Predicting where the vote stealing will need to happen to salvage Romney's losing effort

[Coyotl]

Last edited Thu Nov 1, 2012, 09:44 AM - Edit history (2)

At this point the polls indicate that the Republicans, once again, will have to steal the Presidency if they are unwilling to abide by the democratic process. Current polling is also a useful indicator of exactly where they will need to steal votes to pull off a "victory" on election night. Of course, Ohio is at the top of the list, then Florida. The NYT 538 blog is a useful indicator:

Tipping Point States - http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
The probability that a state provides the decisive electoral vote.

1 Ohio 48.6%
2 Va. 13.5%
3 Wis. 8.2%
4 Nev. 7.1%
5 Colo. 6.4%
6 Iowa 5.8%
7 N.H. 3.4%
8 Pa. 3.0%
9 Fla. 2.1%
10 N.C. 0.4%

More importantly, this list then needs resorting by the number of electoral votes in play.

9 Fla. 29
8 Pa. 20
1 Ohio 18
10 N.C. 15
2 Va. 13
3 Wis. 10
5 Colo. 9
4 Nev. 6
6 Iowa 6
7 N.H. 4

A factoring of the current margin (number of votes that will need to be stolen) is also a useful indicator.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/2012/romney-vs-obama-electoral-map

N.C. 15 -2
Fla. 29 -1
Va. 13 even
Colo. 9 +1
Ohio 18 +2
Iowa 6 +2
N.H. 4 +2
Nev. 6 +4
Wis. 10 +4
Pa. 20 +5

My own analysis, take the top five above and add Wisconsin. That's 94 electoral votes. PA has too great a split to steal at this point.
The best way to consider this is ADD 94 to one column and SUBTRACT 94 from the other column.

Always DOUBLE the impact of stealing one vote because of who gets the stolen votes!

Now we know where to expect the action will take place folks!

Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin and Colorado.

The next step is predicting in which particular locations this is likeliest to happen. The Wisconsin special election is a useful model to consider. Where are the Dem votes in best supply? In inner city precincts voting 90% Obama, of course, Milwaukie in Wisconsin, Cleveland in Ohio, etc. We are all familiar with the Florida politiscape from 2000, Miami-Dade.

What to look for in the past to predict the future? Note the anomaly in Wisconsin, when the state shifted blue and the bluest area shifted dramatically red:


And note the correlations to the percentage of Democratic voters, the target point is over 75% Dems:




This is just a beginning, an alert of sorts, to point in the directions of where to be most alert, where to take preventative steps, and where to focus analysis.
This is also a warning shot to the would-be scoundrels, we are on to you and we have the statistical where-with-all to detect you.
Furthermore, this is just step one in the analysis process of defining where to expect the malfeasance.

Given recent past history and who owns the vote counting, theft will surely be afoot given the predicament Romney is in.

What fraud prevention and detection advice and insights might you add to further ensure fair and democratic elections in the future? I know, hand-counted, paper ballots are number one. I mean, of course, in the current situation and in the context of this election.

[Firebirds01]

1. Thanks for your concern.

Your CONCERN flag is duly raised

[Coyotl]

2. The next thing to factor in is other races and control of Congress

This post should be helpful:

Anyone have an election night watch list?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251192336

SENATE
Brown v Mandel (OH)
Kaine v Allen (VA)
Baldwin v Thompson (WI)
The Virginia race is closest, others not so much and near 100% likely Dem wins.

HOUSE
Ryan v Zerban (WI)
West v Murphy (FL)
Grayson v Long (FL)

[Coyotl]

3. Romney's Halloween trick on Ohio voters Wednesday, October 31, 2012 | Posted by Jim Hightower

Romney's Halloween trick on Ohio voters
Wednesday, October 31, 2012 | Posted by Jim Hightower
http://www.jimhightower.com/node/7875/

Listen to this Commentary = http://www.jimhightower.com/sites/jimhightower.civicactions.net/files/41-20_w_show.mp3

If you really want to scare people this Halloween, go trick-or-treating dressed as an Ohio voting machine.

The "black box" e-vote machines that Ohioans will use on November 6 are owned by Hart Intercivic – but that disguises the real owner. Last year, Hart was taken over by an investment fund with the cryptic name of HIG Capital. Peek into HIG, and you'll find that of its 22 American directors, 21 are donors to Mitt Romney's campaign, and a third of them had been money managers at Bain & Company, the hedge fund that gave Mitt his start in corporate plundering.

But the enigma within Ohio's machines goes even deeper than these cozy partisan ties suggest, for HIG itself is largely owned by an inscrutable private equity creature called Solomere. Who dat? Solomere was formed by Romney's oldest son, Tagg, and financed by Mama Ann Romney and Uncle Scott Romney, with Papa Mitt himself chipping in $10 million and personally pitching Solomere to other rich investors.

Like father, like son – Tagg cloaks the fund's operations through a dark maze of offshore tax shelters .....

[proverbialwisdom]

20. Hightower is a great muckraker. I'm a subscriber to his newsletter. Missed this one, thanks.

[Coyotl]

4. Black Box Voting » News Headlines » (CO) 11/2012 - COLORADO SETS THE STAGE FOR A BOGUS ELECTION -

Black Box Voting » News Headlines » (CO) 11/2012 - COLORADO SETS THE STAGE FOR A BOGUS ELECTION
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/82306.html
Posted on Thursday, November 1, 2012 - 10:21 am:


Colorado election integrity and transparency is now officially out the window, with a series of corruption protection rules and new laws.

1. Let's begin with the unflappable Donetta Davidson, who collaborated with convicted embezzler Jeffrey Dean(1) to remove voter privacy, through a contract specification that required him to redo his absentee mail software in order to embed a method to tie voted ballots to the voters. This shifty business, which now includes all absentee ballots cast on Hart eSlate machines, has led to a blockade on ALL Colorado election accounting records (see #4, below).

2. Next, in a move that has most of us scratching our heads, Colorado Sec. State Gessler proposed new rules in December 2011 to remove requirements for continuous video surveillance.(2) Though billed as "cost saving," note that most video surveillance nowadays is simply piped into digital files stored on a Web site. Since cameras are already installed, there is no significant cost savings in allowing non-continuous surveillance.

3. Sec. State Gessler also decided to reduce the number of seals on voting machines,(2) to the chagrin of election integrity groups like Voter Action, whose investigations and litigation demonstrated vulnerabilities requiring the seals in the first place. The "cost savings" in this measure can be counted in pennies.

4. A number of protective accounting measures crucial for evaluating election tampering have been taken off the table though a new law to block election-related public records examination.

Donetta Davidson led the lobbying for this law. Davidson had become a commissioner of the U.S. Election Assistence Commission, then took a step down to take over the Colorado Clerks Association. In this capacity she led a fight to block the media and citizens from examining the ballots. And no wonder: She knew that due to changes made under her administration, private companies had marks embedded on the ballots enabling them to harvest data tying votes to voters.

Thanks to a lawsuit by Colorado citizen Marilyn Marks, of The Citizen Center, sponsored and assisted by Black Box Voting, the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed right to examine ballots. Marks was shocked when she discovered that identifying marks on the ballots allowed her to immediately associate every voted ballot with the voter who cast it. ....,.

[Floyd_Gondolli]

5. The onslaught has begun

At least 100 threads today all touting a different version of the same, tired mantra.

It would seem that is NO accident either.

[Coyotl]

9. It's Bush PTSD + Voting machines 100% non-transparent, privately-owned + Hacking the Vote Video

Could e-voting machines in Election 2012 be hacked? Yes.

Security experts say a specific kind of electronic-voting machine is vulnerable to being hacked. Influencing a national election would be difficult, but the advance of malware makes it possible.
By Mark Clayton, Staff writer / October 26, 2012 - http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2012/1026/Could-e-voting-machines-in-Election-2012-be-hacked-Yes

Rapid advances in the development of cyberweapons and malicious software mean that electronic-voting machines used in the 2012 election could be hacked, potentially tipping the presidential election or a number of other races.

Since the machines are not connected to the Internet, any hack would not be a matter of someone sneaking through cyberspace to change ballots. Rather, the concern is that an individual hacker, a partisan group, or even a nation state could infect voting machines by gaining physical access to them or by targeting the companies that service them.

The 2010 discovery of the Stuxnet cyberweapon, which used a thumb drive to attack Iran's nuclear facilities and spread among its computers, illustrated how one type of attack could work. Most at risk are paperless e-voting machines, which don’t print out any record of votes, meaning the electronically stored results could be altered without anyone knowing they had been changed.

.................

[sadbear]

6. I say if it's anywhere, it's Wisconsin.

[Coyotl]

7. Free Press confirms installation, secret justification of uncertified last minute election tabulatio

The Free Press confirms installation, secret justification of uncertified last minute election tabulation reporting software in Ohio
by Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis
November 2, 2012 - http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4768


The Free Press has obtained internal memos from the senior staff of the Ohio Secretary of State's office confirming the installation of untested and uncertified election tabulation software. Yesterday, the Free Press reported that "experimental" software patches were installed on ES&S voting machines in 39 Ohio counties. (see Will "experimental" software patches affect the Ohio vote?).

Election Counsel Brandi Laser Seske circulated a memo dated November 1st renewing the already shaky justification for installing software made by Election Systems and Solutions on vote tabulation equipment used in 39 Ohio counties. The letter to Ohio Secretary of State personnel Matt Masterson, Danielle Sellars, Myra Hawkins, Betsy Schuster, and Ohio's Director of Elections Matthew Damschroder, clarified the dubious justification for not complying with the legal requirements for the examination of all election related equipment.

Seske begins by explaining what she purports to be the purpose of the software patch: "Its function is to aid in the reporting of results that are already uploaded into the county's system. The software formats results that have already been uploaded by the county into a format that can be read by the Secretary of State's election night reporting system."

According to the contract between the Ohio Secretary of State's office and ES&S, this last minute "experimental" software update will supposedly transmit custom election night reports to the Secretary of State's office from the county boards of elections, bypassing the normal election night reporting methods.

................

[flamingdem]

8. Rachel Maddow had a list of election officials in charge by political party

For instance we know Husted is a repuke and a problem, there are other problem repukes in charge in swing states.

[brooklynite]

11. ...except that the State official DOESN'T COUNT THE VOTES

Votes are counted at the County level, and more often than not by a bi-partisan Election Board.

[flamingdem]

14. Yes but if the State official can get the counts, as the experimental patch is meant to do

then they can conceivably make a judgement call as to where to flip votes to avoid detectability.

Got to think outside of the box here. If you think the machines can't be tampered with that's another story, I think they can be.

[RomneyLies]

10. I love trashing nonsense conspiracy theory threads. nt

[Coyotl]

13. I bet you did really well in your graduate-level statistics courses

That would really empower this propensity and provide you with something to add to how you feel

[dotymed]

12. We have had 12 years since the selection of bush to fix this theft.

I can not fathom why this hasn't been one of our governments main goals. Of course when you privatize (anything) federal and state election process', theft is going to happen. Everything in America is for sell.
We should not have waited until another Presidential election to (again) make this national scandal a "breaking story."
This process is as big and directly tied to our "occupy" movement.
It may be too late for this election (I hope not) but we as citizens must take to the streets until we have verifiable, transparent voting in what is supposed to be a democracy.
IMO, this is the biggest threat to our (once?) democracy (including terrorists) that has ever happened. We must not just push this scandal aside after this election, no matter the outcome. Unless we demand and fight for a democracy, it will (is) be gone forever.

[Supersedeas]

15. When the election is close...it is subject to theft...Every vote counts? Not so much

[Coyotl]

16. Oregon Department of Justice investigating potential ballot tampering at Clackamas County Elections

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014288197

[Coyotl]

17. What about the Congress? Are Republicans rigging a U. S. Congressional Race?

The political map is a lot different when predicting where election rigging of U. S. House or Senate races might occur.
The question becomes one of:

"Which races are close enough to steal?"

Now, evidence has surfaced in Oregon inferring a possibility:

Are Republicans rigging a U. S. Congressional Race?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251205010

Is this the tip of an iceberg?

Races to watch are the closest ones. For the Senate, look to North Dakota in particular, where a mere 160,000 votes elects a U. S. Senator!

[Coyotl]

18. Other close contests everywhere may be targets, e.g., Oregon Republican caught rigging voting

While the OP does not address state, Congressional, or local races, the entire House or Senate balance might swing in a location other than the states filtered for Romney fraud, or thoe other contests might influence the original prediction's probabilities. In one example, someone has been apprehended in Oregon, and a location with a pivotal voting bloc for Congress and the State House, plus control of the county is in play too.

Clackamas County commissioners call emergency meeting Monday ... ballot tampering investigation
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014291309

.... Clackamas County is home to 10 percent of Oregon's registered voters, and is almost evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.

Clackamas County is considered a swing county that is pivotal in deciding close statewide races. Three neck-and-neck legislative races could be decisive in determining which party controls the state House.

A Clackamas County Senate race was decided by 227 votes in 2010, ...........

[Coyotl]

19. Is the GOP stealing Ohio? Uncertified, "experimental" software patches have been installed ...

Monday, Nov 5, 2012 01:36 PM PST - http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/
Is the GOP stealing Ohio?
Uncertified, "experimental" software patches have been installed on machines in 39 counties of the key swing state

Last week, Bob Fitrakis and Gerry Bello at FreePress.org reported an important story concerning what they described as “uncertified ‘experimental’ software patches” being installed at the last minute on electronic vote tabulation systems in 39 Ohio counties.

The story included a copy of the contract [PDF] between Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office and ES&S, the nation’s largest e-voting system manufacturer, for a new, last-minute piece of software created to the custom specifications of the secretary of state. The contract itself describes the software as “High-level enhancements to ES&S’ election reporting software that extend beyond the current features and functionality of the software to facilitate a custom-developed State Election Results Reporting File.”

A subsequent story at the Free Press the following day included text said to be from a Nov. 1 memo sent from the Ohio secretary of state’s Election Counsel Brandi Laser Seske to a number of state election officials confirming the use of the new, uncertified software on Ohio’s tabulator systems. The memo claims that “its function is to aid in the reporting of results” by converting them “into a format that can be read by the Secretary of State’s election night reporting system.”

....