We were in Nashville a couple of months ago, at a meeting of the Davidson County Board of Elections. We tried to warn them that they would run into trouble with their ES&S touch-screen voting machines, probably sooner, rather than later. But the Kool-Aid drunk Republicans on the board would have none of it. “Paper ballots are the biggest scam ever perpetrated on America,” one of them told us. To our astonishment, he actually seemed to believe himself.
That GOP blend must be some very tasty Kool-Aid.
Meanwhile, the nice Democrats who were in the majority on the board sat there and said and did nothing. They were very very nice. And completely clueless.
And now, next door in Memphis (Shelby County), where they use equally bad Diebold touch-screen machines, Mayor Willie Herenton is calling for an end to Early Voting, which began this week, as reports of votes flipping began coming into his office just after polls opened…
As John Gideon noted, in awarding her his “Enemy of Democracy” prize yesterday, the clueless County Commission Chair, Myra Stiles (don’t know her party affiliation, don’t care), told the local ABC affiliate: “We’re comfortable with the fact that we tested those machines and there is nothing wrong with the way the machines are recording the votes. Apparently it’s an issue of public education. If people press in the wrong area they’re going to get the wrong result.”
Stiles either hates democracy, has been living in a cave for the past three years, or, more likely, realizes that it’s her ass if she admits what everyone knows: The voting system she approved for her county isn’t worthy of a Banana Republic, much less American democracy, and she — not the mayor — should be run out of town for it.
Memphis citizens ought to start lighting their torches and grabbing their pitchforks out of their garages, as early voting numbers are apparently huge so far, and someone is gonna be screwed here. Some 15,000 citizens have reportedly already cast(away) their votes on the Diebold TSx machines.
Local schizophrenic pollster Berje Yacoubian seems to understand the problem in one breath, but dismisses it in the next. “Is he (Mayor Herenton) sounding an undue alarm? Probably overblown right now,” Yacoubian reportedly said, before acknowledging that the issue could easily undermine the results of a “really close” three-way race for Mayor.
Herenton’s two opponents believe the Mayor’s concerns that voters should have their vote recorded accurately are ridiculous. We guess they each must believe they are going to win.
2008 is going to be a fucking nightmare.
But the good related-ish news is that Rush Holt’s Election Reform Bill (HR 811) — which would have made the situation worse by offering a false sense of security and the institutionalization of touch-screen voting machines — is once again “stalled” in the House, according to Roll Call today:
We take no comfort in siding with “local elections officials” on this one, and oppose the bill for entirely different reasons than they do. But perhaps the stall will allow a real solution to emerge for this nightmare before the real meltdown hits us next year.
Working on it.
When County Commission Chair, Myra Stiles said, “We’re comfortable with the fact that we tested those machines and there is nothing wrong with the way the machines are recording the votes,” she most likely did not mean that she or any other actual election official tested those machines.
Rather, it is most likely that contract programmers, temporarily hired by the county to load “ballot definition” software onto each machine, performed a cursory machine function test simply to make sure the machine could “boot up” and display a newly loaded ballot on its touch-screen. A “boot up” test does not rigorously test ballot definition software function or verify that touch-screen “touch sense” registration actual aligns with the ballot image displayed on the touch-screen.
Someone should ask Myra Stiles who tested the machines and ask for the “test script” used to certify that the touch-screen “touch sense” registration actual aligns with the ballot image displayed on the touch-screen on each and every machine. For example; did the programmer who originally coded the ballot definition software develop a rigorous test script and did the test script “touch test” every candidate selection on each and every ballot position on each and every screen. And, ask if Myra Stiles received a testing report from the programmers loading the ballot software and did they run the ballot touch selection test on each and every machine. This is how other commercial software is tested.
Ballot definition software is constructed for each voting precinct for each specific election and contains all the ballot details for that election. The DRE touch-screen and optical ballot scan machines use the ballot definitions to determine how selections on the touch-screen or paper ballot are interpreted and recorded in the vote database, and how election results are tallied.
“Ballot definition software” is most often written by temporary contract programmers and typically undergoes minimal testing and no independent audit by election officials. It is this software that is best able to steal elections!
Last November there were 1,142 counties using DRE voting machines and 1,752 counties using optical scanners. This tabulates to 2,894 counties and 161,111 voting precincts that depend on ballot definition software written in weeks and days just before the election last November. That adds up to a lot programmers writing a lot of “last minute” ballot software that election officials never visually audit or comprehensively test. (This is how 18,000 iVotronic machine votes can go missing as in Florida’s 13th congressional district last November)
Some counties have hundreds of ballot styles, and each one must be programmed correctly since the number of votes cast on each errant ballot style magnifies human error at this point.
The process of creating the ballot definition and vote tallying software is so complex that many counties contract the work to voting machine vendors and local temporary contract programmers.
Voting machine vendors themselves do not maintain a staff of programmers large enough to write all the ballot definition software for all the voting precincts of all its county election administration customers across the U.S. Therefore, Voting machine vendors themselves must contract out the programming of ballot definition and vote tallying software for its customers.
Who checks the credentials of all these contract programmers writing “last minute” ballot software? Who asks if contract programmers also work for a political party or candidate up for election or if they have criminal records? Who performs detailed audits of the software they write? The frightening answer to all questions is – no one!
Whether voting machine vendors or local contract programmers write ballot definition and vote tallying software, typically, local contract programmers are temporarily hired to load the ballot definition software on to the voting machine memory cards of each and every voting machine.
Local election officials are not computer scientists; They can neither adequately assess the competence and veracity of local temporary contractor programmers hired to work on voting machines nor review and assess new software destined to be installed on their eVoting machines. In actuality, local election officials cannot verify that a contractor programmer’s work is bug free or that they did not nefariously write a few extra lines of software code that activates only on election day to flip votes or rig vote totals on a central tabulator and then self delete at the end of the election day.
DRE touch-screen and optical scan ballot counting machine “physical access security procedures” and “security seals” can never guard against incorrectly written ballot definition software. Sloppy programming of the touch-screen “touch sense” alignment to ballot display will result in vote flipping.
The frightening truth is ballot software is seldom tested by election office officials and can never be tested by polling place election judges and citizen observers to ensure that the ballot definition software is free of error, either inadvertent or malicious. The more that software is used in the administration of an election, the more election officials hand control of elections over to unchecked computer programmers.
It would be so easy for a political partisan to entice or plant a few willing temporary contractor programmers working with voting machine vendors or directly for key local election offices to stuff the software ballot box as they perform their legitimate programming duties. Even just a few motivated partisan programmers each working independently could easily throw an election into even deeper chaos than happen in Palm Beach County FL in November 2000 with rigged punch card ballots.
The software access and review language in the current version of H.R. 811 does not specifically address ballot definition software written directly by or for each county election office just before each election. Therefore, local county election officials can continue to refuse requests to review the exact software running on each and every optical scan and DRE voting machine on election day. But, it is this locally written and handled software that is best able to steal elections!
Of course this will not fix corrupt election warlords:
(Holt HR 811 RH page 21, lines 16-23 thru page 22, line 7, emphasis mine).
Doesn’t that mean we do not have to use the EVM, and instead must be allowed to cast a paper ballot vote instead? Notice further:
(id at page 22, lines 8-18, emphasis mine). It seems to me that it could be argued that anyone can cast a paper ballot under Holt HR 811 RH, and furthermore, that the paper ballot must be counted.
The reason is that even Stalin used paper ballots. But like EVM machines, we are not really sure if he counted them properly.
Dishonesty is everywhere, including the EI movement. Golly I am sooooooo surprized. Not.
Unfortunately…
… because Dredd read in an obsolete version of the bill of some things that he wants to see in elections…
…. Dredd now thinks it’s okay for the government to lie to the citizens by telling voters that EVM’s are safe and secure when they are demonstrably not safe and secure.
But that’s all good by Dredd just as long as he himself has the privilege of using a reliable voting system.
And then he has the hypocrisy to rail againast “dishonesty in the election movement”…
Brad writes:
…perhaps the stall will allow a real solution to emerge for this nightmare before the real meltdown hits us next year.
YES!!! And the real solution (with important tweaks added) is described in the video below. After viewing, send it to your Rep in Congress (via his/her Legislative Director’s e-mail – just call your Rep’s office to get the address) and write a VERY strong message saying THIS is what you demand…NOW!!!! And, while you’re at it, give Dennis a call (202-225-5871) and tell him to get off his duff and do what he has promised (hint: it has to do with re-introducing his previous bill HR 6200 – with important tweaks added)…NOW!!!
http://electionfraudblog.com/in...ial-elections/
You will never fix the corrupt voting machines/system. Senators and Congressmen/women like it the way it is. They lead comfortable lies, er lives…why change anything. If there was a market where I could bet on the government criminals, or the American people, I would place a large bet on the criminals. Americans will never take back their country, ever again. It’s sad, but true.
If anyone (Cleo) would care to read this, there was only one, maybe two times in the history of the US that the people even came close to having control of this Government.
The first was around 1786, when the “people” took over the Rhode Island legislature. They were starved out.
The second (arguably) was in the 1930’s.
The rest of the time…oligarchs.
One mans account written @ 1935 here
Unfortunately …
the_zapkitty is not well versed in the way of bills in the House. My link in post #2 is to the version voted out of committee. It is known as an amendment in the nature of a substitute, a term of art, unfortunately an unknown term to the inartful.
Such amendments, together with any applicable perfecting amendments (another term of art), must be voted on first. If they fail the original is the then pending bill.
And even the original is not obsolete. The floor votes will determine which bill prevails should the bill versions (RH and IH) ever get to the floor out of the rules committee.
There is something foreign looming that may effect US elections on a grand scale.
Recession and dollar collapse:
(Telegraph). That eventually could effect the economics of EVM purchases nation wide, since so many jurisdictions don’t think they are getting a good deal even now.
COMMENT #1 [Permalink]
… Michael Dean said on 9/20/2007 @ 3:15 pm PT…
“(This is how 18,000 iVotronic machine votes can go missing as in Florida’s 13th congressional district last November)”
Sorry, but when you compare the result of the 2006 election against past elections, your logic fails.
It is a fact of life that not all voters will cast a vote in every race. Sarasota is no exception to the rule. Further, 18,000 over/under voted ballots in a district 13 race is not even close to the record for that county.
In 2000, with paper ballots that could be recounted, there were 2807 over/under voted ballots in the Presidential race between Bush and Gore. But in the District 13 Congressional race, there were 25,335 of these ballots. That is over 15% of the vote for that race.
In 2006, with electronic voting machines, there were just over 18,000 of those ballots or 14.8%. Those numbers are in line with the history of the county.
It appears that it doesn’t matter what type of voting system that is used, the voters in that county tend to ignore that race. The only difference is if we have a paper trail to recount.
IF we are going to get the electronic voting machines outlawed, we are going to have to make fact based, logical arguments. Using such failed logic is not going to make the case.
… Dredd wished…
“Unfortunately …
the_zapkitty is not well versed in the way of bills in the House. My link in post #2 is to the version voted out of committee. It is known as an amendment in the nature of a substitute, a term of art, unfortunately an unknown term to the inartful.”
Bullshit. Again.
Dredd, unfortunately, will try to use official-sounding jargon to support his oddball versions of legilative and judicial proceedings… but what he posts seems to indicate no understanding in turn of the legilative proceedings or the judicial proceedings he wants to lecture us on.
Thus Dredd’s decision to make a fool of himself again on this subject (House proceedure) after he has been advised by a variety of people hereabouts repeatedly that his version of reality… ain’t reality.
The last known version of the bill was the Managers Amendment version where Pelosi and Hoyer greenlighted a scheme that would have put the bill’s main selling points (meaningless paper trails on DRE’s and indecisive audits) on indefinite hold “awaiting funding” while the nasty parts of the bill that the Holt Noise Machine doesn’t want discussed would have been implemented immediately… that means things like instant corporate lockdown on citizen access to election proceedings and the EAC’s seizure of control of voting regulation for the benefit of the Executive Branch.
But the latest news from Brad’s sources has it that Hoyer’s “unfunded mandate” provision has been dropped… so the current version of the bill is unknown and the Managers Amendment was our last clue as to where it was headed.
What Dredd refuses to acknowledge is that with legislation there is only the current version of the bill… no other version will be voted on. And right now we, the citizens whose future is being gambled with in the name of the bill, we don’t have a clue as to what the current version under actual consideration says.
Apparently Dredd can’t accept the reality of this lack of transparency in the legislative process… which unsurprisingly is especially murky for “Holt’s Fiasco”… as Holt and company really don’t want the details of the bill discussed much before the EAC’s Federal-level power grab is made law.
Well done, zapkitty!
Hey Brad! Were you in D.C.? (since you said you are “working on it” I am guessing maybe you might have been here) If so am sorry I missed you — was here the past couple of days on Capitol Hill.
Well it should be an interesting couple of weeks coming up. 😉
Brad said:
Marybeth Kuznick –
Nope. Not in DC. Fortunately, the phones and Internets reach all the way out there from here in Los Angeles 😉
M.L. Cook (#9) said:
That’s the first I’ve heard of that kind of percentage for District 13 in 2000. I’ll try to check it out, but suffice to say, I’m dubious.
While there could have been 25,335 undervotes (perhaps) in 2000, the number of voters was much larger in a Presidential Election than in a mid-term election. Not to mention the Sequoia flawed-paper punchcards in Florida factor (don’t know if FL13 used ’em, so just making a quick guess, with no time to go check at the moment).
The speculation you make, which I’ve not heard made elsewhere, continues to defy reason, since nowhere else was the FL-13 race so “undervoted”. None of the other counties, and not in the paper-based absentee ballots for the same county.
But I will add that folks like People for the American Way, Verified Voting, Common CAuse et al, are wrong when they suggest that Holt’s election bill, and adding paper trails to such touch-screen machines, would have made any difference in those numbers. At least according to all of the computer scientists I’ve spoken to about it.
Talking about voter counts and percentages in Florida from the 2000 presidential election is not possible. The vote counting was stopped by the Supreme Court. We will never know the actual vote counts thanks to our former Gov. Bush, his Sec. of State, Katherine Harris, Republican hired thugs and finally, the highest court in the land. Sad state of affairs in Florida as we prepare for a repeat in 2008.
COMMENT #13 [Permalink]
… Brad Friedman said on 9/21/2007 @ 4:57 pm PT…
“That’s the first I’ve heard of that kind of percentage
for District 13 in 2000. I’ll try to check it out, but suffice to say, I’m dubious.”
Brad, those numbers have been reported in the Florida Press since November of 2006.
In Sarasota County for 2006, there were 123,901 votes cast with 18,382 over/under voted ballots. That is about 14.8% of the ballots.
In 2000 race (link below), there were 163,740 ballots cast, with 138,405 voting the Congressional race. That leaves 25,335 under/over voted ballots. That is about 15% of the ballots.
http://www.srqelections.com/res.../2000Gen.htm#2
I am not sure why you would make an argument about other counties in the district. What does that have to do with Sarasota County and it’s past history in the District 13 race?
In Duval County, a paper ballot county, there were 224,405 voters who cast a ballot in race for US senator, but there were only 139,891 who cast a ballot in the Congressional Race. Why did more than 84,000 voters skip this race?
http://www.duvalelections.com/E...ry.aspx?eid=16
In Okaloosa County, another paper ballot county, there were almost 56,000 who voted for Governor, over 54,000 who voted for US Senator, but less that 48,000 who voted in the Congressional race. Again, why did more than 7,000 voters skip this race?
Further, I would question why you would consider the punch cards in 2000 for Sarasota County to be “flawed”. In the Presidential Race, they had an under/over voted rate of 1.71%. Other counties with the newer technology, such as Optical Scanning ballots had rates that were doubled, some were more than 12%.
A few examples. In the 2000 Presidential Race in counties with optical scanners, Escambia County had 3.61% under/over voted ballots, Washington County had 3.94%, Taylor had 8.16%, Gadsden had 12.4%.
It would have been nice to have a paper trail in Sarasota so that we could prove one way or another, but an argument based in just the numbers does not stand up against history.
COMMENT #14 [Permalink]
… lildoggy said on 9/22/2007 @ 7:59 am PT…
“Talking about voter counts and percentages in Florida from the 2000 presidential election is not possible. The vote counting was stopped by the Supreme Court.”
First, on the counting (excluding the overseas ballots that were illegally thrown out).
The question is what is a legal vote.
In 1992, Broward v. Hogan had found ballots spoiled by voter error were not required to be manually recounted.
Gore’s own Florida Campaign Chair, Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth conceded that no county in the state’s history had ever conducted a manual recount to look for such ballots.
IF over and undervoted ballots could contain legal votes, then the Florida Courts could not have made their ruling in Broward.
Further, if these ballots were legal votes, then for years, election boards across the state were in violation of Florida Law. Yet, when a lawsuit is filed, Broward, the court ruled in election board’s favor.
The Florida Legislature had 8 years to include those ballots in Fla. Stat. 102.166 and/or Fla. Stat. 102.168. They did not take such action.
If we go by the laws that were in place before the election, we know what the numbers are.
On the action of the USSC. Yes, on 12/9/2000, the court stopped a recount of 1% of Florida’s ballots. So what? Recounting 60,000 of the 180,000 over and under voted ballots (ballots that have never been legal voted before) of more than 6 million ballots cast is going to make the totals more accurate? How?
the_zapkitty said #10:
Dead wrong. Perfecting amendments are, by law, voted on first, amendments in the nature of a substitute next, and finally if the former fails, the original, since that is all that is left if the amendment in the nature of a substitute fails to pass the floor.
Speaking of being clueless. Some of the_zapkitty’s associates or BBV folk have shown their lack of fundamental understanding of election law. Like the_zapkitty they know how to post and type, but not how to litigate.
An ass kicking in court is next in their life.
Dredd’s flailing has gotten so desperate it’s repulsive, not amusing.
While Dredd tries to rules-lawyer based on the amendment rules he read in the House Rules and Manual… the reality is that a complex bill reported out of committe and then “rescued” with a managers amendment is not going to suddenly be “rewritten to be good” on the floor of the House.
Dredd is assuming that the House has unlimited means and time to reach back through all the versions of the bill to get the “right one.”
The House does not.
That’s why the Rules committee controls what types, and how much of, debate and amendments are allowed with any particular bill.
If the “manager’s amendment” version fails or is retracted (whatever that version currently looks like) then technically the bill might be voted on in its “reported out” form. Technically. Actually it’ll be recommited then and there.
If the “reported out” version does manage to actually get voted on and fails (we can only hope) then the bill is going back to committee… period.
There is the reality that Dredd wants to interpret as making his e-voting dreams come true… and there is the reality of the day-to-day operations of the House.
One version of the bill will be voted on by the House when the day comes. Perhaps with certain allowed amendments permitted for debate, such as a DRE ban, or perhaps not.
And as for Dredd’s linking a single report of a lawsuit on BlacBoxVoting.org with the actions and intent of all of BBV just because he thinks that suit might be lost and thus I’ll somehow indirectly get my “ass kicked”… as I indicated above that’s truly a repulsive level of debating “tactics”…