Dopp reports/comments on latest regarding TX vote discrepancies

[Stevepol]

Quite a few counties in TX had highly suspicious results and Election Archive and Kathy Dopp have a summary of some of the most suspicious with sites to visit for corroboration.

Here's Kathy's take (please excuse the sloppy table. I haven't figure out how to make this come out right on a posting):

Dear Friends,

I forwarded you an email on yesterday's suspicious Texas primary election results but did not author it.

Here is my own take -

A FOLLOW-UP ON WHAT HAPPENED IN THE TUESDAY TEXAS PRIMARY ELECTION:

Did 21 counties in TX really have NO Republican voters?
Did 3 counties in TX really have NO Democratic voters?

Or did the voting machine software count the paper and the invisible e-ballots incorrectly?

-----------
Check out the CNN and Texas Secretary of State web sites.

http://enr.sos.state.tx.us/enr/mar04_135_race0.htm

http://enr.sos.state.tx.us/enr/mar04_136_race0.htm

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#TX

Here is the list of voting machines used in TX by county:

http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/forms/sysexam/voting-sys-bycounty.pdf
-------------

Probably the virtually impossible TX vote counts were not caused by fraud, but WERE caused by human error.

(Human error is the only kind of election error since humans build and program the machines, the ballot definitions, and the databases used to count votes.)

The counties with zero vote counts for either the Republicans or the Democrats used a variety of voting machines:

ES&S optical scanners and digital recording electronic (DRE) voting machines, and also Hart DRE and optical scan voting machines.

Texas also uses Diebold voting machines, but no counties using Diebold voting machines had zero votes counted for the Republicans or Democrats.

In Washington State's February primary they counted some Republican ballots as Democratic ballots also in some counties - where voters whose names contained particular letters had their ballots counted as Democratic ballots, even though many of them had voted as Republicans
- so the vote counts there were inaccurate in the same manner as Texas' vote counts are most likely inaccurate.

If Republican ballots were all counted as Democratic ballots in 21 Texas counties, then extra votes were awarded to Clinton or to Obama depending on the corresponding ballot positions of Republican primary candidates as compared to Clinton or Obama's position on the ballots.

I.e. If ballots were counted incorrectly in those 24 TX counties, then both the Republican and Democratic vote counts were inaccurate in TX.

Washington state used ES&S optical scan voting systems and the database of voters was incorrect (and perhaps other databases as
well.) It will be interesting to see what causes are associated with the incorrect vote counts in TX, and whether or not the DRE vote counts, without a paper ballot record, can be corrected at all or not.

Election officials seem to have a tendancy for covering up problems with the vote counts rather than routinely detecting, exposing, and correcting the inevitable errors. It is surprising that election officials do not notice these type of errors until after election advocates point out the virtually impossible patterns of vote counts.

If the press reports this virtually impossible phenomenon in TX it is likely that Republican voters will come forward (or the voter registries can be examined) to find Republicans who voted in the 21 counties, as well as Dem voters in the 3 counties claiming zero Dem votes.

What common errors could have caused so many counties (21) in TX to show no votes for all voters of either the Democratic or Republican party?

There may be a common error among those counties in the way they programmed their voting machines which caused all voters' ballots to be counted for only one party.

PERHAPS:

1. these counties used the same consultant to program their electronic voter registration or electronic poll books which improperly listed all voters as belonging to the same political party?

or

2. these 24 TX counties hired the same consulting firm to program their voting machines.

or

3. the county election officials all forgot, or were not trained to, sort the ballots prior to counting them, or to program the voting machines correctly,

or

4. the poll workers made errors (Vendors and Election Officials typically blame election problems on poll workers.)

or

5. the voters forgot to fill out a bubble to indicate what political party their ballot was

or

6. the ballot printers of optical scan ballots forgot to print different bar codes on the Republican and Democratic ballots

Computers magnify human error and the ability to commit vote fraud by a thousand-fold.

For instance, the States of MA, NH, and CT all use the same company, LHS, to program all their optical scan machines, and CT found in conducting audits of the memory cards during the election, that a high percentage of memory cards contained junk and were improperly programmed.

In New York State, election officials "forgot" to record Obama votes on the reports they submitted from the polls to the central election office. In New Jersey, the voting machines malfunctioned and counted votes incorrectly.

It seems probable that Clinton and Obama were awarded extra votes in Texas that were meant for Republican candidates - and probably not in the same proportion as Democratic voters.

The TX primary election vote counts are obviously not accurate - not even TX popular vote counts are accurate in the 24 counties are showing that either no Republicans or alternatively that no Democrats voted.

It could be that ALL ballots were counted as Democratic in those 21 counties and that votes for certain Republicans were counted incorrectly as votes for certain Democrats (perhaps Clinton).

Here is an excellent article, very well written, by a historian on the phenomenon of how press already improperly reported on the TX primary election contest between Obama vs. Clinton:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/030608a.html

I hope that press and TX election officials will investigate and uncover exactly what the problems were in TX and that TX election officials will try to correct the TX vote counts, rather than trying to convince the public that there were "no problems".

THE OTHER POSSIBILITY

is that ALL Texas Republicans crossed over in these 21 counties to try to influence the Democratic primary election. That would not be a flattering picture of Republican voters. Let's hope that was not the case.

Yet that would not explain the lack of any Democratic votes in 3 counties where there was not much reason for Democrats to cross-over and vote in the Republican primary.

The only way to know the cause(s) for this highly suspicious pattern in the Texas primary is to investigate all the more likely possibilities, that ballots were counted inaccurately, and eliminate it first.

Cheers,

Kathy

----------------------------------

Here is the Texas Vote Count Data for the 24 counties reporting zero votes for either Republicans or Democrats:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.
richardhayesphillips(AT)yahoo.com
March 5, 2008

Didn't anybody notice this?

It is now 24 hours after the polls closed in Texas.

In 21 counties, with 100% of precincts reporting, Nobody voted in the Republican presidential primary.

In 3 counties, with 100% of precincts reporting, Nobody voted in the Democratic presidential primary.

In the 21 counties with NO Republican voters, there were
87,919 registered voters, and
36,239 ballots cast,
all of them Democratic.

In the 3 counties with NO Democratic Voters, there were
5,212 registered voters, and
1,865 ballots cast,
all of them Republican.

In Maverick County,
ALL 9,661 ballots cast were Democratic.

In Hansford County,
ALL 1,235 ballots cast were Republican.

ONE-PARTY TEXAS COUNTIES, PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY, 2008

County xxx Registered Voters xxx Repub Votes xxx Dem Votes

Armstrong xxx 1404 xxx 369 xxx 0
Borden xxx 432 xxx 0 xxx 139
Brooks xxx 6385 xxx 0 xxx 3185
Cottle xxx 1230 xxx 0 xxx 471
Crockett xxx 2654 xxx 0 xxx 1166
Culberson xxx 1959 xxx 0 xxx 526
Dickens xxx 1410 xxx 0 xxx 612
Duval xxx 9331 xxx 0 xxx 5053
Foard xxx 1043 xxx 0 xxx 432
Hall xxx 2110 xxx 0 xxx 813
Hansford xxx 3101 xxx 1235 xxx 0
Hardeman xxx 2969 xxx 0 xxx 1086
Hudspeth xxx 1557 xxx 0 xxx 476
Kent xxx 665 xxx 0 xxx 250
La Salle xxx 4071 xxx 0 xxx 1392
Loving xxx 116 xxx 0 xxx 22
Maverick xxx 26224 xxx 0 xxx 9661
Reeves xxx 6337 xxx 0 xxx 2228
Roberts xxx 707 xxx 261 xxx 0
Stonewall xxx 1087 xxx 0 xxx 483
Throckmorton xxx 1175 xxx 0 xxx 513
Upton xxx 2139 xxx 0 xxx 823
Zapata xxx 7148 xxx 0 xxx 3190
Zavala xxx 7877 xxx 0 xxx 3718

But don't take my word for it. See for yourself.

http://enr.sos.state.tx.us/enr/mar04_135_race0.htm

http://enr.sos.state.tx.us/enr/mar04_136_race0.htm

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#TX

Election officials in the State of Texas have some explaining to do.

Richard Hayes Phillips is the author of the definitive book on the
2004 presidential election in Ohio
– "Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election."
For more information:richardhayesphillips(AT)yahoo.com



------------------------------

Kathy Dopp

The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author Kathy Dopp's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at

P.O. Box 680192
Park City, UT 84068
phone [phone]

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://electionarchive.org

History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf

Vote Yes on HR5036
http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/legislation/SummaryFlyer5036.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf

"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1816

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]

[panader0]

1. This shit makes me crazy.

[flamin lib]

2. Interesting. No counties showed 0 and 0. Also interesting is that

Texas votes by precinct so any error has to central to entire county, not any one poll worker.

In Tarrant Co we use Hart and the equipment isn't networked, so any tampering must be done precinct by precinct. It would take a LOT of work to hack an election that way.

Also in Tarrant there are two completely separate primaries-each party has its own equipment. If that is true of the ES&S system as well that would account for how one party was counted and one showed no votes.

I find the Hart system pretty idiot proof but it seems that the 6 counties I looked at used Hart 2:1. Hart isn't "reprogramed" for each election. As I understand it the machine reads fixed positions on the ballot and the only changes for each election is the names that are printed to referance those positions.

Further, the Hart system has two completly different and separate machines in each precinct; the optical scanner and a DRE (very helpful for vision impaired voters). Both systems would have had to fail. I can't see that happening.

So, it would appear that if there were a melt down it would have to occur at central tabulating.

Bottom line is that for the optical scanner, the paper is the actual ballot and the machine only a counter. If there were any votes cast on the scanner they still exist as a hard copy.

[Wilms]

4. So what that Hart machines aren't networked?

I heard a similar line last week that claims OpScans aren't networked like DREs so they're safer.

Nonsense, all.

The units are centrally programmed. That's your hack point. Then there's messing with memory cards to infect the system and mess with subsequent elections.

There is zero comfort that the machines aren't plugged into a network at the polling site.

This is like people giddy that they "vote on paper ballots" instead of DREs. :eyes:

The election reform movement has done itself a disservice introducing bogus ideas.

[flamin lib]

7. Voting systems that use optical scanners have a paper ballot, period.

In 2004 Tarrant county had an issue with massive over-votes. The ballpoint pens used to mark the ballots gummed up the optics causing the equipment to think every ballot was an over-vote. Because the paper marked is the BALLOT and the machine merely a counter the votes were all hand counted by election officials and the results only delayed for a few hours.

There is simply no way for a county using optical scan vote counters to have no votes to count. It may take a day or two to hand count and verify the paper ballots, but they exist.

It would be easier to "hack" an election at tabulation central using hand written results than it would be to "hack" using the current electronic equipment. It would also be easier to camouflage any tampering in an all hand-count/paper system.

The county election system here is staffed with full time professionals without regard to party affiliation. The people at the polls are volunteers who work elections every two years. In the primary they are partisan but in the general you don't know the affiliation of the person sitting next to you at the polling place.

Conspiracy theories about dark overlords at election central help no one.

[Wilms]

10. I haven't asserted "conspiracy theories about dark overlords at election central".

And most around here aren't easily punked by strawman arguments.

Now, how about them Hand Counts? Have they been scheduled? Is there an automatic, and statistically significant audit for all elections using these systems???

Clearly, there's a problem, so you might get a recount. But how often is a system error...let alone tampering...gone undiscovered.

You're cheer-leading.

[EFerrari]

13. And period is what you get unless those ballots are counted

in public and by people.

[L. Coyote]

16. Like assuming a child has different genes than its parents. Code is reproduced!

If the code is bad, the bad code is propagated to each unit.

For each election, the voting device is reprogrammed.
Each election is a new chain of custody event,
from code creation to final result publication.

[Stevepol]

14. Tarrant County had a big discrepancy a year or so ago I think,

but I can't recall what it involved. I believe they were able to resolve it by re-counting, but I could be wrong. Do you happen to remember or know what happened in that instance? Tarrant I don't believe is a strongly Republican County, and I remember thinking at the time that they took the necessary steps and resolved it pretty well.

I do think the optiscan is safer than the touch screens, but they can easily be rigged and hacked. I believe the device that Hari Hursti hacked in "Hacking Democracy" in the demonstration that Sancho supervised in his county in FL used optiscans, and the memory card was able to accommodate "executable code" (contrary to what the Diebold people said) and was used to hack the demonstration vote. Plus the central tabulator can turn the trick as well if there aren't audits for every election.

[L. Coyote]

3. How have candidates reacted?

[flamin lib]

5. To get a better understanding of the voting equipment provided

by Hart Intercivic go here: http://www.tarrantcounty.com/eVote/site/default.asp and look for the link in the upper right hand corner.

I'm not saying the system is perfect, just offering an overview so people can see how difficult it would be to have 0 votes because the system uses paper ballots for 70% of the votes cast (the DRE is paperless but few people choose to use it as it takes longer to vote it than to mark the paper ballot).

I have no experience with the ES&S.

My home town county uses iVotronic (I think) and had so much trouble getting accurate counts during testing that they chose to use paper and hand counts--what a nightmare!

[Wilms]

6. Oh, I'm sooooo sorry.

That info at the link obviously settles it.

Summary:

Steve Raborn, Tarrant County Elections Administrator, says electronic voting systems are safe.

Phewww. And here I was all nervous about e-voting.

I'll PM Skinner right away and let him know he can shut down this forum.

[flamin lib]

8. Look, if you don't want to be educated on how the system works

and what the strengths and weaknesses are please put me on ignore.

Thanks.

[Wilms]

9. Clearly, it is you in need of schooling. And I'd recommend educators other than a Texas BoE.

I don't want to be misinformed. And I don't want others misinformed, either. I mentioned above that there's a lot of misinfo...apart from disinfo...that clogs the movement.

If you don't like having your erroneous assertions challenged, get a blog without a comments section.

Problem solved.

[flamin lib]

15. Never mind, I've got ignore too. nt

[Melissa G]

11. Here is how the system works re counties in Texas

David Van Os posted this on another list I read. I doubt he would mind my reposting it here.
Here is his explanation below...
"
Armstong, Hansford, and Roberts are the 3 counties in Texas that as of now don't have Democratic county chairs. They are all in the upper Panhandle. So they didn't have Democratic primaries because there was nobody to hold one. In general elections the Democratic vote typically ranges from about 12% to about 22% in those counties. (As of 2006 there were about 7 or 8 counties that didn't have Democratic county chairs, but the palpable changing of the tide has led Democrats to come out in several of them and volunteer to serve as county chairs and organize a local Democratic party. For example, there is now a Democratic county chair in Ochiltree county for the first time in about 15 years, and Ochiltree County held a Democratic primary this year for the first time since then.)

There is an even greater number of rural West Texas and rural South Texas counties that don't have Republican county chairs, with some of them being Democratic counties in national and statewide elections and others being Republican counties in national and statewide elections. To explain more, an interesting quirk about rural Texas is that, outside of South Texas, in both eastern and western rural counties, there are quite a few counties where the last top-ticket Democrat that carried them was Jimmy Carter in 1976, but where the offices of county government are still held 100% by Democrats just like they have been ever since Reconstruction ended in 1877. It is just long, deep tradition. In county government offices, everybody runs in the Democratic primary and the elections are decided in the Democratic primary - even though the majority of the voters are Republican voters for the purposes of everything above the level of county government.

But in most rural South Texas counties, the huge majority of voters are simply Democrats period, for all purposes, and there is nobody to run as a Republican because no Republican could possibly get elected to anything.

David Van Os"

[EFerrari]

12. . . .

:spank: