Nominations for most egregious election glitch

[GuvWurld]

Full disclosure: I am working on a new page for the Voter Confidence Committee website and I would like to include a brief list of links to the most egregious election glitches.

I have too many links in the GuvWurld News Archive to begin sifting through so I'm putting this here as a request for suggestions. I need a link and one sentence headline. The list I hope will develop in this thread will likely be longer than what I'll use for the VCC site. If someone wants to take the suggestions from this thread and compile a top 10 or something, then it might make it even more worth it to contribute here.

Thank you ~ GuvWurld

[The Doctor.]

1. The most egregious was not a glitch...

It was Blackwell's blatant violation of Ohio Election Code.

http://www.yuricareport.com/2004%20Election%20Fraud/BlackwellLocksDownOhioVotingRecords.html

December 10, 2004

Blackwell Locks Down Ohio Voting Records

Reported by Attorney Ray Beckerman

Dayton, Ohio Friday December 10, 2004



On Friday December 10 two certified volunteers for the Ohio Recount team assigned to Greene County were in process recording voting information from minority precincts in Greene County, and were stopped mid-count by a surprise order from Secretary of State Blackwell’s office. The Director Board of Elections stated that “all voter records for the state of Ohio were “locked-down,” and now they are not considered public records.”

The volunteers were working with voter printouts received directly from Carole Garman, Director, Greene County Board of Elections. Joan Quinn and Eve Roberson, retired attorney and election official respectively, were hand-copying voter discrepancies from precinct voting books on behalf of the presidential candidates Mr. Cobb (Green) and Mr. Badnarik Libertarian) who had requested the recount.

One of the goals of the recount was to determine how many minority voters were unable to vote or denied voting at the polls. Upon requesting copies of precinct records from predominantly minority precincts, Ms. Garman contacted Secretary of State Blackwell’s office and spoke to Pat Wolfe, Election Administrator. Ms. Wolfe told Ms. Garman to assert that all voter records for the State of Ohio were “locked down” and that they are “not considered public records.”

Quinn and Roberson asked specifically for the legal authority authorizing Mr. Blackwell to “lock down” public records. Garman stated that it was the Secretary of State’s decision. Ohio statute requires the Directors of Boards of Election to comply with public requests for inspection and copying of public election records. As the volunteer team continued recording information from the precinct records in question, Garman entered the room and stated she was withdrawing permission to inspect or copy any voting records at the Board of Elections. Garman then physically removed the precinct book from Ms. Roberson’s hands. They later requested the records again from Garman’s office, which was again denied.

[GuvWurld]

2. That's cool, stories like are good for this list

I'd like to see glitch stories from actual elections as well as some of the ones related to testing that we've seen recently

[Stevepol]

13. The best ones are the obvious statistical glitches.

Here are two from Harris's BBV:

The result in Comal County TX in November 2002 where the 3 Repub candidates all polled exactly the same total: 18,181 votes (BBV). This result was never audited by the way.

In Scurry County TX November 2002, the two Repub commissioner candidates got a "landslide" victory, but when the votes were handcounted, the Dems had won. Explanation? A "bad chip."

But I think the best are the statistical anomalies that are just obvious fraud.

The best of these is the OH referendum of 05 where four of the five referenda had to do with election reform and were favored by about 65% to 35% according to a very reliable polling source, the Columbus paper, yet lost by the reverse. The results were just flipped in other words. Yet on the one referendum that was favored by Blackwell, the result was right on the mark, about 52% in favor, 48% opposed, something like that.

[Wilms]

3. The Cumberland Story

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=4640&mesg_id=4660

[GuvWurld]

4. Good one Wilms, do you know of...

an article that mentions how the party line thing has happened in multiple places? This way we represent a type of egregiousness and also show its pervasiveness.

[Bill Bored]

5. Happens all the time!

What we don't know is:

1. Does it happen without being detected?

2. Does it happen in states where straight party voting isn't even allowed?

3. Can it be MADE to happen by those with access to the system, either as elections officials, or vendors? (Well, actually it's pretty obvious that the answer to this one YES.)

4. Can it be concealed from the voters and/or (bless their hearts) the auditors, assuming audits even exist?

[Wilms]

6. I don't know of any article mentioning this problem.

Bill Bored theorized about the possibility of exploiting staight-ticket (or party) voting when doing the Ballot Definition Settings" for a given election.

So far, he and I are the only ones I know talking about it. Can't get a lot of attention about it here on DU, let alone elsewhere.

Still, in addition to the Cumberland election I came across (and failed to bookmark) two more elections whose outcomes were reversed after a hand-count. In one case, the real victor was Repub, so this is officially a bi-partisan concern.

[Bill Bored]

8. It happened in WI in the 2004 general election.

ES&S screwed that one up. I think the incident favored the Dems, and the story was sent to Sensenbrenner (before we knew what a dill weed he turned out to be) in hopes that he would allow Conyers to hold real Congressional hearings. Fat load of good it did. Or rather Sensen is just a fat load!:puke:

Anyway, it happens a lot. I thought Wilms was keeping track of them. Guess he thought I was.

[Kurovski]

7. K&R.(nt)

[FogerRox]

9. how about Landsharks glitches in Washington state that lead to his suit?

[GuvWurld]

10. More on what I'm looking for

I'm thinking of stories like the precinct in Youngstown, OH registering negative 25 million votes in Nov. 2004, or wherever in Alaska that the Dems can't get the Diebold data but they want it because there were more votes than voters.

To me, these are compelling stories because once the problem has been identified, there is no way to definitively correct it. That is, these examples should help anyone see that the results will necessarily be inconclusive, that we can't know for sure the true outcome in any of these places.

[Wilms]

11. Kick

[nicknameless]

12. The 18,181 vote totals in Texas

3 repub candidates in the same County on the same day.

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/4642/1/197

A Nov. 7, 2002, Associated Press story datelined Snyder, Texas, reported, “A defective computer chip in the county’s optical scanner misread ballots Tuesday night and incorrectly tallied a landslide victory for Republicans.” Poll workers became suspicious. As a result of those workers’ inquiry, a new computer chip was flown to Snyder, Texas, from Dallas. Once the new chip was installed, the computer verified that the Democrat had won the election. The question remains: Was this an innocent computer glitch or something far more sinister, an attempt to steal that election for the Republicans?

In a July 30, 2003, article published by Alternet.org titled, “The Theft of Your Vote is Just a Chip Away,” writer Thom Hartmann reported on another “Texas anomaly.” In the November 2002 election in Comal County, Republican state Sen. Jeff Wentworth won with 18,181 votes, Republican Carter Casteel won a state House seat with 18,181 votes, and Judge Danny Scheel (a conservative) won his race with 18,181 votes. All three in the same county, same day, same year, all three with exactly the same number of votes. However, no poll workers in the county asked for a new chip.

http://blog.democrats.com/node/430

18181
Submitted by Raul_V on November 10, 2004 - 2:58am.Upcoming Elections

This might be old history for some, but is intriguing that no representative of the DNC ever actually pursued legal action based on the facts.

In November of 2002, Max Cleland lost to Sambliss in Georgia. All the exit polls were "wrong" and, without explantion, Cleland lost. Machines were part of the issue, of course.

But, also, in 5 different minor races that year, 5 Republican candidates won their elected positions with the same number of votes, machines "counting" the ballots.

Final result of ALL these 5 races for the Republican "winner":

18181 votes.

Some of you will understand the "joke". The binary code assigns letters to numeric characters, is a form of basic "computer coding", let's say that. Where 1 is "a", 8 would be "h"...you guessed that right!, the result of the translation then would be:

18181 = ahaha

18181 = ahaha

18181 = ahaha

Pretty funny isn't?

Another story was the Diebold memo about the machine that booted up with -16,022 votes for Gore.

... a memo by GES employee Lana Hires to her supervisor during the 2000 election: “I need some answers,” she writes. “Our department is being audited by the county. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16,022 votes when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here ‘looking dumb?’”

Nominated