To Skeptics Who Doubt the Perils of Electronic Voting

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

To the skeptics who do not understand all the worries over touchscreen/
Direct Record Voting or any computerized voting machines.
Skeptics seem to think that the American Public is reacting
to hype and not fact.

Yes, there IS a lot of hype, and there are a lot of stories lacking substance.
There are some folks who are given to the dramatic, and some folks ARE too loose
with exaggerated rhetoric.
There ARE many stories and theories spread around that don't rely on solid
documentation or provable evidence. When such claims fall through, the tendency
might be to write off ALL claims.

Still the fact is that the concerns about electronic voting are real and valid.

The problem IS very serious, and the consequences ARE dire.

The problems with electronic voting are so serious, that 27 states
now require voter verified paper ballots for every voting system.

1. In 2004, there were voting machine malfunctions in every state,
with votes lost, changed, added and subtracted. In North Carolina,
a state that has had electronic voting for years, over 4,400 votes
were lost in one county alone, causing the outcome of one contest
to be unsettled for months. This is just one very blatent failure
of the voting systems.

If the reader has any doubt that electronic voting is risky and insecure, they would
be well advised to review the database of electronic voting failures here:

Problems from 2004 & 2005
http://www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp

2. There are problems are with any sort of voting machine, whether it is a DRE or optical scan,
but with optical scan, the recovery is much simpler and straightforward, the
election can always be recounted by hand if needed:

Some voting machine companies have worse problems than others, but the
bottom line is that computers fail, and data is corrupted or lost:

See "Mess Ups By Vendor"
http://www.votersunite.org/info/messupsbyvendor.asp

3. Human error is far more devastating when that human error results
in faulty programming or errors in the ballot definitions, causing votes to be
miscounted or lost. As states have switched over to paperless electronic voting,
or to DRES, they have experienced more sweaping and more complex problems
than when using simple paper based voting systems.

See election mess ups by State:
http://www.votersunite.org/info/previousmessups.asp

A very wise man made it clear that there is NO perfect voting system:

"Every voting system (perhaps every system of any kind) is insecure.
Making them more secure is a desirable secondary priority,
but unless we focus everyone on ensuring both auditability and effective auditing,
we're just going to create an impossible muddle." -
Dr. David L. Dill, Founder of Verified Voting Foundation
and professor at Stanford University
www.verifiedvoting.org

[JeffR]

1. Please cross-post this to GD and/or GDP

Though the admins might not approve. The ER Forum is great, but there's an election impending, and there are still DUers - sad to say - who don't get just how grave a threat to democracy this is.

Thanks for the post!:patriot:

[dweller]

3. 5 recs will put it on the Greatest page

one.

dp

[driver8]

2. The fact that we cannot be sure that our vote is counted should

be a wake up call to every American.

Excellent post.

[emlev]

4. Good point. Here it's fleshed out:

by DU's own Guvwurld:
http://guvwurld.blogspot.com.

K&R!

[bleever]

5. Up to the Greatest with you.

K&R.

[mod mom]

6. Thank you for this excellent post.

[Stevepol]

7. Great post, especailly for sticking to the principle of the thing. But...

there are still a lot of facts that point, not just to the possible miscounts or break-downs of computers, but to the systematic tilt of the vote toward Republicans.

Some of these "facts" may have been slightly over-blown, but even allowing for a slight distortion you can't explain how the 02 GA results came about without strongly considering fraud or the results in MN or CO in the same year. Or the NE election of 96 or the OH referendum of 05 or of course the 04 election itself. And every new election offers one more case in point. You can't just throw out these "facts." Clearly, when you're dealing with such slippery figures as election results (tho they shdn't be that slippery. They shd approach exactitude if the procedures are in place and the counting is done deliberately and fairly), you may have some inexactitudes, but the general drift is absolutely clear.

Take one of the "facts" of the 04 election: that the discrepancy between the exit polls and the "alleged" real result favored Bush in 42 out of the 50 states and that in 12 of these states it was beyond the margin of error. There is a good deal of slipperiness of the figures. It might not be 12 states, maybe fewer than that, maybe more, and it depends on just when the screen shots of the CNN poll are taken as to how much tilt there was, still and all, after everything is said and done, even if you qualify the results a good deal, it remains true that this particular discrepancy COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED BY CHANCE. Mitofsky himself admits this. And this is a fact to be entered into the discussion. I personally think it's absolutely clear that fraud has taken place and continues to take place, and I think almost anyone not blinded by careerism or partisanship or blind loyalty to this or that person or party, anyone who looks at the figures, would come to the same conclusion.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

8. depends on who you are addressing & your goal

My original message is designed to persuade persons of either party or affiliation.

The exit poll info or the shift in votes from early voting to regular precinct
voting can be used to persuade the party who lost the election, but
just won't be accepted by most who supported the "winner".

Some interesting reads about the audience being addressed are here:


The Moral High Ground, or "How NOT to talk to a Conservative"
By Chuck Herrin, the ITA specialist and Certified White Hat Hacker who
testified to our NC State Legislative Committee on E-voting -

Excerpt

--

All right. The next person that asks me "How can you still be a Republican after Bush stole the election?" is getting a size 15 to the nuts. Or hooch, whichever's there. Whatever - I'm kicking.

Are you liberals so self-righteous that you actually believe that Democrats wouldn't commit election fraud to win? You gonna try to take the moral high ground with me, the (seemingly) lone conservative with the huevos to tell my party that they're @(#*&%$ up?

Bite me. You want to help fix the Electoral System - wonderful! Welcome to the party! But don't judge me or think you know that "I'm really a Democrat, I just don't know it yet."

http://www.chuckherrin.com/highground.htm

Also enjoy Chuck's rant on empathy training for Liberals and Compassionate Conservatives:

Empathy Training for Liberals: A Primer on the Conservative Mind, From the Inside of One. ..."Another thing we did was go through something called “Empathy Training”, which usually involved going completely blindfolded for a day, or taping several fingers together to simulate motor skills difficulty, or spending a weekend in a wheelchair. This was less fun than spending your Saturday outside building ramps, but for a young man it was a real eye-opener, trying to live “a day in the life”. As a result of this “Empathy Training”, all of a sudden those old Helen Keller jokes weren’t so funny anymore.

Without drawing the analogy that Conservatives are Severely Handicapped ( Hey! Remember, I’m one too :-) ), I would like to offer some insight into how the Conservative mind works for you Liberals out there, so that perhaps we can stop Demonizing each other (Nazi! Fag! Fascist! Pantywaist!) and open meaningful channels of communication."...MORE http://www.chuckherrin.com/LiberalEmpathy.htm

Empathy Training for Compassionate Conservatives: Why the Democrats Are Still Whining About the Election. ..."I love him, but he probably couldn't pick Karl Rove out of an Evil Genius Lineup with Dr. Evil, Max Scorpio, and that Steve guy from the Linux cartoon (www.ubergeek.tv/switchlinux). I can imagine it now - "Suspect number 3, please turn to the right and say 'Mwuahh-haa-haa.'"
http://www.chuckherrin.com/ConservativeEmpathy.htm

I guess what I am trying to say is that it is easier to prove that
voting systems are insecure and faulty, and that elections could be hacked,
then to prove that they have been hacked.

Chuck Herrin didn't say the election was hacked, he showed
our General Assembly HOW TO DO IT.

And he doesn't care for Bush at all.

[Stevepol]

9. You're probably right WillYour, but facts are facts nonetheless.

All I wd add is that if, as everybody has to admit, the situation is as you describe it, i.e. if our votes are being counted by machines using trade secret, proprietarial software, which have been shown to be eminently hackable and easily mis-programmed, the very opposite of a transparent system open to the people, YOU CAN'T HAVE A DEMOCRACY BY DEFINITION!!!

A democracy demands a method of vote counting that assures people that their vote is counted fairly and that the true winner of an election has been anointed. That's not possible in America today. This is a principle that should be obvious to anybody. A fifth-grader of average intelligence can understand it. Even a member of Congress on a good day could perhaps understand it.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

10. exactly

Democracy depends on the citizens belief that all votes
are being counted fairly and accurately.

Anything less creates a big question mark.

Even if there were a perfect voting system, electronic or even
all paper, there has to be audits, there has to be transparency.

We are a bit closer.

In NC I think part of the resistance to the paper was
that voting machine companies knew we could prove that
the machines weren't accurate.

We have had several instances besides Carteret where votes were lost,
but no one reported it very well.

The election officials knew how to pull the wool over the reporter's
eyes, but NOT Any more!

[Febble]

17. A suggestion:

that the more "principle of the the thing" is decoupled from the issue of how much fraud occurred in 2004, the more chance you guys will have of getting support for the case against unauditable voting technologies.

The fact that voters cannot be confident that their vote was counted is the only fact you need, and the documented unreliabilty AND vulnerability to tampering is evidence that their lack of confidence is well-founded.

But, as you brought up the exit polls: sure, estimates of how much discrepancy there was depends on what measure you take of the discrepancy, although we have moved a long way since those CNN were taken. Since the E-M evaluation was issued in January 2005, it is clear that the discrepancy at precinct level was far greater than anything implied by those screenshots, and, contrary to belief in some quarters, the measure I myself suggested to quantify the precinct level discrepancy results in greater weight being given to the discrepancy in more partisan precincts than the "WPE" of the E-M report - ironically, in those precincts in which fraud has, variously, been alleged to be targetted. And no, the discrepancies could not be the result of sampling error which is what, presumably you mean by "by chance". There was clearly a systematic bias somewhere; the question is whether that bias was in the way the votes were counted or in the way the respondents were sampled. As I've said elsewhere, both these theories (bias in the count; bias in the poll) give rise to testable hypotheses, and my own, current conclusion is that hypotheses arising from the first are, at best, minimally supported (discrepancies seem to be higher in urban areas using older technology, which, if anything, implicates old-fashioned Democratic residual vote problems associated with precincts like those that cost Gore the presidency), whereas support for hypotheses arising from the second is substantial.

So I suggest that far from being "a fact to be entered into the discussion" the exit poll discrepancy is a potentially disastrous red herring. A voting system that cannot be audited, that cannot be relied on, that is capable of being hacked, and which many voters do not trust, is no system for a democracy. Period.

[autorank]

11. Election 2004 was stolen by White House Republican Operatives

That's the reason election integrity exists. There was election fraud.

When I see "neutral" presentations of the crime of election fraud it makes me wonder why there is a willingness to forget Ohio 2004, Florida 2000, Georgia 2002, Ohio 2005 (Hackett) and 2005 (special measures). How does it make any sense to forget that the overwhelming majority of complaints filed in 2004, overwhelming, were complaints about voter suppression, vote switching and statistical improbabilities like "red shift?" It's like blaming the British equally for World War Ii because the fought, while ignoring the fact that they were attacked and fighting for their lives.

This is not a neutral issue. I suspect that a real majority of Americans now believe that 2004 was stolen. Why tiptoe around the issues.

I like Chuck Herrin and appreciate his efforts. He's not my go to guy on how to deal with Republican politics (and remember Democrats and Republicans have a third force, independents who are highly skeptical as a group).

Here is Paul Craig Roberts, a columnist with impeccable conservative credentials. "He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury (under Reagan)." He holds views today consistent with the past and he just loathes Bush and writes columns for conservative publications several times a month like this:

Evidence of a Stolen Election
by Paul Craig Roberts Jan 19, 2006
http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts140.html
(A Review of Mark Crispin Millers "Fooled Again."
Roberts included a book graphic anda link to
Amazon.com in his article!)

As coincidence would have it, Mark Crispin Miller’s new book, Fooled Again (Basic Books), documenting the Republican theft of the 2004 presidential election, arrived in the same mail delivery with the January 12 edition of the Defuniak Springs Herald, the locally owned weekly newspaper in a Florida panhandle county seat.

The Florida panhandle is thorough-going Republican. Even Democrats run as Republicans. Nevertheless, the newspaper’s editor, Ron Kelley, believes that American political life is measured by something larger than party affiliation. In his editorial, "The shepherds and the sheep," Kelley reports that two Florida counties have banned any further use of Diebold voting machines after witnessing a professional demonstration that the machines, contrary to Diebold’s claim, are easily hacked to record votes differently from the way in which they are cast by voters.

The pre-election statement by Diebold’s CEO that he would work to deliver the election to Bush was apparently no idle boast. In five states where the new "foolproof" electronic voting machines were used, the vote tallies differed substantially from the exit polls. Such a disparity is unusual. The chances of exit polls in five states being wrong are no more than one in one million. (snip)

Miller directs our attention to Bush’s high-handed treatment of dissenters. If electronic voting machines programmed by private Republican firms remain in our future, dissent will become pointless unless it boils over into revolution. Power-mad Republicans need to consider the result when democracy loses its legitimacy and only the rich have anything to lose.

Here's the editor of American Conservative on Amy Goodman.

Here's Scott McConnell on Amy Goodman's Show. He's editor of The American Conservative:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/02/1522253
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined right now by Scott McConnell, who is executive editor of The American Conservative, author of the article on the November 8 issue, endorsing Kerry. The headline: “Kerry is the One.” Why are you so critical of George Bush?

SCOTT McCONNELL: Well, he has made very, very bad decisions as president, and the invasion of Iraq is, I think, the worst decision any American president has made, certainly since World War II, and perhaps longer. And it's made -- if democracy means anything, somebody who makes a decision like that has to be thrown out of office.

AMY GOODMAN: Go through the key issues that you feel that President Bush has betrayed you on.

SCOTT McCONNELL: Well, first, adopting a kind of wildly ambitious, reckless neoconservative foreign policy, which is quite the antithesis of his father's foreign policy, which was always prudent and sensible, and multilateral.

...and Roberts again, pulling no punches.

From Superpower to Tinhorn Dictatorship

by Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts151.html

America is headed for a soft dictatorship by the end of Bush’s second term. Whether any American has civil rights will be decided by the discretionary power of federal officials. The public in general will tolerate the soft dictatorship as its discretionary powers will mainly be felt by those few who challenge it.

The congressional elections this coming November are the last chance for for Americans to reaffirm the separation of powers that is the basis of their civil liberties. Unless the voters correct their mistake of putting both the executive and legislative branches in the hands of the same party and deliver the House or the Senate to the Democrats, there is nothing on the domestic scene to stand in the way of more power, and less accountability, being accumulated in the executive.

It's very bad policy to pretend that election fraud is neutral when one party, the Republicans hold the huge almost exclusive advantage.

It's very bad policy to say we should tiptoe around conservative supporters of Bush, when many of the leaders of that movement call him a tyrant and a major conservative magazine endorsed Kerry.

Elation fraud is a crime. When a crime is committed you don't sweet talk the criminal or his/her associates. You provide evidence, investigate, and convict. You make sure it never happens again.

FRAUD IS THE REASON WE NEED INTEGRITY!!!

[DemReadingDU]

12. FRAUD IS THE REASON WE NEED INTEGRITY!!!

Excellent!

Still, there are a lot of people who would much rather watch American Idol than take an interest in voting. If they don't vote, how would they know there is fraud?

And there are plenty of people who vote, who think all elections are honest.


Appreciate all your efforts to get the word out about election fraud. Slowly, more people are waking up. Thanks!

[Land Shark]

14. And republicans lose their freedom of choice too

even if they still support the * regime, they lose their freedom to change their mind and have it mean anything even if so many others agree with them. And the country loses its ability to change direction.

That inability to change direction is bad enough. Heard on radio last night that Kissinger said they were prepared to see a communist takeover of South Vietnam earlier on than we thought so long as it was a "decent interval" after America left so America could save face. ("How many have to die for a mistake") Well, then I guess if we eliminate meaningful elections than we will have perpetual war, someday. Even perpetual war is possible, isn't it? If the ability of the people to reject their leaders is no longer meaningful?

[autorank]

16. Perpetual war comes from perpetual lies. SOMEONE is telling the lies.

And ths someones will be the very same group that steal elections...all part of the big lie.

This is ultimately a non partisan issue because there are few Republicans who outright endorse stolen
elections. I suspect that tiny group would consist of the perpetrators and a few of the nihilists who
hate democracy, a tiny faction. The vast majority of Americans find election fraud offensive.

Raising the fraud issue is not partisan but failing to point to the partisans committing the crime is not rational. To stop the crime, you need to know the MO and the "usual likely suspects."

[mod mom]

20. Amen. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. These criminals who are acting

for their own self interest are a detriment to all. We must expose them for what they are, and NOT brush their crimes under the perverbial rug. Expose them for what they are and what they did so all will realize that this antisocial and inhumane behaviour will NOT be tolerated by society. How can be we consider moving forward without looking behind?

I for one, am not this for simply change in regime but instead for routing out the cancer and making the patient not only healthy but also teaching preventative measures for the future.

Fair Transparent and Verifiable Elections!

[Febble]

18. No, integrity is the reason you need integrity

Surely no-one is saying that if it could be shown that 2004 wasn't stolen, that integrity would no longer matter?

Integrity matters, period. If you can't be sure your vote is counted, you don't live in a democracy, and that remains true whether or not a single vote was stolen in 2004.

[mod mom]

13. Auto, You are correct that the recent history of election fraud occurred

was carried out by criminal and un-American tactics of the GOP. There is a "quaint" phrase called equal protection that should ensure voters have equal access to cast their votes. This has not been occurring. In a recent post I attempted to demonstrate how the effects of suppression through voter registrations and purges, misallocation of machines and placing unreliable machines, uncounted votes in precints with higher percentage of peole of color and GOP dirty tricks, played such a huge role in the election outcomes. This disenfranchisement tainted the vote and cause the wrong person to be placed in the White House (and other offices).

We need to confront this criminal activity and hold whover carries it out, regardless of party (in recent history-it was the GOP) accountable for their actions. We have paid a huge price in allowing this to occur. I am a huge Al Gore fan, but I don't agree with his recent comments inferring the alternative was revolution. Had more people joined us, especially John Kerry in '04, we could have used boycotts and protests to demand change. If any of our elected leaders think that this time the GOP will rolll over and play fair, I have a bridge to sell them (proceeds of which will be used toward election reform :) )

We MUST face the past criminal activity and hold those who carried it out accountable. In my state of Ohio, our Secretary of State, who carried out the theft will be responsible for the upcoming election where he is running for Governor-yet we have heard practially zilch (the Dems have asked him to recuse himself, which he prompted refused) from the Democratic party about what occurred. Worse yet, they have done little to prevent the tactics that effected huge numbers of their base voters from re-occurring. They have also not acted upon new laws (HB3) put in place by the GOP controlled legislation to require voter IDs by demanding issuance of voter IDs to their base voters.

That said, I realize now that we can NOT rely on any party to force change, but must rely on ourselves to force the issue.

IT WASN'T HYPE!!!!!

[mod mom]

15. LINK TO IMPORTANT ARTICLES ON GOP DIRTY TACTICS:

This is not hype:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=429411&mesg_id=429411

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

19. Get these Dems to Stop Supporting the "Game"

“Dear Colleague,” Rep. Robert Ney, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D), Sen. Mitch McConnell, Sen. Chris Dodd (D), March 3, 2004.
They warned that amending HAVA to require VVPB would cause
"numerous adverse unintended consequences. Most importantly, the proposals requiring a voter-verified paper record would force voters with disabilities to go back to using ballots that provide neither privacy nor independence, thereby subverting a hallmark of the HAVA legislation.”
www.house.gov/cha/dearcolleaguemarch3-04.htm

Georgia's Secretary of State, Cathy Cox, (Democrat) could easily be considered the official Poster Girl for Diebold Election Systems, Inc. ...
www.countthevote.org/cathy_diebold.htm


Maryland's Secretary of State, Linda Lamone (Democrat) is a staunch defender of Diebold:
Maryland is of national interest because Lamone is the President of the National Association of
State Election Directors (NASED) and the most vociferous advocate for paperless voting in the United States.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=5932

Joe Andrew, former head of Democratic National Committee became a PR person for Diebold
in August of 2005.
http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/PersonDetail.aspx?PersonID=714249

Joe Andrew is a lawyer, former election official and former National Chair of the
Democratic National Committee. He advises Diebold Election Systems on voting industry standards.
http://tinyurl.com/zy6ys (cache of Oakland Tribune )

Joseph J. Andrew, who was head of the Democratic National Committee from 1999 through 2001,
is now lobbying for Diebold, where he is demonstrating that he is even more mendacious than
the veracity-challenged Mark Radke, the PSI (damage control) firm's David Bear,
the protective Marvin Singleton, and the script-reading Joe Richardson.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Andrew

08/20/2005
Diebold hires top Dem for PR blitz
Former party chairman make the case for voting to California
With a phone call and a retainer, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell has launched former Democratic National Committee
chairman Joe Andrew on a 50-state ambassadorship for electronic voting."
http://www.wheresthepaper.org/InsideBayArea08_20DieboldHiresTopDemForPRBlitz.htm

Diebold needs California - which is why they've hired Andrews to get it for them. "
California, the nation's largest market for voting machines and the place where
Diebold's fortunes as the largest supplier of e-voting machines in the nation could be made or broken".


Harris Miller, running for US Senate as Virginia Democrat,
As head of the ITAA, Miller specifically lobbied Congress against verified voting, on behalf of the
interests of Diebold and other manufacturers of paperless e-voting machines -- members of ITAA.

The ITAA PAC, of which Miller was President, Treasurer, and Top Donor, donated 89% of its PAC Income to Republicans between 1997 and 2000.
http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/PersonDetail.aspx?PersonID=268428

The vendor community doesn't like it. "We oppose the idea of a voter-verified paper trail," says Harris Miller, president of the trade group Information Technology Association of America. Introducing paper into the mix, he says, defeats the improved efficiency and reliability e-voting promises. "There was never a golden age when paper ballots were accurately counted," Miller says. Adding paper to e-voting will only make the process of administering elections more costly and time-consuming without improving accuracy, opponents assert. http://www.cio.com.au/index.php/id;558873322;fp;4;fpid;21

More about Harris and Diebold, as well as other things not so positive here:
http://www.sctnominationwatch.tpmcafe.com/story/2006/1/6/23532/17147

Steve Metcalf, former democratic NC state senator turned Diebold lobbyist.
Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (Resigned 3/27/2006)
http://www.secretary.state.nc.us/lobbyists/Lobbyist.aspx?PId=5080

George Nixon Gilbert, democrat and Director of Guilford County NC Elections:
12/24/2005 High Point Enterprise. Company Root of Controversy- by David Nivens, staff writer.
Gilbert calls the Diebold critics “fanatical.”
“These machines are used in states from Georgia to California,” Gilbert said.
“Diebolds are just as reliable as other machines. They all use the same software and they all have software errors.”