and in sworn court testimony before Judge Ballinger that the reason for the sudden appearance of the votes was that voters casting mail-in ballots used marking instruments that were difficult for the optical scanners to read.

Osborne said glitter pens, gel pens and black felt-tipped pens were particularly troublesome for the county's Optech 4-C scanning machines.

Jones' tests on the voting machines found that the opposite of what Osborne claimed under oath was true.

"The sensitivity test showed that these machines are extraordinarily sensitive to black pencil, to ink from a Jelly Roll brand blue glitter pen and to black ink from a Sanford Sharpie Extra Fine Point pen. With these pens and pencils, the Optech 4-C scanner would pick up and count as a vote even a single dot," Jones' report states.

Jones says in the interview that "the blue glitter pen was more reliably scanned than any pen I tried."

The marking utensils best read by the machine used for the early ballots were No. 2 pencils and black ballpoint pens, Osborne has said repeatedly.

Jones, however, found serious problems with both of these instruments. Jones discovered that even tiny specks of lead from No. 2 pencils could be counted erroneously as votes.

"It's not a good idea to adjust machines to be so sensitive that they pick up fly specks of lead as votes," Jones says.

Votes cast with black ballpoint pens were least likely to be detected, Jones says.

The county "shouldn't have given instructions to voters that led the voters to make marks that can't guarantee will be read," Jones says. "My measurements show they really can't guarantee will read a Bic black ballpoint."

Jones also criticized the county's written directions on ballots instructing voters to draw a single line between arrows marked on the ballots when casting a vote. Single lines drawn with blue and black pens, he says, are not dark enough for the county's voting machines to consistently detect.

"Requesting a dark mark instead of a single line would encourage voters to make marks that would be far more likely to be counted," Jones' report states.

Not only has the county been providing incorrect instructions on how to mark early ballots, its Optech 4-C scanners used to count early ballots are not calibrated equally, Jones says.

During his tests, Jones found that two of the six scanners he examined were less sensitive to marks made by blue and black ballpoint pens than the other four machines.

The county's incorrect instructions to voters combined with the inconsistent calibration of scanners could have resulted in the sudden increase in votes detected between the District 20 primary and the recount, he says.

If a sufficient number of ballots in District 20 were cast where voters used black and blue ink pens to draw single lines, and if those ballots were run through a less sensitive Optech 4-C scanning machine during the primary, Jones says the votes may have gone undetected.

And, he says, if those same ballots were then run through a more sensitive Optech 4-C machine during the recount, the uncounted votes may have suddenly appeared.

"An examination of a random sample of the actual . . . Republican early voting ballots from the election would allow this hypothesis to be confirmed or ruled out," Jones states in the report.

"If the examination shows that a sufficient percent of the ballots were marked with a single stroke using a ballpoint pen, as opposed to use of pencil or votes cast with a deeply scribbled mark, this hypothesis would become more likely."

Jones also says visual inspection of the ballots would very likely provide conclusive evidence of whether the ballots were tampered with between the primary and the recount.

Osborne testified during the September 23, 2004, recount hearing before Judge Ballinger that the District 20 ballots were handled and sorted without first notifying the candidates, who are entitled by law to be present during that endeavor.

This unsupervised handling "may have created an opportunity . . . to surreptitiously add marks to ballots," Jones' report states. "I want to emphasize that I do not allege that any such ballot alteration occurred, only that the opportunity may have existed."

Jones says the characteristics of the District 20 race made it ripe for tampering.

more.... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=139x3362

[kster]

15. Hanky Panky? The difference

in the time it takes you to stuff one extra ballot into a ballot box you would be able to steal hundreds of thousands of votes with the push of a button using electronic scanners and central tabulators.

Hand Counted Paper Ballots is the best answer. Its time to stop these people and their election theft machines from picking our governmenT(PERIOD)

[garybeck]

24. read post #16

[Febble]

3. Don't think of it as baby step

think of it as a foot in the door.

With optical scanners, the ballot is the ballot, which is a huge improvement on DREs IMO. Once you've established that bridgehead, you can tackle the counting! But at least you've got something to count. And something to audit, as long as you get the audits!

Good luck.

[pauldp]

5. This is exactly what we are fighting in my county in CA

The County Clerk Recorder says that since we are Op Scan, we don't have to worry but it is GEMS software that is tabulating the vote.
Secret Proprietary Software. Recounts are our only hope and if they are not truly random and mandatory we are screwed. We have to draw a line
in the sand with the tabulating software as well - it must be open source AND we need manual counts.

[Febble]

8. Can you check the precinct counts

against the county tabulations? That would be a start.

[kster]

9. If they want to keep

this fight hidden on the INTERNET we may as well go for the gusto

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=406688&mesg_id=406688


Now if they want to have open and TELEVISED discussion on TV for all to see then maybe we could take them seriously about using machines until that happens Fight Fight Fight for PBHC and recorded at the precicnt level.

[Amaryllis]

12. Same thing in OR. People think if you have paper ballots, you're home free

but Gary is absolutely right in all he says. Feeble is also right in that if you have paper, at least you have a base that can be checked. BUT, with no audit or verification process, it rarely gets checked. Go to www.whoscounting.net , read about the companies, if you haven't already, and see how you feel about having Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia and Hart counting your ballots on their proprietary software programmed in many cases by felons convicted for computer fraud, with political and financial ties to Bushco. Do you trust them? How ridiculous is it to trust them with no audits or any process to verify accuracy of the vote count?

[applegrove]

13. Don't teach apathy. Exit polls were wrong. Next time - people will

not be fooled by them.

[garybeck]

18. i have no idea what you are talking about

who is teaching apathy?
exit polls were not wrong
next time people will do something, if we play our cards right.

[Wilms]

20. You mean you didn't hear?

Hopefully he'll correct me if I've misunderstood...

Applegrove thinks that the exit polls were wrong, that * really won, and that the Dems failed to capture the "hearts and minds" of significant #'s of voters.

He has further stated that our assumption of a Kerry victory, and our suspicion of election fraud will only divide the party and discourage people from voting because of theft.

[garybeck]

23. I guess

I've managed to ignore that sort of illogical theory until now.

I'll go back to ignoring it.

[EFerrari]

33. Works for me. n/t

[vanboggie]

21. "Next time it happens" is little too late

Election fraud needs to come to the forefront BEFORE it happens again. It is where this Bushco dictatorship started and the corruption must be exposed NOW.

[applegrove]

28. Exit polls were wrong in places that had no machines. You cannot say

that exit polls were never wrong. Just keep your heart & mind open. For sure they do tricks. We just don't know what is the trick and what is the lie and what is the truth. We don't have enough proof.

So keep your options open.

[nicknameless]

17. The 18,181 vote totals "received" by 3 Texas rethug candidates, in the

same County, on the same day. Those were opti-scan ballots.

Paper ballots are a must, but they're just the first step. Hand counting is critical.

Nominated for more to see.

[kster]

22. With their SILENCE we got them where we want them to be

(the media and the voting machine companies) we can continue to spread the truth about the election theft machines and they can't do nothing about it. There are more of us than there are of them.

So long as they won't go on Television (and we know they won't) We got them, SPREAD THE TRUTH. Dre's, Optiscan and central tabulators where designed to steal elections , PLAIN AND SIMPLE.

[nicknameless]

25. Yes. Only 48% believe that their votes are counted correctly, if at all.

MSM won't publicize the issue of election fraud, and yet people still know they're being defrauded.

[kster]

26. Less than half are sold on the equipment

What good businessman selling election counting equipment to all of the United States would not be on TV trying to explain to the other 52% what happened and or what didn't happen with the vote counting equipment.

If I was selling vote counting equipment, I would be hoping that the VOTE COUNT was inside the exit polls MARGIN of error, and if it wasn't I would be on TV trying to explain to the people who lost what went wrong or what didn't go wrong, Not hiding or covering up the facts.

[nicknameless]

27. Unfortunately, they aren't being held accountable right now,

and they don't care what we think. (Just ask *)

I'm COMPLETELY convinced that GuvWurld's strategy of holding election officials personally accountable is the answer.
Back when hand-counting was the norm, if cheaters were caught, they could be charged, etc.
Since machines began counting our votes, officials have been able to shrug off vote disappearances, etc. with an off-hand "computer glitch" comment. If they were held personally accountable, I believe the frauds would end and the machines would disappear.

I posted earlier about a comment left on BradBlog by "Catherine A"
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002193.htm

In NC, the law required that the CEO of the voting company swear an affidavit that the code put in escrow was identical to what was put on the voting machines. Personal responsibility, personal liability.

THAT was why Diebold balked in NC.

Personal responsibility & personal liability could end this mess, IMO.

[Festivito]

30. Optical is a good step over screens only. Yes, audits are requisite.

Audits should be random plus chosen by losing candidates.

Any point in time the vote is not verifiable to the senses, the count must be reverified. The example is that it goes into a machine which counts in an unseen unheard manner, the count must be verified later.

And, the ballots should be kept during the whole length of duration of the items voted.

[Free the Press]

31. um, are you saying that the neo-cons rely on TA-liban-BULATIONISM?

[PVK]

32. Same stupidity in Minnesota.

I have explained this in great detail over and over to legislators here and why optical scanners are just as vulnerable. I think I may have finally gotten through to a few of them.

[diva77]

34. In LA County, the largest county in US , the LA County Dem.Party Central

Committee dismissed the opportunity to use its power to inspect the voting systems (including the central tabulator) when asked to do so prior to Schwarzenegger's Special Election Nov '05

Section 15004 of the California Election Code, which
> provides, in part:
> The county central committee of each qualified
> political party may employ, and may have present at
> the central counting place or places, not more than
> two qualified data processing specialists or
> engineers
> to check and review the preparation and operation of
> the tabulating devices, their programming and
> testing
> and have the specialists or engineers in attendance
> at
> any or all phases of the election.


I don't get it?? Can someone explain this behavior?? :shrug:

[Wilms]

35. For one. They might not even know how to do it.

Which makes them a bit derelict for either not hiring the expertise, or for not getting rid of the tabulators.

Who's request did the LA Dems deny/ignore?

[Peace Patriot]

36. I'm afraid you've got corruption in L.A. County. County elections head

Connie McCormack is a Diebold shill, and a real menace to voter rights. She may have infected, or has influence over, the Dem Central Committee. When you get a bad election official like that, they can and do wield too much power, can intimidate party members, and lord in over candidates and elected officials who may not have a clue how these new election theft systems work. I'd say that's your problem. See this transcript of San Fernando Valley Democrats grilling McCormack on electronic voting in December. A very aroused and well informed group! McCormack is evasive, and very defensive, and repeatedly doesn't answer questions. Very slippery. The discussion gets quite hot. She is the one who LED the campaign to oust Kevin Shelley--one of the few honest election officials in the country, who had sued Diebold and decertified their touchscreens prior to the 2004 election. McCormack's best friend--the person she wines, dines and vacations with--Deborah Seiler, was the chief salesperson for Diebold in Calif (now ass't registrar in Solano County!).

Transcript: http://www.dpsfv.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=82

Discussion: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x409746

[Wilms]

38. Sure.

And she might not even need to intimidate. They figure she's a Dem, so she's cool.

But that doesn't answer the question: "Who's request did the LA Dems deny/ignore?"

[Peace Patriot]

37. Optiscans were the machines that Ion Sancho banned in his Florida

county. They failed hacking tests. Diebold optiscans. And he said he was also concerned about ES&S. (And ES&S then reneged on their contract with him--after he said he was going to test them.)

'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code is NOT OKAY in any aspect of our election system.

Private corporations should be banned from our election system. They are inherently corrupting. They are in it for a PROFIT and will lie, and lavishly lobby, and buy influence, and do everythig corporations do to sell their product. They could give a crap about voters' rights. And PARTISAN corporations--Bushites--running our elections is OUTRAGEOUS. It points to Dem Party corruption. How could they ever have agreed to this, or have been SILENT about it?

I disagree with you, Gary Beck, on central tabulators. They are as much of a menace as individual voting machines, maybe moreso. They, too, have secret programming, and can switch thousands if not millions of votes, at the speed of light, leaving no trace.

I did a study of Calif 2004, and I found a very suspicious anomaly re Kerry votes which seemed to correlate to Republican control of the county, rather than voting method. Then I realized that if they were doing the vote switching in the central tabulators, the obvious place for them to switch votes--the least noticeable--would be in the Republican county results, and maybe they were counting on Republican county election officials to look the other way on any weird results. Kerry won the state by a 10% margin. Barbara Boxer won the state by a 20% margin. The difference between them is to be found entirely in the Republican counties, not in any Democratic counties. It makes no sense, politically. But it involved DREs, optiscans, punch cards and other methods. So it wasn't in the voting machines. It must have occurred either when the votes were reported, electronically, or while they were being tabulated, in the central electronic tabulators. (I'm not sure how punch cards votes are reported.) Upshot: They may have been padding Bush's national popular majority by stealing votes from safe places, like Calif Republican counties.