Iowa’s “First-in-the-Nation” Caucuses managed to publicly tally some 122,000 hand-marked paper ballots at 1,774 caucus sites within an hour or two after votes were cast, in such a way that any problems or typos in the state GOP’s reporting of the results could be quickly verified by many different sources as inaccurate, thanks to the thousands who were able to oversee the hand-counting on caucus night.
This year Iowa had the tightest results in state history — just 34 votes were ultimately reported as separating the first and second place candidates — and yet almost nobody is shouting “fraud” or questioning the results in the Hawkeye State today after what was, in truth, a model of transparent democracy.
Contrast that with the embarrassing and disastrous mess that took place across the state of Nevada on Saturday — and in the days that followed — where just 33,000 hand-marked paper ballot votes were cast (down from 44,000 in 2008), but where GOP officials were unable to report even preliminary results to the public until 1am on Monday!
In the bargain, candidates and media and the public are questioning even those late late late results, while nowhere near as many votes were cast, and the results do not appear to be anywhere as close.
So what went wrong in Nevada this year that didn’t go wrong in Iowa?…
At this hour, it remains difficult to known for certain, since — and this appears to be the biggest problem over all — so much of the tallying was done out of the eyes of the public, by a small handful of party-selected individuals, inside various GOP County headquarters around the state.
I’ve been on the road for the last day or so, so unable to focus on the matter as closely as usual, and state GOP officials don’t seem to be answering their phones today for some reason, so the best I’ve been able to do is stitch things together from various media reports (always a risky proposition) in an attempt to try and figure out what led to the massive failure.
I’ll be happy to update this article with corrections and/or clarifications if/when I hear back from any state GOP officials, or others who are more familiar with the process carried out over the weekend. But based on reading a great deal of coverage over the last 24 hours, some reasonable assessment can be made.
For a start, while Nevada has a similar number of precincts (1,835) compared to Iowa’s (1,774), it appears that, unlike Iowa, precincts were combined to hold just 125 caucuses statewide. Thus, there were either too many votes at each caucus to allow them to be counted publicly at each site in a reasonable amount of time, or they didn’t bother to do so at all, choosing instead to send all of the ballots cast back to one central location at separate County Headquarters to be tallied.
Once the ballots leave a caucus site (and, therefore, the eye of the public), the trouble begins. Anything can happen at that point. That’s why it’s so important to count ballots immediately on Election Night in front of the citizenry, just as Iowa did at each of their 1,774 caucus sites on January 3rd. Problems that may discovered later — such as typos or misreporting of the caucus-based hand-counts by a central authority — can be easily verified one way or another without having to rely on a single source, since so many witnessed the initial count, and were allowed to photograph results sheets at the caucus sites, etc. That type of process is very difficult to game, even if Election Insiders (the folks who are inclined to defraud the system, as opposed to voters themselves) try to.
For example, after the Iowa GOP had posted their reported caucus night tallies to their website from each and every caucus, citizens who had witnessed the caucus counts could check those results against their own eyeballs, photographs and other contemporaneous records of the initial tallies. That’s what happened, for instance, when Ron Paul supporter Edward True discovered that the Iowa GOP had reported 22 votes for Mitt Romney when at his Washington Wells caucus site in Appanoose County, in fact, he had received only 2 votes there. Nobody had to rely on either True or the GOP to determine what had actually taken place, since so many others were able to confirm that, in fact, True had it right, and the GOP didn’t.
While it was foolish for Iowa’s GOP chairman Matthew Strawn to announce a conclusive “winner” on Caucus Night, as he did, while just 8 votes(!) separated first and second place (as was the case on the night of the Iowa Caucuses) before numbers could be double-checked for typos, etc., and obnoxious for him and other Iowa GOP officials to publicly slam True for darking to speak up about the anomaly (once again, thank you, Edward True!), the process used in Iowa is just about as close as we get in this country to Democracy’s Gold Standard when it comes to casting ballots which can be known to reflect voter intent and where the tally is then overseen and verifiable by thousands of independent members of the public.
Strawn and the Iowa GOP have taken unwarranted heat for what happened there, given the overall accuracy of the public count in a race which was so absurdly close. Strawn ended up resigning in the wake of criticism by folks in the media who didn’t bother to really understand how the process worked there, after it was ultimately determined that Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney, had actually won the Iowa caucuses by just 34 votes out of some 122,000 cast. (Strawn should have resigned for the treatment he and other GOP officials gave to True after he’d stepped forward, or even for going on record to declare Romney “the winner” on Election Night before double-checking their own reported tally, but not for the fact that it took two weeks to cross all available Ts and dot every I that they could.)
Meanwhile, back in Nevada, ballots were tallied “in the dark” back at the various GOP county headquarters over the last several days, instead of by teams of public counters overseen at the caucus sites. (Some caucuses do appear to have tallied publicly, but not all, particularly at the caucuses where there were too many votes cast to do that.) The results as now finally reported by the state GOP are either accurate or not. Who knows? Nobody can. Now that the secure chain of custody for the ballots cast on Saturday has been broken, no one can known for certain, since it ultimately took days, rather than hours, for the public to learn of even initial results at all. Only party insiders were given access to oversee the tallies as the bulk of them were carried out outside of the public eye.
Yes, there were additional problems across the state — such as the party moving the date of the caucuses twice before finally settling on 2/4/12; a lack of uniform processes across the entire state, with the GOP committees in each county establishing differing procedures; last minute state redistricting lead to confusion for some voters; one caucus in Clark County was scheduled at night for observant Jews and Seventh-Day Adventists to avoid Saturday afternoon worship, and resulted in officials waiting before releasing results, etc — but even all of those problems might have been overcome if the party had entrusted the people and a fully public process, observable by everyone, include the media and even those not voting in the caucuses, to oversee the entire process from votes being cast to votes being publicly hand-counted with results reported to all in attendance at each site before ballots were moved anywhere.
The result of the state GOP failure is, aside from voters being potentially disenfranchised entirely, a huge and deserved black eye for the party. Or, since it’s Nevada, a couple of snake eyes, if you will, as state Republicans managed to crap out in their ill-considered and pathetically carried out “First-in-the-West” Caucuses over the weekend.
The worst result of all, however, may be that party officials may choose to use the state’s 100% unverifiable touch-screen e-voting machines to hold a Primary Election instead, rather than a paper-ballot Caucus system, the next time around. If they do so — rather than correct the terrible processes they used this year — there is likely to be little question about the reported results, since the type of voting machines they use across the entire Silver State means that it will be strictly impossible to know if even one vote was accurately recorded as per voter intent.
Thanks for making hand-counted paper ballots appear to be a bad idea, Nevada GOP! But the fact is, neither the voters, nor the fact that they were allowed to vote on hand-marked paper ballots, are to blame. The only thing crystal clear about the Nevada GOP Caucuses is that the extraordinary incompetence of the state Republican party, which, when they had the chance to run their own elections, using any rules and procedures they liked, managed to fail each and every one of their very own voters.
The only problem with that Iowa heavenly caucus thingy is that they did not announce the correct results (until after Americans were sick of hearing about the Iowa caucus already).
After generation upon generation of propaganda pounding, Americans would always like to have it right the first time so as to limit the cringing to a reasonable spasm episode.
That seems fair, seeing as how they can only stay sane any more by hearing the names of idiots less than a thousand times daily.
After that, stutter shock shuts out the 1,001th and thereafter time the same dumb shit’s name is repeated.
If Iowa is the model of heavenly caucuses, then getting it wrong the first time is doctrine.
But that’s ok … who won that Bush election anyway … have they got that straight yet?
It would be so Iowa to learn he really didn’t win, but he did accomplish that mission thingy in the U.S.eh?
Hey mikey hayden how you like me now??????????????? I know you tested these fucked up totally secret and totally corruptable voting machines out there in the hills of Seattle you asshole! Actually its on film.
Shit in your own bowl often?
Dredd sedd @ 1:
The results they announced that night would have been “accurate” for 9999 out of 10,000 elections, but for how close the final margin was. Had they made that clear when announcing their preliminary totals that night (their dumb mistake), the prob wouldn’t have happened and nobody would have been declared the “winner” until everything was double and triple checked. When the preliminary results of an election with 122,000 votes ends with 8 votes separating 1st and 2nd place, that’s just common sense. The Iowa GOP displayed none in that instance.
But that’s hardly the fault of the vote casting and counting system they used. Mistakes happen in every election, as they did there. Normally such small mistakes don’t matter. In this rare case they did. But the test is not whether or not small mistakes occur, it’s whether or not the people can spot them and then fix them without controversy or doubt.
That’s what happened in Iowa and it’s exactly what you want from an election process. But when you conceal vote counting, as appears to have happened in Nevada, there is no way out to an election that the citizenry can have confidence in because there is no way for them to ultimately know whether the final results are accurate or not.
That you still don’t seem to understand all that, Dredd, given how long you’ve been hanging out here, remains what we shall charitably call “a mystery”.
The latest from mikey:
http://townhallseattle.org/wac-...urity-threats/
Wack alright, you fear mongering fuck.
I am forever vigilant, against assholes that profit off a good people. Your one of the biggest, and oh my nobody knows!
Hey there mikey, you and chertoff got your own special place…huh? Grow up and understand this is the 21 century.
Just so you don’t get confused and speculate…that special place would be hell…if I believed in good and evil instead of imbalanced people.
Woah! Another citizen steps up! Video (from CNN, no less) of Nevada Caucus – Feisty Ron Paul delegate refused entry into the “secret” counting back room and refuses to leave / manhandled by State GOP buggers:
http://youtu.be/1JqFw-mepT0
…anyone happen to know how this played out after the cameras were off?
Bard @4,
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I say the Iowa Republican caucus was ugly as an example of an election, you say beautiful.
Fair enough.
You sprinkle holy water on it by saying paper ballots made it good, I say paper ballots don’t guarantee a fair election.
I will acknowledge that since the coup the standards for elections have gone down hill.
Down hill to the point that the machine election count movies are evil, and even the paper ballot movies are grade B.
Grade B is the golden standard now I suppose.
I find it unfortunate that you failed to notice that the recounted numbers only changed the Romney/Santorem totals. Don’t you think Ron Paul’s numbers might have been in error…just a little bit?
Dredd sedd @ 10:
What was “ugly” about it (above and beyond the ugliness I already pointed out)? What processes if procedures could/should have been implemented to help make it less ugly?
Of course, had you read the article above — or any number of thousands of others here — you’d know I don’t, and have never argued, that paper ballots, in and of themselves, make any election “good”.
Do you bother to actually read our articles here? Or just check the headline before leaving a link to one of your blog articles in comments?
Miles @ 11 asked:
If they were, we have no evidence of it. At least no evidence of change enough to affect his position in the final results. Yes, Santorum & Romney swapped spots, but that was a net change of all of 42 votes total.
Paul, on the other hand, was thousands of votes behind them. I noted it was a Ron Paul supporter who stepped up an pointed to the original reporting error. If other Paul supporters, or observers of any stripe, have evidence that the results, as now reported by the GOP, is wrong, where is that evidence? I’m happy to look at it, of course. I’m just aware of NONE at this time.
My inaccurate election is better than your inaccurate election.
Better is the golden standard.
Nuf said.
Dredd sedd @ 14:
Hardly. You took some serious ad hominem shots at my critique/commentary, which you are more than welcome to do, but failed to back them up with a single substantive point in support. When I asked you specific questions, you chose not to answer them.
Sounds like you don’t actually have any substance at all to support your critiques. So I guess you’ve proved we should all ignore them. If I’m wrong, I’m sure you’ll be able to demonstrate otherwise by actually responding to the questions I’ve asked in response to your (apparently substanceless) snark.
Bard @15,
Since you are spoiling for an argument, I will grant your wish.
Your position is unprincipled, because it is degree based.
In principle a machine election can be more accurate than a paper ballot election, and vice versa. Or less accurate and vice versa.
The degree either one is wrong or right can not change the degree-base into a principle-base.
You proclaimed Iowa’s defective election to be the example for the nation because it used paper ballots and counting ballots out in the open protocol.
But it selected the wrong person, and did not count every vote.
But it is the example?
The holy grail you are advocating is that the way it is done is more important than whether or not the right person is proclaimed the victor.
That does not make sense, Santorum was not declared the victor even though he was the victor.
The disadvantaged him in the subsequent primary events and in the eyes of the public, and it gave imaginary advantage to Romney as well.
It is just a fact that our election systems are flawed because those doing it are incompetent or the system they labor under is flawed.
For a century we have known that Stalin used paper ballots, and like in Iowa, those who count the votes decide. They decided Santorum lost, WRONG, then they decided he won. With the same paper ballots. Hell, machines can do that.
If Minnesota and Iowa are exemplary in our election system I am embarrassed.
Not only that, I do not accept your ideology on it, because I am confident that we can do better and in fact I demand it.
I understand your position well, and for years have agreed with the position that paper ballots counted in public is better than the use of machines.
But that is because of dishonesty and incompetence in our system, and in machine and software engineering.
I have disagreed with the aspect you preach on this blog that does not see the larger problem.
My position has always been that the cure is honesty and competence, not technique, and not equipment.
You can go down the slippery slope of declaring a defective Iowa caucus to be the example to follow, and I can choose to demand something I think is better.
As it should be.
The prosecution of a Secretary of State for election related felonies speaks volumes about the need for honesty and competence.
Under that Sec. of State no election would be safe, whether conducted by machine or by paper ballots counted in the open.
Iowa shows that even though there were no know felonies committed in that caucus election.
So, again, nuf said for now.
Dredd sedd (or, blustered, perhaps, as a better way to describe it) @ 16:
“It” didn’t “select the wrong person”. It selected the person who had the most votes, and if it didn’t, I’d be delighted for you to prove otherwise. The guy who ran the Iowa Caucuses — Matthew Strawn — did, however, incorrectly declare the wrong person won — by 8 votes. But he couldn’t get away with it, thanks to the system used. So why is that the fault of publicly hand-counted paper ballots again?
Now, beyond that, which votes did it “not count”? (And, by the way, if it did not count every vote, how would you know that? Careful, that’s a trick question for ya.)
See above. But to recap, the process didn’t “declare” the wrong victor. The guy running the process did. And the point is that, thanks to the excellent process, we were able to PROVE that the guy running the process declared the wrong victor! Again, that’s the whole point!
Now, contrast that with, say, Ohio 2004, or any number of other elections since, where the guy declared the winner may or may not have won, but YOU will never be able to prove it either way thanks to the secret processes used in those elections.
Right. That’s why you want a system in which the maximum number of citizens can oversee the process to assure that any flaws or incompetency is exposed. That’s exactly what happened in Iowa.
Wrong. Those who counted the votes — the public, in this case — decided, correctly, that Santorum won, not Romney. That, even after the GOP had tried to declare otherwise. So I still seem to be missing your point. Or you’re having a helluva time trying to make it.
If it was up to those in charge, like Strawn, Romney might have been declared the victor and nobody could have done a damn thing about it. Since they used an open, fully public counting process, however, we were all able to learn better and prove as much.
Cool! What do you have in mind, boss? I’m always looking for ways to improve the system. Haven’t noticed you offering such an idea up until now, but looking forward to it!
What “larger problem”? Ah…now we see it below…
Aha! Got it! Your way to improve elections is by demanding “honesty and competence”? Whereas now we demand “dishonesty and incompetence”, I guess?
But let’s play along and presume that all we need to do is demand honesty and competence (which I’m pretty sure folks already demand). How would you know if anybody was either honest or competent, without the transparency that I’ve long been calling for?
Or, are you presuming that after hundreds of years of folks attempting to game elections, they’d suddenly just decide to stop trying to game elections now that thousands of “honest and competent” people (as Judge Dredd determines them to be, I guess?) were magically installed to run our elections?
You can do anything you want, of course. But if your “demand” is for “honest and competent” people to run elections, with no plan for either how to find them, install them, or — most important of all — for the citizenry to know they are “honest and competent”, it sounds like you’ve got no plan whatsoever to improve American elections. It sounds, in fact, like your are pulling contrarianism out of your ass, for some reason that I couldn’t begin to understand.
No election is perfect. No election can ever be perfect. That’s why you want as many people as possible to oversee the entire process, so any mistakes or nefariousness can be immediately and decisively found out and corrected.
And that’s where you’re wrong. Again. The best election system — the one I’ve been advocating — works even under dishonest and incompetent individuals. Even the criminal Charlie White wouldn’t have been able to game an election like the one held in Iowa, even if he wanted to, at least not without being caught by the citizenry. And that, again, is the whole point.
Or, we could just pray to the Magic Election Fairy and ask her to deliver thousands of “honest and competent” election officials and then simply trust that they actually are. We’ll call that “Democracy’s Dredd Standard”.
Good luck with that, chief!
Sorry mikey, I’m not buying your latest try at excusing yourself for your past, undermining the foundation to real democracy, verifiable voting. Talk out of both sides of your mouth much? Make sure to read the last line of this link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mi..._%28general%29
Then I would urge Americans who think drones are making us safer, let alone their immorality, check out the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URl61u2D-kA
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/p...amas-drone-war
Hi Brad, Hi all,
A friend of mine on Facebook posted the link below to a blog where the author argues that there must be something wrong with the Nevada primary based on the fact that Ron Paul’s numbers stayed almost exactly the same as in 2008, despite numerous indicators that many more people are in support of him now than there were in 2008.
I found it fairly persuasive.
Nevada Election Result Likely Fraudulent, Ron Paul Votes Seemingly Discarded
Thanks for all you do, to the sane adults here, especially you Brad.
Writing for the love of truth,
jd
Hey Loveoftruthguy, have you seen any coverage on msm about this or Brad’s new piece on Maine? It is disgusting how they have used our public airwaves to promote the usa circus of sour instead of informing people about important news like this:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/15-8
And then there’s this piece by Keith:
http://current.com/shows/countd...ccupy-movement
Here’s a real eye opener too, if you can stomach it:
http://www.chris-floyd.com/comp...error-war.html
Last link is “fiction.”
Okay, one last post that comes full circle from my first post today…you’ll have to check back once it is posted in full:
http://www.democracynow.org/201...lomat_bombings
Ooops, after reviewing my posts, I should have said in #23 that the piece is a “fiction” by a great writer. Also, check out the following piece on Honduras in the Democracy Now link.
I would recommend all to see this:
http://www.linktv.org/programs/...-of-resistance
If you don’t have satelite tv try this:
http://films.culturesofresistance.org/
And hey Dredd, did you notice my untitled reference to Donovan’s Circus of Sour?
Dredd, I couldn’t find a clip of Circus of Sour, but I found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc6HcA6kEJc
Ya know I tried to post on your blog a few years back and couldn’t get through.
Regardless, I love both you and Brad.
An ya know I haven’t read your argument above…just noted that it happened.
I’m gonna post this as the Bradbog tribute to Mary from over on Emptywheel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFowNFvmUxw
May we all continue to contribute…and feel good about it.
http://www.emptywheel.net/2012/...y-beth-perdue/
Read it and find out who she was and weep with me…cause there goes “the kind” we can all hope to be.
re: Brad and Dredd jousting—
For my money–
Brad, him a make a whole lotto sense.
Dredd, him a make a gigundo word salad.