In addition to the primary elections being held in New York today — where long-ago predicted failures are reported to be occurring with their new e-voting system as we described earlier — elections are also underway today in Delaware, D.C., Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.
To find out which type of voting system will fail and/or or be 100% unverifiable in each of those states, please see VerifiedVoting.org’s Verifier for details.
One of the races certain to get most attention tonight will be the Republican U.S. Senate primary in Delaware where the Tea Party/Palin/DeMint-backed Christine O’Donnell has seen a last minute surge in support, according to pre-election polls, against GOP-establishment supported Rep. Mike Castle. The popular Castle was thought to have been a shoo-in for the Republican nomination until recently, as well as the likely victor over the Democrats presumptive nominee Chris Coons.
But Coons currently cleans O’Donnell’s clock in pre-election polling, so the GOP race has become a contentious one.
We point all of this out by way of noting that Delaware has just three counties, all of which force voters to use 100% unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen, but in this case push-button) voting systems on Election Day. The systems are made by Danaher Controls, one of the smaller, lesser-known e-voting companies in the U.S., though large enough to have been made infamous when hundreds of their machines reportedly broke down during Philadelphia’s May 2006 trainwreck election. In 2004 Verified Voting and the Electronic Frontier Foundation published a short paper [PDF] detailing various other problems with the systems in Tennessee and Ohio elections going back to 1992.
While we’ve yet to hear of problems today on the machines in the “First State,” we thought it might be a good time to mention that no matter whom the voting machines report as the winner in any of the races, including the hotly-contested GOP Senate primary, there will largely be next to nothing that can be done to challenge the results — other than, perhaps, counting the smaller number of paper-based absentee ballots for accuracy. (The paper-based absentee ballots will initially be tabulated by Diebold AccuVote op-scan systems, the same type of system used to flip the results of a mock election in HBO’s Emmy-nominated documentary Hacking Democracy. You can watch that hack here as it occurred live.)
The Danaher DREs being used in Delaware today make for 100% faith-based elections. As with all DREs, after the polls close tonight it will be strictly impossible to verify that even one vote cast on them was recorded accurately as per the voter’s intent, for any candidate on the ballot.
In the event that the e-voting systems report a close election tonight, well, too bad.
UPDATE 7:15pm PT: With 85% of the vote “counted,” and a reported 54%-46% margin, AP has declared O’Donnell the winner. Details…
UPDATE 10:32pm PT: Castle actually defeated O’Donnell! But, um, only on the ballots that can actually be verified. Details in comments…
UPDATE 9/15/14 1:44pm PT: More on the virtually reversed “paper versus plastic” numbers in DE’s GOP U.S. Senate primary now here…
What do you say to a bothersome kitty? Shoo!
So how do you spell “shoo-in”?
Just sayin’
The DRE declared the Tea Bagger the winner by double digits.
A Sept. 13 poll had O’Donnell leading by only 3%.
Politico shows her winning by slightly more than 6% with 100% of precincts reporting.
in a race that is obviously going be very close and has big stakes, why is all the record turnout attributable to winner, nearly half of the record turnout voted for Castle, so it seems the anti-ODonnell crowd was pretty enthused also…just as record turnout for MA Senate Brown seat showed record turnout in Dem districts as well as Repubs…
would love to see what the paper ballots alone said…..pretty sure ODonnell will win in Nov too
Karen – You can see those numbers right here:
http://elections.delaware.gov/r...election.shtml
…and as I suspect you’re hinting, it looks like Castle did indeed win the paper-based results by what appears to be a nearly opposite percentage from the DRE results.
That said, I’d caution against reading too much into that, given O’Donnell’s late endorsement from Palin and subsequent surge in the polls that came likely after most absentees were cast. Moreover, the absentee numbers are much much smaller than the election day totals.
And with all of that said, this is, of course, the problem with 100% unverifiable voting systems of the type used in Delaware (and in some 20% of the rest of the country). There is absolutely no way to know if any of the votes cast on them today was recorded as per the intent of any voter, as I explain in the original article above.
Any chance of contacting Castle and going over the issue with him? What could he do, though, other than come through it looking like a sore loser.
Re: #1 I’m not sure what the point was, but BF is indeed the correct spelling of the term. Just sayin’.
It is impossible to believe that a distinguished public servant like Mike Castle could be defeated by an unknown in the State of Delaware, which has a long history of retaining its statewide office-holders, regardless of party.
From Wiki:
Mike Castle is a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Delaware’s At-large congressional district since 1993. The district, which is the oldest in the nation, incorporates the entire state of Delaware. He is the longest-serving U.S. Representative in the state’s history. Prior to his election to Congress, Castle served as a member of the Delaware General Assembly, first in the State House of Representatives (1966-1967) and then in the State Senate (1968-1976). He was the 20th Lieutenant Governor of Delaware from 1981 to 1985, and the 69th Governor of Delaware from 1985 to 1992.
What is it going to take to awaken the corporate media, that dwindling group who fulfill the oxymoron of “honest politicians” and the American electorate?
AP may have, as Brad reported, “declared” O’Donnell the “winner,” but there is no way to determine who received the most votes on these DREs, and there is the very common discrepancy in which the person who received the most votes on paper ballots “lost” the election.
As covered again and again here at The BRAD BLOG, a single malicious insider with less than one minute access can hack the system to insert code that will predetermine the outcome by means of a final tally by way of a percentage of votes cast going to each candidate.
A 2006 Princeton University study demonstrated that the code could be inserted on one machine and then spread like a virus throughout the system.
A 2006 University of UConn study revealed that optical scan (paper based) systems are as vulnerable to tampering, vote-rigging, and incorrect tabulation as touch-screen systems.
Yet, in election-after-election we sit back quietly and accept as valid the unverified results spewed out by these shoddy and easily hacked virtual voting systems, rarely demanding that which a democracy requires–an authenticated count which verifies that the “winner” actually received more votes than the “loser.”
Unless and until we the people demand authentication by way of hand-counted ballots, ours is not a democracy. It’s a farce.
The optical scan systems seem to be a lot better to me in that theoretically, if enough outrage was raised, the ballots could be hand counted. DREs seem to be by far the less verifiable system. The optical scan machines could be verified except for laziness and thriftiness. The DRE results, not.
I’m beginning to get a queasy feeling about exactly WHY certain corporate predators find it so necessary to keep sponsoring the TPer’s lies, propaganda and campaigns. Now I have a theory. If the election is going to be rigged this year (or 2012), the useful TP idiots serve a number of purposes. First, any close races that are flipped can be blamed on the (allegedly) “common knowledge” that Americans were in an angry, anti-incumbent mood (in fact, I believe the latter has not been borne out through the primary season, at least not in any significant way).
Second, if another “Brooks Brothers” riot is needed to stymie any recounts, I’m sure a bunch of angry old overweight white people will serve in a pinch.
Third, the ultimate scam becomes unassailable afterwards: America’s elite corporate overlords created/bought a “movement” artfully directed it to further its own corporatist neocon interests. Trust me, all the elected teatards that hated the Wall St. bailout will suddenly spout robotic phrases about the need to “allow innovation and growth” as a reason for more deregulatory BS.
We have our work cut out for us. The sane people in America need to build a firewall around the lies and ignorance of the TP neocons. Anyone spouting TP nonsense should be immediate called out. When it comes to politics many of them are as nutty as they come. We wouldn’t want a crazy relative in elected office, right? Well many of these candidates and their supporters ARE someone’s crazy relative. I don’t think it is inappropriate at all to point this out. Over and over if necessary.
And watch out for folks who just want to jump on a “winners” bandwagon. Remind them that the TPers are losers (and give them good examples of why) and that America will be the biggest loser should the GOBPbaggers get anywhere near the reins of power.
Brad,
Not really on topic, but I couldn’t quickly find a better place to let you know that I just blogged about another e-voting issue that I found thanks to a Thom Hartman tweet, which I think he tweeted well after your appearance on his show today. Here’s the link directly to that post: http://bit.ly/doGNBM
@ LMK ~ Exactly right. They’re seeding their November narrative, threading their election crooky-hook with a million planted fallacies. I’m so spooked by the possibilities I’m pretty sure I’ve been visited by the Ghost of Stolen Elections Future every night this week.
(What a pill. That guy keeps me up all night yammering with long-winded explanations of how the Koch Bros. resources will seamlessly sew up the elections for the evil corporate overlords. Then he humorlessly strokes his astral-beard like a cheap, dime-store novel villain and sneers that none of it would be possible without my Aunt Sue heading up their army of Zombie-retirees.
Valium only seems to wind him up, drink just makes him piss in my hamper.)
I’ll add fourth bullet to your fine post re: ‘why the teatards’ (tho’ you have already implied it, in part)- the unilateral flash-mobbing media coverage they always get will give the corporate rulers the appearance of MAJORITY…even tho they are not. By a lot. Not.
(You made great radio, today, Brad!)
Steven Dorst said:
Was I on his show today?! I know I was tired after a long night last night, but I’d think I’d remember that! 🙂
Will otherwise check out your link though…
KatieB @ 10 wrote
They’re not “less” verifiable, they’re completely, 100% unverifiable. It is impossible to prove that a DRE engaged in “counting,” let alone that they accurately counted the vote.
Think of DREs as electronic black holes where votes disappear, never to be seen again.
Chase and Bank of America provide their depositors with copies of their deposits from ATMs as soon as the transaction is made.
Why do we have to rely on individual states making individual deals instead of having the same technology the banks use mandated for voting machines?
Voting is bullshit.
Matt Carmody said:
As I responded to the nearly identical comment you made on the previous thread…We have a secret ballot in the U.S., and if voters were allowed to leave the polls with a receipt showing how they voted they’d be able to buy and/or sell such votes. No voter should ever be allowed to leave the polling place with a record of how they voted.
Because we a Constitution which says that States shall determine how they hold elections and we wouldn’t want the 100% unverifiable type of “ATM” style touch-screen machines to be used in *any* jurisdiction. Unfortunately, they are. Incredibly. In some 20% of the nation.
But transparent bank transactions are nothing like secret-ballot voting, so the comparison is ill-considered.
That’s your opinion, of course, and not a particular informed one, I might suggest.