Aaand the touch-screen voting machines continue to flip votes during the early voting period. Right on schedule. Just as always. But, for the second time this week we have the unusual occurrence of votes reportedly flipping away from the GOP.
Yesterday our report was of a touch-screen in Dallas, TX, caught on video flipping an attempted vote for Republican Gov. Rick Perry to straight-ticket Green Party selections in Dallas, TX.
Today’s report, where the local election official is also misleading voters by downplaying the incident, comes from the same type of 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machine, but it took place in Craven County, NC, according to P. Christine Smith of the Sun Journal…
Sam Laughinghouse of New Bern said he pushed the button to vote Republican in all races, but the voting machine screen displayed a ballot with all Democrats checked. He cleared the screen and tried again with the same result, he said. Then he asked for and received help from election staff.
“They pushed it twice and the same thing happened,” Laughinghouse said. “That was four times in a row. The fifth time they pushed it and the Republicans came up and I voted.”
..
“Something is not right here,” [Craven County GOP Chair Chuck] Tyson told the Sun Journal. He said he “got two or three calls” from people describing the same problem while they were voting.
Tyson also went on to report there were long lines reported as voters waited to use the two touch-screen voting machines available at one location (paper ballots don’t cause that problem) and, even more disturbingly, “machines reporting 250 ballots cast where 400 voters had signed in to vote.”
Well that’s a problem, isn’t it?…
In our report on the video of the vote-flipping out of Dallas yesterday, we offered a great deal of background on the historic — and monumental — failures of the ES&S iVotronic machines which notoriously fail to register not only straight-ticket votes accurately on the screen, but pretty much any vote, in many cases. Most notoriously, perhaps, the ES&S iVotronic lost some 18,000 votes in a 2006 special election for the U.S. House in Florida (in which the Republican candidate was declared the “winner” by just 369 votes), leading to the state getting rid of virtually all of their touch-screen systems. The same ES&S iVotronics were used when Alvin Greene, the unemployed South Carolina veteran who failed to campaign or even have a campaign web site, inexplicably defeated four-term state Senator and former Circuit Court Judge Vic Rawl for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination. (See the previous article for more such examples of ES&S iVotronic failures.)
Yet, in North Carolina and Texas and 16 other states (also listed in the previous article), election officials still force voters to use these 100% unverifiable, oft-failed, easily manipulated voting systems. It’s a disgrace. But how many different ways, and over how many different years can we make that point over and again?
We also explained yesterday how the usual “solution” to the problem of touch-screen vote-flipping is for election officials or voting machine company employees to “re-calibrate” the systems in the middle of the election — at the time they are absolutely most vulnerable to tampering and other malfeasance — rather than simply take them out of service and securely quarantine them for inspection later.
To that end, the Sun Journal’s coverage offers some startling news that ought to send the county Republican and Democratic Parties alike straight to a court house to demand the practice be stopped! According to the paper, when Laughinghouse tried to report the incident an unidentified “man said the machine likely needed to be calibrated…and set about the method to do so.”
But the next graf is even more startling [emphasis ours]…
So there you have it, people of Craven County. Want to game your election? Become a “trained election rover” and you can have complete and unfettered access to every machine in the county each and every morning. If you’d like instructions on how to game that machine, they are available all over the Internet.
In the meantime, poor Mr. Laughinghouse has been so bamboozled by GOP propaganda about the virtually non-existent problem of “voter fraud” (rather than election fraud which can be carried out by a single election insider, say, a “rover” for example, allowing just one of them to flip the results of an entire election without detection), that he’s now completely confused.
“He has become suspicious of voter fraud because of news reports he has heard,” says the paper.
“I’m all for our country and we know there has been voter fraud before and it continues even today,” Laughinghouse is quoted as saying. “So you get suspicious when something like this happens.”
He’s suspicious of “voter fraud” as he’s been misinformed by Fox “News” and friends, the same folks who, for years, have been repeating the Republican mantra that concerns about voting machines are little more than “Democrat conspiracy theories.”
Mr. Laughinghouse must be suspicious of himself, since he was the voter here. The truth, of course, is that the voters are doing fine and need to be left alone, rather than hassled and intimidated and suppressed at the polling place.
Laughinghouse’s real concerns were under his very nose when he went to vote yesterday, and he still seems not to have noticed, as the paper reports…
As this may be the first time Mr. Laughinghouse has heard this, hopefully he’ll read this carefully and it will stick with him (and every other voter perhaps hearing this for the first time): It doesn’t matter what your “ballot” says on the screen. It is 100% scientifically impossible to “ensure that the machine is logging each vote as intended.” In fact, it’s 100% impossible ensure that even one vote has been recorded as intended on such a voting system. And impossible to prove that any vote ever cast on such a machine in any election for any candidate or initiative on the ballot has ever been recorded as the voter intended.
But you folks can go ahead and keep looking for phantom “voter fraud” if you prefer, rather than where the real threat to (small “d”) democratic elections exists.
The upside here: Craven County GOP chair Tyson actually seems to get it. He told the paper about his county’s touch-screen voting machines: “They never work, they’re late reporting, they screw up, they ain’t worth a damn and we ought to go back to paper ballots.”
Bravo, sir.
[Hat-tip to Joyce McCloy, publisher of the indispensable Voting News and founder of North Carolina’s NCVoter.net.]UPDATE 10:36pm PT: And just after posting the above, we get word from McCloy of more reported vote flipping in a different North Carolina county, also charging that votes are flipping, repeatedly from Republican to Democratic on ES&S iVotronic touch-screen systems…
Some people complained that when they voted for certain candidates the electronic voting machines would pick another candidate.
“I was going through county commissioners and made my selection, it went from Republican candidates to Democrat. It did it three different times,” said Dean Lambeth, Mayor of Kure Beach.
One of the affected candidates, Republican Ilario Pantano, who is running against incumbent Democratic Rep. Mike McIntyre in the 7th Congressional district, issued this alert for voters after reports of votes flipping from Pantano to McIntyre.
The campaign’s “warning” is to “DOUBLECHECK your ballot before casting it.” Instead, they ought to be heading to court to get those machines removed from service and require election officials to provide voters with verifiable paper ballots instead at every voting location. Or otherwise wait to vote on Election Day, when NC allows voters to use paper ballots at the precinct.
This is just another reason why (even though political parties love it) early voting in places where you’re forced to use 100% unverifiable touch-screen systems is a terrible idea.
UPDATE 11:00pm PT: Another voter reports the same problems of R to D vote-flipping in Craven County, but adds an additionally troubling twist: “I pressed confirm and the screen went totally black.” Brilliant.
UPDATE 10/28/10: NC GOP threatens lawsuit against State Board of Elections over reported “widespread” vote-flipping. Details now here…
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I spoke with GOP Chair Tyson by phone earlier today after reading the story.
Tyson said that Craven County has had trouble ever since they purchased these touchscreen machines.
Craven uses them for early voting and uses optical scan on election day. Since Tyson refuses to be manipulated into thinking everything’s just fine, and since he IS very creditable, I believe we may be able to get that county to ditch its touchscreens.
Now hold on! If there is bipartisan and equal opportunity vote-flipping, I fail to see what all the fuss is about.
I mean, it’s not like we have real candidates is it?
(Some words to mark.)
But seriously, as conspiracy theoristical as ever, it works perfectly that the malfunctions are plagueing Republicans this time more than the Democrats. Probably the Harris-Blackwell Arm of the IOKIYAR Syndicate realized they had been playing outside the odds for too long, unless….Bingo. Probabilistic argument nullified.
What are the overall stats on these kinds of issues along party lines?
Maybe the hired help for the GOP and Diebold have defected, fed up with what their corporate masters have done to America. So they flipped votes the other way, perhaps.
If the GOP chair wants it done (tossing the touch-screens), perhaps there’s a ghost of a chance it will get done (at least until he gets his marching orders from the higher-ups, no?). If the chair were a Dem, however….?
IOAPIYAR (It’s Only A Problem If You’re A Republican)
Just a goofy aside….Brad has been saying for years (and I have been agreeing with him) that it is impossible to verify that even one vote cast on a DRE (or counted electronically) was counted as the voter intended.
What if there was only one vote on a single machine? THAT could actually be verified….couldn’t it? ;-D
I am getting more and more disgusted with the electronic voting machines. In Wake County, NC (at least the district I just voted in), we used PAPER. Ye olde classic “fill in the oval next to your choice” paper form (made of a thick, sturdy paper). Machine readable, so they can be counted quickly. There’s even a (gasp) paper trail!
I was a big fan of electronic voting a number of years back, thinking it would simplify and speed up voting. Instead, it’s a hacker’s/cheat’s best friend. Get rid of it.
On a side note, as a fan of the Democratic Party I am disturbed by the flipping of votes to “strait Dem” for a couple of reasons:
1) WE ARE BETTER THAN THAT! Unlike the GOP, as shown in Florida and Ohio, Democrats don’t cheat.
2) Have you seen the actions of the NC Democratic party over the past 6-10 years? There is NO WAY they are skilled enough to pull off a hack like that…
NC Resident,
First – LOL to your comment about NC Dems.
Second – that piece of paper you had that told you how you voted? Worthless. There’s still no way to know that the tabulator did its job. (Actually, there’s no way for you to know what the job of the tabulator is. That’s in the source code, and no, you can’t see it. You just have to “believe” that the job that YOU think it should be doing, and the job that the manufacturer/programmer/county clerk (or commissioner) says it is doing are one and the same. It very well may be doing its job by not counting votes accurately.)
But then again, I also can’t discern from your comments whether you think the paper in hand is a good thing or a diversion.
In Cuyahoga county OH, we insert a paper ballot into a reader that onlt tells us that our votes were recorded. When we had our previous machines, there was a thermal paper printout of our vote that could be hand checked later if somebody bitched. As virtually nobody knew how to run these systems, there was no realistic way to check accuracy. Besides, it costs money, so live with the results, fool.
One Dem grows a pair.
Nice.
Why can’t more people in this land conclude what Tyson has about evote machines:
“They never work, they’re late reporting, they screw up, they ain’t worth a damn and we ought to go back to paper ballots,” he said.
Why do we pay MORE to get less/nil transparency, less access/longer lines, less reliability/more malfucntions.
And please Democrats cheat too, read any stories of proven vote theft over the years, its an equal opportunity thing, elections matter to people, anyone with money, power, ambition, and/or hard core beliefs will try to game the system on county, state or national level. Soem my be better at it or more frequent abusers, but we must not trust anyone. Our constitution had checks and balances with idea it was oru best chance to fend off corruption and tyranny, we need same checks and balances in our elections sytems, everyone looking over all aspects of elections.
And paper ballots counted by machines are okay if they are publicly, automatically, audited by hand counting of randomly selected precincts as we do in MN immediately after election and election results not made official til audit done..
I live in New Zealand and I’m Australian …whats with the need for speed over accuracy ? Hand counted paper ballots counted at the “polling place” (several hundred max)then local results sent to a central tabulation location (several hundred local results max).You know the results the next day and everything is repeatable ,transparent and accurate. And each vote doesn’t cost $56 …
Brad, why do you politicize this issue? It’s not a Democrat vs Republican issue. Some of the worst offenders have been Democrats, going back to LBJ, Chicago and before. People on both sides have done/been both good and bad.
This is an American issue. Nothing to do with party. Please stop that and address the real issues, not the phony “us vs them” crap that our dark overlords perpetuate to keep us mentally preoccupied while they rape us.
We’re all Americans and all require honest elections.
We must demand that electronic voting machines not be used whether or not they can weed out the ‘glitches’. Democracy must be protected and remain transparent.
Jack @#13.
Brad has ALWAYS said that evoting concerns were NEVER about party, NEVER about GoP vs Dem, Never. Not once. I know this because I’ve been coming here for years.
Knowing this, I’m guessing you must be new here. I hope you take some time to read the archives.
Time to go back to the old fashioned paper ballots & vote counting precinct by precinct by hand. It was & is insane to use these damn machines that can be hacked in a matter of minutes…….IF they don’t switch enough votes to republicans!
Ditto Dan-in-PA @15 I also have been following this blog for over five years and Brad’s motto-which sometimes runs at the top -is;
IT’S NOT ABOUT LEFT AND RIGHT, IT’S ABOUT RIGHT AND WRONG.
Brad FRIED MAN is off on another goat roping expedition. The demoCRAZY in AMERka is a joke. it’s KABUKI. it never mattered who wins the election, as they’re both owned and operated by corporations and fascists and the Military Industrial Complex.
so what’s the big friggin deal? voting is a joke. the whole system is a FUCKING JOKE.
wake the fuck up!
Jack Nauti @13–
Shooting from the hip into foot in mouth disease. Happens not infrequently here. Fly-bys. Hope you’ll check Brad out more thoroughly.
What makes you think that voter fraud is necessary?
Didn’t you notice that there isn’t any difference between the Obama or Bush administration?
Just don’t get it!
By the way, technically touch screens with soft surface show this kind of behavior after excessive use.
Jack Nauti @ 13:
Don’t know whether it’ll make you feel better or not, but please see the “Note” I included at the end of this post recently: https://bradblog.com/?p=8135
Thanks.
@#20…this is not an example of voter fraud in which an individual casts an illegal ballot. This is ELECTION fraud in which many legal ballots are rendered worthless.
There is a HUGE difference.
@Soul Rebel…
Sure, the tabulators could be corrupt (whether that be by hacked/corrupt software or corrupt officials), but with the paper ballots (paper in hand, although given the subject matter I can see where you thought I might have been talking about Charmin..) at least with a supervised recount one has something physical to work with, not a bunch of electronic bits easily changed.
I do have some level of faith in our electoral process – that paper ballot adds to that faith. And, as a programmer, I have learned to have little faith in the electronic voting machines.
I always had assumed the rovers who access our voting machines maintained some sort of written log detailing the problem and the solution along with time and date and serial number of the machine they were fixing.
I was disappointed to find out SC rovers do not have to write anything down when fixing our machines.
Perhaps instead of calling them “electronic voting machines,” they should be referred to as one-armed bandits. Seems more appropriate.
– Tom
Brad: The DRE machines in this county are somewhat verifiable in that they have a thermal printer attached to them. But even the vendor admits that the printed doesn’t print out 1.5% to 2% of the time, and in real-world use it’s closer to 9% in NC. And that assumes the voter actually verifies the vote on the thermal paper.
Of course another big problem with these DRE machines in NC with our statewide IRV election is that the State Board of Elections is seriously considering invalidating our Public Confidence in Elections Act to use uncertified software (MS Excel) to tabulate the DRE voters (40% of the state’s votes in 30 counties).
Chris Telesca –
There is no such thing as “somewhat verifiable”. That’s like “partially pregnant”.
Don’t have time to re-explain in detail at the moment, but in short, if I come in to try to verify the accuracy of the election on November 3rd in NC, it will be strictly impossible to do so. Those “paper trails”, as you suggest, mean absolutely nothing as there is no way to know that they actually reflect the voters’ intent.
The examples of on-screen vote flipping by DREs are so numerous that it would require an actuary to keep tabs on them.
I’m not sure what part of “unverifiable,” “easily hacked” in an “undetectable” manner by anyone with insider access–mfg, distributor, election official, “trained election rover”–the MSM has difficulty understanding.
In any nation whose media had not already taken a page out of George Orwell’s 1984 the mathematical absurdity of “Alvin Greene, the unemployed South Carolina veteran who failed to campaign or even have a campaign web site, inexplicably [defeating] four-term state Senator and former Circuit Court Judge Vic Rawl for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination,” would have been more than enough of a red flag that led to a public outcry for an end to “faith-based” voting.
Now, if the individual (or individuals) who gamed SC’s system during the 2010 primary have such a twisted sense of humor that they would game it again in the general election; if Greene is declared the winner over the incumbent Republican Senator Jim DeMint–well, it may take that before the MSM actually pays attention.
NO one should vote at all unless it is by paper ballot ! Boycott all the machines as they are ALL fixed and always have been. How do you think we got here !
Dems/Repubs are the same party,just two branches of the same party-and always has been. Only votes of third parties will ever change anything IF anything at this point CAN be chagned, which I doubt.
Any votes by machine are just votes you hand them to put where they want – more votes for them to play wiht. But if they do not HAVE the votes to play with, and boycott all so-called “elections” until you got the paper ballot with the ovals to simply fill in next to a name, you won’t vote.
Nothing about “elections” today are even close to the Constitutional elections of the Constitution !
These are the type of elections dictatorships use.
Just to update you on voting malfunctions in NC. We in Lenoir County have had at least 4 incidents where voters have had their votes switched from straight Republican votes to Democrats. I am running as an unafiliated candidate, though I am Republican. I have had at least 3 people of impeccable character come to me and say they voted straight Rep. and the machine switched their votes on local elections to Dem. It also switched their votes from me as an unafiliated candidate to my Dem. opponent in all cases.
Ironically the first person who brought this to my attention was a registered Dem. who was voting straight Rep. for the first time.
When quizzed about these irregularities the Dir of Elections/and the Chairman of the Board of Elections said there was no issue with the machines. It was they had concluded caused because those voters had large fingers and had inadvertantly hit two choices at one time. Which is absurd.
In my District last election was decided by only 30 votes so it is of grave concern to me.
MacD – Thanks for that update. And please stay in touch if I can help (my email is here). It’s not unusual for Election officials to, inappropriately, blame voters in their quest to try to protect themselves and their horrible voting systems. Another recent example is seen in the TX case, where the election official involved largely just lied about what had happened. Thankfully, however, we’ve got video to prove that he’s wrong in that case.
Please see that TX article, as it offers a great deal of additional information on the specific ES&S machines, and their horrible history, that receiving of reports about vote flipping on in NC.