On Tuesday, we highlighted some of the many failures of e-voting systems in the Jackson, Mississippi (Hinds County), metropolitan area during their statewide primary election that day. Apparently enough systems failed, touch-screen systems that simply malfunctioned and refused to allow votes to be cast, names missing from electronic “ballots,” etc., that the Clarion-Ledger quoted a senior Democratic party official yesterday offering this remarkable statement:
What? Verify an election before announcing results?! Candidates refusing to concede before that’s done?! And how exactly will they be able to “verify” those numbers from 100% unverifiable electronic voting systems? My goodness. It’s anarchy in Mississippi!…
Officials may be able to try and count the paper ballots that were handed out when touch-screen machines failed on Tuesday. But as for the “ballots” cast on the touch-screen, or Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines made by Advanced Voting Solutions (AVS) — a company that has long since gone out of business — there is absolutely no way to verify that even a single one of them was recorded as per the voter’s intent. Hinds County is the only one in the state to use the 10-year-old AVS machines. Most of the other counties use touch-screen systems manufactured by Diebold/Premier. Some of those also failed, according to another Clarion-Ledger report:
Votes cast on the Diebold DREs that didn’t fail are also 100% unverifiable.
“Everyone I’ve talked to is baffled,” McInnis said Wednesday, referencing the voting machine failures and races, such as the primaries for Governor and Lt. Governor, which failed to appear on some voters’ electronic “ballots” at all. Yes, who could have known these electronic voting machines would fail on an Election Day? It’s not as if there has been any blog out there reporting day after day on such issues for years, warning about exactly that.
McInnis went on to say that members of his committee — in Mississippi the political parties run their own Primary Elections, while the state/counties run the general elections — may need the rest of this week and part of next to finish work required to “verify” the election.
“I haven’t conceded,”McMillin said.
Democratic Party officials discovered well into the count Tuesday night that some votes apparently were counted twice.
Among the problems, party officials overseeing primary elections found a Clinton precinct box appeared to be still out after others were accounted for, officials said.
…
“I’m going to wait to see what happens at the courthouse, and what they find out, to determine what’s going on and then take action from there,” McMillin said today.
…
Unofficial figures from the Hinds County website’s elections section showed Lewis received 17,743 votes, or 51.1 percent, to McMillin’s 15,503, or 44.7 percent.
McInnis reiterated that “all these totals are unofficial.
“I don’t make statements about artificial counts. It would be irresponsible to make statements about the election at this time,” he said.
Artificial counts. If they are based, in any way, on touch-screen voting machine results, they are all “artificial counts” because they can never be overseen and verified by the citizenry, or even the party committees who run the primaries in MS.
Had votes been cast on hand-marked paper ballots and counted on Election Night at the precincts, in front of the full public, with results posted directly at the polling places before any ballots moved anywhere, none of this would be happening and the state’s democracy would not be left to best-guesswork. That would have been “Democracy’s Gold Standard.”
Instead, the voters of Mississippi will be forced to accept whatever results officials end up reporting, as they make it all up as they go along. Self-governance and democracy have been lost.
All of this is, of course, just meant by way of a preview for what is soon to come to the rest of the country. Again.
And again. And again and again and again. Because no matter how often you warn people that most ballots cast in the US are totally unverifiable, you continue to vote and do not discourage others from voting.
I think it is the height of apathy to cast a ballot when you have no way to know for certain if it was counted accurately.
But since at least 50% of the electorate is so apathetic that they continue to cast ballots in elections where the results are unverifiable, and where they know that there is a good possibility of votes being uncounted or miscounted, the same problems will keep happening again and again and again.
If you want honest, fully transparent, verifiable elections, a way to hold candidates accountable once they’re in office, and real change, you’ve got to stop voting.
http://fubarandgrill.org/node/1172
The height of apathy is how you describe people who actually take the time to vote? That’s about the most convoluted reasoning I’ve ever heard. They’re not apathetic, they’re uninformed. In fact many are so uninformed they even vote for democrats
RIP, United States of America, bye bye democracy. China is the main recipient of the inheritance.
The biggest criminal in this is the criminally aiding-and-abetting US news media.
At least we don’t have to worry that any of these problems could possibly be the result of voter fraud !
The Rebooblicans slayed THAT dragon when they succeeded in shutting down ACORN … right ?
Yes, WingnutSteve, half are so uninformed that they vote for Democrats and the other half are so uninformed that they vote for Republicans or third parties. But all voters are apathetic.
Voting is the act of declaring yourself incompetent and electing guardians you won’t be able to hold accountable to manage your affairs for you, because you’re so apathetic that you don’t really care what they do. When they steal you blind, it proves that you were correct, as no competent person would designate guardians they can’t hold accountable to manage their affairs.
WingnutSteve –
Please feel free to ignore Mark Smith on that issue as the rest of us have been doing for years. He continues to be under the delusion that somehow, with the vast majority of Americans already not voting in elections, that somehow, something would change if even more of them didn’t.
Mark Smith –
As long as you have been reading this blog, and beating that same dead horse, I’d think you’d have your facts a bit straighter by now. You assert that “most ballots cast in the US are totally unverifiable,” which is entirely and completely untrue. Seriously, are you paying attention at all? Or are you so tied to your pointless, self-defeating hobby horse that you simply wait for me to post an article that has the word “elections” in it so you can once again choke the same dead chicken?
“If you want honest, fully transparent, verifiable elections, a way to hold candidates accountable once they’re in office, and real change, you’ve got to stop voting.”
Your plan continues to be ingenious! Can’t see any downsides to it whatsoever! Should work any moment!
Have you considered expanding it to other initiatives? Perhaps if everyone stopped breathing, it would convince people we need to pass new clean air legislation! What could possibly go wrong?
Dope.