Did Anonymous really Save-the-Vote in Ohio? .... REALLY???

[JohnnyRingo]

66. Ohio can indeed now certify the vote through an audit.

I live in a part of Ohio that uses the infamous Diebold touch screen machines. Trumbull and nearby Mahoning Counties (Youngstown) are 2:1 democrat so we would absolutely be prime targets for vote switching in an alleged Rove conspiracy.

We received these machines in 2004 when we and almost all of Ohio replaced the old punch card ballots with Diebold touch screens that had no paper trail to determine after the election how those units actually voted, other than a computer memory chip. When Ohio went suspiciously for Bush in the '04 election, a public cry went out to add a paper print-out for accountability. Vote switching was specifically cited as the reason.

At first, as many recall, Diebold said that the technology was impossible, but we elected a Democratic governor that year, and they quickly found a way to print the ballots on a paper roll (like a register receipt) when governor Ted Strickland threatened to end their contract immediately (money talks).

I"m a precinct worker here in Trumbull County, and as such, I and three others (2 dems 2 Repub) are largely responsible for security of these archived paper rolls at our precinct. Here's how that works: The rolls are loaded into the machine and the door is locked (There's only one key) A tamper proof sticker is placed over the door with the machine serial # and the sticker # recorded in our log and signed by all four precinct workers.

The moment a voter casts their vote, the machine begins printing the vote in real time, line by line, while the voter watches. The voter can't leave the machine until this is completed. When the roll fills up, one republican and one democrat replace the roll, and all four workers (two from each party) sign the roll and place it in a steel box that will be locked at the end of the day with a recorded tamper proof sticker placed across the lid. Accounting, such as machine serial # that printed the roll, and sequential paper roll #, are recorded in the precinct log book and signed off by all four of us. The vote total for the machine is printed on the last roll as a final report. At the end of the day, those rolls are returned in the locked box by car to the BOE by one Representative of each party with a tamper proof sticker that has a recorded serial # placed over the lid. The rolls are then stored for (I think) two years in case there's a problem that requires accounting. To say that these paper accounts cannot easily be verified is innaccurate.

"Back door" programs can still be installed to change votes I suppose, but it's much easier to get caught doing so now. Unfortunately, in spite of my advice, many people do not watch the print out, though I've never seen a discrepancy myself, nor has anyone ever complained of one. If they did, the paper roll is to be removed at once by a member of each party and examined for accuracy. That paper roll would then be sequestered, the machine serial # recorded along with the paper roll, and the entire action would be signed by all four precinct workers.

Unlike in 2004, I now have a great deal of confidence in this system, and if someone stopped Rove from using some backdoor computer matrix wizardry to undermine this highly documented and verified procedure, I'd like to hear the theory behind that conspiracy.