Reply #9: How difficult do you imagine will it be to recreate the actual vote totals from the tapes? [View All]

[leveymg]

I've done poll watching and voter protection for several electoral cycles, and at the end of the night at the precinct, the Board of Election workers tally the tapes, and make sure that the votes recorded match the number of votes cast. They are able to do this by matching the number of eligible voters recorded in the poll books against the number of votes the machines count. If there is any discrepancy due to spoiled ballots, walk-aways, etc., all that gets recorded and cross-checked before the results get phoned in.

Ideally, there is an observer from both parties watching as this counting and cross-checking process is carried out. It seems to me that it would not be difficult to simply scrap the County Clerk's database, and go back to the poll books and tapes to reconstruct the actual outcome. Provided the machines didn't miscount, the results after the audit should be clean.

Anyone know if there is a paper trail for the votes cast in that county, and what type of machines are used? What about the paper reports the BOE workers filled-out and filed in sealed envelopes the night of the election - where are they? What about the records the Democratic inside poll watchers should have recorded and kept?

Based upon what I know, I cannot imagine a discrepancy of thousands of votes being "discovered" later by a County Clerk. There's something very wrong here.