Machines change votes in Iowa

[BeFree]

Stevepol posted this link elsewhere on DU:

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16751509&BRD=2703&PAG=461&dept_id=555106&rfi=6

A real popular guy had lost the absentee vote that was counted by an ES&S machine, so they hand counted the ballots and sure enough, the machine was totally wrong. Totally.

This is a Scandal. A Scandal in the Heartland.

They are going to hand count the whole county. Gonna be real interesting to see what happens next. Someone from the Dem party needs to be there on the ground, ASAP.

[snot]

1. K & R -- nt

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. one county at a time...

90% of that county will never trust a machine to count their votes again.

:bounce:

who's next?

[Wilms]

3. Faulty voting machines delay results; counting under way

The headline :grr: 's me. As if the "delay" is the problem. Hey knuckleheads. Try this for headline:

"Faulty voting machines destroy democratic process; Hand-counting under way to restore the will of the people"

Faulty voting machines delay results; counting under way

TIM ROHWER, Staff Writer

06/07/2006

snip

But, something wasn't just right from the very beginning, she added.

Things began to look fishy, Drake said, when the county's new computers counted the absentee ballots in the Republican Party's county race between longtime Recorder John Sciortino and newcomer Oscar Duran.

snip

Drake said she decided to count the absentee ballots by hand to determine if the computers were counting correctly.

They weren't - not by a long shot.

snip

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16751509&BRD=2703&PAG=461&dept_id=555106&rfi=6

[BeFree]

4. Someone, anyone, everyone

Get a screen capture of that website. ES&S is NOT gonna want that story to be told. I'm surprised the site is still up.

This was a republican who had his votes messed up. Oh, the irony!

Anyone in Iowa, if you will please get over there and be on the ground to get the story, I'll pay you a hundred bucks to do so. This is that big. we can't let this slip away. Match this with what RFK had to say about Ohio, and we begin to crush these machines.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

5. Total same, but winners changed!

ELECTION: Faulty voting machines delay results; counting under way
TIM ROHWER, Staff Writer
06/07/2006

The problems were noticed when they started counting the absentee votes:

Now this is realllly interesting, look at the computer count:

Duran 99 + Sciortino 79 = total 178

When all of those were counted, Duran, a University of Nebraska at Omaha student, had 99 votes, while Sciortino, the county recorder since 1983, had just 79.

Votes for County recorder of 23 years get "un-recorded"

"His (Sciortino's) totals kept going down," Drake said.

Now look at the hand to eye count -

Duran 25 + Sciortino 153 = total 178

The actual absentee ballot count in the recorder's race when done by hand found Sciortino had 153 votes and Duran just 25.

So, the total, (178) stayed the same, only the name of the winner changed.

Article here -
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16751509&BRD=2703&PAG=461&dept_id=555106&rfi=6

What is not clear to me is which part of the counting was involved -
when the ballots were scanned or when the vote totals were uploaded into the
central tabulator?
If during uploading, how were the votes uploaded?

Has anyone heard about this exact same vote total and same problem elsewhere
in the country with ES&S?

[Wilms]

6. I'd want to audit the ballot definition settings. n/t

[hedda_foil]

17. Exactly

ES&S has been screwing up both ballot definition files and ballot printing right and left.

[lostnfound]

8. Fascinating. This is a classic example of what we've suspected

It's been proposed, demonstrated and inferred that one technique being used is a transfer of a certain percentage of votes from one candidate to the next. This case is very interesting evidence.

I hope they've impounded the machine and the tabulator.

[CornField]

11. First reports

I was watching the precinct counts come in very closely Tuesday night. Originally, Pottawattamie was reporting with only a few precincts remaining out. Roughly around midnight, the entire county was pulled back, showing 0 across the board.

From what I understand/have read/saw on the news locally -- the county auditor (Drake) noticed there might be a problem after the absentee ballots were done (first 'precinct' done after polls closed). From what's been said, the ballots were fed into the machine and (I'm guessing) were then immediately tabulated. Despite the concern, more ballots were fed into the questionable machine and tabulated... getting the same odd results.

Everything was stopped and put on ice until Wednesday morning when the local board of supervisors could approve a manual handcount (expected to take 16 hours, although it was done in under 9). The rest I think everyone knows.

Edited to add the final vote count in the recorder's race (BTW, I've not heard anything so far on if other races were also being counted incorrectly by the machine):

COUNTY RECORDER
VOTE FOR NOT MORE THAN 1
OSCAR DURAN. . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 14.41 %
JOHN F. SCIORTINO. . . . . . . . . . 2,061 85.59 %

[IndyOp]

13. The same totals - Richard Hayes Phillips has been recounting

photographs of punch cards ballots in a small set Ohio precincts from 2004 elections. Why photographs of? Election reform activists took photos of the ballots as evidence.

Hayes Phillips believes that punchcards were shifted between precincts such that in one precinct Kerry was at the top of the ticket and in the next Bush was at the top of the ticket - if we count the first precinct ballots in the machine at the second precinct then top of ticket (Kerry) votes will be counted for Bush.

Hayes Phillips notes that he repeatedly gets the SAME TOTAL number of ballots (total votes) for the precincts as were reported by the election officials -- but who they are counted for shifts.

Doug Jones of Iowa has written about this - the most common, foolproof way to cheat is to shift ballots between precincts (when candidate names are rotated) or otherwise 'switch' how the machine counts votes (if Candidate A is at top in all precincts and is getting more votes, then have the machine assign A's votes to B so B will win).

:kick:

[AndyA]

19. We must get the elections and vote tabulation out of the private sector!

The vote of the people is the basis on which our entire country was founded, our freedom depends on accurate, honest elections.

Voting machines must be thrown out immediately, and the election process returned to the public domain, where checks and balances can be put in place to keep everything honest.

This is a disgrace! We really don't know who our elected representatives are as it is now.

[BeFree]

7. Update: AP story

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IA_ELN_VOTING_PROBLEMS_IAOL-?SITE=IAIOP&SECTION=STATE&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Seems the recount was "time consuming"

Snip from AP:
"Troughout the process, Deputy Secretary of State Charles Krogmeier maintained that the outcome would not affect any of Iowa's major races, including governor.

Krogmeier said the problem apparently involves the programming on the scanners to read the ballots.

"It apparently wasn't done correctly so it doesn't read the ballots properly," he said.

[lostnfound]

9. So depressing that the plan is to have an ES&S team investigate

Fox, come into the henhouse.

[Wilms]

10. This is a recurring es&s problem.

"the problem apparently involves the programming on the scanners to read the ballots"

[Stevepol]

12. *We've never had any problems* How the hell do you know?

"We've been with them for years with other styles of computers, and we never had any problems," Drake said.

An emergency approval by the county's Board of Supervisors was necessary this morning to authorize a hand count of the entire election.


My question is how the hell do they know they never had any problems? How does ANYBODY know whether they had any problems? You don't. All this crap about accuracy etc. is just so much false advertising, lying in other words.

THE ONLY WAY TO DISCOVER THERE IS A PROBLEM IS WITH A RECOUNT AND THAT IS ALMOST NEVER DONE. It just happens that people here knew the candidates and could surmise the results were cooked. That's the only reason anybody even discovered that it was all wrong.

So let's take Chuck Hagel's victory in NE in 96 where he won his election with 83% of the vote, a seat that had been Dem for 24 years. I read that he won every precinct, even black precincts that had never voted Repub before. Of course Hagel's vote was counted by AIS, American Information Systems, the company that became ES&S, the company he headed before he resigned in order to run for Congress, the company that is being recounted here in IA. At the time, it was called one of the most amazing results in American election history. I'd say 83% ranks right up there with Stalin's results in Russia or Saddam Hussein's results in Iraq before the invasion. Hagel certainly deserves kudos for his phenomenal popularity in NE. Or maybe he deserves something else, jail time maybe.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

14. Well said. nt.

[Tin Man]

15. K&R - thanks for posting!

[mod mom]

16. Faulty machines? Wrong vote totals? I'm shocked!

[robinlynne]

18. Yeah! Let's start hand counting. I love this article.

[ArbustoBuster]

20. Kicked and recommended n/t

[In Truth We Trust]

21. Hand Counted Paper Ballots NOW!!!

[Usrename]

22. Wait a minute everbody, couldn't it be the "voter's" fault.

They were to shy to respond to the exit-pollsters. Nothing is wrong with the machines. There's proof!

Better put the :sarcasm: thingy in case they decide to weigh in on this thread.

[Febble]

24. I'd hate to disappoint you...

by not showing up, but I hope I don't disappoint you still further by saying that it sure looks like an important story. Also a triumph for those who scrutinised the process.





As I keep saying, the beauty of hand counts is that you can see what's happening.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

28. and something else beautiful

is that we all can understand the hand counting.

The more transparency, the more trust and confidence in the results.

However, Republicans seem to have a gigantic mistrust of hand counted
paper ballots, and similarly some dems assume paper is less secure/accurate!

Don't know why. At least that is my experience in NC.

This is turning out to be a heck of a year!

[New Earth]

23. .

:puke:

[1monster]

25. That's cool. But in Florida, there is, since 2000, a law enacted which

makes it illegal to hand count ballots that were first counted by a machiine.

Isn't that just soooo special?

Watch out that a similar law isn't passed in your states.

[Tigress DEM]

42. Rot in Hell Katherine Harris.... Jeb boy too.

That has to be against the law. It needs to be overturned.

[sean in iowa]

26. This really does not seem to be fraud.

I spoke to the Pottawattamie auditor's office this morning, and to a very experienced and skeptical election integrity activist, and there doesn't seem to be anything nefarious here. This event does powerfully make the case for a paper trail, and increases scrutiny of ES&S. All in all, it's a good day for the cause of election integrity.

[Wilms]

27. Whichever way, democracy is dead.

Like I care if it was fraud rather than human error rather than machine failure.

[BeFree]

29. No case for fraud!

Who are you kidding? If it wasn't for a feeling from the individual that caught the discrepancy the thing probably would have gone right away.

As it was the machines altered the votes! If that is not fraud, then there never is fraud!

The excuse, so far, was that the ballot rotations caused the misread. Well, answer this: were the absentee ballots all rotated? I have info the abs were not rotated. So it appears that excuse is plain BS!

There is more to this story, much more. Dissing it, at this stage, is not a good idea.

[sean in iowa]

30. See my reply on the other thread as well.

I haven't heard that the absentees were not rotated. What I have heard and read, is that the scanner was programmed to read the ballot positions alphabetically, no matter what precinct was involved. Which would mean, I guess, that on the abs, Sciortino was on top, and the challenger Duran was on the bottom. If that wasn't the position, then more investigation is warranted.

I have, quite literally, lost sleep worrying about ES&S. Wish they were out of business and under the most rigorous investigation you can imagine. I just don't see why they had it in for this County Recorder, especially when the "fraud" created a scandal discovered by the election workers themselves, and highlighted the dangers of the system.

Not dissing the story at all. It is going to be trumpeted by nationally and by us here in Iowa. You just have to be careful what you allege. To propose that they had an interest in this Recorder election is pretty far out there, unless in the course of programming maliciously for the gubernatorial race, they also had to program wrong for the Recorder race. Which is patently not the case, as each race has to programmed individually. And, for the love of God, if you are messing with a big competitive race, you don't want to do anything with local races that is going to draw media scrutiny. Who knows, though. Maybe the guy ran over Chuck Hagel's dog:-]

[BeFree]

31. I read that several other races...

...were likewise affected, so, yes, the machine miscounted other races. Got that off the website you linked.

Please, do further investigate.

Too, I have alleged the election official was honest. Sorry 'bout that. It is always possible they saw that things were somehow mis-programmed to mess with republicans also, and so they called a halt. Anything is possible.

[sean in iowa]

33. You're right; it was a global error

Every race was read alphabetically. Not likely malice, unless they don't mind being incredibly clumsy. Hopefully, this nails the case for a good election reform bill in the legislative session.

[Kip Humphrey]

34. The demise of our Democratic Republic & the rise of a Lottery Republic!

This local race in Iowa demonstrates the horror of e-voting configuration and ONE reason digital voting is dangerous to our Democracy. The fact that these digital processing systems can so easily be mis-configured is more than sufficient reason to reject digital vote processing completely. Multiply these local results across the country and contemplate the resulting ruin of our Democracy. As citizens, we must all act to rid our elections of these disastrous digital vote processing systems! Otherwise, our citizen-based Democratic Republic is nothing more than a programmer-based Lottery Republic!

[Tigress DEM]

32. I agree... however you slice it, that's fraud.

What is great is that these were two republicans in a primary, so it's a good lithiums test. There isn't a political ax to grind, so it simply got noticed and handled.

DEMS need to demand that our future elections get the same respectful consideration.

I wonder when someone thinks of fraud these days they aren't thinking garden variety fraud, like a mistake that gets corrected... rather when one thinks of fraud these days it's the large scale, all out assault like happened in Ohio and New Mexico etc in 2004 where it started during voter registration and didn't get resolved before the electoral vote negated any possible correction.

[BeFree]

35. What I think is fraud

Is when a vote is cast and not counted correctly, or changed. Fraud.

It matters not whether it was by accident, design, neglect, or whatever.

The case against the digital voting fraud is that it can be so widespread. As an example, in this case, the whole county, for all intents and purposes, had every vote changed. The whole county!

Only the machines are capable of committing such widespread fraud.

[truckin]

36. By definition fraud must be deliberate. If a mistake occurred by

accident it is not fraud.

[New Earth]

37. but if a mistake is caught

and NOT corrected when officials KNOW it was a mistake, that is fraud.
(in general, not referring specifically to this case)

[BeFree]

38. We know...

....using the machines are a mistake. And using them to count votes is no accident, so it is fraud.

The issue of using the machines to count votes is not new. Years ago, the best minds in computer security testified that using machines to count votes would be a mistake. The election officials willfully ignored the experts.

[Tigress DEM]

41. With a paper trail and machines designed to avoid fraud it could work...

You just step backward and go lower tech so that you take away the ability to manipulate the data, give the voter a means to verify in perpetuity their vote remains recorded as they originally voted it... a voter verification number and their own pw to view the result posted on a web site that does not record their name with it. Then each voter could report any anomalies.

It has to be annonymous without the truth of the count itself being held secretively away from the voters.

I would feel comfortable with machines that are more like a ATMs, but locked down even more...down to source code if need be to remove and countermand manipulation.

You enter your vote choices and verify who you are with a pin known only to you and the results are not changeable at the machine level, and I'd like a laminated receipt with my verified vote transaction so I could use it to protest if my vote was ever manipulated.

[Tigress DEM]

40. By definition: Fraud = A deliberate deception .....

... practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.

But the previous poster is right on one hand that even if the initial mis-count was accidental, if it is brought to the attention of people who should correct it and they don't THAT does meet the definition of fraud.

[windy252]

39. I printed this article.

How sad that I felt the need to do it in the first place.