— Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG
As a fairly well-known Election Integrity journalist who has personally covered, for years, the myriad election woes of thousands (if not millions) of voters around the country who have tried to bring seemingly endless stories of votes flipped on e-voting systems to the attention of officials, these stories always continue to be remarkable to me, even if not to many others in the rest of the mainstream media.
It’s even more troubling when one realizes that so little ever seems to be done in light of so many of these horror stories, as those very same failed systems are still deployed across the nation, with little or no modification to correct the mountains of documented problems even now, as we head towards an election likely to be of historic proportions this November.
What follows is yet another one of those stories, where a voter had vote selections flipped by the electronic voting system, such that candidates were chosen other than the ones intended to be selected by the voter, though no fault of his own.
But this time, the voter is me.
Though I’ve covered so many of these stories, it was nonetheless remarkable to see it happen before ones very eyes, as occurred yesterday when I voted here in Los Angeles during our very low turnout California state Primary election.
The ES&S electronic voting system that I used to try to vote on yesterday, ended up flipping a total of 4 out of the 12 contests and initiatives for which I had attempted to vote.
Right before my very eyes, the computer-printed ballot produced by the voting system I was using, incorrectly filled in bubbles for four of the races I was voting in. Had I not been incredibly careful, after the ballot was printed out, to painstakingly compare what was printed to what I actually voted for, I’d have never known my votes were being given to candidates I did not vote for.
Had I been a blind voter — as the system I was using is largely intended for use by the disabled — I would have cast my ballot without having a clue that a full 40% of the votes I’d tried to cast for various California Superior Court judges were flipped to other candidates…
After speaking late last night about the problem to Dean Logan, the current acting Registrar-Recorder for Los Angeles County (the country’s largest voting jurisdiction) and officials from the CA Sec. of State’s office, I can report the failed e-voting machine in question is now being quarantined for testing to try and determine what happened in this, just the latest in a mounting string of failures by voting systems made by ES&S, the country’s largest supplier of voting equipment.
While the machine is being sequestered for examination — and one wonders if the same swift action would have been promised to someone not as well known to both the Registrar’s and Sec. of State’s office — we’ll call that point the “good news” for the moment.
In addition to the stunning error-rate of the failed ES&S InkaVote Plus voting machine I had tried to use, my day at the polls yesterday additionally revealed an amazing number of apparent violations of federal law, the California state Election Code, and a number of local, Los Angeles County provisions.
Yesterday’s election was the final one this year, prior to the very same election equipment being scheduled for use this November as we barrel towards what will undoubtedly be an unprecedented turnout for the General Election.
Here’s what happened to me and my ballot, and what I witnessed yesterday at the polls…
TROUBLE FROM THE START
Given last February’s now-infamous Super Tuesday “Double Bubble” ballot debacle when the knowingly-bad ballot design of former L.A. County Registrar Conny McCormack (who quit just a month prior to the election) resulted in some 50,000 uncounted paper ballots on the ES&S InkaVote system, reports of trouble, so far, from the polls out here yesterday have been few. No doubt, that comes as good news to McCormack’s hand-picked successor, acting Registrar Logan, who had initially balked at counting those perfectly-countable, but uncounted “Double Bubble” ballots from the Democratic Primary election earlier this year. Eventually, he counted most of those ballots, while choosing to leave some 12,000 or more voters disenfranchised in that race, despite the vast majority of those ultimately-uncounted ballots being perfectly-countable, as we reported in great detail at the time.
His early response, so far, to the problem I had yesterday, has been decidedly much better, as he called me back within five minutes of my having called his office last night at around 9:30pm while they were still tallying returns after the 8pm poll close. Hopefully that follow through will continue so that we can determine definitively what went wrong when I voted yesterday.
The problem at my polling place was immediately apparent when I arrived to vote late in the day, only to find that, once again, the ES&S InkaVote Plus voting system for my precinct was down when I arrived. My polling place features two different precincts combined into a single room, each “precinct” being run at a separate table.
Last February, the InkaVote Plus system was also “out of order” when I went to vote, and the pollworkers there were all afraid to touch it for fear of being electrocuted due to exposed wires hanging out of it. I’d planned to write that matter up for The BRAD BLOG back then, until my attention was drawn to the astounding “Double Bubble” fiasco.
The InkaVote Plus voting system — which is an assistive audio device, meant to meet the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requirements to allow disabled voters to vote “in a private and independent manner” — was broken yet again this time at my “precinct”. Additionally, the optical-scanner, used with the InkaVote’s regular, hand-marked paper ballots used by most voters, was also down, as it had been the entire day. Poll workers told me they had called the county, but as also happened last February, and even though turnout yesterday was far lower, nobody came out to service or replace the system the entire day.
Fortunately, the InkaVote system is a paper-based system, so voters can vote whether the scanner is up and working or not. Though they won’t receive warnings about overvotes and such, at least they can cast a ballot on such systems, and hope that they later will be counted (and perhaps even accurately, but who really knows?) at the county election headquarters after the polls close.
The InkaVote Plus part of the system allows disabled voters (well, actually, only blind voters, read on) to make their selections and move through the ballot with buttons, as they listen to the ballot read to them via headphones. At the end of the process, a paper ballot is printed out with the voters’ selections — theoretically, the actual ones they voted for — and that ballot is then run through the InkaVote’s optical scanner and counted by the same means as the regular, hand-marked paper ballots used by everyone else.
Fortunately again — given that the assistive device for my “precinct” hadn’t worked the entire day — as in February, there was not a single voter who asked to use either it, or the one that was (theoretically) working in the other “precinct” located inside the same polling place room.
HAVA allocated 4.8 billion federal tax dollars to encourage the “upgrading” of polling places, usually with electronic voting systems, in large part under the claim that disabled voters required such electronic devices to vote “in a private and independent manner” under the new law. And yet, in two elections in a row, not a single voter had used either of the two devices at my large, metropolitan polling place. As it turns out, given my experience in trying to use it, that’s a very good thing.
Logan would tell me later that night, when I called him to tell him what had gone so terribly wrong, that while he didn’t have definitive numbers at-hand, “the number of voters who used [the ‘accessible’ voting devices] last February, was very low.”
I had told the poll workers that I wanted to try to vote on the InkaVote Plus device in order to learn how — and if — it worked. At first they thought I was kidding, but when they learned I wasn’t, most of them became interested in helping me to do so, since they had never seen it in action. As it was the end of the day, and there were very few other voters who came in while I was there, most of the poll workers, including a very helpful precinct captain, oversaw the process as I tried to make it work.
Because my own “precinct’s” InkaVote Plus was down, I was told, I’d have to vote on a provisional ballot at the other “precinct” across the room, if I wanted to vote on the assistive device. So I did.
ALL HANDS ON DECK
I filled out the information on the provisional ballot envelope and they sat me down to vote on the assistive device. After five minutes, or so, of several workers trying to figure out how to tell the system that it should begin my audio ballot, I was finally off and “voting”.
Though it was a laborious process to listen to the entire ballot as it was read, trying to use it to create my ballot was generally easy enough for a fairly technically proficient guy like myself, even if it took about 20 minutes before finally finishing the rather short ballot, on which I had even skipped a number of races, before the device finally printed out my selections (incorrectly).
(As a small aside…Somewhat maddeningly, during the 2 or 3 minute preamble audio explanation of how the system worked, the instructions said I could hit “the up arrow button” to increase the volume “at any time”. So I did. That resulted in the entire preamble instructions starting over again from the beginning. This time, as I listened to the complete instructions, I learned, as the very last instruction during the introduction, that adjusting the volume button would result in the instructions starting over from scratch. Nice planning, ES&S! Had there been a bus load of blind folks who showed up to vote at this polling place, I can only imagine the disaster there might have been as the line to vote would have been nearly endless.)
Luckily, unlike other voters who might need to use the device in order to vote “in a private and independent manner”, I have use of my arms. So I was able to push the buttons on the machine to make my selections and move through the ballot as instructed. Had I not, I would have had to have asked for help from someone. While I could have told my helper which buttons to push for me without them easily being able to figure out who or what I was voting for — they wouldn’t have been able to hear the audio as I heard it on the headphones, and thus, wouldn’t have known which button pushes were selecting which candidates — I would not have been able to vote “independently” as HAVA’s Sec. 301 mandates.
When I asked Logan about the fact that, unlike other “accessible” voting devices, the ones we use in the country’s largest voting jurisdiction do not seem to allow such folks to vote as per federal law, he told me that “jurisdictions all over the country are dealing with that, in terms of accessibility.”
“The post-HAVA environment has focused heavily on visual issues, blind voters,” he explained. “I think it’s widely recognized that the accessible devices out there are not equipped for every possible disability. I don’t know that there’s a certified accessible machine out there that deals with all of those possibilities.”
But when I told him I understood there were voting devices for the disabled with “sip and puff” capabilities for voters with dexterity and other motor skills limitations, he said it was his understanding that “there are prototypes for those features, but to my knowledge they’re not widely available on voting systems at this time.”
In fact, a number of theoretically-“accessible” voting devices have such features, including the AutoMark, also distributed by ES&S, which are certified for use in California. It was Logan’s predecessor, McCormack, however, who selected L.A. County’s current “accessible” voting system. So, for the moment, we’ll not hold the fact that L.A. uses systems that don’t meet the federal standards against him.
John Gideon, of VotersUnite.org (who is also a frequent Guest Blogger at The BRAD BLOG), was surprised to hear that Logan was unaware of the currently available devices. “Unless Dean Logan slept through the sales speeches from the AutoMark vendors, at conferences held by NASED, NASS, and the Election Center, he certainly knows that the AutoMark system, and others, have binary switches that allow for voters without use of their arms to vote independently,” he told me this afternoon.
Stephen Heller of VelvetRevolution.us, the Election Integrity watchdog coalition that I helped to co-found (Heller has also been an occasional BRAD BLOG guest contributor), pointed more towards this document [PDF] at the National Disability Rights Network which notes that “three voting systems on the market — AccuPoll, AutoMARK, and eSlate machines — have a dual switch input option. A dual switch input on a machine allows voters with dexterity disabilities who use technology, like sip and puff, to mark their choices on a ballot independently.”
The eSlate system is made by Hart InterCivic, and used in several California counties. The AccuPoll is no longer being marketed, Ellen Theisen of VotersUnite told me. She added that Sequoia also has a “sip and puff” feature on one of its systems, though she wrote that there have reportedly been problems with that portion of their “accessible” e-voting machine.
But back to the errors that I would discover after I finally finished the audio process and my ballot was printed out.
I had brought a “cheat sheet” to the polls with me, that I had printed out before going to vote, which included the candidates and initiatives I’d intended to vote for. As I had been forced to vote provisionally, I presume, I was not allowed the option to vote for any of the partisan races, even though it was an Open Primary and I’d told them I wanted to vote in a specific party’s primary. I forgot to mention that to Logan to see why I wasn’t allowed to vote for all of the races on the ballot for that party.
Nonetheless, I was able to vote in the 10 California Superior Court races on the ballot that I had planned to vote for, as well as for the 2 state initiatives that were on the ballot.
Since I was working from my own pre-printed “cheat sheet”, I was careful to select the candidates in the judge contests that I knew I wanted. Each candidate’s name was repeated back to me correctly by the audio system just after I selected it as my vote.
I was then allowed to choose from “the candidates” I wanted for the two ballot initiatives. Yes, the audio voice described my “YES” or “NO” options for the initiatives as “candidates”. Hopefully the others who used the system were not confused by that inaccurate description.
Finally, after nearly twenty minutes had gone by, and the polls were just about to close at 8pm, I was done. Given the late hour, and the fact that I had had the option to confirm each “candidate” selection, by name, after I had selected it while moving through the ballot — each one was read back to me correctly, as I had selected it each time — I chose not to listen to the entire ballot read back to me in the summary confirmation that was offered to me. Instead, I simply chose to go ahead, confirm the ballot, and have it printed out so that I could cast it via the optical-scanner.
The machine seemed to print fine — except that 4 of my 12 ballot selections were printed incorrectly!
ONE BALLOT, FOUR FLIPPED VOTES
Had I been blind, of course, I’d not have been able to check printed ballot to ensure that it had been printed as per my intent before putting that ballot into the optical-scanner. It hadn’t.
My selections on the two ballot initiatives were correctly printed. But 4 of the 12 candidates selected in the Superior Court races were for candidates that I hadn’t voted for! I was able to check the printed-out ballot against the proper bubble numbers for each candidate, as seen in the regular, non-“accessible” voting booklet.
The error rate, of course, would seem to far exceed HAVA’s federal mandatory requirements for accuracy on such e-voting systems, as detailed by Theisen, of VotersUnite.org, in another recent guest blog posted here at The BRAD BLOG.
For the record, these are the CA Superior Court judge races that were marked incorrectly on my ballot by the ES&S InkaVote Plus system…
- Office No. 72: I chose to vote for Harvey A. Silberman (bubble #117), ES&S InkaVote Plus selected Serena Raquel Murillo (bubble #118) for me instead.
- Office No. 84: I chose to vote for Lori-Ann C. Jones (bubble #135), ES&S InkaVote Plus marked Pat Connolly (bubble #132) for me instead.
- Office No. 95: I chose to vote for Patricia D. Nieto (bubble #141), ES&S InkaVote Plus printed my choice as Lance E. Winters (bubble #142) for me instead.
- Office No. 125: I chose to vote for James N. Bianco (bubble #159), ES&S InkaVote Plus filled-in Bill Johnson (bubble #158) for me instead.
I was stunned. As were the poll workers who were almost all eagerly following my adventure. I checked, and double-checked against the ballot booklet to make certain I was reading the print out correctly and that the bubbles filled in on the ballot were indeed printed incorrectly in all four of those races.
Though I was able to document much what happened with cell phone video and photographs, I was kicking myself that I hadn’t videotaped myself voting the entire ballot, and repeated out-loud, for the camera, who I was selecting in each case as I went through it. No doubt, as usually happens for even non-Election Integrity journalists who encounter such polling place failures, I had little doubt that ES&S — as is the norm for most of America’s horrible Voting Machine companies — would try and describe the problem I encountered as “voter error”.
Luckily, since I was the only voter to have tried to vote on the device that day, and since I have the personal “privilege” of knowing both Logan and many of the officials in the Secretary of State’s office, I was able to contact them directly last night to explain what happened, and ask that they immediately quarantine that particular machine for testing.
Logan says that doing so, in any similar situation, is both “helpful” and what he recommends all voters do.
One of the SoS officials emailed me back quickly late last night to say that they had spoken to Logan about the matter immediately, and that they were assured the machine would be isolated and tested. The official also added that the SoS office would participate in the testing to find out what went wrong.
Logan himself called me back quickly after I initially called him, late on an election night as they were still tallying votes (this was much appreciated, since he failed to call me back at all during the “Double Bubble” fiasco, a point which I confronted him about when we met face-to-face some weeks afterwards at a state hearing on the matter.)
After I explained what had happened, the acting Registrar promised that he would “immediately get word out so that we can isolate the machine to see what happened.”
I wanted to make sure that nobody from ES&S would have access to that machine between now and the time they were tested to figure out, if possible, what the hell went wrong with it.
“They have no access to that machine,” Logan assured me. “They have a few support staff on site,” but otherwise “the initial review will not be done with them. The machine will be isolated. That will be the protocol,” he assured me.
I asked him to keep me in the loop as to what the procedure would be and when and where the testing would occur, which he promised he would do. Of course, I’d like to be present during the testing of the machine (serial no. LAC016054, as I was able to photograph the back of it) myself, so hopefully Logan will keep his word and follow up appropriately.
“A GOOD CHANCE IT WASN’T JUST THIS MACHINE”
In relating the story to Voters Unite’s Gideon, he noted that it was likely that the problem might have occurred on other machines as well.
“There’s a good chance that it wasn’t just this machine,” he mentioned this afternoon. “If those judges were on the state ballot, there’s a good chance that the problem could have occurred on every machine used in the county. And that points to how well they did pre-election ‘Logic and Accuracy’ testing and if they even did it at all.”
Indeed L&A testing, though it’s supposed to occur on each voting machine prior to Election Day, often doesn’t, as election officials have told me in many instances that they are simply unable to test each and every electronic machine to ensure that it’s working correctly before Election Day, after the ballots have been programmed for it.
Michael Dean wrote a frightening essay several weeks ago for The BRAD BLOG, describing how Ballot Definition Files (BDF), which are created by employees — sometimes working for the county, sometimes working for the voting machine companies, none of them necessarily voters or even American citizens — are almost never fully tested properly for accuracy before they are implemented for use in an election.
Of course, the voting machines themselves are not properly tested in almost any jurisdiction either, much less the BDFs that are programmed to be used with them, often with hundreds of differing formats and languages in all.
Needless to say, we don’t yet know what caused my ballot to be printed incorrectly yesterday (that would be a 100% error rate for ballots printed on that ES&S InkaVote Plus machine, since I was the only one to have tried to use it!) so it’s impossible to know whether the audio BDF was programmed incorrectly, or whether the machine itself simply failed as ES&S’ often do.
Either way, I’m lucky I was able to verify the ballot for accuracy, since I wouldn’t have been able to had I actually been a blind voter. Thus, I was able to VOID that provisional ballot, and go back to my actual “precinct” (the orange table, as opposed to the green one) and vote on a normal, hand-marked paper ballot.
In an email this afternoon, Logan confirmed that the very same voting equipment “was deployed and used at 4,383 locations throughout Los Angeles County” yesterday.
RIGHT TO A SECRET BALLOT LOST
Since the scanner at my “precinct” wasn’t working, as described earlier in this article, after voting on my hand-marked InkaVote ballot a poll worker examined it before I was about to place it in the ballot box (a plastic tub). He wanted to check my ballot to make sure all the dots had been inked in fully, so the votes would be properly read (in theory) by an optical-scanner back at County headquarters later that night. The task of warning of overvotes is supposed to be done by the optical-scanner which had been broken since the polls opened yesterday morning.
While his efforts to ensure the “integrity” of my selections was appreciated, in truth, I had just lost my right to a private ballot in the process of his well-intentioned examination.
But moreover, it also then occurred to me that I would have lost my right to a private ballot had I been able to successfully complete my attempt at using the “accessible” InkaVote Plus device. My ballot would have been the only ballot printed out by the machine that day, so it would have been a simple matter to tell my votes apart from everyone else’s that were hand-marked and cast on heavy card stock, as opposed to thermal printer paper, at the end of the day when the ballots were removed from the ballot box by the poll workers.
The issue of secrecy with machine printed ballots has been a rather contentious one across the country for some time, as experts have found that the same problem occurs with the paper trails that are printed by Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting machines.
In California, after her landmark, first-of-its kind “Top-to-Bottom Review” of all of the state’s electronic voting systems, Sec. of State Debra Bowen decertified most of the state’s DRE systems, other than for one-per-polling-place use as needed, in order to marginally meet HAVA’s accessibility mandate. When she issued her findings, she initially required that if one person voted on such a machine, poll workers would be required to ensure that several other voters used it as well, so nobody’s right to a private ballot would be violated.
It was then pointed out, following the announcement of that new requirement, that it would be quite difficult, if not wholly illegal, to force voters to vote on a DRE if they did not want to, when others were allowed to vote with a paper ballot. In my case, since I was voting just before the polls were to close last night, it would have been largely impossible to find several other voters to vote on the same device, in any case.
“I can’t say for sure. I’d have to look at the documentation,” Logan told me, when I asked if the InkaVote Plus certification documents required more than one voter to vote on the machine, if someone had used it to create a ballot.
“My recollection is that that became a recommendation [as opposed to a requirement] that poll workers should try to do that, because there was a lot of discussion of whether poll workers could actually require someone to do that,” Logan said, though he was unable to tell me for sure what the rules on that were, according to the state’s recent certification documents for the InkaVote Plus system.
“I don’t believe that language is in the InkaVote Plus recertifcation document, but I’ll have to check that,” he added.
I checked it for him today. Though the certification document [PDF] reports that “expert reviewers demonstrated that the physical and technological security mechanisms…for the InkaVote Plus Precinct Ballot Counter Voting System were inadequate to ensure accuracy and integrity of the election results,” and described “serious design flaws” along with myriad “vulnerabilities” and opportunity for malicious “attacks that could potentially be used to modify any of the information stored in the election results database,” it’s rather amazing that SoS Bowen ending up recertifying the system for use at all.
That the system was allowed to be used is perhaps even more amazing, given that ES&S spent months withholding it from review entirely by the Secretary of State’s independent team of testers. It was finally recertified, at the last minute, just prior to last February’s Super Tuesday Primary, largely when it was too late to move to another system in such a large county.
Nonetheless, no specific mandates (or recommendations) are listed in the recert doc requiring (or recommending) that more than one voter use the system, if anybody decides to use the “accessible” portion of the system. It is, however, required that “No poll worker or other person may record the time at which or the order in which voters vote in a polling place.”
That requirement, presumably, is meant in order to make it difficult to track who voted when, so that it becomes more difficult to discover how a specific person had voted. That my ballot would have been the only one on at the entire precinct printed on thermal paper, however, means that no matter when I voted, it would have been a simple matter to determine who and what I had voted for.
The recertification also required that a number of “Use Procedures” be created by the voting machine vendors and county officials, though I was unable to find those documents at the SoS website, so can’t report whether or not such procedures spoke to the particular privacy issue in question on the InkaVote Plus system.
Of course the AutoMark system, the electronic ballot-marking device which does offer the “sip and puff” functionality I mentioned earlier, and does, as I understand it, use a regular card stock paper ballot which might not be easily noticed as different from the others cast, is also marketed and sold in California by ES&S.
Unfortunately, Bowen was recently outraged to discover that the company had secretly and illegally swapped uncertified AutoMark systems in for the certified versions in several counties. The company now faces millions of dollars in fines from the state and possible decertification. Again.
Last November, Bowen filed a $15 million lawsuit against the company for that unauthorized use of voting hardware which was “never submitted to, or reviewed by, the Secretary of State.” The suit was filed after a four-month investigation by her office revealed that they had “repeatedly violated state law.”
“ES&S ignored the law over and over and over again, and it got caught” said Bowen, in the press release announcing the suit late last year.
What will or won’t “get caught” in light of the extraordinary failures found during my own personal attempting at voting on the ES&S InkaVote Plus voting system in Los Angeles, remains to be seen.
UPDATE 6/12/08: ‘Human error’ (though not mine) blamed for my votes being flipped, upon initial investigation, according to the County Registrar. Details here…
…good god. I am speechless.
Make it stop, Mommy, make it stop!
Mind boggling. We need to go back to paper and ink, with every precinct counted twice.
Brad; All we need are bingo blotters and sheets of paper. There is absolutely no need for electronic voting unless you’re trying to steal the election. There should be an amendment stating that all voting be done caveman style. Large print and large circles to be filled in unmistakably by large bingo blotters.
Voting day should be a Saturday or made into a national holiday.
Counting the vote should take a week if necessary, in full public view. Counting should be a celebration of our rights and our system, not a lightning quick, secretive system that at best clouds the legitimacy of the vote.
K.I.S.S, what’s so hard about hand counting? What’s so damned important about instant vote tabulations?
What’s less important than vote integrity?
Bingo blotters and time to count them. That’s all I ask.
Kudos to you, Brad, for being the great watchdog on behalf of the “disabled” vote, and all votes in general.
…So insidious to have the decoy “assistive device” and all computerized voting machines and tabulators leading voters to the polls like sheep to slaughter.
I want a video camera on that machine until it’s examined.
The mind boggles. LA spent four million dollars on nothing. It was a heist. ES&S added nothing to our paper ballot system. The Board of Supervisors should be outed on their compliant fiscal irresponsibility, Connie McCormack should be grilled by the press for on-record statements about this utter failure of her and ES&S’s HAVA solution, and Dean Logan should leave so we can start over with a healthy, skeptical eye and a fresh IT crew at the Registrar’s.
Actually, it was more than four million. I forget the numbers now. But it was way more.
I agree with Mimi Kennedy: we need to demand proof that the machine has been “quarantined” and will not be tampered with before a full examination, with witnesses including you, can be completed.
I have a couple of questions about other possible violations of law here:
Provisional ballots are supposed to be used when the voter’s eligibility cannot be determined at the polls. You were given a provisional ballot because the system was out of order and you had to be sent to a different precinct (albeit in the same room). Is this legal, to force you to vote provisionally for this reason?
Also, you say this provisional ballot did not give you the opportunity to vote in the partisan races you would have had the opportunity to cast votes in had the system been working and had you therefore been able to vote on a regular ballot. I believe this is yet another violation of your rights.
Anybody familiar with election law want to weigh in on those questions?
Kudos to you for taking fast action on this last night!
I believe it was the fine folks of the Ohio Election Justice Campaign who came up with the idea of quarantining voting machines that are known to have malfunctioned. Here’s a blog item about the Quarantine That Machine! project they ran in last February’s Ohio primary.
Brad, Thank you for your bulldog steadfastness on exposing the theft of our votes by the blackbox voting scams.
Brad,
Is there any connection amongst the four candidates to whom you votes were switched? I am curious whether this is voter fraud or ES&S incompetence.
72dawg
Please. This was NOT voter fraud! We’re talking ELECTION fraud and/or incompetence. You gotta try very hard to keep the terms straight because the fraudsters are confusing the masses with the term “voter fraud”. Brad was not fraudulently voting. None of us are. Be careful.
72Dawg –
I don’t know if there are any connections between the candidates. I’ve posted the names in the articles though, so I’ll leave it to the Internet Minions to poke around with.
But I do know that it wasn’t “voter fraud”! If anything, it was either “election fraud” or voting system error/failure. But, unless you’re suggesting *I* did something fraudulent (which I know you’re not) it certainly wasn’t “voter fraud”!!!
i like the bingo dabbers idea….big ,colorful,easy to read easy to count
yes vote counting should be a party not a chore
heres what i dont get….why isnt that race being hand counted? there was obviously a prob
good reporting brad
Think this could have been a problem during the Primaries? My guess is YES
Vote Counting Computers Are NOT The Problem
The truth is elections have ALWAYS been fraudulent — computers, the Internet and other electronic communications have just given the general public the ability to detect the massive fraud that has always been going on. THAT is why you are being fed the red herring that “get rid of the computers and all will be well”.
The government WANTS to get rid of the computers because they know they are a threat to their phony scam. They deliberately made the computer vote fraud easy to detect and in-your-face obvious; so that the public would demand the old ways that they have long ago learned to compromise without detection. How they must laugh themselves silly at their little meetings watching you build your own jails.
The truth is elections are a scam to get the politically ignorant and hopelessly illogical to believe that they or their neighbors of the “other political party” have somehow chosen all the horrors and injustices foisted upon them by government.
Elections keep the public feeling guilty; divided and blaming each other; and wasting their time and energy fighting each other instead of tackling the REAL problem, which is the government itself. The government is not a benevolent parent; or your friend; rather it is a massive bureaucratic system dominated by the self-interests of hundreds of thousands of government employees.
These career criminals will do anything — lie, cheat, steal, and KILL to protect their parasitical jobs and way of life. They have NO intention of giving up their gravy train; and why should they; when they have been getting away with their scam for generations.
People need to grow up and realize that government is the problem; NOT the solution to their problems. Government is like drugs or alcohol — may make you feel better in the short term; but will kill you in the long run. AND the cure is NEVER more of the same.
IF you REALLY want to fix things; the first step is to recognize you are a GOVERNMENTAHOLIC; look at yourself in the mirror and take the pledge to cut back government just like you cut back weeds growing in your garden. STOP BELIEVING anything you are told; just like you would not believe any other career criminals no matter what they promised.
Here is a link to someone who has said it far better than I ever can…
A Holiday For Fools
You all simply must learn to worship the black boot and the mailed fist. In the New Liberty, wise computers shall decide everything for you, including who will rule. We give you the privilege of voting, a mere formality since no matter who or what you vote for, collectivism prevails. Individuals must submit. Voting is part of the submission process, as are computer-corrected elections. It would not be proper to permit the masses a real say in what goes on. The agenda would be ruined if we allowed any real choices. The computers and the corporations that run them know best.
Embrace Hierarchy. Cherish Democracy. Rights are archaic relics. All antiquarian notions must be purged, washed away by the new order.
Freedom is beautiful. It’s a gift from benevolents such as those who run ES&S. Why are you complaining? Lick the black boot. Suck the mailed fist. We are here to help you. The taser is your friend. Officers Jack Boot and Billy Club love you and are your protectors, as are those who pay their salaries with fiat currency from thin air.
Thinking is bad for your health, landless peasants. It won’t hurt as much if you simply shut up and submit.
At least you got to vote multiple times. Vote early and often. It doesn’t matter anyway. Only those who count the votes matter.
Wow the comment above sounds like someone who is a libertarian or braindead. Call your legislators and let them know about this article and that they take immediate action to get rid of these electronic machines. And, if democrats go and vote in November in large numbers, no machine, no human can steal the election because of the margins.
Carl Street #15,
You don’t know what the hell your talking about. Which is why you present zero facts, based in physics, electronics, or programming to back up this specific claim otherwise you would be speaking the opposite tune. e.g. ALL Electronic Vote Tabulation Devices are a serious national security problem. They can’t be validated or verified because the actual electronic signals are invisible to the human eye.
Neither Satan nor even GOD can see these signals.
Looking quickly at your poorly crafted website (my opinion), and over-specific resume (my opinion), I would have to *personally* classify you as a troll who is targeting election integrity disinformation, and hiding behind a swiftly written website which accentuates your supposed success. Yet for the delicious nitty-gritty on your supposed success’s, we quickly are greeted with “Excellent References Provided On Request.”
I was expecting PHD, MBS, or open source project leader. Would be far harder to argue with you then. Even though, if you think about it, people who don’t even have a degree designed the operating system your using now, and probably the network you communicate on.
Anyway *I* felt instead like I just typed a URL into the wayback machine and came out onto an old defunct fortune city twilight zone webpage (I have a few of those, and some lost now as well), a quick lookie at the source “SoftQuad//DTD HoTMetaL PRO 5.0” Yep.. We’ve absolutely arrived. Right Click to avoid the Frames….Should I break out with my panzer’ed Netscape 3 heh heh? This ain’t some kind of personal attack, it’s HOW I ANALYZED YOU.
The only thing I see in what you said having even a slight amount of truth to it is that Electronic Vote Tabulation Devices are not the ONLY problem with our elections. That I do get. Where we part is that I believe Electronic Vote Tabulation Devices — And Recently Electronic Voter Rolls are the LARGEST part.
And we further part ways, that all government is bad, I have family that works for government for more years than you WILL EVER HOLD a single job, not all government employees are not bad. They are doing what they are told to do. In many cases quite impressively. Parts of the leadership at very top most control of government are bad. Not the whole thing. So don’t toss out the baby with the bathwater.
If you cared or dared to dig deeper into this fact, you would find a lot of “New Govt employees”, and “NEWER Govt Execs” are beginning to get screwed by the TOP DOWN corrupt leadership coming directly from this current administration. Research the Thrift Savings Plan (the new retirement plan for young government employees.) At the same time the older ones that actually have a real retirement are leaving sooner rather than later. Then there are hard core government employees like my mom, who should have retired a long time ago, but CARE about this country more!
The government can be cleaned up if the people have the tools to clean it up. Part of those tools is the right to vote. If that right is subverted (like in Brad’s Case.. The Topic of this original thread) then those tools are broken and the government can no longer be trusted or controlled.
We The People ARE the government. You should know that your a veteran, just like I am.
Saying that the Computers are not the problem and all Government is corrupt is just going to stir up a hornet’s nest.
Please read:
Consensual Political Intercourse
You know full well that even after you have made absolutely certain that your ballot is correct, the optical scanner can still misrecord it, right, Brad?
And you know full well that even if the optical scanner doesn’t misrecord your vote, the central tabulator gets another shot at it, right?
And you also know, thanks to your assistance with the CA50 case, that unelected candidates can be sworn in before all the votes are counted and before the election is certified, and then cannot be removed from office for the rest of their term unless Congress itself decides to do so, right?
You know that the same machines and the same voting officials will be in place in November as were in place now.
So please tell me exactly what you think may have changed by November that could give you any reasonable expectation whatsoever that your vote will be counted at all, no less counted accurately?
In what way do you feel that voting in yet another rigged election will help to futher the cause of citizen-owned transparent participatory democracy?
How many presidential elections do you think it is reasonable for us to allow to be stolen before we decide we have enough evidence that they were stolen and recognize that the people who stole this country stacked the Supreme Court, the Justice Department, and most of the federal courts, and exempted themselves from international law, so there is no place we can go with that evidence?
Please read the discussion here:
Uncounted discussion
We are planning The NOvember Uprising. We are going to put the NO back in NOvember. A vote is our only voice in government. An uncounted vote is a gag on the body politic. It means that we have no voice and no democracy.
Do you really think that we can get honest elections by continuing to vote in rigged elections?
We are organizing an alternative election where people can vote and know that their vote will be counted. Because the only candidates with a chance of winning the rigged election are all committed to continuing war crimes, we are not going to vote on candidates, as we don’t care which war criminal “wins.” We are going to vote NO on fascism and YES on government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Will you join us?
I work as an election judge in Baltimore, and in each of the last elections I’ve had to quarantine 2 electronic voting machines.
We need to dump the damn things… and pronto.
About provisional voting:
1) You do not vote a “provisional ballot”. You vote the ballot you would have received normally. Whaat make the vote provisional is that it goes into a provisional envelope so that validity can be verified later.
2) The type of ballot you received is determined by your registered party only. “Open primary” only referred to those who are registered non-partisan. Those people could vote plain non-partisan, or could vote on a specialized republican or democratic ballot which excluded central commitee options. American Independant, Green and Peace and Freedom registrants also received non-partisan ballots because they had no nominees on the ticket.
I hope this explains your ballot questions.
Longtime Precinct Inspector in Sam Diego
Another outstanding example of your fine journalism Brad!
The American public needs to wake up to the fact that Software Driven Devices [SDD] should be banned from the polling place. The very integrity of our democratic system is threatened by this SDD virus which has infected the body politic. It is time for Congress to investigate the folks responsible for certifying these SDD machines, previously the National Association of State Election Directors and now the Election Assistance Commission. Or maybe not Congress, perhaps a grand jury would be more appropriate.
Keep us posted on your flipped votes, you may have been the victim of a crime.
Hand count paper ballots in public, it is the only way to assure an honest count.
Michael Richardson
Obviously, these are not mistakes. Everyone who benefitted from the ‘vote flip’ is in on it. Rigging elections, yet another infringement on our rights by the gov’t. Add it to the ever-growing list of violations:
They violate the 1st Amendment by opening mail, caging demonstrators and banning books like America Deceived (book) from Amazon.
They violate the 2nd Amendment by confiscating guns during Katrina.
They violate the 4th Amendment by conducting warrant-less wiretaps.
They violate the 5th and 6th Amendment by suspending habeas corpus.
They violate the 8th Amendment by torturing.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting 2 illegal wars based on lies and on behalf of a foriegn gov’t.
Write in Dr. Ron Paul and save this great country.
Why in Gods name do we not offer braille ballots for our blind citizens? This seems like to would be much simpler and cost effective and definitely faster for them.
The system you described just seems so over done and complicated. A simple paper braille ballot would work.
This needs to get fixed. No more electronic voting machines.
GOTMAC,
Something like less than 10% of blind people read braille, so that is not a option. It can be used in addition to audio and other accessible designs but not as the only option.
Voting Machine Gives Voters Election Day Off
By Gene Kalmes
The latest touch screen voting machine held a press conference Thursday announcing that it had the future elections completely under control and that voters shouldn’t worry their busy little heads over getting to their local polling place. “I will vote for you because I not only have the time but I am a computer and therefore smarter then any individual human being. I will look at the records of all the candidates and make the logical choice that best suits the needs of America.”
Alice Crumpkowski, a single mother of three who usually votes Democrat was relieved to hear the news, “I have soccer practice, dance rehearsal and day care pickups to deal with after work. If this computer could pick up my kids and make them dinner I would say we as a technologically advanced society had finally reached the Utopian plateau but since that would be asking too much I am delighted with this news. Kentucky Fried Chicken is on the opposite side of town, there is construction near our polling place and any machine that will spare me that kind of hassle gets a kiss from me.”
Fred Stank of Bolingbrook Illinois said, “I vote Republican and just looking at that glistening machine I can tell it will clearly elect a Republican House of Representatives. Any machine that stands up so straight and is so articulate can only be a Republican programmed machine. I bet it’s even a pretty good golfer.”
The new touch screen machine designed by Diebold is currently vacationing at its ranch in Texas where it apparently ropes and brands its own cattle. A machine like this is testament to American ingenuity and foresight. In a photo op wearing a tall white Stetson hat the voting machine winked at some guy in a dark suit who remained expressionless.
I worked a polling place as an asst. inspector in San Diego County. We had one Diebold machine for people with visual or other disability that would create a hardship voting in the conventional manner, though I think the machine could be used by anyone with a preference to do so; no one did the entire day. I would suggest that all of you civic minded folks try this work a time or two. It gives you a good understanding of the mechanics of the process. But I would stress that without ethical party leadership and representation, and honest journalism, the machine counting is just the tail end of a pretty ugly monster.
Taxrat #21 said:
Actually, no. I received only non-partisan races on my audio ballot on the ES&S InkaVote Plus, despite having requested to vote in a specific party primary. Whether I would have been given a proper party ballot, had I voted provisionally on a paper-ballot, is another question. When given an audio ballot, I was definitely not allowed to vote in the party-specific contests.
Carl Street #15.
Though you site no facts I have to agree with most of what you say. Balkinization, guilt, and fear are the tool of tyrants and they are used to great effect in this country. For Phil: I think the election of Sen. Lyndon Johnson would be a good historical reference for the good old days and ways of vote fraud. And like cockroaches; if you see one you know there are thousands unseen. I would also state that historically speaking, we now have an entire 3-4 generations of state educated pople. That sort of “educational” programming of the masses is unmatched in history, Before then, people always were highly suspicious of their leaders, kings and lords. And like Carl states, now we just blame ourselves. A big bravo to the ruling elite. Truly a job well done.
Brad,
Yes, I meant election fraud.
When I wrote “voter fraud” I was thinking of fraud against the voter by ES&S.
Sorry for the mistake. Shouldn’t read/post blogs after midnight.
BB,
Great article and findings of fact.
The system is not “broke”, rather it is wired and has been for a long time. I more or less discovered the corruption 18 years ago and have not “voted” in any CA municipal (the Nov 2008 is a municipal election too) elections since.
I would highly recommend you contact Randall Kelton at http://www.jurisimprudence.com (hear him Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays on http://www.wtprn.com/schedule.html). Randall is doing AWESOME things in Texas with the County Grand Juries and it is time in CA for a Grand Jury indictment against those who run the CA voting sham.
Niskala
Please See:
COMMENT #4 [Permalink]… Fog said on 6/4/2008 @ 9:38 pm PT…
Ditto. I have nothing to add. Except:
Brad, thank you for your work. You are a great American.
#17
J-M
…I can assure you that was no libertarian. I think he was being just a wee bit sarcastic 🙂
For the past 15 years I have chosen to vote absentee.
This allows me to avoid those silly, unpredictable voting machines, and to vote complex ballot issues at my leisure.
I strongly recommend this process to everyone who wants their vote to be counted.
{Ed Note: I appreciate your thinking, Scott, but I got bad news for you. See this: “Why Vote-by-Mail is a Terrible Idea for Democracy” – BF}
I worked as a provisional ballot clerk for this election. Voting provisionally has no connection with whether a partisan ballot is issued. Anyone who was denied a partisan ballot because they voted provisionally was denied a proper (opportunity to) vote in partisan races.
Once the voter’s eligibility to vote and then further, eligibility to vote in partisan races is determined afterwards by registrar… then the vote is either counted or not counted, as appropriate.
In Brad’s case, his eligibility to vote (and on which ballot) was clear since he was on the voter rolls at his precinct. He was correctly given a provisional ballot at the other precinct, even though it was at the same location, since he was out of precinct. But that he was not allowed on the audio machine to vote his party ballot, or vote a Republican or Democratic ballot if he is registered non-partisan (which Brad seemed to be implying), was not correct. But again, even if his eligibility were unclear at the time, he should have been given whatever ballot he requested.
If provisional voters were systematically denied the right to vote on their requested ballot at certain precincts, that’s a problem… which is probably a training issue. (It’s in the manual.)
Also, Taxrat #21, Los Angeles County had 9 different ballot types in this election. There were races that included candidates from Green, AI, P&F, etc. so voters registered in these parties did not receive non-partisan ballots.
Excellent, Gene. But as you can see, some people believe that if they mail their vote to the machine, the machine will take it into consideration.
They know that the machine in your essay is going to make the final decision, and that if it decides to read any of the mailed-in ballots it can also decide whether or not to count them. They even know that pollworkers open their mail-in ballot envelopes (if they haven’t already been shredded on the basis of zip codes) and decide whether to count them, destroy them, or alter them.
Half the people I ask insist that they would continue to vote even if the only federally approved voting mechanism was a flush toilet. They say that their vote is their voice and they will not deny the government the right to flush their voice down the toilet. The government’s right to flush their vote down the toilet is so precious to them that they document it, photograph it, write blogs and article and books about it, and will defend their right to let the government flush their votes away with their lives if necessary.
If the government pursues crimes against humanity and will not allow honest elections, then that is the democracy the vote-flushers will defend to the death. If you refuse to let the government flush your vote, they say, you can’t complain.
They complain a lot. It doesn’t alter the outcome of the rigged elections, but it must make them feel good.
The first time the government steals your vote, it isn’t your fault. You weren’t expecting it. The second time, since it has happened to you before, you are partially responsible. But if it happens a third time, it isn’t theft because you are asking for it and consenting to it:
Consensual Political Intercourse
And since you enjoy it so much, you’re going to keep asking for it and consenting to it, possibly because the videos are pretty popular….
Good article…I’ve submitted a news tip to our local newspaper based on it, citing your work.
I hope they pick up on it…
What is the point of protesting to “count all the votes” in FL, MI or anywhere else, if the count doesn’t reflect the vote?
Follow up: Who exactly is ES&S? (Co. name and website?) I Googled “Inkavote” and found http://www.inkavote.com from “Unisyn Voting Systems”.
Their marketing contact e-mail seems to be a domain “ilts.com”, which seems only to be a placeholder site.
The whole thing seems kind of small-time and unprofessional, with no mention of an ES&S. Or do I have the wrong vendor?
Follow up #2: Sorry, http://www.ilts.com (instead of ilts.com) goes to International Lottery & Totalizator Systems, Inc. Still no mention of an ES&S
http://www.the-signal.com/news/article/2038/
JUDGING THE JUDGES by Roger Gitlin
some info on the judges up for election – check it out…
“The notorious Los Angeles Times called candidate Johnson a racist…
Lance Winters comes out of the Chief Justice John G. Roberts’s school of thought…
Bob Henry rates highest as a Strict Constructionist, followed closely by Pat Connolly…
Mr. Silberman is a strong advocate for children and children’s rights…”
good luck America!
In the autumn election, do the same process, and ask friends to present the same challenges if the perfectly punched hanging-chadless result is different from the cribsheet the voter brings to prove how the preplanned votes should look.
Then ask Secretary Bowen to take control of the decisionmaking for that registrar’s polls until reliable evote machines are installed for the next election.
I would also try to obtain a subset of cribsheet challengers who are provisional ballot eligible only, as maybe the bug applies only to provisional ballots.
Also, I would look for the mo that happened in NH with “subcontractors” transporting ROM piggyback boards in their cars to reboot jammed evote machines. Secy Bowen likely has some excellent ideas on controlling chain of custody of those little piggyback repair flashRAM cards on election day.
Another approach I would take would be investigating who does the fab of those little flashRAM cards, and examining their security and code escrow compliance.
Hey Wilber ~ Looks like These ‘lectronic voting machines are like
slot machines without the arm! Hmmm…
Of course, you know, stuff like this doesn’t matter to the GOP. They’d rather do investigations on fraudulent voters, who, with the exception of Ann Coulter, seem to not exist. You do realize that this is most likely all by design, right? The GOP loves it.
anyone who knows the very least about computer programming / electronics and simple logic knows that this kind of shit should not just “happen randomly”.. this is super easy stuff to implement and the fact that our country has so much trouble with these voting machines shows that something bad is going on.
Steve Whitney –
Sorry, I should have given their full name. It’s Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) of Omaha, Nebraska. The world’s largest supplier of voting systems and the largest in the U.S. as well.
http://essvote.com
The InkaVote is a bit of a Frankenstein system, originally created by a Malaysian outfit, as I recall, as a punchcard system, then modified to work with ink pens for dots, instead of a stylus for punches. Unisys came in either before or after the change to ink. And then ES&S added the “Plus” which is the audio ballot booth attachment in order to make it “accessible”.
See? No matter how much I overwrite any story, I still leave stuff out that folks need to know! 😉
XRA #44,
That’s EXACTLY the problem, I have been screaming about since 2004.
I say it slightly differently.
Compare to my 2004-2008 DIFF
DIFF
+ unvalidatable and failing electronic vote tabulation devices
+ unvalidatable failing electronic voter rolls
+ broken chain of custody for paper ballots
+ swearing of candidates in before election is certified
+ high media influence to effect election outcome
+ ZERO media influence to report on electronic vote tabulation device failure
– swift accountability
– legal authority by the public
+ lawsuits for voting companies against states
(note: clearly this is parody of a poorly written diff file, the +’s amd -‘s though are real!)
Mark S: I’m glad somebody else can see the forest despite the trees.
People who vote in known rigged elections are like people who play the lotto expecting to win the jackpot, even after hearing the truth about the odds.
Both would be better off by abandoning the scams.
One note: I appreciate the use of the term “mal gobierno” (bad government)by the Zapatistas and others, as a way to differentiate from possible forms of “good” government, such as the alternative one that they are trying to organize for their community.
[sarcasm]No one vote. There’s no point anyway. Plus, we’re being run by one party, the rethuglican-demorats. [/sarcasm]
___________________________________________
Here’s a game.
Paid Fake, Useful Idiot, Or Diarrhea Of The Mouth?
#168 True Delphi
Kerry wasn’t trounced and good job giving Mark “OnTheOtherHand” Lindeman a nice softball.
#172 OTOH
Is this next person connected to Rob Pelletier of Diebold?
#176 troubleinwinter
A few examples on his list:
Unverifiable DREs
Voter ID Laws
Do these people work for the electronic machine vendors? They seem to be implying that all we need are electronic machine paper receipts and the machines are cool. The Dutch government doesn’t agree. The fight is now on in Ireland to ban the machines.
#188 OTOH- nothing to see here, move along.
#197 Wilms hates hearing of exit polls too.
#204 OTOH- evoking of authority- He spends a lot of time debunking their importance. If they are so easily debunked as an indicator of election fraud, why can’t Mark simply stfu already {the methinks doth and protesting thing}?
He has some nerve ripping into Professor Freeman, an actual math expert. Lindeman goes on to once more promote political scientists as somehow the be all end all for knowledge on election integrity issues. Who the hell does he think he is to rip into Freeman and Fitrakis? He’s lucky they don’t post at DemocraticUnderground, or he would be getting triple the pawnage that Brad gave to him.
Then OTOH started whining about the fact that his forum antics and “dogs in the hunt” have been exposed. He throws out ad hominems that we’re all part of some carnival circus, just because we know for a fact that the elections were stolen.
Then Pelletier{?} chimed in with a visual. Wilms, TroubleInWinter, and OTOH had a big laugh.
People can go into the DU archives and see how Lindeman, Febble, Kelvin Mace and others stuck up for Steven Hertzberg {stevenstevensteven} and ESI.
There is absolutely no reason we can’t organize a good government also.
Would a new constitutional convention be aimed at drawing up a new Constitution or amending the old one? Amending the old one, to my mind, would be like trying to retrofit the Wright Brothers’ flying machine with a jet propulsion engine. Our Constitution wasn’t designed for or even to accommodate government by the people. Our Constitution specifically prohibits us from voting directly for President or Vice-President, from having any say in the selection of Supreme Court Justices, and from voting directly on major issues that concern us such as wars and money.
If we can get a majority to vote NO in NOvember, we want to work on transitioning to good government, with input from everyone concerned enough to join us. The “Putting the No back in NOvember” group is here:
No in NOvember
It just started a few days ago and only has a few members but it is open to anyone.
I don’t expect that those with a vested interest in political parties or the elections industry (for or against) will consider not voting in rigged elections, but since half the electorate doesn’t vote already, and more and more people are getting tired of stolen elections, we’re putting the concept back on the table for discussion.
Those who are determined to vote in rigged elections are demanding that we allow a third presidential election in a row to be stolen and they won’t even talk about any possible alternatives. It doesn’t matter if their vote is stolen once, twice, three times, four times, or a hundred times, they will continue to vote. Brad verified his ballot and insisted it be correct before he allowed it to be fed into an optical scan machine that would record or misrecord his vote on a memory card that he could not verify, and then fed into a central tabulator he could not verify. And he knows it. He wants to cast his vote correctly, but how the machines and the elections officials count or miscount it is just stuff to write about or lobby about or litigate about, not to refuse to allow.
We want to try to educate those who proudly claim that they would continue to vote even if the only federally approved mechanism was a flush toilet. A vote is not a voice unless it is counted. This is our country that they continue to insist on flushing away. We have to find a way to get them to stop.
Put the NO back in NOvember. Don’t vote in rigged elections. You have the right to a voice, not just an uncounted vote.
I have observed pre-election preparations in numerous jurisdictions, many of them quite large, and I can personally guarantee you that in every single one of those cases each and every machine used on election day was painstakingly and methodically tested and sealed before it went to the polls, without exception. The idea that in LA, or anywhere else, a machine would be set up at a polling place without having gone through legally mandated logic and accuracy testing is unconscionable, outrageous and blatantly illegal. I’m shocked to hear that this is done in LA.
Once again, I have to restate my position that, while voting machines are problematic, our biggest problems by far are with our elected officials who refuse to carry out their duties and obligations. Any registrar who knowingly allows an untested machine to be used in an election should be held painfully responsible.
Gene (#26)
…that post is priceless. Just made me spit-take my Diet Coke. Thanks!
In Santa Clara County, we used paper ballots for most voters, with the Sequoia EDGE machine with thermal printers that allow a voter to verify their vote before that vote is finally recorded both on paper and in a memory card for those who wished, or needed, to use an electronic voting machine.
Fortunately, we use an all paper roster system, so we did not have to deal with electronic roster machines.
I was a Clerk at a precinct polling place for both the February 5th election and the June 3rd election. All I can say is,I am glad we did not have any voters who wanted to use the touch screen machines for either election where I worked. We had an audio voting device similar to the one Brad described. From what Brad said about how long it took him to cast an audio ballot, his experience was typical. We were told to expect an audio voter to need 20 to 30 minutes to complete their ballot, so with one machine allocated to each polling place, not many vision impaired voters can be accommodated.
As I said, fortunately, we did not have any voters who wanted or needed to use our touch screen machine. It is just as well that we didn’t.
For the most part, here in Santa Clara County, we use an optical scan ballot where every voting space consists of a straight line with an arrowhead on one end, with a gap of about 1/4 inch between the two ends of the line. The voter is to use a blue or black pen to complete the line to indicate their choice. These ballots could easily be hand counted, although in Santa Clara County, they are machine counted.
One point that caught my attention was that we had 10 different kinds of ballots, and each kind of ballot had English paired with one of 4 other languages, so in all, we had 40 different kinds of paper ballots for just one precinct!
I am all for paper ballots that are hand counted in front of as many people as wish to watch. We do not need INSTANT election results! What we need are accurate and trustworthy election results. If we use electronic voting machines, I would propose that they be used only for those people who need to be accommodated for their physical differences, but that those machines would produce, in the end, a paper ballot.
But I realize that there must be some way for a vision impaired voter to verify that their machine printed paper ballot has been correctly printed. In this case, I would provide an audio reader for verifying any machine printed paper ballots.
I am all for “open source” code using open source compilers and running on open architecture machines that can be inspected and tested in public at any time. And that openness requirement includes all of the optical scanning and tabulating machines, too.
Still nothing whatsoever related in any way whatsoever to Tuesday’s election “irregularities” in the San Francisco Chronicle.
When I click on your blog, it always seems to take forever to load, and then navigating is slow as well, because of all that you have here. Instead of being irritated, though, I catch myself and thank the stars that you’re doing this. We can put up with the time it takes to load your ads and your other potential income-producing counters and what-not, to have access to this all-important issue.
Now that’s the kind of reportin everyone can do…if correctly informed! GO DEMOCRACY NOW!!!!!!
http://www.democracynow.org/
And hey Bev…I want to take this moment to give you the credit you so richly deserve…as a patriot not of gender but truthful action. THANK YOU!
That is Bev Harris, miles above all us…except for Brad et al!
OOps. I meant to include this:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
Yeah democracy is actionable!
When the hell is Jon Stewart gonna have you three on?
Have I mentioned lately how much I really like you people? *bfg*
Well, we’ve heard from one admitted memeber of the parasite class (government employee) who is trying to peddle that old chestnut “We the people are the government” — Yeah RIGHT!!
Anyone who believes that please contact me because I still have some Brooklyn Bridge stock available at an excellent price… 🙂
In primitive societies members place offerings on altars and expect to curry favors.
In even more primitive societies members press buttons or place marks on pieces of paper and place them in boxes and expect to curry favors.
And YOU people think you are more advanced than illiterate savages???
What a laugh!
Obviously, you still believe in miracles, witch doctors and magic or you would NOT waste your time voting.
Wake UP — All politicians are liars, thieves and murderers — HOW do you think they got to the top of the cesspool?? Nice, honest, ethical people do NOT obtain political office anymore than ethical god-fearing people become Mafia contract killers. The system is designed to filter out anyone who has ethics and has not been compromised.
If voting could REALLY change things it would be illegal. The Democrats are NOT spineless — they are on the side of power and corruption; just like their Republican “opponents”. Only fools believe otherwise.
In a curious sort of way, George Bush is the most honest president the USA has ever had because he stated the truth when he said, “The Constitution is just a goddam piece of paper”. All other presidents believed that too; but they were too hypocritical to admit it and you were too dumb to detect it.
Constitutions, elections, voting, politicians, etc. are just SHOW BUSINESS designed to distract you and divert you from taking measures that would REALLY change things. But, I guess they no longer teach history and most are illiterate and believe in Harry Potter magic tricks and other miracles.
What a shame, — but perhaps someday a REALLY intelligent species will occupy the earth after HomoPoliticoStupidus is extinct — shouldn’t be much longer…
Brad,
Hope you and the election workers who witnessed
the “flipped event” were smart enough to record
your event in the precinct log book with your’s
and the workers signatures. These events need
to put before courts and election officials
and legislators for corrective action.
Also, you may have seen the alarming results
of the recent NH recount of the presidential
primaries, both Democratic and Republican ballots.
By review of the raw data supplied on the NH SoS
homepage one can see that both the machine count
process and the hand count process had error
rates that are unacceptable for the voters.
Did you and other EI teams see the same problem?
Thanks and Good Luck,
Frank Henry
Cottonwood, Arizona
Tel: 928-649-0249
e-mail: fmhenry4@netzero.com
If a machine is hacked, sequestering for it for examination may not show anything. A good hacker will have erased his work. But, most of this looks more like incompetent programming than hacking.
For an example of incompetent programming by ES&S, go to their web site ( http://www.essvote.com/HTML/pro...onic_rtal.html ) and click on “interactive Demo.” When I did this, after changing my vote 14 times the audit log stopped working. One wonders what it does in an actual voting situation.
RE: Jack #50
I too have seen many public tests. The largest jurisdiction was Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
I can assure you as a professional software tester I have NEVER seen anything being painstakingly and methodically tested.
Aside from the fact that only a subset of equipment to be used on election night is test, the machines which are tested are not tested with the underlying premise of finding defects.
I have also reviewed the test plans and decks of test ballots used by many other jurisdictions. None of these test plans have ever been rigorously, methodically, or effectively designed.
Perhaps your experience has been different from mine or you and I disagree on the meaning of painstaking and methodically.
I do wholeheartedly agree with your position:
while voting machines are problematic, our biggest problems by far are with our elected officials who refuse to carry out their duties and obligations.
I have election officials in this area on video violating the statutes concerning canvassing of votes. On a different matter both the DA of my county and the AG of my state have stated in writing that enforcement of election statutes is not in their jurisdiction even if the complaint involves felonious destruction of election records under WI Stats 7.23 (1)(g).
To whom do you suggest we go to in order to prosecute officials who refuse to carry out their duties and obligations?
I am serious looking at the grand jury options found Juris-Imprudence.
{ED NOTE: Spam message deleted. – BF}
Fantastic article, Brad. Ho-Lee-Sheeeit.
BAN THE MACHINE!
Jack Nauti @ 50 said:
And what county would that be in, Jack? Please do let me know, because I’ve yet to find a county that actually tested every machine set for deployment. Everyone else I’ve asked about this, essentially said they test the ballot definition files on a few machines in “L&A” testing, but have no time to test *all* of them, and still have an election.
So, pray tell, what county do you “personally guarantee” every machine is tested first?
I hope you all realize that Dean Logan was up to his eyeballs in the King County gubernatorial election scandal in Seattle before coming to LA. He’s no stranger to election fraud.
I was an Inspector for the past two primaries in CA.
If you were not afforded the opportunity to vote in a specific party’s primary (or NP) on the audio system, it was due to worker ignorance/incompetence, or the machine malfunctioned when the worker attempted to enter the code for that party (or “precinct” per the prompt on the touch screen).
I worked in an NVC, also. We had more than two precincts in our polling place. Let me say, delicately, that the knowledge base amongst the various clerks/inspectors of the precincts varied.
Also…I so love dealing with the support folks in Norwalk prior to election day. Not. The misinformation is staggering to me. And…They are two for two in failing to respond to equipment failures I’ve experienced on election days. In trainings, they swore we could escalate issues until they were resolved. Didn’t happen. We were told to just make do. So…..at least two of the readers (machine that scans ballots for over/undervotes) weren’t operational.
Brad – if you want to have some additional “fun.” I suggest you show up at an NVC at closing and just hang out and observe how the ballots are processed, and see how many tally sheets actually balance. I am NOT alleging fraud. But Inspectors are ordered to get the ballots to the drop-off points regardless any issues they may be experiencing. ALL citizens have a right to be a poll watcher and so long as you do not directly interfere with the process, you can get very close and observe the farce.
Heck…you could show up at 6 A.M. and observe the chaos typically involved in trying to get things up and running by 7. I wish you would have been able to observe our mess, and the “support” we received from Norwalk. Our co-ordinator was stuck elsewhere as he/she had to assist first-time workers there.
This is the same Dean Logan that oversaw similar incompetence in King County, WA. Makes you wonder.
How about going with the obvious: the machine wasn’t programmed to read the ballot correctly due to incompetence. The error wasn’t caught due to insufficient testing. (I work as a software engineer and the number of losing fights I’ve had with management over requiring brutal independent testing of our software is nothing short of amazing–I’m surprised the electronic world even works.)
I am an election judge in Chicago. We use mark-sense and touch-screen voting. I am appalled at the reported negligence and incompetence of California election authorities.
I am a Republican and despise the Daley regime. But the workers at the Board of Elections are all diligent and honest, as far as I can tell. Equipment failures have been rare, and the Board responds quickly and vigorously to problems.
I don’t know what the comparable budgets are, but I suspect that California is just not spending enough to do it right.
Carl Street,
I will try to disarm you a bit.
I start by saying I am sorry if I offended you, good thing about the Brad Blog is he does allow all opinions. I have a sharp tongue, and it tends to get me quick service sometimes.
Things are bad everywhere, EVERYONE I KNOW HAS SERIOUS PROBLEMS RIGHT NOW, this country is in serious bad shape. It’s easy to blame and yell sometimes, as opposed to contemplate the problem. I do it all the time myself. It’s human nature. Sometimes you just have to pick up a sledge hammer and start going nuts to calm down, after you’ve destroyed everything you own, things start to get better.
Hopefully in America it doesn’t grow and grow and POP like a bubble. Or it might be tough to stay alive in a civil war.
Okay then? Onward with the discussion.
Without that “parasite class” your home would likely be located under water.
You wouldn’t have any *CLEAN* water to drink.
You would get less imports because the locks wouldn’t exist.
Many military families wouldn’t have housing.
(we’re not talking Walter Reed here, this is a NEW problem in the past few years)
Southern California would be much less of an oasis and much more like a desert.
New Orleans, wouldn’t have ANY LEVIES AT ALL RIGHT NOW. If you eliminate the “parasite class.”
(you are welcome to argue about the failure of the original levies, but again they wouldn’t HAVE BE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE without the “parasite class.”
There are lot’s of different faucets of government, and a lot of government employees that have nothing to do with this current administration’s bullshit, many in the “parasite class” have watched many other administrations come and go. Some have found conditions absolutely intolerable under the current administration and have left in protest. Pressure is felt differently at different agencies.
In other words if you worked say as a engineer building dams for the last 50 years, you really couldn’t say that you were a parasite. I mean I really find that hard for you to classify a top notch engineer who changed everyone in this nation’s lives for the better a “parasite.”
Now would you classify the SUPPORT for that engineer a “parasite” as well? How about his family, are they parasites also? Maybe some of his family members walked alongside of Cesar Chavez back in the day where that wasn’t all that safe of a thing to do. Are they “parasites” as well?
I am only describing one government agency. And that agency only does what it is TOLD TO DO. This agency’s projects are controlled by Senate, and the Military. They can make suggestions but it’s still controlled top down.
Volunteering for Military Service, is another government job that I would find it really hard to call or label as a “parasite.” They also do what they are told, from top down.
So like I said before, I say again, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
Get the electronic tabulation devices out.
Get the corruption out.
WE ALL SHOULD AGREE ON THAT.
If this could be accomplished in our lifetime
Then perhaps people might want to suggest a non corrupt candidate, who actually has a chance to hold office.
It’s a simple resolution if you think about it – electronic voting machines cannot be trusted! We need to shelve HAVA, and return to the tried-and-true method of tabulating votes – with the manual punch-card machines. It takes way too much effort and time to manipulate votes with those machines…and WE THE PEOPLE need to maintain our control over voting, or we have lost all rights as we know them.
It’s a wonder anything ever gets done in this country. We can’t even figure out how to be sure everyone’s vote is counted. How are we going to figure out how to give free or low cost health insurance such as health savings accounts to every one?
Here’s the rub…it used to be that the bastards would at least present the illusion that things are okay, while taking their thirty pieces of silver…now, it’s just a free-for-all!
Brad – excellent work, my friend! I’m sure you’ve a dialogue with Bev Harris – there must be some way to rid America of these disenfranchising devices – no good will EVER come of electronic voting.
Harri Hursti proved it.
“Butch” and “Hoppy” proved it.
Electronic voting machines are designed to do EVERYTHING BUT TABULATE ONE’S VOTE CORRECTLY.
If ATMs performed this way…would you use them?
Why…after countless years of election fraud after election fraud, do WE THE PEOPLE allow these machines to blight our lives?
And please…don’t take from this that I’m some sort of Luddite – but take your craniums from those idiot boxes and do something for your fellow citizens – if we don’t safeguard the right to vote, WE HAVE NO CONTROL WHATSOEVER OVER OUR REPRESENTATIVES.
Why do they need to live up to campaign promises? If our vote doesn’t count, they will respond only to payola.
You know it’s funny…Here we are now– faced with a whole new fraud and yet we never fixed the old frauds. You know the fact that all candidates both left and right are funded by the same people.
Candidates they fund because they have pictures of these people having sex with trees in the park. We will get you elected but you will vote the way we want you to vote or else we will put testimony of this poor weeping willow on Youtube…
“There I was…just swaying in the breeze and all of a sudden I feel something in my knothole and my branches started shaking and…gasp sputter sob crack creek”
The shivering quivering branches played over and over–forever making us all ashamed– barely able to look another tree in the eye–let alone cast another vote.
Do we really need laws and leaders. Can’t we just go back to mobs and those wooden things we stick peoples heads in in the town square?
comment number 36
You do realize I am being funny in comment 26: Humor is a pretty effective weapon is pointing out absurdities…I would have thought the machine wearing the hat and roping cattle might tip off the humor but that’s okay…
One thing I have learned on the internet is people are real slow thinkers…not saying you are…perhaps you got the point…but your last sentences suggested that you didn’t understand I’m on your side.
In comment 75 however I am completely serious.
Hey Mark from comment 36…
I read your article on your link. I get what you are saying better now. We are saying the same thing in all our comments. I agree. I will not vote again.
I will not do other things as well. Things I won’t say. Things I will do about it though are to make wise cracks and videos and await the time it finally hits the fan. Then I’m going to see which way to run or who to hit with a baseball bat. Not quite sure–want to play it by ear.
But I agree with you–and you too are rather dry in your delivery of a very sad joke on us all. I guess I was a little slow too.
Well, fine guys, but I wish you’d try to remember that they will love it if you don’t vote. That is their dream. If you vote, at least you are forcing them to steal it, not just letting them run wild without ever putting in your two cents….
I think Mark makes an excellent case and I don’t think I can sum up my feelings better than that. Please read his link…
http://www.truthawaits.com/cons...tercourse.html
However…If someone like Ron Paul or Kucinich run I will vote…But if you want to dig deeper on our candiates I suggest trying Rense.com…It’s a good spring board to articles from all over the place…Don’t let the UFO’s scare you off…some of my best friends are UFOs…
And don’t underestimate the power of one smartass and one well placed wisecrack…May just be the ticket to knocking the bastards off their rickety thrones…
http://www.truthawaits.com/cons...tercourse.html
http://www.prisonPlanet.com
This I will dust my voter card off for…
Ron Paul to end campaign outside Texas convention
Associated Press
Friday, June 13, 2008
AUSTIN, Texas “” Republican presidentical candidate Ron Paul will end his campaign Thursday night and announce a new effort to help elect libertarian-leaning Republican to public offices around the country.
Campaign spokesman Jessee Benton said the announcement, expected during a speech outside the Texas Republican convention, was “not a disappointment at all. I think this is really exciting.”
Paul’s announcement will be a formality.
As to your “secret ballot” lament:
The “secret” ballot is the means these people use to steal elections. If ballots were completely open, this couldn’t occur. Look: YOUR NAME should be secret, but who you voted for should be displayed for all to see. If absolutely nobody but you gets to see who you voted for, then the people counting the votes are in complete control of the outcome.