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D.C. election officials blamed a defective computer memory cartridge yesterday for producing what appeared to be thousands of write-in votes that officials say did not exist.
Ah, the return of the "glitch".
As I have stated before, "glitch" is a word the press likes to use anytime they discuss computer failures. The word conveys a problem, but doesn't assign blame to anyone. Things just mysteriously happen.
I wonder if they would refer to the collapse of the bridge in Minnesota as the result of a "glitch".
No, of course not. The bridge collapsed because people failed to perform the proper maintenance on it, and allowed serious structural failures to go untreated.
Same with computers. Recovering from a hardware failure is the acid test of a well written program. In this case, the software failed the test, since it allowed phantom votes to register.
"It was determined that one defective cartridge caused vote totals to be duplicated into multiple races on the summary report issued by our office. The Board immediately caught and addressed this error, as is reflected in the last unofficial results report issued on Election Night," Murphy said in the statement.
This is the hallmark of bad software. A good programmer anticipates errors, especially hardware failures, they even have a name for it, they call it "error-trapping".
He refused to answer questions from reporters, and no members of the election board appeared.
Of course, this assumes that the cause of the problem is being accurately reported to the press, which is a risky bet most of the time, especially since election boards seldom have their own programmers of techs on staff. The usual routine is to repeat whatever the vendor told them happened, and not answer questions which would reveal that they are simply reading lines from a script and have no clue what they are talking about.
I am not the only one who is skeptical.
"That press release is a model of obfuscation," said Henry E. Brady, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley who has studied voting systems extensively, including in the deadlocked 2000 presidential contest.
The explanation that a defective cartridge caused tallying errors across multiple races "is what throws me off," Brady said. "It is hard to know what that means. I'm having trouble figuring out how that happens."
The maker of the voting machines used in last fall's disputed Sarasota area congressional race warned state and county officials that voters might have trouble recording their votes but the company's advice for fixing the problem went unheeded.
And as the controversy swirled into another national debate about another troubled Florida election, state and county officials never told anyone about the company warning that some of its touch-screen machines could produce a seconds-long delay before recording votes.
An Aug. 15 letter from Election Systems & Software told state and county officials about "slow response times" in recording votes on some of its machines. The company said an "update to the firmware" was required and also suggested counties post signs and train poll workers and voters about the need to press firmly for several seconds to ensure that the machine properly recorded the vote.
Such is the level of arrogance of some election officials.
I have certainly been sympathetic to the problems faced by election officials in trying to do their jobs. They lack the expertise, have lots of people yelling at them, and while they get lots of grief if there is a screw up, they endure little praise when things go right.
But there is a group of election officials who ruin it all for the rest of them, and we see such a group in this story. Election officials who have nothing but contempt for voters, who worship at the altar of BBV and ignore all evidence, no matter how compelling, that the system has problems. And even when palliative measures are available, refuse to implement them since they believe doing so would imply admission of error.
ES&S told Sarasota they would have problems. They told them how to deal with the problem to insure accurate elections. But...
That never happened in Sarasota County.
And although state, county and company officials insist the accuracy of the vote counting was not in jeopardy, Pasco County got the same letter and chose not to use the 40 affected machines on Election Day in November.
"It wasn't any big deal," Sarasota Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent said Wednesday.
There you have it, straight from the horse's ass' mouth!
In all probability the wrong person was "elected" to office, but this is not a "big deal". Sit down and shut up, and take the congressmen WE decide you should have.
But the arrogant contempt isn't just found with one person, it is endemic in Florida.
County and state officials said Wednesday they did not question the company when it failed to bring forward an upgrade before the election because, despite the response delay, the machines were working properly.
"We weren't experiencing a problem," Dent said.
"There was no need to go to the vendor to change the systems that close to the election," said Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the state Division of Elections. "The elections were not in jeopardy."
I think the MASSIVE undervote proves your WERE experiencing problems, specifically your system was BROKEN and you were too intoxicated with your own magisterial superciliousness to be concerned with quaint customs like "fair elections".
A question for Sarasota voters: Why does this woman still have a job?
Diebold Inc. saw great potential in the modernization of elections equipment. Now, analysts say, executives may be angling for ways to dump its e-voting subsidiary that's widely seen as tarnishing the company's reputation.
Though Diebold Election Systems - the company's smallest business segment - has shown growth and profit, it's faced persistent criticism over the reliability and security of its touch-screen voting machines. About 150,000 of its touch-screen or optical scan systems were used in 34 states in last November's election.
The criticism is particularly jarring for a nearly 150-year-old company whose primary focus has long been safes and automated teller machines.
"This is a company that has built relationships with banks every day of every year. It pains them greatly to see their brand tarnished by a marginal operating unit," said Gil Luria, an investment analyst who monitors Diebold for Wedbush Morgan Securities Inc.
They have no one to blame but themselves for this. And if I were a bank, I'd be damned leery of anything Diebold told me or promised me about their products, given the blizzard of lies and criminal deceptions the company has engaged in.
The major challenge that Diebold faces now is that no one is going to buy a company so totally discredited as this one. It would be easier to sell Titanic brand cruise ships, or Hindenburg brand zeppelins than a Diebold voting machine company. Diebold's name has become synonymous with deceit, inaccuracy, and corrupt politics, and rightly so.
Diebold has always defended its voting machines and its own intentions, even after its former chairman and chief executive, Wally O'Dell, sought with little success to convince critics his strong ties with Republican politics as a fundraiser for George W. Bush were not the motive for the company's involvement in elections.
See what I mean?
Might Diebold choose to keep the voting business and grow it?
"It's a possibility, but I'd assign it a very low probability," Luria said.
Voting machine makers such as Diebold; Election Systems & Software, of Omaha, Neb.; Sequoia Voting Systems, of Oakland, Calif., and Hart InterCivic, of Austin, Texas have had the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 as a sales catalyst. HAVA, with $3.9 billion of funding, urged the nation to move past punch card voting and hanging chads that delayed the conclusion of the 2000 presidential election.
ES&S, Sequoia and Hart InterCivic declined comment on a possible Diebold Election Systems sale.
The other companies have no reason to buy even Diebold's customer list, since they are going to get the customers anyway once Diebold bails out of the business. And they are hardly likely to invest in Diebold's universally reviled hardware/software.
Diebold may literally have to pay someone to take the company, otherwise they will be facing law suits from orphaned customers.
Douglas E. Rodgers, managing partner and chief executive officer of Washington-based investment banking firm FOCUS Enterprises Inc., said he has worked with Diebold executives on recent acquisitions. He could not comment on Diebold's intentions for voting systems.
Kimball Brace, who closely tracks voting system vendors as president of Washington-based Election Data Services Inc., said there is uncertainty now in the elections market, a result of possible legislation setting new requirements with no promise there will be additional funding.
He couldn't say what Diebold will do.
"If I were in these guy's shoes, I'd be looking close and hard at what I'm doing in this marketplace," Brace said. "But given the uncertainty, who would buy it?"
Indeed!
And when all is said and done, it will be BBV - 0, anti-BBV activists - 1
An influential U.S. senator last week called on the federal government to find out why electronic voting machines have caused problems in some recent elections.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) last Wednesday asked the Government Accountability Office to conduct an investigation of electronic voting machines -- especially those that fail to produce a paper receipt of the ballots cast. Feinstein, who chairs the senate Rules and Administration Committee, called on the GAO to complete the investigation before the 2008 presidential election.
Feinstein is asking that the GAO investigate claims by e-voting critics that some new machines are prone to error, can be easily hacked and altered, and can be secretly reprogrammed to change the outcome of a race.
This is WAY overdue. This should have been done years ago, or at the latest after the Diebold emails were leaked.
It should be followed up with a criminal investigation (with emphasis on the RICO statute) into every vendor and "certification" lab, as well as efforts by ITAA and to "lobby" those certification labs and government agencies to set standards which were favorable to the BBV vendors, at the expense of accurate and secure election equipment.
While they are at it, they should look into The Election Center and the money it received from vendors which appear to have influenced its recommendations on voting equipment.
NewsChannel5 has confirmed that embattled elections chief in Cuyahoga County has resigned.
Executive director Michael Vu's ouster marks the end of a tense term that thrust Cuyahoga County and its voters in the national spotlight. Under Vu, the county weathered a botched primary election and convictions of two workers who mishandled the 2004 presidential recount.
At age 28, Vu was hired in 2003 to take over the largest and arguably most problematic elections board in the bellwether state during a hard-fought and close presidential campaign.
In November 2004, Cuyahoga, which has more than 1 million registered voters, was among the counties with long lines and complaints over provisional ballots. The election ended with Ohio giving President Bush the electoral votes needed to narrowly win the White House over Democratic U.S. Sen. John Kerry.
Before Vu's appointment, the county had a history of troubles, including absentee ballots invalidated because they were counted twice, shortages of ballots, misplaced ballots, votes cast by unregistered voters and voters who were not told of a change in their polling places.
Under his watch, problems continued.
Last May's primary, the first attempt at electronic voting in the county, was marred by poll workers who were not prepared to operate the machines, some poll workers who didn't show up to work and vote-holding memory cards that were misplaced or lost.
And last month, two elections board workers were convicted of illegally rigging the 2004 presidential election recount so they could avoid a more thorough review of the votes.
Vu defended those workers and their decision to pick ahead of time the ballots they would count in what was supposed to be a random sample. He said the workers followed longtime procedures and did nothing wrong.
Just because you have criminal procedures in place for a long time doesn't make them legal.
Gov. Charlie Crist is preparing to recommend that the controversial touch-screen voting machines used in Broward, Palm Beach and 13 other Florida counties be scrapped and replaced with optical scanners that would count paper ballots.
U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, said the governor would recommend spending at least $20 million on optical scanners for the 15 counties with touch-screen machines when he presents his proposed budget to the state Legislature on Friday.
After the old-fashioned computer punch-card voting system contributed to massive problems with the 2000 presidential election, Florida overhauled its election law. Most of the state's largest counties bought touch-screen machines.
Broward has spent about $20.4 million on touch-screen machines and Palm Beach County more than $14.4 million.
And now they will have to lose all that money because the previous administration refused to listen to us.
Two election workers in Ohio have been convicted of rigging the recount of the 2004 presidential tally in one county.
Elections coordinator Jacqueline Maiden and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer of Cuyahoga County were each found guilty of negligent misconduct of an elections employee. That's a felony that could mean up to 18 months in prison.
The two were also convicted of a misdemeanor count of failure of elections employees to perform their duty. Each was acquitted of five other charges.
Maiden and Dreamer were accused of secretly reviewing pre-selected ballots before the recount in Cuyahoga County to avoid a more costly, time-consuming hand count of all votes.
Cuyahoga is Ohio's most populous county. It was Ohio that gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat Senator John Kerry.
Diebold's helpfully provided picture of their voting machine key, allowing anyone to make their own copy.
As we learned back in 2003, Diebold in its infinite wisdom decided that to save money, it would install identical locks with identical keys on all of its voting machines (Imagine the door to every ATM in America with the same key). But never you worry, because they only give that key to "authorized" people, which seems to mean anyone with access to their web site, a key blank, a file and a little patience.
A laboratory that has tested most of the nation's electronic voting systems has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after federal officials found that it was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests.
The company, Ciber Inc. of Greenwood Village, Colo., has also come under fire from analysts hired by the state of New York over its plans to test new voting machines for the state. New York could eventually spend $200 million to replace its aging lever devices.
Experts on voting systems say the Ciber problems underscore long-standing worries about lax inspections in the secretive world of voting-machine testing. The action by the federal Election Assistance Commission seems certain to fan growing concerns about the reliability and security of the devices.
We have said in the past that since the ITA's (Ciber being one of them) could not be trusted since they refused to disclose their testing methodology and since they actually worked for the e-voting vendors.
How many times must we be right before election officials LISTEN?
Voters at several South Mississippi precincts reported problems with the new touch-screen machines as voting got under way in midterm elections this morning.
At Gulfport Little Theater and Biloxi Community Center, for example, voters were handed paper ballots because workers were unable to make to the machines work.
And at Margaret Sherry Library on Popps Ferry Road, three of seven touch-screen machines were working while at D'Iberville Community Center, just four of 13 were working.
Votes cast with the paper ballots will be counted, assured David Blount, communications director with Secretary of State Eric Clark’s office in Jackson.
A man who reportedly believed Republicans were conspiring to steal today's election entered an Allentown polling site, signed in and proceeded to smash the screen of one of the electronic voting machines with a metal cat paperweight, poll volunteers said.
Michael Young, 43, of 375 Auburn St., will be charged with felony criminal mischief and tampering with voting machines, according to Ronald Manescu, chief of investigations for Allentown police.
Police gave no motive, but a source said Young, a registered Independent, believed Republicans had conspired to win the election by using electronic ballots. This is the first time electronic machines are being widely used in a Pennsylvania general election.
"He smashed it with the cat's ears," said volunteer Jim Govostis, who watched the incident unfold at Raker Center, a nursing home owned by Good Shepherd, around 12:30 p.m.
Young, who brought the paperweight with him, then sat down, hung his head and waited for police, who arrested him without incident.
"He came in here very peaceably and showed his ID," said volunteer Gladys Pezoldt, "then he got on the machine and just snapped…He was immediately remorseful. When the police came, he got up, turned around and put his hands behind his back."
Using a metal cat was a nice touch. Bricks and hammers are so unimaginative.
As already reported voting difficulties continue to frustrate voters in another decisive election, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden renewed his proposal to simplify the way Americans vote. Wyden has introduced legislation to provide funds to help states adopt Vote by Mail election systems, such as Oregon's.
"The great Yogi Berra said it best: 'It's Déjà vu all over again.' Except instead of the boys of October, we're talking about the long lines and broken machines of November." Wyden said. "Allegations of election fraud and voter suppression were once rarities, today they're business as usual for the American voter. It's time to stop throwing taxpayer dollars at a broken system. Oregonians have a solution--Vote by Mail."
For more than a decade Oregonians have been successfully voting by mail. Up to three weeks before Election Day, ballots are sent to all registered voters, giving busy families time to research their votes and carefully mark their ballots, which are then either dropped in the mailbox or delivered to secure drop boxes at libraries, county offices and other convenient locations. Trained election officials then match the signature on each ballot against the signature on each voter's registration card, before processing the vote.
The transparency of Vote by Mail eliminates virtually all fraud, while addressing many traditional voting challenges:
- Vote by Mail eliminates poll problems--there are no long lines, polls to open late or even confusion about where to vote.
- Vote by Mail eliminates voter roll issues and the need for provisional ballots--ballots are mailed only to registered voters at their official address. Those who do not receive a ballot have ample time to resolve the issue with election officials.
- Vote by Mail virtually eliminates voter fraud--no vote is processed or counted until a trained election official is satisfied that the signature on the ballot matches the signature on the voter's registration card.
- Vote by Mail reduces the risk of voter intimidation--a 2003 study of Oregon voters showed that groups--like the elderly--who are most vulnerable to coercion prefer Vote by Mail.
- Vote by Mail creates a paper trail.
- Vote by Mail increases voter turnout--by eliminating the need to stand in line at the polling place, voting becomes convenient for hourly wage employees and other working families. Oregon's consistently ranks among the top five states in voter participation.
- Vote by Mail encourages educated voters--receiving ballots weeks in advance, gives voters an opportunity to research issues and deliberate in a way that is not possible in a voting booth.
- Vote by Mail saves taxpayer dollars--because there is no longer a need to transport equipment to polling stations and to hire and train poll workers, Oregon has reduced its election-related costs by 30 percent since implementing Vote by Mail.
In September of this year, building on the success of Vote by Mail in his own state, Wyden teamed up with Senators John Kerry and Barack Obama to sponsor legislation to help other states implement their own version of VBM. Wyden's bill creates a $110 million, three-year grant program to provide funds to states to help offset the cost of adopting VBM election systems. States have the option of adopting VBM statewide, within a group of selected counties (or municipalities in states where elections are overseen at this level), or even in a single county or municipality.
"Vote by Mail works. This legislation gives states funds they can use to make the transition away from traditional voting methods that have led to so many problems, so many concerns and so little confidence in the American election system.," Wyden said.
On a day already rife with computer glitches, long lines, and legal appeals to extend voting in Denver, provisional ballots are now running out at some Denver voting centers.
Democratic party leaders are in court this afternoon, seeking a two-hour extension for voting in Denver, due to massive computer problems which have kept many from casting their vote.
Party spokesman Brian Mason said the motion was in response to "the huge problems in Denver this morning."
The problems began right at 7 a.m. as computer problems at the voter-check in stations bogged down, creating a bottleneck in the first hour of voting as a rush to the polls overloaded the system.
Power failures slowed voting at some locations, Denver Election Commission spokesman Alton Dillard said.
Voting machines had backup power and weren't affected, but laptop computers used to verify voter registration were knocked out, forcing workers to call the central office for the information, he said.
Power has ALWAYS been the Achilles' heel of these systems.
Mark Coles, a computer technician with the Denver Election Commission, said the election system had to be split onto three separate servers to handle the backlog.
"It's just like traffic on (Interstate) 25," Coles said. "It's as if we are building two more I-25s right next to it" to ease the traffic congestion.
And you didn't forsee this??!!
But the fix did not come in time to help some voters who hoped to vote before heading to work.
"We will not get to vote today," said a frustrated Lauren Brockman as he left the Botanic Gardens.
At Corona Presbyterian Church, voters were being told to expect about a two-hour wait as they snaked around the building.
"All my friends, I told them to vote between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.," said Rob Weil the election judge supervisor at Corona. "But if it keeps being this slow, this line will stay."
Remember how election officials and vendors told us that e-voting would "speed" things up?
