On day 1 of vote test, numbers don't add up

[SarasotaDem]

SARASOTA COUNTY -- An audit of the county's touch-screen voting machines Tuesday found several discrepancies, most prominently in the disputed 13th Congressional District race, but state elections officials said it is unclear whether the problems were the result of human or machine error.


http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061129/NEWS/611290392


Friday's machine audit could be interesting .... :)

[NMDemDist2]

1. welcome to DU SarasotaDem!!

:hi:

we are all watching this very closely and wish the best for you guys down there. hopefully it will be enough to get your county commission to dump the touch screens and get some paper ballots in there!

[SarasotaDem]

2. Bye touchscreens ......

They have to dump them ... we voted on a county referendum that won easily.
Ms.DENT was going to fight it but now says that she will follow the voters wishes .. LOL

[caseycoon]

5. Hooray!

That's wonderful!
:toast:

Now if we can do the same in all counties in the US.....
:shrug: Wouldn't it be GREAT?

Thanks for letting us know!

[Peace Patriot]

7. Hearty congratulations to you on that win! (Bye-bye, touchscreens!)

The arrogance of these our election officials never ceases to amaze--though I know that it is the direct consequence of the corruption wrought by HAVA's $3.9 billion electronic voting boondoggle. Also shocking: their easy adoption of the corporate "culture of secrecy". Many of our election officials now see the voters as "the enemy." Election officials and these private corporate vendors circle the wagons against "the enemy." We have no right to the "secrets" of OUR elections--from the "trade secret" programming code, to the secret industry "testing" of the machines, to the tapes, memory cards, data, ballots, internal memos, phone logs and other documents/actions of our public officials. We have to SUBPOENA them to know how they are conducting our elections!

I find this just incredible. I know that the Corporate Rulers and the government are now one, in many respects. We see it on issues of war, the environment, Medicare--everything. Corporate lawyers writing our laws. Corporate war profiteers bilking our government (us!) of billions and billions of dollars. Government defending corporations, and acting like a corporation. But it still mindboggles me to see this happening in the direct mechanics of our ELECTION SYSTEM, the most fundamental basis of our democracy.

I saw a quote from ES&S the other day, that they may nor may not cooperate with the FL-13 investigation. The arrogance!

I am so heartened by the Sarasota struggle. My profound thanks to you, and to all the Sarasota activists and voters!

And I greatly appreciate you posting at DU. We are avidly interested in the FL-13 fight. The DU election forum has been one of the main "voices crying in the wilderness" on this vital matter. It is a great gathering place for election fraud/election reform information and analysis. There has never been a clearer-cut case of fraud by voting machine, than FL-13. (I mean, even the NYT thinks it's bad!) We have been following events with great interest, as well as we can. To have a Sarasota activist posting here is fabulous!

The soul of it all--the soul of everything good that's happening among the American people with regard to our voting system--is the willingness to FIGHT, and particularly to fight the scourge of "TRADE SECRET" vote counting.

You are our heroes!

I noticed, in the huge increase in Absentee Ballot voting all over the country, in these recent midterms, that we have a very big constituency of discontented, distrustful voters, for potential mobilization on election reform. It's the hidden gem in these elections. In California, FIFTY PERCENT of the voters voted by AB, and it was big all over the country. I believe these voters are expressing an opinion on the voting system. They are BOYCOTTING the machines. They are trying to find a way around the rigged electronics. Voting by AB was a form of protest. And I think this may provide us with a strategy for achieving transparent vote counting by the '08 primaries, if all else fails. (And, believe me, the election theft industry is working overtime to make "all else" fail.) The strategy is to organize Absentee Ballot voter groups, to pressure LOCAL/STATE officials to, a) hand-count the AB votes, and b) post the results BEFORE any electronics are involved. These simple, common sense demands are what the AB voters want. And by promoting them, and winning this concession, we begin to create a paper ballot system BY DEFAULT. If one group of voters gets transparent vote counting, it will snowball. All voters (for instance, optiscan voters) will want their ballots handcounted, too. And the size of the AB vote this time indicates a large enough constituency to have the clout to get this snowball rolling. This strategy also circumvents the vast corruption in the system. Election officials and their corporate masters can keep their crappy new machines and million dollar contracts, for the time being--and maybe use the machines merely for double-checking the handcount, and storage/reporting of data. But the secret corporate lock on the totals will be broken.

I would be interested to know what the Absentee Ballot component of FL-13 was. And, also, have you found a discrepancy between the AB votes and the rigged vote (ahem, the electronic vote)? I remember an analysis, shortly after the 2004 election, of the NC Bush/Kerry and Senate races, that showed a clear bias to Bush and to the Repub Senate candidate in the electronic vote vs. the AB paper ballot vote. I wonder if you've found anything similar (aside from 18,000 votes for Congress that were 'disappeared'). And do you have any information on how the AB votes were handled and counted in FL-13?

Thanks again--many times over!!!

[mom cat]

9. Get rid of ALL the mucking fachines!

[kiteinthewind]

23. . n/t

[Roy]

3. Finally!!!! a miscount in favor of the Dem!!!!! LOL!!!!!!

[I_Will]

4. Yeah, but that only happens "test" mode :) n/t

[John Q. Citizen]

6. 8 undervote out of 45 cast in the test of one machine. Wow.

[ThomCat]

8. That is very, very scary.

x(

[BikeWriter]

10. Welcome aboard, SarasotaDem!

[Demeter]

11. Vote Disparity Still a Mystery In Fla. Election For Congress --WaPo

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801382.html?referrer=email

DEATH KNELL FOR THE BLACK BOX VOTING MACHINES?

Vote Disparity Still a Mystery In Fla. Election For Congress

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 29, 2006; A03



SARASOTA, Fla., Nov. 28 -- Almost since the time the votes were tallied here on election night, the race for Florida's 13th Congressional District has been surrounded by a contentious mystery:

Why were there no votes for Congress recorded from more than 18,000 people who chose candidates in other races?

The answer is central not only to the outcome of the election, which for now has been won by Republican Vern Buchanan by a mere 369 votes and is in litigation, but also to the ongoing debates over whether the electronic voting systems in use nationwide can yield reliable tallies and recounts. Coincidentally, the latest dust-up has occurred in the contest for the seat being vacated by Katherine Harris, who presided over Florida's election apparatus during the much-disputed 2000 contest between President Bush and former vice president Al Gore.

So far, there are three theories, and lots of political and legal posturing.

Maybe, as scores of voters have claimed, there were glitches with the touch-screen systems and they dropped votes.

Or maybe voters overlooked the congressional race simply because of a confusing ballot design.

Or maybe, as some say, an astoundingly high number of Sarasota County residents decided to forgo voting in the high-profile race.

The phenomenon of voters casting ballots without making selections in every race is known as "undervoting," and it happens in virtually every big election, particularly in contests for lesser-known offices that some voters ignore.

But the magnitude of the undervoting in the Buchanan-Jennings race was startling -- about 15 percent of those who cast ballots in Sarasota. By contrast, it was about 2.5 percent among voters in other counties.

Jennings has filed a lawsuit alleging that thousands of Sarasota County votes were not counted because of "the pervasive malfunctioning of electronic voting machines." The county tilts in her favor.

The broken-machine theory is backed by two voting experts and scores of sworn statements from voters who had trouble with the machines, Coffey said. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune has reported that more than 100 have reported problems with the machines.

[greenman3610]

12. those machines weren't "broken"

they were working PERFECTLY.

[mom cat]

13. NO MACHINES BETWEEN ME AND MY VOTE! ... NONE!!!!!

[NOLADEM]

14. Electronic Voting is IMPOSSIBLE to secure properly

There are too many ways to fuck with the results.

There needs to be paper ballots. They can be scanned for speed and accuracy, then if a recount is needed a hand recount can be done.

[aquart]

15. "Scanned for speed and accuracy"?

Who are we kidding here? The scan results go WHERE? Into a pc. Accurate, my ass.

[lumberjack_jeff]

16. Only three theories? I can think of another.

The f'ing black box was programmed to elect the Republican. Duh.

[Pab Sungenis]

17. Any touch screen, in any application, is unreliable.

Especially when the touch points are near the edges of the screen, as they were on this ballot. I have periodic problems with our system at the movie theater and am nearly constantly realigning the screens. We also had one of those "Megatouch" video game systems that worked for everyone by my manager and I; apparently it was biased against fat people whose skin isn't as conductive as everyone else's.

Why we're trusting votes to these things that I wouldn't even trust for a video game I will never know.

[FlaGranny]

18. You mean it's possible the machines didn't

count of votes of fat people? LOL. I wonder.

[SarasotaDem]

19. Thanks

Thanks for the welcome ... been lurking forever ...... :)

It's amazing how some people here in Sarasota still think there isn't a problem
with the touchscreens.

Fridays audit will be of machines that were actually used in the precincts that had the
greatest undervote.

We're all hoping for a revote.

[calimary]

20. Hey! Welcome to DU!

Glad you're here! And yes, we ARE watching this with interest. Let the ACCOUNTABILITY begin!

[KansDem]

21. Then there should be no Day 2

I don't know hom much longer we are to tolerate this madness: the f**king things just don't work!

What was it Einstein said about insanity?

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

...Yes! Thanks, Albert!

[Roland99]

22. Hand-counted. Paper. Ballots.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

[kath]

24. Counted. At. The. Precinct.

with plenty of observers from all parties.

This way no ballot boxes disappear on the way to county headquarters...

[Roland99]

25. Yes!

[fladonkey]

26. Orange County...

at each precinct we had several booths for paper ballots and 1 touch screen machine for people that wanted to vote that way.

[Vidar]

27. Good post, SarasotaDem. Welcome to DU.