Guest Blogged by John Gideon, with Brad Friedman
Elections Systems and Software (ES&S) has finally shown us why they should not be in the elections business. The disgraceful primary election in Arkansas yesterday is a prime example. It was, and continues to be, an utter disaster today. The day after.
Brad and I both have been overwhelmed all day with the number of reports coming in on the complete failures by ES&S in the state yesterday. So much so, that it’s difficult to even know where to begin. Thus, tonight’s late report — with general details and enough links to set you on your way to inform yourself about what the hell is going on here.
In our best (if fruitless) attempt at brevity, however…
ES&S failed to deliver voting machines on time to Arkansas counties. That late delivery led directly to poll workers failing to receive adequate training on how to conduct elections on the ES&S iVotronic (touch-screen) voting machines. It also led some counties choosing against using those iVotronic machines at all. In fact, four counties chose to knowingly violate the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 when they made the decision to use their old voting systems and ignore the disastrous and cynical federal HAVA mandate to provide poorly designed and implemented voting machines for disabled voters.
Those four counties are to be lauded for putting the voters — and the hope for a legitimate, accountable election — over intimidation by a crooked, flawed and cynical federal government mandate.
All of those failures resulted in machines failing to start up at the beginning of the day and then, in some cases where they did work, failing to be closed down properly at the end of the day.
ES&S’s failure to deliver voting machines to counties on time led to late or non-delivery of software to many of those counties, which led to many of them choosing to use paper ballots at the polls for the most part, along with a single iVotronic to try and comply with HAVA.
This unexpected use of paper ballots caught some several counties unprepared. In at least one case it has been reported that some voters were sent away without voting at all when a polling place ran out of paper ballots. And this was only in a lightly attended primary during an off year election!
As reported by the Benton County Record:
…
Several polling places resorted to using paper ballots exclusively, including Precinct 38 on Moberly Lane in Bentonville. The election sheriff there, Dennis Mason, said poll workers had problems with the machine early on, and the problems were never fixed. “We had it set up, but it didn’t work, so it was just worthless,” he said at 7 p.m. “We called in and they said somebody would come out to look at it, but nobody showed up.”
…
“I don’t know how many millions we spent on this of taxpayers’ money, and then they screw it up this bad,” [state Sen. Kim Hendren] said.
The tabulation of votes has also been another ES&S failure. It seems that ES&S has done everything they can to ensure that any county that has used paper ballots would have problems counting those ballots or would not be able to meld the optical-scan vote count with the DRE vote count. Secretary of State Charlie Daniels and many county officials are announcing that the problems will not happen in November because they won’t have to use any paper ballots. They plan, apparently, to go strictly with iVotronic touch-screens. The type that failed all over the state.
Mission accomplished for ES&S’s propaganda machine.
So how bad was it? So bad that even the state Republicans are finally waking up to what’s going on here!
“Get ready for six months of debating the ins and outs of voting software and machines. We don’t say this dismissively. It’s important,” wrote the Arkansas Times’ blog, which also includes a statement from the state GOP excoriating the Sec. of State and ES&S for their failures.
Frankly, we’re exhausted by it, as you might imagine. So we’ll leave it to you to poke around and find out more information tonight. Tonight’s “Daily Voting News” links to dozens of disaster tails. Here’s just a few examples of articles detailing problems from across the state…
Wake us when the nightmare’s over.
It’s clear, the private sector has absolutely no legitimate role in elections. The corporate interest obviously is to cripple paper balloting, to contractually bind districts to use their machines, and to covertly sell the fraudulent results to the highest bidder – GOP, local corrupt politician, lobbying interest, etc… They knew this was going to be a joke and in fact orchestrated it = jail time.
Democracy or capitalism, take your pick.
Reframing "corporatization" as "privatization".
Now THAT’S quaint!
Let’s lose it!
Until all the ATM’s and PC’s, which are similar technology (computing machines), all fail massively like election machines are prone to do these daze, I have to think something in this mess is deliberate.
After all, one of the major voting machine companies makes ATM’s and they work. And ATM’s are more complicated.
It seems that the republican dictatorship has found a way to exonerate the voting machine companies and the teleco’s.
For the first time in US history, private companies are becoming adjuncts to spying and are being protected under national security concepts:
"President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye" (link here).
This means they do not have to disclose financial data when the magic wand national security is waived.
And it even reaches the telecom companies that are doing the NSA spy dirty work:
"Telecom giant Verizon is refusing to confirm or deny participation in the illegal National Security Agency (NSA) wiretapping program, as citizens in Maine urge the state’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to investigate whether the company handed over its phone records.
In a tight-lipped 44-page response to the PUC last Friday, Verizon argued that the Commission lacks the authority to investigate a complaint that the telephone company was involved in the NSA program. The company further claimed such information is protected by the state-secrets privilege" (link here, bold added).
My guess is that this may be used to protect the big three election machine companies (ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia) when it becomes obvious that the nation has been destabilized even in the election system.
Everywhere I see a Diebold atm I go inside and tell the person in charge that I will not use diebold atm machines because they might be as hackable as their voting machines.
If 5 or 6 other people do the same the word might get back to the companies to clean up their act.
At 9:00 am I was unable to post here, the submit button went grey and a message poped uo " no website is configured at this address"
Let’s use ATM’s in elections instead of ESS’s! Why is it that ATM’s seem to work better than ESS’s and Diebolds? Or else let’s stick with the paper ballots and have the appropriate paper trails!
what can I do? I live in NW Arkansas (Washington Cty). Any ideas?
JSamuel #7
Stay in touch. Network with others. Keep up the good work.