Author: Luther Weeks

Why We Need Manual Recounts And Audits

They used optical scan! They had the paper! How could the wrong candidate be elected? (See Myth #9 )

Governor’s race decided by margin of 0.2% with highly questionable results. But not recounted or audited. Democratic Underground has the story <read>. Here are the pertinent details:

A close look at the 2002 Alabama Governor’s race suggests that the fraud perpetrated in that election was more obvious than even the 2000 or 2004 U.S. Presidential elections. The final official results were Riley 672,225, Siegelman 669,105 – a difference of 3,120 votes, representing a margin of 0.2% of the total.

The initial vote count for Governor for Baldwin County, reported from the Bay Minette tabulator at 10:45 p.m., was quite surprising to say the least. It reported: Riley (R) 30,142, Siegelman (D) 11,820, and the Libertarian candidate, John Sophocleus, 13,190. Although it was expected that Siegelman would lose Baldwin County, the margin of the loss not believable, as he had lost Baldwin County in the Governor’s race in 1998 by only a little over four thousand votes. Furthermore, the idea of his losing to the Libertarian candidate was not plausible.

Result: Free lodging for the ‘sore loser’, but not in the Governor’s Mansion:

Continue reading “Why We Need Manual Recounts And Audits”

Voting Machines vs. Slots – Which Do We Protect More?

How we actually treat Voting Machines vs. Las Vegas Slot Machines – Does it indicate our priorities and how important we consider Democracy? From the Washington Post <read and compare>

Of course this may or may not apply to Connecticut Slots, but as we covered here, we seem to hold electric meters to a higher standard <read>. Maybe its energy, since we seem to hold energy companies to a high standard, beyond that of voting machine companies <read>.

FEC ‘Toothless,’ ‘Neutered,’ and ‘A Paralyzed Enforcer’

“It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” – Mark Twain

What Me Worry Department <read>.  Truth, not fiction, from Buzzflash, not Mad Magazine.  Nothing of consequence going on this year, right?.

The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and The New York Times have reported or commented on the troubling FEC impasse. In essence, Bush nominated a person whom the Senate Democrats will not accept. (He served temporarily as a recess appointee until January.) In turn, the Senate Republicans refuse to confirm any nominated Democrat. Bush is sitting on his hands now, unwilling to suggest a different Republican nominee.

Nice kettle of fish. And really, why should any of them budge? Continue reading “FEC ‘Toothless,’ ‘Neutered,’ and ‘A Paralyzed Enforcer’”

The Company That Can’t Or Won’t Count

Forbes Magazine, Diebold a Reluctant Takeover Target <read>

I am not encouraged by the prospect of a military contractor taking over our voting machines. On the other hand UTC could certainly provide a higher quality product if they chose to keep and fund the voting machine division.

“The New York Stock Exchange has notified Diebold that it is at risk of delisting due to management’s failure to file timely financial statements,” Geisler said…

Diebold shareholders are somewhat in the dark, and not just by lack of SEC revenue and earnings filings. The company’s annual meeting of shareholders, which usually is held each April at a college campus near its Canton headquarters, has been postponed indefinitely.

Update: Its not just their accountants that can’t count: <read>

A failure in Diebold touch-screen voting systems in Butler County, OH resulted in votes not being included properly in Election Night results, even though the system had reported that all votes were uploaded and recorded correctly. Once the error was discovered, a subsequent upload of all of the county’s 1599 touch-screen memory cards to the Diebold central election tabulator after the election, also resulted in the failure to record the results of one of the memory cards, despite the system having reported that all results were “uploaded properly.”

Cost Of Touch Screens (Up To 8x The Cost of Op Scan)

Kim Zetter covers the costs of touch screens in Maryland in the Wired article, The Cost of E-Voting, <read>

We are proud of our support of optical scan for Connecticut. In addition to being safer and more auditable, they cost Connecticut about 1/2 as much to purchase and are even more economical to maintain and audit. In the recent statewide hearings we heard complaints from registrars of the costs of optical scan, which are much less than we would have hand with touch screens.

Also note that it is Representative Steny Hoyer (D-MD) who is responsible for delaying the Holt Emergency bill H.R. 5036 and insisting it pay for adding paper trials to touch screens. (Although we strongly support H.R 5036, we would much prefer it pay only for optical scan equipment). Note also that MD will be converting to optical scan machines in 2010 and paying again.

Now for what we are missing: Continue reading “Cost Of Touch Screens (Up To 8x The Cost of Op Scan)”

Internet Voting is Too Risky for Public Elections

We have criticized the DNC for accepting and promoting Internet voting for expat delegates to the convention. This set a completely wrong precedent. It does not take much to imagine the intimidation possible with an internet voting machine set up in a military base, union hall, nursing home, or church.

By Verified Voting Foundation
April 03, 2008

The Verified Voting Foundation issued a warning today that the Internet is not safe for casting ballots in important public elections. Many computer scientists and others are concerned because Internet voting was used in the Democratic Party’s Presidential primary for overseas voters in February, and because several state and national legislators recently have expressed an interest in Internet voting as an option for military service personnel overseas.

“Internet voting is vulnerable to all the risks of paperless computerized voting machines; it allows no meaningful recounts or audits,” said Barbara Simons, a computer scientist and expert on Internet voting. “If ballots are cast on the Internet, attacks on the election can be made by anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world, including individual hackers, political parties, international criminal organizations, hostile foreign governments, or even terrorists.”

“The Internet could be used to make voting easier, by, for example, allowing military and overseas voters a convenient way to obtain an absentee ballot, but votes delivered over the Internet cannot be trusted,” said David Dill, professor of computer science at Stanford University and founder of the Verified Voting Foundation. “Multiple studies by computer scientists have shown that making Internet voting safe is an incredibly hard problem, not solved yet, and possibly unsolvable. At this point, any claims of ‘secure Internet voting’ should be regarded with extreme skepticism.”

Quality and Voting Machines

Imagine the discipline of Quality applied to voting machines. Business Wire story, ASQ Quality Report Offers Solutions to Error-Proof Voting Machines <read> .  Basic modern engineering but we are not applying Quality techniques to voting.

Perhaps much more is needed than outlined in this article to produce a voting system with integrity, confidence, and efficiency. However, using standard quality techniques could go a long way to protect our votes. Consider the level of testing of medical equipment and medical staff. Compare that to voting system equipment and election official training. Simpler, more foolproof equipment and procedures are even more important when the people using the equipment don’t run elections or vote every day.

“It’s very important for citizens to have as much trust in their voting systems as they have in their medical care systems or air travel,” says ASQ quality expert Liz Keim, a past president of ASQ. “So why not leverage some of the same basic tools that bring reliability to critical functions like medical care and air transport to solve quality problems that continue to plague our elections?” she asks.

Continue reading “Quality and Voting Machines”

Voters Registering Like Their Life, Liberty, and Persuit of Happiness Depends On It

AP Story, Official predicts Conn. voter registration could reach 2 million

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz says nearly 20,000 people have registered to vote since Connecticut’s presidential primary last month.

She says there’s lots of enthusiasm and interest in the political process this year. Nearly a quarter of the new registrations since the Feb. 5 primary are people ages 18 to 29. She’s hoping 2 million people will register to vote before the November election.

Currently the state has more than 1.9 million registered voters. Democrats outnumber Republicans, but unaffiliated voters are the biggest group of all.

The newly registered voters since the primary include 9,000 Democrats, 2,600 Republicans and more than 8,000 unaffiliated voters.

We understand more voters have already registered after the Primary than before!!!

Update: Record Journal, Trend Not True in Meriden

Why We Vote: To Keep A Republic

Robert Koehler, Huffington Post, Keep The Republic, <read>

The ground feels a little soft, but we’re going to stand it.

Premise one: Having a fair election — all votes counted, all who are eligible and want to vote allowed to vote — is far, far more important, even in 2008, than who wins.

Premise two: Fair elections are not a given. They never have been, but things are worse now than ever before because of a perfect storm, you might say, of factors that have converged in the new millennium: officialdom’s seduction by unsafe, high-tech voting systems; the seizure of power by a party of ruthless true believers who feel entitled to rule and will do anything to win; a polite, confused opposition party that won’t make a stink about raw injustice; and an arrogantly complacent media embedded in the political and economic status quo.

The result: Benjamin Franklin’s worst nightmare.

“Well, Doctor, what have we got — a Republic or a Monarchy?”

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

“This really is the serious business of our lives,” said Ion Sancho, election supervisor of Leon County, Fla., a fair-elections hero and one of the participants. “My goal is waking people up. My tactic is to put myself in the middle of the road and say” — to anyone who would suppress or interfere with the vote — “hey, you’re going to have to hit me.”

These are just words unless you sign on with your life.