NYT: In Search of Accurate Vote Totals

[Apollo11]

New York Times Editorial - September 5, 2006

In Search of Accurate Vote Totals

It’s hard to believe that nearly six years after the disasters of Florida in 2000, states still haven’t mastered the art of counting votes accurately. Yet there are growing signs that the country is moving into another presidential election cycle in disarray.

The most troubling evidence comes from Ohio, a key swing state, whose electoral votes decided the 2004 presidential election. A recent government report details enormous flaws in the election system in Ohio’s biggest county, problems that may not be fixable before the 2008 election.

Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, hired a consulting firm to review its election system. The county recently adopted Diebold electronic voting machines that produce a voter-verified paper record of every vote cast. The investigators compared the vote totals recorded on the machines after this year’s primary with the paper records produced by the machines. The numbers should have been the same, but often there were large and unexplained discrepancies. The report also found that nearly 10 percent of the paper records were destroyed, blank, illegible, or otherwise compromised.

This is seriously bad news even if, as Diebold insists, the report overstates the problem. Under Ohio law, the voter-verified paper record, not the voting machine total, is the official ballot for purposes of a recount. The error rates the report identified are an invitation to a meltdown in a close election.

The report also found an array of other problems. The county does not have a standardized method for conducting a manual recount. That is an invitation, as Florida 2000 showed, to chaos and litigation. And there is a serious need for better training of poll workers, and for more uniform voter ID policies. Disturbingly, the report found that 31 percent of blacks were asked for ID, while just 18 percent of others were.

Some of these problems may be explored further in a federal lawsuit challenging Ohio’s administration of its 2004 election. Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who has been criticized for many decisions he made on election matters that year, recently agreed to help preserve the 2004 paper ballots for review in the lawsuit.

Ohio is not the only state that may be headed for trouble in 2008. New York’s Legislature was shamefully slow in passing the law needed to start adopting new voting machines statewide. Now localities are just starting to evaluate voting machine companies as they scramble to put machines in place in time for the 2007 election. (Because of a federal lawsuit, New York has to make the switch a year early.) Much can go wrong when new voting machines are used. There has to be extensive testing, and education of poll workers and voters. New York’s timetable needlessly risks an Election Day disaster.

Cuyahoga County deserves credit for commissioning an investigation that raised uncomfortable but important questions. Its report should be a wake-up call to states and counties nationwide. Every jurisdiction in the country that runs elections should question itself just as rigorously, and start fixing any problems without delay.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/05/opinion/05tue1.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials

[acmavm]

1. If two frigging years isn't enough to fix the problem then we have a

bigger one and that is the damn stupidity of the people in this country. If they think that the programs cannot be put into place that will accurately count our votes, then they damn well better give up thinking that these clowns are capable of running a state/local/federal government with all it's problems and snafus as well.

[Tiggeroshii]

2. Why the fuck is this just opinion?

Idiots need to be putting this on the front page. Of course they won't.

[annabanana]

3. This is in the New York Times, people!!

After years of being "tin-foil hat" territory, after years of screaming and working and mobilizing and being marginalized and sneered at by corpomedia. . . this is in the New York Times!.

(look, Andy, look!)

nominated

[Apollo11]

4. Like a sinner repenting ...

Yes folks, this is the same New York Times who - on November 12th 2004 - brought you this headline:

Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried

By TOM ZELLER Jr.

The e-mail messages and Web postings had all the twitchy cloak-and-dagger thrust of a Hollywood blockbuster. "Evidence mounts that the vote may have been hacked," trumpeted a headline on the Web site CommonDreams.org. "Fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines," declared BlackBoxVoting.org.

In the space of seven days, an online market of dark ideas surrounding last week's presidential election took root and multiplied.

But while the widely read universe of Web logs was often blamed for the swift propagation of faulty analyses, the blogosphere, as it has come to be known, spread the rumors so fast that experts were soon able to debunk them, rather than allowing them to linger and feed conspiracy theories. Within days of the first rumors of a stolen election, in fact, the most popular theories were being proved wrong - though many were still reluctant to let them go.

<...>

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/politics/12theory.html?ex=1258002000&en=4d92304c5edc7155&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt

[Peace Patriot]

5. This is bullshit! Don't you see what's going on with this editorial?

They are trying to PRESSURE New York to CONVERT TO ELECTRONIC VOTING! Ignore the Ohio issue, for a moment, and concentrate on this paragraph:

"New York’s Legislature was shamefully slow in passing the law needed to start adopting new voting machines statewide. Now localities are just starting to evaluate voting machine companies as they scramble to put machines in place in time for the 2007 election. (Because of a federal lawsuit, New York has to make the switch a year early.) Much can go wrong when new voting machines are used. There has to be extensive testing, and education of poll workers and voters. New York’s timetable needlessly risks an Election Day disaster. "

Notice that first phrases: "the law needed to start adopting new voting machines statewide." NY has the old reliable lever machines. They should make the smart and conservative decision to KEEP THEM. There are NO PROBLEMS with the lever machines. They are almost impossible to rig. Not so the "new voting machines"! This editorial takes it as a given that NY should abandon the voting system that works, and adopt the "new voting machines" that DON'T WORK. It's crazy! The article is crazy! It criticizes the legislature for "delaying" this BAD CONVERSION TO ELECTRONICS THAT IS DESTROYING OUR DEMOCRACY because "MUCH CAN GO WRONG" with these "NEW VOTING MACHINES."

WHY is NY "scrambling" to put these goddamned, Bushite-corporate controlled, SECRETLY PROGRAMMED,election theft machines in place? Because the Bush Junta is using every pressure they can to force them to. They want to turn NY into a "red" state as they are trying to do in California--with extremely riggable, non-transparent electronic voting systems!

You see, now that ACTIVISTS and Greens and REAL Democrats like Conyers and the GAO and Steven Freeman and Brad Friedman and Bob Fritakis and RFK, Jr., and ALL OF US have exposed the fraud in Ohio--a matter that the NYT black-holed for two years, along with the other war profiteering corporate news monopolies--they can safely discuss Ohio to set the context for a SPEEDY conversion of NY to the SAME piece of crap voting system that Ohio has!

This article is so twisted and so perverse, I can hardly believe it--except that I will never forget Judith Miller on the front page of the NYT telling a 100% pack of lies to help create the ILLUSION of support in this country for a heinous, unjust, illegal war.

FACTS OMITTED:

Conversion to Bushite-corporate controlled election theft machines, run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it--with virtually no audit/recount controls, was engineered by the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney, and abetted by Bilderberg 'Democrat' Christopher Dodd. This corrupt gang provided a nearly $4 billion electronic voting boondoggle, with which to bribe, entice, corrupt and bully election officials from one end of the country to the other, into FAST-TRACK purchasing of these extremely insecure, insider hackable voting systems. The bill--the so-called "Help America Vote Act" of 2002--placed no controls on secret corporate vote counting, no controls on lavish lobbying and other corrupt practices, required no paper trail at all (let alone a real paper ballot), and permitted secret industry "testing" of the machines. And the chief beneficiaries of this piece of crap legislation are:

DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer," right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004"; and

ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things). Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship; they are run by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich.

These are the people who "counted" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy.

The third major election theft player, Sequoia, employs Republican former Calif Sec of State Bill Jones, and his chief aide Alfie Charles, to peddle their machines--in an outstanding example of the highly corrupt practice of "revolving door" employment.

The 2004 election was NON-TRANSPARENT and UNVERIFIABLE--as will be all future elections under this electronic regime. NON-TRANSPARENT elections are NOT elections. They are tyranny. That's what we have now in most of the country.

NY has been a major holdout. It has resisted the bullying of the Bush Junta Dept. of Justice, which has been trying to FORCE New York to go NON-TRANSPARENT--to subject its elections to direct Bushite corporate control.

NY should REMAIN defiant. And the rest of us need to BECOME defiant--and throw all of these election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

--------------------------------------------------------

Bust the Machines--Vote by Absentee Ballot this November! BOYCOTT the Machines! DON'T vote on them! We need MASSIVE Absentee Ballot voting to pressure local/state election officials to restore TRANSPARENT vote counting!

[Apollo11]

6. I see what you are saying

That paragraph confused me at first. Now I see it is a stealthy way for the NYT to promote the false idea that more electronic voting is the solution to all our problems.

Somebody needs to call the Times on this bull$h!t. I hope you and others will write to the New York Times, and I hope the Times prints your letters.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Oh, don't bother. The NYT went over to the Dark Side long ago.

These fuckers have taken away our right to vote, and they are not going to give it back voluntarily. We have to FORCE reform. And the only way to do that peacefully is to BOYCOTT the voting machines--NOW, this fall--by means of Absentee Ballot voting. FLOOD election officials with MOUNTAINS of paper Absentee Ballots, and create sufficient panic and crisis in the election theft industry to FORCE local/state election officials to the table. Our DEMAND: Restore TRANSPARENT VOTE COUNTING. Vote counting that everyone can SEE. Vote counting that everyone can UNDERSTAND.

AB votes are not "safe" either--and will not insure accurate vote counts this fall--but, if enough people vote AB (and many are--it's up to 50% in Los Angeles)--if everyone who loathes the Bush Junta (60% to 70%) votes by Absentee Ballot--then we'll have some bargaining power. We need a citizen REVOLT against the rigged machines. If nobody will vote on these diabolical machines, what can they do? Let these shiny new election theft machines sit idle! Let them gather dust! DON'T vote on them!

Bust the Machines--Vote by Absentee Ballot this November!

[Peace Patriot]

8. I take that back--or one part of it. DO write to the NYT! I shouldn't

have said "don't bother." It is ALWAYS worth it to express your opinion, if that is what you want to do, even if you know they are deaf to you. I've learned from experience that if you really nail corporate news monopolies--as with this devious NYT editorial--they will NOT print it. That's mostly why I said, "don't bother" (that, a fit of cynicism). But if you frame it right--say, as a statement in defense of the old lever machines, taking the CONSERVATIVE position (if it's not broke, don't fix it)--you might get it published. I don't think I am capable of writing such a letter any more--a "diplomatic" letter to those who have so royally fucked us over. But if someone wants to try, fine. I applaud it. I am NOT against people expressing opinions and trying to get some real information out there, however you can.