On Monday night’s All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, New Jersey State Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg joined Hayes to discuss “smart gun” legislation she helped pass in her state. But it was the curious assertion by a supporter of the technology, claiming that electronic voting machines are now “fool-proof”, which kinda just blew my mind.
Mark Glaze, spokesman for Everytown for Gun Safety, a group which, according to its website “brings together survivors of gun violence to share their stories and advocate for laws that will prevent future tragedies,” said twice during the conversation, that e-voting systems are now “fool-proof.”
While there were once concerns about e-voting systems, he said (see his full remarks below), those worries have now been assuaged thanks to “public and private partnerships at both the federal and state level that guaranteed that these machines were fool-proof”.
Huh, what?! When did that “partnership” take place? And how did they “guarantee” such “fool-proof” results? Was that before or after, for example, the 2012 election in Palm Beach County, FL, when a paper-ballot optical-scan computer tabulation system (made by Sequoia Voting Systems) was discovered, through pretty much a stroke of luck, to have inaccurately declared the “winners” of three different elections, such that the contests were overturned and a hand-count by human beings found that the computers had declared the wrong “winners” in two of them? After that incident came to light, the Vice-President of Dominion Voting, the e-voting vendor which now owns Sequoia, admitted that the bug which caused the wrong “winners” to be named by the computer tabulator exists in all versions of it’s Sequoia systems — both paper-ballot op-scan systems as well as touch-screen systems — in use across the country.
“And guess what?,” Glaze continued telling Hayes on Monday night’s show, “Today, there are very few questions about electronic voting machines.” Really? Someone must have forgotten to tell that to the voters in St. Lucie County, FL, where hundreds of votes were mistabulated thanks to faulty memory cards in the county’s computerized paper-ballot tabulation system (made by Diebold) in the contested U.S. House race between Rep. Allen West (R) and Patrick Murphy (D), also in 2012?
I could go on — and on, and on — with similar recent examples along those lines, but I’ll spare you. For now. You’re welcome. Hopefully you get the picture.
Glaze then went on to assert that, whatever the initial concerns may have been about electronic voting and tabulation systems, “we figured out how to get around it and today electronic voting makes things more fool-proof and easier and reduces the risk of fraud.”
Yes. That’s actually what he said. And on television, where everyone could hear it!
We’ve sought comment from Glaze, asking for details in support of his remarks — and on his great, if unconfirmed news about electronic voting systems! — and will update this item when and if we receive a response.
Here’s the segment from the 5/5/2014 segment of All In. Mark Glaze’s gob-smacking comments on e-voting begin just after the 4:20 mark, and I’ve transcribed them in full below…
When it became clear that some of the first electronic voting machines were mostly gonna be made by a very conservative company, there was all sorts of progressive concern. And guess what happened? You dealt with the problem by public and private partnerships at both the federal and state level that guaranteed that these machines were fool-proof. And guess what? Today, there are very few questions about electronic voting machines.
…
Like every kind of change, change takes time. But, again, I think electronic voting is a good analogy. Ya know, there were lots of concerns on the Right and Left that the government is not gonna count your vote, is gonna count your vote the wrong way, or is going to create a list telling people how you voted and somehow manipulate that.
But, we figured out how to get around it and today electronic voting makes things more fool-proof and easier and reduces the risk of fraud. I think that there’s a great lesson to be learned there.
For the record, despite his claims, many states and counties are still using the very same, 100% unverifiable, easily-hacked and oft-failed “first electronic voting machines” that Glaze would seem to be referring to. The rest are using technology that is of the almost identical generation, for the most part, with absolutely none of it either “fool-proof” or anything remotely close to it. Unfortunately.
[Hat-tip for the heads-up to Carl Howard on Facebook…]
I’ve been thinking about these issues for a long time. My conclusion is that we can all save a lot of energy if we just put the NSA in charge of voting.
Why? Because it’s not gonna make any difference at all, and doing it now can save us all a good deal of angst.
Unfortunately, Glaze’s comments, misinformed though they may be, probably accurately reflect general public perception that e-voting tech issues must have been dealt with – rather than the reality that such systems are inherently vulnerable at multiple levels to both coding errors and to potentially untraceable deliberate manipulation.
Yeah I heard this last night from three rooms away while I was doing dishes. My spouse was wondering when I was going to explode. I started screaming in my best WTF when he said it over and over again. Unbelievable
I’m going to make a point to comment about this to the All In show, please, everyone else who cares, do this. Maybe it will lead to some investigation.
Brad, I’m so glad you caught this. I saw it last night and was screaming, screaming, screaming at the TV. And then I was watching Chris Hayes just let it go by and remembering the pain and frustration of trying to bring this exact subject to his attention at a book event and how much he didn’t get it and obviously still doesn’t.
I’m thinking a handwritten letter to Rachel and him is my next attempt. Just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
I’m so glad you posted this. Gonna go put it on my facebook page now.(where, if I’m lucky, two people will check it out.)
Karen @ 4,
Being as clueless as I am with social media and the like… I would appreciate if you might have a link to a comments page for the All In show, if one exists. I hunted around a bit and couldn’t find one. Would I have to use the dreaded Twitter or something?
TIA
Lora @6,
On his show the other night Chris Hayes gave out these contacts–
facebook–All In with Chris Hayes,
and this email–
AllInwithChris@MSNBC.com
Hope that works.
Thanks David,
I emailed him.
I have yet to get on Facebook…scared of the time it would take to learn it and use it. I’m not intuitive at all with this stuff. Maybe this summer.