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November 4, 2008 at 02:56:26
The Vote Grab: Voting machines are unreliable and inaccurate by Peter Tatchell (Posted by Siv O'Neall) Page 1 of 2 page(s) |
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As early voting in the US presidential elections gets underway, ES&S iVotronics touch-screen electronic voting machines have been observed in four separate states flipping the votes – mostly from Barack Obama to John McCain but sometimes to third party candidates too. This has already occurred during early voting in the states of West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Texas. A county clerk in West Virginia invited a video crew to watch his demonstration of the reliability of the disputed voting machines but instead he saw the machine flipping the votes, as critics claimed. He put this down to the faulty calibration of the voting machine. However, even after he recalibrated the machine it continued to flip votes. Watch the video here: This is further evidence that the electronic voting machines that will be used in the 4 November election are not reliable and accurate – that they are prone to malfunction and may not record the actual vote winner. Democrats are not the only people who are worried. Stephen Spoonamore, a Republican security expert, explains why electronic voting is inherently unsafe in an eight part series of interviews. You can watch Part 1, and access Parts 2 to 7, here. Writing in the New Statesman way back in 2004, reflecting on criticisms of the electronic voting systems used in the presidential election that year, Michael Meacher MP pointed out that statisticians, academics and political analysts had highlighted significant voting differences between electoral districts that used paper ballots and those that used electronic systems. These cannot be explained by random variation. The investigators found a much larger variance than expected and in every case it favoured George W Bush over John Kerry. In Wisconsin and Ohio, the discrepancy favoured Bush by 4 per cent, in Pennsylvania by 5 per cent, in Florida and Minnesota by 7 per cent, in North Carolina by 9 per cent and in New Hampshire by a whopping 15 per cent. Research by the University of Berkeley, California, revealed election irregularities in 2004 in Florida. These irregularities, all of which were associated with electronic voting machines, appear to have awarded between 130,000 to 260,000 additional votes to Bush. The discrepancies between paper and electronic voting could be the result of simple technological glitches. But some experts detect something more sinister: outright vote fixing by interference with voting machine and tabulation software. Meacher reported that Diebold company voting machines and optical scanners may not be tamper-proof from hacking, particularly via remote modems. Diebold machines were used in counting a substantial proportion of the 2004 votes and will be used again in next week's presidential poll. Two US computer security experts, in their book Black Box Voting, state that "by entering a two-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created; and this set of votes can be changed in a matter of seconds, so that it no longer matches the correct votes". This is entirely possible, according to Clinton Curtis, a Florida computer programmer. He has confirmed that in 2000 he designed an undetectable programme for Republican congressman Tom Feeney. It was created to rig elections by covertly switching votes from one candidate to another to ensure a predetermined ballot outcome. See a video of his sworn testimony here. As Robert F Kennedy Jr, nephew of JFK, has exposed, the US is one of the few democracies that allow private, partisan companies to secretly count votes using their own proprietary software. Moreover, the vast majority of western democracies have independent Election Commissions to oversee voting methods and corroborate the results. The US does not. Most election ballots next week will be tallied or scanned by four private companies - Diebold, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic. According to Kennedy: Three of the four companies have close ties to the Republican Party. ES&S, in an earlier corporate incarnation, was chaired by Chuck Hagel, who in 1996 became the first Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Nebraska in twenty-four years - winning a close race in which eighty-five percent of the votes were tallied by his former company. Hart InterCivic ranks among its investors GOP loyalist Tom Hicks, who bought the Texas Rangers from George W. Bush in 1998, making Bush a millionaire fifteen times over. And according to campaign-finance records, Diebold, along with its employees and their families, has contributed at least $300,000 to GOP candidates and party funds since 1998 - including more than $200,000 to the Republican National Committee. In a 2003 fund-raising e-mail, the company's then-CEO Walden O'Dell promised to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush in 2004." Is it right and proper for partisan pro-Republican companies to count the votes? It is certainly not objective and impartial. The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
The unreliable machines we read about are non-existent. The machines are performing exactly as they have been programmed to perform. How often have we heard of similar machines malfunctioning in casinos? Or at ATM locations? Or in grocery stores? How about in banks? With no confidence in our voting process how strong is our democracy?Even Venezuela had a 'fair' election that went against the wishes of Chavez, and he did not 'change' it or have the vote count altered. by
Dennis Kaiser (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 35 diaries, 730 comments [137 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Nov 4, 2008 at 5:45:10 AM
it is not only the electronic voting machines that are a problem. in nyc the lever machines in 6 districts did not record a single vote for obama. all districts were comprised of people who were either poorer and/or people of color. districts such as in harlem, ny had only hiliary clinton votes. if that isn't blatant, i don't know what else is. the primary in new hampshire had a similar problem. hilary only won in districts with electronic voting machines; obama won in all districts with mechanical and paper ballot voting. why don't we have the ability to declare an election invalid either on a local or national level? by
tanya (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 37 comments) on Tuesday, Nov 4, 2008 at 5:52:53 AM
I must note the report on TV at this early hour in the election of one particular voting place in Virginia having problems with thier voting machines. 5 (yes, five) of the available 7 (seven) voting machines malfunctioning. Now, isn't that just a 'hoot'? Seems since it's raining, water has come in contact with the screens on the machines, causing malfunctioning. I wasn't aware there were to be ballots cast in an 'open air' setting anywhere. Or it seems the building being used to cast ballots obviously is in dire need of a new roof.
Go figure! It surely wouldn't be a bit of 'crookery' taking place now. Would it? Not in a needed 'swing state' of all places.
Could the Repub's think so many voing Americans just fell off the 'turnip truck'? by
gen_dig (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 15 comments) on Tuesday, Nov 4, 2008 at 10:37:34 AM
' Why not just flip a coin? The results could at least be trusted to have been fair. by
PrMaine (13 articles, 13 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 510 comments [22 recommended, 1 rejected]) on Tuesday, Nov 4, 2008 at 12:01:14 PM
It's true. Flipping a coin, or even throwing cards @ a hat would quite likely be just as fair, literally hundreds of millions of dollars less expensive, and a whole lot shorter. I note a voter on MSNBC suggested dueling. That would work I suppose. One of the things I liked most about Japan was their law that campaigning could not be longer than 2 weeks. Ours has been going on for almost 2 years. Outrageous. by
Larry Retzack (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 43 comments) on Tuesday, Nov 4, 2008 at 6:35:52 PM
I really don't know what a person could do to make these machines flip votes - you people maybe know the ins and outs more than me. I just got done serving as a "Judge of Elections" in a precinct, and the way it is set up here the "flipping" would have to be programmed in at the County Elections Bureau - and no way could I affect it at all. Based on what people told us how they were voting (they volunteered this - we did not ask) the returns were consistent with what they said - 60-40 in favor of Obama here. by
Fred Bush (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments) on Tuesday, Nov 4, 2008 at 10:03:24 PM
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