E-Voting Trouble During Today's Elections in Virginia, New York, and Elsewhere

[truedelphi]

Source: Brad Friedman's Election Website

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10352

E-Voting Trouble During Today's Elections in Virginia, New York, and Elsewhere

"Tweeters" spell out difficulties for Dem candidates getting their rightful vote count.

From Brad's article:
The Tweet from Col. Morris Davis @ColMorrisDavis

Voting prob: Screen had McAuliffe w/aspirin size bubble then Cuccinelli. 3x touched M, checked C. 4th touched very top of bubble & got M.


In New York, for example, the Post is reporting that "Many of the city's 'optical-scan' voting machines were reported broken - or simply would not boot up - on Tuesday morning, forcing voters to toss paper ballots into overflowing baskets, according to frustrated Twitter posts." The Gothamist confirms that report with Tweets from all over the city complaining of scanners malfunctioning. "At PS 32 in Carroll Gardens this morning, Awl co-founder Choire Sicha reported a wait time of 20-30 minutes because of malfunctioning scanning machines," they report.

Many of New York state's systems are also manufactured by Sequoia/Dominion, though the city itself uses systems made by ES&S, the nation's largest e-voting company, and one with its own long and storied history of failure and inaccurate counting. (See a brief history of ES&S failures here.)

Read more: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10352

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[ReRe]

1. Yeah...

... both Parties will say everything went smooth as butter via the MSM and America will never know the difference. Brad who???

Politicians of both parties must like our election system pretty well, as neither Party ever does anything about these poorly administered elections. Every single election now, something is fucked up. Not enough ballots, machines counting more votes than people registered, lines around the block as only one or two voting machines available in a heavily registered precinct, and on and on and on.

Just another one of those days...

[Scalded Nun]

2. Keep this in mind, folks

This is just beginning, and is just what is being seen and reported.

Imagine what is going on that cannot be seen.

Testing time before 2014.

[Kelvin Mace]

3. They failed,

whether intentionally or not I do not know, to calibrate the screens on the Virginia touchscreen systems.

NYC claim about scanners not booting up is very troubling as this is pretty reliable tech and if there were problems with the machines they should have shown up when they were taken out of storage and tested. My guess is no one tested them, expecting them to just work.

Though I worry less about NYC, since they have tangible ballots and VA does not.

Idiots.

[onenote]

12. In my part of Virginia we have optical scanner/paper ballots

Not the touch screens we've had in past elections.

[Kelvin Mace]

19. Of the various methods for counting ballots

OpScan is the best in that you still have a paper ballot you can recount if there is a dispute. Properly audited and observed it is the best system we currently have.

[sakabatou]

4. No shit.

[Stevepol]

5. Germany's experience with e-voting is well to be reminded of.

In 2009, the German constitutional court, the court that settles constitutional questions, concluded after lengthy consideration that if electronic voting machines are used to count the votes, it is impossible to have a democracy. The main reasons they cited were that in a democracy, the AVERAGE VOTER had to be able to understand how to verify the vote and had to be able to feel confident that the reported vote count was accurate. This, the court said, was not possible with electronic voting machines since only computer experts could actually authenticate the vote. They also pointed out the many errors that voting machines had made in the past and the ease with which it would theoretically be possible to maliciously program the computer so as to give a fraudulent vote total. Thus, the court ruled that e-voting was not to be used in German elections from that time forward. Here's a link to an article about this ruling:

http://www.edri.org/edri-gram/number7.5/no-evoting-germany

In any case, it seems pretty obvious to me that when the vote is either impossible to verify or when there is no requirement to verify the vote or no way to verify it after the election is over, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE A DEMOCRACY.

It's possible to have a cyber democracy of course, which is what we have in the US, sort of like a somewhat more sophisticated version of Dungeons and Dragons.

[DFW]

6. My wife could tell you horror stories (she's German and we live in Germany)

One election day, some years back, she went to vote, and was told at the polling place that she couldn't vote here (near Düsseldorf) because she resided in München (Munich), at the other end of Germany. She protested that they made a mistake, because she had never in her life lived in München. They said their computer said she lived in München, so she lived in München and couldn't vote here. She demanded they look up the registered residence of our two daughters, then aged 7 and 5. I didn't yet have a legal residence here, and so was not listed anywhere. The two girls were indeed listed at our house near Düsseldorf. She then demanded the election officials either arrest her on the spot for child abandonment or let her vote.

They let her vote.

In the aftermath, they agreed to change her residence to the true one, but never managed to erase her fictitious "previous" residence in München. That was beyond their competence. She has to this day no idea how long she supposedly lived there. Only the city's computer knows, and it isn't telling.

[truedelphi]

7. Your wife has my sympathy.

The digitalized society scares me silly.

I have already been close to having things go terribly wrong, medically speaking, on account of erroneous data entered into my patient records. Luckily I was conscious and pretty feisty, but if I have a stroke, and my "chart" shows I take a med I don't, what then?

Election-wise -- Having tried way back in 2004 to have Democratic leadership wake up as to the realities of Black Box voting, and knowing that my then Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey thought the 2004 election was stolen, I felt some relief.

But the top people in the Dem party fail to care. Possibly because in some places in the country, "glitches" are to their advantage? Or because they are in collusion with the Republicans?

I take no comfort in knowing that both Al Gore and John Kerry failed to counter any of the 2000 and 2004 vote problems. In fact, in Kerry's case, he broke a major problem he had made to progressive voters: that he would use an army of lawyers to see to it that any needed recounts were performed.

But Kerry resigned within 24 hours anyway. Only because of Ralph Nader and David Cobb, both of them independents, did money get supplied to voting activists like Andy Stephenson and Susan Truitt, so that the vote recount on John Kerry's behalf in Ohio could proceed.

[Coyotl]

8. He who controls the voter registrations controls the elections...old story in many rigged elections.

Not the least of which, this tactic helped steal Gore's lead in Florida 2000.

[Wilms]

9. We warned NY.

And guess who was the WORST in responding to e-voting risks. The DEMOCRATS. Yep.

Granted, the repubs who wanted to keep levers were largely motivated by the fact that they're a lot cheaper to own and maintain.

Bo Lipari and his New Yorkers for Verified (sic) Voting did voters a terrible disservice.

[brooklynite]

17. The lever machine had a high breakdown rate when we used this in September.

I'll stick to the paper ballots and scanners.

[Wilms]

27. I would love to see the documentation.

And I don't mean headline. Story after story headline were doom and gloom. Read down and ask if the headline was justified.

But keep on repeating the lie.

[Rebellious Republican]

10. I have been saying this for years!

Corporate owned machines = Corporate owned votes.

[Dopers_Greed]

11. If only people got as upset about voting glitches...

As they did about the healthcare.gov glitches.

[DirtyDawg]

13. I'm tellin ya...

...they're at it again. Republicans - when in doubt, or when all else fails...just steal the damn thing...and you can count on Democrats to do nothing but complain and the media to act as if it's just too bazaar to believe...but believe it cause they've done it so much already, that they know it'll work.

[hue]

14. Déjà vu all over again... (WI)

[snot]

15. Wake up, DU'er's! This is no accident.

Dig into it and you will see. Here's one starting point – check out the info in the replies: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1091203

[elleng]

16. CAN'T STAND IT!

Never again true, fair elections in the U.S.

[brooklynite]

18. It must be a conspiracy!

Everyone knows that Boards of Elections never have problems with voting equipment....

[iandhr]

20. At least with the optical scan ballots in NYC...

... there is a paper trail.

[truedelphi]

23. the problem there, is that it is to the discretion of the Local Registrar of Voters as to how much

It would cost to recount the ballots.

In Marin County Calif., charming but suspicious Registrar of Voters Michael Smith wanted roughly one dollar per ballot for a recount. (About $ 106,000 to recount 101,000 ballots.) And money had to be paid first, before the recount would proceed.

In other counties, the ballots are simply re-run through the machines. Not sure that is much help.

[markpkessinger]

29. Now if they could just print the ballots in a font size larger than 6-points . . .q

. . . and preferably a higher contrast ink color (i.e., NOT light blue on white!), we'll be making progress.

[virgdem]

21. I just voted in Virginia...

I voted on the electronic touch screen and the candidate for Lt. Governor was completely missing. I called one of the so called helpers and she tried to help me. We could not press the back button-the screen was stuck-so she tried to punch the button and in the process of punching the button, either inadvertently or intentionally cast the ballot for me. I was pissed to say the least. I had to vote for LT Gov by provisional ballot. What a Phucked up system. I wish they'd go back to the optical scanner that was used previously. I just hope that the rest of the ballot was cast as it showed, or my vote didn't count at all. At least my husband didn't have any problems this morning. One thing that I'm glad about-I got to cast a vote for the Attorney General (Herring), and Northam is on track to hopefully win.

These election workers don't know what they are doing. They need additional education on how to properly assist voters who are having problems with these damned electronic machines.

[JEB]

22. Pencil on paper best known technology for voting.

Hand count with observers.

[blkmusclmachine]

24. Hack The Vote

[tofuandbeer]

25. Back to stones in a jars.

[Cryptoad]

26. To Parphase Stalin

It doesn't matter who votes, it matters who counts the votes!

[Scuba]

28. Paper ballots, hand counted, in public, cameras rolling, nothing less.

[questionseverything]

30. illegal to hand count in virginia...

Fairfax County does use the Premier (formerly Diebold) AccuVote optical scan systems. That county happens to be where Democrat Jennifer Boysko is trailing by just 56 votes and has requested a recount. So no problem, exercise a tight chain of custody, publicly hand count the op scan paper ballots and we'll know who really won--just like they did in Palm Beach County, Florida where three losing candidates turned out to be the winning candidates, right?

No, not in Virginia [emphasis added]:

Paper ballots initially counted by hand are to also be recounted by hand...Additional ballots to be counted by hand include ballots tabulated by optical scanners that contain "write-in votes, overvotes, and undervotes," and "any ballots not accepted by the tabulator, and any ballots for which a tabulator could not be programmed to meet the programming requirements." However, all other ballots tabulated by optical scanners are retabulated by machine.

And the absolute kicker is that the State of Virginia, in its infinite wisdom, added a legislative provision to insure that, at least, per statute, no court will ever question the wisdom of trusting the outcome of our supposedly public elections to whatever takes place within the electronic bowels of the machines.

“There shall be only one redetermination of the vote in each precinct,” and “The recount proceeding shall be final and not subject to appeal.”

[truedelphi]

31. That sort of thing has happened here in the great and

Supposedly progressive state of California.

In fact, in getting to know many of the Registrars of Voters, I have only met one out of the 57 officials that seemed fair and honest. How can a state keep its voting processes honest when so many of those in charge want the elections to be controlled by other than the determination of voters?

[questionseverything]

32. we the people have to be able to oversee

EVERY STEP IN THE ELECTION PROCESS

otherwise its a sham