Data entry errors to blame for wrong NY Super Tuesday tallies

[Bill Bored]

Finally some responsible journalism!


Data entry errors to blame for wrong NY Super Tuesday tallies

By DAVID B. CARUSO
Associated Press Writer

8:32 PM EST, February 20, 2008

NEW YORK

An unusual number of data entry errors by poll workers and police officers appears to have been responsible for inaccuracies in the vote tallies reported to the news media on the evening of the state's presidential primary.

-snip-

Most of the attention has focused on 80 city election districts that reported receiving zero votes for Barack Obama while collectively logging thousands of votes for the other Democratic and Republican candidates.

New York City's Board of Elections said Wednesday that it had concluded that Obama actually had received a substantial number of votes in 55 of those districts.

-snip-

Poll inspectors simply misread the numbers in 35 districts, while police made data entry errors in 20 districts, Board of Elections spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez said.

She chalked up the discrepancies to "human error" and stressed that the mistakes only affected the unofficial tallies reported to news organizations, not the formal vote counts.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--miscountedvotes0220feb20,0,4200259.story

[kster]

1. Oh my, them damn humans

Hand Counted Paper Elections, stop the silliness.

The secret Vote/Counting machines is getting a bit embarrassing whether it be mechanical, or electronic paperless machines, and or optical scanned paper ballots.

You guys can keep trying to sell this shit, but I have to tell you, you are looking pretty silly.

Hand Count em its that simple.

What is it that you do not get? :)

I'm waiting for your silly ass explanation as to why we should keep these secret vote/counting machines in place.

K&R :)

[Wilms]

2. Talk about shit sales. n/t

[kster]

5. ---

:hi:

[Jim Lane]

3. This kind of mistake could happen even with hand-counted paper ballots

After you count the paper ballots, the people doing the counting have a tally sheet in front of them with their total for that election district (which is the New York term for a precinct). Now, numbers have to be transferred from the tally sheet to the master reporting form. With our lever machines, the machine's panel displays a number, which has to be transferred from the machine to the master reporting form.

Somebody messed up the transfers. Human error.

(My expertise here is that I've been a pollwatcher supervising the reporting of numbers from lever machines, and I've counted paper ballots that were cast during the time that a machine was broken.)

Let's not get carried away to the point of saying that hand-counted paper ballots will solve every vote-tallying problem. People were stealing elections (or, in some cases, innocently screwing them up) back when no one had any thought of any method other than hand-counted paper ballots.

[Bill Bored]

4. You are correct sir. And thank you for actually reading my post. nt

[kster]

6. Lets say I was to agree with you, What is

the most accurate way to the count ballots? Right now the rich people are counting our votes IN SECRET with electronic counting, if what I am saying is true, then in the future (with the use of these secret electronic vote/counting machines) the rich kids will be counting our kids votes in secret.

How would you prefer that our kids votes get counted?

1) Electronic counting

2) Mechanical counting or

3)Hand Counting the Paper Ballots and posting them totals before the ballots are allowed to leave the polling place.

For my kids future I'm going with...

3)Hand Counting the Paper Ballots and posting them totals before the ballots are allowed to leave the polling place.

You? :)

[Jim Lane]

7. Obviously, Diebold is not the answer

I didn't mean to imply that verifiability is bad -- only that it's not sufficient.

In answer to your question: I'm not up on the details of different reform proposals. From what I've seen, I'm inclined toward electronic counting based on open-source code, but with hand-countable paper available as a backup.

[Rene]

18. Hand counting can be very corrupt also. Our towns 3700 balots

were recounted 3 times...we have more than 4 announced totals now.
I've filed an election campaign complaint for the Nov election. State impounded all the voting materials. I still have not heard results.
I do not think the correct people are sitting on our 7 person Town Council.

I'd like to know if the Diebold Optical scan machines have an internal log of the votes cast with a date/time stamp for each vote being logged/counted.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

8. what is the corrected tally?

:shrug:

[Wilms]

9. You asked about that already.

And someone responded.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=497599&mesg_id=497599

Now, is this an Election Integrity question, or a partisan one?

If it's the later, GD: Primary is a better place for it.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

10. good grief grow up - its not partisan to want correct election results

:wtf:

I asked a question not aimed specifically at YOU.
If you so dislike answering questions, then ignore mine.

Let someone less childish answer next time.

I see now the other poster provided a date when the correct results will be made
available.

"Official results will be announced on Feb. 26."

Your argument could be turned against you that you are responding in a partisan fashion
by harassing someone who wanted to know what the correct election results are.

Good grief.

Wilms, please feel free to put me on "ignore" so that you won't have to suffer so much.

[Wilms]

12. You haven't approached this from a partisan angle?

WTF, indeed. It's been that and a bit of tin foil thrown at the levers.

And yeah, you were wondering about official totals. I got that. too.

Anyone else getting how different the clerical issues wouldn't be if this was a scanned or hand-counted race? How about wondering how many other states have certified their results yet and the clerical issues involved in them??

Good grief, agreed!

[kster]

13. For Christ sakes Wilms, Hand Counting the Ballots at the polling place

then posting them totals before the ballots are allowed to leave the polling place, then, WillYourVoteBCounted wouldn't need to ask "Does anyone know what the CORRECT results are for New York Election" because he/she would already know.

I mean come on Wilms. One more time Wilms...

"Does anyone know what the CORRECT results are for New York Election"

This is America and WillYourVoteBCounted needs to ask "Does anyone know what the CORRECT results are for New York Election" :crazy:

[Wilms]

14. Sounds good enough.

So why haven't you instructed NYS to do that? Huh??

And your state...do they post it on the door, kster???

How about even just your precinct???

Did you at least provide the SoS with links to your rants so that they know how you want things handled???

If not, why?

[Bill Bored]

15. May I have some of what you're smoking?

See if you can get your brain around this:

There are 15,000 precincts in the State of NY. People usually VOTE in ALL of them. To find out who won an election, you have add up ALL the vote totals from precincts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.....14,997, 14,998, 14,999 AND 15,000.

Posting them on a door at each precinct, like THIS...


...does NOT by itself tell ANYONE who won the election.

Do you understand that?

Is this your field?

Have you ever actually VOTED in an election?

So you have to take ALL these results, from EVERY PRECINCT, and TRANSCRIBE THEM to some central location, at least in each county, where they are then ADDED UP. This is where the ERRORS were made in NY -- the process of transcribing the totals BY HAND.

The method used to count the votes at EACH PRECINCT has NO EFFECT on HOW THE PRECINCT TOTALS ARE AGGREGATED.

Here is a definition of the word "aggregate":
1 : to collect or gather into a mass or whole

The point is, the SAME ERRORS would have occurred with hand counted paper ballots because the same precinct totals would have to have been AGGREGATED.

These errors will be corrected on Feb. 26, during the OFFICIAL 100% RECANVASS.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

16. LOL that picture!

I can't even think up a comment. But laughing MAO.

:yourock:

[kster]

17. That pic is cool, but, we could also post the polling place

(before the ballots leave the polling place) totals online, give them to newspapers, television,
supposed cable news channels, and for old times sake post them on the door. Great pic Bill. BUT...



The good news, New Yorkers chose optical scan vote/counting machines that actually read a real Paper Ballot that can also be Hand Counted by humans, over their paperless lever machines and the paperless touch sreen vote counting machines, this is a very, very good sign.

I applaud the New Yorkers for their decision, to my friends in New York your work is far from over, Do not let the officials LOCK UP our Paper Ballots in their new shiny machines, we all own the paper ballots, not the vendors not the politicians if we want to Hand Count those Paper Ballots at the close of the election at the polling place TEN TIMES over, its none of no ones GODAMN BUSINESS!!!

:)

[Bill Bored]

11. It's hard to be partisan when talking about results for a single party.

But then again we ARE Democrats! :party: