Did CA get bluer, while the nation got redder, because Debra Bowen threw out touchscreen voting?

[Liberty Belle]

Let's not forget that Debra Bowen, our courageous secretary of state, ordered hack tests on all our voting machines and decertified the ones that proved to be easy to hack. Touchscreens are only allowed now for disabled voters.

Is it really just a coincidence that in the first statewide election since she decertified the Diebold touchscreens and others, EVERY SINGLE STATEWIDE OFFICE WAS WON BY A DEMOCRAT?????

While our current machines are not perfect, and some could still be rigged, I suspect Bowen made it a lot harder for the election thieves. Knowing the scrutiny upon them, perhaps they scurried off and focused efforts on other states with more accommodating right-leaning or just clueless secretaries of state.

The GOP tried running a football player with absolutely no qualifications against Bowen, but thankfully she held her seat.

Get a clue in the red states -- who you elect as secretary of state matters....that is, if your elections are not already rigged. Get rid of those machines, whatever it takes.

[EFerrari]

1. The thought crossed my mind, anyway. n/t

[lisa58]

2. I know people who know people...I'll ask.

[tabatha]

3. Yes!!!

I have been thinking that since the elections.

And I said so before the elections --- that we would have decent results because of her.

Thank you Debra Bowen !!!

CA is the prize that the republicans want.

[JDPriestly]

63. We have had to endure a number of obnoxious Republican governors.

Finally, we are back to the last really successful governor. I hope we stay blue for the rest of my life and that of my children and grandchildren.

Our Republican governors really messed up the state.

[live love laugh]

88. The mantra should be "Explain California." We lost a lot due to election fraud. Period. nt

[flamingdem]

4. Many recs, few posts, still a hot button issue

I am wondering about other states, are there any resources saying what states use what equipment?

I know tin foil.. but Scott in Florida is so hard to believe.

[immune]

9. I loaded up

on extra tinfoil before the first ballot was cast. People tell me I have serious trust issues. :eyes:

[molly77]

83. Why talk about tinfoil when it has been proven that the machines

that we use to vote on are verily easily hackable. Do you ever think when you preface these kind of statements with tinfoil hat mantras that you are doing exactly as programmed. Do not question your govt. under any circumstances. If you do...be sure and minimize yourself.

[immune]

94. Actually,

I agree with you very much. Should've added the sarcasm tag.

[EFerrari]

34. The kind of equipment used is usually listed on the SoS's website. n/t

[mistertrickster]

5. Hmmm . . . interesting. Especially since D meant "death" for so many dems elsewhere. nt

[HughMoran]

6. We lost everything with the same optical machines we used last time

Bzzzt - nice try.

[Nostradammit]

10. How do those optical votes get counted?

Do they all get tabulated centrally?

[HughMoran]

12. Eventually.

(I'm not 100% on this - from memory) the machines store the votes within and then the data is either wired or physically taken as a module from the machine. I think it's electronic, but the actually ballots are carefully controlled as a backup. When a recount is needed, the ballots are re-fed through machines in specified locations where the ballots are stored. The process seems to work quite well as we had a recount in 2008 between Hilary and Obama and the errors were there, but relatively small. I personally like optical systems due to the fact that a hard copy of the ballot is kept after the fact.

[laughingliberal]

20. That sounds much better than the black boxes used in many places. nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. Yes but unlike the electronic machines

they have paper trails... and yes we have had a triggered recount or two on local races here in San Diego.... which they could not do with only the electronic cards.

[Liberty Belle]

84. In San Diego, yes unfortunately. Not sure about other cities.

[Liberty Belle]

24. They could've been rigged this time and not last, or the loss could be honest in your area.

[HughMoran]

26. It's very difficult to rig optical machines.

[kath]

28. From what I read a few years back though, IIRC, it's not that hard to hack the central tabulator.

[snot]

49. Last time might have been an even bigger landslide for D's w/o electronics.

[snot]

50. [self-delete -- computer hiccup.]

[Merlot]

7. Debra Bowen is my Hero!

"Is it really just a coincidence that in the first statewide election since she decertified the Diebold touchscreens and others, EVERY SINGLE STATEWIDE OFFICE WAS WON BY A DEMOCRAT?????"

Good question.

[senseandsensibility]

8. kick

Good point. Thanks, Debra.

[MrScorpio]

11. We've got optical readers and paper ballots here and guess what...

Red.

I figure that the hackable machines are only for the blue areas

[BeFree]

13. Calif

Maybe the only state to put the hammer down on the machines.

Ms. Bowen is a heroine.

[glitch]

14. Good question.

We still have central tabulators but the scrutiny would make a difference, IMO.

[BlueCheese]

15. Bowen is a great SoS.

Somewhat ironically, the Republican SoS she replaced was a pretty decent guy himself, if I remember.

Having said all that, I don't buy that the voting machines had much to do with the election results.

[xxqqqzme]

82. He was the rethug steroid boy appointed to

replace Kevin Shelley, who, though elected, was hounded from office by rethuglican innuendo and a smear campaign. This was going on at the very end of the recall BS so it got very little whorporate media attention, except the rethug accusations. Shelley refused to certify diebold and demonstrated their unreliability. The appointed rethug immediately certified the diebold machines. Which led Bowen's election in '06. Worked for her campaign.

ALL investigations of Shelley quickly died after he resigned.

[HuckleB]

16. Interestingly, I thought about this in regard to Oregon, last night.

Oregon has vote by mail, and Oregon maintained every Dem House seat, and every Dem in statewide office. We did lose seats in the state house and senate, but ... it does make one wonder about those machines.

[Nostradammit]

36. I trust none of them.

I doubt they plan to steal every race in every state at first.

Over the next few election cycles they will be stealing more and more of them.

Who programs the tabulators for Oregon. Anybody know?

[DBoon]

17. She is really sharp

She gave the keynote at the 2008 USENIX Security conference, and definitely had much more on the ball than any other politician I know

Just the fact she spoke at a unix technical conference was impressive

[musette_sf]

18. I still say that Gropinator won NOTHING

and it was all gamed by the touchscreen voting machines. I lived in Alameda County at the time, and it was the FIRST and LAST time we had touchscreen machines. Thank You Debra Bowen!!

[CLANG]

53. What's a gropinator?

[druidity33]

60. aka Ahnold "terminator" S., former Gov of CA. nt.

[musette_sf]

67. so called

due to some, um, unwanted physical affection he has displayed to women over the years.

[Nostradammit]

74. You've got one right there in your avatar.

[CLANG]

76. That's the Tan Man (dickhead). Is he a groper too?

[Nostradammit]

79. I'd be willing to bet he is.

Probably too drunk to ever go through with anything, though.

[Raine]

21. Ink a Vote is what they have in my area of Los

Angeles County, it seems to work pretty good. :thumbsup: :-)

[CaliforniaPeggy]

25. My town has it too...

It works well. I always check to make sure my little ink dot got put down with enough force, though...

:hi:

[proud patriot]

22. I actually thought of that a few times since the election

she won re-election too . My Vote for Bowen was just as important if not more important
than for the others .

[laughingliberal]

23. Kudos to Bowen! nt

[Blue Owl]

27. K&R

How about that...

[BolivarianHero]

29. CA didn't "get bluer"

Hispanics turned out in record numbers and Brown and Boxer both still did much worse than Obama did 2 years.

It's blue compared to a decade ago, sure, but not compared to 2008. All that changed is that Republicans who were only in office because of personal non-party votes decided to retire.

[Liberty Belle]

85. Not true- Maldonado, the Lt. Gov, got booted out.

by Gavin Newsom.

[BolivarianHero]

91. I'm aware of that...

He was also an appointee rather than an elected incumbent. His previous attempt at running for statewide office ended with a loss at the GOP primary.

[Capn Sunshine]

30. I'm an election officer in Ventura County

We still get one touchscreen per polling place, to be used in case of overflow, and it's set up to accomodated visually and hearing impaired voters. No one uses the thing. They prefer to wait

[Liberal Left]

31. Thank Kevin Shelley

He set the stage for that to take place in 2006.

[EFerrari]

33. Yep. What they did to Kevin Shelley, with the Chronicle leading the way,

was disgusting.

[Warren DeMontague]

37. But he was a "mean boss" and he "threw a cell phone"!!!

:eyes: :sarcasm:

Yeah, that WAS a pretty transparent smear job, wasn't it.

[EFerrari]

45. It couldn't have been pulled off without the Chronicle.

They kept all the bs in big letters above the fold for weeks.

[truedelphi]

59. Oh I remember all that. It was SAD. n/t

[defendandprotect]

32. Computers began coming in mid-to-late 1960s.... I'd question every election back to Nixon/Humphrey !

[suffragette]

35. I thought about that, too

And it made me look for an update about the Republican who stole ballots in San Francisco.
Clearly, it's much , much harder to commit election fraud doing it this way than by computer.

From the earlier report:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/04/BAJO1G6ETJ.
DTL(11-03) 11:46 PDT San Francisco -- San Francisco police have arrested an election worker but have not recovered 75 ballots he allegedly stole from a polling station, police said Wednesday.

Karl Bradfield Nicholas, 50, of San Francisco left his post at 4:15 p.m. on election day at the station on Knott Court with the ballots and a memory card that recorded the votes cast, said Lt. Lyn Tomioka, a San Francisco police spokeswoman

~~~

Nicholas, formerly of Kentfield and San Rafael, is a computer repairman and registered Republican. He represents himself in lawsuits and has a website in which he rails against the court system.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/04/BAJO1G6ETJ.DTL

Missing SF ballots found floating in pond

SAN FRANCISCO -- Approximately 75 voting ballots that disappeared when officials say a San Francisco polling inspector took off with them Tuesday have been found.

John Arntz, San Francisco's director of elections, said Thursday the ballots were found floating in a pond at the Palace of Fine Arts in the city's Marina neighborhood.

Arntz described the ballots as "waterlogged." A memory pack that records information from the ballots, and a voting roster that also disappeared have not been recovered.

Because the chain of custody of the ballots was broken, Arntz said he was seeking advice from the city attorney's office on how best to proceed with the recovered ballots.


Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/11/04/3160984/missing-sf-ballots-found-floating.html#ixzz14NzKBtPq

Hmm, two things here. I'm noticing the parts about him being a Republican and a computer repairer are being left out. And it makes me wonder on the computer part, wondering if he might have hacked any in the past.

[OnionPatch]

38. I have to tell you how good it felt to vote with a pencil.

I live in Riverside County where a whole lot of, let's call it "shenanigans", went on in the past. Last Tuesday I voted on paper! It felt so good!! :bounce:

[Sirveri]

39. I hope you mean pen... Using a pencil which can be erased isn't good either...nt

[OnionPatch]

64. Oops, sorry, yes it was a pen, not a pencil.

I was just happy it wasn't a finger on a touch screen machine.

[Wednesdays]

44. In Oklahoma we use a felt-tip pen, in a quaint method of "completing the arrow"

It's on a paper ballot, but what kind of machine "reads" it, I have no clue. :shrug:

[andym]

92. We use a very similar ballot in CA, except it is used for mail-in ballots

at least in Santa Clara country.

[malaise]

40. A profound observation

K & R - Go California!!

[blm]

41. Excellent point.

.

[RainDog]

42. K&R n/t

[1955doubledie]

43. Something to consider

However, were such machines in all or most of the 60 house districts that flipped Dem to GOP? :shrug:

[Lorien]

46. The much dispised Charlie Crist wanted to get rid of all the touchscreen machines

in Florida and return to paper ballots, but the excuse not to do so by the rest of the State government was "it will cost too much." X(

[Blue Owl]

47. Touch screens are for disabled voters

Hmmm....

[catzies]

48. DEBRA BOWEN IS ONE OF THE BEST FIGHTERS FOR DEMOCRACY WE HAVE

I had to shout it on purpose because it's true.

Seccretary Bowen is an exemplary and oustanding public servant and I'd abolish term limits just to kep er as Secretary of State.

[MzNov]

51. + a zillion

[CLANG]

52. I agree it seems to beg further investigation.

[kestrel91316]

54. I hadn't thought about that, but it makes perfect sense to me. I have never

used a touchscreen voting machine and wouldn't ever do so.

[judesedit]

55. VERY good point. Electronic voting machines can be hacked in an instant and has already been testi

fied to. The creator of the software has admitted to throwing the election to Bush in 2004. Do you really expect them to stop now? These machines should have been discarded as soon as they discovered this little fact, but corporations, foreign and domestic, and the top 2% wealthiest Americans are running the show. This was blatantly displayed by candidates dumping their own millions into their campaigns along with the donations from seedy, undisclosed sources. They are already obligated to big banks, pharma, oil, and the huge corporations destroying our country. I'd say "Wake up, Americans", but I fear it may be too late. So sad. Grass roots America was intentionally kept in poverty until this election was over. The GOP knew we couldn't donate to the democratic or any other party this way. We now have MORE criminals running this country, not less. The Dumbing Down of America has sure worked.

[DesertDiamond]

56. It occurred to me that this would be another stolen election. I saw the usual signs.

[ecstatic]

57. GA wasn't this red 10 years ago

I suspect there's a lot of rigging going on, but what can I do? Only 10.5% of our population is 65 or older; 30% black, 8% Latino... hmmmmm

[valerief]

58. Badda bing! Electronic voting machines are rigged red!!!! nt

[KansDem]

66. I must admit when I voted last Tuesday...

...here in Kansas, I wondered as voted on the electronic voting machine if my votes would really count.

I kept thinking, "18181, 18181, 18181,..."

[Cleita]

61. I truly believe that her efforts to make our elections

more transparent and honest had a lot to do with it. I never trusted the results from the Grey Davis witch hunt. You know Darryl Issa who started this now wants to investigate and impeach our President. I believe Darryl Issa should be investigated for his part in the recall of Grey Davis and I hope our new Attorney General will do it.

[byronius]

62. She's my favorite public servant. What an excellent American.

[jtuck004]

65. Yeah. that's it. n/t

[katty]

68. well it was a good thing!

[grahamhgreen]

69. YES! Plus, they had a wedge issue on the ballot (Decrim), that brought out Dems.

[The Backlash Cometh]

70. Wow. Nice catch.

[NuttyFluffers]

71. i just want to bump this to give recognition where it is due. go Debra!

:party:

[earth mom]

72. This year the elections were stolen by Rigged machines AND Faux news propaganda. nt

[pasto76]

73. I wasnt all that happy when I voted on a Diebold machine.

and I was not offered a paper ballot. I was actually worried when the Bennet/Buck race was down to .2% that there would be shenanigans, like Boulder county going for Buck.

Thankfully that didnt happen.

[NorthCarolina]

75. The EVM I voted on was messed up

The paper roll was jammed in the printer that is used to keep a printed record of every vote cast. I called attention to the fact that I could see the paper was not advancing, and they opened the machine to try and fix it. It was at the beginning of the roll still and had a deep black hole in it where the print head had been repeatedly running over the same spot of paper. I voted at about 4:30 in the afternoon, and so apparently the machine had not permanently recorded a single vote all day. I was informed that it was no big deal since nobody ever looks at the paper tapes anyway.

[KaryninMiami]

77. Touchscreens and Opti-Scan machines can be rigged

And yes- many of us knew damn well that the machines would be rigged and they were- no doubt. All they need to do is skim a percentage here and there maybe a percentage and a half and no one would question it and the GOP gets in with a high enough majority (but not too high to cause someone to demand a recount). Here in Florida I know something went wrong with the Gov. race- everyone I know - even conservative, Republicans voted for Alex Sink. There is no way she didn't carry this state. Not a chance.

Need more info on electronic voting machines? Visit www.bradblog.com. Or PM me and I'll send you a ton of stuff to read. Or look up Clint Curtis.

[Citizen Worker]

78. Mere coincidence.

:sarcasm:

[Axle_techie]

80. It wasn't touch screen where I voted in Kentucky

and Paul still won...

[LaPera]

81. Karl Rove tried hard by putting in a paid for republican African-American to defeat SoS Debra Bowen.

Karl Rove tried hard by putting in a republican African-American to run against and to defeat Democratic Secretary of State Debra Bowen


It didn't work but Rove won't give up he wants California badly and it's the big prize - you saw the way was able to remove Dem Gray Davis as Governor by using ENRON republican petitions and Rove purposely made it a mess a crowded field to put a republican star with a name and got republican Arnold elected - Who was way way over his head!

Beware in the future Rove will not give up - He wants California and it's huge electoral votes - Rove will find some slimy tactic!!

[BootinUp]

86. There are other factors to consider

The unpolled Latino vote (see Nate Silver)

I would also suggest that the tone of the campaigns (highly charged, partisan, etc) caused better turnout for us in blue states.

[Nostradammit]

89. Are you any relation to a guy named Beatle?

[BootinUp]

90. No, why do you ask?

[Nostradammit]

93. Just curious

no offense intended.

[drm604]

87. Interesting thought.

I don't like the touch button things we use here in the Philly burbs. I an always suspicious of electronic voting.