Suspicious N.Y. Senate Race a Warning to Dems: Impound Ohio's Machines Now

[nashuaadvocate]

Folks, if you haven't heard about it yet, you just gotta read about the New York Senate race in the 35th Senatorial District (Yonkers, Greenburgh, Mount Pleasant).

There's an article from The Advocate on it here.

If a recount in Ohio were to result in the same sort of gains for a Democrat that this race did, Kerry would gain 87,500 votes in Ohio over George W. Bush.

This is a warning flare being sent to Democrats: IMPOUND OHIO'S VOTING MACHINES NOW.

-- TNE

***
An excerpt:

On Election Day, the Westchester County Board of Elections announces that the Republican candidate, incumbent Nicholas Spano, has won the contest by 1,700 votes -- a comfortable and indeed insurmountable margin.

Nevertheless, Democrat Andrea Stewart-Cousins successfully militates for a recount.

And according to CBS, that "recount of the machine vote narrowed the gap to single digits."

[Al-CIAda]

1. Once again, thanks! -eom

[mod mom]

2. How? Remember we have Blackwell who won't even respond to Rep Conyers

and Dem members of the Judiciary Committee, an Attorney Gen seeking sanctions against contesting attorneys, a Chief State Supreme Court Justice that would not recluse himself from a suit against him., 2 senators drunk on the Neocon koolaid, a neocon lame(ass)duck governor H E L P !!!!!! We are being held captive by neocons.

[nashuaadvocate]

4. Three ways --

1. Current Cobb-Badnarik recount suit in federal court -- the one I like to refer to as, "the one they might actually win."

2. Whatever means the DNC can come up with (perhaps FOIA-related) using the half a million dollars it just committed to the effort.

3. The Hitchins Plan. Get the Federal Election Commission or the Election Assistance Commission or a Congressional Committee to do it.

(4. A Democratic official of conscience somehow convinces his/her Board of Elections peers to make it possible: either through an independent analysis, or a joint Democratic-Republican review of the source code, and so on. Very unlikely).

Maybe others I've not thought of.

-- TNE

[mod mom]

5. Seeing the 1st two will take some time, my question is does an entire

congressional committee need to do it or perhaps Rep Conyers minority wing of the Judiciary?

[Amaryllis]

11. NA, thanks for the great reporting. Question: Do you know if Dean will be

in charge of the Dem investigation? Might actually be some hope for a real investigation if he is, since he actually knows how the machines can be hacked.

My understanding is that the EAC is in bed with the rest of the crooks, so how would that help?

[Chi]

3. Certainly no longer appears to be a 'drip'...

I wish the dam would just break already.

Great job again Nashua Advocate.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. That is assuming they haven't already been wiped and

re-programmed.

With a paper trail you have the ballots, and can keep them for years. With the electronic tabulators and vote machines, I would guess they would have to be re-programmed for each election.

Of course, I could be wrong about that, but it just seems to me.

Does anyone know?

[Bill Bored]

7. Let me try to clarify something

First, thanks Advocate for giving this so much coverage! It's in my backyard, but because of everything else that's been going on, I haven't had time to read much about it. It's not my district either. A lawyer friend of mine said it was the precinct mixups in the polling places that made the difference. And this was also a problem in Ohio.

As to the point about the machine recounts though, first of all, to the best of my knowledge, these are just lever machines. Bi-partisan canvassers read the totals on the mechanical counters, write them down, and within 15 days of the election, they are ALL recounted again by state law to rule out human error. This really means re-canvassed since there is nothing to actually count, except perhaps the totaling of the individual machines.

From what I've been told by an election lawyer I know, the most common mistake that's made in this process is due to human error -- transposing or misreading the digits from the counters when they are copied onto a piece of paper or whatever. This is why they do it 2 or 3 times for EVERY election in the state -- not just this one.

It's not unusual for the machine counts to change within a few weeks of the election. Since a single digit can represent tens, hundreds or maybe even thousands of votes, the fact that there was over a thousand-vote change is not really surprising or even alarming necessarily. The fact that it was corrected is somewhat reassuring. Do you have information that contradicts this? Was it not discovered as part of a routine audit for example? If so, please post.

As to the issue of voters going to the wrong collocated precincts, this is certainly Ohio revisited. The question is whether they were told to do so by uninformed poll workers or party operatives, or whether they just did it on their own. I don't know the answer.

Thanks again for the story!

[berniew1]

8. Lots of documentation on New York fraud, dirty tricks, suppression

The widespread problems documented in New York obviously affected a lot of races. They didn't have a real election there- similar to also not having real elections in Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, etc.
There was evidence of huge amounts of touchscreen vote machine fraud, manipulation of registrations, absentee and provisional ballots, voting machines , etc. that swung millions of votes in 20 states I've looked at. New York was one of the worst.
http://www.flcv.com/newyork.html
http://www.flcv.com/ussumall.html

[zann725]

12. Didn't someone find 8 machines in NY with "seals broken" on Nov. 3?

Thought I remembered reading that somewhere JUST ONCE?

[texpatriot2004]

9. kick and impound the machines now.

[wiggs]

10. This should be very big...

There were threads on this issue on DU several weeks ago.

The recount effort found that nearly every machine coughed up more votes for the democratic candidate than were initially reported on election day.

Nearly every machine.

And seals were broken or missing on 22 of the machines.

This is not random error. Can't be. I DON'T KNOW WHY MORE ATTENTION ISN'T PAID TO THIS BECAUSE THIS SHOWS THAT THE MACHINES OR REPORTING OF VOTE TALLIES IS FALLIBLE!! Something is wrong!

And if something in one part of the system has been tampered with, the entire system comes under suspicion.

Where's the press? Where's the FBI? Where are the dems in NY? This should be a major story!

The door is opened, someone needs to walk through it.

[La Femme]

13. Fraud investigation

"And seals were broken or missing on 22 of the machines."

Scary! Unfortunately, I have given up on fraud being discovered. Any signs of tampering or changing of the data have long since been covered up.

The Democratic party spending money on an investigation in Ohio at this time appears more like an attempt to appease us, the party members. Perhaps they have realized that we are disenchanted with the lack of action from the Democratic party and are looking for a party that will fight for their convictions.