Avi Rubin's blog: My day at the polls - Maryland primary '06

[freedomfries]

My day at the polls - Maryland primary '06
posted on bradblog
http://avi-rubin.blogspot.com/2006/09/my-day-at-polls-maryland-primary-06.html

I don't know where to start. This primary today is the third election that I have worked as an election judge. The last two elections were in 2004, and I was in a small precinct in Timonium, MD. This time, I was in my home precinct about 1/2 a mile from my house. We had 12 machines, over 1,000 voters and 16 judges. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and was at the precinct before 6:00. It is now 10:18 pm, and I just got home a few minutes ago. As I have made it my custom, I sat down right away to write about my experience while everything was still fresh. In anticipation of this, I took some careful notes throughout the day.

The biggest change over the 2004 election was the introduction of electronic poll books that we used to check in voters. I was introduced to these in election judge training a few weeks ago. These are basically little touchscreen computers that are connected to an Ethernet hub. They each contain a full database of the registered voters in the county, and information about whether or not each voter has already voted, in addition to all of the voter registration information. The system is designed so that the machines constantly sync with each other so that if a voter signs in on one of them and then goes to another one, that voter will already be flagged as having voted. That was the theory anyway. These poll books turned out to be a disaster, but more on that later.

Around 7:15, when we had been open for business for 15 minutes already, a gentlemen shows up saying that he is a judge from another precinct nearby and that they did not receive any smartcards, so that they could not operate their election. We had 60 smartcards, and the chief judge suggested that we give them 20 so that they could at least get their election started. As she was handing them over, I suggested that we had to somehow verify his claim. After all, anyone could walk in off the street and claim this guy's story, and we would give them 20 access cards. The chief judge agreed with me. The guy pulled out his driver's license to prove who he was, but I told him that we were not doubting who he was, we just wanted to verify that we should give him the cards. He seemed to understand that. After calling the board of elections, we were told to give him the cards and we did. A little later, several voters who came in informed us that news reports were saying that in Montgomery county, there was a widespread problem of missing smatcards. I could only imagine what a nightmare that was for those poll workers because as it was, our precinct did not have this problem, and as you'll see, it was still tough going.
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http://avi-rubin.blogspot.com/2006/09/my-day-at-polls-maryland-primary-06.html

[babylonsister]

1. Thanks for this. It is truly pathetic that we can't get this right.

I'm totally disgusted.

[Kurovski]

3. Geez, paper, levers, something easier than this.

Now that I think of it, it really is absurd to expect to train people on this stuff in a few hours. people who have no experience whatsoever.

It's a farce of tragic proportions.

[blm]

8. Simple - Paper ballots, hand counts, video cameras at every precinct.

watching every ballot counted.

Deliberately chaotic - the way it has been set up to mask the GOP thievery.

[Kurovski]

2. What a freaking nightmare. K&R

"One other thing struck me. In 2004, most voters seemed happy with the machines. This time around, many of them complained about a lack of a paper trail. Some of them clearly knew who I was and my position on this, but others clearly did not. I did not hear one voter say they were happy with the machines, and a dozen or so expressed strong feelings against them."

(Did anyone else have a giant grey "error" page appear after clicking on the link? There was no problem, I just clicked it away and the story was behind it. I'd just never seen anything like it before. It scared me at first. :scared: :rofl: No, really...it did.)

[Bushfire]

7. Got the giant grey "type error" page too

had to force quit Safari on my iBook twice when looking at his blog. wierd...

[rumpel]

4. thanks, freedomfries for posting this

everyone should, no, must read this report.

[Kurovski]

5. Kick. (nt)

[Stevepol]

6. I get to be #5! Good read. K&R!! When will people wake up?

This farce is so obvious and transparent a fifth grader could figure it out. When the vote is counted in total secrecy without a hint of verification, and when it is easy to hack or rig the machines either at the factory or at some point afterwards so that the hack is completely undetectable, what you have is NOT a democracy. It's more like a computer game. Everybody is expected to guess how long it will be before the election is stolen. Human nature being what it is, it would be naive to the point of lunacy to think that the vote is NOT being hacked or rigged.

So who's the conspiracy theorist?

[Billy Ruffian]

9. See Comp.risks

The USENET newsgroup comp.risks had the full blog entry posted by the newsgroup moderator. It appeared in Volume 24, Issue 42. You see it here, at the comp.risks archive , or here, in google's newsgroups

comp.risks frequently has postings on problems with electronic voting.