OH NO! It's starting to look like our nation's future could hang on Georgia's paperless DREs.

[garybeck]

I'm not a man of predictions, but that magic number of 60 democratic senate seats is looming, and it's starting to look like Georgia's paperless Diebold DREs could play a major role in deciding the future of the nation.

It's looking more like Begich will win Alaska.

Experts are saying Franken has a very good chance of taking the recount in MN.

That leaves GA. Good old Georgia. Shit. that's the home of "robgeorgia.exe." It's one of the few states that is 100% paperless DREs - no way to conduct an audit or recount. And with no audit or recount possibility, it's a dream come true for hackers and riggers. It's the home of the infamous Max Cleland loss. It's the home of the infamous "clock upgrade" to the machines at the last minute which whistleblowers now say had nothing to do with clocks.

http://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/map.php?&ec=allall&year=2008&state=Georgia

It may very well come down to the difference between 59 and 60 seats will be decided in the re-vote in Georgia which has one of the worst histories in terms of questionable and unverifiable results of elections in the past.

[brooklynite]

1. What you're saying is the GA Republicans will steal the election they didn't steal two weeks ago...

Sorry, I refuse to get worked up about voting machine conspiracy theories. As unreliable and potentially vulnerable individual machines may be, I've seen no evidence of a state-wide or nation-wide conspiracy to rig votes, and no explanation as to why, if this capability exists, it wasn't used in 2006 or this year.

[TheWraith]

3. Conspiracy theories don't need facts, dammit! You're just supposed to believe!

It's common knowledge that Democrats win every election above dogcatcher level, and if a Republican gets in it can only be because of election fraud. :eyes:

People who push this nonsense do a hell of a lot of damage to REAL investigations of vote-tampering.

[garybeck]

5. Nope

the evidence of fraud in previous Georgia elections is well documented. it's not heresay conspiracy theories. Employees of Diebold have gone on the record. You should actually look at the evidence before you discount it.

[brooklynite]

6. I reiterate my original point...

If you assume the Georgia GOP is in cahoots with the State Government and can rig the machines, why didn't they give Chambliss the handful of votes he needed (approx 9,113 votes by my count) to avoid a runoff?

[TheWraith]

8. Crickets.

Nobody who believes in the magical vote-stealing machines can explain how we won in 2006 and 2008, either.

Bottom line, these machines are bad because they're unreliable and insecure, not because they're portable versions of Tammany Hall.

[OnTheOtherHand]

9. strictly speaking

I believe the prevailing explanations are: (1) millions of votes were stolen in 2006, and perhaps dozens of House seats, but a late Democratic surge overcame the fraud; (2) a variant of 1 (including the speculation that Prop 8 actually lost), and/or the notion that the vote-stealers took this election off because Obama's margin was clearly going to be too large, and to lull us into complacency.

I don't believe any of this.

Bottom line, these machines are bad because they're unreliable and insecure, not because they're portable versions of Tammany Hall.

Nailed it!

[Wilms]

14. Well hang on a moment. Strictly speaking, do we know what happened in FL-13?

If not, I'm sure we'd agree it premature to rule out possible causes. Right?

[OnTheOtherHand]

15. yeah, but I don't see what that has to do with my post

I also think that if FL-13 was a hack, it was a crazy weird one. Crazy weird things do happen.

[garybeck]

13. no, not crickets

it is a flawed argument to say that just because a certain election was not stolen, none were. that is not a logical statement so I won't waste my time with it.

[kster]

10. You have to do some of the math yourself

Judge Rules to Uphold on Electronic Voting, Appeal Expected

Georgia will continue to use machines in Georgia which have been banned in other states.

"The machines they use in Georgia are the AccuVote-TS R6. Georgia is the only state that has state-wide unverifiable voting except for Maryland and Maryland has the same type of machines. Their legislature has voted to throw all of them away after this election and back to an optical scan. So Georgia will be the only state in the union which will have statewide unvertifiable voting at the end of this year," Garland Favorito of VoterGA told Atlanta Progressive News.

"These kind of machines were decertified 3 times in California; they were decertified in Ohio and Nevada; and basically they are being thrown out of Maryland. They have been decertified in practically every state they were used except Georgia," Favorito said.

After hearing one hour of oral presentation by the State’s attorney and a 20 minute presentation by VoterGA’s attorney, Judge Johnson declared after a few minutes of deliberation that the machines were Constitutional and that the case challenging their use had no merit

http://www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/news/0386.html



Touchscreen voting machines banned in Florida

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=9444



California official seeks
criminal probe of e-voting

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190

[garybeck]

12. I never said anything like that. Don't put words into my mouth.

You say, "If you assume the Georgia GOP is in cahoots with the State Government and can rig the machines..."

Did I ever say anything like that, even remotely?

If you understood the way the voting machines work, which you obviously don't, you would know that the state GOP and the state government would have nothing to do with it.

You can throw all kinds of hypotheticals about Chambliss, and why the outcome came out as it did. I said nothing of it.

My references to past elections in Georgia are well documented.

You on the other hand are putting words in my mouth that did not come from me. You also say there is no evidence of fraud in the past and that simply isn't true. You can't say something doesn't exist unless you look for it and don't find it. Otherwise you just expose your own lack of knowledge.

[garybeck]

4. you're not seeing an evidence because you're not looking

if you actually LOOKED at the history, you would see there is strong evidence of fraud with Georgia's DREs.

[Donnachaidh]

7. the numbers go WAY down with runoffs

It's a sad fact in Georgia.

Now, the way we could combat that is to get OBAMA to show up down here to fire these yokels back up. So far, we've just got Bubba showing up tomorrow in Atlanta.

[read the law first]

20. Thanks for the Bubba slur.

The one thing that nobody has ever explained is the motive for the Democratic Secretary of State (Cox) to steal the election on behalf of the Repugs (Chambliss).
I know, I know, exit polls, yada yada yada, Black Box Voting, yada yada yada but WHY would the Democratic Secretary of State (Cox) KNOWINGLY steal the election for Chambliss in 2002?
What did she get out of the deal?

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

32. Cathy Cox is just hot for Diebold, she "models" for Diebold

she's just stupid over Diebold:

[gtar100]

16. Sorry to you. You haven't really looked into the issue much, have you.

www.blackboxvoting.org

And lest we forget:
The Sacrament of Democracy

Seems like your attitude is "I got mine, what are you complaining about!"

[Stevepol]

17. Why have you seen no evidence? Might I suggest that

it's impossible to have any evidence when there's no paper to use for audits or recounts.

Of course this is one of those inconvenient truths.

Maybe we could have the election verified by using licensed clairvoyants.

[woodsprite]

2. Hey, shouldn't that pic be labeled 'Harm and Twit'? n/t

[Ellipsis]

11. Not that they are going to do this...wouldn't it be much cheaper to use paper given it's a runoff?

It wouldn't take that long to count the votes.

I'd love to see cost a comparison.

[yowzayowzayowza]

18. Interesting idear!!! n/t

[emlev]

19. Check this out: 'Document Hold' Served by OH Attorney to GA SoS in Advance of ... Senate Ru

Just up on The BRAD BLOG

'Document Hold' Served by OH Attorney to GA SoS in Advance of State's U.S. Senate Run-off Election
Diebold Touch-Screen Memory Cards and Other Documents Sought for Retention as Allegations of Racketeering Scheme 'to Corrupt Elections in the U.S. Over the Course of This Decade' Spread to Encompass '02 and '08 Senate Races in the Peach State...

The lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the civil RICO lawsuit King Lincoln v. Blackwell in Ohio has served a document hold request to Georgia Sec. of State Karen Handel in advance of the December 2nd run-off election between incumbent U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss (R) and his opponent, Jim Martin (D).

Today's letter from attorney Cliff Arnebeck (posted in full at the end of this article) requests "any records of official investigation of the reported use of uncertified patches by Diebold in two Democratic Georgia counties in 2002, reported by former Diebold consultant Chris Hood."

It also requests "protocols, inspection and audit procedures that have been prescribed to protect against other introductions of uncertified patches into federal elections in Georgia."

And, in an effort to preempt any planned improprieties in the upcoming Georgia run-off election between incumbent Senator Saxby Chambliss (R) and his opponent, Jim Martin (D) --- particularly given the 2002 history of Diebold-run Senate elections featuring Chambliss --- Arnebeck also requests Handel's "confirmation that all … records for the runoff election will be retained for the federally prescribed 22 month period."

article continues at link

[Bonn1997]

21. Anyone have the unadjusted exit poll #s from this Ga race?

The margin of victory is stunning.

[read the law first]

22. Final poll -3% margin of error 4% final result -16% damn. e/t

:wtf:

[Bonn1997]

23. 4% final result?

You mean the exit polls had Saxby winning by only 4 points? (Or am I misunderstanding you?) If it is 4 points, the 16 point reported difference is hard to believe

[OnTheOtherHand]

24. no exit poll number

There was no major-media exit poll for the runoff in Georgia. (I'm not aware of any exit poll for the runoff.)

The previous poster seemed to be saying that the last poll gave Chambliss a 3-point lead, with a 4-point margin of error.

I don't know what poll that would refer to. As far as I know, the last two polls out of Georgia were PPP (Chambliss +7) and Insider Advantage (Chambliss +4). Regardless, a long way from the apparent margin (currently close to 15 points).

[Bonn1997]

25. Thanks. I am suspicious. nt

[Bonn1997]

26. I'm surprised there were no major exit polls

Every Senate seat is so important. I guess the media didn't think the public was interested enough in this election.

[OnTheOtherHand]

27. yeah, compare the election night(s) coverage

On election night 11/4, the major networks had wall-to-wall coverage. They used the exit poll results to help fill the space. On Tuesday, not so much. Substantively, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but as a business decision, it's probably sound.

I'm not especially suspicious about the Tuesday result at this point -- it makes some sense to me that it was harder to turn out Democratic than Republican voters -- but with an inherently unverifiable voting system, principled skepticism is warranted.

[Bonn1997]

28. Why would it have been harder to turn out Dem voters?

I think Dems should have been just as motivated to get to 60 Sen seats as Reps to block 60. It sucks that we even have to speculate though.

[OnTheOtherHand]

29. shrug

Psychologically, I think people often are more motivated to defend what they have than to strive for more.

However, "speculate" is exactly the right word. I'll say this: according to GA's stats right now, black voters made up over 1/3 of the November 4 electorate, and only about 1/5 of the runoff electorate. It should be possible at least to sanity-check that result without relying on machine counts -- but I sure don't have the data to do it right now.

[read the law first]

30. You did misunderstand.

The final poll that I saw on the day before the election showed Martin behind by three with a four point margin of error. So, that could mean that Martin was as far behind as 7 points or ahead by 1 point.

However, the margin of victory was between 15 and 16 points. So that is as few as an eight point swing or as many as a 17 point swing between the final poll numbers and the final result. I don't know of any exit polling.

On this site, we've always been suspicious that Chambliss swung from 6 behind to 6 ahead in the Cleland race (a twelve point swing between the day before the election and election day). But now we have an 8 to 17 point swing from the day before the election to election day. So, maybe (i) pollsters don't understand Georgians (who could?) in either 2002 or 2008, (ii) or the 12 point swing on the Cleland race in 2002 might not be out of the ordinary for Georgia, or (iii) the Repugs stole this election too when they didn't have to.

[Stevepol]

31. I'm not sure the Repugs are all aware of what's going on.

I remember watching Sonny Perdue after the 02 fraud in which he defeated Roy Barnes by 5 points, after Barnes reportedly had an 11-point lead in the pre-election polling 4 days before the election. Perdue looked dazed. He was like everybody else, wondering how in hell he won the election. Meanwhile the Dems just accepted the defeat like the good jellyfish they can't help being I guess.

I don't think many people among the leaders in either party care that much whether Diebold determines the election. Nobody wants to rock the boat. Besides, since there's no reason to have the slightest confidence in the result of the election and no chance to know what the real result was, why raise a stink? Just go back home and watch MSM and TV news and lick your wounds and blame the American people.

[give-me-liberty]

33. sorry folks...

the Voterga.org lawsuit was derailed by the Republican SOS Karen Handel, who was the chief of staff to Dan "dumb as rocks" quayle.

we tried, folks.

we tried really hard to get Diebold out by the November election.

this lawsuit will go to the supreme court... as I will not rest till diebold is out of georgia.