Small vote manipulations can swing elections

[Carolab]

http://www.wheresthepaper.org/p43_di_francoWebPage.htm

Or, one might alternatively title this "How Bush Stole the Election".

[Vodid]

1. Thoughts about touchscreen "calibration".

I'm a perennial lurker, and cannot start a thread, but I had a thought recently that I haven't heard voiced. I hope it is okay to mention it here.

Using the touchscreen machines, I assume "calibration" to mean that the box one sees on the screen for each candidate, correlates exactly to where one touches the screen. But assume that the "touch" part of the box is expanded several millimeters for one particular candidate, perhaps into his opponents box. Over thousands of voters, this would certainly cause a vote shift to the candidate with the larger touchscreen box, even though the visual box on the screen appeared equal for both candidates. It is a plausible explanation for why many people said their vote for Kerry registered Bush, and since it is just a matter of coordinates in the computer, and something that needs to be adjusted (calibrated) anyway, easy to implement, and easy to fix after the fact.

I hope somebody reads this and considers it.

It came to me when I thought of how simple it is to make a di (singular for dice) come up more frequently with a desired number by simply rounding the corners very slightly on the opposite face from the desired number.

[electropop]

3. could be

I have actually written touchscreen software, and it can be finicky. It would be pretty easy to put in a little bias like that.

[ivorysteve]

2. So can we do some testing on these machines?

Now that the election is over, can't we do some quentifiable testing of the screen areas, using the machines as they were configured on Nov. 2? Wouldn't that be something of a smoking gun? Or at least a bullet?

[roseBudd]

4. Surely the outdated soon to be abandoned Shrouptronics of Franklin County

can be obtained and analyzed? Shrouptronic AKA Danaher Controls.

Considering the Gahanna precinct 4000 vote "glitch" that favored Bush this would seem to be the place to start.

[Zan_of_Texas]

5. Touch screens have a number of potential problems.

1. There can be secret "buttons" programmed in a certain place on the screen, that only an administrator (or vote thief) knows about.

2. Apparently (although this is not proven), the screens can become off-kilter by transportation.

3. The touchscreens can be programmed to default on one candidate, and will vote for that candidate unless the voter presses the other -- sometimes more than once. There is quite a bit of reporting that this happened in a number of states, on various companies' DRE touchscreen equipment, in the Kerry/Bush contest. In fact, it has happened on DRE dial equipment made by Hart InterCivic as well.


Here's one in-the-field report from a year ago, in a VA suburb. The manufacturer is Advanced Voting Solutions of Frisco, Texas. Interestingly, it was the Republican Party there that complained about procedures, and then the touchscreen anomaly was discovered after that.


Fairfax Judge Orders Logs Of Voting Machines Inspected

By David Cho
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 6, 2003; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6291-2003Nov5?language=printer

It took more than 21 hours from the time polls closed Tuesday night for Fairfax County, the putative high-tech capital of the region, to get final election results from its new, computerized vote machines. Widespread problems in the system, which the county paid $3.5 million to install, also opened the door to possible election challenges by party leaders and candidates.

School Board member Rita S. Thompson (R), who lost a close race to retain her at-large seat, said yesterday that the new computers might have taken votes from her. Voters in three precincts reported that when they attempted to vote for her, the machines initially displayed an "x" next to her name but then, after a few seconds, the "x" disappeared.

In response to Thompson's complaints, county officials tested one of the machines in question yesterday and discovered that it seemed to subtract a vote for Thompson in about "one out of a hundred tries," said Margaret K. Luca, secretary of the county Board of Elections.

"It's hard not to think that I have been robbed," said Thompson, whose 77,796 recorded votes left her 1,662 shy of reelection. She is considering her next step, and said she was wary of challenging the election results: "I'm not sure the county as a whole is up for that. I'm not sure I'm up for that." Meanwhile, attorneys for local Republicans and GOP candidate Mychele B. Brickner, who lost her bid to chair the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, went before a Circuit Court judge yesterday morning, asking him to keep 10 voting machines under lock and key and not to include their tabulations in the results. The machines, from nine precincts scattered across the county, broke down about midday Tuesday and were brought to the county government center for repairs and then returned to the polls -- a violation of election law, Republicans argued.

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