Scary Conversation overhead on Electronic Voting

[MiniMe]

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. I work in Washington, DC about 4 blocks from the Whitehouse.

I was standing outside my building today, ok I admit it I was smoking, and 2 people were discussing a report they were working on for their boss. I looked at the report and the title was "Analysis of Voting Problems in Cuyahoga County". They apparently had to summarize the report for their boss, not that it was a very big report. Apparently the conclusion of this report was that all of the voting problems in Cuyahoga County were caused by untrained poll workers.

I came into the middle of the discussion, but I couldn't shut my mouth any longer. I went off about electronic voting and the lack of an audit trail and about how easy the machines are to hack. They did ask me how I would like to vote, I told them that I would rather go back to the lever machines than electronic voting. Then they told me that the problem with lever voting booths is that you can't tell when the machines stop counting votes.

Anyway, I told them to try doing research online and to call Congressman Conyers to get more info on the voting problems in Ohio. I really want to know where they work, we have lots of gov't office in our building, including some DHS offices.

Do people really believe that the only problem with electronic voting is poll worker training?

[Iwasthere]

1. email John Conyers with this

I am sure he would like to know more

[Wanet]

2. Don't you think it's likely

That the boss of these two people WANTED a report that showed that voting problems were caused by inept poll workers? The point would not be to find the truth, but to support their cause and hide electronic voting cheating.

[MiniMe]

4. Considering the report looked to be about 5 pages.....

you are probably right.

[Squeech]

3. They don't believe it

but they probably believe that if they say so they can sanitize the issue for their management.

What's the exact formulation of that old saw about how hard it is to explain something to somebody whose paycheck depends on his failure to understand it?

[MiniMe]

5. They were kids in their 20's. I'm really not sure if they believe it

or not. Or if they are just trying to summarize what that report said without interjecting their own opinions into it.

[slaveplanet]

6. did you get their names? n/t

[MiniMe]

7. I see them fairly often, but I don't have the names nt

[Mango Suede]

8. make some noise, dems

What's scary is the absolute lack of elected Democrats making BIG noises about the electronic voting - here we go again

[newyawker99]

17. Hi Mango Suede!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[meldroc]

9. Poll worker training is part of the problem. Only part of the problem.

Voting systems are getting more complex, and your average poll worker is a random Joe off the street, who isn't an engineer or programmer or other technically minded person, and chances are the poll workers have only seen the machines once or twice before they go live on election day.

But yes, there are lots of other problems, which we've all talked about - Diebold machines lack of a paper trail, security issues, software bugs, hardware defects, along with social problems like voter suppression, crooked officials, dead people voting, etc.

[Peace Patriot]

10. Some basics:

1. If they had wanted a transparent election in 2004, we would have had one. Transparent elections are a no-brainer. People vote, and you count the votes in public view. They didn't want that to happen--and went way out of their way to prevent it.

2. It was nuts to roll out a new, untested, electronic voting system, going nationwide for the first time, without a 100% paper ballot audit to test the accuracy of the machines. Think about it. What would a good government policy be in such a case? Why wasn't a good government policy INCLUDED in the "Help America Vote Act" legislation (engineered by the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney)? Why in fact was a paper trail SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDED as a requirement for electronic voting? Was a transparent, recountable, auditable election intended?

3. Why did they rush this system into place, with a nearly $4 billion electric voting boondoggle--at a time when "the war on terror," the war on Afghanistan and the pending war on Iraq--not to mention multiple tax cuts for the super-rich--were sending the federal government toward a $10 trillion deficit? These machines were fast-tracked, and rammed down election officials' throats--or were gladly purchased in exchange for lavish lobbying (millions spent on it)--before ANYONE knew how they worked. They were often bought on blind faith from corporations with very close ties to the Bush junta. They were untested, and, we now know, unreliable, highly insecure--indeed porous--and extremely insider hackable. Crapass machines from crapass corporations for a crapass country. (--projection; we're not crapass, but the Bushites think we are). The two main platforms--Diebold and its spin-off, ES&S--are run on WINDOWS, for godssakes! Election officials had to rely on private corporate personnel to run our elections--and, in any case, were obliged to bring them in frequently for servicing and upgrades, because the programming code they run on is a PROPRIETARY, TRADE SECRET--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it. These circumstances are MADE TO ORDER for fraud.

4. The only "standards" the HAVA commission (Bushite feds) have seriously followed are the strict timelines for "HAVA-compliant" election systems--with the incentive of lots and lots of federal money for upgrading voting systems to electronics. For instance, they are now suing the state of New York for sticking to its old, reliable lever machines--and "not meeting HAVA deadlines." To speak to a point in the OP raised by these young government employees, the old lever machines have NEVER raised any questions about fraud. They are nearly fraud-proof. They've been used for decades without complaint or suspicion. The Bushite feds have used every pressure possible to get fast conversion to NON-TRANSPARENT, Bushite-corporate controlled electronics. They furthermore permit SECRET industry "testing" of the machines.

5. The two main beneficiaries of the HAVA billions are:

DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer," right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004"; and

ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things). Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship; they are run by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich.

SEQUOIA: The third big player in the election theft industry, also with ties to the Republican Party. Our former CA Sec of State, a Republican, and his chief aide, now work for Sequoia, peddling their voting machines--a totally corrupt practice.

These are the people who "counted" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy. One third of the country voted on paperless voting machines (unrecountable, unauditable). The rest had their votes "tabulated" by Diebold/ES&S secret code, with virtually no audit/recount controls.

---------------------

I repeat: If they had wanted a transparent election in 2004, we would have had one. They didn't want transparency--a recountable, auditable election. The reason was to conduct more Iraq war profiteering--and a widened Mideast war--despite overwhelming opposition to it. To have a war that nobody wants, in a democracy, you have to rig the elections. That's what they did.

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Throw Diebold, ES&S and all election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

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Bust the Machines! Bust Bush! Bust the War! Bust Congress! VOTE ABSENTEE!*

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*(AB votes are NOT "safe" either--and will NOT result in accurate vote counts this fall (that is impossible)--but, if enough people vote AB (and many are--it's up to 50% in Los Angeles already), we can create panic and crisis in the election theft industry, and FORCE reform NOW. FLOOD them with MOUNTAINS of paper AB votes to deal with. Boycott the machines! Refuse to vote on them! It's an easy protest. Everybody can do it. Most states have some form of AB voting--some easier than others. Let's do what we can to bring this election theft system to its knees NOW. We don't have much time to save our democracy. The time is NOW.

[TexasLawyer]

13. Great post, Peace Patriot

Thanks!!!!!

[tiptoe]

20. Kick & Recommend OP for access to Peace Patriot's response!

[lonestarnot]

11. blame the victims! untrained voters next.

[Peace Patriot]

12. Poll workers: Poll workers didn't need much training before the onset

of this highly esoteric, secretly coded election theft system. People vote, and you count the votes in public view. Very simple. Ordinary citizens could do it. Common sense security. Rules for signing people in and handling ballots, etc. This highly obscure system, where the vote counting occurs by secret formulas inside the "black box" or the equally impenetrable central tabulators, means that ordinary citizen poll workers cannot see the 'votes' that are actually sent to the central tabulators in the form of highly manipulable electrons. If it's an optiscan, the vote is separated from the evidence of the vote, and the real vote (the ballot) is almost never seen again. Polls workers cannot act as a check and balance on fraud. Further, they can't fix anything when these electronic systems--INEVITABLY--break down. Another opportunity for fraud by insider techies. How helpless do YOU feel when your computer or other electronic equipment breaks down? Poll workers are in the same spot. Call Diebold! This is reckless privatization of our elections! And it CANNOT be allowed to stand.

The best system: Paper ballots, hand-counted in public at the precinct level, with results posted at the precinct level before any electronics are involved. Canada does it in one day. But speed should not even be a consideration--only accuracy and verifiability.

Next best: The lever machines are pretty solid, and time-tested. Absentee Ballot voting is also acceptable--with security provisions as they have in Oregon (--it's all AB voting)--provided that the AB votes are counted by hand in public, with results posted BEFORE any electronic entry or tabulation, and the AB votes are given equal priority for counting with any other voting methods used. (Currently, many AB votes are just scanned right into the electronic system and provide no more security than optiscans. And now that AB votes are often protest votes, the Diebold shills who run our elections count them last, after the riggable electronic totals are gone off to the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. This is to insure that rigged results become a fait accompli and are then difficult to challenge.) (Note: I still support the AB voting protest, though--because it means that we don't have to touch their diabolical machines, and if enough people do it, it WILL force reform.)

Third best: Punchcards, if everybody's careful with them. (--prone to cause Bushites to pound on windows and riot on election day.)

Unacceptable: ANY electronic voting machines run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code--optiscans, touchscreens, or central tabulators. Period. NO SECRET CODE anywhere in our system. Open source might be possible, with sufficient testing, audits and security. It's also a lot less expensive. (Decent democracies, like Venezuela, use open source electronic voting, and they regularly elect popular leftist politicians.)

[cherokeeprogressive]

19. I beg to differ

"AB votes are often protest votes, the Diebold shills who run our elections count them last, after the riggable electronic totals are gone off to the war profiteering corporate news monopolies."

You are 100% wrong. I work for a Registrar of Voters. And I'm not a "Diebold shill" thank you very fucking much.

We use electronic voting machines. I know the process inside and out. IN FACT, I am the Poll Worker Trainer Lead for my county. You didn't mention the company that makes our voting machines. Is that because you're not familiar with all of them?

Ours are NOT touch-screen machines, and they are NOT hackable IMNSHO. And I say that with confidence, because I am personally involved with each step of the process, from the design of the ballot, to the preparation and shipping of the equipment, to the training of the Poll Workers (my primary responsibility) to the offloading of the trucks--escorted by armed sheriff's deputies, and the tallying of the electronic votes. Did I mention that you can watch the inside of our warehouse, where it all happens, 24/7/365? Or that on our website you can see the vote totals, per precinct, as they're being tallied? Forgive me for that little omission.

Have you been to our office to see how we count absentee votes? And when we count absentee ballots? There are volunteers from the General Public sitting at tables in our warehouse TWO fucking days after we send the absentee ballots out. Would you like to guess what they're doing? Gee, might it be opening and counting absentee ballots? Well! If you guessed that, then you'd be right! Oh, and by the way? I don't agree with your assumption that ab's are "protest votes". It's how I vote, and I do it for convenience.

"Diebold shills" What the fuck's up with that? If you said that out loud to most of the people I work with, they'd not only put your mind right, but then they'd ask you outside for at the very least a spirited wrestling match. We're VERY PROUD of what we do, and how we do it. We don't miscount or discount votes, we don't disenfranchise voters, and we don't fucking steal elections, or allow them to be stolen. Yet people like you paint us with a pretty broad and stiff brush.

I don't claim that every recorder or registrar office in the country is up to our standards. I can only speak for US. In fact, I'm going to send a link to your post to some of my friends in the office. I'm sure they will find it worthy of discussion. And then we'll talk about you this afternoon over a few cold ones. I can assure you though, we'll be more respectful to you than you were to us. It's just the kind of people we are: Proud professionals working in the public sector for way less than we could get working for a corporation. And doing a fucking bang-up job.

Peace

[Peace Patriot]

14. MiniMe, see this thread. The report that your young gov't workers were

trying to summarize is probably the Election Science Institute, down Rumpel's Election news thread, at:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x446327

Rumpel (1000+ posts) 
Fri Aug-18-06 10:38 AM
Response to Original message

8. News Analysis: The Coming Paper-Trail Debacle?

Yuba.net.com

Ohio report finds challenges abound in evaluating voter-verified paper audit trails
By: Dan Seligson, electionline.org
Published: Aug 18, 2006 at 08:42

A 240-page report on failures and foibles during Cuyahoga County's May primary raised more questions about the accuracy and reliability of touch-screen voting machines which researchers say failed to match up electronic ballots to paper versions of the vote.

Perhaps equally significant - and noteworthy - are the details of the considerable woes that plagued the voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) system through careless election administration, printer failures or both.

Buried some 93 pages into the report, which was commissioned by county leaders and produced by the San Francisco-based Election Science Institute, are details of errors that included poll workers loading thermal paper into VVPAT printers backwards, blank audit trails, "accordion-style" crumpling of ballots, long blank spaces between ballots that could have represented missing or unprinted VVPATs, torn and taped-together VVPATs and missing ballot text.

ESI researchers found that nearly 10 percent of VVPAT ballots sampled were in some way compromised, damaged or otherwise uncountable, an alarmingly high proportion for a state that requires that paper be used as the ballot of record in the event of a recount.

(MORE)

http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_40865.shtml

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I recall something about Electionline (the reporter's group) tainted with corporate electronic voting money. Don't know who this SF Election Science Institute is--probably similar, industry front. Who needs "science"? People vote, and you count the votes in public view. No-brainer.

"Election science,' my patootie.

Beware of people who blame poll workers--or push optiscans as "safe" (as opposed to touchscreens). NO SECRET CODE anywhere in our system! And beware of anybody talking about "election science." It means a method of counting votes that you can't understand.

[MiniMe]

16. It might be, but they mentioned that nobody had seen it yet...

not sure if she meant in her office or generally. And the report they were looking at was only about 5-10 pages. Of course, it could be a summary. What shocked me most was that these kids were preparing something for their boss that they obviously knew nothing about.

[w4rma]

15. It seems you have to be a computer professional to have enough training

to use these things. And they don't work securely even when properly used.

We need to go back to paper ballots.

[tiptoe]

18. K & R !