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BlackBox Voting Tests California Diebold Machines
Doc Ruby writes "The California Secretary of State has invited Black Box Voting to hack away at some Diebold voting systems. The testing is set for Nov. 30, 2005. Evaluations conducted by Black Box Voting in San Joaquin, Marin, and Alameda counties (Calif.) reveal that a critical paper audit component is missing for all absentee and mail-in ballots, and also for recounts. (Black Box personnel were hired by the Libertarian Party to conduct inspections.)"
Paper trail: the magical words. In Montréal, Québec, the recent municipal election is being contested. Mark-sense ballots were counted by machines, but ballots are kept in sealed boxes after being run through the machine (by the elector). Right now, the ballots are being recounted by hand in the courthouse.
Unless there is third party auditing at the time of voting, or access to the source code with definitive proof that the shown code is compiled on the machines, and the machines haven't been updated, then it's an exercise in futility.
We want a paper ballot. Sure, we could have a computer voting system, but it has to spit out a paper ballot with my choices marked on it. THAT is the ballot that should be counted, either manually, or with an optical scanner.
If the paper trail that I look at is not the same ballot that is counted, I can't be sure that a programmer decided to print one thing and tally another.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
There is no other way. Period. So what if we look at their source? What are we going to do, take a library to use in some high school election? Any objection to a release of source code is utter lawyer bullshit.
What I want to know is:
What happens when you put a Sony Music CD into a Diebold machine?
(you just *know* they've got Autoplay enabled in there. . . )
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Some people have mentioned that receipts might be valid, however this raises issues of people selling votes (or being harassed). The anonymous paper and pencil system is the best --- while corruption can lead to large numbers of fraudulant ballot papers, if the corruption is at this level, there isn't much that can be done anyhow.
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
I believe you. And I believe her. I believe everything I read on the internet. Especially accusations of Communism; they tend to ring particularly true.
Sigh.
the layman's guide to computer science
How do you know the source they give makes equals the binary you run?
If there's a backdoor of some kind for someone to specifically tamper with the voting results, that would be BAD, but I'd be surprised. I will not, AT ALL, be surprised, however, holes in the operating system, programs underlying the voting software proper, or so-called "middleware" are chock full of holes that someone could use. For that reason, I am very much against this process.
My suggestion to fix the system: There is nothing wrong with filling out (or sending in, for absentee voting) a paper ballot, which, in my opinion, should be produced with anti-counterfeiting and anti-tampering technologies, similar to those employed in our currency. An electronic system could be used to optically scan and process the votes, with individuals verifying the optical scan, and this information should be entered into a database for any kind of processing that the government needs to do, along with the optical scan of the original paper ballot. Most importantly, however, is this: Each paper ballot should have an attached "carbon copy" of some type that the user keeps, which will come with a special user ID and passphrase that the user can use after the election date to log in to a secure site and verify that his individual vote was counted as he intended. This sort of public watchfulness on the voting process will create a situation in which it will become extremely difficult to alter the results.
Bev Harris is NOT a Communist.
He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a Communist... but he is *NOT* a porn star.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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The libertarian party of all parties? I'm not a member, though I did vote libertarian last year, but I like this. I wonder if any of /.'s democrats/republicans can venture to guess why their beloved party didn't sponsor something so crucial to to keeping the corruption out of our voting. Perhaps it's because they (say: democrats) live by the old cliche: "The enemy (republicans) of my enemy (libertarians/other 3rd party) is my friend" ?
These guys account for something like 1-5% of the vote (depending, of course), it makes sense that they're trying to get these things in line. Think I might just go pay my dues.
Person marks ballot with permanent marker (like the old multiple choice tests but not eraseable). Voting machine is a form reader with a ballot box underneath. This is how municipal elections are done in Nanaimo (and I presume most other municipalities in) BC, Canada. Federal and Provincial elections are still hand-counted with scrutineers seeing (and counting) every ballot.
This is how voting has been done in San Diego County in California for the past couple of elections. I personally don't think that the touch screens are going to be adding much but expense.
While it's true that blackbox voting machines make it easier to rig elections, it doesn't matter if someone is determined to falsify the voting results. Even with purely paper-based voting, they could use the age-old technique of deception and falsify the results and documents. Maybe even put all "wrong" votes in a box and throw them in an incinerator, and make new ones with the right vote on them. Any "conspiracy theorists" could be silenced by force or public ridicule. It's suprisingly easy when you think about it.
The big problem here is that paper ballots can still be tampered with - ballot box stuffing, throwing out opposing ballots, even changing ballots. It's possible.
Maybe if there was some sort of (excuse the buzz word here) biometric way of tracking a vote? Paper ballots with a thumbprint? Well... that does make the whole "secret ballot" thing problematic... and everyone's finger prints would then have to be on file to vote, which probably wouldn't fly either... most polling places don't even require a picture ID as far as I know.
Maybe we should drop the idea of a secret ballot? I'm not saying we should make it a matter of public record or anything, but allow votes to be tied to names specifically. Or is that already done?
Sorry, I'll admit I'm quite ignorant about voting procedures (don't mod me down for it - please correct my ignorance), but developing a truly functional and verifiable means of voting seems nearly impossible while votes records are secret.
Here's the link to the specific post detailing their request
If the editors are listening, it might be worth fixing the
That little mistake puts the issue in a wrong light.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Why are they using machines to count the votes ?
/fetched by the administration.
Here in Germany the voting process is 100% transparent.
The whole country is divided into ~400000 pieces. In each of these pieces, a votingplace is established. Each votingplace is maned by 7 citicens (volunteers prefered. vacant posts are filled by selecting random citicen.).
The voters vote through making a cross on a piece of paper.
After the vote, the whole voting comittee counts the votes two times. After that, the votes are sealed in a bag. The result and the votes are then given to
During the whole process, _every_ citicen has the right to be on place and controll the work of the comittee.
The whole process is FAST:
Usually it only takes ~1 hour to count the votes.
Voters don't need complicated instruction manuals (everybody knows how to use a pen, right ?)
The whole process is reliable:
It is very hard for a political party to man a whole comittee.
As every citisen has the right (and many make use of their right) to be on place and to controll the work, falsifiing is extremely hard.
Because we have a clear paper-trail, every vote can get re-counted.
Ever tried to use a machine when there is a power-outage ? Pens work without electricity.
The whole process is CHEAP:
No expensive machines.
Volunteers & citicens don't get paid.
$$$
If there was any sense of justice the government would just pay OSS developers to write something that at the end of the day was public domain open to scrutiny.
But of course $$$ trumps all and if Diebold can't make MILLIONS off faulty voting boxes then the commies win!!!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
There are about as many ways Black Box Voting can mess up this test as there are ways to cheat elections that use these easily programmed voting machines and tabulators.
Computers are machines which we use to manipulate data. Votes are not the kind of data we want manipulated. End of case, electronic voting machines are a bad idea.
The "paper trail" some of these machines produce is not the ballot that is actually counted, it is an auditing tool. In California only 1% of these paper votes will be compared to the electronic vote. Unless the audit is very carefully designed, and some very stringent security measures enforced, there will be many opportunites to cheat, since 99% of the electronic votes will not be compared to the paper votes. Paper trails and electronic votes are much easier to mess with than boxes and boxes of voter verified paper ballots. People tend to notice when large bulky ballot boxes are being messed with, but nobody can see what's happening to their votes inside a memory cartridge.
Let's make a few points clear here.
.cgi?file=/1954/14325.html
1) The Libertarian connection happened as a result of California Election Code 15004, which reads:
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The county central committee of each qualified political party may employ, and may have present at the central counting place or places, not more than two qualified data processing specialists or engineers to check and review the preparation and operation of the tabulating devices, their programming and testing, and have the specialists or engineers in attendance at any or all phases of the election.
---
So we (Black Box Voting) approached the California Libertarian Party to team up and do up-close inspections of these voting machines, or at least explore what's possible under 15004. They hired us at a buck a day. The main result: we ended up with listings of installed software and drivers that make it obvious Diebold wasn't obeying a court order to shut down networking drivers that weren't necessary. We've complained to the California AG's office about this and Diebold's cross-connection of the San Diego central tabulator box to the Internet (also banned by both the same court order and state regulation). More details at:
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth
This upcoming "test hack" at the California Secretary of State's office is another matter entirely.
This all started when we (Black Box Voting) hired Finnish security consultant Harri Hursti to help out in a "test hack" in Leon County FL where the county elections official (Ion Sancho) was worried about all this "Diebold" controversy.
What Hursti found was pretty wild. In short: before the election, all the precinct memory cards are prepped from the central vote count box with the ballot and candidate data...normal enough. But the cards are also prepped with interpreted BASIC code loaded into all the memory cards to control the output of the summary counter printer at each precinct. Worse, if you mess around with that code loaded first at the central tabulator, you can make that end-of-day-printout read whatever you want...put in a vote-skimming routine, false numbers, whatever. Nothing in the system at the central or precinct ends checks for hashes or whatever to see if the BASIC code is legit. Said code can be date/time sensitive so that the machines will still pass Logic&Accuracy testing before or after the election. With the paper trail at the precinct dickered with, you can use the other major hack available - altering the central database of votes to match the precinct report paper. Not hard - the central database of votes is written in MS-Access so either load a commercial copy of Access and tweak by hand, or load/type a Visual Basic script to monkey with the JET database engine (the "Access back end") on autopilot.
Net result: one thoroughly "pwned" election.
The full report:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVreport.pdf
Since then, *nobody* has tried to duplicate the Hursti results. If they're true, Diebold would have to do a nationwide recall and the Federally approved testing labs (Ciber Inc. in Huntsville AL and a division of Wyle also in Huntsville) would need a visit by people with badges, guns and search warrants.
After the preliminary report on the Leon County hack was released but before the final report linked above, Bev Harris and I formally asked the California Secretary of State's office to check out the issues Hursti found, under yet another obscure clause of the California elections code, 19202:
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Any person or corporation owning or being interested in any voting system or part of a voting system may apply to the Secretary of State to examine it and report on its accuracy and efficiency to fulfill its purpose. The Secretary of State shall complete his or her examination without undue delay
Think Ohio, 2004. What possible incentive would the current Administration & Congress have to insist upon making the current process transparent and subject to review? The G.A.O. report hammered Ohio and their voting machines. Reaction from our "elected" leaders? None.
then doesn't it seem rather strange that the president who only has a 30% approval rating got elected by a majority only a year ago?
Quoting:
/ 97374
"I don't know what the right response is for you people, but clearly the state officials are being "handled" by Diebold here. You have to find some way expose or work against or break this down."
Well we've "handled" it back so far by proposing a much more reasonable test protocol. No response yet from them.
The thing about us doing the hack is, yes it'll be great if it's fair, but...OK, let's say the SecState's office does it, and it turns out later that what they tested was a classic "lab queen" Diebold Frankensteined up nice and special. Can you say "egg on face"? "Who does the hack" is connected to "who takes the political risk if it's done wrong"...noteworthy especially since state law (EC19202) says it's THEM that does the testing...
At the same moment we replied in EMail to the SecState's office, we put out a press release on this subject...we've had a fair number of responses so far and a few of hits in Google News just today:
http://www.govtech.net/magazine/channel_story.php
(and the same story above in another "government news site"...)
http://www.fcw.com/article91533-11-23-05-Web
It's not a lot...but it's had one comical effect: the various reporters we've talked to have all tried to call the guy at the SecState's office engineering this thing (Bruce McDannold, whose phone number we included in our press release) and they all say he hasn't answered phone calls. He also hasn't gotten back to us, which is odd because he's usually very good about returning EMails.
I refuse to speculate on what he's up to and I'll forego the snideness I'm thinking.
To answer your original question: we WILL do this thing even with at least some of their restrictions in place...but we want a basically fair shot here, and what was proposed...well y'all can decide for yourselves what sort of offer they made us.
---
Full disclosure: I helped Bev Harris decipher the massive pile of files she downloaded from a Diebold FTP site in January '03 starting around July '03 on my part. She founded Black Box Voting Inc. as a non-political non-profit (501(c)(3) tax status) in mid-2004, at which time I became a volunteer member of the BBV board of directors. In July I lost my day job and three weeks ago I joined the full-time staff at BBV, resigning from the board of directors and moving up to the Seattle area. BBV has a full-time staff of three, I make $2k a month. Bev and I were the two co-plaintiffs in a consumer protection lawsuit in California that netted the state of California a $2.6mil refund; Bev and I each collected a "bounty" of $76,000. That suit started prior to BBV's formation as a non-profit and was run without any of the non-profit's resources.
http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/. A 100% F/OSS voting solution that can run on commodity hardware and F/OSS operating systems.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/
At least, I hope that fsckn works...I thought I did it right the first time...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Black Box Voting is complaining that there is no paper trail for the counting of mail-in paper ballots.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/1303 7.html
"New information obtained by Black Box Voting investigator Jim March shows that mail-in votes in upcoming Nov. 8 elections will lack crucial safeguards. The Diebold "GEMS defect" -- the ability for anyone with access to change vote results on the "mother ship" that tallies and controls election results -- has now been acknowledged by Diebold, but has not been mitigated in most locations, and it is worse for mail-in votes. The GEMS defect has been proven. The risks are significant. Mail-in votes are at exceptional risk because they are counted on a system that lacks protective features found on polling place machines. While the precinct-based optical scan machines made by Diebold produce a results tape, the same machines, when counting mail-in ballots, use a different program and do not store vote tallies on a memory card, nor do they produce an independent results tape. Therefore the defective GEMS program holds the only record for absentee vote totals. "
Hey Black Box dudes - why aren't the mail-in ballots themselves a pretty good paper trail for themselves!?!?
Paper trails are great so long as they're USED, at least for spot-checking.
Right now, California has one of the better laws on this, saying that 1% of the precincts need to be hand-counted once there's a paper trail in place. And paper trails are mandated beginning in '06.
Great.
But several counties don't assign their absentee ballots to precincts - they treat them as a distinct batch. And since they're not PRECINCTS, these counties claim they don't fall under the 1% manual recount rule.
Los Angeles County (population 12 MILLION) is among these.
So even though absentee voting *always* includes a paper trail (the part people mail in), in LA and elsewhere it doesn't get spot-checked. Hack just that portion of the vote, you're golden.
Sigh.
In six states it's ILLEGAL to recount paper ballots...danged if I know why. Most states don't have a spot-check rule.
Voter verifiable paper is a good start but it's only "part of this complete breakfrast" if you know what I mean...
Jim March
Black Box Voting
A few excerpts:
Nevada asked the Gaming Control Board to take a look at voting machines. After that review, Nevada went to a paper trail in 2004.
Definately a she, not on meds, has no use for Osama Yo Mama, ain't a commie :).
She has however been an action movie star:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/videos/volusia2.mpg
Drop dead funny, taken from a "dumpster dive session" behind an elections department warehouse in Volusia County FL in which all sorts of real voting records (mainly the critical end-of-day polltapes) had been thrown out. Illegally.
("Poll tapes" are printed on older voting machines on "cash register rolls", they basically spit out about 3ft worth of "I took in 345 votes for Bush, 257 for Kerry" type stuff, keeping a "running tally". They're not as good as a voter verified paper trail, they can be "hacked" at least in Diebold's case, but that's not THAT easy and a cheating election official(s) with limited or no techie background would find it easier to just junk them.)
I understand what you mean, but please ask for "voter-verified paper ballots" instead of a "paper trail".
I was part of the Champaign County Election Equipment Advisory Board in Champaign county Illinois. We were an appointed body whose job was to evaluate voting machines that would make us compliant with the new "Help America Vote Act" law. Our board heard sales pitches from a few vendors (Diebold, HartIntercivic, ES&S) and their local reps, we asked them questions, collected information, and eventually made a recommendation to the County Board (who are elected). We've given the County Board our advice and the County Board will make the final decision and sign the contracts.
We took a field trip to Tippecanoe county Indiana and saw a Diebold voting machine, and our guides were nice enough to give us a demonstration. We were familiar with the Diebold system they demonstrated from a user and administrator's perspective, but we were stunned that the long strip of paper the machine printed was not voter-verified. The Diebold machine we saw produced this paper if the operator had a physical key and pressed the appropriate button (typically the election judge on the site would do this at the end of election day). But no voters got to see what was printed on the paper, therefore there was no way for a voter to make sure that there was any accurate written record of their vote, even a printed record that stayed with the election judges (not a receipt).
Ostensibly, what's on the paper is a record of votes in a pseudo-random order (so as to prevent an election judge from correlating a particular voter with the printed information). But since the paper is not voter-verified, what was written on the paper is completely untrustworthy. Voters were relying on whatever the software says. Tippecanoe county Indiana is a long-time Diebold customer (since before Diebold bought Global Election Systems, if I recall correctly).
This machine compelled me to distinguish between a "paper trail" (which the Diebold reps and the Tippecanoe county demonstrators assured us the machine could generate) and a "voter-verified paper ballot". The former simply isn't good enough.
Digital Citizen
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/08/politics /main1027281.shtml
Nobody bothers to ask how many other votes there were already in the system or what happened to them? Who was in charge of putting in
the votes? How many people's votes did he input? Who did he have them vote for? Why didn't he purge them after the test? How many other people did the same, and how many votes were left in the systems? Why isn't the media asking these questions? This would be a scandal in any other country in the world. USA election systems are PWNED by the Bush crime cartel.
http://nightweed.com/usavotefacts.html
The US elections are clearly fraudulent and thus should be considered invalid. Even by the lowest of banana-state standards. Why is no accountability taking place? Why don't Americans care if a criminal cartel is running their country? They're paying the bill sooner or later for the shit they are letting these people do to them.
"Notice exit polls are no longer conducted? They "broke" during 2000, so no news organization will have them anymore. This in spite of the fact that statistics don't "break" during only one extremely critical election, and no other. They didn't break, kids, the election totals were altered and no longer matched reality."
Yes I did notice the story was dropped very quickly. I watched a documentry about Rove the other day (on the Australian TV station SBS). Early in the day of the election, exit polls were not lining up with Rove's "tally room" predictions and everyone was looking glum. At the end of the day the "real tallies" came into line with Rove's predictions and there were smiles all round.
This was explained as a result of a last minute drive to get republicans to the booths. It was also pointed out that Rove's "tally room" was hooked directly to the "real tally room" so thier numbers were simply ahead of the exit polls. Even if I could swallow that, the FINAL exit polls in question were ALL wrong and ALL against Bush. Statistically this is like all the air in the room suddenly accumulating in one corner, yes it is POSSIBLE but Rove somehow predicted the event and was waiting in the correct corner when it happened.
It is not a lack of skilled statiticians in the US media that is a problem, it is the strange lack of interest & indignation by the US public. I am hoping for some intrepid reporter to catch Rice giving the others a blow job, maybe then you guys will impeach the lot of 'em.
Disclaimer: Don't take this post as US bashing, my country also re-elected a pack of smirking liars. It's like a re-run of the 1950's, everyone is checking for terrorist under the bed.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"I want to see evidence to your claims."
It's on every diebold machine, just fish it out of the bit-bucket.
Insightfull, WTF? Your whole argument about statistics is based on the administration's official straw men (ie: exit polls were taken only in the morning, sampling is not as reliable as the official total). There were at least three sets of numbers, Rove's predictions, Diebold's count and the Exit poll stat's. Two of them were a very close match but they were not the two sets everyone (except Rove) had expected, the explaination is Rove101, stats101 has it's money on the exit polls.
"The majority of Americans don't like extremists--and they HATE poor losers. Throwing those accusations without any sort of reliable evidence makes you look like both."
Off course if I point out your statistician has no clothes I am a loser extremist and it is every American's patriotic duty to hate me. ( The "hate" bit may one day become the definition of "irony" ).
"Not only that, but such accusations are dangerous."
In other words, allowing people to voice concerns when they have no "evidence" is dangerous, therefore it's better to shun them than to answer their concerns. Modern doublethink: Provided you don't live in a cave with suicidal nutcases, it's ok to start a war without sane reasoning.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I am disappointed that edjucated engineers are crying out for a paper trail on for voting machines. We can use an all computerized system that lets everybody count the votes, and is secured via asymmetric encryption. Two public lists are maintained by the government. One list contains registered public keys. This list is generated during voter registration, when a person submits their typical voter registration info along with their public key and an optional request to be anonymous. If a person is anonymous, then only their public key is added to the list, and otherwise their name is also added. When people vote, they use their own computer to cast a vote via the web, and their vote consists of a pair:
( public key, encrypt( private key, ( public key, votes ) ) )
Then anybody can have access to both lists. Anything that can be observed using a paper trail is now observable via a purely computerized system. Even better, since anybody has access to both lists, anybody can count the votes and anybody can audit the system.
You know the shortest way to sort out this whole Diebold mess is to actually temper with the machines in certain states.
:)
And make the Libertarians win the next election in those states, followed closely by the Green Party.
Wanna see how fast the system will be fixed then by both Republicans and Democrats?
I'm a computer geek... I hate paper... I automate everything I can get my hands on. But why, why, why, would you take a system that works, with checks and balances, and replace it with one full of holes?
Paper ballots just plain work... I can see who I've voted for. I put it in a box, under the watchful eye of at least 2 independant people. Even more independant people watch as that box is opened and all the ballots counted and recounted... and then recounted again if the margin is close. Then that number is phoned in to the central office, again under the watchful eye of people who know the total. On the other end, yet more groups of independant people add all these numbers up... and poof, we have a new Prime Minister.
(please note that "independant group" and "individuals from several different parties" are pretty much the same in my books, as far as the "Keeping it honest" factor)
Or, we could have a computer ballot... tap the screen, hope that it records who you REALLY voted for.Hope that the card wasn't preloaded with hundreds of votes. Then the magic box magically talks to another magic box... hope that it tells it the right stuff... or that no one intercepts and feeds a fake number.... or no-one knows how to dial in and override results... or that no-one messed with the voting box itself to delete all votes and reset them.... Then we trust the big magic box to tell us the right number... and if it doesn't, how would we know? In several states, a 2-3% swing of the vote is enough to change who is President... and who's going to know? A piece of paper in your hand saying "You voted for X" is useless, because even if that piece of paper has a unique ID that matches up with the magic box database... well, just because it says "Vote#465213 was for Candidate A" doesn't mean that's what it told the big magic box at the end of the line.
There's no outstanding reason to switch to computers... yes, they reduce required manpower, but (at least up here) many election folks are volunteers, so the cost is minimal. And frankly, I'd rather have dozens of independant eyes watching my vote, and watching who counts my vote, rather than trusting democracy to the magic boxes made by people who publicly promised Ohio to Bush.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
http://www.commonwonders.com/
Poll Shock
Off by 40 points, newspaper's predictions may be disturbingly accurate
By ROBERT C. KOEHLER
Tribune Media Services
November 24, 2005
One of the most wildly inaccurate pre-election polls in memory, which was off by over 40 points on some predictions, may prove to be deadly accurate as an indicator of the problems we face as a nation with our voting process -- and democracy itself.
But you won't learn this by reading the Columbus Dispatch, the newspaper that conducted the poll just prior to Ohio's Nov. 8 election. The paper's public affairs editor conceded to me that the poll results the Dispatch wrote about, wrongly indicating massive public support for several proposed constitutional amendments, were, in essence, the journalistic equivalent of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
"Much like the American space program, both our triumphs and our shortcomings are out there for all to see," Darrel Rowland said in an e-mail. Unlike NASA, however, which did manage to find that faulty O-ring, the newspaper's powers that be don't seem particularly interested in learning how their big public flop occurred. "We'll certainly double-check the poll mechanics," he said, "but see no reason to discontinue a methodology that's proven accurate for decades."
And Rowland's right, as far as I can tell: The Columbus Dispatch's survey of voters, conducted by mail, has historically been a reliable poll; it has been cited for its precision in the scholarly journal Public Opinion Quarterly and is considered far more accurate than telephone surveys. There is no faulty O-ring, in other words; the methodology doesn't need changing.
And that's why there's a story here that must not be allowed to vanish.
The story is about how America votes, and evidence that pandemic chaos and perhaps even centrally orchestrated malfeasance are accompanying the spread of electronic voting machines to the nation's precincts. We know there's cause to worry about the state of our democracy because of the historical accuracy of the Columbus Dispatch voter poll.
Of the five proposed amendments on the Ohio ballot, only the first -- a $2 billion state bond initiative to promote high-tech industry -- was not related to the conduct of elections, and oddly enough its results were accurately forecast in the poll (predicted yes vote, 53 percent; final yes vote, 54 percent). Then it gets hairy.
Issue 2 would have made absentee voting easier in the state. It had lots of high-profile support, and the Dispatch poll predicted a cakewalk for it: 59 percent yes, 33 percent no, 9 percent undecided. The actual result: 36 percent yes, a whopping 63 percent no.
Then there was issue 3, which would have lowered the campaign-contribution limits that a lame-duck state legislature had raised a year ago. Prediction: 61 percent yes, 25 percent no, 14 percent undecided. Actual result: 33 percent yes, 66 percent no.
The results of issue 4, to control gerrymandering by establishing an independent board to draw congressional districts, were only slightly less dramatic. Prediction: 31 percent yes, 45 percent no, 25 percent undecided. Result: 30 percent yes, 69 percent no. And for issue 5, to establish an independent board instead of the secretary of state's office to oversee elections, a 41 percent predicted yes vote shrank to 29 percent, while the no vote ballooned from 43 to 70 percent.
Ka-boom goes the Challenger.
Here's the telling thing. The Dispatch, member in good standing of the mainstream media, has no interest in raising doubts about the integrity of the U.S. electoral system, and so hasn't looked in that direction for an explanation of what voting-rights activist Bob Fitrakis called a polling error of "Landon beats FDR" proportions.
Instead, the paper blames the notorious volatility of statewide referendum issues. Rowland hypothesized "a huge shift in the electorate in the last few
Canada's annexation plans are proceeding perfectly. eh. To coerce Celine into joining our plight, we have promised her ze role of national anthem singer - she will provide ze official rendition of the slightly edited star-spangled banner with a guest performance by Michael Bolton - you Americans will tremble in fear every time your own anthem iz played! HAHAHAHAHA
Your new Canadian Toque wearing Overlords.
Look, speaking personally as Republican with strong Libertarian leanings (a "Ron Paul Republican"), I voted Bush over Kerry in '04. I'm not all that enthralled with Dubya, far from it, but I hate Kerry's guts.
So I'm not saying Kerry probably should have won Ohio because I enjoy saying it. Far from it, the words stick in my throat. (It looks to me like it was a combination of electronic vote fraud and "disenfranchisement fraud", messing with voter registration rolls and not putting enough voting stations in college and minority areas with high Democratic turnouts.)
The fact is, we had more election-related violence before and during the 2004 election than any other that I can recall (almost age 40). If public confidence in the vote collapses, it'll be civil war within 10 or 20 years no matter WHO is running things.
We have to have fair elections. Period.
Jim March
Black Box Voting