Something Just Occurred To Me Re: DREs and Undervotes....

[earth2chuck]

Hi All,

As I'm preparing to testify in front of the NC General Assembly and demonstrate the "Hack The Vote" from www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevote.htm something occurred to me. I don't know if this has come up before, so forgive me if it has.

One of the big advantages people in favor of DREs keep trotting out is the great reduction in Undervotes. All of a sudden, 2+2 added up for me when I thought of the following:

1) Many people are dismissing some irregularities as the "Dixiecrat" phenomenon, which is a legit possibility for some voters, but not normally as many as this last election.

2) DREs greatly reduce the number of undervotes. If there is a default selection already made, I can see why.

3) Many, many of the voting machines had the President set as the default. That's like a paper ballot coming pre-filled out and then you having to erase what's already there and circle the other choice.

4) In NC (I don't know about other states), if you vote straight-ticket, you must also cast a SEPARATE vote for President. If you don't, no vote for President is recorded. Unless, of course, there is a default choice which is selected automatically.

5) The results of a "Dixiecrat" and a straight-ticket Democratic vote would be identical - local elections voting Dem and Presidential votes going Republican.

In 2000, there were over 100,000 NC votes with no mark for President. See this article for a little more: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/10007894.htm?1c

If the default on these machines was set for Bush, 2 things happen.

A) Bush picks up maybe 100,000+ votes in NC alone, and
B) DRE advocates point to the "wonderful loss of undervotes" recorded by using their systems!

Any other info from other states on this?

Peace,

Chuck Herrin, CISSP, CISA, MCSE, CEH
www.chuckherrin.com

[GetTheRightVote]

1. Are up in NC, it is the state I am working in right now, contractor

:kick:

Where are you at in NC ??

I hope you do not mind my asking.

[earth2chuck]

3. Triad Area

[Liberty Belle]

2. Bingo. :kick:!

:kick:

[genieroze]

4. I read Bush was the default choice, shouldn't that be illegal.

I could be wrong but it strikes me as well, unfair. Do you know for a fact if NC has this default in place? I doubt Kerry could have taken NC, but it could explain Bush's popular vote. If other states used it, that could explain much.

[berniew1]

43. It is illegal. Its flagrant election fraud.

[GregD]

5. Hi Chuck

Please contact [e-mail]

We created this database http://www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp and the problem you address such as default, straight-party-ticket (but you must select president separately) and other issues were FREQUENTLY observed and documented.

GregD

[texpatriot2004]

6. In Harris County (Houston, TX) 389,422 undervotes of 698,895

cast votes in the straight party category. In the presidential race, we had 20,692 undervotes; county clerk's office doesn't break these down by party.

I found the number to be very high. Someone I know working with blackboxvoting also considered the number of undervotes quite high.

I worked at my precinct polling place on election day and my mother worked early voting at hers. We had many problems with E-Voting straight tickets. It was such a problem that the Harris County Democratic party sent out an e-mail with detailed instructions because apparently for some period of days there were problems casting straight party tickets.

Perhaps this information will be relevant, helpful, useful, etc.

[IndyOp]

15. tex please clarify --

389,422 undervotes of 698,895?

You don't mean that more than half the people who voted, or more than half the people who voted straight ticket had undervotes?

:shrug:

[texpatriot2004]

47. Yes, that is exactly what I mean. Shocking huh? If you go to our county

clerk's office website, HarrisVotes.com you can look at the results yourself. Those figures are for the straight party votes.

[starmaker]

7. no undervotes? i had been wondering about this

buncombe county voted on machines and i heard the vote toggled
between bush et al
worth checking county results to get any clues

i also heard there may be q's about machines in swain

did all races have a default not sure
my roommate doesn't exactly remember

[berniew1]

44. Here's how you can tell; go to voteprotect.org maps Texas county

see if there are any reports of vote switching

There was in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico
Default to Bush
http://www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html

[spooked]

8. If you go to this site

http://www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp?offset=40&sort=&selectstate=&selectproblemtype=

and do an EDIT FIND and type in the word STRAIGHT, you can find instances of straight ticket voting problems from these 444 voting irregularities.

There were straight ticket problems in IN and UT just on the first page!

[IndyOp]

9. Touchscreen Counties & Problems in Ohio

Ohio counties using DRE machines include Auglaize, Franklin (Columbus City), Knox, Lake, Mahoning (Youngstown), Pickaway, and Ross.

A December 15 article in The Washington Post reveals that Jeanne White, a manager of the Buckeye Review, an African-American newspaper in NE Ohio, pushed the button for Kerry and watched her vote jump to the Bush column. “We’ve never seen anything like this before” Mark Munroe, Chairman of the Mahoning County Board of Election is quoted as saying in the November 3rd edition of The Vindicator. Munroe confirmed that vote switching problems occurred in at least 16 precincts and involved some 20 to 30 ES&S machines that “needed to be recalibrated during the voting process because some votes for a candidate were being counted for that candidate’s opponent”.

For Mahoning County there are 116 incident reports, 28 of them involving machine problems. Most of these are complaints consistent with to VoteProtect.org

Similar problems occurred in neighboring Mercer County in Pennsylvania, which, like Mahoning County was among only a handful of BOEs in either state to use these problematic ES&S machines produced and managed by Bush supporters. Prof. Victoria Lovegren of Case Western Reserve University, an expert in computer programming, came to this hearing and cast very serious doubt on the validity of the Ohio vote recorded by any BOE using these electronic devices. Everyone present seemed to agree with this assessment of the problem which was read into the record: “One pattern that has been documented based on the experience of voters in Florida, New Mexico, Ohio, and elsewhere (especially in swing states) is the machines appear to have been set with a default to Bush. Then if the voter successfully punched the ballot for another candidate, Bush was replaced by that candidate.” The exact number of votes incorrectly counted for Bush instead of Kerry by such means is unknown.

Link: <http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1032>

===================================

Moss v. Bush (the lawsuit filed with the Ohio Supreme Court to overturn the Presidential election) alleges, on information and belief, that these undetected operating instructions were only operational on November 2, 2004. On information and belief, the logic and accuracy tests of the DRE machines did not include setting the system date of the machine forward to November 2, 2004, to test what would happen to the machine in actual operation on November 2 and 3, 2004. Without such a test, it would have been very difficult to detect the effect of unauthorized operating instructions inserted into the software. On information and belief, some or all of the unauthorized operating instructions were pre-set to delete themselves a given amount of time after the election. Ohio counties using DRE machines include Auglaize, Franklin, Knox, Lake, Mahoning, Pickaway, and Ross.

===================================

A quote from John Conyers about Youngstown (Mahoning County - ES&S Touchscreen): "And in Youngstown, machines turned an undetermined number of Kerry votes into Bush votes as well."

[JohnGideon]

10. New Mexico Is A Great Example of Undervotes and....

Phantom votes. Remember that every phantom vote makes an undervote disappear. Ellen Theisen, VotersUnite, and Warren Stewart did a report on under and phantom votes that was presented as testimony to the state supreme court. It will also be used in further court cases in New Mexico. You can get all of the information here:
http://www.votersunite.org/info/newmexicophantomvotes.asp

[L. Coyote]

11. Given Ohio 2004 ballot, lots of non-votes are cross-votes cast for Kerry

Read this thread to see why there are so many non-votes in Ohio punch card counties this year. Cuyahoga counts them as zero, even if punched.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=196518&mesg_id=196518&page=

[IndyOp]

12. This thread by berniew1 has good links to information about

Bush showing up as the default candidate in Ohio, Florida, and New Mexico -- and on how this is correlated with the number of undervotes:
<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x185734>

Also don't miss this further down on the same thread:
<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x185734#188484>

:kick:

[starmaker]

13. buncombe county

105,000 for pres
100,630 for sen
101968 for gov
goes down from here

http://www.buncombecounty.org/common/boe/2004_GeneralResults.htm

[Acryliccalico]

17. I have

heard of this default setting thing before. Sounds like a reasonable explanation.............Acryliccalico here thanks Chuck for answering my e-mail a few weeks back ,made me feel better. E.L.

[starmaker]

27. haywood co results optiscan

25933 pres
26141 sen
26255 gov

statewide had pres with more than sen totals
interesting #'s for two adjacent counties with diff voting methods

[IndyOp]

14. If you have enough time and can show video streamed via internet

in your presentation then you might be able to use two short clips from Votergate. In one part a candidate in a race in Louisiana went to the warehouse on the day after the election to inspect the records. She learned that all she could get was a print out of the poll tape, which was not very satisfying. She had a friend film her as she went from one voting machine to the next to the next -- tested about 15 in all -- on every one when she touched the box next to her name, her opponents name appeared in the 'feedback window'. Also -- in another part of the movie pollwatchers in Georgia for Cynthia McKinney report that people had been complaining that when they touched the box next to McKinney's name the checkmark appeared next to her opponents name.

Either segment would be powerful -- especially for people who really have no clue what all the fuss about voting machines is about.

:kick:

[dlaliberte]

16. With a default vote, how do you vote for none?

Is there a way to vote for no one on these DREs? If one is selected by default, then there must be some way to select none, otherwise how would you not vote for anyone if that is your preference? Even if there is not a default selection, if you accidently selected one candidate and decided you wanted to select none, how would you do that? And if there is a 'none of the above' selection, why is that not the default always? That should be required by law.

This default selection of a particular candidate ought to be considered fraud, or if it is allowed by some state laws, such laws ought to be declared unconstitutional.

[Acryliccalico]

19. Kick n/t

[berniew1]

45. You can't. None goes to Bush(default person)

[insane_cratic_gal]

18. Illegal No.. Immoral Yes!

what diebold and co claim to do, is default to the candidate that most accurately defines your choice. Say I voted Dem across the board, but some how don't choose a presidential candidate. Diebold's claim (think I read this someplace) the machine will then reflect (cough bs) and choose the candidate Kerry for you.

Which should never be done. EVER. That is misleading the voter's intent. Software especially in an election can't just assume your intent, by a pattern.
Yet that is exactly what it claims to do.

With no paper trail there is no way to actually KNOW the voter's intent. You see the beauty in this right?

There is no way to trace it. DRE's represent 30 percent of the voting system in the US. 3% cast no vote.. It could very well chose a sitting president or as I call the Diebold Choice.

Without any verification of a voter's intent it's immoral and places not one ounce of integrity in our voting system.

I can't stress this enough. We need reform! Reform Reform.. keep saying it until your blue in the face. Until our election process is taken out of the hands of privatized companies! Until machines are taken into an open lab under public scrutiny! not a stupid POST test they call verification(bullshit). We will never have an election that is the choice of the people, only the choice of a machine. (i feel like I'm in a terminator movie atm)

[berniew1]

46. Defaut to candidate is illegal; its fraud

[Bill Bored]

20. Wow! The Great Check Herrin himself

And you hadn't thought of this before? You must be hanging out with too many Republicans! Actual neo-cons maybe??? :)

Anyway, welcome to DU Chuck, and God's speed!

Of course if there are fewer undervotes, which is one of the great "advantages" (and I'm sure selling points) of the DREs, the votes have to go somewhere. There are reports of "defaults" to Bush, but I've always thought of these as "glitches", whether they were intentionally programmed to occur or not.

But are you saying that when the ballot is first displayed in NC, it comes up with an _automatic_ vote for Bush that the voter has to cancel if he so chooses? I thought the term "default" was just a way to describe a bug. Are you saying this is the actual design of the e-ballot and the Dixie Cups or whatever the Democrats call themselves down there never complained about that?

And if you vote a straight ticket in NC you will automatically _not_ cast a vote for president as a normal occurrence? Doesn't this mean that the default for Bush would disappear? I'm confused, but you have my respect man! Good luck with your testimony and please let us know how it goes!

Got to go read the rest of this thread now!

[Bill Bored]

49. kick

[ellent]

21. No doubt about a default candidate in Travis County ...

the eSlate was set up so that if you voted a straight party Democrat ticket and went to the next screen, Bush/Cheney was highlighted. So if you pressed Enter, the vote changed to Bush.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-10-22/pols_feature18.html

This was no accident, at least not on the part of the manufacturer (Hart Intercivic) which designed a voting system with a default-candidate feature. Logic would tell us that other voting machines have that same capability.

I spoke with a client a couple of days ago. His company is building a product that will use a touch screen, and they have a prototype they've been playing with. I asked how often they had to recalibrate it. He said not very often, they've been using it for a couple of months and haven't had to yet. I've written documentation for touch screen systems before and I never heard about calibration problems until I heard about them with voting machines.

And, as a friend pointed out, if it were a calibration problem why wouldn't it happen on every page of the ballot? I think a host of ills is being blamed on calibration. Touch screen technology isn't as touchy as it appears from this election. But programming errors or mischief could certain play havoc with a voter's ability to get the screen to display correctly.

Why aren't we hearing about calibration problems during pre-election testing? Maybe they don't occur in test mode.

For a list of 10 news reports of touchy touch screens, see:
http://www.votersunite.org/info/previousmessups.asp

[dlaliberte]

29. Calibration problems - NOT

The explanation is given that these machines need to be recalibrated when they erronously record a vote for Bush after the voter has selected Kerry. But that sounds like complete nonsense. What we hear is that voters did select Kerry, and it showed that they selected Kerry, but then they go to the next screen or the confirmation page and it shows their vote was switched to Bush. That is not a calibration problem - if it were, the initial selection would have shown up as selecting Bush.

The vote switching problem is exactly the kind of switching that Clint Curtis has described. Hidden to the voters unless they look carefully. Actually, it might have been hidden even more - even the confirmation page might show what they originally selected, but what ends up being tallied might be anything else. A paper trail that the voter verifies could help avoid this. But that only helps during a recount of that looks at all those paper trails. We know they are clever about ways to avoid recounting even when there is a paper trail.

[loudsue]

22. Chuck: WHEN are you going to testify??? (date/time)

I'm in N.C., and I want to be a fly on the wall that day! I live near Raleigh, and I want to hear your testimony before the Gen.Assembly.

:kick::kick:

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

28. E-voting committee, Jan 7 more info here

Joint Select Committee on Electronic Voting Systems:

NEXT MEETING - January 7, 2005 at 10:00 a.m. Friday. Chuck Herrin will be presenting testimony on security, standards and auditing. 2 more meetings planned after, January 14th and 21st, with goal of writing legislation for VVPB.

Find out more about the committee members, driving directions, how to get email alerts, and how to listen to the live hearings via streaming audio here:

http://www.ncvoter.net/alerts.html

Please pass this along.

[MarkusQ]

23. How established/conjectural is the default vote?

It would seem to me that if that is an established fact (and not just a conjecture as I have been assuming) we have an open and shut case of election rigging.

Also, are there really no undervotes? Or, if there are undervotes, how do we explain them?

--MarkusQ

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

31. Undervotes, explained

Undervote means that no vote was tabulated for any candidate in a particular race.

It is not always possible to determine if this was intentional or not.

We can deduce what is likely.

It is more likely for voters to vote for president and not some other lesser races. The importance of the office plus how much the voter cares about the contest.

[L. Coyote]

35. Non-votes (undervotes) include cast votes in Ohio.

In Cuyahoga county, any vote for disqualified is ignored and the disqualified column is reported as zero. That's a punch card county with considerable cross-precinct voting, so Kerry votes went to disqualified. More on this at at the site, including examples.

These votes could be counted and reported, instead of covered up. There is a correlation between non-votes and Kerry vote, and it is suspicious.

[MarkusQ]

40. I know what "undervote" means; the question is...

If some class of machines (say one brand of touch screens) truly have a "default" vote as has been suggested, they should not show any undervote--if they do, this will be an Odd Thing^tm that we will need to find an explanation for. Specifically, how could it happen?

--MarkusQ

[ginnyinWI]

24. We SO need national election standards!!!!! n/t

[Acryliccalico]

25. Kick n/t

[mdb]

26. Unreal. Straight democratic ticket going to a default candidate

This would definitely put more votes into any default candidate.

I voted a straight ticket but know it was for all races. And if you wanted a race to go for someone other than your straight ticket chosen, then that race will override the straight ticket.

[starmaker]

30. who designates default?

lot of questions on counts
will look into nc results further later
most interesting numbers when u start digging

[mdb]

32. More importantly. Why? Why have a default candidate in the first place?

That's just crazy. So the manufacturer can say we eliminated so many problems with overvotes? So they can throw more votes toward a particular candidate? I'd have to say both.

A republican company looking good and helping to give someone the win. Notice I'm not even naming candidates here. Because this is not just for this election but if none of this is resolved it is for all elections coming up in 2, 4 or how many years.

[Bill Bored]

33. Here's the problem

Some judge will rule that as long as the voters have been given the opportunity to change their votes to whatever they actually intended, it's not fraud. It's just another version of the Butterfly Ballot. It's deceptive, statistically unfair, and the intent may be to steal the election, but if each voter can somehow correct the problem and in the end and the machine doesn't change the vote that's actually cast, it's not fraud.

This is why it may be essential for Kerry to contest the election. In the absence of fraud, he's the injured party, not the voter, because his name wasn't the default. The voter had the opportunity to change the vote but failed to take advantage of it.

This is just my uninformed legal opinion, but if you think about it, it makes sense even though it's less sinister than the outright hacking theories. They could have run some focus groups with live voters to test the machines and see how often they failed to change the default, etc. From this, they calculate margins and if it's enough to win, no hacking necessary! Just let the voters make their mistakes and it's over. It's passive fraud as opposed to active fraud. And there's plausible deniability too. And this is why they didn't want the voter-verified paper. The paper would reveal the mistake in time for the voter to fix it.

Finally, this may only work with a close election. But this is exactly how it's been lately for various reasons. A true landslide scenario would require other methods. They may not have been prepared for that, but it didn't happen. The media and the voter supression saw to that.

Comments???

[The Judged]

36. not fraud & not equal protection under the law either!

After dragging the DRE company executives before Congress and deposing them on the actual cause of such a * and/or * party default, Congress should then drag every BoE that utilized DRE's before them and ask whether or not the machines were calibrated correctly prior to Election Day voting.

If the answer is no, then it is obvious that everywhere that there were DRE's their was unequal protection under the law for voters.

What justification can anyone give to the American people for a default * vote, when a default should be a null vote?

The argument that the opportunity to redress the error existed at the time of voting and that people failed to avail themselves of it is quite bankrupt, considering that government officials do not have a license to intentionally conduct a policy that distributes unequal protection under the law so long as they offer the American public an opportunity to redress it immediately upon realizing that they have been victimized by it.

[Bill Bored]

41. Sounds good to me but tell it to the judge!

Is anyone suing on these grounds? Is it in Arnebeck's suit? I'm not sure it is. Did the Ohio DREs have a "default?" I know they didn't have VVPBs.

Until Chuck's post, I had always thought this behavior of the machine was a "glitch." Now we are hearing it's par for the course. It's outrageous if true and I can't understand why no one has brought it up before, other than in those "incident reports." If the code is deliberately written this way, and it's so bloody obvious, it's more than just incidental!

[loudsue]

34. Chuck: Are you planning to use the BBV.org website in your presentation?

If it is done by computer projection, and you're online during the presentation to the NC Gen Assbly., I hope you're aware that the BBV.org website is out of service. It may be up again by Jan 7th, but you may need to check if you were going to use it in your presentation.

Just sayin'... :shrug:

:kick::kick:

[O.M.B.inOhio]

37. kick!

[oddtext]

38. the NC vote was BS

that's really all that i have to say. there is NO F*CKING WAY that * increased his plurality here over 2000. that was/is BS!!!!!!!

:mad:

[starmaker]

39. compare votes cast for prez sen and gov in nc

more votes for prez in meck,henderson,buncombe and wake
haywood and randolph more for sen and gov
durham andcabarrus about even
a quick random sample without any crosscheck as to how many actually
cast ballots info not on state website

seems to correlate somewhat to dre counties but just a small sample

[berniew1]

42. DRE vote machine fraud documented in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico

Default to Bush and other measures to make the undervote look ok.
http://www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html

[texpatriot2004]

48. kick