On today’s BradCast, the attempt at verifiable citizen oversight of election results from the 2016 Presidential race gets underway in Wisconsin, and gets stopped dead in its tracks by a Trump legal filing in Michigan. All of that, even as more actual Republican voter fraud (yes, real voter fraud) is revealed by media and rewarded by Donald Trump. [Audio link to show is posted below.]
The state of Wisconsin officially began its *”recount” of some 3 million ballots cast in the 2016 Presidential election today, in the state where Trump reportedly defeated Hillary Clinton by just over 22,000 votes. Unfortunately, several of the largest jurisdictions have decided to simply re-tally their hand-marked paper ballots by the same optical-scan computers which tallied them (either correctly or incorrectly) in the first place. That, despite a host of computer science, security and voting systems experts who continue to argue as loudly as they can (including in recently filed court documents), the only way to know for certain how voters voted is to hand-count those ballots.
Meanwhile, in Michigan late today, where Trump reportedly won by just over 10,000 votes out of nearly 5 million counted, the Trump Campaign filed an objection to Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s request for a “recount” there. That legal maneuver will successfully delay the start of counting, which had been scheduled to begin on Friday in the state, until sometime next week. That’s a disturbing development, given that all states are federally mandated to have final certified numbers completed by December 13th. It’s an echo of the successful GOP efforts to stall and then block entirely, the statewide Florida “recount” in 2000. In a statement in response late today, Stein describes the Trump filing this way: “The Trump campaign’s cynical efforts to delay the recount and create unnecessary costs for taxpayers are shameful and outrageous.”
At the same time, Trump’s brain-addled supporters are buying his lie about “millions” having “voted illegally” in the 2016 election. They have fallen for it thanks, in no small part, to so many years of irresponsible reporting on the matter by corporate media over our publicly-owned airwaves. And yet, so far, the only “illegal” votes that have been found in the 2016 election (four cases in total) were all documented to have been cast by Republicans.
Nonetheless, as we have reported on very high profile Republicans like Ann Coulter and Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich and many others committing actual voter fraud and voter registration fraud over the years, Trump has now hired a voter fraud felon (see this from 2006) for a top White House national security advisory role. All of that American madness and much more on today’s BradCast…
* NOTE: The BRAD BLOG generally uses quotes around the word “recount” to denote post-election hand-counts of ballots which have never actually been counted by human beings, but rather, only tabulated by computers during the official tally. It’s impossible to know whether those computers actually tallied votes accurately unless paper ballots are examined by hand.
> Unfortunately, several of the largest jurisdictions have decided to simply re-tally their hand-marked paper ballots by the same optical-scan computers which tallied them (either correctly or incorrectly) in the first place. That, despite a host of computer science, security and voting systems experts who continue to argue as loudly as they can (including in recently filed court documents), the only way to know for certain how voters voted is to hand-count those ballots.
I’m not an expert on this but I wonder if there isn’t a way to do a recount more efficiently. I can well understand that you need ACCESS to all of the ballots. But it would seem that the ballots that we most need to focus on are undercounts, overcounts, provisional, and any others that are most likely to be miscounted or uncounted. I understand that the optical-scan computers don’t spit those out into a separate bin (like they should). If there isn’t a machine that can separate them out, perhaps a very rapid manual scanning of the ballots can find them. The “good” ballots could then be run through one or more optical-scan computers and that process could be audited to make sure that those appear to be getting read correctly (if not, then we have a VERY BIG problem). That may give more time to focus on anything else that the experts suggest such as getting access to the memory cards, etc. At the very least, this would seem far better than having any counties just re-tally the ballots using the same optical scan computers.
In the longer run, it really seems like we need to demand that the program code that counts votes be open-source and publicly available. Any programmer can tell you that bugs are much more likely to be found and fixed in open-source software. Professional analysts may be very good at finding certain types of problems but using open-source code brings in other types of scrutiny that is likely to find many other types of problems. And having such scrutiny will make it much, much less likely that some programmer will risk putting in a back door, much less be able to get away with it.
I guess elections are not as important as honestly counting the votes (Will Elections Cure The Disease? – 3).
Hi Brad.
I’m still chanting. Let me know if I can help.
Certainly you are right, machine counting ballots that were already machine counted is a distraction.
The Election Assistance Administration has done nothing to stop this kind of thing from happening.