TruthIsAll - Great piece on bogus voting machine "errors" - lousy security. Bookmark this one;)

[autorank]

Forewarned is forearmed Just got this from TruthIsAll. It’s a very simple explanation about how elections can be fixed and why all the media we hear about “calibrating” machines and machine “errors” is bullshit. Bock mark this one for post election debate.

==================
TIA:

It's time to dispose of some voting machine myths perpetuated by the
BushCo media apologists.

This simple Excel model demonstrates one way of hacking a central tabulator for three
sample precincts, each containing 100 voters, using a random number generator.

To test the model, enter a percentage of democratic votes to be switched.
You can also change the default number of (pre-hack) democratic votes in each precinct.

http://www.geocities.com/electionmodel/RandomVoteHack.xls

There is no such thing as a computer "glitch".
The computer does what it's TOLD to do.
Nothing more. Nothing less.

The need to "calibrate" touch screens is pure BS, a classic straw man.
Did you ever have to calibrate a Diebold ATM before you made a deposit?
Did you ever have to re-calibrate YOUR computer before linking to a blog?

Why is it that touch screens are "mis-calibrated", yet switch Democratic votes to the GOP?
95% of the time?
If it were a truly random occurrence, it would be 50%/50%.
The media and naysayers disregard this proof of programmable fraud.

Remember the 2004 EIRS database? Of 88 touch screen incidents,
86 switched votes from Kerry to Bush.
These "glitches" occurred in different locations, mostly in FL and OH.
THEY WERE INDEPENDENT EVENTS.

So how do we compute the odds?
The probability is equal to the sum of the individual probabilities
of getting 86, 87 and 88 switches.

In Excel:
1.23689E-23 =BINOMDIST(86,88,0.5,FALSE)
2.84343E-25 =BINOMDIST(87,88,0.5,FALSE)
3.23117E-27 =BINOMDIST(88,88,0.5,FALSE)

THE PROBABILITY IS 1.26565E-23 or
1 in 79,010,724,999,066,700,000,000
That's ONE in 79 SEXTILLION.

I've written thousands of programs on mainframes, minis and PCs.
Any computational errors were due to faulty programming/logic.
It was NEVER a computer "glitch", just a programming error.
Every professional software developer knows that a program
never runs perfectly the first time.

Hell, anyone can program a computer to add. Even Diebold.
So what's the problem? They don't want to count the votes.
So how do they get the machines certified? Money talks.
And the Democrats won't do anything about it.

Diebold has had four years to clean up and publish the code.
But why should they? It does exactly what they want it to do.

If you still believe that the DRE problems are just "glitches"
and not due to malicious programming, you're living in a dream world.

Pass it on.

[Tuesday_Morning]

1. Kicked, recommended

and bookmarked!

Thanks, guys.

[helderheid]

2. Recommend #2 - hope it hits triple digits!

[Me.]

3. K & R

*shadow government*

[BeFree]

4. Anyone can program a computer to add

There isn't an honest computer professional alive who has looked closely at these computers and still recommends the use of these machines to count the votes.

Corrupting these machines is far to easy to accomplish.

[stellanoir]

5. 6th rec for TIA & autorank !!!

[conscious evolution]

6. K & R

:kick:

[Peace Patriot]

7. TruthIsAll, clear as a bell, as usual, pierces the confusion, disinformation,

psyops, and relentless propaganda, with the pure tones of plain truth and reality.

The liars and the corrupt can take their blather elsewhere. There is no reason for computers to be adding the votes incorrectly, and or to be switching votes from Dems to Repubs in 86 out of 88 incidents, except that they were PROGRAMMED to do so.

Thank you, TIA and Autorank! This crap about "calibration" and "glitches" supports my chaos theory of the Bush Junta. Chaos in Iraq. Chaos during Katrina. Chaos in our election system. Uncertainty, "glitches," machine "breakdowns," long lines, people disenfranchised, panicky calls for emergency paper ballots, secrecy, suspicion, insecurity, election rules--including the rules for secret industry "testing" of the machines--immensely complicated and off-putting, loss of faith in the legitimacy of elections and government. Chaos creates the conditions for massive looting. (Rumsfeld, of the weeks of looting in Iraq after the invasion: freedom = the freedom to loot.) They're not building anything--not even a Nazi state. They are creating chaos, i.e., opportunities to steal us blind.

$3.9 billion, through the fingers of local election officials, into the pockets of major Bush/Cheney donors and donors to far rightwing causes (Diebold/ES&S). That was a looting, in and of itself. Now they're looting the states and counties who purchased these systems (like a plague, all over the country), with long term "servicing" contracts, to fix the "glitches" in their e-voting systems. What a scam!

And then, on top of that, they can keep wingers in office to keep voting for more tax cuts for the super-rich, mortgaging our future with a $10 TRILLION deficit. Sweet.

We'll be years untangling the snakepit-like disaster of our election system--when they're long gone to Paraguay via the Cayman Islands.

Now they're blaming it on Venezuela (which has OPEN SOURCE CODE in their election system!). How confusing.

Chaos. Name of the game. Goal: M. O. N. E. Y.

[Cleita]

8. K&R

[FourScore]

9. K&R

Great thread! Just last night, I read (with total frustration) a post at dailykos from an election judge. She claimed all this panic about vote switching was pretty bogus. I was shocked how many people thanked her for "putting things into their proper perspective"!!! She claimed that these computers are sooooo sensitive, that just bumping into one, can somehow cast a vote. That after sooo much use they occassionally need recalibrating. And I thought to myself, "Then why haven't I ever seen this happen at an ATM? Why do they seem to always switch in one direction (from republican to democrat)? What a bunch of bull!!

I needed this thread. Thanks again.

:kick:

[Cetacea]

10. KR

http://videothevote.org/

[Cleita]

11. Another...

:kick:

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. Nothing quite as satisfying as identifying fundamental disinform-

ation, eh,Auto? Tee hee!

[nashville_brook]

13. kickipoos

:kick:

[mom cat]

14. Thanks for the statement of the truth! K&R

[texpatriot2004]

15. K & R for Transparent Democracy nm

[LWolf]

16. K&R for TIA n/t

[robinlynne]

17. This should be the number one 2 and 3 subject right now! This is the

most important thing happening. Forget apologies. The election is being freeped right now, right in front of us. 5 states already.

[autorank]

19. This time the public is skeptical and the word will be out. Look at this

1) 92% of Americans feel that they have the right to watch the vote count and ask serious questions to the elections officials (Zogby). Of course, they can't watch the vote count and they'll find that out. There are no votes, just code. NO BALLOTS to count.

2) 60% have heard that machines can be programed to steal elections and just one machine can do it (Zogby)

3) Only 45% are solid on the proposition that 2004 was "fair and square" and 55% either just "somewhat" believe it was fair and 32% think it was a heist (Zogby).

Those Zogby's which I helped sponsor are covered here:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0608/S00220.htm and here http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0609/S00346.htm

Harris or someone had a recent poll, very recent, where a big number think that the elections are going to have a real element of fraud involved.

These are huge changes in public perception.

They are risking the entire facade of a cooked democracy just to stay in power. They will pay.

You're right. This is topic #1 right after GOTV.

[robinlynne]

20. And yet, in Ohio thousands of votes have already been discounted because

the absentee voters put the 8digit number from their driver's licenses instead of the 11 digit number. Machines are flipping for republicans in 5 states, and the country is not discussing it. I have been to dem headquarters to coordinate poll monitor training, and they don't give a shit. All they care about is GOTV. Their people on the ground are given GOTV numbers to make. That is all. (They were planning to have pollwatchers from 9-3Pm, exactly when no voters are out voting, for example, and they are pushing "the right to provisional ballots". We, EP people, are pushing the right to NOT use provisional ballots. This is bad autorank.

[autorank]

22. I share your frustration.

The Democrats here in VA blew a recount by not listening to people. They allowed the recount judges to refuse to count 200 thousand Diebold optisal scan ballots by hand. No fuss made about that. Oh, btw, they lost the recount. We'll see what they do this time.

I can't believe that the Democrats in Ohio are so limited. They've got the smartest pepole in the country on election fraud issues. What more resource do they need.

I'm just outraged. It is bad enough to have Blackwell and company but to have such indifference in the opposition stuns me. I'm very sorry to hear this, very! I was out there for "We Count" in Cleveland and it was great. I guess the anger of one of the EP folks at the representative for Strickland was more than justified (I agreed at the time but wndered, hey this guy seems OK...oops).

Hang in there.

[robinlynne]

23. sorry for the anxiety. But hey if DU is talking about the stupid kerry thing,

what do you think the rest of the country is talking about?

[autorank]

24. The weekend. It's a cable phenomena. Inside the political junkie

beltway. But look at this http://tinyurl.com/yexnvb It's from my 'live blog' with new levels of misspelling. Lee Fisher was there for Strickland. It's amazing that a guy who won by recount and said he knew the issues was wrong on what the Ohio Democrats would do. I thought, well maybe they get it. Guess not.

[Peace Patriot]

25. "This time the public is skeptical." Yup! And we've got to remember that

it's going to take years to undo the mess that Bushites (and collusive Dems) have made of our election system. We cannot turn it around in one election. BUT, consciousness of election fraud is growing by leaps and bounds. HUGE Absentee Ballot voting this time. Corporate news monopolies started spinning two weeks ago, that the big AB vote is voter "convenience." It is not. It is a REVOLT--people DON'T TRUST the machines, and are trying to get around them, and get their vote counted. Their AB vote is a vote AGAINST THE MACHINES. They KNOW--they know what's going down! This is not the vague anxiety many people felt after 2004, many people convinced that it was stolen but not knowing HOW (--because of the black holed news about HAVA, Diebold, ES&S--wingers counting all our votes under a veil of corporate secrecy!--and all the rest. NO coverage of it pre-2004. And the Dems quiet as lambs.) This AB thing means that many people now KNOW. They've gotten the word. AB voting is up to 50% and 60% in some places, with dramatic increases everywhere.

We need to get on this. And we need to get on this NOW. The voters have given election reformers this GIFT of a huge revolt against the machines. If I had the money and wherewithal, I'd be polling on this. We can PROVE the big AB vote with official numbers. But we can't prove WHY people voted this way--and the bad guys are spinning it already. Damn!

But, in any case, the big AB vote is a credit to the election fraud/election reform movement--to us! Word IS getting around. The people who are voting AB may feel they have no influence over election system decisions, but, by God, THEY are not going to vote on these election theft machines! They don't know the whole of it, but they know SOME of it, and they're WITH us. Now we have to educate further, and mobilize this great block of voters--and EMPOWER them to help FORCE reform.

I see the arc of reform this way: These midterms will be a mess. Many close calls will go to Bushites. (And even some Dems winning won't be real Dems--they will be people pre-(s)elected in the primaries to create an impeachment-proof majority in the House, made up of Bushites and unreal Dems--like those who voted for torture and suspension of habeas corpus.) And some contests will be flipped right over--big Dem pre-election lead in the polls, flipped over by the machines on election day (as they did with the Ohio election reform initiatives last year--with impunity--a 60/40 flipover!) There will be challenges, and machine "breakdowns," many election fraud incident reports, and lots of agitation about it--with help from some of the real Dems--and "the mess" will give us momentum for election reform in the only venue where reform is possible--the local/state jurisdictions.

We have two years, to create enough transparent vote counts to make the '08 primaries a real contest (between real Dems and Bushite/Corporate Dems), and secondly, to win enough seats with real Dems in the '08 general election, to begin to influence NATIONAL policy on election reform.

And one of the critically important things we must do is to SUCCESSFULLY agitate, LOCALLY, for TRANSPARENT counts of the ABSENTEE BALLOT votes. They must be hand-counted, and the results posted, BEFORE any electronics are involved. There needs to be an ORGANIZED movement around this. "The Absentee Ballot Voters Election Integrity" movement. We need organized groups to ADVOCATE for AB voters' rights. Instead of trying to get rid of Diebold, et al, we should be pushing from the OTHER direction: to get a paper ballot system BY DEFAULT: Absentee Ballot voting that is counted independently of the machines. (No scanning or "entering" of AB votes into the electronic system before they are HAND-COUNTED and results posted.)

You see, this is where I think ordinary citizens are right, and many election reformers (who have pooh-poohed AB voting) are wrong. We have AN EXISTING PAPER BALLOT SYSTEM: Absentee Ballot voting, which is available in most states. And it will be EASIER to get the handling and counting of AB votes reformed, than to get corrupt election officials to throw out their expensive new machines. We appeal to common sense. We mobilize the AB voters. We get the AB votes counted with proper scrutiny PRIOR to use of electronics.

Then we get even more people to vote by Absentee Ballot! Things are heading that way, anyway! People are fed up with these machines, and are voting in droves by AB already! And these ordinary citizens have pointed us toward an EFFECTIVE strategy for getting transparent vote counts, that bypasses an head-on collision with Diebold & Co. and their corrupt defenders.

I expect the Diebold II Congress to have a Dem majority in the House, but a very compromised majority (not capable of serious investigation, impeachment, or real reform of any kind). They may do "something" about election reform, but it could just as well be "poison pill" legislation, as anything helpful (like a mandated paper ballot backup, and/or decent auditing). A "poison pill" would be mandated electronic voting (it is NOT mandated, currently), say, with a required "paper trail" (but not one that has any legal standing in recounts). This could kill local reform. I don't trust the Corporate Dems at all on this. We'll see if people like Russ Holt can at least prevent a bad bill (let alone get a good one through).

I may be wrong about the composition of the Diebold II Congress. It may just turn out to be a clone of the present one--with the same Bush "pod people" majorities, and no Dem committee power. No one can be certain, at this point, what desperate Bushites may do. This is the main problem, of course. UNCERTAINTY. They have the capability of stealing it outright--all of it, every seat (--with only a couple of exceptions--the few states like NY that have resisted e-voting.) If they're smart, they won't jeopardize their election theft system by stealing seats with both hands this time. They'll give us a carefully tailored and largely hamstrung Dem majority in the House. If they DO steal the whole thing, momentum for election reform will be even greater.

A word about Kerry: It's easy to hate the man, at the moment--for giving the Bushites some election theft cover. But I don't think people are going to buy yet another "Big Lie" about why Bushites "win." And this one is simply absurd--that voters are so stupid that they would change their votes because of one misspoken word by someone who isn't even a candidate. (I think it was the word "us." He meant to say, 'get an education so you won't get US stuck in Iraq'--i.e., so you won't grow up be a stupid, illiterate asshole like Bush.) IF this remark can turn around a 15% advantage to Dems in the polls, then it is JUST MORE EVIDENCE of election fraud, and it furthermore exposes the role of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies in committing it. (--and who knows? ...it may be a gift in disguise, because people know, deep down, that it IS the poor, the uneducated, the jobless, who mostly "get stuck" as cannon fodder in Iraq. And I think most Americans have become damned good at reading between the lines on Bushspin.)

[nicknameless]

18. "ONE in 79 SEXTILLION"

I tried to post this heading: "1 in 79,010,724,999,066,700,000,000"
But got an error message that periodic spaces are needed.
79,010,724,999,066,700,000,000 -- A number so long that it gets an error message.


Just a "glitch".
Yeah, right.


K&R & Thanks to TIA and Autorank!

[mopinko]

21. recalibration is absolute bs.

hubby works in an sec regulated company, developing touchscreen systems that process millions of dollars daily. there is no such thing.