Texas held their first round of Primary Elections last night since adding new electronic voting equipment to loads of counties around the state. It was one of the first Primary Elections to occur since the Help America Voting Act (HAVA) kicked in this year.
If today’s ‘Daily Voting News’ by John Gideon is any indication, America is in for one hell of a mess this year. Take a look at just a few of the headlines from just the Texas section of today’s DVN…and keep in mind that usually the real problems held in ‘E-Lections’ don’t even begin to surface until some time after Election Day…
We have a feeling it’s gonna be a very long year…
Welcome to "Wally" World.
Voting is headed in the same direction as the new Medicare Drug Benefit Program. A fiasco. Thanks to computers, we ingenious yankees are now able to make everything so complicated that Murphy’s Law is the law of the land. But of course it’s not the computers’ fault. It’s that we as a culture have denied the lost our grip on reality. We started out bending and shaping it to sell products, and ended up denying that reality objectively exists. And now we’re lost in a void of unmeaning.
Nothing works right anymore. It isn’t a problem confined to government, either. Corporations suffer from it just as badly. It’s becoming typical of every large organization.
I raised the question in a previous post as to whether we will even be able to hold elections in November, with all the labyrinthian problems of lawsuits, certifications, and machine failures. It is very possible that every major election in the US this fall is going to look like Florida in 2000.
#2 –
"…Every major election… is going to look like Florida in 2000."
How ’bout minor elections, too? Don’t you think they’re gearing up to try to steal mayoral and city council and school board and dogcatcher races? I’m sure of it!
As long as there are voodoo voting procedures, the Pubs will continue to try to use them.
Of course, even where we have a paper trail, we still need to use the paper for random recounts of computer-counted (whether on DREs or scan machines) votes. We must be vigilant and make sure that the election commissions use the physicallity of paper ballots to get fair vote #s…
In fact, all y’all need to try to join the election commission in your neighborhood…
peace out,
Shannon
Add Tarrant County to the list.
Somehow 100,000 extra votes showed up (link here).
Notice the BIG, BIG difference is that the company that made the machine admitted their error:
"The system did what we told it to do," said John Covell, a vice president with Hart. "We told it incorrectly."
Wow, are you listening Wally? This is an example of telling the truth.
The truth is the way to fixing problems, the faith based voting system is not.
Sing with me!!
"It’s the end of the world as we know it.. It’s the end of the world as we know of it today.. It’s the end of the world as we know it… And I feeeeeel fine.."
Problem is, where do several dozen million informed Americans go to escape this crap? Cananda saw it coming, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to get there.. Europe? Lots of places are as upside down as here.. Austrailia? I hear there are all kinds of problems starting down there too.. Perhaps it’s time to just "cut and run" and buy a nice hunting rifle, some decent gear, some "science tools" and books, and head out to the middle of nowhere in Alaska or Canada or something. Some uninhabited "cold" place that will be warm in 10 – 15 years.. Plus, if the Nukes fall, don’t want to be anywhere near civilization..
Dredd, in your link it says that 100,000 votes appeared, but were equally disbursed among the candidates.
I have a question: How does a glitch also contain a mathematical computation to divide mysterious 100,000 votes among all candidates?
That would mean it was somehow tracking the 100,000 votes, and then dividing it by the # of candidates, keeping track of how many candidates there were too, off to the side somewhere. That doesn’t make sense to me. I’d like them to explain further.
Their explanation consists of, "well the mysterious 100,000 votes were disbursed evenly, so it didn’t hurt anything." A computation had to "accidentally" occur to divide the 100,000 votes evenly. Doesn’t sound like an accident or a glitch, to me. Although they admitted it, which was nice. But what if it was a small amount that couldn’t be detected? Because it was 100,000, it was detected.
Big Dan, it could be as simple as "the first vote for a candidate added 20000 votes" or something like that. Then -any- candidate that got a vote got inflated by the same amount, and there was no need for "hanky panky".. We’d need to know more to do the numerical analysis on it to know for sure.. or look at the code and find the bug.
I think the point is, we’re seeing MORE and MORE problems with more machines brought in. We need to take a step back.. KISS.. I don’t understand this American "need" to use technology just because you can. Technology is a tool to be used when "appropriate", not "just because".. yet Americans don’t seem to get that, as a rule.
Right. Just this one example, of the 100,000 mystery votes, is bad. And there’s thousands of examples. This is beyond a doubt proof that electronic machines are bad. It’s absurd when officials say things like, "well, they were dispersed evenly, though." I hate when they say things like that, or "they can be explained."
How about, THEY SHOULDN’T HAPPEN!
Savantster at #5 — You should be happy, happy happy!
You shouldn’t lose any sleep over few thousand brown people burned alive. Over very likely loss of the Sierra snowpack in a couple of decades resulting in water deprivation for over 20,000,000 people. Or the fact that everything our nation stands for has been flipped to the opposite.
Be happy. Indulge in the corporate opium. Get a big car while there is still relatively cheap oil and have fun! There’s nothing wrong with being a complete fool!
…I don’t think the world will end with a wimper, but with a vacant stare and an idiot grin.
(But we’re having our own – a bit more mature – fun here, aren’t we?)
Unirealist, #2, is right. Nothing works. It’s like a trip down the rabbit hole to be an American now. The forces of "KAOS" are everywhere. There are people using this as an opportunity, and the rest of us are reeling from the multifarious insults to our constitution/s… if you catch my drift. "…denying that reality objectiively exists." Guess what, folks! It does!
Agent99 – Yep. And dealing with reality is where true meaning is. And deep fulfillment. Diversion, wishful thinking and head-in-the-sand will never compare and won’t solve anything. (I love the "KAOS" remark coming from "Agent99" – I like your take on things revealed by your online name.)
Dredd#4, Big Dan #6,
Re: Tarrant County irregularities
John Washburn has just posted at BBV why he believes the official explanation is fraudulent.
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bi...8500#POST18500
Thanks, Arry. It’s an archetype for the ages!
So, Arry, been bungling around in my flippy life the past couple hours with your "…dealing with reality is where true meaning is," floating around in my head. I do not think I’ve heard or read another human making this fundamentally-crucial point in years. I sure hope people catch *your* drift.
There’s so much rumor and opinion and nefarious information out there that, not only do people confuse their participation in blog commentary with social action, but they completely miss the utter void of meaning in their lives while mesmerized by having an opinion.
It really is a KAOS plot out there, and it could be foiled if enough of us would drop our conditioned habit of slapping an opinion on whatever comes our way (forgetting that this, of itself, solves nothing). Bad guys understand that people believe their opinions will fix things, and go about their merry business while we deplore it. Grown-ups look at reality, and proceed accordingly.
Folks:
I wonder whether our (CA) primaries will fare better than TX’s primaries. I just received the following rather comforting email from our lovely California Secretary of State. I guess I have nothing to worry about . . .
Pran
—– Original Message —–
From: "Elections Web Mail"
To: Pran@ccccc.ccccc
Subject: RE: PLEASE Reverse your decision to certify Diebold machines
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 15:21:11 -0800
Thank you for your e-mail regarding Diebold’s OS and TSX equipment and its certification with conditions for the 2006 elections.
Secretary McPherson shares your concern that we have only the most secure, reliable voting systems, and he is committed to ensuring the accuracy and integrity of every vote cast. That is why he has established the most stringent requirements for voting systems in the nation.
The recent Diebold certification decision comes after the touch screen and optical scan systems have met the most rigorous federal and state standards. In addition, both the independent panel of experts from the University of California and the federally-approved Independent Testing Authorities have indicated that the Diebold AccuVote Optical Scan and the AccuVote TSX systems can safely be used for our elections, with the additional security and use procedures we have in place in California. These stringent use procedures and security measures include requirements that the elections official reset the encryption key prior to programming any units; that each memory card have a permanent serial number assigned to it and be programmed in a secured facility under the supervision of the registrar of voters/registrar of voter’s staff; and that each unit be sealed with a serialized, tamper-evident seal. These security measures must be in place before the June 2006 election. For a more complete list of these enhanced security and use requirements, please visit our website at
Secretary McPherson has established clearly articulated expectations and standards required of voting systems and their vendors so that all who wish to be considered for use in California now know, for the first time, exactly what will be expected of them.
The Secretary remains committed to ensuring the reliability and accuracy of every vote, and that is precisely why he has set such high performance criteria to ensure that the integrity of the vote has been protected. With these qualifications for our voting systems, we believe voters can have confidence in the electoral process and the equipment used to capture their votes.
Thank you again for your feedback and for taking the time to share your thoughts.
Sincerely,
Elections Web Mail Representative
Agent 99 – I’ll return the compliment. Couldn’t be truer – about opinions and reality.
I believe if Brad Bloggers and all the other terrific people trying to turn the country around would focus on living and evolving reality, rather than on opinions, and rather than on their own diversionary feelings of weakness or depression, rather than on fear of the future, it would conserve a lot of energy, psychological wear-and-tear, and they would be far more effective and alive. (Mindfulness, you know. The zen of activism. I studied deeply the zen of Get Smart!)
[[Because I was given this info from "a guy who heard it from a guy…" (and who knows how far back that string goes, or who any of the "guys" along it were…) in an unrelated discussion about long-standing disparities in local politics and governance, you probably shouldn’t quote me on it directly. BUT the individual is both someone whom I’ve never known to show the slightest hint of even so much as embellishing on truth (or even speaking at all, unless he has something relevant and poignant to contribute), and someone who could very easily be in a position to have received viable info from a directly involved source (whom he presumably trusts to have viable info to give–which I say based on the way he carries himself coupled with his willingness to pass such info on).]]
At any rate, I live in Dallas Co. (right next to Tarrant Co. to the east), and it has been whispered that there were some "irregularities" in the results of the primaries here, too. Supposedly very strange ones. VERY. Nothing’s been said because they weren’t too majorly huge and someone somewhere is (allegedly) still trying to make some kind of sense about it and come up with an explanation…although, it should be noted that (IF(!) it’s true), lots of relevant, negative info and other damning things of many various interests have a tendency to "disappear" or get shushed up pretty thoroughly around here when the right elements (most of them having to do with either good friends/connections to old money in the area or with [LOTS of] dead presidents) are involved.
For my part, I find it doubtful that it could be too big or meaningful without someone noticing, what with the FBI (and god knows who else) taking up permanent residence downtown to investigate various city council members and ?? how many other city and/or county officials for, well, let’s just say that the aforementioned tendency toward vanishing on the part of relevant info is a small part of it…so who knows?
Cuellar wins by a glitch again!
See page 13 of problems with ES&S here:
Bexar County, Texas. Misprogramming causes the Unity software to balk at accumulating votes
from the optical scan machines used to count absentee ballots. 36
Tabulation of the Bexar County votes was delayed for about 1 1/2 hours, beginning about 8 p.m.
…"They have big problems," said Nick Peña, a poll watcher for District 28 U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez,
D-San Antonio. "They look very worried.
"They have a bunch of technicians in the tabulation room, and they are pulling out wires and
reattaching them, and the computer screens are all frozen. You can tell that something is happening,"
Peña said.
… Borofsky said the delay occurred after it was discovered the tabulation computers hadn’t been
properly programmed with updated data in order to count the mail-in paper ballots.
The computer system then was taken off line and updated with the information needed to process
the 3,000 paper ballots, which were tabulated using high-speed scanners.
http://www.votersunite.org/info...Sinthenews.pdf
Tarrant County TX had problems before, learn from history as it tends to repeat itself:
See page 5 of this VotersUnite report:
http://www.votersunite.org/info...tinthenews.pdf
October 2004
Tarrant County, Texas. Electronic voting machines confuse voters, causing many to undervote. The
sequence of screens caused some voters to accidentally miss voting on the stadium referendum. 10
The biggest problem of the day was in Arlington, where poll workers fielded numerous complaints
from voters who said that the new electronic voting machines were confusing, and that they had
mistakenly cast their ballot without voting on the stadium referendum.
Parten said Arlington voters who cast straight-party ballots must press the "NEXT" button on the
voting machine to get to the stadium question.
Voters can also vote on the proposal once they reach the summary page of the electronic ballot, he
said.
"If you’re not paying close attention, you’re going to miss your chance to vote on the stadium," said
north Arlington resident Tom Been, who chose a straight-party ballot, but didn’t go to the last virtual
page on the computer screen.
He had hoped to vote against it.
"It’s very annoying, the way they set it up," he said.
October,
2004.
eSlate Tarrant County, Texas. Machine malfunctions disenfranchised voters when they froze instead of
accepting the access code entered by the voters.11
On Tuesday, … a set of voting booth computers shut down.
"It looked like a couple of older guys were still voting when the computer screens completely shut
down," said Cam Sanders, an Arlington teacher. "I think they were talking about whether their votes
were lost."
In Fort Worth on Tuesday, Singer said his wife and their friend waited nearly 1-1/2 hours to vote at
the Southwest Subcourthouse. But when their friend punched in the access code, he said, the
machine froze.
Singer said their friend was not given another chance to vote.
"I’m concerned because I wonder how many others were treated that way,"
Big Dan #6
All I can say is that the machines should work flawlessly or not be used.
"Close enough for gummit work" is not going to get it.
The only positive in the mess is that one vendor will admit to a problem and admit to it being his company’s fault.
That is a step Diebold and the others seem very, very reluctant to take.
I can work with someone that admits their mistakes and is willing to correct those mistakes.
How hard is it to tabulate the results of an election with an eVoting machine? Here’s an answer from an experienced programmer:
SELECT COUNT(CHOICE_A) AS SUM_A,
COUNT(CHOICE_B) AS SUM_B
FROM VOTE_TABS
There’s your count.
Get the picture?
I am very interested this theme, with attention I will read following informations.