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Crucial side discussion from the O'Dell thread: How did fraud occur?

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Time for change Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 04:49 AM
Original message
Crucial side discussion from the O'Dell thread: How did fraud occur?
I, like many of you who participate in this forum, believe that our best chance for meaningful election reform is exposure of what happened in the 2004 election to the American public. The exit poll data may or may not hold the key to this.

If the E-M data is ever released for independent analysis, the testing of well thought out and plausible hypotheses on how fraud occurred will be needed. Therefore, the development of such hypotheses IMO will be more important than how ardently we believe that the 2004 election was stolen.

A discussion on this issue was initiated on the O'Dell thread. However, that thread has become too large, and furthermore it is upsetting to many people because of its emphasis on dissension within USCV, an organization which many of us, including myself, have looked to with great hope. Therefore, I thought that it would be good to start a new thread on this particular issue.
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TruthIsAll Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 05:07 AM
Response to Original message
1. I was thinking the same thing
I suggest we copy the most relevant posts to the new thread in order to bring the main points into focus (maybe 30 of the 400 posts as a starter). There are a few of mine I would like to include. Perhaps you can cull the list, include the posts, and then ask us to augment the list if necessary.
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Time for change Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 11:24 AM
Response to Reply #1
3. Good idea TIA
Please transfer anything over that you think will be useful.

I will do the same, concentrating on specific issues that I feel may be particularly important -- but I'll wait till this afternoon, when I get home from work.
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tommcintyre Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 05:11 AM
Response to Original message
2. ANOTHER THREAD:What is our best evidence/indicators of HOW it was stolen?
Edited on Thu Jun-16-05 05:17 AM by tommcintyre
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=362509

Topic Started: Mon Apr-25-05 46 posts total
What is our best evidence/indicators of HOW it was stolen?
We have plenty of evidence to indicate the election WAS stolen. It ranges from the USCV election poll discrepancy report, statistics to show that the anomalies favored Bush, states (like Wyoming) had more votes than registered voters (106% turnout), etc. And we have substantial links we can point people to that contain this evidence.

We know the scenario of WHY it was done (motive). The scenario on election day: By mid-day the Bush camp is despondent, and the Kerry camp jubilant the exit polls clearly show a Kerry win. It fact, it has been documented that Karen Hughes informed Bush that he had lost. But Karl Rove wasn't worried. He went to work on the phones. By that evening, everything reversed, and Bush had a most "improbable" victory. (Watch the recent episode of PBS' FrontLine if you want to see most of this unfold.)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/architect/view

But HOW was it done? This is thrown up as a most common obstacle to even accepting the POSSIBILITY the Bush didn't really win.

I don't agree that it should be an obstacle to having a serious investigation to determine IF Bush really won - the existing body of evidence (mentioned above) should be MORE then enough to justify it. If there is a "reasonable doubt" (and there certainly is), it should be investigated.

But, it still would help to trigger this needed investigation if we could provide more specific details as to how they may have pulled it off. What was actually done?

The speculation runs the gamut from: many people were involved, and they did what was necessary without centralized direction; to Karl (and company) hacked it at the central tabulators, there was secret code on the machines to carry it out (Curtis testimony), the machines were manipulated through wireless communication, etc.

I thought I'd throw this out there in case anyone has found links that rise above the level of speculation as to how it was done.
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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 12:34 PM
Response to Reply #2
4. The first step
Is always to put out months of polling data and press releases about how close the outcome of the election will be.

We saw this in Georgia in 2002, in the primaries in 2004 and now in the election of 2004.

This step begins months and months before an election and is ingrained in the public's perception long before the polls open.

Our first step of research should be to collect polling data from several sources to document this process.

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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 12:43 PM
Response to Reply #2
5. The second step
In electronic voting counties, who set up the ballots on the machines? We see in Georgia and the northeast that a central location has been "hired" to define the elections - before the elections.

Who are the paid consultants who are writing the definition of the election and what are their connections?

We know it's LHS in the northeast and KSU in Georgia. What about Maryland? What about the other electronic voting states?

Can someone in those states volunteer to research that issue?

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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 12:44 PM
Original message
The third step
Vendor involvement in the election process.

How many ES&S/Diebold/Sequoia "technicians" are on the ground during the conduct of an election? What are these technicians doing in polling places? What kind of supervision are they under? Have they signed oaths to conduct a free, fair and honest election or are they immune from those oaths?

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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 12:48 PM
Response to Reply #2
8. The fourth step
Vendors involved in the tabulation process.

Were vendor "technicians" holding the hands of the elections officials during tabulation? Were the vendor technicians actually DOING the tabulation?

Grab your state, and find the answers to those questions.
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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 01:01 PM
Response to Reply #2
9. The fifth step
Elections officials "trust" the vote tally from the computer as the impeachable total even if the number of voters don't agree with the computer.

Grab your state and compare voter turnout to votes cast on the machines, in absentee balloting and determine if the numbers agree.

Our preliminary research has found several states with more votes than voters.

Pick your state/county/precinct and do the math.

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Time for change Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 04:31 PM
Response to Reply #9
17. In states or precincts where there were more votes than voters
Do you know what kind of investigations have been done?
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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 05:36 PM
Response to Reply #17
20. I'm currently working with a group in Georgia
on it. As for other states, I have no idea.

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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 01:03 PM
Response to Reply #2
10. The sixth step
Blank voted ballots.

Find our how many blank voted ballots occurred - how many voters went to the polls, stood in line, walked up to the machine and cast no ballot.

Our preliminary research is indicating this number is very large in states with electronic voting.

Blank voted ballots are not reported in final election results.
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 02:32 PM
Response to Reply #2
16. Since the election was, basically, unaudited and unrecounted--a third of..
...it being unauditable and unrecountable (no paper trail--a quite deliberate condition created by Tom Delay's blockade of a paper trail in Congress), we really do have to speculate, deduce and think backwards from the facts.

I think there is almost no question that the election was essentially stolen electronically-- and I think this partly because of the elaborate lengths that Bushites went to, to set it up that way.

They used HAVA ('00-inspired election reform) to completely corrupt our election system with $4+ billion larded onto the states, much of it poured into the pockets of the major Bush donors and activists at Diebold and ES&S who sold shoddy, expensive, unreliable, insecure, and extremely fraud-prone electronic voting systems to the states; and failed to provide any common sense controls (and blockaded those proposed by Democrats). Think about it. They permitted "trade secret" proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by Bush partisans, for the counting of our votes; they fought any paper audit trail; they permitted lavish lobbying of state officials, and failed to ban "revolving door" employment (the former CA Republican Sec of State who bought Sequoia systems now works for Sequoia, as does his chief aid, etc.).

The fact that we have to speculate, deduce and think backwards from the facts--most particularly because of the lack of controls on electronic voting systems--IS PART OF THE EVIDENCE OF FRAUD, and points directly at electronic voting as the means.

In this out of control fascist coup that we are suffering, we sometimes forget the basics: that elections have to be TRANSPARENT to be valid, and that partisan control of the vote count IS NOT OKAY.

We also have to SERIOUSLY QUESTION any story about the election that comes out of the White House, for instance, that Karen Hughes told Bush he was losing. When was the last time you heard anything truthful out of Karen Hughes' mouth, or Bush's, or Karl Rove's? I think it's much more likely the whole thing was play-acting--part of the plan. And how about that howler of Rove's recently (also touted around prior to the election) that the Bushites had an "invisible" get out the vote campaign? The fact is that the Democrats blew them away in new voter registration in 2004, nearly 60/40(!) and also blew them away among swing voters (most new voters, independent voters and Nader voters voted for Kerry). There is solid evidence for that. There is NO EVIDENCE for any "invisible" Rovian GOTV campaign.

So (need I repeat this?): Don't believe everything (or anything) your hear from Bushites.

Here's my speculation, based on my instincts on election night (when I first conceived the outline of it) and based on extensive review of the mountain of election fraud evidence since that time:

The election fraud scheme was well thought out, and well-planned in advance, and consisted of a main plan and several backup plans (contingency plans for a Kerry blow-out, which was clearly happening on 11/2):

Plan #1 required very few people and utilized the easy access to electronic voting systems that had been quite deliberately set up with the HAVA billions and lack of controls. One hacker, a couple of minutes, a few lines of code. "Back door," "front door," "side door"?--wireless? internal modems? pre-programmed and self-erasing?--we don't know the details yet because the evidence was quite deliberately hidden. They used this access to steal %'s of the vote, here and there, in many states, concentrating on the east coast (as TIA has shown) to flip the popular vote early on, and probably also with special focus on the battleground states (to secure the Electoral vote).

Plan #2 required a number of political operatives in certain states, and was an old-fashioned, Rovian vote-stealing and voter-intimidation scheme, involving Kenneth Blackwell, of course, in Ohio, Jeb Bush's machine in Florida, Texas Republicans (who made threatening phone calls to former felons in Ohio), the RNC-paid people in the west who were shredding Dem voter registrations, and other such blatant, bald-faced, highly visible thuggism.

Plan #3 was the "terrorist alert" plan, well set up by the many, phony "terrorist alerts" planted in the news just prior to the election. This is the backup plan that Wayne Madsen may have stumbled upon (payments to agents who would implement the plan, if needed). I'm fairly sure it was intended for the west and California in particular--to shut down major vote centers like Los Angeles with tied up freeways, etc.--and with Schwarzenegger now in place to duke it out with Democratic Sec of State Kevin Shelley over the validity of a partial vote. (They soon got rid of Shelley--who had sued Diebold and decertified their DREs in Calif. prior to the election.) I think this plan may also have something to do with Dick Cheney's weird, inexplicable flight to Hawaii two days before the election. (The V-P's plane in trouble over the Pacific???). (They put out the ridiculous story that Hawaii might go "red.")

Plans #1 and #2 took care of the Kerry blowout. Plan #3 wasn't needed (except in Warren County, Ohio, where the vote count was put into lockdown--all public monitors excluded--by a phony terrorist alert).

Plan #2 (Ohio, Florida, etc.) had pre-election, election day, and post-election elements to it (as did all parts of the plan). I have a feeling that old pols like Rove were not too confident in the promises of the new techie Bushites, and trusted his own thuggish methods more. The pre-election stuff went forward (Blackwell doing his best to limit Dem voter registration with new, arbitrary rules, such as the 80lb. paper requirement), but the election day stuff--highly visible, massive violations of the Voting Rights Act--was implemented because Kerry's vote was so big. (Guestimate: a 10% margin for Kerry.)

I was wondering why they would do anything that visible, when they had access to the electronic vote counts--and it may be because the electronic vote count fraud was pre-programmed to certain percentages, and could not be that easily changed. (This may be a clue to who, what and where.) When the Kerry landslide started happening, word went out to Blackwell and his operatives to short the Dem precincts on voting machines, to unfairly challenge long-registered voters and force "provisional" ballots upon them, and all the rest--highly visible, illegal or unethical actions--to at least secure the Electoral Vote in Ohio, while they implemented other components of Plan #1 (the electronic plan) such as election day access to vote counting systems (via internal modems? wireless? private company techs wandering around the central tabulators and "servicing" the machines?).

Plan #2 (thuggism) in Florida involved the pre-election purges of black voters, 50,000 absentee ballots "lost in the mail, and other such blatant fraud, and combined with Plan #1 (electronic) through Jeb Bush's onerous control of elections systems in Florida (legal action taken to prevent a paper trail, etc.). (The UC Berkeley statistical team found 130,000 to 260,000 "phantom votes" for Bush in Florida's three main Dem counties--Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach--in electronic vs. other voting methods. DU analyst "ignatzmouse" found a similar problem in No. Carolina--an inexplicable 9% edge to Bush in electronic voting.)

I think you have to have a narrative in your mind--a working hypothesis--to investigate such a massive, complex crime as this one. The more we study this election, the more we find evidence for the above narrative. The exit polls--and the thing that really sticks in my craw, the FALSIFICATION of the exit poll data on everybody's TV screens on election night (their ALTERING the exit poll data to hide the fact that Kerry won the exit polls, and to fit the data to the "official tally" Bush win)--is only one piece of this narrative. (What was THAT all about--a late night Rove phone call to the lapdog TV networks?).

Given the preelection polls (and Zogby saying that Bush could not win), the huge Democratic success in new voter registration, the stats on how new voters, independents and Nader voters voted--the big enthusiastic crowds for Kerry, the brainwashed, thoroughly "vetted," bussed in crowds for Bush (the loyalty oath signers)--and given all of the above--the deliberate setting up of a fraudulent election SYSTEM, and the evidence for INTENT to commit fraud--and...

now...

...Bush's astonishingly low approval rating, down to 35% (!), and consistently low over the last year, with 60% to 70% of Americans disapproving of every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic...

...it should not surprise us that Kerry won the exit polls. There really doesn't need to be an explanation for it. That anybody is trying to "explain" it (Edison-Mitofsky, for instance) is PART of the false, fraudulent, lying, non-transparent, invalid, undemocratic, tyrannical, illusion of an election that took place on 11/2/04.

They can't prove Bush won. So they lie. That's the sum of it. And they set it up that way--to be unprovable--in order to use illusions, rather than fact and legitimacy, as the key component of their power over us. They can't win on the facts. The fact is that they are lying, thieving mass murderers. They are not representative of the majority, and are not even close to being. They have no legitimacy. All they have is illusions, which Karl Rove & Co. have become quite skilled at manipulating, and which the lapdog news monopolies are helping to create.

If you have an election that can only be verified by inference--and all this evidence of a wrong outcome--you do not have a democracy. You have tyranny. And we must realize that NO AMOUNT OF FACTS AND "SMOKING GUNS" will automatically result in justice--especially given the news monopoly collusion on election night (and other egregious lapdogism, i.e., the Iraq war, Halliburton, the federal debt, 9/11, etc.).

Lord knows I'm not saying: don't investigate. I just think that we need to understand the whole picture of injustice and illegitimacy that we are looking at, and living through--and this bigger picture needs to inform the investigation and the search for truth.

We need to be thinking "outside the box." WHY are we SPENDING SO MUCH TIME defending exit polls that merely CONFIRM all other known facts--a mountain of evidence of a wrong outcome, and of means, motive, opportunity and intent?

I think TIA has the right approach to the exit polls. Show how impossible the final, tweaked number is (and other analytical revelations); search for the pattern of fraud (for instance, east to west); debunk any absurd "theories" that are thrown out as whitewashing; and, I would add, focus on the withholding of the data, and on the falsification of the polls on election night, because these two non-statistical facts not only tell us of the NEED to suppress the true exit poll results, they also tell us some things about the fraud plan itself.

For instance, they tell us that E/M was probably not a direct participant in the preelection and election day stages of the plan--their polls told the truth (a substantial Kerry victory, even after all the vote suppression)--but that E/M and the alphabet soup of news monopoly corporations that hired them clearly anticipated the need to suppress the exit polls, in their plan to "adjust" the exit polls to fit the official tally late that night, and in having the "reluctant Bush responder" theory handy, to be utilized if anyone cried foul--as well as this silly thing that they recently made up, about "enthusiastic pro-Kerry poll-takers." These built-in fudge factors indicate some direct guilt, but probably mostly pressure and arm-twisting (especially re: E/M).

Let me just back up here a moment to say that this election system--a new electronic voting system being tested out nationwide for the first time--cried out for proper verification. Exit polls are used worldwide for just this purpose--to verify elections and check for fraud--ESPECIALLY in an unusual circumstance like this (widespread suspicion of fraud in '00; new voting system, with all kinds of red flags over it). For E/M and the news monopolies to then design an exit poll with these fudge factors--the doctoring of the result (polluting the exit poll data with the official tally), the use of demographics, the withholding of the data, etc.--is serious malfeasance, in the first place.

So I'm not letting them off the hook, as to direct involvement in PLANNING a fraudulent election. I'm just trying to suss out the extent of the conspiracy. The electronic totals went from the Bush-company controlled electronic tabulators directly to AP, thence to the TV networks, which, late in the day, then began feeding the official tallies into the exit polls, changing the exit polls. The exit polls (in reality) continued to show a Kerry win, but those results were suppressed, the system shut down, and, later, a new exit poll model appeared, miraculously changed to a Bush win. It now appeared that Bush had won the exit polls AND the official tally--but only one of those things was true.

How do we know that AP wasn't fiddling with the official tally? (What was the security between the AP computer and the official central tabulators?) (AP had sole control of the official results being fed to the TV networks and other news monopolies.)

To me, the complicity of the news monopolies is much worse than the fact of a stolen election. Fascists will steal elections. We can count on it. But the news monopolies' and the pollsters' involvement in creating the illusion of a Bush win--at whatever stage of the game they became involved in it--has deprived us of one of our chief weapons against tyranny--journalistic integrity, the Fourth Estate.

I've gotten off on a tangent here--but maybe that's okay. My point is that we need to think backwards from the facts, and think creatively, and keep the CONTEXT always in mind. And we need to develop working hypotheses and narratives, and keep testing them against the facts. And we need to hesitate when someone rules something out just because it seems too big, or too improbable, or because it violates some illusion we have (for instance, that the news monopolies wouldn't act in concert to deliberately give us false election data--clearly they did so in the case of the exit polls!).






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Time for change Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 06:13 PM
Response to Reply #16
22. That pretty much covers everything
I've had most of the same thoughts, but I'm having a real hard time thinking about how any of this could be shown, particularly with regard to analysis of the exit polls.

I too thought that this would have been done mostly electronically. But the E-M exit poll data show the lever machines to be associated with the largest discrepancy between the exit polls and the official vote count. Do you have any ideas on that?

And please see my post number 18, and let me know if you have any ideas on that.
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librechik Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 07:56 PM
Response to Reply #16
30. beautiful--Thanks! n/t
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Time for change Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 05:27 PM
Response to Reply #2
19. Thanks for pointing out your previous thread
I was not aware of it. There's a lot of information there to get through. Any posts in particular that you would suggest looking at?

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glitch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 12:44 PM
Response to Original message
6. Their modus is blitzkreig so I would expect to find fraud everywhere
that it is possible, from the corporate tabulators to individual machine-flipping to old-fashioned suppression of turn-out.
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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 12:45 PM
Response to Reply #6
7. That may be true, but
Edited on Thu Jun-16-05 12:49 PM by Boredtodeath
we need the EVIDENCE. Let's go find it.

DU is best at research. Let's turn the hounds of DU loose.

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glitch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 01:17 PM
Response to Reply #7
11. Forensic audits of all the computer equipment involved. Not gonna get that
Edited on Thu Jun-16-05 01:40 PM by glitch
without an official investigation, warrants and seizures. Not that these shredders would obey the law and provide them under investigation. But we can't (and don't want to, that would taint the evidence) investigate these machines until it's an official case.

We already have proof of voter suppression and machine flipping from eye witness testimony.
That and all the anomalies from the statisticians already give us prima facia cause to investigate.
We even already have some individual lawsuits going, possibly getting discovery and building precedent.
But we do need an official Federal investigation, which may already be in the early stages, Thank You John Conyers.

Bug Congress for that investigation, even the repukes. They won't want to go down with junior when they see him sinking. Keep spreading the word via the net and street media. Even the corporate media, although I wouldn't concentrate my efforts there.

Build the buzz so we can get that official investigation.

Edit to add: support the people on the frontlines who are builing the buzz, like uscountvotes.org and vorersunite.org and banvotingmachines.org with CASH.

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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 01:21 PM
Response to Reply #11
12. Not true
Edited on Thu Jun-16-05 01:21 PM by Boredtodeath
What is true is that it's hard work and takes a lot of dedication, but election records are public records.

Ask for them, research them, build a case.

Buzzing about "allegations" means we can be dismissed out of hand.

Buzz means nothing.

Make a commitment and do the work. Without it we have no case.

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glitch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 01:47 PM
Response to Reply #12
13. I believe the cause to investigate has already been made.
The people who are in charge of investigating need to be made to investigate. And then indict.
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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 01:54 PM
Response to Reply #13
14. Perhaps it has
But they're not going to. So, you're going to do what while you wait for them to decide they don't need to investigate?

What? You're just going to "get over it" when no investigation occurs? Or are you going to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

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glitch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 02:03 PM
Response to Reply #14
15. Well, that's enough of that.
If you really want to help join uscountvotes.org, they are still gathering evidence.

And keep building that buzz, even if it's just here on DU.



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Time for change Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 05:05 PM
Response to Original message
18. Can we compare precinct counts with central tabulator counts?
Edited on Thu Jun-16-05 05:06 PM by Time for change
Here is a discussion I was having with eomer on the O'Dell thread before I decided to create this one:

Me:
IF Mitofsky has final precinct level data that came out of the precinct, and NOT the central tabulator (which I have to admit never even crossed my mind before this discussion), could that be compared with the central tabulator numbers??? If there are big and frequent discrepancies there, that would prove fraud.

eomer:
It never crossed my mind either (amazing that this long after the fact we can come across something this basic that many or maybe all of us have not considered). If this polling place count information does exist it may contain a smoking gun when compared with the final official count.

I should say I think BB's definition may be right in the majority of precincts. There are some precincts where a polling place count exists and others where it does not. I don't know what the percentages are.

Any precinct that uses opscan with centralized scanning would not normally be counted at the polling place. I don't know how many opscan precincts use centralized scanning and how many use polling place scanning. Also, I was under the impression that most DRE systems did not have a count at the polling place - that the memory cards were transported to a centralized county operation and were not counted until arriving there. Does anyone know how many DRE systems include a count at the polling place?

Another question is whether a polling place count that exists is then made available. I believe that some jurisdictions require it to be posted on a door. But there may be places where a polling place count is done but it is secret. Are there cases where a count is done but it is secret unless you are someone special (E-M for example)?

Me:
I've highlighted what I think are the critical questions and comments in eomer's post.

I got to thinking about this when I attended a conference this weekend sponsored by Vote Trust USA. There was some opinion there that the best way to diminish cheating in future elections would be to get a final precinct count at all the precincts, so that if the central tabulator later changed those counts it would be obvious. In many precincts it is very difficult to get these counts (which IMO is another reason to suspect cheating).

Anyhow, it never occurred to me until eomer mentioned it that maybe Mitofsky has those counts, and if so it could provide, as eomer surmises, a smoking gun.

Can anyone answer eomer's above highlighted questions, or tell us how this would be investigated? I'm very interested that this may provide fertile ground for investigation.

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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 05:37 PM
Response to Reply #18
21. All of Georgia's DRE precincts have a per machine tape
Georgia law requires it. Every DRE must run a report of vote totals by candidate.

Georgia has 26,000 DREs statewide - that's 26,000 tapes.

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Time for change Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 06:15 PM
Response to Reply #21
23. Do you know if they've been checked against the central counts?
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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 06:18 PM
Response to Reply #23
24. It's being done now
Slow going, tedious work, but it is happening.

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Time for change Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 06:23 PM
Response to Reply #24
25. Of course it may be that in Georgia
they wouldn't have needed to do the cheating this way. With all those DREs, they could have had them programmed to give false counts at the precinct level right?

And if state law requires that the precinct counts be checked against the central tabulators, then maybe they would have avoided this means of fraud.

Do you know if they're doing this in other states?
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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 07:03 PM
Response to Reply #25
28. Wait a minute.......
I didn't say state law required the precinct counts to be checked against the state tabulators. I said state law requires that a tape be run at each DRE. No one ever said they had to check them! </sarcasm>

Every Diebold state (Maryland comes to mind) probably has this requirement and Susan Pynchon did find those "poll tapes" in the Florida trash so I presume it's done in Florida as well.

My guess is that Diebold wouldn't have written this into the software if it wasn't a wide requirement.

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Bill Bored Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 06:43 PM
Response to Reply #18
26. Per machine tape. Right!
Forgot to mention this in the other thread.
Some people call this a "poll tape", "results report", etc.

What's interesting is that it has nothing to do with what's on the ballot. It's a reflection of the votes in each machine's database.

It would distinguish between tabulator (post election) fraud and fraud committed at the precinct itself though, unless someone fixed the tabulators and then actually went back and covered their tracks by fixing the individual DRE result reports. But that would be "hard work."
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Time for change Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 06:56 PM
Response to Reply #26
27. Do you have any idea what the status is nation wide?
That is, whether comparisons have been done for precinct vs. central tabulator, in how many precincts? What have they shown? How many more comparisons are possible but haven't been done yet, etc?
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Bill Bored Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 08:58 PM
Response to Reply #27
32. Sorry, but I don't.
Edited on Thu Jun-16-05 08:58 PM by Bill Bored
State election canvass laws might provide some answers.

And you could try to correlate the states with the weakest laws to those lovely exit polls.

But hey, GA was within the MOE, and we know how great their election system is, right BoredToDeath?

BTW, that's a new way to find out how good the exit polls are: find the actual f*&%ing fraud and see if the polls agree! What a concept!
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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 10:28 PM
Response to Reply #32
33. LOL, yep. Within the margin of error.
Depending on which margin you're talking about.

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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 07:05 PM
Response to Reply #26
29. Not possible in Georgia
Unless you locate the poll mangers to SIGN the poll tapes after you "correct" them. Georgia law requires 3 signatures on each tape from each DRE. That would require a pretty big conspiracy.

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Bill Bored Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 08:53 PM
Response to Reply #29
31. Well I did say it would be HARD WORK, didn't I? nt

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Boredtodeath Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 11:35 PM
Response to Reply #31
34. Well, I guess
They COULD find one forger to duplicate all those signatures. What's a little cash for a criminal when you're stealing an election, right?

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