Early on election night last Tuesday, with just 18.07% of the unofficial returns from the Pennsylvania Primary in, astute BRAD BLOG reader Matt Sircely (who was aware enough to save off the HTML page locally!) noticed the following oddity on the official Dept. of State website results page…
Note the three different sets of bars and percentages representing Obama’s tally. The problem did not occur for any other candidate [Update: looks like it did, see updates at bottom of article for more info], as seen on the full web page, which was noticed early in the evening, and saved locally by the alert reader. Whatever the problem, it was eventually corrected by officials.
Today, Sircely called the PA Dept. of State to try and get an explanation of what caused the problem seen above (audio from call is posted at the end of this article)…
The Dept. of State’s Director of the Office of Communications and Press, Leslie Amorà³s, confirmed the Election Night problem, but was unable to explain why it occurred. She told Sircely, during the short phone call, that she’d be happy to try and get an explanation from their technical staff.
She went on to say, however, that whatever caused the anomaly, it didn’t effect the outcome of the reported results.
“I think it was just, when it was uploading…um…it didn’t make a difference though,” Amorà³s told Sircely during the call, though it remains unclear as to how she knows whether it actually made “a difference” or not.
When queried as to how data is gathered for use on the DoS’ results web page, the Communication Director acknowledged that it “varies” from county to county. “Some results are uploaded from counties, some results are pulled from websites and manually entered, some results are faxed to us and manually entered…some are phone called,” she noted, before acknowledging, in reference to the triple Obama listing, “that was the first time that had occurred.”
Later in the brief conversation, Amorà³s noted that — even with all of the media and public watching results, as they were coming in to the PA DoS website on Tuesday night — “none at all” had bothered to ask about the problem until Sircely did so today.
As The BRAD BLOG reported on Monday, due to the types of electronic voting systems used in more than 85% of the Keystone State, the bulk of results from last Tuesday’s election are 100% unverifiable for accuracy in any way, shape or form. As VerifiedVoting.org described the concern, prior to the election, the results would be “essentially unrecountable, unverifiable, and unauditable.”
Nonetheless, with mountains of documented “problems with voting machines and inaccurate voter registration rolls” which occurred across the state on Tuesday, resulting in “countless eligible voters…needlessly refused the right to vote,” as a local consortium of watchdog groups reported [WORD], Hillary Clinton was named the winner over Barack Obama by 9.2 points in the fully faith-based election.
Though the margin in the result was closer to 9 points than 10, due to some lucky math, the media would largely go on to declare her reported victory as the “10 point, double-digit” win she needed to stay in the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination.
At this hour, with 99.99% of results counted, according to the same official PA website which failed, as seen above, on Election Night, Clinton is reported to have won 54.6% of the votes to Obama’s 45.4%.
As Sircely’s captured webpage shows, with just 18.07% of the unofficial results reported early in the evening last Tuesday, Clinton had garnered 52.8%, while Obama had either 47.2% or 47.4% or 47.5%, depending on which of his three reported totals you may wish to choose from.
Sircely’s conversation with PA DoS spokesperson Leslie Amorà³s follows below (appx 3 mins)…
UPDATE 4/25/08, 12:44pm PT: Since publishing the above, we’ve heard from several readers who mentioned that they noticed a similar occurrence happening with both McCain and Clinton’s totals on Election Night, though we’ve got no screenshots showing that yet (anybody have one?). In the meantime, we’re trying to find out from the PA DoS as to whether they can confirm the problem also having occurred with the other candidates. So, hopefully, more soon in that regard…
UPDATE 4/25/08, 7:15pm PT: DJ Paul Edge has posted screenshots similar to the one above, but with Hillary Clinton showing multiple entries from the PA DoS site. So while we continue to await official confirmation from the PA DoS (not likely until Monday earliest), presuming those other screenshots are also legit, then it’s probably safe to assume that whatever happened did not only happen to Obama during the night, as we originally reported. Though DJ Paul sees a different oddity in his series of screenshots. Hopefully it’s all just bad web programmer/cache problems. But in the mean time, we look forward to an official explanation from state officials as to what actually happened there.
Curious and curioser, said Alice.
I was taking notes Tues as I flipped channels and at one point, around 9-9:30 pm, ABC did show Clinton 53, Obama 47. I thought I may have made a mistake but now that I see this, maybe not.
GWN said: “I was taking notes Tues as I flipped channels and at one point, around 9-9:30 pm, ABC did show Clinton 53, Obama 47. I thought I may have made a mistake but now that I see this, maybe not.”
I saw it too — at one point the gap was actually 5 points.
I hope Matt’s not waiting by his phone… he might starve…. 🙁
I saw this a couple times too on election night;
it was really weird. I didn’t know what to make of it.
Matt,
Good work for saving those pages! Now–
If you haven’t already, get in touch with Bev Harris at http://www.blackboxvoting.org,they are preparing their “Freedom of Information” requests for a forensic examination of what happened in PA.
Unfortunately, people from out-of-state can’t make the requests, so they are looking for “co-signers” for the requests from people who live in PA.
Thanks!
If anyones interested, here is a pretty good (and short) write-up on Power Line Communications describing the ABC’s.
Pretty soon they’ll be able to put a small CCD in your refrigerator and see what you pull out to eat, how often, how many times you go in there, etc.
The Manufacturers are already putting the chips in the new energy efficient models so the power company can shut them off or raise the temp. if they need to at peak times.
Looks like in the future every aspect of our lives will be monitored with this new technology. (including voting?)
Just think, you’ll be able to vote and see the results on the control panel on your refrigerator door…nice :snark:
Link
Link
…even better, we’ll have a biometric device mounted on the handle of the refrigerator so that your life insurance policy carrier can lock you out or raise your premium if you go in there too many times 😉
No – I saw this happen for John McCain and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama multiple times while refreshing the page. It always went away immediately (after one refresh)
It’s clearly a system bug, possibly having to do with cached data sources, and more likely than not, applies only to the website.
When I viewed the PA Primary Results page on Tuesday night I saw three listings for Clinton and one listing for Obama. It definitely seems like it was more of a web interface glitch. When I clicked on the link to only view the Presidential Race results it only showed one listing for Obama and one listing for Clinton.
GWN & CDM (#2/#3)– Me too. Glad to see your posts, here, today…thought I was going bonky watching the returns on Tuesday.
Okay, I’m not crazy…yet.
Future headline?
Voter Turnout Zero Percent! Officials Reassure Public Glitch Had No Effect on Final Vote Totals!
I’m very concerned about unauditable elections, but I am not really worried about this one. This really appears to be an issue with the website code, as opposed to any vote tallying upstream (which may well have other bugs).
I think we need to be careful about calling “Wolf” every time something appears at all fishy.
That’s fine. No one’s cryin’ ‘wolf’ – just fishy. I’d love to hear more from tech experts who may have seen this before. I’d also love to hear from the PA DoS.
I agree with BCC’s comment above. I’ve developed a site to display election results for a government agency, and in my experience the Web site is just a display system that is totally disconnected from the tabulation process — by law, I think, since the vote tabulation software should not be networked to anything else.
People interested in election integrity have to be careful about jumping at too many issues, because that helps both the basically well meaning officials who are not up for the work of fixing election problems as well as the operatives who steal elections (e.g. Karl Rove) to dismiss us as crazies.
BTW, the assertion that people concerned about election integrity are crazies who should wear “tinfoil hats” rings pretty hollow to me. When I went to volunteer for Reagan in 1984, I was asked by party officials to participate in dirty tricks aimed at preventing get out the vote efforts. That’s when I became a Democrat.
Hey, PA has taken their county map of results down. I also cannot access the map that shows which machines are used in which county?
I know that Brad has stated that more than 85% of PA votes on machines; is there any info on any counties/districts that are hand counted? Are there any?
I would be curious to see the results of these districts.
Unfortunately it took segregationist Governor Wallace to reveal the truth that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between” Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats willingly went along with the War in Iraq, suspension of Habeas Corpus, detaining protesters, banning books like “America Deceived’ from Amazon, stealing private lands (Kelo decision), warrant-less wiretapping and refusing to investigate 9/11 properly. They are both guilty of treason.
Support Dr. Ron Paul and save this great nation.
Last link (before Google Books bends to gov’t Will and drops the title):
America Deceived (book)
#16 Anjha, the map of results is still there but as you say the one showing which machines were used says “The requested article is no longer published.”
#16 Anjha, here is a site Brad mentioned to see which machines were used.
This is what Hillary’s “experience” amounts to: the knowledge of who to bribe & how to cheat the system. With her & Bill’s +$100 million and their network of fat-cats & corporate big-wigs who know that Hillary will “play ball” more readily than Obama, it’s much easier for someone like Hillary to rig votes, lie, cheat & steal. THAT is what she means by “experience.”
An “up-start” or “newcomer” like Obama is more likely to rely on his integrity and merits alone, which is something that corporate America can’t have. This is probably the true sub-text of Hillary’s “Obama can’t win” comment to Bill Richardson–not that he is “unable” to win, but that he should “not be ALLOWED” to win.
Want 4 more years of lies, corruption, and Middle East war-mongering? Then vote for Hillary.
Man these voting systems sure are hillarious.
Thanks for the links. I also found this one and it does not appear that any counties hand count. If anyone knows of counties or precincts that do, I would be interested in comparing that data.
Again, thanks for keepin up the good fight.
oops, duh
should have checked your verifier link first.
Thanks
The link to verified voting’s national map of voting systems referenced earlier in this thread is very useful. Brad has also posted the cached original map [PDF] from the Pennsylvania Department of State page which details the manufacturers that each county patronizes in the Keystone State.
Brad please visit the link below and see pictures of broken (cracked) voting machines and extremely long lines! You should get in touch with the guy who documented this:
#25 Joyce, I believe some of those pictures are from the 2006 election. I know the one with broken machine is.
I had hoped our problems were confined to the Republican dirty tricksters. Now the disease seems to be appearing in the Democratic party.
If Hillary felt cheated and is cheating in response, then I guess they’ve all given up on democracy as too unpredictable and messy.
Oh woe is us.