A great column yesterday by Andrew Kantor in USA Today on the failure that is Diebold’s electronic voting systems. An amusing (if painfully so) piece as well. He covers the mountain of evidence against Diebold’s e-voting systems (“We send people to death row on flimsier and more circumstantial evidence,” writes Kantor), the damage to our democracy, and the state of denial that officials, and the other dead-enders who support this technology, are now in.
His column includes this…
…And this…
And I mean that. There has to be some threshold of evidence that will cause them to de-certify these machines. What is it? Does the San Diego Chicken have to be elected governor before you admit there’s something wrong?
Because if we’ve entered the realm of “Nothing will convince me that these machines pose a problem,” then they don’t deserve to be in office. Period.
…Amongst other gems.
I hope he’ll broaden his coverage to include the other manufacturers (ES&S, Sequoia, Hart InterCivic et al) soon, since there is no reason to believe their machines are any less shitty than Diebold’s.
Only complaint is the headline and sidebar encouraging folks to vote by absentee ballot. On that, I sent Kantor the email below which I hope he (and you) will consider when advising folks to vote by absentee…
Tremendous column today in USA Today. Really enjoyed it, and hope to be linking it up from BRAD BLOG shortly.
ONLY “complaint” is the advice to vote Absentee to “circumvent the entire e-voting process.”
Unfortunately, that’s not so. Those Absentee ballots are also counted by electronic op-scan systems (the same ones that have failed in election after election so far this year) and worse, there are few ways to track the tabulation of those votes and get an accountable paper trail of their tabulation when they’re sent in via absentee.
Those ballots, if they arrive on time, or at all, etc. are scanned straight into the central tabulator. There is no real good way to know how many have been scanned, received etc. Very difficult to audit, in other words.
I’d recommend voting Absentee ONLY if there is not a paper ballot option at your polling place (that would include op-scan). If your ONLY choice is to use touch-screen, then Absentee is certainly preferred, but voters should try to deliver their ballot to the polling place or Board of Elections on Election Day (check local rules for that).
If you MUST vote absentee and you MUST send it by mail, xerox your ballot first, and then send it certified return-receipt requested.
Yes, that’s a lot of work. Yes, voting in America shouldn’t be that hard. But that’s the state of our electoral system/mess right now.
All in all, however. Thanks for noticing! And giving a damn!
Brad
As I have said before, when a hacker rigs the vote so that both Dems and GOP candidates get 0 votes, that is perhaps the only circumstance that will compel our legislators to admit there is a problem and act (if it turns out even that it is not too late for them to do anything).
The pity of this is national media is just warming up to the trainwreck as the sexier sex scandal is about to explode all over the same media pages.
Contacted my local election authorities to ask for a ballot to vote absentee.. Said I would be out of town please send it to my home. Was told the ballot could only be sent to my away from home address or to an address out of my local county (?)
I responded that ballots sent to my home prior to leaving would be less apt to be suspicious, (I thought) rather than to another county !
Contacted Austin and they were as surprised as I was but said locals make the rules.
Oh and my county official said “there had been NO problems during the Primary vote in March.”
Yet I found on the internet where Austin election officials sent out letters saying that “due to the problems with the machines, paper ballots should be available to the voters.”
Is it just Texas or are they trying to make it so difficult no one votes ?
I don’t feel like I can safely vote absentee only to be tallied on an optically scannable form programmed by a private company – that is, if and when and where and under whose supervision it ever even gets fed into the scanner.
I don’t feel I can safely vote on any e-vote machine, paper receipt or no. I SAW my vote change from Kerry to Bush when I pressed for Kerry. What if I hadn’t paid attention? And I had to toggle – press for Bush again – in order to un-do the Bush vote. I was scared to death to do that because when the vote flipped the first time I automatically lost trust. Whose to say the receipt would match?
I’ve never regained that trust. Fool me once. Just forget anything that has to go into a programmable machine. Forget it. I’d rather my vote be known to the entire public that to have this level of secrecy. I belive in my vote and I don’t care who knows it.
First let me sing my praises for Andrew Kantor, and express my thanks for his helpful piece. But, not to complain, but can anyone find out how Kantor came to be aware and write about this issue, and like, what took so long?
On the general topic of why we should not trust election results from DRE machines in general and particularly from Dieebold:
I keep wondering when there will be some update on the lawsuit that the Democratic Party has against Diebold in Alaska, where there was a 40% discrepancy between officially reported results and the totals from the local Diebold machines, back in 2004. Not likely that there will be any further coverage of that before this next election, but I keep hoping, because it’s such a blatant story.
Just now while I was searching google for any recent news on the Alaska story, I came across this fabulous interview with Steve F. Freeman, which is so powerful, that I just wish he would get interviewed on 60 minutes or something, instead of in op-ed news on the web
http://www.opednews.com/article..._professor.htm
My favorite quote from the interview:
There were some details in the interview about the Washington race between Gregoire and Rossi, concerning how discrepant the DRE vote counts were from paper-ballot counts, in Snohomish county. Eye popping details. Go read it. Smoking-gun stuff.
But isn’t there some way to get things rolling in Alaska?
One more last thought or question for all of you here. Freeman mentions the reuluctance of Democrats to contest questionable election results. Does anyone have any idea where this reluctance comes from? Why do they just quietly bow their heads and put up with this crap? Is it because doing so would get them labelled as undermining our democracy, and supporting the terrorists, and so thereby being heinous traitors who should be beheaded for such disloyalty to our fuehrer? Or what?
Apologies for hijacking this thread like this, but methinks it’s not too far off to talk about Freeman and Alaska in the general context of reasons not to trust election results from Diebold machines.
Would it do any good to call or write to my congressman and ask them to please sponsor emergency legislation to request a team of international observers to come and monitor elections here, since we want to set an example for the world on how to run free and fair elections?
We need exit-polling big-time. We need people to use their cell-phone cameras to record their votes off the screen, and make digital video records, making sure to focus both on the screen, and also on the paper record as it slides by, (if there is one). I think all it would take would be for a handful of people to generate a video record of their vote getting flipped, to start a firestorm, especially if people started uploading these damning video records to You-Tube, in addition to making them available to their local election officials…
I really don’t understand why elections are not reported in this country with local reporting at the precinct level happening FIRST, and with totals given for every machine. Those totals should be made public on the door of the precinct for people to photograph and witness. All counties should similarly report their totals on the internet before sending a COPY of those totals on to the state. Then the state should make the state-wide totals available, including all the subtotals from all the counties. It would be great if the counting could be postponed everywhere until the polls were closed everywhere–Yes, people on the east coast would have to wait until late into the night, but it would be worth it.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that to rig exit poll results to be wrong or discrepant violates many laws of mathematics, and requires a massive conspiracy, whereas flipping an electronic election requires a couple people with access and know-how?
This next time out, I think the stakes are now too high, and that the Democrats will not retake either house. The Republicans are just acting way too smug and complacent about it all, and they are not doing enough sucking up to the voters, as I have seen them do in years past in similar situations, many years ago.
All this “stay the course” nonsense–it amounts to “stick with us, the fix is in–all will be well.” All it will take is just a bit more than the usual amount of vote manipulation made much easier now that there are so many DRE machines out there, plusa few plane crashes or one big terrorist act, and some plausible way to dismiss those notoriously unreliable election exit polls, or some attention-grabbing story, that will galvanize the country and cause us all to vote for Republicans in droves, (just like cattle, in fact). Maybe we catch Osama finally, and we find out how it was all because of the helpful NSA and we should all love big brother Jeb Bush.
Bumper sticker ideas: “What democracy?”
Why does everyone blame the POLITICIANS and MSM for the TOTAL LACK OF COVERAGE of these issues – OUR BIGGEST PROBLEM IS THAT PROGRESSIVE AND LIBERAL POLITICS HAVE BEEN STOLEN BY A FEW SUPERBLOGS THAT WORK TOGETHER TO PROMOTE THEMSELVES AND FLAME, DELETE, AND BAN ANY DIALOG ABOUT REAL LIBERAL ISSUES!!!
Why would dems, repugs, or the MSM pay attention to a story that kos, americablog, c&l, greenwald, digby, fdl, atrios, and the rest of the faux “advertise liberally” gang REFUSE TO COVER!!!!!!!!!!!
There silence means one of 2 things:
1. That Brad’s reporting is full of crap (Not true, unlike the “superblogs”, Brad actually is doing REAL JOURNALISM, HAS REAL SOURCES, AND IS NOT JUST PROVIDING SNARK ABOUT MSM NEWS/VIDEO!
2. The “superblogs” are all about promoting themselves and lining their own pockets. Think about it – we were able to get 24/7 “fitzmas” crap at fdl and THEY TOTALLY FLAME, DELETE, AND BAN ANY TALK ABOUT PROBLEMS WITH OUR ELECTIONS!!! Atrios flamed, deleted, and banned comments that question elections – EVEN WHEN STATISTICAL ANALYSIS SHOWS THAT THE “OFFICIAL RESULTS” CANNOT BE RIGHT!
Face it, gang, our FIRST BEEF should be with the self-proclaimed “liberal” superblogs that undermine Brad’s credibility by denying this story and the importance of Brad’s work!
When we are ready to direct our energies to those that are most responsible for keeping this dialog off the Internet and out of the MSM, then we can start to organize action. Its already too late to do anything to change the situation before this falls elections (thanks, faux “advertise liberally” circle-jerk of links.
Sittin’ on our hands, blaming everyone else, and hopin’ kos will send out “the memo” is a recipe for defeat!
Thinking we can get our votes counted by voting “absentee” is INSANITY!!!!!!! If they have no intention of counting our votes – WHY SHOULD ANYONE BELIEVE THAT THEY WILL ACTUALLY COUNT ABSENTEE BALLOTS!!!!
We all know that they will skew AGAINST the repugs because so many are foolish enough to think that this will solve the vote fraud problems. THE REPUGS WILL JUST KNOW WHICH VOTES TO EITHER NOT COUNT OR MISCOUNT!!!!!
Voting absentee is like raising your hand and saying to the republicans, “DON’T COUNT THIS VOTE CUZ I DON’T SUPPORT YOU!!!!! Yeah, right — that will convince them to count your vote, won’t it.
DON’T BE FOOLS!!!!! This week, the US officially became a fascist state with the passage of the new authorization to detain anyone and torture – WE NEED TO ADRESS VOTE FRAUD!!!!
Well, the Republicans can’t afford to lose either house, so they have to fix the elections. But the discrepancy will be so huge that they have to fix the exit polls, too. We should be focusing our attention on TRANSPARENCY in the exit polling results. Let’s not forget that we were never allowed to see the raw data of Mitofsky’s polling in 2004. And we won’t be allowed early results screen captures, either. The only reason we got them last time was screw-ups by the network, isn’t that true?
John Dowd #5, yes, that is an excellent interview you linked to. Thanks.
Please, someone, how do we turn down the noise in here?
Czaragorn, best way to start would be for you to GET YOUR DAMN HANDS OFF YOUR KEYBOARD AND LEAVE THE COMMENTING TO US ADULTS!
The only real difference among the machine suppliers is that only Diebold’s management bragged about delivering votes to one party.
My wife and I are submitting requests for absentee ballots tomorrow in Cuyahoga county OH, just like all the poll workers.
# 10 – Why would you request noise turndown? A clean, honest vote, where citizens once in awhile get to voice an opinion needs to be LOUDER !
It absolutely amazes me that so many take this stealing of our choice so lightly. This is the ONLY way to make a change in direction and to get the ones who are suppose to be listening to really listen. If only because their jobs are on the line.
Brad and others have finally gotten the attention of Lou Dobbs and Keith Olbermann to give voice to this serious and disgraceful theft. It will not change dramatically this November but hopefully in 2008.
Isn’t anyone else angry that your vote was switched, disgregarded or just wipe out?
Oh for gods sake Czaragorn is a regular here and is talking about the highlighting and bold . “Someone” forgot to close tags.
Thanks GWN
ahhh calmer now.
Texas Lady – Angry doesn’t even come close to how I feel, not only about the voting issues, but about the vote to allow torture and the 100-0 vote to spend another $480 billion on wars and war toys!
Charlie
Stand up and take a bow for not closing tags, and take back what you said to Czaragorn in your # 11 ’cause if you get him upset he won’t offer to buy the beer when we all go to visit him in Prague… 🙂
Bluebear2 #17
There isn’t a word for the way I feel about that torture vote. Demoralizing isn’t even close. How could this happen? Two more years of Republican rule, and we’re going to be having public beheading’s of Democrats. Not that it would be much worse then throwing our country into the 12th century.
The administration, initiated by Cheney I think, might use a One Percent Doctrine to decide if someone or some organization is a threat, but when it comes to our elections they can see 100% problems and still not feel compelled to change anything. This indicates rather clearly that they want the situation to be as it is, not to fix it. They’re all criminals.
Foley was chair of a committee on exploited children? How amazingly farcical and bizarre.
BTW, I’ve been away for a few weeks because of computer problems. I still don’t have my e-mail back, but at long last (and after changing computer 3 times and installing 3 new modems and a new power line) I’m back. Not that y’all noticed. ahem
Keep up the great work Brad and BBloggers.
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