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Evoting Problems in Ohio
deus_X_machina writes "The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that a computer error involving one voting-machine cartridge gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct. Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, says the cartridge was retested yesterday and there were no problems. He couldn't explain why the computer reader malfunctioned."
but that requires intent, not just incompetence.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Apparently the republicans are invulnerable to truth and reason. Fairly or unfairly, they've taken the election. Since the conservative trolls and their mod abusing partners are still running rampant, let me cut to the chase.
We as democrats face a strategic gap. Our agenda of promoting civil rights and defending the lower class and the environment isn't grabbing the middle aged voters. In order to turn back the tide of partisan villification and party unilateralism we need to have referendum.
As americans we already have the ability to contact our representatives. Because of the situation we are in, we need to do something more than that. We need our democratic representatives to lead us by calling us together to share our insights and regroup as democrats.
If we do not act now we will be swept away. Discussing our hopes and desires with our neighbors is not going to cut it. Similarly just contacting our reps isn't enough. We need to professionally analyze and resynthsize our mode of operation. Clearly something has to change. We can do this the dumb, easy way, and go about business as usual. Or we can take a comprehensive accounting of ourselves and act.
Beyond that, I have some minor opinions of what we need to do; but these are just guesses in the dark on my part. To firm up our strategy we need to organize. Here's my 2 cents:
The republican agenda is set at the top and their rhetoric is uniform - they listen to Rush Limbaugh and everyone knows what lie to use, what button to push to aggravate us, and which slur to accuse us with. IMHO, we need to fight fire with fire on this. I've heard that we democrats function best as a party when we work from the grassroots up. If this election was our best, we're screwed. We need to oppose fundamentalist christianity's drive to weld their theology to the federal government, but we can embrace christians in the middle and on our side without giving up that goal. Republicans often go against the teachings of Jesus. We need to bring christianity to the fore so that we can counter their "blah blah bible" arguments. We can still embrace non christians by preserving the constitutional foundations of the separation of church and state, and the freedom of religion.
We may want to look at the South, and see if there is room for compromise with southern ideals. Personally, I view the north-south differences in terms of slavery. It appears to me that the big issue we have to face with the south is bigotry against non-whites and non-fundamentalist christians. We can embrace southerners without embracing racism and theological intolerance.
Finally I think we have all seen how much damage the conservative media bias has done to the national discourse. Their spinjockeys and pundits pound out two messages continuously to all their members: The first message is one of reinforcing hatred of democrats. They brand us all as communists, all as unamerican, all as unpatriotic and they're getting cocky about calling us terrorists. We have to give them a few bloody noses or it's never going to end, and America will spiral into theocracy and or fascism.
The second message of the conservative pundit is the party message of the moment. They always have ammo. If you win a discussion on one topic, they turn on you with another. Every time you argue, you're arguing with Karl Rove. It's like playing chess against an army of Kasparovs.
We need to reassert our party identity, and then we need to fight tooth and nail.
One last thing... we need to use our philibuster ability. We may need to compromise unduly... but we can not give up entirely.
As Barak Obama said, the Arc of the Universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
We shall overcome.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
someone--anyone--
First you say republicans don't whine, then you admit they do. And as someone who is most definitely not a liberal I must say that my big problem with FOX is not the spin, it is the complete disregard for unbiased commentary and the abandonment of any sort of journalistic objectivity. I have seen a "reporter" roll their eyes and dismisively laugh while reporting the statements of democrats, leftists or foreign governments.(only the ones that oppose US actions of course)
The sad part of it all is that I used to watch FOX news much more often, before 9/11, because they had a lot more real news than the other networks, and I could see through the bias. Now it's absurd.
On a side note, it would be nice to see a news channel that is closer to the content of "the economist". I'd love it regardless of the bias, just to get the damn news and not the fluff that everyone has today.
A blog about stuff.
Paper ballots are not as usuable by the blind and people with limited use of the hands as touch-screen balloting.
E-voting also makes providing multilingual ballots to all precincts easier.
In low-turnout elections it also facilitates combining polling stations.
On the down side, there's that nasty lack of an audit trail on SOME machines.
Memo to America: Listen to Nevada.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'msure this is only the first of many, many such stories we wil hear.... No paper audit trail in many places. fun fun fun
I'm sure that for each of these stories reported, 5 or more go unreported/undiscovered.
6 out of 10 voters to my precinct were not listed in the roll book at the polling place. Many of these people were long time voters, all were given provisional ballots. Their names and signatures were on the master list, but magically never made it to the polling place. The reason? A "mistake," and in a predominately Democratic area, by a predominately Republican elections board. Hmmm. Maybe I'm reading too much into that, my name was on the list, although I'm not registered as a Democrat...
Hey, but what does it matter at this point? Election's over, and there's a few countries to run. With Republicans in charge of everything, America should be on track to Bush's ideal. Let the good times roll!
Here come da fudge!
Because there is a box on the ballot that says "Vote for all Republicans" and one that says "Vote for all Democrats", but there are no boxes that say "Vote for all Green/Libertarian/Natural/Independant/Socialist
Where do you hail from? In New York each party has a separate line on the voting machine. If you want to do a party line vote all you need to do is find the line for your party and go all the way across pulling levers down.
Maybe the true problem is that the Libertarians and Greens didn't bother to field any candidates for any office other then the US President (and in New York the Senate race). Haven't you ever heard the expression "All politics are local"? I didn't decide my local votes until a day or so before the election -- after I personally met with and talked to the people on the ballot. Perhaps the little parties should focus on some county executive/mayoral/assemblyman races before the White House. What's more effective? Trying to appeal to 1,000s to 10,000s of people on local issues to build a base or trying to compete with the DNC and RNC warchests?
Just my two cents on the issue. Of course I'd rather see more use of Electoral Fusion to bring the major parties back into the mainstream -- rather then running third party candidates that either sabotage their own cause (Nader in 2000/Perot in 1992) by putting the other ideology into power or third party candidates that fail to accomplish anything (Nader this go around). I realize that's a minority opinion around here -- and I'm not trying to flame -- that's just my opinion on this issue.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Open Voting is the place to actually do something about this rather than just whine. They need money to stay alive, and they have a simple Paypal button. Put your ten bucks where your mouths are, people.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
These errors do not change the election result! Bush won by too big of a margin in Ohio and Florida, any assumption that the machines threw it for Bush would mean that those counties would have had to vote in tremendous numbers for Kerry (like 70%)
I don't follow. First off, several counties recorded over 70% in favor of Kerry. For instance, Chicago was 81% (802K) Kerry and only 18% (180K) Bush. Admitedly, none of the metropolitan areas in Ohio hit more than 67% (Cleveland area), but then, the validity of these very numbers is what is at question. Franklin county (Columbus area) had over 500,000 votes so even if the problem was restricted to this county, then we're still dealing with some very large numbers.
All that said, it does seem very unlikely that several instances of this problem could change the results... but I don't see why it is not a possibility.
Right, the Diebold machines didn't get caught. Please support http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
My guy won. If there are any doubts about the accuracy of the vote, then I want them straightened out now
./er.
I agree. There is not too much doubt about the fact that the president won. But that doesn't mean that the investigations won't turn up foul play. Nixon was ridiculously in the lead when his guys did that little Watergate thing. And Nixon's mistake was finding out about it and trying to cover it up. The president would be smart to start the investigation now. It would convince the average Joe, impress a lot of liberals, and he would gain the respect of the average
I am living proof of the Peter Principle
I think the key problem with easy to tamper with, difficult to audit voting systems, is that it makes it difficult to trust the results of any election.
Remember, the electors have not yet cast their votes, we are in the wierd area between the votes to choose electors and the actual election of the president. I woulnd't be suprised to see more of this same kind of issue coming up in the coming weeks. This does not make me feel comfortable with the electoral process in general, regardless of the outcome.
If you are talking about the machine recording 3000 *extra* votes for Bush, it is true that if this happend 30 times then this would be 90000 extra votes for Bush, which is approaching the margin. However these are *extra* votes, it would be pretty obvious if there were 90,000 more votes from these areas than there are voters. Also the areas are then voting 95% for Bush which is extremely unlikely. So I do not think this error is repeated 30 times, it would have been obvious and detected by now.
This needs to be said at the top of this thread because noone reads the articles:
Source - Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush's total should have been recorded as 365.
Franklin is the only Ohio county to use Danaher Controls Inc.'s ELECTronic 1242, an older-style touchscreen voting system. Danaher did not immediately return a message for comment.
Not that I disagree with you, but I don't understand why we can't say the same about Republicans? Why is it they can continue to insult minorities, non-Christians, city-dwellers, and the poor, and still win elections? I guess we don't make up 51% :(
Exit polls have been very reliable throughout history, until evoting came along.
In this case, the exit polls were wrong everywhere electronic voting was used. They were pretty accurate in places with paper voting and audit trails.
Furthermore, in every single case where the exit polls were wrong, the final results favored Bush. Statistically implausible, to say the least.
Check out these graphs.
If these are right, Kerry should've won the election easily, just like everyone was predicting because of the huge voter turnout (which has always been bad for the incumbent)
Unfortunately, this will never be proven conclusively, since there are no paper trails for a recount.
I.
Wall Street has volume in the hundreds of millions per hour. Every transaction must be documented and has a paper trail (or backup report) somewhere, and every participant can be held accountable. Failure to comply with the law can and does result in jail time for offenders.
II.
We have a world-wide network of ATM machines. Each produces a paper receipt, often with an internal duplicate copy for auditing purposes. Each customer has a unique network ID and a secret PIN. Many systems automatically detects fraud-like activity automatically notify customers via cell-phone within one minute of transaction being completed. Again: hundreds-of-thousands, even millions, of transactions happening hourly.
III.
The Federal Reserve processes millions of "paper ballots" (cheques) daily. Each "ballot" is optically scanned and routed to the correct party, with errors approaching zero. Fair system: errors totaling 0.01 dollars or greater are penalized with a monetary fine. 100% accuracy rate built-in and required by law.
Even during the 9/11 terrorist attack, the New York Federal Reserve - one block from WTC - managed move their operation to New Jersey and complete day's "ballot" processing.
Conclusion #1
"Help" America Vote Act is Orwellian double-speak at its finest. Federal Elections demand a Federal Employees, Federal Training, Federal Standard. We can have separate elections with their own method for local/state/federal offices. State/Local constitutions can easily be amended to this end - should be uncontroversial.
Federal elections should be fully staffed and trained, just like the TSA (Transportaion Security Administration). Some will argue that Federal Government is wrong solution for problem and will advocate private corporations as a solution. Some people are morons. TSA is many magnitudes superior to pre-existing private security (equivalent: Diebold), which allowed 9/11 slaughter. At the very least, system can be audited without resorting to lawsuit.
Conclusion #2
As with securities exchange, ATM, Federal Reserve examples cited above, electoral process can & should have accuracy approaching 100% accuracy and same-day efficiency. Primary obstacle is lack of incentive. All examples cited involve monetary transactions, which Americans are notorious for valuing above Liberty.
Ergo, values of average politician/American must change to value liberty. Of course, the only party that can change things is the party in power, and as long as they are in power "the system works" (Note: not a cut at any particular party, as this cuts both ways).
Real change will only occur after nation-destroying election scandal and ensuing violent revolution. Call me an optimist.
Unfortunately, many choose ruminate about voter irregularities as being part of a imperfect, but practical, system. We often hear these folks, when confronted with vote tally irregularies, shake their head and sigh "perhaps we'll never know for sure."
This attitude is completely unacceptable when elections are being decided by 1,000 votes out of 2 million.
Consider:
If my employer's Daily Statement of Condition was off by $1,000 out of $2MM, and I told our Controller that "perhaps we'll never know" why the difference existed, I would be fired immediately.
It's mind-blowing that certain parties feel this is acceptable standard for United States electoral system.
Problem: how to make voting analogous to monetary transactions?
A MODEST PROPOSAL
Make the election a lottery. Ten lucky voters get $10,000,000 tax-free. Winning chances would be better than "Powerball," which has far more than 100,000,000 tickets and odds of winning approaching zero. Turnout would easily top 60% each election, and voters would demand election integrity to ensure their chance for jackpot.
This is a no-brainer proposition that will never become reality in current America. Sometimes genius isn't a
No, you're right.
;-). Just goes to show how much flaming and lack of serious discussion there is (on both sides, of course).
OMG, I think this is the first time I have ever agreed with a Bush supporter
We still disagree on one thing, however. Namely, I don't think invading Iraq was a good first step towards setting up a functioning democracy there. By invading Iraq, the US has built up a lot of anti-American sentiment among Iraqis. Although it would be nice, I can't see a popularly elected Iraqi government being well-disposed to the West. Furthermore, if the aim is to replace a fundamentalist Islamist state with a democracy, Iraq was a pretty silly choice because it wasn't a religious state. Why not support the reform movement in Iran instead? The Ayatollahs there are already beginning to allow a little bit of freedom; why not give them positive reinforcement instead of threatening them by invading their neighbour pre-emptively?
There are many less intrusive ways of establishing a democracy. In Burma, diplomatic pressure helped Aung San Suu Kyi's democracy movement immensely (it's too bad that diplomatic pressure disappeared after 9/11 because the democracy movement has been swept under the rug since then).
Saddam Hussein was a corrupt dictator and he did what corrupt dictators do best (be corrupt). I'm sure the US could have offered him some sweet deals on the side in exchange for a gradual loosening of his power. Anyway, this is all speculation. The difference of opinion here seems to be that you think the occupation of Iraq might lead to a stable democracy. I think it won't, and that there are better ways to bring about freedom for people under oppressive regimes. I guess only time will tell.
Don't you hate meta-sigs?