MUST READ! - E-VOTING 2006: The Approaching Train Wreck (+)

[kster]

The following piece linked below is an absolute MUST READ by BRAD BLOG Guest Blogger John Gideon of VotersUnite.org, no matter how much you already know, or don't, or think you do about the state of our Elections in 2006! Please read, link and/or disseminate this piece! The warning signs here have never been plainer. Please take note. -- Brad

E-VOTING 2006: The Approaching Train Wreck
Our Elections are Now Officially 'A National Disaster in the Making'
A MUST READ GUEST EDITORIAL BY JOHN GIDEON OF VOTERSUNITE.ORG

Normally this space is taken with my ideas of what are the "Top 5" voting news stories for the week. Today I am going to use this space to talk about what I see as the beginning of a disaster in the making with our elections. This isn't the election fraud that some point to when they talk about the vendors and some elections officials. It's not about recounts or audits. This is a real, get your hands around it, happening problem that will disrupt our election process if we do not do something about it now. While we have been involved in all of our issues about Direct Recording Electronic (DRE or "touch-screen") voting machines or paper ballots the electronic voting machine vendors have been wreaking complete havoc across the country.

So far this year two states have conducted primary elections. In Texas there is at least one candidate who has stepped forward and has challenged the election because of anomalies in vote counts and known voting machine failures. One county's machines counted some votes up to 6 times which resulted in approximately 100,000 more votes being counted than were cast. Though the vendor, Hart Intercivic, initially blamed the problem on human error, they finally had to admit that it was a programming error and not poll workers or voters who had erred. In Illinois some county officials are threatening to withhold final payment of funds on contracts with Sequoia Voting Systems because of failures with their machines that ended with results in the primary not being known for over a week after the voters went to the polls. In both states the involved vendors were very successful in the media with deflecting the blame from their machines to "human errors" or "glitches". However, when you listen to people who were there and who saw and worked through the problems you get a very different picture...

COMPLETE EDITORIAL: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002673.htm

POSTED BY BradBlog
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x890481

[niallmac]

1. "Train Wreck" will be a very mild description of what will happen

if the SOBs steal the mid terms.

[kster]

2. Thats what I'm

beginnig to sense.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

12. We're badly in need of another cliche

What BushCO has already done to this country and the planet, for that matter, is beyond train wreck.

Perhaps mid-sized nuclear disaster would be appropriate.

[RaleighNCDUer]

13. An electoral Chernobyl.

That may resonate.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

14. TheThree Mile Island Election Meltdown

nm

[Amaryllis]

40. meltdown? too tame?

[EFerrari]

3. I'm voting with no time to post, kster, but thanks!

:kick:

[Wilms]

4. .

[Amaryllis]

5. A thought: perhaps this is intentional. What happens to 2006 elections

if enough people realize it is a disaster in the making? Think Karl Rove strategies...we have to call off the election till we get things straightened out once people start to realize how bad it is? What are the possible options here? Go ahead and have the election, knowing it will be rife with errors, demands for recounts, lawsuits, leading to chaos...or?

Talk about no basis for confidence! This is snowballling fast enough that the general public is going to start to tumble to it, doncha think? And then what? Who decides who wins? Am I being overly dramatic or paranoid here? Seriously - tell me if I am. I would love it if I were.

Karl Rove was on C-Span today talking about election integrity and Dem voter fraud...you think he doesn't follow closely the state of elections? We need to assume that he is fully aware of what is happening.

So how do we prepare?
A major call to action to alert our reps and senators, at a state level as well as national; certainly anyone we know who is running for office needs to be alerted, and this is factual info that should be much easier to sell to the media than election fraud. The facts are right there in black and white and are not debatable. Can't chalk this up to conspiracy theories or sore losers. And this stuff will affect all parties.

[kster]

6. I just hope KKKarl on c-span

has just figured out that there are to many people that are on to the election theft machines, and they (Karl rove and company) are not going to be able to win it (as big) with these election theft machines as they usually do.

So he is giving them their excuse for not winning before the election.

One can hope, right.

[autorank]

9. Great point -- every tiime I do a daily thread, it's a different country..

...with problems. Here's my list from memory:

Belarus,
Ukraine,
Philippines,
Thailand,
Mexico,
Iraq,
several of the "stans,"
Egypt.

Well, there are more, it's just late.

It's an international problem despite all the assistance "we" provide thorugh State and the "NGO's" who apparently don't know shit about doing this sort of thing...or maybe the international problems are because of WH intervention. I like that explanation better.

[GuvWurld]

10. There are two main things that are intentional

Many examples will support each of these two things which are being caused on purpose: divisiveness and uncertainty. The divisiveness is easy to see through McCarthyist rhetoric about war; over-hyped perennial campaign issues such as gay marriage, flag burning, and stem cell research; the brazen propaganda machine that screams out of your TV and radio; and countless other examples, including the rift in the perception of reality caused by all the inherent uncertainty. This comes in the form of voting machines which produce negative totals or any of a number of other anomalous results that can't be reconciled; public officials making frequent self-contradictory statements; official reports being censored or scrubbed; classifying previously public materials; and an incurious media allowing scientifically impossible claims to stand as the official story, as with 9/11.

To educate people about what is going on, and in particular about election conditions, it may be that the best approach is not to come directly at people to tell them they are wrong, or that they believe lies. This will make most people defensive. I think it is most effective to contrast what we know with what we're told to believe and leave the juxtaposition to sink in. This will help people to address their cognitive dissonance. This is ruthless honesty. This is also why I have always regarded it a better tactic to illustrate how current election conditions ensure inconclusive outcomes (inherent uncertainty) rather than debate with a naysayer about what constitutes a "fact" from a past event.

To bring a little more context here, the uncertainty is one way of many that we are kept divided. We are kept divided because should we grow more united we become more of a threat to the power structure and the elites at the top. Yet this is exactly what we must do. We have to overcome the divisiveness and make common cause with our ideological foes for they too have suffered the same loss of liberties as we, and their franchise has been equally nullified. If they, like we, want to be free, we will have to work together to restore both our liberties and our franchise. What else is there?

Blueprint For Peaceful Revolution

[Votergater]

30. Isn't it a good thing if the press/tv see election problems as newsworthy?

It seems the press in Ohio right now is focussing on some of the equipment failures/flaws and also indictments over the rigging of the recount in Cuyahoga County.

[Amaryllis]

32. Absolutely it's a great thing if the press sees this as newsworthy! Just

wondering how it will be handled as the meltdowns get so numerous that it becomes evident on a much larger scale that there is no basis for confidence in our elections. It must happen, but just wondering how it will be handled by those who brought us HAVA.

[Votergater]

33. I think in November a number of elections will be decided in the courts

It will be interesting to see what constitutes as "evidence".

[Amaryllis]

39. That;s what I'm thinking too, and surely the media and the public

will get it that something is wrong. And as both parties are contesting in the primaries, as in TX, it will not be perceived as such a partisan issue as it is when Dems are always the losers.

[Votergater]

41. The problem for the press will probably be the complex technical aspects

of the systems and their failures. The words 'glitch' and 'snafu' are all too easy for journalists to use. Again.

[Kurovski]

7. K&R(nt)

[autorank]

8. Kester, great post. "This is the end my friend, the only end my friend"

At the risk of sounding negative, 2006 is shaping up to be a giant train wreck.

I've heard th is and said it for a few weeks now...too much news reading for the daily thread.

CA Registration Database -- rejecting 25% to 43% of registrants.

FL Registration Database (felon purge of up to 50k in 2000; attempt to do the same in 2004 but caught; you just know they'll do the same in 2006)

IN Wow, check this out --

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=417795&mesg_id=417796

Detailed coverage of what a disaster this is.

Not all states have these problems. Why these states -- Uh, they ALL have Republican Governors and Republican Secretaries of State.

There are more on the centralized registration databases but that's not all...by a long shot.

TouchScreens are out there en masse, thanks to the "bi partisan" Help America Vote Act.

WE NEED TO THINK ABOUT HOT TO PREVENT AS MUCH OF THIS AS WE CAN AND HOT TO RESPOND POLITICALLY AFTER THE FACT IF IT MATERIALIZES. (Legal responses will be very difficult).

I HOPE IT DOESN'T BUT IT'S A BIT NAIVE TO THINK THAT IT WON'T AT THIS POINT.

Recommended, the post and www.BradBlog.Com

PS. Imagine the Democrats doing better than they do now in the polls and imagine * and the Republican candidates doing worse...ok, got that,

NOT IMAGINE THE REPUBLICANS RETAINING CONTROL OF BOTH HOUSES.

COULD BE, WE'LL SEE. KEEP WORKING.

[vanboggie]

11. Halliburton Happy Camps

I've often wondered if the outcry and possible uprising after Election 2006 is stolen is the reason for the domestic detention facilities Halliburton is building. We know Bushco wants illegal immigrants here, so I don't believe that is why they are being built. When the Repukes are handed Congress again, even the non believers will have to admit that our elections are a sham.

[FudgeBudgie]

15. Bear with me...

I'm new to the whole anti-voting machine meme, so can somebody set me in the right direction:

Why are voting machines such a terrible thing?

I'm guessing the answer will be along the lines of "all the companies are tied to the GOP through the whole "conflict of interest" via "six-degrees of separation"" line of reasoning, which I find questionable.

Voting machines can be an excellent boon to the voting process, once all the bugs are hashed out - there's no better trail than an electronic one, and I'd love to be proved otherwise. I think there needs to be some real support for fixing the problems with networked voting machines, rather than just bashing them without any constructive criticism.

[OnTheOtherHand]

17. heh

I myself think the "GOP controls the voting machines" argument is weak, so we can stand together in the apparent minority on that point.

"Voting machines" can describe a range of technologies. Some folks here oppose all voting machines and insist on hand-counted paper ballots; other folks are opposed to DREs but are open to optical scan under certain conditions (and then there is the whole issue of lever machines). Some folks would support even DREs under certain conditions, although that is very much a minority view here. I don't think there are any ardent defenders of punch cards.

Opinions differ on whether "all the bugs" can be hashed out. The general tendency of an electronic audit trail is to require faith in the people who designed it. And we have seen machines get hacked without affecting the audit trail. At what point are people entitled (much less obligated) to accept that the results are legit?

But if (for instance) one believes that DREs are inherently insecure and non-transparent, then that is the constructive criticism. (Just as a rhetorical experiment, try this sentence: "I think there needs to be some real support for fixing the problems with slavery, rather than just bashing it without any constructive criticism." People's divergent assumptions can make it hard to communicate at all!)

[FudgeBudgie]

18. thanks for the reply

I just don't want to see the same exact arguments being used against us once the shoe is on the other foot. The real solution is to have as fail-safe an election process as possible - which is one of the laudable goals of this article - because we've seen what little success post-election voting fraud suits have produced. First impressions/results are crucial.

[OnTheOtherHand]

19. I think we agree about the goal (safe elections)

Another way that I am definitely in the minority here is that I think that Bush "actually" won in 2004. A lot of people here don't even seem able to read that statement without "translating" it as "I have confidence in the election system" or even "I support Bush." But the problems with the election system don't seem to depend on who won or should have won the last election. (And Gideon's arguments don't hinge on any allegation of election theft -- although they do implicitly raise the question whether the machines could be 'fixed,' which I guess is where we came in....)

I can't tell yet whether we disagree about "voting machines."

[FogerRox]

36. I should go back and read those posts agian

ANybody say anything about transparency? Maybe I missed it.

Just a minor issue, right?

[OnTheOtherHand]

37. when I am being terse, "safe" implies/entails "transparent"

After all, if it isn't transparent, how do you know whether it is safe?

Of course, I see transparency as a continuum. I'm not viscerally in the "hand counted paper good, machines bad" school. Nor am I viscerally in the "machines mean Progress" school.

I don't know what FudgeBudgie thinks. And I don't know whether any of this responds to your concern -- not even sure which posts you were referring to. So, sorry if this is a complete non sequitur.

[FogerRox]

38. LOL was just having fun, I thought you would come back,

and say something like that, excellent. SAfe is OK too. LOL.

[Amaryllis]

21. The DRE's and the scanners and tabulators that count even

paper ballots in paper ballot states such as OR use proprietary software, not accessible by even election officials. This is essentiallly secret vote counting; faith-based voting ( I trust you to go count my vote in a back room, with no verification of accuracy). ELections need to be TRANSPARENT; meaning we see how the votes are counted and there is verification of results so that all are satisfied the outcome was the result of votes being counted as the voter intended.

Aside from this, these machines as they are currently buitl are so unreliable that all that aside, they shouldn't be used. See this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x421915

[The Wizard]

27. Blue thumbs

Paper ballots deposited in transparent boxes for all to see, and then counted in front of witnesses from all interested parties. Hell, Iraq has an election system more transparent than we do.

[kster]

23. Its the secrecy and lack of a paper ballot back up

surrounding the machines, that makes them impossible to trust. Heres a good article for you.



"Well, that's OK. We'll just gather all the votes together and do a recount.

Oops, no paper copies of individual votes with the Diebold Accuvote machines. Well, I guess we can look at the program used in the machines to try and make sense of what happened. Oops again. Diebold Election Systems won't release the file. The company's lawyers say this is proprietary information".

http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2006/04/09/news/opinion/opinion2.txt

[The Wizard]

28. Proprietary = lame excuse

The proprietary argument doesn't wash. All it really means is that no one else can use their system. Do authors sell blank pages because their work is copyrighted?

[Amaryllis]

31. It means NO ONE, even the secretary of state, has access to their

source code to see if it is what they say it is and no way to know if there is malicious code built in.

[FogerRox]

35. lyn landes ECO talk web site

I have gome to the Newark Business library and spent over 100 hours re-sourcing the "Repubs own the voting machine companies" theory, well it aint no theory.

Would you like to see the SEC forms that shows Former Diebold President WAlly O'Dell got about 34 million in stock options the day after the 2004 elections?

Never mind ...I just finished reading the rest of your post & I wont get started on what amounts to a 600 page book.

[JPZenger]

16. Lots of Confusion in PA.

The primary election in PA. will be a mess. The counties couldn't buy voting machines until the State certified them. The State waited until the last minute. Then there was a court decision that caused delays and uncertainties, until it was overturned. The counties are rushing to have systems in place before the primary election, or they don't get any Federal money towards the new machines.

Last month, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University found new vulnerabilities in the Sequoia systems that are to be used in two of the biggest counties. That test was done with the involvement of the State government.

As a result, there has been very little time for education of the public or the little old ladies who will oversee the system on election day.

[peabody71]

20. If it were an ATM every vote would be counted.

God knows no company would lose a penny if it were money we were talking about,
God damned it!

[McCamy Taylor]

22. ED-Electile Dysfunction, If they cant get the system up, then maybe

Karl Rove intends to have them postpone the election (which we all know that they are going to lose).

It is one reason for Congressional GOPers to keep their heads buried in the sand all the up until this fall. THEN they could notice that no one has a working E-voting sytem in place. THEN they could call the election on account of ED--and wait for better poll numbers.

Now, obviously the vendors are not in on this, because they are the ones whose pocketbooks will suffer. Some are going to go bankrupt. They are guilty of greed, over extending themselves, all the things that the manufacturers of video game systems do--except we are dealing with an election here.

And of course, the GOP absolutely, positively does not even want to suggest that E-voting is anything other than perfect, because Selection 2004 is still such a fresh wound.

[Trevelyan]

24. I think you are right Amaryllis and we need to keep on top of this.

Is rove the only evil propaganda genius the neocon pnacers have though? or do they have a whole State Dept???

[Trevelyan]

25. K&R Bookmarked --- Thank you once again Brad for being that

Rep. Conyers' bulldog about our right to clean elections.

[Mrspeeker]

26. GOP has been doing this since 2000

Rigging elections!
They have just found new ways of doing it!

[The Wizard]

29. No brakes

A derailed, downhill train will do great damage before it comes to a stop.

[Bill Bored]

34. Recommended, with an hour to spare! nt

[Imagevision]

42. amazing voter fraud-defective equipment can't gain media traction??

[Land Shark]

43. this is a good article and worthy of reading