Error in tally upends NY congressional election (bad)

[Renew Deal]

Source: MSNBC

NEW YORK — A congressional election on eastern Long Island that had appeared to end in victory for a four-term Democrat, U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop, is now up for grabs after authorities discovered they had misreported the result of the vote.

Officials with the Suffolk County Board of Elections said they discovered Friday that the unofficial tally released in the hours after the polls closed was off by thousands.

A routine check of voting machine memory cards showed that instead of leading by about 3,500 votes, Bishop was trailing Republican challenger Randy Altschuler by a little less than 400.

Board of Elections commissioner Wayne Rogers said the original numbers were reported by telephone and relayed through intermediaries before being entered into the county's computer system.

"Somewhere within that process, some of these numbers must have been transcribed incorrectly," he told The Associated Press on Saturday.
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Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40043028/ns/politics

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqiD0KTZrKE

This could be really bad. I hope Bishop rocked the absentee vote. :banghead:

[Ken Burch]

1. Wayne Rogers? "Trapper John McIntyre" is running the Suffolk County Board of Elections?

[jeff47]

2. An error that favors Republicans in electronic voting machines?

How unexpected!

[rurallib]

3. my first thought also.

[NYMdaveNYI]

6. No, we still use lever machines in NY...

And District 1 is not totally liberal. It’s like Long Island’s Kansas.

[Renew Deal]

11. This was the first general election using electronic machines.

They use a combination of ballot reader type machines, so there is a paper trail. It's odd that the vote count is exactly 4000 votes off. Sounds like it could have been some sort of human error.

[NYMdaveNYI]

14. Wow, jesus, I had no idea... I just sent in an absentee ballot...

The State of New York, rip-roarin' into the 20th Century!!!

[Igel]

7. Actually, the error favored the Dem candidate.

Fixing the error favored the (R) candidate.

Not that the election night totals carry any weight whatsoever.

The NY BOEs may publicize preliminary, unofficial counts, but it's the official post-election canvassing of the machines that produces the official totals. They catch all kinds of mistakes.

The problem is that everybody assumes that the election-night totals must be right. If everything works perfectly on election night, sure. But often numbers get switched, figures are toted up incorrectly, when totals are reported by phone they're misread or miswritten. Remember: The poll workers are doing the initial reporting after 12 or 15 hour shifts with few breaks and are reporting the numbers to people who are moving into high gear after an absurdly busy 12 or 15 shift.

[jeff47]

8. You need to re-read that.

Specifically, this paragraph:

A routine check of voting machine memory cards showed that instead of leading by about 3,500 votes, Bishop was trailing Republican challenger Randy Altschuler by a little less than 400.

So, the tally reported on election day (by people) happens to not line up with the memory cards created by the electronic voting machines.

[TreasonousBastard]

10. Don't forget that the mistaken tally came from the memory cards...

and that when calling nobody says "Cuomo 256, Paladino 127..."

The totals are transcribed from a tape run after the polls close to a grid so the call in goes "A1-224, A2-56..."

It is entirely possible that there was an error in the grid so, say, the Working Families vote was doubled or the Conservative vote put to Bishop.

Whatever happened, we're on it and already have the first team of lawyers at the BOE, watching,

And I got an email saying we need $25,000, the first installment for the war chest, by Monday.

(we're hunkered down-- this is going to be one bad bitch.)

[Renew Deal]

12. Do you think there are enough votes for Bishop in the absentees?

[TreasonousBastard]

13. Impossible to tell. Republicans have requested slightly more than half...

of the absentee ballots, but that means little since Bishop has fair support amongst some Republicans. There are around 3,000 affidavit ballots, but nobody has a clue how they voted, or how many will be allowed.

We're just sick over this, but nothing to do but slog on and hope for the best.

And if we lose, get ready for 2012. With a vengeance!

[TreasonousBastard]

4. We're on top of this. Last night we got the email that the call in was screwed up, and...

there is a good chance Bishop will lose to the teabagging bastard.

We use scanners, so wisecracks about electronic voting from the peanut gallery should be ignored. The real problem seems to be in the transcribing from the paper printouts from the scanners to the BOE at the end of the night-- all human error. The printouts came directly from the chips, so they should agree, but that is being checked.

There are about 10,000 affidavit and absentee ballots so far, and they will all have to be counted, probably by hand.

We might end up counting everything by hand-- one of our state Senators is behind by a lousy 40 votes.

This is going to cost a LOT of money, and the begging cup is out already.

[Nite Owl]

5. Which state Senator?

Is it Brian Foley? He was my legislator when I lived on LI and was a big help to me with a problem I was having with flooding on our street, he really followed through. My husband was hospitalized with his father, same room. I thought Brian lost.

[TreasonousBastard]

9. My mistake, typing faster than thinking-- not Senator, it's Assemblyman Mark Alessi...

a Democrat, who's endangered. Our state Senator out here, Republican Ken Lavalle, is an institution and we had almost no chance of unseating him.

Yeah, Foley got upended this year. Lee Zeldin ran against Bishop last time out and got his clock cleaned. This time he managed to narrowly beat Foley in a wave of teabaggery.

[The Croquist]

20. Now I'm smelling a rat

I've been looking at this more. A few facts:

There are 460 election districts in the NY 1st congressional district.
I don't know the current voter tally but the one reported on the Suffolk County Board of Elections is:
Bishop 92,525
Altschuler 88,791
Total 181,316

That works out to 394 votes per election district. How the hell can one district over (or under) report 4,000 votes for one candidate if they average 394 total votes per district? Shouldn't there be some kind of quality control check in place?

Even flipping them requires 2,000 votes if 100% went to one candidate. That means that there had to be multiple "errors" made that night if the Tuesday night results are to be considered in error. When I say multiple keep in mind that this was a close election. Even at the 2008 ratio of 59% versus 41% for Bishop, Bishop only gained 109 votes per election district at the 2008 turnout numbers and 71 at 2012 turnout numbers. That means that if you "accidentally" flip vote tallies you would need 28 - 18 districts to screw up on election night.

That's too many screw ups. I can see one big time screw-up but 18 - 28?

If the Friday night total is in error they should also stand out like a sore thumb and be even easier to spot since the Friday numbers would demand at least a quick check when you see how different they are from the Tuesday numbers. Either way something sucks.

[TreasonousBastard]

22. It's obviously not just one district-- something systemic screwed up...

A tape is run at the end of the day and the votes are transcribed to a grid-- the same grid we used when we had the lever machines. The grid is a simple A1,2,3... B1,2,3... sort of thing and essentially reproduces the positions of the candidates on the ballot.

No names are called in at the end of the night, just grid numbers, so I suspect that something got screwed up with the grids-- maybe programming the grid into machines got screwed up at BOE headquarters. So far, I haven't heard any excuses from the usual suspects.

(I'm a pollworker and on the local Democratic committee, but have few worthwhile connections in the BOE for this kind of cockup. One of our committee members is a lawyer and very connected, but he's also very tightlipped due to potential lawsuits from all sides)

[The Croquist]

23. Thanks for both replies / Wild ass speculation

Interesting. A mapping error from the grids to the computer could credit Bishop with the Conservative vote and credit Altschuler with both the the Independent and Working Families parties.

If you look at the Tuesday totals for the Independent and Working Families parties you get 14,705. The Conservative party got 18,987 for a difference of 4,282. My understanding is that the swing is about 3,854. That's a difference of 428 votes that could possibly be explained by minor errors.

I would expect that each candidate would need a separate mapping table because not all candidates will be endorsed by the same parties so an error for one candidate would not translate to other races.

[The Croquist]

19. It sounds like you know what you're talking about so a few questions

Can you explain what an "affidavit ballot" is. I've got an idea but I suspect that they vary from state to state. Specifically:

Is it for people that aren't on the voter rolls but thought they were?
Is it for people that show up at the wrong precinct?
Is it for people that don't have proper ID and if so do they have to come back to provide it?

What are the deadlines for absentee ballots?
I know they need to be postmarked by November 1st but what date do they need to be received by?
I recall in 2000 that there were claims that US ships didn't always postmark their ballots. Has that issue been resolved?

Have they identified the precinct(s) with issues and if so how does their vote totals compare with past elections? Keep in mind that we had a bad year but if the average precinct went an extra 10% republican what was the swing here? Was the first number or second number closer to the "expected" number?

So far it doesn't sound like fraud, just an honest mistake, but the recount process can get very "creative".

From what I've read, and it's not much, Bishop isn't claiming foul or disputing the new numbers although he wants a manual recount. Is that correct?

[TreasonousBastard]

21. Affidavit ballots are for people who think they're on the roll, but don't show up in it...

If someone shows up at the wrong poll, our county has records of everyone and where they should be, so we send them to the right one. If they've moved and the new address isn't in the poll book, or if they aren't in there at all but claim they're registered, the affidavit ballot is used. We only require ID when voting the first time.

Absentee ballots had to have been received by today, but I'm not sure when military ballots are due in. I think it's by the end of the month, but I don't think we have all that many military ballots out there.

Nobody's claiming foul, just fuckup. But, since this is only the second time we've used this system, it should be checked out. If a hand count is the way, so be it. In the general scheme of things, there's a random comparison of paper ballots to memory chips, but that may not be enough here.

[DumpDavisHogg]

15. So Citizens United lets corporations pay off election officials too?

This is rigged, obviously, as were many of the "elections" nationwide.

Why aren't people marching in the streets RIGHT NOW?

[eilen]

16. NY Congressman Maffei is also in question

in our Congressional district. A rural county corrected their votes which favored TeaBircher Anne Marie Buerkle. We are waiting on the absentee votes -- 2 weeks.

[Odin2005]

17. Bullshit! The fascists are trying to steal the seat!

:grr:

[Devil_Fish]

18. Tough Shit. Fox News elected Bush in 04. No do overs cry babys. NT