Almost all DUers recognize that election fraud currently poses a grave threat to our democracy, given the abundant evidence for the
stealing of the 2004 Presidential election and the fact that electronic voting machines use
secret code for counting our votes, usually without recourse to a paper trail to verify the accuracy of the vote count. And though our opinions differ on the
extent of the vote stealing capabilities and the preferred methods of the Republican Party’s plans for vote stealing, few of us have any doubt that voters will be suppressed and votes will be stolen on Election Day 2006.
Most of us also recognize that, despite our great concern with the secret vote counting of DRE (direct recording electronic) machines, there are also many other ways that Republicans have used to steal elections in recent years, including
voter suppression,
illegal purging of registered voters targeted at Democrats, and electronic manipulation of central tabulators. A few months ago I posted a review of several means of
preventing election fraud (to the best of my ability, though admittedly far from complete), along with specific evidence for various different types of election fraud in 2004, which suggested that vote switching on individual DRE machines was
not the principal means of election fraud in 2004. Unfortunately, nobody knows what will be the principal mechanism for election fraud in 2006.
One means of preventing election fraud that has been advocated by many is to vote absentee, since that bypasses the counting of votes by DRE machines. I did not address that issue in my election fraud prevention post, either to advocate it or to warn against it, except to note that in the Ohio Presidential election of 2004 Kenneth Blackwell failed to provide absentee ballots in response to numerous Democratic requests for them, and then those same voters were denied the opportunity to vote on Election Day. This issue is discussed in John Conyers’ famous report, “
Preserving Democracy – What Went Wrong in Ohio”.
In the past few days I have received e-mails from credible sources suggesting that absentee ballot manipulation may be a major means of election fraud by the Republican Party this November, especially in Ohio. Obviously neither I nor anyone else can predict the relative importance of this means of fraud for the upcoming elections, but I do feel that we should be aware of this possibility or likelihood:
Message from Bruce O’DellMost important is a message from
Bruce O’Dell, former Vice President and co-founder of U.S. Count Votes, who has 25 years of experience as an information technology consultant. To summarize his message: There are many jurisdictions in our country where verification of the legitimacy of absentee ballots will be made by Diebold software. If the Diebold machines determine that a vote is not legitimate it will not be counted, and nobody will ever know which votes were counted and which weren’t.
And incidentally (not noted in O’Dell’s message), the
purging of around two hundred thousand legitimate Ohio voters in 2004 by Diebold machines was probably
the major reason that George Bush was awarded Ohio’s electoral votes and proclaimed president in 2004.
Here is what O’Dell has to say about absentee voting (See “
Bruce O’Dell Says RUN from Absentee Ballots”!):
There is another serious problem with absentee voting: many jurisdictions now use electronic signature verification software, in some cases provided by ... our friends at Diebold.
The Diebold "
VoteRemote" application uses optical image recognition technology to check a paper signature against a digitized reference signature on file (say, a voter registration or a photo ID database).
In case enough alarm bells have not already gone off for you, let me add one or two of my own.
The VoteRemote software obviously can be interfaced with computerized voter registration databases; such a product is, conveniently enough, also sold by Diebold. Signature verification software also has a setting which controls how precise the match needs to be with the signature sample held in the voter registration database in order for the ballot to be accepted as genuine.
In those states with partisan registration, it's not difficult to imagine covertly programming such a machine for very forgiving tolerances for verification of signatures of voters in one party ... and much tougher standards for verifying the signatures of voters of another party.
Did I mention that since absentee ballot signature verification software does not actually tally votes (it only disqualifies them) it is exempt even from the ludicrously lax testing and certification protocol applied to vote tallying software?
Did I mention that according to witness testimony published on Black Box Voting's
web site a rather well known individual named Jeffrey Dean was involved with development of VoteRemote?
My advice: in 2006, run as far away from an absentee ballot as fast as you can.
Message from Mark Crispin MillerHere are some thoughts on this issue from Mark Crispin Miller, author of “
Fooled Again – How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)”:
Absentee ballots are very easy to toss out. Historically, they've been the first to go into the trash when fraudsters run the show. Moreover, those voting absentee can't know if they've been quietly taken off the books, as countless would-be voters were two years
ago….
And, most important, a high turn-out on Election Day will help immensely to pre-empt, or at least complicate, another theft by the Republicans, whose fraud will be much harder to explain if millions have showed up to vote. This is why the GOP in Maryland and Colorado (and elsewhere) is pushing people to vote absentee.
Message from an Ohio voterAnd here is an e-mail that Dr. Miller received from a voter in Ohio:
I live in Ohio, and last night I received a robo-call from the Republican party urging me to vote absentee. The message said it was bipartisan but paid for by the Republican party. Why would they target registered Democrats with this message? Do you think they plan on throwing away our ballots?
ConclusionI don’t know exactly what to advise with respect to this information. But one thing I can say for sure – Wherever Diebold machines are being used to verify absentee votes, I would NOT recommend voting absentee.