Ohio back in play as the single most corrupt election state
Bookworm on Oct 17 2008 at 9:25 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
The Supreme Court has acted and held that Ohio’s mad Democratic Secretary of State can continue to allow every two bit Mickey Mouse and corpse to show up on election day, at multiple polling places, to ensure an Obama victory in that state.
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Except that, while voter registration fraud is rampant, voter fraud is rare…
“. . . To justify this battery of new voting impediments, Republicans cite an alleged upsurge in voting fraud. Indeed, the U.S.-attorney scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales began when the White House fired federal prosecutors who resisted political pressure to drum up nonexistent cases of voting fraud against Democrats. “They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments that would scare these alleged hordes of illegal voters away,” says David Iglesias, a U.S. attorney for New Mexico who was fired in December 2006. “We took over 100 complaints and investigated for almost two years — but I didn’t find one prosecutable case of voter fraud in the entire state of New Mexico.”. .
There’s a reason Iglesias couldn’t find any evidence of fraud: Individual voters almost never try to cast illegal ballots. The Bush administration’s main point person on “ballot protection” has been Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department attorney who has advised states on how to use HAVA to erect more barriers to voting. Appointed to the Federal Election Commission by Bush, von Spakovsky has suggested that voter rolls may be stuffed with 5 million illegal aliens. In fact, studies have repeatedly shown that voter fraud is extremely rare. According to a recent analysis by Lorraine Minnite, an expert on voting crime at Barnard College, federal courts found only 24 voters guilty of fraud from 2002 to 2005, out of hundreds of millions of votes cast. “The claim of widespread voter fraud,” Minnite says, “is itself a fraud.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23638322/block_the_vote
Humor me Ozzie,
How about we agree that both voter registration fraud and voter fraud are damaging to the democratic process and both should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Unless you think the new democrat slogan should be “Every Illegal Vote Should Count!”
I read a rationale for ACORN’s strategy on the comment section at Hot Air. According to this poll worker in Pennsylvania, the total vote for the democrat candidate can just be overstated. It has nothing to do with illegal votes cast, just overstating the count based on democrat registrations.
In this case, she was saying there aren’t enough poll watchers to prevent this kind of fraud.
The type of ballot system would determine how easy it would be to commit this type of fraud.
Washington State went to mail-in ballots, supposedly for cost savings.
I asked the county auditor how the process works. As ballots are received, each ballot is checked against the voter registration card on file. The ballots are then counted on election day. I asked her if there are party officials there, and she said they could be, but they have never had anyone show up. We’re so trusting in small communities.
But you can see how easy it would be for fraud in this system. In fact, I wouldn’t doubt that ACORN allows some of these ridiculous voter names to be included in their registrations. It would be easy for the county official to start looking for the obviously phoney registrations, while allowing other fraudulent registrations to be unnoticed.
Anger in the country may reach the boiling point.
My Dad did not fight WWII, nor did I serve for 25 years, to see this turned into a Bannana Republic where the side with the most thugs wins elections.
I feel I must follow up on BrianE’s post.
/vent on
I live in Washington State. If the Bay Area is the belly of the statist beast, the Puget Sound area is probably the small intestine. It is widely acknowledged that our gubernatorial race four years ago had some, ahem, irregularities. There were three, count ‘em, three recounts, all but the first requested by the Democrat candidate (the first was triggered by state law). In each recount, ballots were ADDED to the number – ballots that were ‘found’ after the last valid date for receipt of ballots. Most (if not all) were mail-in. Most (if not all) came from King County (primarily the urban Seattle area – our 7th Congressional District – which routinely sends uber-statist Rep. Jim McDermott to the House of Representatives by 80% margins).
After the third recount, the Democrat party finally, um, found enough ballots to give Christine Gregoire the victory. The elections supervisor for King County shamelessly admitted that stacks of blank ballots were unaccounted for prior to the election, and that stacks of purportedly cast ballots were found in unsecured locations (contrary to all established procedures). These ballots were included in the amended totals for the final count. This supervisor resigned to take a position as the deputy county clerk in Los Angeles. Here’s an article from the more ‘progressive’ of Seattle’s major dailies, the Post-Intelligencer talking about this scandal. Good luck, LA County…
This whole debacle occurred before mail-in voting became the standard. The November 2008 general election will be the final election where there will be neighborhood polling places in Washington state. There is no transparency to this process. Our ballots are to be delivered by (federal) Post Office employees to a (state) government warehouse – staffed by (county) employees who’s full-time jobs are dependent on the political machine continuing to operate. Ballot results from (government inspected) machine counts will be tabulated by other county employees feeding at the government trough. No community-based poll workers. No civil ritual of casting a ballot. No walking into the polls with my young children to demonstrate that as citizens we should go out of our way to take a hand in the governance of our country.
It reduces the sovereign franchise to the same level as filling out a shopping list. Except that I trust my grocery store far more than I trust my local government. At least the staff there keeps the store clean.
/vent off
Ozzie,
What are Prof. Minnite’s political affiliations? Is her expertise in criminal law? Does she bring any preconceptions or agendas to the table?
Just asking.
How about we agree that both voter registration fraud and voter fraud are damaging to the democratic process and both should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.- Brian
Voter registration fraud is considered a petty crime, while voter fraud is a serious crime. In the first case, ACORN employees are trying to get paid for not doing their job, while in the latter, the democratic process is at risk.
If Mickey Mouse is registed to vote, that’s voter registration fraud, while If Mickey shows up to vote, that’s voter fraud.
Under Bush, the DOJ actively pushed attorneys to opursie and prosecute cases of voter fraud and when some could not find evidence of fraud, they were fired. If you look at cases where fraud was uncovered, as in Washington, only five people were jailed, with the District Attorney admitting that ACORN was not trying to subvert elections.
“But you can see how easy it would be for fraud in this system” Brian
Ohio 2004 was frought with fraud, Brian, and I posted Christohper Hitchens article which laid out “Ohio’s Odd numbers.” In fact, he said that we cannot trust our elections as long as we use voter machines. Voter fraud doesnt come close to out and out election fraud.
Nobody seems terribly concerned about that, however.
Jon Greenbaum, of the voting rights project has been crttical of Secretary of State Brunner, but hints that the GOP could be up to even more mischief:
“Jon Greenbaum, director of the Voting Rights Project, which has sided both with and against Brunner, said he is leery of GOP motives for getting lists and added that “asking for sweeping changes right before an election is a recipe for mischief.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101600702.html
What are Prof. Minnite’s political affiliations? Is her expertise in criminal law? Does she bring any preconceptions or agendas to the table?
Just asking.- Bob
I dont know.
Here is her testimony before Congress:
It reduces the sovereign franchise to the same level as filling out a shopping list- Bob
We can’t trust our elections, Bob. Plain and simple.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8112825559202389150
Ozzie,
I firmly believe, as you seem to, in citing sources. I also believe in checking the sources, and noting their origins and biases when citing them.
I did a quick Google on Prof. Minnite. She’s a poli-sci professor at Barnard, not a legal expert. She has had past affiliation with Columbia University’s Center for Urban Research and Policy – hardly a politically neutral organization.
It doesn’t matter to me whether she votes Democrat or Republican or Green, but her associations and alliances do bear on the substance of her opinion. Frankly, I think this sort of information is useful in evaluating whenever a person renders an “expert” opinion. This is why Sen. McCain’s artless statements about the “washed-up terrorist” are, despite the clumsy presentation, relevant.
By their allies, ye shall know them.
I have to say that BobK and BrianE are absolutely correct. Comrade Stalin used to say that it does not matter who votes, but it matters who counts the votes. And that might be the ACORN strategy.
Eric.
Bob asked what Lori Minnite’s political affliations are. She is a research fellow at Demos– an advocacy group working for a nationwide policy of vote day registration.
From an article on Salon.com:
But Minnite says that the latest Republican uproar over ACORN is part of “a far broader effort to corrode public confidence in the electoral process.” Minnite is a co-author of the forthcoming book “Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters” and a research fellow at Demos, a public policy think tank based in New York. She predicts that as Nov. 4 approaches, Republican allegations about voter fraud are certain to continue. Minnite spoke with Salon by phone recently from her office in Manhattan.
Do you believe that voter fraud poses a threat to the validity of American elections?
“No. No threat.”
“The statistics bear me out. From 2002 to 2005 only one person was found guilty of registration fraud. Twenty people were found guilty of voting while ineligible and five people were found guilty of voting more than once. That’s 26 criminal voters — voters who vote twice, impersonate other people, vote without being a resident — the voters that Republicans warn about. Meanwhile thousands of people are getting turned away at the polls.”
“Political parties and corrupt election officials, on the other hand, do seem to present a potential problem. We should be a great deal more worried about who has access to the ballots. In terms of illegal aliens voting and people voting twice — the popular images of voter fraud — no I don’t think that there is any risk at all.”
How did you come to this conclusion?
“It is very difficult to find information on voter fraud. I’m quite fluent with political science data sets, but the more I would look, the less I would find. There was simply no information.”
[snip]
“I am struck by the ferocity of the attack on ACORN. I am not privy to the campaign strategy of the Republican Party, but I have to assume that it is the result of a coordinated disinformation campaign aimed not only at undermining ACORN’s work, but also as a part of a far broader effort to corrode public confidence in the electoral process.”
“We see the repetition of wildly exaggerated allegations about ACORN’s “criminality” by people like Michelle Malkin, a right-wing blogger; John Fund, who’s been attacking ACORN for years from his vantage as a Wall Street Journal columnist; and Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative so devoted to Nixonian dirty tricks that he’s tattooed an image of Nixon’s face on his back. His blog, by the way, is sponsored by the same law firm that launched a phony voter fraud attack on ACORN in Florida during the last presidential election.”
Why do you think the incidence of fraud is so low?
“I’ll give two reasons. First of all, what is the motivation for someone to vote twice when we often have a hard time getting people to vote once? There is no rational basis for someone to risk getting arrested for a crime like that”
Three things stand out to me from her interview:
1. ACORN voter registration fraud is really the fault of Republicans.
2. There really is no data to draw a conclusion that voter fraud doesn’t exist.
3. There can’t be voter fraud because there’s no rational reason for someone to commit fraud.
This passes for research nowadays?
Folks have got to get this right. Fraudulent voter registration has nothing to do with fraudulent voting (sarcasm.)
This is how it works: undermine the initial process, which subsequently undermines the downstream process.
Drip, drip, drip. Water is the most powerful solvent known, given time.
“I’m worried about the religious right…” drip, religion is bad.
“Our elections are being stolen…” drip, vote the right way or you are part of the problem.
“Illegal immigrants live here…” drip, make them citizens.
“Afforable housing…” drip, you should help pay someone else’s mortgage.
“Economic justice…” drip, you should work for someone else’s well being.
“Rights…” drip, define what you wish as a right, then castigate those who disagree.
Don’t worry about Mickey Mouse or ACORN stealing the election. According to an investigative report out today in Rolling Stone magazine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, after a year-long investigation, reveal a systematic program of “GOP vote tampering” on a massive scale.
- Republican Secretaries of State of swing-state Colorado have quietly purged one in six names from their voter rolls.
Over several months, the GOP politicos in Colorado stonewalled every attempt by Rolling Stone to get an answer to the massive purge – ten times the average state’s rate of removal.
- While Obama dreams of riding to the White House on a wave of new voters, more then 2.7 million have had their registrations REJECTED under new procedures signed into law by George Bush.
Kennedy, a voting rights lawyer, charges this is a resurgence of ‘Jim Crow’ tactics to wrongly block Black and Hispanic voters.
- A fired US prosecutor levels new charges – accusing leaders of his own party, Republicans, with criminal acts in an attempt to block legal voters as “fraudulent.”
- Digging through government records, the Kennedy-Palast team discovered that, in 2004, a GOP scheme called “caging” ultimately took away the rights of 1.1 million voters. The Rolling Stone duo predict that, this November 4, it will be far worse.
There’s more:
- Since the last presidential race, “States used dubious ‘list management’ rules to scrub at least 10 million voters from their rolls.”
Among those was Paul Maez of Las Vegas, New Mexico – a victim of an unreported but devastating purge of voters in that state that left as many as one in nine Democrats without a vote. For Maez, the state’s purging his registration was particularly shocking – he’s the county elections supervisor.
The investigators level a deadly serious charge: “If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat McCain at the polls – they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering.”
Folks have got to get this right. Fraudulent voter registration has nothing to do with fraudulent voting (sarcasm.)- Allen
It’s a felony to cast a vote under a fictious name. Repeated agggresive attempts to prove fraud have resulted in very few convictions.
But man-oh-man, ACORN register 1.5 million and people automatically assume ALL of them are false? It’s unreal.
Meanwhile, what occured in Ohio in 2004 was a travesty that only Christopher Hitchens and few others seemed to notice.
Since votes are secret, and once someone has voted and dropped the ballot in box you can’t attach it to any particular person, just exactly how do you prove voting fraud?
Ozzie,
As to voter fraud in Ohio, I suggest you read this Salon article.
It’s a quite lengthy article, but well worth it if you’re interested in facts.
From Salon.com:
Was the 2004 election stolen? No.
June 3, 2006 | “After carefully examining the evidence, I’ve become convinced that the president’s party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declares in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. And so, 19 months after the election, let us head once again into this breach.
[snip]
If you do read Kennedy’s article, be prepared to machete your way through numerous errors of interpretation and his deliberate omission of key bits of data. The first salient omission comes in paragraph 5, when Kennedy writes, “In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.” To back up that assertion, Kennedy cites “Democracy at Risk,” the report the Democrats released last June.
[snip]
That report does indeed point out that many people — 26 percent — who first registered in 2004 did not find their names on the voter rolls at polling places. What Kennedy doesn’t say, though, is that the same study found no significant difference in the share of Kerry voters and Bush voters who came to the polls and didn’t find their names listed. The Democrats’ report says that 4.2 percent of Kerry voters were forced to cast a “provisional” ballot and that 4.1 percent of Bush voters were made to do the same — a stat that lowers the heat on Kennedy’s claim of “astounding” partisanship.
[snip]
Kennedy’s headlining claim is that 357,000 voters, “most of them Democratic,” were either prevented from voting or had their votes go uncounted, making Kerry (who lost by 118,000) the likely true winner. Kennedy finds these “missing votes” in the damnedest places. He counts 30,000 voter registrations that were deleted from voter rolls, in keeping with state law, as mostly Kerry voters, though it’s impossible to know if those were even real people. He says that 174,000 mostly Kerry voters didn’t vote because they were put off by long lines. But the source states it was actually 129,543 voters, and that those votes would have split evenly between Kerry and Bush. And that same source — the Democratic Party’s report once again — notes conclusively: “Despite the problems on Election Day, there is no evidence from our survey that John Kerry won the state of Ohio.” But Kennedy doesn’t tell you that.
But to prove Blackwell stole the state for Bush, Kennedy’s got to do more than show instances of Blackwell’s mischief. He’s got to outline where Blackwell’s actions could possibly have added up to enough votes to put the wrong man in office. In that, he fails. In the following pages, I match Kennedy’s claims with the reality of the 2004 election.
Claim: In rural counties in Ohio, more than 150,000 votes meant for Kerry were somehow switched to Bush.
Reality: Kennedy’s pattern sounds intriguing. But as Mark Lindeman, a political scientist at Bard College, pointed out to me, the whole story dissolves when you look at results from previous elections.
Claim: Blackwell engineered a “purge” of 300,000 voters in Ohio’s major cities.
Reality: Scrubbing the voting rolls of people who hadn’t voted in prior elections isn’t an arbitrary move. It’s the law. Here’s the relevant section of the Ohio code, 3503.19, which states that a person who “fails to vote in any election during the period of two federal elections” shall have his registration “canceled.” To be sure, people who intended to vote and weren’t aware of this rule could have been cut from the rolls, and you might say that’s unfair. But that’s an argument for a better election law, and not proof that the purges were part of a Republican election-theft plot.
Much more here:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kennedy/
Ozzie (#13),
Oz, you can come up with counters to every single one of those so-called points, as easily as anyone else here can. I’m not going to waste my time.
In the manner in which you’ve stated them, there’s much room for partisan “shading” and deceit. More is needed than merely the points you listed. One example:
First data point:
– Republican Secretaries of State of swing-state Colorado have quietly purged one in six names from their voter rolls. Over several months, the GOP politicos in Colorado stonewalled every attempt by Rolling Stone to get an answer to the massive purge – ten times the average state’s rate of removal.
Counterpoint:
- For ten straight months, I charge $100 on my credit card, but pay only $50.
- Then, in the eleventh month, I “quietly purged” the amount due by paying $500.
For ten intervals, I did too little. Then I fixed the problem; but fixing the problem required “ten times my average rate of payment”, $500 instead of $50.
As to the “stonewalling”, I’d need details of information requests and precise responses before I could make any judgment of any sort at all.
The rest of the data point counterpoints are left as an exercise for the reader. They’re all just as easy.
From Hot Air,
Brunner wins: Supreme Court reverses Sixth Circuit on “mismatched” voter registration forms
http://tinyurl.com/5sfpjp
Simply put, the Supremes did not rule on the merits of the case, deciding only that the state GOP had no standing to bring the suit.
From postulation, it appears that the Attorney General would be the one to sue.
Book can correct me if I am in error.
Voting fraud _does_ exist…and – what a shock! – seems to be linked to ACORN!!
http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/10/17/more-acorn-fraud/
I’m a bit mystified as to why no one puts their finger on the obvious solution — it would fix almost every case of attempted vote fraud that we know about or suspect…..
Make people come in person to vote, like we used to, and then REQUIRE PICTURE ID AT THE POLLING PLACE.
End of problem.
Ozzie,
newsbusters
http://tinyurl.com/5b7tr6
I would say Minnite has a profound bias.
So, everyone, in terms of practicalities: What can be done by conservatives in Ohio on Election Day to attempt to prevent fraud? What are their options now?
Now that the voter registration forms will be allowed to remain, the risk is that they can be used to cast fraudulent votes. Once these votes are cast, they cannot be recalled.
How might such votes might be cast? The highest risk is in urban communities, where the vast majority of fraudulent registration forms were turned in. Is the risk isolated to electronic voting machines? Is the risk that provisional or absentee ballots can be added by dishonest poll workers? Such provisional or absentee ballots might be filled out prior to election day and surreptitiously added in; or they might be created during election day, or after the polls close.
What are options and tactics for preventing fraud? I hope conservatives across Ohio are figuring this out, planning for the prevention of fraud. Because of the actions of the Democrat in charge of voting, this has all become necessary.
For information on how to prevent voter fraud go to http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
Helen,
The four-minute video at the site you provided reveals to me just how chaotic our system is. What I see is chaos, dependent on good intentions, entirely open to potential fraud. How depressing. If a sophisticated – and determined – fraud effort attacked our “system”, deliberately determined to exploit its vulnerabilities, I shudder to consider the results.
The video I cite from Helen’s link (which focuses on ballot tabulation and reporting/gathering “procedures”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3_xFb1sWKU
I feel as though I’ve stepped into the twilight zone. I’m in a store, sending my purchases through the self-checkout scanner, when it goes on the fritz. I have four more items to scan. An employee walks up and shakes her head in dismay, saying, “Oh, darn, just a second, I can fix this.” She pulls a key out of her smock and inserts into an unobtrusive slot, then she pulls the whole scanning machinery up and out of the way. Beneath it is a small comfortable square room, about 12” x 12”, with four two-inch high sprites sprawled on couches, guzzling vodka, watching a small HD-TV. “Guys!” my smocked helper admonishes. “Oh, hi, Sarah!” the four sprites yell. “You’re in the middle of a transaction!” she admonishes. “Ooops, sorry!” they state in unison, chagrined. They turn off the TV and head back to four small benches that each have one comfortable chair. And one abacus.
Our belief in voting integrity is living on borrowed time, I think. Tick, tick, tick, tick…
would say Minnite has a profound bias.- rock
Ignore her, then, and pay attention to the countless others adressing this problem.
Did you listen to Clinti Curtis’ testimony?
Christopher Hitchens was a Bush supporter, yet wrote about what occured in Ohio in 2004. (In case you missed it http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2005/03/hitchens200503)
During a book signing this summer, he was asked if he thought we could trust our elections, and he said not as long as we use voting machines. He called the use of machines a “racket and a fraud” and said it ‘should never have been allowed to happen.”
Ohio is being fought over in advance, which could become a post-election blessing. Colorado, on the other hand, looks like a disaster in the making.
As to voter fraud in Ohio, I suggest you read this Salon article- Brian
I saw it when it came out, Brian. And then I read articles debunking that debunking.
This is what Hitchens concluded:
“The Federal Election Commission, which has been a risible body for far too long, ought to make Ohio its business. The Diebold company, which also manufactures A.T.M.s, should not receive another dime until it can produce a voting system that is similarly reliable. And Americans should cease to be treated like serfs or extras when they present themselves to exercise their franchise.”
Our belief in voting integrity is living on borrowed time, I think. Tick, tick, tick, tick…- Mike
Borrowed time? After paying attention to Florida in 2000, Georgia in 2002 and Ohio in 2004, I’ve already lost faith.
Also for your consideration:
“An election whistleblower who is a Republican, a nationally known data security and computer architecture expert, and an Ohio resident has filed a sworn affidavit in federal court that describes how Republican Party consultants in 2004 built an electronic vote counting network in Ohio that could have stolen votes to re-elect the president.
The whistleblower, Stephen Spoonamore, who has run or held senior technology positions in six technology companies, and whose clients have included MasterCard, American Express, NBC-GE, and federal agencies including the State Department and the Navy, said Mike Connell, a longtime Republican Party computer networking contractor, “agrees that the electronic voting systems in the US are not secure” and told Spoonamore in 2007 “that he (Connell) is afraid some of the more ruthless partisans of the GOP may have exploited systems he in part worked on for this purpose.”
“Mr. Connell builds front end applications, user interfaces and web sites,” Spoonamore said in his September 17, 2008 affidavit. “Knowing his team and their skills I find it unlikely they would be the vote thieves directly. I believe however he knows who is doing that work, and has likely turned a blind eye to this activity. . .
“I have followed with interest the security issues involved with electronic voting in United States,” Spoonamore’s affidavit said. “My understanding of the vulnerabilities of American elections to fraudulent manipulation is based upon conversations with professionals in election administration working within state governmental structures as well as information technology specialists working in private industry a contract basis for state governments.”. .
This centralized collection of all incoming statewide tabulations would make it extremely easy for a single operator, or a preprogrammed single ‘force balancing computer’ to change the results in any way desired by the team controlling Computer C — in this case GOP partisan operatives,” Spoonamore said. “Again, if this out of state system had ANY digital access to the Secretary of States system it would be cause for immediate investigation by any of my banking clients.”
Spoonamore’s declaration discusses how it is common in detecting electronic banking fraud to find the insertion of “man in the middle” attacks, where criminals insert a computer between a network’s data transmission points. He further describes “force balancing,” which he said is a feature of banking industry computers, such as ATMs, which balance sums in user’s accounts after deposits and withdrawals. Spoonamore said Ohio’s 2004 electronic voting tabulators, made by Diebold (now Premier Election Solutions), which also makes bank ATMs, contain software that add and subtract votes. He said the subtraction feature could only be used to delete votes.
“The Diebold system is riddled with exploitable errors,” he said, citing a report on the Diebold’s vote counting computers commissioned by former Maryland Gov. Robert Erlich, a Republican. “Many of these concerns are almost comical from the perspective of a computer architect. One example of this: The existence of negative fields being possible in some number fields. Voting machines as custom built computers which should be designed to begin at the number Zero, no votes, and advance only in increments of 1, one vote, until they max out at the most possible votes cast in one day … There is no possible legitimate reason that NEGATIVE votes should ever be entered. And yet these machines are capable of having negative numbers programmed in, injected, or preloaded.”. .
Apart from discussing the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, Spoonamore’s affidavit also said that there is “no possible way” to make paperless electronic voting secure
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_28279.shtml
Hot Air links to a blog from a collegiate reporter in Ohio, on the trail of an 0bama campaign worker apparently voting from a temporary address. http://www.palestra.net/blogs/read/17321
“Reynolds said “Well he got here before October 4 right? So he will be here 30 days right? And he registered before Oct 6 right? So he has complied with the law. There is no story.”
I told him it appeared as if Smith had NOT complied with the law because he was most likely a temporary resident of Ohio. We have spoken to multiple attorneys and that the law actually states that a temporary presence in Ohio does NOT make one eligible to register and vote in the state. (Ohio Revised Code 3503.02 Residence Determination Rules). This information can be found online, and it was also given to us by the Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney Ron O’Brien just 2 days ago.
Reynolds laughed and said he was “well versed”… that I didn’t need to refer him to the law. He repeatedly told me that he didn’t see any story here.”
And then there’s this:
6 Ala. counties’ voter rolls exceed population
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-10-17-ala-voters_N.htm?csp=34
And then there’s this:
6 Ala. counties’ voter rolls exceed population- Quisp
In four years of prosecuting voter fraud cases, there were only 82 convictions. Not one of them involved any Mickey Mouse, or fake Tony Romo showing up to vote.
But it’s good to see people fnally waking up to funny business.
From the Washington Post, Nov. 2000
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday , November 12, 2000 ; Page A22
“Smething very strange happened on election night to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official in Volusia County. At 10 p.m., she called the county elections department and learned that Al Gore was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000.
But when she checked the county’s Web site for an update half an hour later, she found a startling development: Gore’s count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000–all because of a single precinct with only 600 voters.”
Ozzie,
Hitchens is a British subject and thus who he supports as president has no bearing on this topic.
In reading through the SAIC report, I find it dated 2003. Is it your position that no changes have been made since then?
I also find that Spoonamore is the only source connected to the report.
I am unable to find a single NYT story or Washington Post story on this “crisis”.
I find that extremely odd.
It may just be the search engine I used.
Hitchens is a British subject and thus who he supports as president has no bearing on this topic – Rock
Christopher Hitchens became a U.S citizen.
” Iam unable to find a single NYT story or Washington Post story on this “crisis”.- Rock
I could probably find some for you, Rock. But Bill Moyers discussed it just last night on PBS:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10172008/profile.html
I am unable to find a single NYT story or Washington Post story on this “crisis”. -rock
While wikipedia itself is suspect, if you scroll down to the bottom of this entry, you’ll see a host of articles from a variety of cources, including the Washington Post and New York Times, regarding the 2004 election
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_voting_controversies
Ozzie –
Once again, you are very selective about the quotes and articles you choose to use.
In comment #30, you say that there is “funny business going on.”
You keep telling us how horrible partisanship is but in comment 13, you tell us not to worry about ACORN (which is a Democratic operative) and then you list a litany of alleged GOP “crimes.”
I looked up that Dana Milbank article that you quote in your comment (#30) and noticed that he very clearly says the following:
” . . . the problems in counting votes here are systemic. The underlying causes are NOT FRAUD OR CORRUPTION, but lax state oversight, inadequate funding, out-of-date technology, poor training – and general ineptitude.” (Emphasis mine.)
You, of course, do not use that quote nor do you ever mention anything about that in your comments.
Ozzie – you give no one reason to believe your claims because your arguments are simply dishonest.
Deana
Ozzie
Hitchens Wiki page states that he is a British subject.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens
It may be that the page has not been updated.
Hitchens is also an Obama supporter.
Switching support: Hitch on Fox on why he’s endorsing Obama
http://christopherhitchenswatch.blogspot.com/
This states: The British ex-pat became a U.S. citizen in April of last year, on his 58th birthday.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/talk/2008/08/this_hitchens_moment.html
I would dare to say that the Wiki page needs updating. Thats what I get for using Wiki to begin with.
” . . . the problems in counting votes here are systemic. The underlying causes are NOT FRAUD OR CORRUPTION, but lax state oversight, inadequate funding, out-of-date technology, poor training – and general ineptitude.” (Emphasis mine.)- Deanna
In 2000, there was no evidence of corruption, Deanna. It was considered an oddity. Since then, whistleblowers have testified, in various courts of law, saying that YES, election fraud did occur and will continue to occur unless we return to paper ballots, without optical scanners..
“You keep telling us how horrible partisanship is but in comment 13, you tell us not to worry about ACORN (which is a Democratic operative) and then you list a litany of alleged GOP “crimes. ” – Deanna
Because, in this case, according to sworn testimony and affadavits, the GOP has been behind massive election fraud.
In four years of LOOKING for voter fraud, there have only been 82 convictions. Guess how many of those invovled people behind fake voter registrations actually casting a vote? None
OK, I can’t keep the columns straight, but these are interesting statistics from the 2006 election. 56% of votes, 84 million, were cast on optically scanned paper ballots while 36%, or 65 million votes were cast on electronic voting machines.
Types of balloting equipment in use for November 2006 election
Type of voting equipment Percent counties Registered voters Percent voters
Punch cards 0.42 414,027 0.24
Lever machines 1.99 11,627,385 6.83
Hand-counted paper ballots 1.8 330,912 0.19
Optically scanned paper ballot 56.19 84,026,447 48.94
Electronic equipment 36.63 65,959,464 38.42
Mixed (multiple types) 2.95 9,341,055 5.44
Total 100.00 171,699,290 100.00
Because, in this case, according to sworn testimony and affadavits, the GOP has been behind massive election fraud.
Funny how these sworn testimonies and affadavits aren’t getting the GOP investigated by the FBI, but instead ACORN is.
Oz has already been proven to have bought into Democrat propaganda on the issue of “Kill him”, aka fake rage at McCain-Palin rallies.
Oz instinctually blames people while at the same time justifying her blame by saying they are partisan and thus needs to be blamed. Then Oz defends the Democrats, who she admits as being partially to blame, and she justifies this based upon…. “evidence”. Then she says that there is no evidence of election fraud on the GOP’s side, which demonstrates that the GOP is conducting election fraud.
Oz’s instincts are a nihilist’s instincts. She believes everything is going down the toilet and she is talking up a good game here to speed it up, for surely she has admitted that she doesn’t think either party will make things any better. That’s a good reason to attack the GOP while defending Democrats, isn’t it? If both parties are equally bad, then why not attack the GOP given that Sarah Palin is worse than Obama in Oz’s eyes? It makes perfect sense for those invested in the problem and in perpetuating the problem.
Funny how these sworn testimonies and affadavits aren’t getting the GOP investigated by the FBI, but instead ACORN is.- Ymar
Funny how that works, isn’t it, Ymar?
The DOJ has been investigating this for years..
Us attorneys were fired for looking into allegations of voter fraud and not finding any.
And Mike Connell dodges a subpeona.
“Oz has already been proven to have bought into Democrat propaganda on the issue of “Kill him”, aka fake rage at McCain-Palin rallies” – Ymar
I have seen enough videotape of people at these rallies to know that things are ugly as hell, Ymar.
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2008/07/27/the-london-times-calls-out-the-new-york-times-for-double-standards/#comment-26647
Us attorneys were fired for looking into allegations of voter fraud and not finding any.
That’s a convenient explanation, isn’t it, for defending Democrat partisan attacks on Bush?
I have seen enough videotape of people at these rallies to know that things are ugly as hell, Ymar.
You called yourself an iconoclast rather than a nihilist, do you remember? It’s in the link above.
I also suspect that George H.W. Bush was similarly guilty. – Me
The Left always likes to tear down people and then say that their own are heroes. – Ymar
Wait a minute. Wasn’t Bookworm smearing Democrats with a wide adulterous brush, while touting Republican presidents’ virtues?
I think ALL politicians have a tendency to be liars and cheats, and was merely pointing out tht the fantasy world in which Republicans remain true to their mates by virtue of the Republicanyness didnt exist.
“Unfortunately for you, we already know you are a nihilist, O. The same applies to most of the Left, as well.” — Ymar
Unfortunately for me? hahaha. I’m not a member of “the left” Ymar, as I think there arguments of “left vs right,” “conservative vs liberal, ” Democrats vs Republican” are meant to blind people to the truth.
I’m a registered Independent who thinks the entire system is broken.
But it’s rip-roaring fun to read partisan arguments and look for gaping holes.
Here’s the overview. If you are not a member of the Left then why do you protest making the distinction between most of the Left being nihilists and you being a nihilist. If you were truly interested in destroying the rhetoric of left vs right, you would have taken a stance to reinforce the distinction by saying that even though you do share the same characteristics as the Left has, you are not of the Left. But you decided to delude yourself and try to lie to us with the claim that just because you are not a member of the Left, you are not a nihilist either.
If that’s not clear and definitive enough, let’s look at something else in the same comment of yours. Bookworm is not a politician, thus when you use her as an example of why your “all politicians” line is correct, you are performing what is known as specious logic. Neither does Bookworm act like you, Oz. She doesn’t deny her political affiliations or the common traits she shares with individuals on the Left in her community and individuals in other political parties. Bookworm does not act in an intellectual dishonest manner, like you through claiming yourself independent while being engaged in particularly partisan attacks on the GOP alone. Bookworm is acting with transparency in lambasting the Republicans. But you act with dishonesty while lambasting the GOP but calling yourself somebody that is just calling both parties to account; you don’t call both parties to account.
So let’s get to the end of your comment. You say you are a registered Independent, as if that means anything (especially with ACORN around finagling registration rolls), and you say you find gaps in “partisan arguments” because it is fun. You also call yourself an iconoclast rather than a nihilist.
Which is why you’re a nihilist. – Ymar
Actually, I’m more of an iconoclast.
I try to refrain from telling people I’ve never met who or what they are, but you are most amusing.
To be honest, I find nothing amusing in the destruction of this nation and its people for the benefit of some glorified messiah and his totalitarian ideology. That’s a tragedy, not a Hollywood comedy. I find nothing amusing when good men and women are attacked and destroyed solely to benefit some party’s idea of purity and dogma.
But you find it funny, entertaining, and amusing.
1. a breaker or destroyer of images, esp. those set up for religious veneration.
2. a person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition.
An iconoclast destroys, but there is no definite reason why an iconoclast chooses to destroy. He may choose to destroy things because he believes he can replace them with better things. He may choose to destroy things just because he hates and believes with a passionate intensity that even though he cannot replace what he destroys with something better, still it is something that he must do.
A nihilist, however, is an entirely different animal.
4. Philosophy.
a. an extreme form of skepticism: the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth.
b. nothingness or nonexistence.
What is laughter except a denial of existence? Or rather, once existence proves meaningless, all we have is laughter. We cannot cry for what has never had meaning, for what has never had meaning cannot ever be lost. We cannot feel joy for the destruction of something we believed had no value to begin with. We cannot feel happy and satisfied with destroying an existence that never had an existence except in the heads of other people.
Grim humour uses this for productive means since it allows human beings to laugh at death and tragedy, to hold such things in contempt so that people can get on with their lives in the face of adversity instead of being bent and broken by sadness and grief. It is not the same as amusement, however. One cannot be amused at the death of a loved one or the death of the innocent. One can either laugh or break down in grief.
Oz, you destroy arguments and GOP attempts to create a better world, while repeating and justifying Democrat corruption, because you believe it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter which side you support or not. Thus, you have no reason to go against Democrats or the GOP based upon their actual actions. You just do what you feel like doing, since why should you do anything different given that reality does have an objective existence and truth that human beings can perceive?
You, an iconoclast? No, you the nihilist. An iconoclast actually believes that what he is destroying is real, otherwise why waste the energy in doing it. A nihilist destroys because it doesn’t matter to him one way or another. A nihilist acts upon purely selfish motivations for obviously there is no objective truth to create standards of morality or ethics for the nihilist to act under.
I try to refrain from telling people I’ve never met who or what they are
I do the same thing. The difference is, I believe that I have already “met you” for how much of your beliefs that I have seen written here and exposed here at Bookworm Room would have been known to me had I “met” you in a social setting or dinner conversation? How much would I have been allowed to ask and how much would you have answered, given that your allies, neighbors, or people you dislike were around the table?
I have met more of your beliefs here than I ever would have over 10 or 20 social conversations face to face, Oz. Do you not realize this or do you not believe that objective truth exists? If objective truth does not exist and cannot be perceived by me, then what does it matter whether I meet you face to face or simply read your political thoughts on a blog? All are equal in worth, is that not true? Just like Democrats and the GOP are equal in worth, regardless of who gets elected, so you might as well do as you feel like doing against Sarah Palin?
P.S.
Suek, I couldn’t find that long comment analysis on nihilism for you, so this is the second best.
>>I couldn’t find that long comment analysis on nihilism for you>>
Maybe just as well. It’s a hopeless, depressing approach to life – I don’t think I’d really _want_ a longer explanation!
Still, it’s impossible to save and catalog everything we run across on this marvelous internet, isn’t it! I asked one commenter on another blog how he filed and accessed his pretty super extensive references….he said he used an old fashioned card catalog! I have all kinds of things I’ve saved in files on my computer, but they phase out in terms of reference, and when I want them again, I don’t have them readily available. There was a commenter on Dr Sanity who always seemed to have a multitude of links..ytba, I think he used…he disappeared. I found a commenter with that sign off (“yet to be announced”, apparently) in a blog based in Alaska, but have no idea if it’s the same individual. He was very good – very pertinent, and very free with his links. I was wondering at some point if he saved them all on an Excel program of some sort…I don’t know if you could catalog them that way, but I’m not sure how else you could cross reference them in such a way that they could be used on the various topics where they might be applicable. I say Excel…I guess what I mean is a data file of some sort. I haven’t learned to construct a data file yet – something with search terms. I should – we have the program – but I haven’t.
IF there are any computer savy BW readers, here’s some information about the alledged vote hacking in Ohio in 2004.
First is a deposition by Spoonamore in an ongoing lawsuit.
I’m not computer expert by any means, but Spoonamore indicates the vote totals between precinct computers and the state computer was done via fax, not electronically, but that the state computer would have to have been hacked to affect the state totals. He admits it is speculation, but says the reason he is suspicious is that hard drives on the precinct computers were switched, which would be consistent with hackers covering their tracks.
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/Lincoln-ReplyAff1-9-17-08.pdf
More interesting is a lengthy analysis of Diebold machines, and the state of electronic voting in general by Douglas Johnson, University of Iowa. This relates to the original downloading of supposed Diebold source code from an unsecured FTP site. Leaving all the issues of theft, copyright infringement and the like aside, it’s a fascinating and disturbing look at the state of voting machines.
I didn’t know that the security of the Western world and it’s voting process is dependent on Windows CE and Microsoft ACCESS. That should give everyone reason for concern.
Mr Johnson was on an Iowa elections committee and recommended decertification of Diebold Accuvote TS machines. It’s quite entertaining, full of intrigue and conflict of interest.
What is does demonstrate is what we already know- Washington is dysfunctional and turning over any more power to these people will be deadly to us all.
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/dieboldftp.html
>>What is does demonstrate is what we already know- Washington is dysfunctional and turning over any more power to these people will be deadly to us all.>>
I think there’s a benefit to centralization of power to a certain extent, after which it becomes a deficit. I think I’ve referred to being on a school board. We have a superintendent/principal for one small school and an unpaid elected school board. Other school districts have one superintendent for a number of school facilities with a principal for each school, and usually a paid elected school board. Superintendents are usually Ph.Ds, and are pretty well paid. It makes sense for a qualified Supe to manage several facilities, and to have lower paid but qualified principals directly managing each facility. When you get to a certain level, though, the principals become superintendents in effect, because the District Superintendent doesn’t have time to attend to each individual facility. Likewise the Board. Paying board members gives them reason to want to stay in their position, and increases the likelihood that they’ll know who will give them the best deal. Makes it a cushy day job.
When this nation was founded, the States were the primary power, the Federal government was simply an overarching unifier. We have concentrated power more and more in the Federal Government, less and less in the States until we have arrived at Brian’s description – Washington is dysfunctional. We need to return to States Rights. That means that we have to get the states out of the pockets of Washington – that’s the leash that binds us…the money. There are all sorts of things that people take money from Washington for and in return, do things they don’t really want to do…. Remember the 55 MPH guidelines? Every state in the union. It wasn’t federally “mandated”, but if the states didn’t pass the 55 max law, they weren’t going to get their federal highway funds.
It’s like your kids – “sure you can go to Maui – but I’ll only pay for it if you pass all your classes.” So kid either pays his/her own way – which usually they can’t – or gets the grades. You know they’ve grown up when they say “thanks, Mom…I’ll pay for it myself”. States have become more juvenile – more dependent on Big Brother federal government – and the situation won’t change until the states start taking care of themselves. It’s a law of diminishing returns thing.
All,
I’m going to fire this off as a short, ill-tempered rant.
The Diebold machines are flawed because they were forced into service early.
They were forced into service during the alpha testing phase because of alleged voter confusion in the 2000 election; this action was championed by the Democratic party and mandated in several states (including Ohio) to replace the butterfly punch ballots.
The “hanging chad” and poor ballot design (primarily in Democratic-run areas of Florida – the predominately Republican areas did not report similar problems) caused voter confusion blamed for Al Gore’s loss in 2000; nevermind that Democratic lawyers attempted to disenfrancise military residents serving outside the state.
Bottom line – the machines don’t work right because they weren’t ready. They were used to “prevent” fraud and rushed to production. The software and hardware shortages were a result of this. The software is a modified standard accounting program from Diebold used by banks – the programmers never removed the “debit” portion, they just left off the hardware that accessed it. The machines don’t make paper receipts because that feature would have required adding a printer, ink cartridge, and paper roll; add 33% to the base cost and quintuple the operating cost. I’ll state this for the conspiracy folks – the government took the cheap machines, across the board. And they didn’t take the service deal. The only conspiracy was one of getting off cheap to deflect attention from the real voter fraud issues. Remember that the St. Louis area had more votes cast in several primarily Democratic (75-25 split) areas than total residents? Yep, the dead man won the election, making up a 45,000 vote deficit in the final hours, when polling places were illegally kept open and over 50 reports (including video!) of individuals voting at multiple polling sites were dismissed as “acceptable irregularities” by the Democrat-affiliated election oversight officials.
Anyhow, the Democrats demanded new machines – NOW! And now that we’ve paid too much for machines with problems because they weren’t ready for the market? Oh, it must be a conspiracy. A Republican one, don’t you know?
And by the way, the only people convicted of vote tampering in 2004 were the Democratic vandals that slashed the tires of a rental van hired by the Republican party to transport residents of a retirement community to the polling site. Note that the local party didn’t ask affiliation; they were taking any and all voters who needed to go.
Yep, love that even handed stuff.
Makes me so mad I want to break things.
Bottom line on Ohio – ENFORCE THE D@MN LAW!
Voter registration is easy – allow it at the DMV with your driver’s license or through Selective Service. Close registration four months early (with exceptions for birthdays in the exclusion zone) to allow for verification of eligibility. If you are moving in the exclusion zone, get an absentee ballot. If you don’t register in time – TOUGH! It is a right but if you can’t get off your behind in time, life sucks.
‘Nuff said, rant off.
SSG Dave – “You can have it now or you can have it good. You can’t have both.”
>>http://www.palestra.net/blogs/read/17368>>
Looks like the Obama campaign members are actively participating in fraudulent voting …
Who needs ACORN!!
It’s not just Diebold:
Insecurities and Inaccuracies of the
Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H DRE Voting Machine
by Andrew W. Appel1, Maia Ginsburg1, Harri Hursti,
Brian W. Kernighan1, Christopher D. Richards1, and Gang Tan2.
1Princeton University 2Lehigh University
The AVC Advantage voting machine is made by Sequoia Voting Systems and has been used in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and other states. Pursuant to a Court Order in New Jersey Superior Court, we examined this voting machine as well as its computer program code. On October 17, 2008 the Court permitted us to release to the public a redacted version of our report.
Public Report: Insecurities and Inaccuracies of the Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H DRE Voting Machine
This report was originally submitted to the Court on September 2 in the form of an expert-witness report by Andrew W. Appel. The Court has released this redacted version to the public. The version we release here, linked in boldface above, is the same as the Court’s redacted version, but with a few introductory paragraphs about the court case, Gusciora v. Corzine.
Videos: click here. We can now release the 90-minute evidentiary video that we submitted to the Court on September 2nd. We are seeking the Court’s permission to release a much shorter video which demonstrates the most important points much more succinctly.
Frequently Asked Questions (“Why are you releasing this just 3 weeks before the election?” etc.)
What you need to know:
The AVC Advantage contains a computer. If someone installs a different computer program for that computer to run, it can deliberately add up the votes wrong. It’s easy to make a computer program that steals votes from one party’s candidates, and gives them to another, while taking care to make the total number of votes come out right. It’s easy to make this program take care to cheat only on election day when hundreds of ballots are cast, and not cheat when the machine is being tested for accuracy. This kind of fraudulent computer program can modify every electronic “audit trail” in the computer. Without voter-verified paper ballots, it’s extremely hard to know whether a voting machine (such as the AVC Advantage) is running the right program.
It takes about 7 minutes, using simple tools, to replace the computer program in the AVC Advantage with a fraudulent program that cheats. We demonstrate this on the video.
Even when it’s not hacked to deliberately steal votes, the AVC Advantage has a few user-interface flaws. Therefore, sometimes the AVC Advantage does not properly record the intent of the voter. All known voting technologies have imperfect user interfaces, although some are worse than others. The public should beware of the argument that some people make, that “we should not replace the AVC Advantage with voting method X, because X is imperfect.” The AVC Advantage’s susceptibility to installation of a fraudulent vote-counting program is far more than an imperfection: it is a fatal flaw.
What should be done? Most technology experts who study the security of voting methods recommend precinct-count optical-scan voting, with by-hand audits of the optical-scan ballots from randomly selected precincts. We agree with this consensus. In fact, most states are moving in the right direction: 32 states now vote with voter-verified paper ballots (mostly optical-scan, some with DRE+VVPAT). Only a minority of states are still using paperless DRE voting machines such as the AVC Advantage. We recommend that those states adopt precinct-count optical scan.
Executive Summary of the Report
I. The AVC Advantage 9.00 is easily “hacked,” by the installation of fraudulent firmware. This is done by prying just one ROM chip from its socket and pushing a new one in, or by replacement of the Z80 processor chip. We have demonstrated that this “hack” takes just 7 minutes to perform.
The fraudulent firmware can steal votes during an election, just as its criminal designer programs it to do. The fraud cannot practically be detected. There is no paper audit trail on this machine; all electronic records of the votes are under control of the firmware, which can manipulate them all simultaneously.
II. Without even touching a single AVC Advantage, an attacker can install fraudulent firmware into many AVC Advantage machines by viral propagation through audio-ballot cartridges. The virus can steal the votes of blind voters, can cause AVC Advantages in targeted precincts to fail to operate; or can cause WinEDS software to tally votes inaccurately. (WinEDS is the program, sold by Sequoia, that each County’s Board of Elections uses to add up votes from all the different precincts.)
III. Design flaws in the user interface of the AVC Advantage disenfranchise voters, or violate voter privacy, by causing votes not to be counted, and by allowing pollworkers to commit fraud.
IV. AVC Advantage Results Cartridges can be easily manipulated to change votes, after the polls are closed but before results from different precincts are cumulated together.
V. Sequoia’s sloppy software practices can lead to error and insecurity. Wyle’s ITA reports are not rigorous, and are inadequate to detect security vulnerabilities. Programming errors that slip through these processes can miscount votes and permit fraud.
VI. Anomalies noticed by County Clerks in the New Jersey 2008 Presidential Primary were caused by two different programming errors on the part of Sequoia, and had the effect of disenfranchising voters.
VII. The AVC Advantage has been produced in many versions. The fact that one version may have been examined for certification does not give grounds for confidence in the security and accuracy of a different version. New Jersey should not use any version of the AVC Advantage that it has not actually examined with the assistance of skilled computer-security experts.
VIII. The AVC Advantage is too insecure to use in New Jersey. New Jersey should immediately implement the 2005 law passed by the Legislature, requiring an individual voter-verified record of each vote cast, by adopting precinct-count optical-scan voting equipment.
Thousands Face Mix-Ups In Voter Registrations
In New Databases, Many Are Wrongly Flagged as Ineligible
By Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 18, 2008; A01
Thousands of voters across the country must reestablish their eligibility in the next three weeks in order for their votes to count on Nov. 4, a result of new state registration systems that are incorrectly rejecting them.
The challenges have led to a dozen lawsuits, testy arguments among state officials and escalating partisan battles. Because many voters may not know that their names have been flagged, eligibility questions could cause added confusion on Election Day, beyond the delays that may come with a huge turnout.
The scramble to verify voter registrations is happening as states switch from locally managed lists of voters to statewide databases, a change required by federal law and hailed by many as a more efficient and accurate way to keep lists up to date.
But in the transition, the systems are questioning the registrations of many voters when discrepancies surface between their registration information and other official records, often because of errors outside voters’ control.
The issue made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which yesterday blocked a challenge to 200,000 Ohio voters whose registration data conflicted with other state records.
It is impossible to know how many voters are affected nationwide. There are no reports of large-scale problems in Virginia, Maryland or the District, but the trouble is cropping up in many states.
In Alabama, scores of voters are being labeled as convicted felons on the basis of incorrect lists.
Michigan must restore thousands of names it illegally removed from voter rolls over residency questions, a judge ruled this week.
Tens of thousands of voters could be affected in Wisconsin. Officials there admit that their database is wrong one out of five times when it flags voters, sometimes for data discrepancies as small as a middle initial or a typo in a birth date. When the six members of the state elections board — all retired judges — ran their registrations through the system, four were incorrectly rejected because of mismatches.
As the gateway to voting, the new registration lists have become the focus of attention from many fronts, including voting rights advocates, officials concerned about fraud and political campaigns looking for an advantage.
It is “this season’s big issue,” said Wendy R. Weiser, who directs voting rights projects for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law, noting that efforts to keep names off the lists are “a new trend, not in the majority of states but in the battleground states.”
The changes stem from the Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress in 2002 in the aftermath of the deadlocked presidential race two years earlier. The law provided millions of dollars for states to upgrade voting equipment and procedures, and to create the centralized databases, which allow voters in most states to check their registrations and polling places on the Internet.
The electronic lists have been coming online gradually, and for 31 states, this will be the first time they are used in a presidential election.
As the databases are implemented, voters’ names and other information are verified against state driver’s license records or Social Security records to determine their eligibility. Federal law allows each state to decide what constitutes a match — whether it will accept nicknames, for example.
But states are not using “the best scientific knowledge known today” when they verify the information, said Herbert Lin, who is studying the issue for the federal Election Assistance Commission, which oversees election reforms.
By federal law, anyone whose name is flagged must be notified and given a chance to prove his or her eligibility. But voting rights experts say voters are not always alerted, and even if they are, some may decide to simply skip the election. If questions about eligibility remain on Election Day, those voters are entitled to cast a “provisional” ballot. But which of those ballots are ultimately counted depends on local and state rules.
Several of the battles over registration lists have taken on a partisan tinge, including in Montana, where a state GOP official challenged nearly 6,000 voters over apparent discrepancies in their addresses. He dropped his challenge after Democrats went to court, but not before one county sent letters to hundreds of voters informing them that their registrations were in jeopardy. Now the county is trying to let them know they are eligible to cast ballots after all.
The Republicans filed the case “with the express intent to disenfranchise voters,” a federal judge said.
In light of the Supreme Court ruling yesterday, Ohio’s Republican Party said it is looking at its options in state court to try again to force Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, to produce lists of voters whose registration information conflicted with driver’s license data or Social Security records.
Brunner called the court challenge “another partisan lawsuit.” The state Republican chairman shot back that Brunner “continues to do everything she can to help her candidate.”
Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who co-chairs John McCain’s campaign in that state, is demanding that election officials use the database to re-verify the identities of voters who registered going back to 2006.
The elections board has refused, citing the database’s error rate. The issue has gone to court, and a ruling is expected next week.
Among the errors with Wisconsin’s database, which has been fully in place just since August, are incorrect ages for 95,000 voters, all of whom are listed as 108 years old. If no birth date was available when names were moved into the electronic system, it automatically assigned Jan. 1, 1900.
In court filings, Van Hollen said “tens of thousands” of ineligible voters could cast ballots, noting that Wisconsin “will be a swing state” whose 10 electoral votes “may be won by a very narrow margin.”
The crush of new registrants around the country has heightened the problems, including in Colorado, where 22,000 must clear up questions about their addresses and other discrepancies before they can cast a regular ballot.
In Alabama, the centralized system triggered a new controversy over a constitutional ban on voting by people convicted of a felony crime of “moral turpitude.” The governor’s office in the past year issued a list of 480 crimes that meet the definition, including disrupting a funeral and conspiring to set an illegal brush fire.
Alabama’s court administrator and attorney general issued a shorter list of 70 more violent and serious crimes. But Secretary of State Beth Chapman said the longer list was used to identify ineligible voters until three weeks ago.
Among those wrongly flagged by the database was former Republican governor Guy Hunt, who was driven out of office in 1993 after being convicted of a felony ethics violation for misusing inaugural funds. But Hunt, 75, received a pardon that declared him innocent a decade ago.
“Well, he’s voted ever since the pardon, so he sure shouldn’t be on any list now,” said Hunt’s son, Keith, in a telephone interview.
The former governor, who has run for office since he was pardoned, was included on a “monthly felons check” sent to a county registrar this year. The document, obtained by The Washington Post, contains 107 names of purported felons, but 41 of them committed only misdemeanors, according to the handwritten notations of a county staffer.
Chapman, a Republican, stressed that any ban can be appealed. But state Sen. Zeb Little (D), who has reviewed other cases, said, “I am certain that people will be turned away at polls in November over this for no valid reason.”
In Georgia, the database has so far labeled 2,600 people as noncitizens.
That nearly cost American-born Nelson Tyler, a civilian contractor in Afghanistan, his vote. The system mistakenly tagged Tyler when a Social Security number popped up belonging to a noncitizen.
After receiving a letter from DeKalb County saying he had to prove his citizenship, Tyler protested and resubmitted his number. Within days, he got an e-mail apologizing for the mix-up. In it, a county elections official said she had told her staff not to rely solely on the database when verifying ballot requests because “we had found it was not 100% accurate.”
Tyler cast his absentee ballot, but he said in an interview that the experience was unsettling. The closer the elections get, he said by e-mail, “the more these types of disqualifying tactics begin to rear their ugly heads.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/17/AR2008101703360_pf.html
And more news from today:
Some early W.Va. voters angry over switched votes
Jackson County touch-screens switched votes, 3 residents say
“When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain,” said Matheney, who lives in Kenna.
When she reported the problem, she said, the poll worker in charge “responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail.”
Even after she began using her fingernail, Matheney said, the problem persisted. . . ”
for more
http://wvgazette.com/News/200810170676
Voters say they were duped into registering as Republicans
SACRAMENTO — Dozens of newly minted Republican voters say they were duped into joining the party by a GOP contractor with a trail of fraud complaints stretching across the country.
Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.. . .
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fraud18-2008oct18,0,1216330.story?track=ntothtml
“SACRAMENTO — Dozens of newly minted Republican voters say they were duped into joining the party by a GOP contractor with a trail of fraud complaints stretching across the country.”– Ozzie
So what?
Ozzie, you are an accumulator of the most irrelevant information that may be circulating around the web.
You are purged from Washington state voter roles if you fail to vote in x number of elections. So what! You register again.
Ozzie,
I keep looking at your data, and from the most part comes from partisan sources, or uses facts or rumor masquerading as fact to draw faulty conclusions. I don’t know. It just not worth the effort.
“Ohio 2004 was frought with fraud…” – Ozzie
This is the kind of contribution you bring to the table. Farhad Manjoo pretty much debunks this. And the Spoonamore allegations are tenuous– not based on evidence but supposition.
And using Hitchens as an expert witness? Yawn.
There are serious issues that need to be addressed, including computer hardware and voter verification issues- leave the tinsel hat stuff for other websites.
Here’s a salon article where Kennedy refutes Manjoo and Manjoo responds.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/06/06/rfk_responds/index.html
To continue the conflicting data meme,
Did Washington waste millions on faulty voting machines?
http://www.bnd.com/breaking_news/story/508139.html
Found through Instapundit.
The bulk of the story refers to states switching to optical scanning equipment because it retains the underlying paper ballets, which makes it easier to follow paper trails in cases of fraud.
And that would be the system that gets my vote. 8)
Spoonamore allegations are tenuous– not based on evidence but supposition- Brian
Listen to Clint Curtis, then
The bulk of the story refers to states switching to optical scanning equipment because it retains the underlying paper ballets, which makes it easier to follow paper trails in cases of fraud.
And that would be the system that gets my vote- Rock
Even those aren’t secure.
Ion Sanchez (sp?) conducted a test in Tallahasee, Florida.
Here’s the test:
Go to minute 7 here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeXtPNP2a-s&feature=related
Which is concluded here:
Yep, love that even handed stuff.
Makes me so mad I want to break things.
There’s not a lot of justice in this world of ours, Dave. Some will seek to preserve what there is of it and some will seek them out for destruction.
And that would be the system that gets my vote.
Schools use scantron sheets and have been doing so for awhile now. If children can fill in the dots correctly, it should have no problems for adults. You just need a pencil.
RE: “Schools use scantron sheets and have been doing so for awhile now. If children can fill in the dots correctly, it should have no problems for adults. You just need a pencil.”
Amen to that. Paper and pencil allow checking up on how people actually voted. That was why BlackBox Voting was started. Suek flew all over me for mentioning it, but cheating is cheating no matter who is doing it. Real paper ballots help prevent voter fraud.
Real paper ballots help prevent voter fraud.
So you reject the hysteria created by people with a vested interest in undermining voter confidence in the 2000 elections by stirring up doubt about the old ways and lobbying for new electronic voting machines?
Helen says:
>>Suek flew all over me for mentioning it,>>
I did? Where?
>>but cheating is cheating no matter who is doing it.>>
Agreed.
>>Real paper ballots help prevent voter fraud.>>
Absolutely.
So? Where did I “fly all over” you? I’ve stated clearly…I’m fine with computer voting as long as paper exists to back it up. No back up? Bad idea. It doesn’t sound like we’re in disagreement. I think there must be a misunderstanding here somewhere. Like _that’s_ a first!!!
Found this today…
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obama-demands-doj-stop-acorn-probe