Uncounted ballots unlikely to reverse Proposition 8

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-me-ballots9-2008nov09,0,4500310.story

Even with 2.7 million outstanding ballots statewide -- some mail-in and some provisional -- the odds aren't in favor of beating out the gay-marriage ban's lead of more than half a million votes.
By David Lauter
November 9, 2008
Could the vote on Proposition 8, the gay-marriage ban, turn around when all the uncounted ballots are tallied? Almost certainly not. Here's why:

Roughly 2.7 million ballots from Tuesday's election remained to be counted statewide as of late Friday, according to the California secretary of state's office.


The estimate comes from reports filed by each of the state's 58 county registrars, who have until early December to complete the count and publish the final, official results.

The complete, county-by-county list is available on the secretary of state's website. Last week, Times reporters contacted the state's largest counties and reported that at least 1.7 million ballots remained outstanding. Since then, several of the counties, including Los Angeles, have increased their estimates. L.A. officials reported to the secretary of state that they had more than 615,000 ballots yet to count.

Where do all those ballots come from, and why does counting them take so long?


Statewide, about 1.9 million were mail-in ballots that were received too late to be counted on Tuesday. Those ballots can be processed relatively quickly.

But 728,000 were provisional ballots, generally cast by people whose names did not show up on their precincts' registration lists. Those ballots need to be processed by hand, with officials checking to see if the person who voted was entitled to do so.

Then there is another group of at least 146,000 ballots that were damaged or for some reason could not be read by optical scanners. Those also have to be handled individually.

With all those ballots outstanding, how can news organizations, including The Times, be confident about calling the results of elections? The answer is a matter of odds.

Take Proposition 8 as an example. As of Saturday morning, the secretary of state reported 5,661,583 votes in favor and 5,154,457 opposed, for a margin of just more than half a million votes. In order to reverse that result, opponents of the measure would have to win just more than 59% of the uncounted ballots. So far, however, opponents have won 47.6% of the vote. The odds are strongly against the uncounted ballots being so dramatically different from the ones counted.

[Peace Patriot]

1. Let's get this straight. 99% of these ballots will not be counted. They will be scanned

into electronic systems, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by far rightwing voting machine corporations. The ONLY ballots that will actually be counted--in the sense of, um, counting--are the "damaged" ballots that won't go through the scanners and have to be, um, actually touched by human hands and reviewed by human eyes.

You want to trust ES&S*, whose initial funder and major investor is reclusive rightwing multi-billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon foundation, which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, to 'count' our votes with 'TRADE SECRET' code? Then maybe you'd prefer to live in Saudi Arabia. You want to trust Diebold, whose CEO was a Bush/Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser, to 'count' our votes with 'TRADE SECRET' code? Maybe you're one of the deluded souls who think Bushwhacks believe in "freedom and democracy." Bats and spiders fly out of their mouths, when they speak those words. Diebold (now called "Premier") is a BUSHWHACK corporation! And the third big election player, Sequoia, isn't much better than these two. They hired former Republican CA Sec of State Bill Jones, and his chief aide, Alfie Charles, to peddle their machines--after Jones and Charles brought the curse of 'TRADE SECRET' VOTE counting to California.

We have an almost completely NON-TRANSPARENT vote counting system. 99% of the ballots are NEVER COUNTED. They are scanned into extremely riggable electronics.

So, consider this: The fascist fuckwads who control the vote counting with SECRET code let Obama win, because his support is so overwhelming that, to reverse his win, they would risk a public rebellion and a big 'Boston Tea Party' for their voting machines. They need those machines for future uses. But they significantly shave his mandate, and concentrate on Congress, where they tweak some close races--for instance, Chambliss in Georgia--to send obstructive Pukes and more 'Blue Dog' Democrats to the House and Senate, to prevent any serious reform. This combines with the Financial 9/11 that the Bushwhacks on Wall Street just pulled off, to create suffering and turmoil in the country, and with their election theft machines still in place, they can oust Obama and install their favorite nazi in 2012.

Prop 8 may be designed as the beginning of the planned turmoil, intended to topple Obama. It is already ripping apart the constituencies that elected him--blacks vs. gays, Hispanics vs. gays, etc. And it is very strange, indeed, that, in the most left-dominated election perhaps in our history--apart from FDR's elections--this fascist initiative would be approved, in the most leftist state in the nation.

I think it's the voting machines. And the scenario that I have outlined is so similar to what happened in Germany in the 1930s--the ripping apart of the center-left and its inability to govern, in the midst of a grave Depression--as to be truly haunting.

This subject line (or L.A. Times headline)--"Uncounted ballots unlikely to reverse Proposition 8"--is a false representation of what is now occurring, and what occurred on Nov.4. MOST of the ballots--99%--are NOT COUNTED. A 1% audit is miserably inadequate to detect fraud in a 'TRADE SECRET' code system. The most trustworthy experts say that 10% is the MINIMUM needed to detect fraud. In Venezuela, with an OPEN SOURCE CODE system, they neverthless handcount a whopping 55% of the votes, as a check on machine fraud--five times the minimum number. We here, in the "land of the free, home of the brave," are counting ONE TENTH of the MINIMUM needed to detect fraud.

So let me express the hope that some of the energy of the rebellion against Prop 8 be directed at our NON-TRANSPARENT voting system.

We have many problems in our political/government system--the corpo/fascist 'news' media being a big one. But they are all dwarfed by corpo/fascist vote counting with 'TRADE SECRET'code, in my opinion--which can be used as a fascist bludgeon (as in 2004) or, more subtly, as a surgeon's scalpel, as I believe is the case on Prop 8 and some other election thefts in 2008, possibly in preparation for a final fascist coup d'etat in 2012. You want Sarah Palin installed in the White House? Don't do anything to get rid of these election theft machines! Believe the corpo/fascist wing of the Democratic Party leadership that everything is okay if there is a paper ballot! Don't question the 1% audit! Fool yourself into believing that only the remaining mail-in and provisional ballots are "uncounted"! Virtually ALL of our votes remain"uncounted"!

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*(I'm not sure what's happening with ES&S in California. At one point, our new Sec of State, Debra Bowen, banned all their machines, because ES&S didn't cooperate with her "top to bottom" review. But they may have wormed their way back in. In any case, we still have Diebold (ES&S was a spinoff of Diebold) and Sequoia, which are bad enough, as it is. Diebold has very close ties to the Bushwhacks (and to ES&S), and Sequoia violated political ethics by hiring a Republican Sec of State--the person in charge of elections--right out of public office. This is called a PAY-OFF!)

[Ian David]

2. The fight to stop Prop 8 in California is still going on in the courts. THEY need donations, too.

www.InvalidateProp8.org

www.eqca.org