DREs may be nefarious BUT they are faithful -- TN "vote flipped to Obama" story debunked

[Fly by night]

Disclaimer:

Lordy, I would give anything if the story publicized earlier this week on BradBlog and here -- that three voters in a rural Tennessee county using ES&S iVotronic DREs had witnessed their votes jump from McCain to Obama -- were true. Why? Because a story like that is so rare but, if true, it would affirm that electronic voting carries risks for all voters, not just "tin-foil-hat" Democrats. As we worked our TN Voter Confidence Act bill through our legislature (to ban DREs and move to paper ballots/random audits), it would have really helped us if there had been examples of Republicans being harmed by this equipment as often as Democrats, or at all. Unfortunately, my follow-up on the Tennessee story this morning proves to me what my OP title says: DREs may be nefarious BUT they are faithful -- to their Republican masters.

Here's the link to an earlier thread on this story:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7564462

I would strongly recommend that DUers also read the original story published in the Decatur County Chronicle (weekly, circulation 2,700, motto: "Blessed in the nation whose God is the Lord" (Psalm 33:12)) this past Tuesday. Here's the link:

http://www.decaturcountyonline.com/article.asp?art=1244

Here's what I learned in speaking with the local reporter and the Decatur County Election Registrar who was interviewed for the story:

--- The newspaper learned about the story "... when the voters called the paper to report the vote flips from McCain to Obama". Or maybe it was a call from the two county election commissioners quoted in the story -- both Republican party members of the five person local commission -- one of whose father-in-law happens to be the newspaper publisher.

--- The three voters who reported the vote-flips (but only to the newspaper -- they have still not contacted anyone at the Election Commission) were the mother, father-in-law and either cousin or uncle of the Decatur County Republican Party Chairman

--- All of them are in business with each other at the local sawmill.

--- None of the aggrieved voters have listed phone numbers.

--- When the Decatur County Election Registrar offered to call a county election commission meeting to discuss the vote-flipping incident, the Republican commissioners declined.

--- Neither of the Republican commission members have been back to the county election commission office to file any formal complaint about the equipment or to ask that it be de-commissioned.

So folks -- I report, you decide. As for me, my initial skepticism has (sadly) been confirmed. What looked like a rare glimpse at bi-partisan harm caused by DREs has sadly been -- once again -- another debunked exception that reinforces the rule.

When I finished my conversation with the county Election Registrar (who was completely open and helpful throughout our conversation) by saying "You know, when I heard this story, I smelled a fish. And it weren't fresh-caught", she said "Exactly."

Folks, we've just witnessed a little bamboozlry on the banks of the Tennessee River, in a sleepy little backwoods county whose Republicans are as slimy as they are stupid. Their little attempt at small town psy-ops has plopped pathetically -- like poop from a dying pachyderm.

Like the ACORN brou-ha-ha-ha-ha, this story has no merit.

DREs may be nefarious BUT they are faithful.

That's all folks.

Peace out. GOBAMA.

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Faithful to those who programmed them. nt

[InternalDialogue]

2. K&R

[bleever]

3. K&R. Get this to the Greatest.

Thanks, Fbn.

[Bill Bored]

4. That's why all vote switching should be done the old fashioned way:

in a smoke-filled back room, or inside an optical scanner, so neither party can see it!

Thanks for following up on the story though Fly!

[Fly by night]

6. I agree that opscans without mandatory random manual audits is no solution.

That's why our TN Voter Confidence Act requires both.

[Fly by night]

5. An update after speaking w/ one of the Repub county election commissioners

The commissioner said that he believes if the vote-flip happened at all, it was because the candidates' names were too close together on the touch-screen so that someone with large fingers might accidentally trigger a vote for the wrong candidate if their fingers strayed outside the correct box, even a little bit.

That commissioner also said that he was sorry their county ever went away from optical scan, which is what they had before the DREs were forced on them.

He ALSO said that the voters who reported the vote-flips were "rabid Republicans" who had gotten worked up by all of the ACORN news (sic). It sounded like even he was questioning whether the accidential vote-flips had occurred at all.

One thing we did agree on -- the sooner we get back to paper ballots, the better. We also agreed that there is no valid excuse for our having postponed that move here in Tennessee until 2010.

[politicasista]

7. K & R

I posted my voting experience in another thread, but didn't experience any vote flipping. However, the ballot could be confusing to people without reading glasses, therefore, you would have to look directly at the screen and proofread it before touching VOTE. (The font size is very small and Obama/Biden's names are first on the ballot while McCain/Palin's names are slightly larger listed second).

Hope this story gets around. :kick:


:hi:

[clear eye]

8. Thank you for the info. Important enough to be posted in GD.

K & R.

[newtothegame]

9. I would think they would want it to ACTUALLY flip a few, just to keep a good face...

What's a few McCain to Obama's if it's up against THOUSANDS of Obama to McCain's?

[Fly by night]

10. Exactamundo

[last_texas_dem]

11. Very interesting

I guess I should've know better than to think any electronic voting machine shenanigans would've worked to "help" Obama...

[Fly by night]

12. Oh shit. Bill Moyers just mentioned this non-story as if it were fact.

Just goes to show how rapidly nonsense news spreads.

Non-plumbers

Non-attack victims

Non-vote-flipping for Obama.

When will it all end?

Hopefully, January 20, 2009.

[IsItJustMe]

13. K&R

Seems like we are constantly being bombarded with false news. You know, girl gets assulted by Obama supporter, votes being flipped for Obama. Damn, if I didn't know better, I would say that Fixed news and Republicans were working overtime.

[Fly by night]

14. Google follow-up on this faux story

When I Googled "Decatur County Chronicle Obama" this morning, ten of the first twenty hits were to this faux story published on Tuesday in a weekly paper with a circulation of 2,700. (WTF!!!)

None of the hits were to my debunking of the story. And remember, as of yesterday (Friday) afternoon, I had been the only person to call anyone in Decatur county to verify (not) the story.

As a patriotic act, I will email those ten "hits" this afternoon and correct their impressions. It will be interesting to see if corrections/updates are given, as they were posted quickly on BradBlog and on Voters Unite. (Thanks Brad and John.)

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

15. NC machines flip to Obama, not McCain

Some machines scramble voter choicesBY DAVID NIVENS [e-mail] Oct 25,2008

GUILFORD COUNTY - Laurie Edwards of Thomasville heard a strange voting story from her mother this week.

Turns out it's a fairly widespread problem with touch-screen voting machines.

Edwards said her mother, Liz Odom of Greensboro, had problems getting a voting machine in Jamestown to accept her presidential vote on Friday. She cancelled the vote until the machine accepted it.

"I have had several complaints of this happening, with the machines giving the Democratic vote when the Republican was selected," Bill Wright, chairman of the Guilford County Republican Party, told elections officials Friday. "These machines should be calibrated every day so this does not happen."

http://hpe.southernheadlines.com/index.cfm?section=6&story=5417

And they did it in 2004 too in Craven County NC

[Fly by night]

16. It is interesting that all the R to D stories have come out in past 2 days.

I would encourage you to check on the NC story if you live there.

There's been another LTTE in the Nashville Tennessean alleging the same thing from another Republican. I am tracking this story down also.

[Fly by night]

17. ... and appear to ALWAYS involve local Repub officials ...

... as stories out of Williamson and Greene counties in Tennessee APPEAR to involve.

I will track down every story I can find on this here. I do know (from the Greeneville report) that the state Republican Party chairman sent out a report on the now-debunked Decatur county "votes flipped to Obama" story.

This story is even worse than anthrax -- it's spread through fax machines.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

In NC, it was a Democratic official running election that flipped to Obama

Our state seems to flip that way.

We had vote flipping in Craven County in Oct 2004 that flipped from Bush to Kerry.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

26. In NC, it was a Democratic official running election that flipped to Obama

Our state seems to flip that way.

We had vote flipping in Craven County in Oct 2004 that flipped from Bush to Kerry.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

27. The NC election director (DEM) was interviewed - here's article

I will give an excerpt, you have to register to read the articles at the High Point Enterprise.
I know the reporter, he isn't the type to print gossup, and his bs detector works pretty well.

Some machines scramble voter choices BY DAVID NIVENS [e-mail] Oct 25,2008

GUILFORD COUNTY - Laurie Edwards of Thomasville heard a strange voting story from her mother this week.

Turns out it's a fairly widespread problem with touch-screen voting machines.

Edwards said her mother, Liz Odom of Greensboro, had problems getting a voting machine in Jamestown to accept her presidential vote on Friday. She cancelled the vote until the machine accepted it.

"I have had several complaints of this happening, with the machines giving the Democratic vote when the Republican was selected," Bill Wright, chairman of the Guilford County Republican Party, told elections officials Friday. "These machines should be calibrated every day so this does not happen."

Election officials agreed to check the iVotronic machines more carefully and urged voters to study the review screens to make sure all their selections are correct before casting the electronic ballot.

Here the General Counsel for the NC State Board of Elections answers questions:

"We know not everyone is pushing that review screen button," Wright said.

West Virginia voters have reported similar problems with touch-screen machines manufactured by Election Systems & Software, which is North Carolina's only machine vendor. Experts acknowledge that the machines can scramble vote selections if they are uncalibrated, causing a touch in the wrong place and an incorrect vote selection.

And here is where the Guilford County Election Director answers questions:

"Voters should tell us if they are having any problems," said Guilford County Elections Director George Gilbert. "If they don't tell us, then we can't know. I don't know how many of these are calibration problems. Some people touch the wrong spot."

Gilbert said older machines present the most problems. Election workers test voting machines before deploying them to voting sites.

"The new ones do not get out of calibration in two weeks of use," he said. "We will find the ones that are out of calibration."

http://hpe.southernheadlines.com/index.cfm?section=6&story=5417

[Fly by night]

28. Your multiple posts confirm the TN "false equivalence" pattern, rather than contradicting it.

It doesn't matter what the party affiliation of the state election coordinator is. (In Tennessee, we don't elect our Secretary of State, and both he and our State Election Coordinator appear to be from the "Flat Earth" party.)

What does matter, in terms of establishing a pattern of intentionally working to create a "false equivalence", is who is reporting the "vote-flipping" (in both Tennessee and North Carolina, it's high-ranking local Republican officials) and whether they're reporting it to the media before (or entirely in place of) reporting the problem to local election officials. The snippets of the article you posted contain both of those elements. I am curious who the two voters quoted in the article are and how the reporter was made aware of them. For that reason, I will register and download the entire article. I may also make a few phone calls.

BTW, it is clear that my debunking efforts are getting the attention of the Republicans. Someone registered on DU yesterday for the sole purpose (it appears) of trying to criticize elements of what I had reported (principally minor points or points I had not discussed at all) in an effort to cast aspersions on my entire report.

I am still working to get my hands on the Republican memo/email that went out here in Tennessee encouraging people to make these reports. I think the newbie below could make that available fr us if he/she wanted and I'll ask them to do so if they return.

I think we're exposing another rancid side of the soon-come dead elephant party. Smells a lot like long-dead fish.

[Fly by night]

29. The full article didn't say much else so here's what I wrote the reporter:

David,

I saw a reference to your story on a web-site I frequent and downloaded the story. I am tracking down these stories as I hear about them. I have four sets of questions for you:

1) How were you made aware of the problems that Laurie Edwards' mother, Liz Odom, had with voting? Did either of these voters contact you? Do you know whether either or both are active in the Republican party on the local level? Was Bill Wright aware of their experience?

2) Did Bill Wright offer you any other names of voters who had experienced the same event (vote-flipping to Obama)? Have any of these aggrieved voters reported their experiences to the local election officials? (From reading your article, it appears not.)

3) Are you aware of any emails or other memos being circulated among Republicans in North Carolina encouraging these reports? (We have had such a memo circulated statewide in Tennessee.)

4) Can you tell me something about your paper: circulation, daily/weekly, editorial direction, etc?

Thanks for your help with this information. If you write anything else on this story, please let me know.

[Fly by night]

30. And here's how the reporter responded:

1) How were you made aware of the problems .... :
Ms. Edwards contacted us. I don't know if she reported the problem to Bill Wright.

2) Did Bill Wright offer you any other names of voters .... :
Wright offered no names during the Board of Elections meeting.

3) Are you aware of any emails .... :
NO

4) Can you tell me something about your paper: circulation, daily/weekly, etc?
Daily, Circ. 20,000+

Thanks for your interest,

David Nivens
Reporter
News Department
The High Point Enterprise
336.888.3626
[e-mail]

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

So there do appear to be similar elements in this report and the ones in Tennessee: the voter (or rather, in this case, the daughter of the aggrieved voter) speaks directly to the press but not to local election officials, local Republican Party chairman ready to make a statement (that can't be corroborated), local election official saying that no voters had reported problems to them, etc.

Methinks a pattern that keeps repeating itself, out here in what's left of the no-holds-barred non-reality-based world.

I'll stay with the story as I can. Hopefully a member of our local press may take the story from here. (I'll let all y'all know.)

[drosenfeld33]

25. Imagine if our ATM machines made as many mistakes

[SoCalDemocrat]

18. Can you get a copy of the ballot from that county?

Any chance you can ask that reporter for a sample ballot how it appears on their voting machines? I would still like to see if McCain is listed above or below Obama.

[Fly by night]

21. Democrats are at the top of the Presidential ballot in all TN counties.

Not sure who made that decision but that's the way it is.

I am following up other reportys of vote-flipping in two other counties, all made by local Republican leaders who said that their votes flipped.

Damn, now that's a good voting machine virus -- to just attack the votes of Republican leaders, and then to implant a decision NOT to report the problem to election officials in each and every case.

Riiiight.

[Time for change]

19. Wow! Vote flipping for Obama is so rare they have to make it up

I wonder who told them to do this?

[Fly by night]

20. The TN Republican Party told them to do this, via an email from the party chairman.

[JohnWxy]

22. The Fascists are so gifted when it comes to techniques of disinformation.

[bc123]

23. Let's point out some of Bernie's inaccuracies....

I want to ask where do you think you get off blasting someone else for this story when you are obviously a very inaccurate reporter?

For one thing, the "aggrieved voters" DO IN FACT have listed phone numbers. Did you even check? They weren't hard to find.

For another, as mentioned in the article-- one of the voters made the election officials aware of the problem he was having before he finished voting. Furthermore, when the Election Office was contacted, they did not deny the incidents happened. They blamed it on voter error, but they did not deny it. And technicians were called in to assess the problem, which they confirmed to be legitimate, which was also mentioned, among other places, in an article in the Greenville Sun newspaper---where similar incidents were found to have happened.

Finally, the election commissioner that you refer to IS NOT the son-in-law of the newspaper's publisher. For that matter, you obviously fail to realize that many people in small towns are related to each other. If the accuracy of reporting rested in no one being related to anyone else involved, there would be no news in a rural community. It makes no difference who the voters or commissioners are related to. That does not make the story false.

The entire point of the article is not that Republicans have been disenfranchised in some way. The point of the story is that voters---Republican and Democrat--- should be careful when they are voting to ensure they are voting for whom they intended.

Seems to me like your debunking has been debunked.

Next time, try checking your facts. Just because one slimy and stupid Democrat told you something does not make it true. And just because a Republican said it doesn't make it false.

[Fly by night]

24. Welcome to DU. While you're still here, let me respond to your attempt to debunk my debunking.

I called Bell South information on two separate occasions, asking for the numbers of the voters from among all phones in the entire county. The operator couldn't find them.

The Decatur County Election Registrar told me that none of the voters had contacted her office. They had discussed the alleged vote-flipping incidents with the two Republican election commissioners, at least one of whom appears to have helped write the newspaper article. However, those commissioners did not ask for a meeting to discuss the problems and neither of them asked that the equipment be taken out of use.

I encouraged everyone to read the original article because it explains clearly that the local ES&S subcontractor was called and did confirm that votes could indeed appear flipped when the problem was that the voter's finger also touched another candidate's space -- any portion thereof. I have no argument with that.

What I found suspicious was that three close relatives of the Decatur County Republican Party chairman would have the same problem -- votes flipping from McCain to Obama -- when they voted on different equipment and/or at different times. And that those three voters would speak to the newspaper before speaking with the county election office -- I don't believe they have done that yet.

It is even more curious that no other voter in the county has reported a similar problem -- just these three relatives of the county Republican party chairman, all of whom are in business together at a local sawmill. Even one of the Republican election commissioners I spoke with described those three as "rabid Republicans" who would likely make a stink if they ever had the chance, even when they knew there wasn't a problem.

The Greene county vote-flipping reports (again, three local Republican officials reported their own votes flipped from McCain to Obama) also spoke with the local newspaper first before speaking to the county election administrator (only one has so far, but days after he voted). They were silent even though all three were voting in the county election office and one of them had formerly been a county election commissioner.

I did speak with that official and he believes that he may have accidentally touched the wrong button by mistake, though he did say it happened twice before he could get his vote to register correctly. Even he (the former county election commissioner) could not explain why he had not said anything to any election official at the time, waiting for another day to bring the problem up.

Once again, the contagion effect of three officials (all of whom had attended a local barbeque where an email from the TN Republican Party was read aloud encouraging people to make these reports) suddenly making these reports to the newspaper strains credibility. Again, none of these voters spoke up at the time to any election officials and no other voter in Greene county has reported having similar problems.

I notice that you make a big issue of my getting the relationship between the newspaper editor and one of the commissioners wrong. I relied on information provided by local people, so I (or they) may have made a mistake. I notice you do not question the accuracy of any other relationships mentioned by me (which are really the more critical ones), so I must assume they are accurate. I also mentioned that the only Republican election commissioner I spoke with told me that he discussed with the technician what could be said in the article, suggesting that even this commissioner was helping work on the newspaper story. (It's a shame that none of these "helpers" got listed as co-authors of the article. It would have made all this much easier.)

In closing, I am all for both Republicans and Democrats being careful when voting, making sure to check their review screen to make sure votes appear to be counted as cast. (Of course, with DREs, it's all a crap-shoot anyway, sending our unverifiable votes into equipment that your side still owns and operates.) That's all well and good, but it would have been nice for the TN Republican Party to give the election integrity issue even one minute of their time, attention and support during the three years we worked to ban DREs and institute paper ballots/audits in Tennessee. You know, if your party had given us any support at all, we wouldn't be voting on this equipment here in 2008.

I've about decided that these "votes flipped to Obama" stories are either the Republicans' attempt to create some "false equivalence" to try to balance all the stories coming in from around the country (six states so far) that are reporting vote-flipping, but always away from Obama. Either that, or our side has developed a super-stelthy voting machine virus that only attacks Republican officials and is passed from one Republican to another via email.

I've leave it up to you, newbie, to tell me what's up. Nice try though.