Reply #39: I think I said vote switching DURING an election is impossible on levers. [View All]

[Bill Bored]

If not, that's what I meant. You're not going to say it's impossible with software I hope!

With levers then, pre- and post- election procedures handle the rest. And they are VERY SIMPLE and do NOT rely on statistics, flawed software certification processes, or I.T. security that most people have no idea how to implement. The fraud is contained if the lever machines are tested and inspected and the totals are copied immediately after the election. This is how it works in NY. It's only when SOFTWARE enters the mix that things can go horribly wrong.

And you have proved it with Chautauqua, thank you very much! Software was used to fix those results, although there may have been an easily explained lever glitch because someone didn't follow a procedure. That gave a candidate a clearly impossible number of votes, which had NO effect on the electoral outcome, but should NOT have been certified.

But the software error (or fraud) raised the perceived undervote rate for the entire county by 300%!

As to lever hacks, accounts of what may be possible, that do not take into account FEASIBLE procedures that may be used to prevent it, do not impress me and they should not impress you either. I'm NOT convinced, that what we need to do to keep scanners and paper ballots safe, is at all FEASIBLE -- and it's not yet even on the table in NY. It's unconscionable to be advocating for lever replacement until those laws and regulations are on the books and we have a reasonable expectation that the counties CAN AND WILL comply.

The point about CA-4 is that there was an audit and no one seems to know what the results are or why there wasn't a full recount in an election with such a narrow margin, even though statisticians said that with Bowen's "emergency" regs, a full recount was imminent. So where is it? And does anyone actually know how to read those regs in the first place?

Finally, in NY, you cannot correct precinct scanner errors after the election, if the courts say the ballots have NOT been proven to have been "preserved inviolate." In the State of NY, there is a legal PRESUMPTION that they have NOT been so preserved, and before you can recount post-election, that presumption has to be disproved to a court (except for absentee and emergency ballots).

I'm sorry but you don't know the case law on this in NY and because of that, I think you are putting too much blind faith in the whole post-election audit/recount paradigm here. You are also allowing your frustration with the Exit-Poll True Believers (EPTBs) to cloud your judgment about Novick's expertise in other areas where she is probably more qualified than most of the attorneys in the State at this point, because unlike them, she has done the legal research. That's NOT just reading the Election Law that's currently on the books, even though there are MAJOR contradictions therein as a result of ERMA. The fact that she might draw incorrect conclusions about the meaning of an exit poll is utterly irrelevant!

You don't like it when the EPTBs tell you that you don't know how to read polls, do you? So try not to suggest that Novick doesn't know how to read law. That's all I'm saying.

Oh, and on edit: I forgot to mention that HAVA does NOT ban lever machines.