ZED!

LHP, Esq! I always enjoy your posts. Now to read this one.

Hey loosehead! Great news.

2

Well, ah, 4 (maybe). I LOVE those old clunker machines. It is all about selling new machines to their rethug friends, and of course, changing election results.

LHP! I’ve been hoping for a post on this. Now to read.

1) They mistakenly believe that there is some problem with NYS’s “old technology” toggle voting machines. WRONG

I have heard that you can influence the vote on this kind of machine by putting a toothpick in the gears.

Woot LHP!!

Dayam. A Distant possible double digit. phooey.

can’t even claim to have read the post (LHP! DOJ!) yet.

Order is misleading unless you read for content

What?! First you expect me to read? And for content?

This is not america.

That is very good news, LHP, and the clarity you have provided on this issue is beyond compare. You are in a ‘class’ by yourself, thank you.

I think that the reality is, most anything built by humans can be gimmicked by humans.

Oh, that is great news. I am a NY voter, and I was very worried about this. (I always vote absentee, anyway, because I work out-of-state and it is very difficult to get to the polls.)

LHP, you little side-excursion regarding Feinstein is equally classy. Hope she ‘gets’ it.

I have also read that the other disadvantage of toggle machines is that there’s no way of doing a recount, since the machines collect only a running total, and do not record each vote.

Well, the Repubs failed to divide California’s electoral votes, so they thought maybe they could steal the election by warping NYS results. WRONG — thanks to very hardworking people like lhp.

They can’t win honestly, they have to cheat. Nice values there.

Any news on NH recount???

OK, now is a good time to give you all my little anecdotal intel. My daughter went to pollworker training last weekend for a new machine. The Edge. It is a touchscreen voting device, one designed to accommodate the disabled. You can print a paper receipt of your vote. The pollworker can print a paper record when the poll closes, plus there is some kind of card that is used. SF will still use the Eagle and the Insight machines as well.

PBS also had a story about voting machines in CA but I missed.

I too heard the guy complaining on AA and it seemed like he thought a national voting oversight body was a good idea. I was amazed to be hearing it because i thought it would mean easier politicizing of it all and thought of our dear boys in DOJ.

FWIW>

I love the old toggle machines. The sound they make when you register your choices by pulling the big red lever is the WHUMP! of democracy.

What is the political backstory if Rudy is not on the ticket does the GOP have a chance in New York even is they steal 5%, 10% of the vote?

here’s a link to the PBS California voting machines story:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb.....01-16.html
tasty quote:

DEBRA BOWEN, California Secretary of State: Our scientists found that every system they looked at could be compromised in ways that made me uncomfortable.

They were able to bypass security seals by undoing two screws and opening the whole machine. They were able to change the results without having any knowledge of the computer code itself.

So she’s making changes at what some consider to be very late in the game. Worth watching.

Meanwhile in Ohio, if I am interpreting this right, the ACLU is actually *opposing* efforts of the newly elected Democratic Secretary of State to move from voting machines to paper ballots in Cuyahoga County/Cleveland.

How can this be?

LHP “They are mechanical and do not require electricity to operate.”

Basic. Really basic. But they work and don’t need costly replacement every three years. And most importantly, ain’t nobody can steal the votes. At least not for lack of valid ballots.

Just which machines does the DOJ approve of? and why do I suddenly smell insider contracts?

Rs don’t have a chance in NYS no matter who’s on the ballot IMO.

I vote absentee too, but I always wonder if it’s counted on time to count, and counted accurately. Anyone know?

Feinstein will get a letter from me. (I’ll share the response.)

You have highly developed olfactory sensibilities and a ‘feel’ for ‘fixes’?

OT
Nevada Caucuses up on NewsHour

I was just thinking that the last time I went to the polls to vote (I voted by mail last election), I voted on a stand-up desk without even a curtain (only 3 sides covered) and was given a black marker and a cardboard ballot. To vote, you had to fill in the arrow next to the name of the candidate of your choice. Should I also expect different machines here in AZ for the coming election?

I am not sure about this, but I think absentee ballots are only counted if the number of absentee ballots exceeds the difference in votes obtained by the top two vote-getters.

And San Diego County Board of Supervisors is suing Debra Bowen for wanting paper and pen ballots. This is the wild, wild, west. Issa, Bilbray, and Hunter.

Its worse than that watching Tucker on MSNBC sets off my stupidity detector and my stomach.

Happily rubbing little paws together in anticipation.

The same article I read that gave all the good info about toothpicks in gears & inability to do recount on toggle machines recommended the kind of ballots where you color in the bubbles and they are optically scanned. That the author thought was the most reliable, and recountable. Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I read it so I can’t give a link.

Then why are they fighting in New York these new voting machines are everywhere I would think they could find friendlier judges down South?

Debra Bowen said 45% of Californians vote absentee now.

WOW!

I don’t know why NYS is fighting new voting machines. Maybe LHP does. I’d guess it’s because the state is way behind in the change process & looking for some excuse not to leap into uncharted waters. But I don’t know that for a fact.

The public cannot get at the “gears” and anyone who has access to the back of the machine works for the Board of Elections. If Bof E people want to steal an election, there are much more sophisticated ways for them to do that.

I think you are thinking of the classic “jam the toggle with a toothpick” stunt–which is quite effective, yet easily detectable and easy to fix. You go to emergency ballots until the mechanic comes and it’s fixed in a couple of minutes. These machines arealy are tough.

Oh! yikes!

I think one of the ways to vote that is still in use is filling in the “gap” in the arrow pointing to your choice with a really dark pen, and then scanning that ballot into a reader (which usually jams up…).

What IS the status of absentee ballots counting? I hate voting that way cuz I think it doesn’t count, but Mr. Dosido does every election.

Thanks.

No! You don’t abuse yourself that way, I hope. Sensitive souls should not, even out of civic concern, place such srains on their constitution;
at least, not on a regular basis.

Behavior of this nature will ultimately age you and if pursued overlong may cause life-threatening complications. Ask yourself: would the Dali Lama do this?

Does this not afflict your inner calm and serenity? Life provides sufficient opportunity for heart attacks, one should not court infarctions

I gotta tell you, it’s all up in the air. For so long it looked like it was going tobe a Rudy?hillary matchup wih Long Island the BIG battleground, now everythings going kaflooey

I don’t know about these ADA issues. Is it “privacy” that disallows having a poll-worker “assist” the disabled individual? How about having a poll-worker assigned to sit behind a screened area who will mark the ballot as requested by the disabled voter. Then the ballot is handed back to the disabled voter for inspection. (Or if blind a third worker can confirm the votes). This is then submitted.

Cheating can easily be audited since the poll-worker doesn’t actually see the handicapped individual…so a non-handicapped individual or polling inspector could easily test the system). I would think that, as mail-in balloting becomes more pervasive, these would be vastly more convenient for the handicapped in any case. In fact, submission of mail-in ballots are legal at the polls, I believe.

It seems that placing our elections at risk because some classes of handicapped can’t vote “in person” using the precise same devices as “abled” voters reaches a certain level of absurdness. It has little to do with access and more to do with certain lawyers wanting to get settlements. I’ve seen the ADA used on small businesses in this fashion, often causing them to shutter because they simply can’t build a ramp with a 5-degree vs. a 7 degree slope.

So what kind of voting machines or methods are used in other countries and with what kinds of reliability?

Purple fingers.

Are you calling Kawlifornya another country? ;)

The first year I did my election monitoring program, we had a localized blackout (oddly in my town) there was a big storm and tree limbs came down on the power lines. I got on the phone with my poll watchers and told them to run to the nearest 7-11 and buy flashlights. Our pools opened a little late (didn’t really matter cause the storm kept people home) and votes were cast by flashlight and BIC lighter. (lucky the privacy curtains didn’t catch fire!)

The power cord out the back of the machine is for the light fixture attached to the machine.

We’ll see, DWBartoo.

Dear Senator Feinstein,

I am surprised that “elections” is not one of the choices to click under issues/topics. In my opinion it is the paramount issue, as nothing else is American if we have questions about the validity of elections.

I have been concerned about election results since 2000, and read responsible reporting on them where it is available. See, for example, this quote from Looseheadprop at firedoglake.com:

“After the 2000 recount debacle in Florida, Congress rushed to pass a really poorly thought out piece of legislation misnamed the Help America to Vote Act. HAVA contained provisions for funding for states to buy new voting machines and mandated that they comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (the only provisions I applaud). However, HAVA also contained all kinds of unrealistic provisions. For example, it created the Election Assistance Commission, which is actually the antonym of what its name suggests. (LHP digression here–DiFi is proposing batshit crazy stupid legislation to make the EAC–currently a temporary agency–into a PERMANENT voting obstruction entity and giving it power over all elections, further eroding states’ rights. Dianne Feinstein, I’m talking to YOU. Put down the legislation, back away slowly and keep your hands where I can see ‘em.)”

Please explain your thinking in support of HAVA, and particularly why you would want to make anything even next door to questionable, permanent.

Respectfully,

OT the GOP new message is that Mitt with his hedge fund experience will be better for the economy than Hilary. Pat is pushing the line right now on Tucker.
The problem with that *story* is that Hedge funds are imploding from the subprime loans they bought. Hedge Funds don’t have to report their numbers and only report when they have good quarters.
As the subprime problem gets worse Mitts money skills will be called into question especially if Bush bails out the hedge funds.

In NY absentee ballots are the biggest source of ballot challenges. It’s easy b/c the voter isn’t there to defend themselves

And San Diego County Board of Supervisors is suing Debra Bowen for wanting paper and pen ballots. This is the wild, wild, west. Issa, Bilbray, and Hunter.

They’ll likely go all PC and claim she’s violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Mika B^*&^*%^(^)&ski says that she has been told that Bloomberg will run and announce most likely beginning of April.

So, NYers, what is he all about other than being a billionaire? Anyone?

So everyone with a purple finger voted for Saddam Hussein, huh?

NY State is the gold standard for reliable and transparent elections. So whatever NYS does will be the ceiling, not the floor for what other states do.

Plus we have all those juicy electoral college votes.

Geez, hypersentive a little? *g*

But it provides me with so much material to be SNARKY. OH! No! I’m one of them yes, I am Things Come Undone and I am a Snarkaholic.

So, NYers, what is he all about other than being a billionaire? Anyone?

Not much, that I’ve seen. The City hasn’t gone to hell in a handbasket since he’s been mayor, as far as I can tell.

(BTW, why did you not spell Mika Brzezinski’s name?)

Because NYS doesn’t want to buy crap machines that don’t work. They actually want to have a fair election

Yes. Why replace something that has worked well for decades? PA is a swing state, both sets of lawyers are out in droves during closely contested national races, and with the old toggle machines, I don’t remember many recounts (except to verify in really close contests).

Speaking of snark, anyone seen SnarKassandra around lately? I remember her saying something about having to move, if I recall correctly.

Hee, hee, because I have to look it up every time, and I’m lazy!!! I like her.

TexBetsy will know. You are right, she was really upset last time I saw her on here, but I’ve been cruising around a lot lately. I hope she’s okay.

eCAHN! You wonder why? The DOJ brought this suit against New York State.

Drive by …

Action Alert!

If you’re in the Bay Area, tonight @ The Grand Lake Theater in Berkeley they are showing Uncounted which is just as good as Hacking Democracy and American Blackout

I spent about an hour talking to one of the producers, Glenna Smith, after the showing on Tuesday here in Sac. It is information everyone should know

Please go if you have the time

L8r

I like her, too. I have only the Morning Joe show a few times, but I get the impression that she is constantly suppressing her desire to just start shouting at Scarborough and his right-wing loonie guests (Doughy Pantload seems to be on frequently), “You are all a bunch of insane nutjobs!! Let me the fuck out of here!!”

So you think this case was originally set up to help Rudy back when people thought that he was the frontrunner? The GOP seems to be trying to get a long term advantage by having the Federal Government decide who will make the voting machines.
My guess is the DOJ will choose a machine thats hackable, leaves no paper trail, and of course has insider contracts.

There is a new post at Youthink Left?

Well, that explains it.

I don’t know about these ADA issues. Is it “privacy” that disallows having a poll-worker “assist” the disabled individual? How about having a poll-worker assigned to sit behind a screened area who will mark the ballot as requested by the disabled voter. Then the ballot is handed back to the disabled voter for inspection. (Or if blind a third worker can confirm the votes). This is then submitted

That’s what was done in tha past. The ADA community is pushing for a system that allows the voter to vote w/o other assistance from humans. Further, part of the movement is to change the physical plant of everything to make it equally accessable to able and disabled folks alike

I watch “do it yourself” programming alot and “hometime” did a whole series on how the ADA community is trying to convince builders and developers to build ALL house with wider doorframes and no doorsill and grab bars in bathrooms and countertops that accomidate wheelchairs, etc.

The ADA community wants the machines that able bodied voters use to be the same as the machines disabled voters use, or at least the same system.

I hope I am explaing this clearly.

Thanks, LHP, for an enlightening post.

There needs to be a company to make up some of the old machines.

He frequently calls her a Marxist (jokingly…maybe)…I’m waiting for the day she calls him a wing-nut.

Canada hand counts paper ballots and they have complete results in a few hours.

It’s very reliable, transparent and auditable.

Yep. I just commented on it.

Yeah, but doesn’t Canada only have like a couple thousand people in it?

Yes, LHP, I used to live in a rural precinct north of SF, and they were always finished counting paper ballots early in the evening. They were slowed down considerably when the County brought in computerized machines.

In case you’re still interested, C & L has the video up of Matthews apology.

So you think this case was originally set up to help Rudy back when people thought that he was the frontrunner? The GOP seems to be trying to get a long term advantage by having the Federal Government decide who will make the voting machines

i think it’s a lot of things. If you want to steal an election, chaos is your friend.

Also Diebold is making a killing on all these new systems. Microsoft lobbied the NYS legislature VERY VERY heavily. There are some big money interests involved in this.

Yes. Computers are sometimes not all they’re cracked up to be.

Well if Mittens is good, the Johnny “Keating 5″ McCain has to be at least his equal. After all, he has direct experience in bailing-out the Savings & Loan Industry.

And then there’s John “FIG” Edwards. After his term in the Senate ended he was hired by the Fortress Investment Groupto advise their lobbyists on how to influence Congress. Fortress is a major off-shore equity group that buys up distressed loans and mortgages, as they did after Katrina, foreclosing on many low-income homeowners with a strategy of reselling their properties to those wanting to build Upscale homes.

tentatively tries for a zed…

Canada is about 10% of U.S. We could just have 10% more elections officials to do the counting.

I used to live in a rural precinct north of SF, and they were always finished counting paper ballots early in the evening. They were slowed down considerably when the County brought in computerized machines.

How sad will it be when 3rd world countries have fairer elections than we do?

Dang. GUY ATE IT!

Clapping hands with delight in things snarkily grasp and then shared amongst friends!!! …LOL …707 …LOL

Re:

After the 2000 recount debacle in Florida, Congress rushed to pass a really poorly thought out piece of legislation misnamed the Help America to Vote Act.

Lily Tomlin once quipped “no matter how cynical I get, it’s hard to keep up.”

I’ve been studying votescams, election fraud and DREs since the 2000 election. Heck I even have a forum on the topic on another board:

http://siliconinvestor.advfn.c.....d=19008151

LHP, I would encourage you to consider an alternative to viewing Congress as “pass(ing) a really poorly thought out piece of legislation“. What we actually have in HAVA is yet another example of an Orwellianly titled piece of legislation that was crafted by industry, in this case, the DRE manufacturers and their K Street representatives. Regrettably I had a hard drive catastrophe a few months back so my URL for this exact topic is lost in cyberspace. But my point is that you are entirely too kind to Congress to think that they actually had any intention whatsoever to help us vote. My research indicates that the exact opposite is the reality we face.

[Maintenance Note to self and others: It’s time to back up the hard drive again, cause you just never know when MTBF, er, Mean Time Before Failure ends up meaning mean times indeed.]

‘reliable’ - ding!

‘transparent’ - ding!

and

‘auditable’ - ding!

(its only ‘failings’: it doesn’t make money for right-wing bounders, nor does it allow reliable ‘delivery’ of specific election ‘results’ favorable to the bounder’s ‘interests’ probably making it un-A-Murkun)

RayDuray;

Fellow wood-butcher,
word-splicer
and
conscience-monger

youse really think
Congress doesn’t have
our best interests
at heart?

Why really, how
could youse?

Oh, I agree with you about this being an industry crafted bill. But I think Congress is just too damn lazy and ill informed and got punked AGAIN

“The problem is that EAC didn’t do a very good job of certifying the labs or notifying states when it decertified labs and it fell WAY behind setting up these standards. As a result, NYS which quite rationally waited for the standards before rushing out to buy just any old untested equipment ran afoul of the SPENDING deadline in HAVA.”

More Bush administration incompetence?

Or was it willful?

Heckuva job, EAC

Yes, but the court has ordered that NYS have a schedule for compliance (read new electronic machines run by corporations which count our votes in secret)in place this year, meaning that most of the important decisions about which machines out of the limited choices will be acceptable will be published in the next 2 months and after that each county can begin making its purchases. The state is still reading HAVA compliance as computerized voting machines — if not DREs then Op-scans which contrary to popular opinion are subject to the same vulnerabilities and undetectable tampering.

Actually the NYS Bof E is really very far along with their process. The problem would be rying to buy machines, feild test machines and train the elderly and untech savvy pollworkers all by November and with such high stakes.

There does seem to be a pattern here, …lazy …ill-informed …punked.

Where have we seen this before?

Oh! Wait! I know! Patriot Act, FISA, Iraq ‘war’ …(etcetera/adnauseum)

Is there any way ‘they’ could redeem themselves? Even slightly?

(Thinking very hard - smell of wood smoldering) um…?

Would ‘Im-PEACH-ment’ help?

Quite possibly.

Re:

I think Congress is just too damn lazy and ill informed and got punked AGAIN

I’m sorry to hear that. Until it is generally known and accepted by the American public that Congress has been malevolently working in opposition to the interests of the great percentage of the population we aren’t going to have the sort of upheaval in our politics that we need. I sincerely doubt that many Republicans got “punked” by the HAVA bills authors. I would have to say it is more likely they got “comped” with junkets to fine hotels, golf courses, etc. and it goes without saying that money flowed into campaign coffers.

A handful of Democrats may have been naive and voted for HAVA because they honestly thought that it would help. But not many. I find it impossible to image that a Congressman or Senator with a million dollar budget for a staff of analysts would have less understanding of the legislation than a solo researcher like me. So, I reject the idea a significant percentage of Congress got hoodwinked into voting for HAVA.

What type of voting machine does the plan call for? And with whose standards will it/they be compliant? So far, to my knowledge, none of the computerized machines meet certification standards. Thanks. JLML

Re:

Would ‘Im-PEACH-ment’ help?

This is precisely what America desperately needs today. I couldn’t agree more.

Indolent or intentionally self-serving, the wrong ’sorts’ of people are drawn to politics.

In so called ‘primitive’ societies, very often, those who lust for power are, absolutely and deliberately, not permitted it. Smacks more of ’sophistication’ than lack of the ‘civilization’ we would (and have)
foisted upon such peoples.

LHP — the reason the mechanical machines were decertified was because the companies that made them ceased to make them, and ceased to make replacement parts sometime in the early 1980’s. The only way after that point you could repair machines was to buy old machines from another place, and hire the mechanics who could strip them for parts. Sadly, the mechanical machines operate on the same principles as do gear and spring loaded cash registers and adding machines. When is the last time you bought something which was rung up on an 8 drawer NCR fancy model?

I served as an alternate on my State interium Legislative Commission that decertified both the mechanical machines and the punch cards in about 1987, for different reasons. Error rate on Punch cards was way too high, and down time on election day on the mechanical ones made for long waiting lines at the polls.

We adopted the paper ballot — Scanner in the Precinct method — because the survey research people told us (and provided the data) that the most accurate method would be the one most like ticking off items from a “to do” or grocery list because more people were more familiar with that custom than any other system on offer. They had 45 years of research data on this matter. But they insisted that along with the system, we had to put audits into law — whioh we did. Before we certify an election, we do two tests — a random selection of precincts that are hand re-counted and compared with scanner results, with the random selection made after the election is complete, and recounts of any precinct that presents results outside the existing index. Along with this, a very liberal rule regarding how candidates and parties can request full recounts is necessary. Of course state by state you need rules on whether the scanner “reads” a ballot for clear mistakes, such as over-voting, and allows for corrections while the voter is still in possession of the ballot. (You can’t do that with central scanning systems, and you should not have a mixed system in any state. The Error rate of over-voting cannot be corrected with a central scanning system, and the Error rate is significant in a close election.) There are also many ways to accomodate the disabled while using paper ballots that are scanned. There are Computer systems that will mark a paper ballot using voice (for the blind), and you can’t distinguish that ballot from any other.

I remember sitting through hearings on the type size and fonts to use on ballots — rules we eventually put into state law, and in the process learning how in one election or another, such technical matters made the difference. I am convinced that is the key that somehow we managed to adopt before all this became controversial. Likewise the language used on a ballot giving voters instructions. We actually got the survey research folk to test and determine whether an instruction: “Vote for up to three” or “Vote for three or less” in a school board election where there are three vacant seats, produced more or less error. We put the best language into State Law. I recommend the approach. The key is clear state law combined with a straight forward system. One thing we ended up doing as a commission was to rip about 90% of the accumulated rules about ballot counting out of existing state law.

“But they insisted that along with the system, we had to put audits into law — whioh we did. Before we certify an election, we do two tests — a random selection of precincts that are hand re-counted and compared with scanner results, with the random selection made after the election is complete, and recounts of any precinct that presents results outside the existing index. Along with this, a very liberal rule regarding how candidates and parties can request full recounts is necessary.”

Thanks Sara. Although my preference is for paper ballots, hand-counted in a manner which is publicly observable, the uniformly applied protocols you cite and the use of off the shelf, open-source (non-proprietary) software which could be run by state employees would go a long way toward making optical scan counters acceptable for use at each precinct.

Yes Sara, thank you for this enlightened information. I second JLML.

NYS B of E wrote implementation standards. They are pretty complete, I consulted on the drafts. We have nice audit provisions (though I wanted stronger ones)

The BIGGEST problem at the moment is Microsoft. Most of the machines use Microsoft software for some part of their programming and the NYS standards require escrowing the code Microsoft (who has been lobbying the NYS lags like you cannot believe) refuse to deposit the code in escrow.

NYS is looking at trying to develop it’s own system from scratch using open source code.

If hat can be done in time for the 2009 timetable, then Diebold et al are screwed. And NYS may end up exporting the machines if they are a success.

If that happens there will be such a delicious irony to the whole thing. Seriously NYS Bof E has been really doing a heroic job trying to save the idea of fair elections.

The last time I had occassion to ask about it was 2000, but Sequoia was still making the NYS machine and parts for it until then. No the problem with the majority of the NYS toggle machines is that they do not THEMSELVES produce a paper record and they cannot be made ADA compliant.(there are a few toggle machines in some upsatte caounties that do produce a paper print out)

I would be interested in seeing the implementation standards. See my remarks at 100 concerning software. Assuming the conditions outlined at 99 and 100 and cutting out the corporate middleman there still remains the chain of custody issue with paper ballots and op-scans. This came to me in an email this morning:

“All this push in NY against DREs has gotten us to the point where many understand the dangers of voting on DREs- but if we succeed in getting Opscans we’ll be in the mess NH is in now. People don’t understand- you can’t legitimately recount an election if you don’t have chain of custody of those ballots after election night. I have been doing a lot of research lately on election law in NY which I’ll share at this meeting- the gist of it is in NY when the courts understood what a democratic election required (back in the day when we hand counted our ballots)- there were almost no recounts permitted after election night and for a very good reason: The first count- with all the safeguards the legislature put in to prevent against the efforts by insiders to manipulate the vote– was the most reliable count. Once election night was over- and all the watchers and officials went home– in other words once there was no more public scrutiny- those paper ballots sealed in boxes were considered highly vulnerable to manipulation because they’d lost the scrutiny of the polling place. People today tend to think that recounts are the answer to our problem. They’re not. Transparent, observable tightly run elections are the solution and neither DREs nor Opscans can provide that because watch all you want- you cannot see what goes on inside a computer whether that computer is located inside a DRE or an Opscan.”

I think it would be really great if you could do another post explaining all these details.

Apparently there are large differentials between the expected results and the official tallies in the returns which came from opscans in New Hampshire and those from the hand-count precincts. It has recently been reported that secretive vote counting is clearly prohibited in Article 2 of the South Carolina constitution, yet they use DREs and will do so in the upcoming primary. So lots of unanswered questions as well as legal issues to be resolved both at the state and federal level. Could the feds force NYS to vote in a manner that violates the state constitution?

Best, JLML