New Fraud Theory

[TennisGuy2004]

Okay, I have a new fraud theory.

We already know that most of the election results were hackable via computer manipulation.

What if the Rove group hacked results in a number of states, then sent people to visit a few select precincts in the middle of the night in the battleground states to physically alter/remove/add ballots? This type of fraud would be virtually indetectable, because the live election results would appear normal, and then with any subsequent recounts, the outcome would be the same.

Is this even remotely possible? Thoughts?

(By the way, could someone give me some more info on this business of Mitofsky's machine crashing?)

[ahyums]

1. Edit: I'll make it more succinct. Surely there must be ways to ensure that

ballots are secured properly, it's far too obvious a weakness to have been overlooked. I think the problems with technology relate more to the fact that most people are basically unfamiliar with it and its potential.

[Wordie]

2. This sort of wild speculation undermines efforts to solve real problems.nt

[Lefta Dissenter]

3. Our ballots were

sealed with tons of tape in boxes and locked in the town hall safe for the night, before being taken to the County. Of course, I LOVE our town administrator - he did everything to ensure that every vote was counted.

I haven't been able to finish precinct reports yet for Wisconsin, but at least the numbers that show up on the Dane County website for my little town match the numbers we read from the machines on election night (which also balanced out with the number of people who came through to vote plus the number of absentee ballots we processed). So Rove didn't visit our precinct! (OK, that's one precinct out of 3,450 or so for the State of Wisconsin, times 50 states... )

[TennisGuy2004]

4. Watergate Happened.

Watergate happened. Anything is possible.

[Lefta Dissenter]

5. I'm thinking that

what you're suggesting isn't the most efficient way to change the results with our voting system. Why mess with individual machines at the precinct level and then risk breaking into offices, when you can easily hack the GEMS system at the County or State level?

[JaneEyrez]

6. Hold on just a minute...

I'm not ready to say this isn't possible. Look what's happening to the recount in New Hampshire. Nader's not finding anything in spite of there being wide variance in exit polling versus results. Somebody had already suggested that Rove set up NH as a red herring so that somebody would recount there, find nothing and say, well, that proves there's nothing wrong.

I don't know about the security of the physical ballots in NH, but I'd be willing to bet there would be all kinds of assistance from the Bastard Blackwell to dispose of, replace, change, whatever was necessary to get the physical ballots to align with the reported results... and the hell of it is, they've already had ample time since the election to do whatever was necessary to cover their tracks.

That's why a system of election where the voting apparatus is in the hands of partisans is INSANE!!!!

:shrug:

[Lefta Dissenter]

9. I'm not saying

that it isn't possible - I'm only saying that with OUR system, it wouldn't be the easiest or the least risky.

Our optical scanner machine for our town of 3600 voters would have had to have been set ahead of time to start adding to the wrong candidate at some point, which, I am aware, can be done. I know it didn't just skip votes or whatever, because throughout the day we were comparing the numbers checked off on the voter rolls as people came through with the number of votes recorded on the machine. It always squared up vote for vote. Then once we processed the absentee ballots, those numbers squared up with the machine, as well. And the numbers for our township shown on the county website square with what the machine read off at the end of the day.

And I did make the point that I only know the entire procedure for ONE precinct out of 3450 in Wisconsin... but you'd have to have too many people in on it to mess with the paper ballots in OUR precinct, where the boxes were signed and sealed and locked up. And I'm not talking about little sticky seals that can be peeled off, I'm talking signed tapes that are strapped on with repeated layers of packing tape on top. You couldn't have broken into the boxes of ballots without it being evident.

And how many individual machines are you going to go around and tamper with, and then AGAIN go and tamper with ballot boxes that are, presumably, locked in safes?

And if that were the case in our town, you'd have to say that the (Libertarian) town administrator and the (I'm not sure what party) town clerk would have had to be in on it as well, the next morning, when they took the boxes out of the safe to find that they had been tampered with.

It just doesn't make sense to me that you'd do it that way, when you can easily hack into the central computer system, as Bev Harris demonstrated to Howard Dean. Low risk there, and efficient, because you can manipulate many more votes in one move.

[CantGetFooledAgain]

7. No, that wouldn't be necessary

The GEMS system is tabulating results at the county level. All that would be necessary in case of recount would be to use counterfeit paper ballots to back up the altered county totals.

It would require someone at the county elections office for each county that was tampered with to destroy the real ballots and substitute the fake ones.

Can anyone tell me why this wouldn't work? And doesn't this sound like what was being attempted in Volusia County, where there were literally two sets of tapes with different numbers?

[anamandujano]

11. I wonder if our statisticians

can correlate recount results (ie, how they matched originals) with GOP infestation of the voting apparatus (ie, Katherine Blackwell in charge type places.)

In clearer words (I hope), if the GOP is in charge of the original ballots, polling tapes, whatever--then recount results are more likely to match the original count, no matter how much the tallies different from exit polling, no matter how grand the shift from Kerry to Bush.

[ahimsa]

10. How about this?

You get the complete voter registration lists, you send a mass mailing to the list, you take all the ones that are returned as undeliverable, you tell the media you are making a "challenge list" out of them, you go to the polls to "challenge" these voters and at the end of the day, when they didn't show up, you cast an absentee ballot for * in their name.

:tinfoilhat:

[Lefta Dissenter]

13. OK, again, I am speaking for our little teeny-tiny township

In order to apply for an absentee ballot, you had to do so by a certain date, and provide appropriate identification. If that id wasn't included, then in OUR CASE, ballots were mailed out, and the individuals had until the end of election day to show up WITH the id. Those absentee ballots (there were only a few) were marked with 'ID required' (still in sealed envelopes at the time), and not processed unless the ID issue was resolved. All of them were resolved by the end of the day.

If you showed up on election day, you either vote in person, non-absentee, or you're dropping off a ballot that had been filed for quite a while previous to that. You wouldn't be able to somehow cast an absentee ballot on Nov 2 without prior application.

Did I understand your scenario properly? :shrug:

The other thing is that in my town, most of the pollworkers have been working here for 20 or 30 years. They know virtually EVERYONE - if not by face, then at least by some important factor like, "Why haven't you applied for a license for that dog I see in your yard?"

Our signed printout tapes went into the ballot boxes that were sealed and taped up, by the way, so they went to the county with the ballots. I wrote the numbers down as they were printed off the machine, and those are the same results that are showing up at the county level. In my opinion, what is needed is poll-watchers from all parties at every precinct to verify the tapes at the end of the day. Then those numbers can be compared to the County reports.

That could reduce the ease with which someone could tamper with that one step of the process.

[ahimsa]

14. Oh, ok

That's a relief. Still, challenging voters based on bad addresses doesn't seem like a very efficient strategy - I wonder if there isn't more to it than that. Were they challenging voters in small towns like yours or only in large precincts where not everyone knows everyone else?

[mdb]

15. Agree. From what I understand about Gems the changes take place at the...

county level on the database and you wouldn't know it at the precinct level because the precinct by precinct summary report won't show the changes made at the county level. The precinct level is not tampered with. So if your going on precinct by precinct you would not even notice any alterations in the count. But going by county where the alterations are made you would.

[Lefta Dissenter]

16. technically,

the county tallies should equal the total tallies of the individual precincts. HOWEVER, if there isn't a recount, or if you don't just HAPPEN to get caught by someone like me who happened to pay attention to her own precinct (or poll-watchers, as I suggested above or below - wherever it is), then you get away with it.

When I'm reporting on the precincts in each county, I'm checking to see if the totals add up. Each of the 72 counties in WI has anywhere from four (I think that was the lowest number) precincts to almost 500 (Milwaukee County). But then I have to go to the state report of the counties, to be sure that THOSE numbers agreed - that the counties actually reported the correct tallies to the state. I think the greatest weakness in THIS system is that there isn't anyone making sure the county reports match the individual precinct reports. That's where poll-watchers can make the difference...

Unless, of course, you have "homeland security" issues on election night, and close your offices off to outside observers as you're printing out your tapes. That should have been TOTALLY illegal, and the media and the law should have been all OVER that one!!! We had eight poll-workers PLUS the town admin plus the town clerk plus a repug poll-watcher all verifying the tapes as they were printed - not to mention a few spouses of some of the poll-workers who were just hanging around, waiting to take their wives home.

We had about 95% turnout (we had had turnout in the high 80's in 2000), and the margin of victory of bush over Kerry was narrower than bush had over Gore in 2000. From that, our admin predicted that Wisconsin would go for Kerry with a slightly larger margin than we went for Gore in 2000, which also turned out to be true.

NOW, as someone brought up, Milwaukee County and some of the others would be a completely different story. That's where you need poll-watchers. I simply don't understand why the repugs had them for every precinct in our county, and there was not a dem to be found, at least in my area.

[AndyTiedye]

8. Worse Than Watergate Happens Daily Now

The media says nothing,
and the Republican House and Senate like it this way.

[jsamuel]

12. Remember how Bev found ballots in the bag marked SHREADER also...

I don't know...

A recount is what needs to be trusted.

[JaneEyrez]

17. We are all trying hard to understand how a fraud could be

perpetrated. It's clear that most of us have really started paying attention to these issues since 2000 when, for the first time (at least in my case), we found out about spoiled ballots. I guess I was really too idealistic and unprepared for how committed the Rethugs are in pursuit of a win. There seemed in this election cycle absolutely nothing that they would not do, no matter how petty or cruel, to get their way.

I have not yet understood how the entire process of voting from precinct level all the way to the end tabulation can be completely accounted for. I don't know how it is handled elsewhere, but I know in Volusia County, where I live, you have to sign in to vote. I don't even know if there is any attempt to correlate the number of people signed in on the registration books with the amount of votes cast in that particular precinct.

Do we account for dem vs. rep at each level to see if the county and state totals accurately convey the totals at the precinct level? I don't know. I guess I want to believe in the accountability of our elections, but there seems to be so many possible ways to manipulate the results.

The biggest one, of course, is that we allow the vote tabulators and the voting machine suppliers to be partisan people with no oversight. Why in God's name did we ever TRUST that that was a good idea?