Ohio punchcards and punchcard machines brainstorm

[roseBudd]

I have spent a lot of time thinking about if I wanted
to cheat with punchcards I would manipulate some
machines and divert those machines to democratic
precincts. Since a new guard sheet is prepared for
each election, determining who creates guard sheets in
each county with anomalous results could shed light
over whether spoilage "happens" or is "facilitated."

From:
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/%7Ejones/voting/votomat/animate.html



"A new guard sheet is prepared for each election.
Holes punched in the guard sheet allow ballots to be
punched only in certain positions.
It is highly unlikely that the piece of chad will tear
loose at both ends at the same time. Thus, it is
likely to be in a trapdoor configuration initially.
If the T-bars were missing or badly worn, the piece of
chad would not grip the end of the punch, and as a
result, even with a needle point stylus, it would not
tear loose."

I have seen some statistical analysis of Cuyahoga that
seemed to indicate some white liberal precincts also
had unexpectedly high spoilage rates.

If the machines were manipulated the guard sheets or the T-bars
might be evidence of intentional tampering.

Alternately the ballots themselves could be slightly
different between GOP and dem precincts. One company
Dayton Legal Blank produced all the punchcard ballots
used in Ohio.

[ramblin_dave]

1. I wonder about candidate placement and central tabulators

I've seen claims that candidate placement varies on the card holders so no one gets the 'first on the list' advantage. Is this true? Does it vary within a county? Is so, how do the central tabulators get set up to cope with this? How is it determined which hole in a card is for which candidate? Could someone manipulate this to reverse the count based on which precinct the cards are coming from?

[truehawk]

14. Yes, precincts that voted together had different ballot order

Take a look at this diary,

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/2/44647/2043

[fob]

2. So you're saying "fraud" could be as simple as a heavier weight ballot

paper in demo counties that doesn't "de-chad" as easily and results in more spoiled ballots.

Seems kinda far-fetched that someone would go to such lengths as to worry about the thickness of paper. I'm sure the Ohio SOS sould be right on top of something like that, right?

/madness

[roseBudd]

3. Maybe not heavier but containing different fibers

Something that only forensic analysis would reveal. Alternatively the die cutting of the ballots could be off in certain lots of ballots.

[truehawk]

15. Teh heavier the stock the easier to get the chads to come away cleanly n/t

[momzno1]

19. apparently, heavier stock is harder for the card readers

to accurately read. There was speculation earlier that the paper weight of punchcards in poor, and liberal areas was heavier. This would ironically fit with Blackwell's refusal of voter registrations on the wrong weight paper. Maybe he had a "paper eureka moment" in his evil planning....<G>

[Dolphyn]

4. Worn out T-bars!

"If the T-bars were missing or badly worn, the piece of
chad would not grip the end of the punch, and as a
result, even with a needle point stylus, it would not
tear loose."

So, fixing the vote is simple; just make sure the oldest
machines go to the precincts you want to suppress.

"would not grip the end of the punch" suggests it could
also be done by using a dull puncher.

:mad: :puke:

[Wordie]

5. My god...that could do it, couldn't it? Can that be checked????

[roseBudd]

8. Is there a way to visually segregate and route punchcard machines

to GOP vs. dem precincts? Serial numbers? Who is in charge of delivery? I believe this type of suppression would have most likely occured in Cuyahoga. Again I do remember a DU poster finding a couple precincts in Cuyahoga that were white liberal precincts that had high undervote rates for president. If we are to believe punchcard spoilage is higher in some dem precincts because of education and inexperience with voting, the white liberal precincts should not have high spoilage unless spoilage is facilitated rather then just happening.

[roseBudd]

6. Here is a picture of a punchcard ballot

[truehawk]

13. Look all the way over to the right, and you will see the alignment posts

If the posts on a voting machine are moved .050", then it becomes hard to detach chads.

Move the posts half an inch or so and the wrong row of holes line up under the ballot sheet.

[truehawk]

16. one other thing, the precinct assignment at the bottem

Adjacent precincts had different canidate order.

Look on the extream left, for the precinct in which cast.

If the precinct disignation was filled out so that the ballot would be counted on the wrong counter, that would cause switched votes, unless the voter notices that the ballot is for a different precinct than that shown on the ballot sheet. And how many people check that?

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

7. Wasn't the majority of those "spoiled" votes were votes for President?

I believe I read that.

So why just for those votes, unless the tbars were deliberately tampered with. Otherwise, if they were just old machines, wouldn't all of the tbars be worn?

[roseBudd]

9. There are 93,000 ballots in Ohio that punchcard reading machines

cannot read, because of undervoting for president in OH.

[Quakerfriend]

10. Very interesting

Especially in light of Lady Blackwells tantrums re: the type/weight of paper used in voter registrations. Did he have this already on the brain?}(

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

11. That's what I thought. Thank you and thank you too for your work! :)

[Wordie]

12. Is there any way of tying a high level of undervotes to specific machines?

I don't know if this has happened, but it should be checked. Don't they have to certify the machines? Does that mean they test each individual machine, or only test the TYPE of machine?

[Igel]

33. Or overvoting. n/t

[truehawk]

29. There may BE no hanging chads, look at these Sample Ballots

http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/BOE/ballots/PDF/PARMA08E.pdf
http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/BOE/ballots/PDF/PARMA08D.pdf

If you voted for Kerry in Parma 8D and the ballot was read in Parma 8E, you voted for a disqualified spot.

If you voted for Kerry in Parma 8E and the ballot was read in Parma 8D, you got Bush.

Now I don't know if these preticular precincts voted at the same polling place or not, but multiple precincts at one location seems to have been common. Someone who knows Ohio streets could check the precincts which voted together.

[roseBudd]

23. or file down the T-bars, they are history anyways as they will no longer

be in use in 2006.

Apparently there are positions that are less desirable for a candidate's spot to be due to chad buildup.

See:

http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/chad.html#Votomatic

Looking into this, I disassembled a Votomatic voting machine made by Computer Election Systems Incorporated, and found that it has a horizontal steel brace across the back of the mechanism. This brace is behind punch positions 4 and 5 (assigned, respectively, to Pat Buchanan and Al Gore on the now infamous Palm Beach County butterfly ballot). As a result, while there was room for a huge volume of chad behind the other punch positions, probably more than the 50,000 pieces quoted, it seemed that it might be possible to block these positions after only a few hundred votes! This could explain the complaints from voters about their need to repeatedly force the voting stylus before it would punch through the card.

In casting 450 experimental votes in position 5 on a 228 position Votomatic ballot, starting with a clean Votomatic machine, there were no jams that required hammering, but at several points during the experiment, there was a small added resistance to punching as minor chad jams were pushed aside. When the machine was opened after the experiment, there was a large but loosely packed body of chad between the support brace and the bottom sides of the T-strips, and chad was wedged between the T-strips for a distance of several centimeters above and below ballot position 5.

[LisaL]

17. Actually, you don't even need to mess with the ballots at all.

Just give people wrong instruction booklet.
For instance, if Kerry is number 1, and Cobb is number 2, but instructions say Kerry is number 2, and Cobb is number 1, people who wanted to vote for Kerry would end up voting for Cobb if they punch out # 2 as their wrong instructions tell them. Punch card ballots do not have any names, only numbers.
I am pretty sure that is what actually happened in precincts where third party candidates got crazy number of votes.

[truehawk]

18. Yes, any way mismatch the punchcard precinct designation & counting prgm

[k8conant]

27. The booklets are attached to the punch card station

...at least they are here in Jefferson County, WV.

OTOH, my son voted absentee and they also gave him a punch card and stylus to fill out with a station!

[skids]

31. And how sure are you...

That the poll workers pointed you to the correct machine?

Or that they wrote the correct precinct on your ballot?

[jamboi]

20. Impressed w/ the time you invested in this. Cool. n/t

[Chili]

21. jmknapp created some killer graphics on this...

...which I put on my site last week (based on the raw data from the EIR calls made to the hotline on election day):

http://shadowbox.i8.com/Suppression/ohio/ohiomachines.htm

I've been hollering about this for a week, but no one in the media is listening. It's not as glamorous as fraud, it's uglier, and they don't want to touch it. Nobody wants to touch it.

[truehawk]

22. They never do.

[roseBudd]

24. Have you made your investigations available to Cliff Arnebeck?

Lawyers can ask for discovery and have access to witnesses.

[Gregorian]

25. Just several of many possible problems

One direction of alignment could be critical. Depending on how the geometry of the t-bar assembly, if for some reason the ballot is not aligned with the t-bars, there could be problems with the ballot punching action. If for some reason the ballot were to not engage in the voting fixture properly, due to buildup of paper, or some other debris occluding the alignment surface(s), the voting blank, or chad, may not properly punch due to it's misalignment with respect to the t-bars.

As a mechanical engineer, I would need to spend quite a bit of time studying this voting fixture in order to fully understand it's modes of weakness.

If I remember, the voting punch is made as dull as possible. I believe it even has an enlarged punching end. But there could be a multitude of designes and or manufacturers.

The ballot itself is just as important as the voting fixture, as far as inducing an element of error. The chads are made with a punching die. There may or may not be a standard on how much force is needed to punch the chads. That could translate into some chads that hang, and some that break free.

I would expect negligible wear of the t-bars. Paper against steel under this circumstance would seem to be a minimal wearing operation.

It's just my guess, but I imagine the greatest affect on counting votes would not be due to the voting fixture, but the rules regarding chad configuration. But still, that would depend, perhaps, on the way the punching operation resulted due to problems with the voting device.

It's hard to say without literally testing the voting apparatus. I can only use my own mechanical experience to say that location of the voting ballot might be the most susceptible means of causing error. That, and the piercing or blanking operations done on the voting cards themselves. That is also a study unto itself. Types of card and how the chads are created. It's safe to say that they are not equal. As the blanking dies for the paper become dull, there are limits on when they are replaced or sharpened. Those which are stamped when the dies are dull, would be harder to push out while voting.

I wish I could spend time on this. But it could take a good deal of time to just determine whether there are multiple designs of voting machines. And perhaps even different designs of voting cards.

[roseBudd]

28. A social services agency on Cincinnati's infamous Vine St. in

Over-the-Rhine had a punchcard voting machine for the poor to practice on. I emailed the professor who is the author of:
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/chad.html#recommendations

But have not heard back from him.

Here is a picture of The mechanism of a Votomatic punch, seen from the back.


Positions of obstructions inside the Votomatic (1st) and Data Punch (2nd) mechanisms, relative to a 228 position ballot.




Relationship of punched card columns to internal braces in the punch mechanism Votomatic Data-Punch
Over a brace 64,67 25,29,30,43,47,48,60,61,65
Partly over a brace 33,34,36,37 24,26,42,44,64
Adjacent to a brace 63,65,66,68 28,31,46,49,59,62,66

[ramblin_dave]

26. I still have questions about the counting process

I have this idea that punch cards from the various precincts are brought back to a central location in each county for counting. But if the holes for each candidate vary by precinct, then the counting machine must be somehow configured to reflect that. How exactly is this done? Couldn't someone monkey with this process and cause votes for one candidate to go to another?

Also, if there's a recount, the observers will be looking at cards with holes and will have to know which hole is for which candidate. Is this correlation published somewhere? I'm sure no observer will know how the names lined up with which holes in the precincts except by what election officials (who may try to rig the recount) tell them.

[Wordie]

30. Here is some background information that may be helpful to you:

This site has a chart that lists the type of equipment that Ohio's 10 largest counties used in November 2004. It also lists each county's residual vote rate (the sum of overvotes and undervotes) for the 2000 presidential election.

http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/equipment_machines03.html

[Snivi Yllom]

32. If you really wanted to commit fraud there is a much easier way to do it

You get a stack of punched ballots.

You take a stylus and punch a hole all the way through the stack in the chad corresponding to the candidate you want to win.

The votes already cast for this candidate are unaffected.

The votes for any other candidates become overvotes and are not counted.

[Igel]

34. I've heard this before, but

find it hard to believe that a person could easily punch through more than a few cards. Maybe with a different tool (to get a better grip), or a press. But I also suspect that after the stack were a dozen or so cards thick that you'd start trashing them.

I'd want to see where it was done (with video).

Just to add my 2 cents (maybe not in the best place), I suspect that even if every voter really did want to vote for president and every other office/measure on the ballot, you'd get undervotes. My first time in LA I didn't know what to expect; I got most of the way through the process before I finally felt the "thunk" as the stylus actually perforated the card. Checked, and only a few holes were punched. Not sure everybody would have noticed.

[AnarchoFreeThinker]

35. easier to hide punchcard fraud

Change cardstock/paperbond too a heavier weight for use in those areas you expect the other guy to get more votes--instant hanging chads. A slight change in weight wouldn't even be detectable to a casual observer or official.

[newyawker99]

36. Hi dmsRoar!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: