Look what happens when people actually pay attention to their democracy. As reported in today’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel…
Supervisor of Elections Lester Sola made the recommendation Friday in an initial analysis of the county’s voting system and the feasibility of adopting a new one. In his report, Sola said that adopting the simpler system could save county taxpayers millions and restore voter confidence by providing a paper record of ballots cast.
…
Sola’s report comes days after a voter advocacy group released a disparaging report that cited a litany of problems during last fall’s general elections, among them malfunctioning voting machines.
We previously linked to a Miami Herald news article describing the report referred to above.
The report from earlier this month demonstrated, amongst other things, that “there were 5,917 cases where there were more votes than signatures” and that “In another 2,208 cases, there were more signatures than votes.”
The voting machines in question, which failed the voters and costs millions of wasted tax dollars, were made by Electronic Systems & Software (ES&S), one of two companies (along with Diebold) which record and count 80% of the votes in the United States of America.
UPDATE: From Miami-Herald’s article today on the same issue…
Broward County also uses ES&S machines.
Dade is one of ES&S’ biggest clients. The company has more than 40,000 units in 20 states.
…
In Broward, there is no effort to replace the [ES&S] iVotronics the county purchased for $17.2 million in late 2001.
…
”It doesn’t really make any sense to put more money into these machines that nobody trusts,” Sorenson said.
Either way, the county will continue to pay for its decision to buy iVotronics — at least for the next seven years. It owes ES&S $20.5 million.
ATTENTION BROWARD COUNTY (and all other counties and Secretary’s of State now using or considering purchasing from ES&S and other private and unaccountable voting machine companies): Save your tax payers’ money NOW! Don’t buy these pieces of junk from irresponsible companies like ES&S and Diebold!
FURTHER UPDATE: ES&S seems to be gaming the system further in what appears to be a specific bid by the company to supress sales of technology by AutoMARK which creates both a paper trail and assists disabled voters. ES&S entered an agreement with AutoMARK to help sell their machines, but appears to be in the business of doing precisely the opposite! Thanks to John Gideon of VotersUnite.org for his excellent work on this report exposing the chicanery that ES&S is up to!
Wow! Do you suppose the good people of Miami-Dade know something that the rest of the country doesn’t?
Woo hoo! Both Pennsylvania & Florida election officials are acknowledging what’s right in front of their faces. They’re making decisions that are in the best interests of both democracy and thier state economies. Now, if only these election officials would start talking to other election officials in the rest of the states.
It’s not like they need to propose their own idea for a 100% accurate voting process. All they need to do is say "Look – These e-vote machines from ES&S and Diebold have problems with accuracy. There is a much bigger margin of error with them than we had with paper ballots. Plus these e-vote machines are costing our states millions of dollars. The right thing to do is to void their contracts and stop using their e-vote machines."
You’d think the crummy machines had a warranty, and Miami Dade would not be liable for the 20 million bucks they still think they owe? Isn’t there a lemon law for voting machines (-;
crime of the century: these companies are accessories before and after the fact.
this is from my friend ms in la who is working on an election fraud piece we’ll be presenting to General Clark soon…
"Blackwell has insisted on Optical Scan for all of Ohio courtesy of Diebold. Florida is pushing for the same, threatening to throw out $25 million worth of Touch Screens and go straigh OptiScan.
Guess it’s got nothing to do with the fact that in Fla. bush easily won every Optical Scan county!
This is a sneaky new repub trick. They maintain they distrust eletronic machines as if capitulating to voting activists, and want to return to paper ballots. But they leave out the part about the ballots electronic tabulation again. Now they want to throw in encrypted paper trails whose code would be known to vendors alone. Same thing. And they keep striking the word "ballot" out of the new legislation in the states to strip the paper record of any legal status. Tricky, tricky people these pubs are."
Brad,
Excellent work on spreading the news and it’s good news that we’re going to paper ballots. We have to watch out for the tabulators though.
America’s Work Stories
http://usaworkstorieis.blogspot.com
usaworkstories@aol.com
I think the best way to protest unreliable voting machines is for everyone to vote only by absentee ballot. Good solid papertrail. A voter can copy their ballot before mailing it in, so there could a double check
Comment #4 is correct, Brad. Do your homework! Optical scanners on paper ballots were just as high a discrepancy exit polls vs. final count, as electronic voting machines. The key phrase is "IN CERTAIN COUNTY’S"!!!!! There’s the best analysis I’ve seen on this, at:
http://www.freezerbox.com/archi...cle.asp?id=321
It explains, by analysis and statistics, how certain county’s exit polls vs. machine count broke sometimes 16% for Bush, in countys with paper ballots, but those paper ballots are counted by electronic optical scanners!!! This site explains all the "spots" from paper ballots to the final machine optical scanner counting, where there is no security and the count can be hacked.
Brad, I believe the only accurate state was Washington, where they mail in their ballots.
There’s some good graphs here:
http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/...tion_2004.html
that haven’t been explained yet, either.
Read this article:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/o...gonvote23.html
…about how Oregon is the most accurate state, where exit polls matched the final count, and they are the ONLY STATE WITH MAIL-IN BALLOTS!!!
Here is a quote from the article:
"Oregonians have discovered that Vote by Mail is the most effective, efficient and fraud-free way to conduct an election.
At its core Vote by Mail works and is wildly popular because it returns control of the act of voting to the place it belongs: the voter. As a voter, you know when to expect your ballot in the mail, you decide when and how you want to mark your ballot and you decide when you want to turn it in (as long as it is in by 8 p.m. on Election Day)."
According to the article, the advantages of conducting elections entirely by mail are clear:
***Voter participation: It increases turnout — 84 percent of registered Oregonians voted this year.
***Convenience: People can vote according to their schedule.
***Education: People have time to study issues and candidates before voting.
***Fraud protection: It has built-in safeguards that increase the integrity of the elections process.
***Built-in paper trail.
***Voter eligibility: Built-in time to resolve disputes.
***Actual results are released when polls close as opposed to unreliable "exit polls."
***Financial: It saves money.
Brad, we’ll never see this in all the states, because it’s the best system. States should have a referendum to go "Vote-By-Mail", then watch who fights against it the loudest!!! Those will be the ones who are hacking the votes!!!
I said "Washington" instead of "Oregon" at the beginning of my last comment. Too bad we can’t edit our comments, can we?
Big Dan – No, sorry, this software doesn’t allow for user editing of comments 🙁
As to your comment, I’m well aware of the numerous concerns there are re: Optical Scanners. For one, they need to be counted on the precinct level (as opposed to a centralized tabulator).
Even with the various problems, however, the upside is that to use them a PAPER ballot needs to be created. Which, in Miami-Dade, means that at least votes (if there was a will) would not be lost!
Yes, the paper can still be gamed. And yes, the paper can be non-voter-verified and/or encoded which is a problem as well.
But again, point is, we wouldn’t have gotten even *this* far if not for groups like the one who forced Miami-Dade to examine their system.
We can’t solve everything in one fell swoop, but we can take some measure of victory for various places where things are moving in the RIGHT, instead of WRONG direction.
What do you think of "Vote-By-Mail"? Like Oregon does? Please answer, if you get a chance…
re #4 and #7 — I’m hoping the Democrats can get a bit tricky too and implement a two-step strategy [yes, I know it’s asking a lot!] where the first step is to bring in paper ballots and the second step is to get rid of the scanners. Fingers crossed…
#3 and related- any indication that counties might sue Diebold for damages- at least to get the purchase money back? Granted, I don’t have a lot of faith in the courts right now…
Fight fire with fire. If they won’t secure electronic voting machines, Dem operatives should hack the machines, at a ridiculous rate, just to prove they are not secure. For example, have a precinct with eVote machines, go 100% Democrat, with the total number of votes triple the registered voters. Just to bring to light how easy they can be hacked into.
Just remember, eVote scandals are not being addressed because Republicans control both houses of congress. Dems should highlight how the GOP is suppressing eVote security measures. It’s not being trumpeted enough by Dems.
And when is a group of progressives going to start a news cable channel? If they do, they should call it "FACTS AREN’T LIBERAL", or "F-A-C-TV".
Re: vote-by-mail there is a long history of fraud with this methodology. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do it well, just that there is a lot of be careful of.
(E.g. in some places, handling of absentee and postal votes was subcontracted out to private companies–this is one of the reasons for vote fraud recently uncovered in the UK.)
A paper ballot handed in to a precinct on election day would be safer.