Guest Blogged by John Gideon, of VotersUnite and VoteTrustUSA
The “DVN Top 5” is a feature in the weekly voting newsletter of VoteTrustUSA. The March 13 edition can be found here. The selection of what will be the “Top 5” for each week and where it goes on the list is all mine. The fact that you may disagree with my choices is great because it shows that you have been reading the DVN articles that I’ve posted throughout the week here on The BRAD BLOG!…
#5 � As reported on Friday by the Washington Post, Maryland Gov. Ehrlich is doing all he can to find the money in the state budget to bring optical-scan voting into the state. The state House has already voted to allow the state to lease optical-scan machines before the November elections. The state Senate, however, has other ideas and they have targeted that money to an electronic poll book adjunct to the Diebold touch-screen machines. In the meantime the Democrat dominated State Board of Elections is doing all they can to not have verifiable elections in the state.
#4 � Meanwhile in New Jersey the reliability of Sequoia voting machines and of the company itself is being questioned in court. As reported on Friday by both The Times of Trenton and The Star-Ledger, Sequoia’s Vice President of Sales, Howard Cramer, took the stand to defend his companies product and to respond to questions from plaintiffs attorney, Penny Venetis. Cramer told the court that Sequoia was developing a new printer (to be used on the Advantage DRE?) but under examination by Venetis he admitted that they were still working on bugs in the prototype and they could not guarantee that it would be commercially available.
This is a “two-front” court case at this time. The hearing last week was in county court and is limited to whether the state can meet the Jan. 1, 2008, deadline for having voting machines that produce a paper audit trail. Meanwhile, a state appeals court has reserved judgment on whether the machines used at the polls are so unreliable they violate the constitutional rights of voters. Before it rules, it wants to know whether the entire controversy is moot because all machines will soon produce paper trails that can be used to verify the accuracy of their tallies. It ordered the county court to find out.
The county court case should finish early next week and the appeals court has scheduled a hearing for 24 March.
#3 � What is a county to do when the state has ordered them to comply with the Help America Vote Act, they have contracts or verbal agreements with the vendors, and the vendors suddenly announce that they cannot provide machines and state required training on those machines in enough time for the state’s primary? That is a question being asked all over the state of Pennsylvania.
Advanced Voting Solutions, Elections Systems and Software and Danaher have all either told their customers they cannot be ready by the state’s May primary or they are not absolutely sure they will be ready.
Carbon Co. has been told by AVS that they may not be able to deliver enough machines for the primary.
ES&S has told Luzerne Co. that they cannot make delivery of machines for the primary.
Bucks Co. has set their minds on Danaher but Danaher is not sure they will have enough machines available to support a May primary election.
These are just a few of the counties that may be in a bind because the vendors spent their time selling machines and have not looked at whether they can manufacture the machines they are selling. And, remember that Sequoia told Ion Sancho in Leon Co. FL that they could not provide machines because they were over-extended.
#2 � After reports of failures of ES&S memory cards in Summit Co. Ohio, on March 9 and March 10 the report of failures comes from North Carolina. As reported in BRAD BLOG 1000 bad memory cards were found in the state and the reasons for failure of the cards has changed from just a low or dead battery issue to now being “read back errors” unrelated to the battery issue.
And in a side issue the EAC has again decided that it is better to bury their heads in the sand rather than to do their job and force ES&S to warn all of their customers or recall all of their memory cards.
#1 � On Monday, the
Secretary of State met with Ion in a meeting that was supposed to have been public but ended-up being “behind closed doors”. The Associated Press and Tallahassee Democrat have both filed protests over this issue.
Finally, the support for Ion Sancho has been overwhelming. Members of the County Commission received thousands of emails from supporters across the country. So many, in fact, that the commission ended-up giving Ion unanimous support.
John/Brad,
I’m puzzled that there is still no mention here at Daily Voting News or BradBlog about the most recent BBV investigation. It features the first independent investigation of Diebold TSx touchscreens thanks to Emery County (Utah) Clerk Bruce Funk. What gives?
This investigation has revealed serious security holes of significance for voters and election officials. It has also showed safety faults and poor construction that would never be approved for any conventional consumer product.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
Catherine – My understanding is that the "Top 5" is based on stories from the "Daily Voting News" over the past week.
The BBV stuff out of Utah only broke cursorily on Saturday with a few scant teaser/details.
Given what I’ve seen so far (and what I’ve heard from sources involved) I suspect there will be many stories concerning the new findings by Hursti in Utah in the coming week(s).
Can’t speak for John (who compiles both DVN and Top 5) but I’m just taking my best guess 🙂
Either way, no "puzzling" necessary I shouldn’t think, given the above.
Brad,
I felt the Saturday details were significant enough to deserve a mention. Just my opinion.
I’m sure there will be more coverage as things progress.
Keep well, and good luck with the VR ad campaign.
John
I am trying to stir up trouble. Hope you don’t mind.
Exit poll science provides tools that have been used for decades successfully. Accurate predictions are the legacy of these tools.
The 2000 and 2004 official election results were at odds with the exit poll predictions.
Those doing the polls, Edison/Mitofsky, were of the popular mindset "it can’t happen here". This mindset is not prepared to entertain any notion of election fraud as the reason for the massive first time discrepancies.
They instead offered the explanation that "republicans were more shy than democrats" and that is why the massive discrepancy. They did not even consider vote fraud.
A study done by 8 Phd’s and one MS pointed this out and that fraud must not be ruled out (link here). They said:
"3. Inaccurate Election Results [fraud]
Edison/Mitofsky did not even consider this hypothesis, and thus made no effort to contradict it. Some of Edison/Mitofsky’s exit poll data may be construed as affirmative evidence for inaccurate election results. We conclude that the hypothesis that the voters’ intent was not accurately recorded or counted [fraud]cannot be ruled out and needs further investigation" (ibid. at page 3, bold and "[fraud]" added).
Edison/Mitofsky and the MSM, who used the data, can’t bear to even consider that America could be corrupted in its election processes. Frankly it is beyond me how the hell they figure and stubbornly hold to that when the public does not trust the republican president nor the republican congress, and electronic voting machines have been outed.
Anyway, I hypothesize that since republicans have taken over the voting machine companies, they will try to take over exit polling. It is open to question and debate how they will try this.
They already have one company I discovered, and posted in #14 above (link here). My suspicions indicate that we should check out any deals between republican operatives in the republican regime and Edison/Mitofsky to see if they are trying to compromise from within.
Catherine A #1, #3
I posted about that story (or stories) here too (link here) soon after you first mentioned it.
It is an eye-opening and good news item!
Catherine A –
If you were a subscriber to Daily Voting News you would know that in fact I did post the BBV story, as it was shown on Scoop. I did that yesterday.
I don’t post the Sunday DVN on BRAD BLOG because I post the "Top 5" here and it goes in the VoteTrustUSA newsletter that goes out to a couple thousand subscribers.
Don’t forget gerrymandering
The personal attack than gerrymandering is can be felt in this article in a district that was bastardized by Tom DeLay (link here).
Much if not all of the Texas gerrymandering which DeLay did is racist in nature.
typo
I meant to type "The personal attack that gerrymandering is …"
I believe Bev posted an address for Bruce Funk and support in standing up to the malfunctions of the voting machines in a previous post. Not to be negative on exit polls, cuz they do have a place in un-hackable elections. In 2004 there was a mountain of data on the exit polls versus the election results and the outcome resulted in nothing. Do exit polls carry any weight? I’m inclined to think not. If they did, it would have showed up after the last election.
Mugzi #9 They only hold weight in the Ukraine. Did you ever see the exit polls talked about on the Msm? Articles were far and few between. I rememeber seeing stuff in Pdf on the net but never in the msm. Not even Keith Olberman had the balls to talk about it!