Memo to Rahm: 'Appear On the Ballot' May be Somewhat Misleading in Chicago

[BradBlog]

Memo to Rahm: 'Appear On the Ballot' May be Somewhat Misleading in Chicago
The Windy City relies on 100% unverifiable e-voting systems, tied to Hugo Chavez, with a track-record of infamous failure
Just ask Oprah!...

Perhaps you've been keeping up with the kerfuffle over the past day or two over former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's bid to be on Chicago's ballot in the upcoming February mayoral race there. On Monday, a court determined his residency status was not sufficient and ordered him removed from the ballot, while on Tuesday the court of appeals has temporarily stayed that order, leaving him on the ballot for now, after agreeing to hear his appeal.

But in modern-day Chicago, "appearing on the ballot" is not quite as straightforward as one might think, given the 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems now forced on voters in the Windy City.

Over the years, we've covered specific failures of the very same Sequoia e-voting systems that are used in Chicago and elsewhere across the country, as well as the remarkable duplicity of the company's top officials. So it seems like this would be a good moment to remind folks of the most disturbing Sequoia/Chicago related incidents.

One involves Oprah's "lost" vote on the Sequoia touch-screen systems used there in the 2008 Presidential general election, the other involves the CEO of Sequoia Voting Systems simply lying to Chicago officials about his company's direct business partnership with a Venezuelan e-voting firm tied to Hugo Chavez, and the fact that the Venezuelan firm, Smartmatic, still owns the intellectual property (IP) rights to the e-voting systems used by Chicago voters --- even as the new owners of Sequoia continue to lie about it...

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8323

[mod mom]

1. Rahm is part of the Democratic establishment who did NOTHING to correct e-voting issues.

I wouldn't doubt that insider rahm thinks he has the election already won w his already $11 MILL in the bank. Remember. It isn't who votes that count but who counts the votes. Mr Dead fish probably isn't even breaking a sweat about the race regardless of what machines are used.

[frazzled]

2. Brad obviously doesn't live in Chicago

I've only lived here since 2004, but I've voted every single year in an election (city and state/fed elections are held in alternate years), and each time I have voted on a paper ballot read by an opti-scan machine. Most people do. Names are printed in INK on PAPER and the results are 100% verifiable.

It may be that the early voting stations are touch screen (I don't vote early ever). But this article is just plain, unadulteratedly FALSE. There is not "100% unverifiable touch-screen voting" in Chicago. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[EFerrari]

4. Your machines failed massively in 2006, all over Cook County,

and I spent hours arguing against San Francisco buying the machines Cook Country tried to unload on us.

[frazzled]

5. Echh, a few precincts didn't know how to transmit the votes by phone

so they had to bring the cartridges in. This was human failure, not machines. Plus, you were talking about the Cook County Board President race: you clearly don't know Jack Squat about what the real, and very HUMAN elements of Cook County politics or voting are.

And you didn't respond to the real fact: it is a complete and utter lie that Chicago has only touch screen machines. It's false, untrue, and misleading.

[EFerrari]

6. Brad doesn't say that Chicago has only touchscreens.

He says the touchscreens they have are unverifiable and that's correct. As far as the op scan systems, the best argument against them is not that the company has ties to Venezuela but that their memories are easily hackable and it's a simple matter to stack a recount by tampering with the cards themselves, as the people who went to jail for doing that in the OH recount found out.

[frazzled]

9. Sorry, but he absolutely does

I quote: "But in modern-day Chicago, "appearing on the ballot" is not quite as straightforward as one might think, given the 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems now forced on voters in the Windy City."

If that isn't meant to say that machines in Chicago are required ("forced on") to be the 100% unverifiable touch-screen kind," then he needs to take a writing course.

No one is forced to vote on a touch-screen machine here. Indeed, precincts are required to let voters choose which kind of machine to vote on. Over the years, I've noticed that there are only one or two touch screens at our polling place and about a dozen booths for filling out the paper ballots for opti-scan. That is what most people choose.

[EFerrari]

11. That bolded sentence says touchscreen machines are 100% unverifiable

and that is correct.

[BradBlog]

12. He absolutely doesn't, but...

Frazzled writes:

No one is forced to vote on a touch-screen machine here.

Unless you need to vote early, like the half a million voters who voted early in Cook County in the 2010 general election.

Nonetheless, as I noted previously, I have added a clarification to the article since clearly you were misled by it. And if you were, I'm sure others were as well.

I'm sorry you were confused by it (as I noted in my clarification on the original article), but that you are still trying to suggest I was *purposely* hoping to mislead people somehow is a bit strange.

That you are more concerned with my confusing wording then with the hundreds of thousands of voters who vote in Chicago every election on 100% unverifiable e-voting systems -- systems which are the private, intellectual proprietary property of a Venezuelan firm and now serviced by a private Canadian firm who lied about that -- is similarly strange.

[madrchsod]

7. i`m pretty sure that all of illinois has both machines

i always use paper ballots and the election worker watches me scan the ballot into the machine

[BradBlog]

15. You're cool with transmitting votes by phone?...

You really aren't worried about anybody gaming the system, are you?

For the record, in California, transmitting results by the Internet, including from the very same 100% unverifiable touch-screens that Chicago uses, was decertified in 2007 after the Sec. of State commissioned a massive study of the e-voting systems.

She decertified the systems that you guys continue to use anyway, and allows them (essentially) *only* for disabled-accessible voting and *only* if the so-called "voter verifiable paper audit trail" is 100% hand-counted.

As I noted in my original article, even a 100% hand-count of those paper trails can be gamed, as the CA study revealed, and as is demonstrated in the video from UC Santa Barbara (made as part of that study) that I included in the original article.

I'm sorry that you're apparently fine having more than 12% of your fellow voters using 100% unverifiable voting systems with results sent from *all* systems, I guess, via the Internet (where they can be easily manipulated as well). And I hope you'll excuse me that I am not.

[BradBlog]

8. Brad doesn't need to live in Chicago to report these FACTS

Frazzled, with all due respect, you say:

It may be that the early voting stations are touch screen (I don't vote early ever). But this article is just plain, unadulteratedly FALSE. There is not "100% unverifiable touch-screen voting" in Chicago. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

But the fact is, that in the 2010 election, approximately HALF A MILLION 100% UNVERIFIABLE VOTES were cast during early voting alone (using 100% unverifiable touch-screen systems) in Cook County. True, Chicago is only part of Cook County. But it's the largest part.

That is a huge number of 100% unverifiable votes that will be cast -- in early voting alone -- for the Chicago Mayoral race. On Election Day, voters may choose to use either op-scan or 100% unverifiable touch-screen systems as you accurately note.

As another commenter here points out, yes, those op-scan systems are similarly made by Sequoia, and were similarly lied about to Chicago and Cook Cty officials by the CEO of the company (as I point out in the story, they believed he had been "evasive" and "deceptive" in his testimony, so they sent him additional questions, on which he was also evasive and deceptive in his reply to them.)

I did not report that ONLY touch-screen systems were in use in Chicago, but while enough are used to flip the election undedectably, clearly I need to add a clarification to that end and so I shall do so.

But I hope that clarififies your misperception of the article as being anything but "just plain, unadulteradely FALSE."

[frazzled]

10. Considering only 84,600 cast early votes in Chicago

I don't know where you got the "HALF A MILLION 100% UNVERIFIABLE VOTES." Turn it down a notch and do not think I am stupid or gullible.

I use links and facts. Please note that the total in this Tribune article--official numbers--was as of 5pm Thurs. before the election. So if you'd like to add 15,000 more who voted on Friday and Monday, go ahead, be my guest. But that will still give you only 20% of the number you pulled out of your butt. In city elections, even fewer will vote. 2010 was a big Governor's race and Cook County Board President and US Senate:

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2010/10/early-voting-doubles-from-last-governor-election.html

[BradBlog]

13. Half a million in Cook County in 2008, as originally linked. Sigh...

I misstated the "half million" early voters as 2010 above, when I meant 2008 (as linked in my clarification on the article which I've mentioned to you now several times).

Here is the story I linked to for sourcing at ABC7/WLS:
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/politics&id=6480569

In Illinois, early voting is over. In Cook County, nearly a half million people took advantage of it.

Other than that, yes, it was "pulled out of (my) butt". Good lord.

Yes, I too use "links and facts". My original article is very well documented, yet you seem more interested in challenging *me* rather than the horrible, often 100% unverifiable privatized voting system that your city chooses to use.

[BradBlog]

14. 12% (at a deep deep minimum) voted on 100% unverifiable systems in Chicago in 2010

Frazzled -

Just for your info, going by ONLY the number of early voters cited in the link you offer for 2010 (which is, as you note, only said to include early voting as of 5p Thursday prior to the Tuesday election), over 12% of Chicago voters voted on 100% unverifiable touch-screen systems that year.

The 100% unverifiable touch-screen early voters you cite (84,800) does not include early voters who voted at some point after the last Thursday before the election, as you note, and also does not include those who voted on touch-screen on Election Day itself (unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though the city breaks down votes for folks to know who voted on what, at least as far as very quick check of their posted results seem to show.)

But even using those best-case numbers (84,800) for you, as a part of Chicago's total vote in 2010 -- the race with largest number of votes on the ballot was for Governor, with 689,951 votes counted according to the Chicago Election Comm (http://chicagoelections.com/dm/general/SummaryReport.pdf) -- the 100% unverifiable vote made up 12.29% of the total results.

As noted, that is the absolutely most conservative estimate possible (early votes only as of Thursday and not including any Election Day touch-screen votes, as compared to the largest turnout race on the ballot).

Now if you feel comfortable that the margin for elections in Chicago will never be any closer than 12.29% of the total votes cast, and if you ignore the fact that all of the other results are easily manipulated on the same central tabulators made by Sequoia, then I guess you have nothing to worry about at all and can continue to ignore my well-documented reporting on these matters.

[EFerrari]

3. Venezuela has more transparent elections than we do.

I hope Cook County can rise to that standard some day. :)

[Poboy]

16. BradBlog OP's always get a recommend from me. -nt