News Poll: Was the 2004 election rigged?

[The Smoking Man]

Election problems are just a conspiracy? Can we get a direct answer to this one question--Why, with all the technology available in this country (including Diebold's), is there no paper trail for these voting machines?

Er? ... Plausible deniability!?

 

[Manchot]

The first thing that came to mind was the possability of technical problems with printers. What happens when they run out of ink, run out of paper, paper jams, ect... I'm sure that you have had experience with printer problems before.

Running out of ink and paper is certainly not a problem, because that can be prevented by ordering lots of it. Paper jams are easy to fix. In general, laser printers are very reliable, and to suggest that so many would be failing that it wouldn't be prudent to use them is absurd. (Punch cards are much less reliable, as we discovered in 2000). I really don't understand why people don't want transparency in an election. IMO, several things need to happen:

1. All voting machine code needs to be open source, and reviewed heavily by partisan and non-partisan programmers (so that third party candidates are not disenfranchised). Furthermore, the specific architecture of any machine needs to be heavily reviewed (to prevent a party from benefiting from a hardware "glitch"). All code should be well-documented and not arcane, with every line having a precise explanation of what it does. If there are disputes, they should be discussed in a public forum.
2. The code needs to be compiled and downloaded to the machines in the sight of many people, and the compiled code should be matched with every party's idea of what the "correct" code should be. The port used to download the program then needs to be permanently sealed up inside the machine.
3. None of the voting machines should be connected to a network of any kind. Period. In fact, the only external port should be an LPT1 printer port. To transmit the data at the end of the election, it should be printed out on several pieces of paper, each transmitted to the election authority by many different people. Also, a paper tally of each vote should be kept.
4. Finally, each voting machine needs to be destroyed.

 

[pattylou]

4. Finally, each voting machine needs to be destroyed.

Why? WHat if they need to audit the machine for a bug?

 

[russ_watters]

Important point before I continue: pattylou, I need to know your interpretation of your poll. Ie, what is the difference between "rigging" and "tampering"?

edit: used the wrong word...

 

[russ_watters]

Manchot, I was with you until #4. Other than that, your plan seems pretty good.

 

[pattylou]

Important point before I continue: pattylou, I need to know your interpretation of your poll. Ie, what is the difference between "rigging" and "tampering"?

edit: used the wrong word...

In my opinion the two words are interchangeable. From the Patty's Brain Dictionary (which has not sold many copies):

Rigging: modifying intentionally to effect a particular result.

(in this case, the particular result was "more votes" of unspecified number, but hopefully subtle enough to go unnoticed)

Tampering: Mucking around with, due to dissatisfaction that things may not come out the way you like, otherwise.


(So, the two words in my mind are interchangeable - but if this has led to problems with responses, I apologize!)

"Stealing" would be a different word in this dictionary yet.

 

[Manchot]

Sorry, I should've been more clear on point #4. I meant that the machines should be destroyed sometime before the next election, so that they aren't reused. I didn't actually mean that they should be destroyed immediately.

 

[pattylou]

Sorry, I should've been more clear on point #4. I meant that the machines should be destroyed sometime before the next election, so that they aren't reused. I didn't actually mean that they should be destroyed immediately.

Why? If they are good, agreed on by both parties, etc - why destroy them?

 

[rachmaninoff]

Why? If they are good, agreed on by both parties, etc - why destroy them?

Actually it's not that bad of an idea. If identical machines are mass-produced, they could be dirt cheap, so it would be feasible to replace them every four (two?) years. Maybe with different, better models - since when were eight-year old PCs not obsolete? (eh, not a good comparison...) Bottom line, there's a legitimate fear that if such machines were left alone somewhere in a closet for four years, some enterprising villans might switch them out for identical-looking machines with some kind of ingenious backdoors... or, the public could think they might possibly have been replaced with identical-looking machines with ingenious backdoors, causing distrust in the system... You can have the construction, compilation, deployment, and use of the machines thoroughly supervised over a short time period, but with long-term storage... is it really feasible to lock up three democrats and three republicans with every voting machine stored in a closet somewhere, for four years?

 

[russ_watters]

In my opinion the two words are interchangeable. From the Patty's Brain Dictionary (which has not sold many copies):

Rigging: modifying intentionally to effect a particular result.

(in this case, the particular result was "more votes" of unspecified number, but hopefully subtle enough to go unnoticed)

Tampering: Mucking around with, due to dissatisfaction that things may not come out the way you like, otherwise.


(So, the two words in my mind are interchangeable - but if this has led to problems with responses, I apologize!)

"Stealing" would be a different word in this dictionary yet.

In the google definition of "rig" it gives this (one of many definitions): "arrange the outcome of by means of deceit; "rig an election"". Regardless, you are alleging criminal fraud (fraud: "In the broadest sense, a fraud is a deception made for personal gain"). Whether there was an attempt to steal by an individual or lot of individuals, whether it was successful or not, its still stealing or attempted stealing, isn't it?

Could you please explain to me how that is different from stealing. I don't see a difference.

 

[russ_watters]

A quick google of "bush rig election 2004" shows 9 of the 10 hits using "rig" and "stole" interchangeably - and in the tenth, I can't find the refence to the election.

If that wasn't your intent, pattylou, fine, but the poll is very misleading. Read back over the early responses with that in mind...

 

[rachmaninoff]

Could you please explain to me how that is different from stealing. I don't see a difference.

In your own words, it's the difference between "stealing" and "attempted stealing". You said it yourself. Semantically it may not look like much of a difference, but with a national election you can imagine it would take a heck of a lot of attempting to get a single rig. I mean, a successful rig.

It boils down to the fact that there are thousands of voting precincts, and manipulation at anyone of them is extremely unlikely to change the national result. "Stealing" is three or four order-of-magnitudes above "attempted stealing".

 

[pattylou]

Actually it's not that bad of an idea. If identical machines are mass-produced, they could be dirt cheap, so it would be feasible to replace them every four (two?) years. Maybe with different, better models - since when were eight-year old PCs not obsolete? (eh, not a good comparison...) Bottom line, there's a legitimate fear that if such machines were left alone somewhere in a closet for four years, some enterprising villans might switch them out for identical-looking machines with some kind of ingenious backdoors... or, the public could think they might possibly have been replaced with identical-looking machines with ingenious backdoors, causing distrust in the system... You can have the construction, compilation, deployment, and use of the machines thoroughly supervised over a short time period, but with long-term storage... is it really feasible to lock up three democrats and three republicans with every voting machine stored in a closet somewhere, for four years?

You need to check the machines before each election whether they are old ones or new ones.

New ones could be tampered with during production.

I don't see that you are more secure with new machines; in either case you need to check them thoroughly before the election.

 

[pattylou]

In the google definition of "rig" it gives this (one of many definitions): "arrange the outcome of by means of deceit; "rig an election"". Regardless, you are alleging criminal fraud (fraud: "In the broadest sense, a fraud is a deception made for personal gain"). Whether there was an attempt to steal by an individual or lot of individuals, whether it was successful or not, its still stealing or attempted stealing, isn't it?

Could you please explain to me how that is different from stealing. I don't see a difference.

Let's say Kerry did some rigging of his own.

Obviously he didn't steal the election.

That's the difference between rigging and stealing. Bush "won." We have no idea if some of his votes were legitimate or not. (The same is true for Kerry's votes. )

I don't know with much precision what the actual voter wishes were in the election. I believe the country is fairly "evenly divided" but beyond that I don't know that the election accurately reflects the will of the people. This is not the same thing as stating that Bush stole the election. I am making a ststement of uncertainty.

The fact that I am an American, saying this, about my country - is amazing.

 

[pattylou]

A quick google of "bush rig election 2004" shows 9 of the 10 hits using "rig" and "stole" interchangeably - and in the tenth, I can't find the refence to the election.

If that wasn't your intent, pattylou, fine, but the poll is very misleading. Read back over the early responses with that in mind...

I tried that google. With no quotes I got 87 thousand hits. With quotes, I got 0.

I'd like to try a few variations on this google, but I need to replicate yours first. How precisely did you word the search?

 

[russ_watters]

In your own words, it's the difference between "stealing" and "attempted stealing". You said it yourself. Semantically it may not look like much of a difference, but with a national election you can imagine it would take a heck of a lot of attempting to get a single rig. I mean, a successful rig.

It boils down to the fact that there are thousands of voting precincts, and manipulation at anyone of them is extremely unlikely to change the national result. "Stealing" is three or four order-of-magnitudes above "attempted stealing".

But that doesn't fit with how this thread has gone (edit: its also gramattically incorrect: "attempted to rig" and "rigged" mean two different things and this thread says "rigged"). Pattylou herself was the first to bring up the Deibold CEO's quote about "delivering the election". That implies a successful fraud! One of the first pieces of evidence brought up was The Study. Again, The Study alleges succesful fraud.

Further, if you simplify the poll question to be: 'Did anyone, anywhere attempt to manipulate the 2004 election', it becomes a yes or no question with a right answer: the answer is that all elections involve some tampering. That makes for a pretty useless poll though, doesn't it? Some of the early responses imply to me that people saw that and wondered what the point of the poll was, based on that.

It doesn't make any sense to me that this was meant to be a discussion of the hundreds of votor irregularities that were reported. If it was, right from the start, it didn't go that way. That is why I'm focusing on a successful fraud, guys.

 

[pattylou]

You've been trying to nail down successful/unsuccessful fraud; I've been trying to repeatedly emphasize voter distrust.

I started the poll because I have no idea what the general sentiment is on electronic machines among the population. It's not in the news, you don't ever talk about it with you neighbor (for fear of being labelled a whacko), I've scanned Zogby etc repeatedly, no luck. (I'll try again in a minute.)

So, *my* purpose in this poll was to get a rough feel - is the distrust insignificant (~5%) and I'm really a weirdo? Is it significant (maybe 20%) and only among democrats? Is it overwhelming and among both parties?

In that sense I think the poll was informative, but the problems with bias and sample size on a forum like this, diminish the "information" gleaned, considerably, possibly to the point of worthlessness.

 

[russ_watters]

In that sense I think the poll was informative.

I think the poll gave you misleading results because you worded it badly. I'm going to start a new one...

 

[pattylou]

I think the poll gave you misleading results because you worded it badly. I'm going to start a new one...

Shouldn't we work together on wording before you start it? you seem hell bent on promoting your view. No offense.

 

[pattylou]

I emailed Pew to ask them if such a poll (voter confidence elctronic machines) has been done. They will respond within five business days.

 

[rachmaninoff]

It doesn't make any sense to me that this was meant to be a discussion of the hundreds of votor irregularities that were reported. If it was, right from the start, it didn't go that way. That is why I'm focusing on a successful fraud, guys.

If Joe Schmoe votes for Kerry, and Joe Schmoe's deceased grandmother also votes for Kerry, that's a "voting irregularity". It's also a fraud, and a felony. If poll worker Bob doesn't notice Ma Schmoe is actually a 23-year old male, it becomes a 'succesful fraud'.

Let's clear up the ambiguities once and for all. I propose the following conventions for classification of the magnitude of a voting fraud:

Level I: Order-of-magnitude of ten fradulent votes.
Level II: Order-of-magnitude of one thousand fro-voes.
Level III: Order of magnitude of one hundred thousand votes, or minimum required to swing one medium-rare state.
Level IV: Order of magnitude of ten million votes, or minimum required to swing one big, gullible democratic republic.

All frauds are assumed succesful.


So, by "stealing an election" we mean a Level III or IV. I'd say both were statistically impossible in 2004 - exit polls, observers, margins of victory, etc., etc., we've discussed this before.

By 'rigging an election', we mean any concerted effort that could possibly (not probably) swing a state like Florida or New Mex in a very close race. Looking at '00, something like 400 votes from a single precinct could have done it. Order-of-magnitude, it's a 'Level II'.

My assumption is, anything that involves concerted activity between poll-workers from multiple precincts is extremely unlikely to be successful.

An easy axiom is, it is impossible to edit votes once they leave a precint - because precinct results are reported by the media. Hence, any national-scale rigging involves something done in hundreds of individual precincts, and involves hundreds of coordinated Level-IIs. Again, hundreds of people are involved, this can't work (edit: except maybe, in a really close race, using electronic machines, a single programmed backdoor...)

 

[SOS2008]

If Joe Schmoe votes for Kerry, and Joe Schmoe's deceased grandmother also votes for Kerry, that's a "voting irregularity". It's also a fraud, and a felony. If poll worker Bob doesn't notice Ma Schmoe is actually a 23-year old male, it becomes a 'succesful fraud'.

Let's clear up the ambiguities once and for all. I propose the following conventions for classification of the magnitude of a voting fraud:

Level I: Order-of-magnitude of ten fradulent votes.
Level II: Order-of-magnitude of one thousand fro-voes.
Level III: Order of magnitude of one hundred thousand votes, or minimum required to swing one medium-rare state.
Level IV: Order of magnitude of ten million votes, or minimum required to swing one big, gullible democratic republic.

All frauds are assumed succesful.


So, by "stealing an election" we mean a Level III or IV. I'd say both were statistically impossible in 2004 - exit polls, observers, margins of victory, etc., etc., we've discussed this before.

By 'rigging an election', we mean any concerted effort that could possibly (not probably) swing a state like Florida or New Mex in a very close race. Looking at '00, something like 400 votes from a single precinct could have done it. Order-of-magnitude, it's a 'Level II'.

My assumption is, anything that involves concerted activity between poll-workers from multiple precincts is extremely unlikely to be successful.

An easy axiom is, it is impossible to edit votes once they leave a precint - because precinct results are reported by the media. Hence, any national-scale rigging involves something done in hundreds of individual precincts, and involves hundreds of coordinated Level-IIs. Again, hundreds of people are involved, this can't work.

Agreed. And per my post #53 in the thread on culture war and civil war, use of a word such as "stolen" is contrary to the scientific method of controlling for bias in survey methodology.

I had brought this up in a thread long ago on separation of church and state. The reason for the exit poll anomaly was that many people were block voting. If you knew you were doing something wrong, would you participate in an exit interview? No, so people voting for Kerry participated at a higher level, throwing off the results. But this then gives more serious cause for concern about how block voting affected the election outcome.

As for suspicions of rigging, if you look at my quotes from Wikipedia, you may note the affiliations are all with Republicans candidates. I don't see any reliable evidence posted here indicating possible fraud in favor of Kerry. And since we still can't get an answer to why the U.S. is unable to produce a paper trail when other less-advanced countries are doing it just fine...

 

[rachmaninoff]

The reason for the exit poll anomaly was that many people were block voting. If you knew you were doing something wrong, would you participate in an exit interview?

Could you clarify? I googled 'block voting', and it looks like a legitmate system of election, one that isn't used in the US. What meaning are you considering?

 

[pattylou]

Russ: You may have missed this:

A quick google of "bush rig election 2004" shows 9 of the 10 hits using "rig" and "stole" interchangeably - and in the tenth, I can't find the refence to the election.

If that wasn't your intent, pattylou, fine, but the poll is very misleading. Read back over the early responses with that in mind...

I tried that google. With no quotes I got 87 thousand hits. With quotes, I got 0.

I'd like to try a few variations on this google, but I need to replicate yours first. How precisely did you word the search?

 

[SOS2008]

Could you clarify? I googled 'block voting', and it looks like a legitmate system of election, one that isn't used in the US. What meaning are you considering?

I'm referring to politics and the pulpit. This has always existed to some degree, but not to the extent that it reached in 2004, of course because of Bush and his flagrant appeals to the fundamentalist voters. After the election there were a few news stories on the matter. Immediately following the 2004 election there were at least 60 religious organizations that were under investigation by the IRS. There have been more since, most recently this:

"Political North Carolina pastor resigns
Pastor was accused of ousting members who voted against Bush"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7769149/

Here is a site you can link to if you'd like to learn more about this issue: http://www.au.org/site/PageServer?pagename=resources_politicsandpulpit

The real extent of this will never be known, because it ranges from subtle reinforcements (which I've witnessed myself, such as email distributions) to the more blatant behavior of the pastor in North Carolina.

Aside from this we have had intense debate here on many factors, such as media suppression and/or bias, etc. It would be interesting if one could quantify each variable, for example:

Props to ban gay marriage = % fundamentalist votes for Bush
Swift Boat Veteran smear campaign = % general votes for Bush
Pro illegal immigration = % Hispanic votes for Bush
Fear mongering on terrorism = % general votes for Bush
Illegal invasion of Iraq = % neocon votes for Bush

And so forth. You add to that possible tampering with election results, even a small percent, and you have yourself an imposter for president--Many nasty things all added up.

 

[pattylou]

Equating Kerry to dead babies = % tender hearted christian votes for Bush

(remember the girl in tears at the town hall debate? The one that voiced the question about Kerry's stand on abortion? This coupled with Bush's "culture of life.")

 

[2CentsWorth]

Equating Kerry to dead babies = % tender hearted christian votes for Bush

(remember the girl in tears at the town hall debate? The one that voiced the question about Kerry's stand on abortion? This coupled with Bush's "culture of life.")

Wasn't that the same chick that was crying about removal of Terri's feeding tube? Seriously, there is an organization that backs this kind of stuff, and I'm sure she's a member.

Here's another one: Gerrymandering = % votes for Bush

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Running out of ink and paper is certainly not a problem, because that can be prevented by ordering lots of it. Paper jams are easy to fix. In general, laser printers are very reliable, and to suggest that so many would be failing that it wouldn't be prudent to use them is absurd.

I personally believe that there would be problems to overcome with printing out so much hard copy at once. I also believe that resolving such issues wouldn't be that difficult. I only bring them up because I believe it's very possible the reason my the particular model lacked a paper trail was lazy engineering.

 

[SOS2008]

More than half of all states now require Voter-Verified Paper Ballot (VVPB) for touch-screen machines so that voters can verify their vote is recorded correctly, and the paper ballots are the vote of record in a recount. Apparently Diebold is getting nervous—they just hired a former DNC chair to lobby Democrats to allow unverifiable paperless systems. Hmm...

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_2958901

 

[champ2823]

How does a county in Ohio with 600 residents record 6,000 votes for Bush? Greg Palast has a great BBC documentary on this on his website along with the 2000 election and the documents showing the felonies list of innocent people...mostly African Americans who were turned away at the polls. I was in the minority on this one...Right leaning and believe there was fraud,

 

[The Smoking Man]

How does a county in Ohio with 600 residents record 6,000 votes for Bush? Greg Palast has a great BBC documentary on this on his website along with the 2000 election and the documents showing the felonies list of innocent people...mostly African Americans who were turned away at the polls. I was in the minority on this one...Right leaning and believe there was fraud,

An interesting Op-Ed piece at the NY-Times. (Sorry, I know that it is about the 2000 election .. but it is an interesting observation)

 

[russ_watters]

More than half of all states now require Voter-Verified Paper Ballot (VVPB) for touch-screen machines so that voters can verify their vote is recorded correctly, and the paper ballots are the vote of record in a recount. Apparently Diebold is getting nervous—they just hired a former DNC chair to lobby Democrats to allow unverifiable paperless systems. Hmm...

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_2958901

Diebold made a classic business error: they assumed that since their product was the best on the market, it would sell. But if that were the case, we'd all be using Beta vcr's.

 

[Skyhunter]

More than half of all states now require Voter-Verified Paper Ballot (VVPB) for touch-screen machines so that voters can verify their vote is recorded correctly, and the paper ballots are the vote of record in a recount. Apparently Diebold is getting nervous—they just hired a former DNC chair to lobby Democrats to allow unverifiable paperless systems. Hmm...

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_2958901

Another example of why I still refer to them all as Republicrats. They all belong to the lobbyists that pay to elect them, not political parties.

What do you think of the idea that we make lobbying and political donations a crime?

How about compelling our representatives to come home when not in session and hold town hall meeting where they can meet with their constituents and hear their concerns?

Maybe they should have a forum for discussion like this one where their constituents can voice their opinions and signal to their congressperson how they expect them to vote on issues

Or does this sound too much like democracy?

 

[champ2823]

An interesting Op-Ed piece at the NY-Times. (Sorry, I know that it is about the 2000 election .. but it is an interesting observation)

Nice piece and thanks for the read

I saw this piece on the election and thought it was pretty informative and possessed some suspicious scenarios. Also, it has an interview with Howard Dean before the election on it. It could have been Dean, Cheney or whoever for that matter as the interview was about how the Diebold system could easily be manipulated not because of the company's software, but because it uses Windows. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htm

Published on Saturday, November 6, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
by Thom Hartmann

When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.

"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.

And some believe evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004.

The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling.


Also See:

Florida Secretary of State Presidential Results by County 11/02/2004 (.pdf)
Florida Secretary of State County Registration by Party 2/9/2004 (.pdf)



While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely matched the Kerry/Bush vote, in Florida's counties using results from optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking – the results seem to contain substantial anomalies.

In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.

In Dixie County, with 9,676 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.

The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.

Yet in the touch-screen counties, where investigators may have been more vigorously looking for such anomalies, high percentages of registered Democrats generally equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry. (I had earlier reported that county size was a variable – this turns out not to be the case. Just the use of touch-screens versus optical scanners.)

More visual analysis of the results can be seen at http://us together.org/election04/FloridaDataStats.htm, and www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm . Note the trend line – the only variable that determines a swing toward Bush was the use of optical scan machines.

One possible explanation for this is the "Dixiecrat" theory, that in Florida white voters (particularly the rural ones) have been registered as Democrats for years, but voting Republican since Reagan. Looking at the 2000 statistics, also available on Dopp's site, there are similar anomalies, although the trends are not as strong as in 2004. But some suggest the 2000 election may have been questionable in Florida, too.

One of the people involved in Dopp's analysis noted that it may be possible to determine the validity of the "rural Democrat" theory by comparing Florida's white rural counties to those of Pennsylvania, another swing state but one that went for Kerry, as the exit polls there predicted. Interestingly, the Pennsylvania analysis, available at http://ustogether.org/election04/PA_vote_patt.htm, doesn't show the same kind of swings as does Florida, lending credence to the possibility of problems in Florida.

Even more significantly, Dopp had first run the analysis while filtering out smaller (rural) counties, and still found that the only variable that accounted for a swing toward Republican voting was the use of optical-scan machines, whereas counties with touch-screen machines generally didn't swing - regardless of size.

Others offer similar insights, based on other data. A professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, noted that in Florida the vote to raise the minimum wage was approved by 72%, although Kerry got 48%. "The correlation between voting for the minimum wage increase and voting for Kerry isn't likely to be perfect," he noted, "but one would normally expect that the gap - of 1.5 million votes - to be far smaller than it was."

While all of this may or may not be evidence of vote tampering, it again brings the nation back to the question of why several states using electronic voting machines or scanners programmed by private, for-profit corporations and often connected to modems produced votes inconsistent with exit poll numbers.

Those exit poll results have been a problem for reporters ever since Election Day.

Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news stoically," noted the AP report.

But then the computers reported something different. In several pivotal states.

Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were rigged.

Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the first Clinton campaign who became a Republican consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an article for The Hill, the publication read by every political junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of brilliant points.

"Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote. "They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state."

He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points."

Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the various states the election was called for Bush.

How could this happen?

On the CNBC TV show "Topic A With Tina Brown," several months ago, Howard Dean had filled in for Tina Brown as guest host. His guest was Bev Harris, the Seattle grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from her living room. Bev pointed out that regardless of how votes were tabulated (other than hand counts, only done in odd places like small towns in Vermont), the real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners that read punch cards, or the machines that simply record a touch of the screen, in all cases the final tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine.

That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC.

"In a voting system," Harris explained to Dean on national television, "you have all the different voting machines at all the different polling places, sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a thousand polling places in a single county. All those machines feed into the one machine so it can add up all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it be more convenient to do it to each of the 4000 machines, or just come in here and deal with all of them at once?"

Dean nodded in rhetorical agreement, and Harris continued. "What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer."

"So," Dean said, "anybody who can hack into a PC can hack into a central tabulator?"

Harris nodded affirmation, and pointed out how Diebold uses a program called GEMS, which fills the screen of the PC and effectively turns it into the central tabulator system. "This is the official program that the County Supervisor sees," she said, pointing to a PC that was sitting between them loaded with Diebold's software.

Bev then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the results of a test election. They went to the screen titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the various precincts," and then saw that in this faux election Howard Dean had 1000 votes, Lex Luthor had 500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning.

"Of course, you can't tamper with this software," Harris noted. Diebold wrote a pretty good program.

But, it's running on a Windows PC.

So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS software, go back to the normal Windows PC desktop, click on the "My Computer" icon, choose "Local Disk C:," open the folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder "LocalDB" which, Harris noted, "stands for local database, that's where they keep the votes." Harris then had Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled "Central Tabulator Votes," which caused the PC to open the vote count in a database program like Excel.

In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes and Lex Luthor had gotten 400.

"Let's just flip those," Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. "And," she added magnanimously, "let's give 100 votes to Tiger."

They closed the database, went back into the official GEMS software "the legitimate way, you're the county supervisor and you're checking on the progress of your election."

As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation, Harris said, "And you can see now that Howard Dean has only 500 votes, Lex Luthor has 900, and Tiger Woods has 100." Dean, the winner, was now the loser.

Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, "We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds."

On live national television. (You can see the clip on www.votergate.tv.) And they had left no tracks whatsoever, Harris said, noting that it would be nearly impossible for the election software – or a County election official - to know that the vote database had been altered.

Which brings us back to Morris and those pesky exit polls that had Karen Hughes telling George W. Bush that he'd lost the election in a landslide.

Morris's conspiracy theory is that the exit polls "were sabotage" to cause people in the western states to not bother voting for Bush, since the networks would call the election based on the exit polls for Kerry. But the networks didn't do that, and had never intended to.

According to congressional candidate Fisher, it makes far more sense that the exit polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs - and that the vote itself was hacked.

And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff Fisher thinks this hit him and pretty much every other Democratic candidate for national office in the most-hacked swing states.

So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come close to this story was Keith Olbermann on his show Friday night, November 5th, when he noted that it was curious that all the voting machine irregularities so far uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the Washington Post and other media are now going through single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how the exit polls had failed.

But I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play."

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. www.thomhartmann[/URL] .com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," and "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy."

###

 

[pattylou]

When I wrote this thread weeks ago, my interest was in the level of trust that the US electorate has in the voting system. I had searched for public polls with no luck - I even emailed Pew and they gave me a few links but none asked specifically about the level of trust that people have in the system.

I came across a new article today, and it references a (presumably recent) CBS/NYTimes poll.

According to a CBS/New York Times poll, only 35 percent of people surveyed had “a lot” of confidence that their votes would be properly counted.

http://www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=3674

(I was unable to find the actual poll.)

This is consistent with the poll here, which, although though every poll has flaws in it's writing/repsonse/etc, indicates that indeed confidence in our election system is only enjoyed by well under 50% of the population.

This seems very important to me. It has little to do with whether the right person has won any particular election, but it has a tremendous amount to do with our perception of how fairly the very basis of this democracy is run.

If less than half the iraqi's thought their vote last weekend was run fairly, I'd sit up and start asking questions. How about you?

 

[russ_watters]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/31/opinion/polls/main652496.shtml" is the poll, pattylou. Two questions:

...confidence in our election system is only enjoyed by well under 50% of the population.

...35 percent of people surveyed had “a lot” of confidence that their votes would be properly counted.[emphasis added]

1. Do you consider the dropping of the words "a lot", when you paraphrased the article, significant?
Your paraphrase implies a binary condition, and you should know from experience that poll answers with qualifiers in them are never binary.

2. Do you think it is more important that people be confident that their votes would count or that their votes actually count? See, we've discussed that before - probably in this thread - I've asked that question before (that lead to polls about people being afraid to fly because they are irrational, remember?) and I'm not sure I got a clear answer from you. The bottom line (two, actually) is that people are afraid of things they shouldn't be and it is a fact that more votes were counted in this election than last election.

People can be afraid if they want. I think it is more important that the votes actually count.

 

[Art]

more votes were counted in this election than last election.
.....
People can be afraid if they want. I think it is more important that the votes actually count.

The problem is some votes appear to be getting counted too often or in the wrong column. Following Bush's first election victory where there were thousands of probable democrat voters disenfranchised, it seems a new approach was adopted in the last election of simply falsifying the results. Perhaps the neo-conservative election slogan should be 'Vote early - Vote often' or 'Neo-con votes are so good they count them twice.'
Given the information supplied in the above posts on discrepancies between exit polls and declared results only the most politically blinded, naive observers could claim to have confidence in the way the votes were tallied particularly in Florida.

 

[Informal Logic]

Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were rigged.

That slays me, though that figures.

 

[pattylou]

I believe this deserves a new thread, as it is breaking news. I'll put it here anyway.

BREAKING : Due to contractual non-performance and security design issues, Leon County (Florida) supervisor of elections Ion Sancho told Black Box Voting that he will never again use Diebold in an election. He has requested funds to replace the Diebold system from the county. He will issue a formal announcement to this effect shortly. This comes on the heels of the resignation of Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell, and the announcement that a stockholder's class action suit has been filed against Diebold by Scott & Scott.

Black Box Voting: http://www.blackboxvoting.org Leon County Election Supervisor Ion Sancho:
http://www.leonfl.org/elect/MeetTheSupervisor.htm

Finnish security expert Harri Hursti proved that Diebold lied to Secretaries of State across the nation when Diebold claimed votes could not be changed on the memory card.

A test election was run in Leon County Tusday Dec. 13 with a total of eight ballots - six ballots voted "no" on a ballot question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert Thompson and by Harri Hursti voted "yes" indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked.

At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A "zero report" was run indicating zero votes on the memory card.
In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and minus votes.

The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied "ender card"
was run through as is normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting machine.

Correct results should have been:

Yes:2
No:6

However, just as Hursti had planned, the results tape read:

Yes:7
No:1 [/color]

The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine into the GEMS central tabulator.
The central tabulator is the "mother ship" that pulls in all votes from voting machines. The results in the central tabulator read:

Yes:7
No:1

This exploit, accomplished without being given any password and with the same level of access given thousands of poll workers across the USA, showed that the votes themselves were changed in a one-step process. This hack would not be detected in any normal canvassing procedure, and it required only a single a credit-card sized memory card.

On Oct. 17, 2005 Diebold Elections Systems Research and Development chief Pat Green specifically told the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) board of elections that votes cannot be changed using only a memory card.
Video of Pat Green, Cuyahoga County

According to Public Records responses obtained by Black Box Voting in response to our requests shows that Diebold promulgated this misrepresentation to as many as 800 state and local elections officials.

In other news, a stockholder suit was filed today against Diebold by the law offices of Scott and Scott:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-13-2005/0004233556&EDATE=


Diebold CEO resigns: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=175001748

 

[Amp1]

By Russ

...No manual form of balloting even has the potential for zero error in the casting and counting of ballots.

That is your opinion Russ, not a fact, the fact is there is the potential for zero error in manual balloting. The post above shows what the potential can be in a papertrail-less unmonitored E-ballot system made by cronies.

 

[pattylou]

A mainstream media report on this issue:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/13410061.htm

Edit: And the Associated Press is picking up the story.

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/13413981.htm

 

[pattylou]

California is considering certifying some new Diebold machines (this is old news.) Because of last week's hack in Leon County FL, California is requesting that Diebold provide the code that is on the memory cards, in order to certify these machines for the state.

It turns out that the code on the cards violates Federal Election Commission restrictions. Read about the sticky wicket that Diebold is currently in:

Permission to reprint granted, with link to: http://www.blackboxvoting.org

BREAKING Dec. 20, 2005: California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson has laid a subtle and elegant trap. Today, California threw Diebold Election Systems pending certification into a tailspin, using Machiavellian logic designed to cast doubt on the federal testing lab process, the upcoming HAVA deadline and Diebold voting systems simultaneously (while standing neatly aside to watch the house of cards collapse).

This move follows on the heels of a devastating hack demonstration by Harri Hursti sponsored by Black Box Voting, which took place in Leon County, Florida on Dec. 13.
This hack manipulated memory cards by exploiting design defects and Diebolds customized AccuBasic program code.

Here's how the California trap works: In a terse letter to Diebold, State elections chief Caren Daniels-Meade writes, "Unresolved significant security concerns exist with respect to the memory card used to program and configure the AccuVote-OS [optical scan] and the AccuVote-TSX [touch-screen] components of this system because this component was not subjected to federal source code review and evaluation by the Independent Testing Authorities (ITA) who examined your system for federal qualification. It is the Secretary of State's position that the source code for the AccuBasic code on these cards, as well as for the AccuBasic interpreter that interprets this code, should have been federally reviewed.

"we are requesting that you submit the source code relating to the AccuBasic code on the memory cards and the AccuBasic interpreter to the ITA for immediate evaluation. We require this additional review before proceeding with further consideration of your application for certification in California."

And herein lies the trap. Federal testing authorities are supposed to rely on standards set by the Federal Election Commission. The FEC standards prohibit Interpreted code thus, the AccuBasic interpreter is illegal. [/b](The entire AccuBasic source code tree is written in a home-brewed language that Diebold programmers made up themselves, making it more difficult for certifiers to examine.)

The Hursti memory card attack demonstrated in Leon County Florida manipulated the voting system by passing code through -- drum roll please -- the Diebold interpreter, using a set of programs called AccuBasic which was written in a concocted computer language and (now it is revealed) was never examined at all by federal testing labs.

The ITA dilemma: ITAs have the choice of either recommending code that explicitly violates FEC standards (placing an unsupportable liability burden on them) or admitting that the original certification was defective. If the ITAs retract their recommendation, it will effectively strip Diebold of its federal certification, and may also affect its older products.

The Diebold dilemma: Diebold can refuse to submit its code to the ITAs, but that will lose the state of California, continuing a pattern initiated last week when two Florida counties dumped their Diebold machines. Alternatively, Diebold can submit its code and watch as the federal authorities sever their product line from the U.S. market.

The position is made more unstable because Diebold is now fending off stockholder suits by an armload of attorneys piling on to solicit clients for a voting machine-related securities fraud lawsuit.

California Secretary of State letters to Diebold Election Systems:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/legal/Dumpty1.pdf
http://www.bbvdocs.org/legal/Dumpty2.pdf

Something terribly wrong has happened here.

American citizens have been commenting on the unacceptable performance of the ITAs since before Black Box Voting was incorporated in 2004.

In November 2002, Dan Spillane (a former senior test engineer for VoteHere) met with Black Box Voting founder Bev Harris.

"It's a house of cards," he said, showing her stacks of bogus ITA reports.
"The bottom card is the certification process." Spillane says he flagged more than 250 system integrity errors in the touch-screen system he evaluated, yet the system passed every level of certification. He was terminated by VoteHere, he sued, and the case was settled by VoteHere with details kept confidential.

Here are writings by computer programmer Jim March on this subject: "The Federal testing process was subverted multiple times by Diebold staff we're going to need to study the Federal certification process, in public." http://www.equalccw.com/lewisdeconstructed.pdf (Date 9/23/2003; Jim March)

Bev Harris's book, Black Box Voting, took the ITAs, NASED and the state examiners to task: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-6.pdf (Date 10/10/2003; Bev Harris). Harris published interviews with state voting machine examiners exposing slipshod state certification that relies on the flawed premise of strong federal certification: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-9.pdf
(Date 10/15/2003)

A Riverside (Calif.) computer programmer Jeremiah Akin writes of ITA failure during testing of Sequoia voting software: "Failure of certification process to catch major security flaws in software:"Riverside has run elections on software that was later found to contain major security vulnerabilities that were not spotted in the certification process."
http://www.exit.com/RiversideVoteTest/letters/response_to_mudslinging.pdf
(Date 2/29/2004; Jeremiah Akin)

Black Box Voting published ITA reports from Ciber Labs for Diebold showing that "penetration tests" (security evaluations) were marked "not applicable" and "not tested." http://www.bbvdocs.org/general/ciber-reports.zip
(Date: Oct. 17, 2004; Black Box Voting, Inc.)

Susan Pynchon, an ordinary citizen who now runs the Florida Fair Elections Coalition, wrote this analysis demonstrating a breakdown in Florida's state certification process:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/general/FFECreport.pdf (Date July 11, 2005; Susan Pynchon)

Ordinary citizens led this investigation, gathering momentum and evidence nationwide, resulting in the Thompson and Hursti security tests in Florida, culminating in the California Secretary of State ordering Diebold and federal testing labs to go clean up their room (while neatly diverting attention from state-level certification failures).

And now, a word from one of our forefathers:

"There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves.
They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government."
-- Thomas Jefferson - END

 

[russ_watters]

Missed this before:

That is your opinion Russ, not a fact, the fact is there is the potential for zero error in manual balloting.

That's not an opinion, Amp1, it's a matter of math. You may not be understanding what I'm talking about when I say that, so let me explain:

Computers do not make mistakes. If something goes wrong with a computer, that means it has either been programmed wrong, tampered with, or is physically broken. Have you ever typed 1+1 into a calculator and gotten 3? Of course not - such errors are simply not possible. A computer is just more complicated, but the same principle applies. That means, if correctly programmed, a computer will always give perfect answers. Always.

People, on the other hand, are inherrently flawed. Any counting system that relies on judgement calls by people will always contain mistakes (caveat: you were not clear about what you meant by "manual balloting" - there are may types with various degrees of error). The Florida "chads" issue shows that quite clearly: depending on which counting criteria you use, the counts change - and the people doing the counting disagree on what the correct answer is.

edit: Obviously there is one source of error that computers can't eliminate: votor error. If a person pushes the wrong button, and then ignores the "are you sure?" verification, there is nothing that can be done. But the vote is (can be) still recorded and counted correctly (ie, it records and counts what was actually entered).

 

[edward]

California is considering certifying some new Diebold machines (this is old news.) Because of last week's hack in Leon County FL, California is requesting that Diebold provide the code that is on the memory cards, in order to certify these machines for the state.
It turns out that the code on the cards violates Federal Election Commission restrictions. Read about the sticky wicket that Diebold is currently in:

Great posts Patty Lou. This may be the smoking gun that many of us knew was there all along.

 

[pattylou]

I feel like I'm watching a train wreck in slow motion. I don't know if things are really as dire as they sound for Diebnold, but they are certainly not having an easy time at the moment.

Diebold Withdraws As N.C. Voting Equipment Vendor

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The effort to upgrade voting equipment in North Carolina by next spring took a hit when an approved vendor pulled out of the running.

Diebold Election Systems said it can't follow a new law that required it to share its software coding with the state.

The company told the State Board of Elections it would be impossible to meet a deadline to account for all software used by the company for machines certified to be sold in all 100 counties.

The decision means that only one vendor currently is cleared to sell equipment, raising more questions about whether counties will have enough time to buy machines that meet the state's technical and security standards.

Another firm that was certified, Sequoia Voting Systems, withdraw earlier this month.

See also: http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051223/NEWSREC0101/512230306/1010/NEWSREC020107

 

[loseyourname]

I doubt things are dire for Diebold. They do plenty other than make voting machines.

 

[russ_watters]

...like making most of the ATM's in the US...

 

[pattylou]

I assumed it was clear that this thread is primarily concerned with elections, but evidently I was wrong. I'm sorry for not being more clear.

Let me restate in clearer terms: I wonder if Diebold will be run out of the voting machine business.

Clearer?

Here's a re-cap of the last ten days:

(1) Florida hack that received international attention and was covered in most major newspapers.

(2) Two counties dumping Diebold completely, in Florida, and Jeb Bush stating that the situation will be reviewed for the entire state.

(3) California requesting (what seems likely to turn out to be illegal) code in order to certify the machines, because of that hack, http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/article_1070767.php/Voting_machine_maker_Diebold_in_trouble

(4) North Carolina dumping Diebold.

This is all in the last ten days.

But if we're talking generalities, you do know (don't you?) that Diebold CEO resigned Dec. 12th amid sagging stocks http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-12-14-diebold-odell_x.htm , there are class action suits being filed against Diebold http://www.timesreporter.com/left.php?ID=48863 , and their stock has been generally down (with a slight upswing following O'Dell's resignation.)

Frankly, I doubt you've been paying any attention to the situation with Diebold at all. Of course, I could be wrong. Regardless, your patronising responses (As opposed to a response that is considered, referenced, or thought-provoking in any meaningful way) are offensive to me. I think it is important to post updates on Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S, because after all - this is your democracy too. Despite the condescending tone of your responses, I remain confident that your vote is important to you. I expect that at some level you are registering that more and more red flags are being raised as to whether Diebold has acted illegally.

From post 192:

Federal testing authorities are supposed to rely on standards set by the Federal Election Commission. The FEC standards prohibit Interpreted code thus, the AccuBasic interpreter is illegal. (The entire AccuBasic source code tree is written in a home-brewed language that Diebold programmers made up themselves, making it more difficult for certifiers to examine.)

Now, I have spent the last twenty minutes on this post. I wanted to get references, and double check my recollection on dates, numbers, etc (They were all correct, except for the stock upswing which I had forgotten about following O'Dell's resignation.) . I didn't spend that amount of time because I wanted to argue with you. I spent that amount of time because this is a damn important issue, and you should be informed. And you should recognize when you are obfuscating the issue. And you shouldn't make throw-away comments as some sort of point-scoring ego trip.

Now you have a choice. You can rattle off some attack at me, or you can take a minute, get out of the damn debate-club mentality that you're seemingly stuck in, and consider whether you care enough about this information to re-weigh how confident you are in the electronic voting process. Not in the potential for electronic voting, but in the process as it stands, based on evidence that is regularly forthcoming.

 

[russ_watters]

Um...you realize loseyourname and I are two different people, right? And I don't see how either of those posts - or the previous one of mine (which wasn't even directed at you) - constitutes any kind of attack.

Quite frankly, the reason I've stopped trying to discuss this issue with you is the over-the-top combative attitude you just displayed.

 

[pattylou]

I have little interest in sugar-coating what has been going on with the election machine vendors, or pretending to be palsy walsy with anyone. I am not combative, I am frank about what is happening under your (collective) nose.

I didn't address the previous post specifically to either you or LYN, because I saw no point in doing so. It is the general condescending tone that is counterproductive. If you care about your democracy, then look into this. If you think there is an issue, call your Secretary of State. Who cares if I'm combative? Get over it. Look at the issue, look at the data, and if you think there is a problem (you may not) then try to take your vote back from the corporations.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Breaking news:

ES&S (another major voting machine vendor) is now under threat of being decertified in California.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Assistant Secretary of State for Elections Bradley J. Clark threatened to start the process of decertifying Election Systems and Software machines for use in California if senior officials didn't address the concerns immediately.

"The California Secretary of State is deeply concerned about problems experienced by counties utilizing ES&S voting equipment and software," Clark wrote in a letter addressed to company president Aldo Tesi nine days after the Nov. 8 (special) election.

Software problems included incorrect counting of turnout figures, a malfunction that prevented voters from verifying that their choices were registered accurately and one machine recording the wrong vote during a test, according to the letter.

<snip>

Clark's letter said that on Nov. 8 a state monitoring team "experienced an alarming error on the iVotronic system in Merced County, where a voter chose one candidate but the vote was recorded for another candidate. This error is documented on videotape and demonstrates that it was not an operator error, but was, rather, an error in the system."

All headlines:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&n...s/california/northern_california/13475849.htm