What does a pot of coffee, a baseball team in Milwaukee and recent events in America have in common? 
You'd lose ten dollars.
I'll be right here watching as you people refuse to admit you ever voted for the fascists you currently praise.
Originally posted by: Darkhawk28
What does a pot of coffee, a baseball team in Milwaukee and recent events in America have in common?
I don't know, Darkhawk28, What does a pot of coffee, a baseball team in Milwaukee and recent events in America have in common?
Originally posted by: BBond
Originally posted by: Darkhawk28
What does a pot of coffee, a baseball team in Milwaukee and recent events in America have in common?
I don't know, Darkhawk28, What does a pot of coffee, a baseball team in Milwaukee and recent events in America have in common?
They're all brewing.
Originally posted by: Darkhawk28
Originally posted by: BBond
Originally posted by: Darkhawk28
What does a pot of coffee, a baseball team in Milwaukee and recent events in America have in common?
I don't know, Darkhawk28, What does a pot of coffee, a baseball team in Milwaukee and recent events in America have in common?
They're all brewing.
:roll:
I know you've heard this one...
What's the difference between Iraq and Vietnam?
Originally posted by: BBond
Originally posted by: Darkhawk28
Originally posted by: BBond
Originally posted by: Darkhawk28
What does a pot of coffee, a baseball team in Milwaukee and recent events in America have in common?
I don't know, Darkhawk28, What does a pot of coffee, a baseball team in Milwaukee and recent events in America have in common?
They're all brewing.
:roll:
I know you've heard this one...
What's the difference between Iraq and Vietnam?
I could state the obvious, but that wouldn't make a good punchline.
At the expense of being bypartisan, I am inclined to say that some vote rigging was indeed done here in Ohio. Not enough to overturn an election, but they are already documented reports of electronic machines adding votes.
Originally posted by: Darkhawk28
Originally posted by: BBond
Originally posted by: Darkhawk28
Originally posted by: BBond
Originally posted by: Darkhawk28
What does a pot of coffee, a baseball team in Milwaukee and recent events in America have in common?
I don't know, Darkhawk28, What does a pot of coffee, a baseball team in Milwaukee and recent events in America have in common?
They're all brewing.
:roll:
I know you've heard this one...
What's the difference between Iraq and Vietnam?
I could state the obvious, but that wouldn't make a good punchline.
The difference between Iraq and Vietnam is, George W. Bush had a plan for getting out of Vietnam.
Didn't voting irregularities lead Bush to condemn the elections in the Ukraine and demand a new election?
:roll:
CADsortaGUY
Lifer
Keep it up. I'm sure people will "get it" next time right? I mean if you tell people that the nation is dumb enough times - someone is bound to believe it - right? :roll: Oh wait...it didn't work...CsG
"57 Rural Counties Affected - Vote Fraud Suspected
Rural Oklahoma Voting machines know how to count backwards.
(Oklahoma City) November 18, 2004 - Rural Oklahoma Voting machines know how to count backwards.
That looks like what the secretly programmed machines did for Sen. Kerry in President Bush's easily won Presidential Election victory in Oklahoma.
All 77 counties use the Optech Eagle voting machines and Tabulator's made by ES&S, Sen Hagel's republican company.
The respectable, conservative "Tulsa World" newspaper reported Nov 3rd that Kerry was winning in 57 of the states's rural counties., with 70% of the vote counted. Turns out that the famous November 3rd report was probably not supposed to be printed.
It represented the counting when the tabulating was about 70% "complete," as they used to say in the old Soviet Unon.
The "official" State of Oklahoma Election Board vote totals released later show Kerry not winning; but, losing in all the state's 77 counties, including the 57 rural counties. Yea, somebody really messed up, big time, and published a partially completed and, I guess you would haver to call it, "fixed" vote.
A simple comparison of total votes for Kerry between the staid establishment mouthpiece, the "Tulsa World" newspaper and the so-called "official" final vote totals at the State Election Board show fewer votes for Kerry in 57 counties than the "Tulsa World" does.
Fifty-seven of the 57 counties clearly demonstrate that Sen Kerry lost 37,982 votes to the ES&S Optech Machines. During the same time period President Bush gained a whooping 393,825 votes.
Nice, slick, easy way to win an election. As a man once said "He stole it fair and square!"
In other words, Kerry lost votes already cast by voters. The voting machines counted backwards. What could be simpler than that?
Who programs these things, eh? Why, ES&S Corp., of course.
It turns out the every vote in the state, all 1.4 Million of them cast, were counted on the same type of flawed machine, programmed originally by the Hagel's ES&S company.
Whether they knew the difference or not is not known; but, spokesmen for the State Election Board would only say the Machines and Tabulators were fron Optech. They breathed not a word anout ES&S.
Who really won? Well, nobody really knows! Most people in Oklahoma still think President Bush won his Presidential election. Wrong! Time for a re-count, this time by hand!
Not that Oklahoma's very few Electoral Votes make much difference in the grand scheme of things. Except, of course, fraud is suspected in Ohio, too. A recount is already guaranteed in Ohio. What will Oklahoma officials do?
"Film at 11." Fat chance!
People in the Great Flyover State of Oklahoma all know that the Professional Hairdo Anchors in the Oklahoma TV stations and the Radio Celebrities will not touch this with a 30 Foot Pole since their right wing owners keep them on a real short leash.
But, the money is good and the living is easy in Oklahoma, where "The Oklahoma Observer" says 20% of the people can't even read. This makes TV and radio even more important.
If these small state celebrities are reading this, and you know they are, then these parasites know the truth. I dare you, Kelley! Go for it! Get a life, dude! (Kelly Ogle is a local TV personality in Oklahoma City who specializes in "happy talk" transitions.)
Watch for more election 2004 reports here as I get to them. Please circulate and distribute IMC this report widely. You know that none of us can depend on the so-called dominant press to do so in the great state of Oklahoma or the USA anymore.
Meantime, I reminded of the Salsa ad for some company. When informed that somebody had bought Salsa from a company in New York City, an ole boy hollers off screen "Get a rope!"
By the way, what are YOU going to do about this situation?
Copyright 2004, Bob Nichols. All rights reserved. Permission for reposting is allowed provided the complete text and attribution are kept intact. Bob Nichols is a Project Censored Award winner. He lives and works as a writer, political commentator and community organizer in Oklahoma City. Nichols encourages your comments at bobnichols@cox.net "
http://okimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=344
Concerned Locals Push For Presidential Election Fraud Probe
Medford, Oregon -- "We believe exit polls in the Ukraine, but we don't believe exit polls in the U.S.," said Tim Ream. "What is that telling us?" Ream was one of the speakers at a meeting Monday night in the Medford Public Library attended by about 75 people from Southern Oregon who want the federal government as well as state governments to investigate occurrences they say indicate widespread fraud in the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
http://www.culvercitynews.com/...OID=251855&cp=1691
Rural Oklahoma Voting machines know how to count backwards.
(Oklahoma City) November 18, 2004 - Rural Oklahoma Voting machines know how to count backwards.
That looks like what the secretly programmed machines did for Sen. Kerry in President Bush's easily won Presidential Election victory in Oklahoma.
All 77 counties use the Optech Eagle voting machines and Tabulator's made by ES&S, Sen Hagel's republican company.
The respectable, conservative "Tulsa World" newspaper reported Nov 3rd that Kerry was winning in 57 of the states's rural counties., with 70% of the vote counted. Turns out that the famous November 3rd report was probably not supposed to be printed.
It represented the counting when the tabulating was about 70% "complete," as they used to say in the old Soviet Unon.
The "official" State of Oklahoma Election Board vote totals released later show Kerry not winning; but, losing in all the state's 77 counties, including the 57 rural counties. Yea, somebody really messed up, big time, and published a partially completed and, I guess you would haver to call it, "fixed" vote.
A simple comparison of total votes for Kerry between the staid establishment mouthpiece, the "Tulsa World" newspaper and the so-called "official" final vote totals at the State Election Board show fewer votes for Kerry in 57 counties than the "Tulsa World" does.
Fifty-seven of the 57 counties clearly demonstrate that Sen Kerry lost 37,982 votes to the ES&S Optech Machines. During the same time period President Bush gained a whooping 393,825 votes.
Nice, slick, easy way to win an election. As a man once said "He stole it fair and square!"
In other words, Kerry lost votes already cast by voters. The voting machines counted backwards. What could be simpler than that?
Who programs these things, eh? Why, ES&S Corp., of course.
It turns out the every vote in the state, all 1.4 Million of them cast, were counted on the same type of flawed machine, programmed originally by the Hagel's ES&S company.
Whether they knew the difference or not is not known; but, spokesmen for the State Election Board would only say the Machines and Tabulators were fron Optech. They breathed not a word anout ES&S.
Who really won? Well, nobody really knows! Most people in Oklahoma still think President Bush won his Presidential election. Wrong! Time for a re-count, this time by hand!
Not that Oklahoma's very few Electoral Votes make much difference in the grand scheme of things. Except, of course, fraud is suspected in Ohio, too. A recount is already guaranteed in Ohio. What will Oklahoma officials do?
"Film at 11." Fat chance!
People in the Great Flyover State of Oklahoma all know that the Professional Hairdo Anchors in the Oklahoma TV stations and the Radio Celebrities will not touch this with a 30 Foot Pole since their right wing owners keep them on a real short leash.
But, the money is good and the living is easy in Oklahoma, where "The Oklahoma Observer" says 20% of the people can't even read. This makes TV and radio even more important.
If these small state celebrities are reading this, and you know they are, then these parasites know the truth. I dare you, Kelley! Go for it! Get a life, dude! (Kelly Ogle is a local TV personality in Oklahoma City who specializes in "happy talk" transitions.)
Watch for more election 2004 reports here as I get to them. Please circulate and distribute IMC this report widely. You know that none of us can depend on the so-called dominant press to do so in the great state of Oklahoma or the USA anymore.
Meantime, I reminded of the Salsa ad for some company. When informed that somebody had bought Salsa from a company in New York City, an ole boy hollers off screen "Get a rope!"
By the way, what are YOU going to do about this situation?
Copyright 2004, Bob Nichols. All rights reserved. Permission for reposting is allowed provided the complete text and attribution are kept intact. Bob Nichols is a Project Censored Award winner. He lives and works as a writer, political commentator and community organizer in Oklahoma City. Nichols encourages your comments at bobnichols@cox.net "
http://okimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=344
Concerned Locals Push For Presidential Election Fraud Probe
Medford, Oregon -- "We believe exit polls in the Ukraine, but we don't believe exit polls in the U.S.," said Tim Ream. "What is that telling us?" Ream was one of the speakers at a meeting Monday night in the Medford Public Library attended by about 75 people from Southern Oregon who want the federal government as well as state governments to investigate occurrences they say indicate widespread fraud in the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
http://www.culvercitynews.com/...OID=251855&cp=1691
Not really saying much here. Historically the last 40 years OK has gone to the Republican nominee. I guess the whole voter machine conspiracy is meaningful? Oklahoma has not voted for a Democrat for president since LBJ in 1964.
Excuse me while I break something. I'm going over the 1244 reports from Cuyahoga County made to the EIR and I'm discovering for the 1st time HOW MANY PUNCHCARD MACHINES WERE DOWN on election day. One entire polling place had to be shut down as of 3:30 in the afternoon. This is OUTRAGEOUS. These are my neighbors, and I'm so angry I can't type. I live in a mixed suburb in Cuyahoga County, and I notice that there are NO REPORTS - NOT ONE - of machines being down in my suburb, nor in any affluent white suburb. There is a report from Parma and one from W. 150th - blue collar, mostly Republican - but that's it. LOOK AT ALL THEM: 99% of these broken machines are in black communities of Cleveland, some very poor, some even in Shaker Hts. PUNCHCARDS! Suburbs with no reports of broken machines surround these areas in all directions. It's so obvious that this was intentional that I can't believe it wouldn't stand up in court."
http://www.democraticundergrou...&address=203x84186
http://www.democraticundergrou...&address=203x84186
Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY
CsG
I never need to worry that you'll be that someone. Telling you you're dumb will never work. You don't possess the faculties to comprehend.
Oh wait...it didn't work...again...
Feds to Investigate Voting Irregularies
Sat Nov 27,10:50 AM ET
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Congress' investigative agency, responding to complaints from around the country, has begun to look into the Nov. 2 vote count, including the handling of provisional ballots and malfunctions of voting machines.
The presidential results won't change, but the studies could lead to changes.
The Government Accountability Office usually begins investigations in response to specific requests from Congress, but the agency's head, Comptroller General David Walker, said the GAO acted on its own because of the many comments it received about ballot counting.
GAO officials said the investigation was not triggered by a request from several House Democrats, who wrote the agency this month seeking an investigation. The effort, led by senior Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) Democrat John Conyers of Michigan, was not joined by any Republicans.
Walker said in a statement that some of the election work is under way. The probe will cover voter registration, voting machine problems and handling of provisional ballots, which were given to voters who said they were eligible to cast votes although their names were not on the rolls.
He cautioned that the GAO cannot enforce the law if voting irregularities are found, noting that state officials regulate elections and the Justice Department (news - web sites) prosecutes voting rights violations and election fraud.
Conyers said in an interview Wednesday that several House Democrats "want the widest, most impartial investigation that can be had. Whether they (GAO investigators) want to go as far as we want to go, we're not certain. We're at first base. Where do we go from here?"
The congressman said he plans to meet with Walker and key Republicans to see whether Congress should take action to improve election systems.
He said he would like the investigation to include allegations that insufficient numbers of voting machines were sent to some Democratic areas.
The study also should cover how election officials responded to problems they encountered, he said.
Thousands of complaints have poured in to Congress and appeared on Internet sites about problems with the elections, the Democrats said.
In make-or-break Ohio, where Bush won 20 electoral votes, voters cast 155,337 provisional ballots. They are under review by state elections officials, who count them if registration is confirmed. About 78 percent of the ballots counted so far have been deemed valid.
Meanwhile, election officials in two Ohio counties have discovered possible cases of people voting twice in the presidential election, and a third county found about 2,600 ballots were double-counted.
Groups checking election results have overwhelmed Ohio county boards of election with requests for information, and a statewide recount of the presidential vote appears inevitable after a pair of third-party candidates collected enough money to demand one.
Other examples of problems cited by Conyers and other House Democrats:
_In Columbus, Ohio, an electronic voting system gave President Bush (news - web sites) nearly 4,000 extra votes.
_An electronic count of a South Florida gambling ballot initiative failed to record thousands of votes.
_In Guilford County, N.C., vote totals were so large that the tabulation computer didn't count some votes, and a recount awarded an additional 22,000 votes to Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites).
_In San Francisco, a glitch in voting machine software left votes uncounted.
_In Youngstown, Ohio, voters who tried to cast ballots for Kerry on electronic machines saw their votes recorded for President Bush instead.
_In Sarpy County, Neb., a computer problem added thousands of votes to the county total. It was not clear which presidential candidate benefited from the error in the overwhelmingly Republican state.
REPUBLICAN CHALLENGES PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION BASED ON EXIT POLLS
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
from the New York Times
An international election observer mission - from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Parliament, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the Council of Europe - released a preliminary report on Monday declaring that the election did not meet democratic standards.
The observers' findings were seconded by Republican Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Citing the disturbing fact that official results diverged sharply from a range of surveys of voters at polling places, Lugar said, "A concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities."
Other prominent Western observers were unsparing in their criticism of the state's conduct of the election.
"Fundamental flaws in Ukraine's presidential election process subverted its legitimacy," the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, sponsored by the Democratic Party in the United States, declared in its preliminary report. The institute, cited "systematic intimidation, overt manipulation and blatant fraud" that were "designed to achieve a specific outcome irrespective of the will of the people."
-- New York Times
This reporter was unable to reach Senator Lugar regarding the inconsistency of official election results and exit polls in the USA; the intimidation of minority voters in Florida and Ohio; nor the failure to count two million ballots cast, half by African-American voters, in America's first post-democratic election held earlier this month.
Eastern bloc observers noted that balloting in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida did not meet Ukrainian standards, but applauded America's attempt to restore democratic institutions after the overthrow of elected government in 2000.
http://www.democraticundergrou...esg_id=86344&page=
Wayne Madsen will be on radio Today! Listen online.
Listen or download Sunday Monitor with Wayne Madsen! (11/28 and 11/21)
It is the 6PM CST Sunday Monitor show in Houston, also carried by Pacifica network. He is expected to be interviewed around 6:15 - 6:30CST
Topic of course is the new allegations about how technological fraud in the vote counts may have been carried out.
For those who miss it, the program will be in the online archives later.
Huge thread about Madsen at DU
Wayne Madsen will be on radio Today! Listen online.
Listen or download Sunday Monitor with Wayne Madsen! (11/28 and 11/21)
It is the 6PM CST Sunday Monitor show in Houston, also carried by Pacifica network. He is expected to be interviewed around 6:15 - 6:30CST
Topic of course is the new allegations about how technological fraud in the vote counts may have been carried out.
For those who miss it, the program will be in the online archives later.
Huge thread about Madsen at DU
?We want to look at the exit polls,? Jackson said, referring to at least two non-partisan Election Day polls, by Zogby and CNN, which gave Kerry 53 percent and 51 percent of the vote, respectively. ?We don?t want to be presumptuous, but these numbers in the Butler, Clarmont, Warren and Hamilton counties are suspicious.?
By suspicious, Jackson is referring to the latest analysis of the Nov. 2 vote by a coalition of Ohio voting rights activists. In analyzing the still-unofficial results, the totals reveal that C. Ellen Connally, an African-American Democratic candidate from Cleveland for Ohio Chief Justice, received more than 257,000 votes than Kerry.
In Butler County, for example, Connally had 45,457 more votes than Kerry. The reason these vote counts are suspect is because Connelly, a retired African-American judge, was vastly outspent in her race, and did not have the visibility of the presidential race. Thus for a more obscure Democratic candidate, farther down on the ticket, to get a quarter of a million more votes statewide than Kerry, suggests something happened to suggest there may have been a transfer of Kerry votes to Bush.
?This looks like a computer glitch or a computer fix,? said Bob Fitrakis, a lawyer, political scientist and Editor of the Columbus Free Press (http://freepres.org) who has written about election irregularities since Bush was declared the winner. Fitrakis is among the team of lawyers who announced they would soon file an election challenge in the state?s Supreme Court.
?Statistically, Kerry, as the Democratic presidential candidate, should have more votes than Connally. In a presidential election, most voters have the priority of casting a vote for president and the votes for president are almost always much higher than those of candidates farther down the ticket. When voters vote for Democratic candidates farther down the ticket, it is usually being driven by a sample ballot from the Party, starting at the top with president. Many voters simply don?t vote for Supreme Court justices. It is highly improbable that Connally?s vote totals would be so much higher than Kerry?s,? Fitrakis said.
The fact that Warren County has such odd vote counts is no surprise to Fitrakis. ?The Republican-dominated county threw out all the media and independent vote watchers when votes were being counted at the end of Election Day, claiming ?homeland security? issues. This would have easily allowed for the wholesale shifting of a large amount of votes from Kerry to Bush. If you?re behind closed doors, it is easy enough to do. The November issues of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines show how easy it is to hack the vote and steal an election. The articles are called ?E-vote emergency: And you thought dimpled chads were bad? and ?Could hackers tilt the election?? I think they did,? explained Fitrakis.
Fitrakis said that when one looks at the Connally-Kerry results across the state, it becomes clear that Connally ? who was on the Ohio Democratic Party sample ballots ? was getting tens of thousands of votes in counties that were known to be Republican strongholds, until this year?s unprecedented voter registration and mobilization efforts.
There were 15 Ohio counties where Connally?s margin was 5,000 votes or more better than Kerry?s unofficial results. In five counties, Connally had a 10,000-vote margin or better. These counties used punch card, optical scan, and touch screen voting machines ? with most using punch card systems.
This analysis is merely the latest that has been uncovered about how Ohio?s Nov. 2 vote was tilted toward Bush. Immediately after the election, there were reports that the number of voting machines brought to the state?s urban, Democratic-leaning precincts was deliberately shorted. There were numerous sworn statements from voters in urban areas that the voter rolls were old and out-of-date, forcing voters, many registered for years, to use provisional ballots ? which get counted last or do not get counted at all unless the voter was in the right precinct. Voters also testified under oath about machines malfunctioning and recording votes for Bush when people believed they had selected Kerry.
All of these trends ? plus the fact that the Bush victory did not jibe with at least two non-partisan exit polls taken on Election Day in Ohio ? are behind Jesse Jackson?s trip to the state today, Sunday, Nov. 28.
Jackson will visit Columbus and Cincinnati to meet with voters, civil rights activists, ministers and others who are working for a full accounting of the Ohio presidential vote. Jackson said he hoped to coordinate these activities and his organization, Rainbow-PUSH, would join litigation seeking to challenge Bush?s alleged victory at the state Supreme Court.
More...
By suspicious, Jackson is referring to the latest analysis of the Nov. 2 vote by a coalition of Ohio voting rights activists. In analyzing the still-unofficial results, the totals reveal that C. Ellen Connally, an African-American Democratic candidate from Cleveland for Ohio Chief Justice, received more than 257,000 votes than Kerry.
In Butler County, for example, Connally had 45,457 more votes than Kerry. The reason these vote counts are suspect is because Connelly, a retired African-American judge, was vastly outspent in her race, and did not have the visibility of the presidential race. Thus for a more obscure Democratic candidate, farther down on the ticket, to get a quarter of a million more votes statewide than Kerry, suggests something happened to suggest there may have been a transfer of Kerry votes to Bush.
?This looks like a computer glitch or a computer fix,? said Bob Fitrakis, a lawyer, political scientist and Editor of the Columbus Free Press (http://freepres.org) who has written about election irregularities since Bush was declared the winner. Fitrakis is among the team of lawyers who announced they would soon file an election challenge in the state?s Supreme Court.
?Statistically, Kerry, as the Democratic presidential candidate, should have more votes than Connally. In a presidential election, most voters have the priority of casting a vote for president and the votes for president are almost always much higher than those of candidates farther down the ticket. When voters vote for Democratic candidates farther down the ticket, it is usually being driven by a sample ballot from the Party, starting at the top with president. Many voters simply don?t vote for Supreme Court justices. It is highly improbable that Connally?s vote totals would be so much higher than Kerry?s,? Fitrakis said.
The fact that Warren County has such odd vote counts is no surprise to Fitrakis. ?The Republican-dominated county threw out all the media and independent vote watchers when votes were being counted at the end of Election Day, claiming ?homeland security? issues. This would have easily allowed for the wholesale shifting of a large amount of votes from Kerry to Bush. If you?re behind closed doors, it is easy enough to do. The November issues of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines show how easy it is to hack the vote and steal an election. The articles are called ?E-vote emergency: And you thought dimpled chads were bad? and ?Could hackers tilt the election?? I think they did,? explained Fitrakis.
Fitrakis said that when one looks at the Connally-Kerry results across the state, it becomes clear that Connally ? who was on the Ohio Democratic Party sample ballots ? was getting tens of thousands of votes in counties that were known to be Republican strongholds, until this year?s unprecedented voter registration and mobilization efforts.
There were 15 Ohio counties where Connally?s margin was 5,000 votes or more better than Kerry?s unofficial results. In five counties, Connally had a 10,000-vote margin or better. These counties used punch card, optical scan, and touch screen voting machines ? with most using punch card systems.
This analysis is merely the latest that has been uncovered about how Ohio?s Nov. 2 vote was tilted toward Bush. Immediately after the election, there were reports that the number of voting machines brought to the state?s urban, Democratic-leaning precincts was deliberately shorted. There were numerous sworn statements from voters in urban areas that the voter rolls were old and out-of-date, forcing voters, many registered for years, to use provisional ballots ? which get counted last or do not get counted at all unless the voter was in the right precinct. Voters also testified under oath about machines malfunctioning and recording votes for Bush when people believed they had selected Kerry.
All of these trends ? plus the fact that the Bush victory did not jibe with at least two non-partisan exit polls taken on Election Day in Ohio ? are behind Jesse Jackson?s trip to the state today, Sunday, Nov. 28.
Jackson will visit Columbus and Cincinnati to meet with voters, civil rights activists, ministers and others who are working for a full accounting of the Ohio presidential vote. Jackson said he hoped to coordinate these activities and his organization, Rainbow-PUSH, would join litigation seeking to challenge Bush?s alleged victory at the state Supreme Court.
More...
Widespread Election Fraud in Cleveland
by Bob Fertik on November 22, 2004 - 1:44am.
I received this fascinating analysis on Friday. I am publishing it in the hope that readers will examine the data with as much scrutiny as Dr. Hayes has. The preliminary results for Cuyahoga County are here.
Bob
From: Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.
Date: November 19, 2004
Attached is my recently completed precinct by precinct analysis of the 2004 presidential vote in Cleveland. There are wholesale shifts of scores of votes from the Kerry column to other candidates, and astonishingly low turnouts in certain precincts and entire wards. The Ohio recount will prove these numbers to be fraudulent.
I may have identified only the tip of the iceberg. I note that there are 17,741 uncounted ballots in Cuyahoga County. Kerry's margin in Cleveland was reportedly 108,659 votes with a 49.89% turnout. The rest of Cuyahoga County had a 71.95% turnout. Such a turnout in Cleveland would have given Kerry a margin of 156,705 votes, left Bush with a statewide margin of 85,007 votes, and with 248,100 votes still uncounted, nobody would be conceding Ohio.
This is a situation that demands rigorous investigation. I can imagine Michael Moore going door to door in Ward 4, Precinct F, looking for the 215 Peroutka voters, or in Ward 4, Precinct N, looking for the 163 Badnarik voters. Or going door to door in Ward 6, Precinct C, to find out why the turnout was only 7.10% - or in Ward 13, Precincts D, F, and O, to find out why the turnout was only 13.05%, 19.60%, and 21.01%, respectively.
More...
by Bob Fertik on November 22, 2004 - 1:44am.
I received this fascinating analysis on Friday. I am publishing it in the hope that readers will examine the data with as much scrutiny as Dr. Hayes has. The preliminary results for Cuyahoga County are here.
Bob
From: Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.
Date: November 19, 2004
Attached is my recently completed precinct by precinct analysis of the 2004 presidential vote in Cleveland. There are wholesale shifts of scores of votes from the Kerry column to other candidates, and astonishingly low turnouts in certain precincts and entire wards. The Ohio recount will prove these numbers to be fraudulent.
I may have identified only the tip of the iceberg. I note that there are 17,741 uncounted ballots in Cuyahoga County. Kerry's margin in Cleveland was reportedly 108,659 votes with a 49.89% turnout. The rest of Cuyahoga County had a 71.95% turnout. Such a turnout in Cleveland would have given Kerry a margin of 156,705 votes, left Bush with a statewide margin of 85,007 votes, and with 248,100 votes still uncounted, nobody would be conceding Ohio.
This is a situation that demands rigorous investigation. I can imagine Michael Moore going door to door in Ward 4, Precinct F, looking for the 215 Peroutka voters, or in Ward 4, Precinct N, looking for the 163 Badnarik voters. Or going door to door in Ward 6, Precinct C, to find out why the turnout was only 7.10% - or in Ward 13, Precincts D, F, and O, to find out why the turnout was only 13.05%, 19.60%, and 21.01%, respectively.
More...
The controversy makes Yahoo! News...
Nearly a Month Later, Ohio Fight Goes On
1 hour, 53 minutes ago
By JOHN McCARTHY, Associated Press Writer
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Nearly a month after John Kerry conceded Ohio to President Bush, complaints and challenges about the balloting are mounting as activists including the Rev. Jesse Jackson demand closer scrutiny to ensure the votes are being counted on the up-and-up.
Jackson has been holding rallies in Ohio in recent days to draw attention to the vote, and another critic plans to ask the state Supreme Court this week to decide the validity of the election.
Ohio essentially decided the outcome of the presidential race, with Kerry giving up after unofficial results showed Bush with a 136,000-vote lead in the state.
Since then, there have been demands for a recount and complaints about uncounted punch-card votes, disqualified provisional ballots and a ballot-machine error that gave hundreds of extra votes to Bush.
Jackson said too many questions have been raised to let the vote stand without closer examination.
"We can live with winning and losing. We cannot live with fraud and stealing," Jackson said Sunday at Mount Hermon Baptist Church.
An attorney for a political advocacy group on Wednesday plans to file a "contest of election." The request requires a single Supreme Court justice to either let the election stand, declare another winner or throw the whole thing out. The loser can appeal to the full seven-member court, which is dominated by Republicans 5-2.
Jackson said he agreed with the court filing planned by lawyer Cliff Arnebeck, who has represented the Boston-based Alliance for Democracy in other cases.
"The integrity of our election process is on trial," Jackson said Monday in Cincinnati.
Elections officials concede some mistakes were made but no more than most elections.
"There are no signs of widespread irregularities," said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.
Blackwell, a Republican, has until Dec. 6 to certify the vote. The Green and Libertarian parties are raising money to pay for a recount that would be held once the results are certified.
Other critics have seized on an error in an electronic voting system that gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in a suburban Columbus precinct where only 638 people voted. The extra votes are part of the current unofficial tally, but they will not be included in the official count that will be certified by the secretary of state.
Some groups also have complained about thousands of punch-card ballots that were not counted because officials in the 68 counties that use them could not determine a vote for president. Votes for other offices on the cards were counted.
Jackson said Blackwell, who along with other statewide GOP leaders was a co-chairman of Bush's re-election campaign in Ohio, should step down from overseeing the election process.
"You can't be chairman of the Bush campaign and then be the chief umpire in the seventh game of the World Series," Jackson said.
Blackwell's office responded by saying the state has a "bipartisan and transparent system that provides valuable checks and balances."
"The problem seems to be that Rev. Jackson's candidate didn't win," said Carlo LoParo, a Blackwell spokesman.
Nearly a Month Later, Ohio Fight Goes On
1 hour, 53 minutes ago
By JOHN McCARTHY, Associated Press Writer
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Nearly a month after John Kerry conceded Ohio to President Bush, complaints and challenges about the balloting are mounting as activists including the Rev. Jesse Jackson demand closer scrutiny to ensure the votes are being counted on the up-and-up.
Jackson has been holding rallies in Ohio in recent days to draw attention to the vote, and another critic plans to ask the state Supreme Court this week to decide the validity of the election.
Ohio essentially decided the outcome of the presidential race, with Kerry giving up after unofficial results showed Bush with a 136,000-vote lead in the state.
Since then, there have been demands for a recount and complaints about uncounted punch-card votes, disqualified provisional ballots and a ballot-machine error that gave hundreds of extra votes to Bush.
Jackson said too many questions have been raised to let the vote stand without closer examination.
"We can live with winning and losing. We cannot live with fraud and stealing," Jackson said Sunday at Mount Hermon Baptist Church.
An attorney for a political advocacy group on Wednesday plans to file a "contest of election." The request requires a single Supreme Court justice to either let the election stand, declare another winner or throw the whole thing out. The loser can appeal to the full seven-member court, which is dominated by Republicans 5-2.
Jackson said he agreed with the court filing planned by lawyer Cliff Arnebeck, who has represented the Boston-based Alliance for Democracy in other cases.
"The integrity of our election process is on trial," Jackson said Monday in Cincinnati.
Elections officials concede some mistakes were made but no more than most elections.
"There are no signs of widespread irregularities," said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.
Blackwell, a Republican, has until Dec. 6 to certify the vote. The Green and Libertarian parties are raising money to pay for a recount that would be held once the results are certified.
Other critics have seized on an error in an electronic voting system that gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in a suburban Columbus precinct where only 638 people voted. The extra votes are part of the current unofficial tally, but they will not be included in the official count that will be certified by the secretary of state.
Some groups also have complained about thousands of punch-card ballots that were not counted because officials in the 68 counties that use them could not determine a vote for president. Votes for other offices on the cards were counted.
Jackson said Blackwell, who along with other statewide GOP leaders was a co-chairman of Bush's re-election campaign in Ohio, should step down from overseeing the election process.
"You can't be chairman of the Bush campaign and then be the chief umpire in the seventh game of the World Series," Jackson said.
Blackwell's office responded by saying the state has a "bipartisan and transparent system that provides valuable checks and balances."
"The problem seems to be that Rev. Jackson's candidate didn't win," said Carlo LoParo, a Blackwell spokesman.
Did Dubbya rig the election?
Michael Meacher
Monday 29th November 2004
Michael Meacher smells something fishy in Bush's return to office. The evidence of fraud is not yet conclusive but, given the Republicans' record, it is all too plausible
The great mystery of the US presidential election was that the exit polls, which had been reliable guides in all previous elections, did not tally with the final results. Tony Blair, it is said, went to sleep on 2 November thinking John Kerry had won, but woke in the morning to find that George W Bush was the victor. Many Britons and Americans had the same experience. Nobody has advanced a satisfactory explanation. Now allegations are surfacing that the use of electronic voting systems and optical scanning devices may have had a significant influence on the result. Computer security experts insist that such sys- tems are not secure and not tamper-proof, yet they were used to count a third of the votes across 37 states. Though the Democrats remain strangely coy about the whole subject, academics and political analysts are now drawing comparisons between areas that used paper ballots and areas that used electronic systems. Is it possible that results in the latter were rigged?
An analysis of the poll by different states points up inconsistencies that cannot be explained by random variation. In Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Iowa, New Mexico, Maine, Nevada, Arkansas and Missouri, where a variety of different voting systems were used, including paper ballots in many cases, the four companies carrying out exit polls were almost exactly right and their results were certainly within the margin of error. In Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire and North Carolina, however, where electronic or optical scanning machines were used (though not exclusively), the tracking polls were seriously discrepant from the published result.
Two aspects of this are immediately striking. One is the large size of the variance, and the other is that in every case it favoured Bush. 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 an astonishing 15 per cent.
Moreover, extensive voting irregularities have been reported across the US - including intimidation, exclusion of black voters from electoral rolls, touchscreens that consistently registered support for Bush when the name Kerry was touched, and a large number of county precincts (including in Ohio) where the number of votes cast exceeded the total number of registered voters, sometimes by large margins. In Florida, for example, the number of votes reported for all the candidates exceeded the maximum possible voter turnout by 237,522, so that a minimum of 3.1 per cent of the votes must be fraudulent, and possibly considerably more. Florida uses electronic voting machines in 15 counties, and these account for a majority of the state's residents.
None of this is conclusive evidence of fraud. But an independent inquiry is surely needed to expose what really happened in Florida and several other states. Some Americans are already demanding such an inquiry. Court hearings, held in public in Columbus, Ohio, will very likely lead to at least a partial recount in that state. Ralph Nader, the Green candidate, may have secured a recount in New Hampshire, and is demanding recounts also in Ohio, Florida and North Carolina. And a survey by the University of Berkeley, California, has shown that irregularities in Florida associated with electronic voting machines seem to have awarded 130,000 to 260,000 or more excess votes to Bush.
One's immediate reaction is that such large-scale fraud is implausible. But look at the history of the Republican Party, and its willingness to go to extraordinary lengths to manipulate the popular vote, and the idea seems all too likely.
The best-known example was the Watergate break-in of 1972, designed to get illicit access to Democrat plans for a presidential election that Richard Nixon feared he would lose. At the previous election in 1968, Nixon's aides were charged with persuading the South Vietnamese to delay their participation in peace talks to deny possible advantage to the Democrats, then in office.
But that was only a precursor for 1980. In that year, when Ronald Reagan was the Republican candidate trying to stop the re-election of President Jimmy Carter, a potentially treasonable plot was hatched, which came to be known as the "October surprise". To stop Carter getting the credit for securing the release of the 52 US embassy hostages seized after the Iranian revolution, members of the Reagan campaign flew to Paris to meet Iranian and Israeli representatives in October, less than a month before the election on 4 November. Several sources, including the New York Times (15 April 1991), confirm that not only did William Casey, the CIA director, attend those meetings, but so did the vice-presidential candidate George Bush (father of George W).
It was agreed with the Iranians that the hostages would not be released before the election. In return, the Reagan-Bush team promised to supply $40m of military equipment if elected. Military equipment started to flow to Iran from Israel on 21 October, the proffered release of the hostages was withdrawn, and Carter was defeated. The hostages were finally released on 21 January 1981, minutes after Reagan was sworn in as president.
The Iran-Contra affair followed in 1986-87. After the US Congress had passed the Boland Amendment in 1982 forbidding direct military aid to the Contras in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration again ferried arms secretly to Iran (then subject to a US arms embargo), and then used the proceeds to fund weaponry for the Contras. Even when this deal, illegal at both ends, was later exposed, the administration's web of deceit managed to shield Reagan and Bush from the consequences of their conspiracy.
Once elected, Bush junior used his authority to keep this material hidden for ever. In November 2001, he signed an executive order that limited freedom of information by allowing either a past or sitting president to block access to White House papers. He then vetoed access to Reagan's papers, which would otherwise have been opened to public scrutiny in January 2002. Under this order, Bush's personal papers, detailing the decision-making process in the war on terrorism, could remain secret in perpetuity.
The most recent example of Republican manipulation is notorious. After the Bush-Gore race for the presidency in 2000, it later emerged that, under the governorship of George W's brother Jeb in Florida, around 30,000 black voters (overwhelmingly Democratic) had been illegally excluded from the voting rolls. When a stop was put to the recounts in the state, Bush was declared the winner by fewer than 540 votes.
So can we really be sure that this year's result was an accurate reflection of the popular will? It has emerged that the Diebold Gems software and optical scan voting machines used in counting a high proportion of the votes may not be tamper-proof from hacking, particularly via remote modems. Two US computer security experts, in their recently published book Black Box Voting, argue 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". After the Florida fiasco four years earlier, the US Congress voted $3.9bn to improve the quality of voting systems. Perhaps the latest revelations about what happened where electronic systems were used may become known as the "November surprise".
Michael Meacher is Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton
This article first appeared in the New Statesman. For the latest in current and cultural affairs subscribe to the New Statesman print edition.
Michael Meacher
Monday 29th November 2004
Michael Meacher smells something fishy in Bush's return to office. The evidence of fraud is not yet conclusive but, given the Republicans' record, it is all too plausible
The great mystery of the US presidential election was that the exit polls, which had been reliable guides in all previous elections, did not tally with the final results. Tony Blair, it is said, went to sleep on 2 November thinking John Kerry had won, but woke in the morning to find that George W Bush was the victor. Many Britons and Americans had the same experience. Nobody has advanced a satisfactory explanation. Now allegations are surfacing that the use of electronic voting systems and optical scanning devices may have had a significant influence on the result. Computer security experts insist that such sys- tems are not secure and not tamper-proof, yet they were used to count a third of the votes across 37 states. Though the Democrats remain strangely coy about the whole subject, academics and political analysts are now drawing comparisons between areas that used paper ballots and areas that used electronic systems. Is it possible that results in the latter were rigged?
An analysis of the poll by different states points up inconsistencies that cannot be explained by random variation. In Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Iowa, New Mexico, Maine, Nevada, Arkansas and Missouri, where a variety of different voting systems were used, including paper ballots in many cases, the four companies carrying out exit polls were almost exactly right and their results were certainly within the margin of error. In Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire and North Carolina, however, where electronic or optical scanning machines were used (though not exclusively), the tracking polls were seriously discrepant from the published result.
Two aspects of this are immediately striking. One is the large size of the variance, and the other is that in every case it favoured Bush. 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 an astonishing 15 per cent.
Moreover, extensive voting irregularities have been reported across the US - including intimidation, exclusion of black voters from electoral rolls, touchscreens that consistently registered support for Bush when the name Kerry was touched, and a large number of county precincts (including in Ohio) where the number of votes cast exceeded the total number of registered voters, sometimes by large margins. In Florida, for example, the number of votes reported for all the candidates exceeded the maximum possible voter turnout by 237,522, so that a minimum of 3.1 per cent of the votes must be fraudulent, and possibly considerably more. Florida uses electronic voting machines in 15 counties, and these account for a majority of the state's residents.
None of this is conclusive evidence of fraud. But an independent inquiry is surely needed to expose what really happened in Florida and several other states. Some Americans are already demanding such an inquiry. Court hearings, held in public in Columbus, Ohio, will very likely lead to at least a partial recount in that state. Ralph Nader, the Green candidate, may have secured a recount in New Hampshire, and is demanding recounts also in Ohio, Florida and North Carolina. And a survey by the University of Berkeley, California, has shown that irregularities in Florida associated with electronic voting machines seem to have awarded 130,000 to 260,000 or more excess votes to Bush.
One's immediate reaction is that such large-scale fraud is implausible. But look at the history of the Republican Party, and its willingness to go to extraordinary lengths to manipulate the popular vote, and the idea seems all too likely.
The best-known example was the Watergate break-in of 1972, designed to get illicit access to Democrat plans for a presidential election that Richard Nixon feared he would lose. At the previous election in 1968, Nixon's aides were charged with persuading the South Vietnamese to delay their participation in peace talks to deny possible advantage to the Democrats, then in office.
But that was only a precursor for 1980. In that year, when Ronald Reagan was the Republican candidate trying to stop the re-election of President Jimmy Carter, a potentially treasonable plot was hatched, which came to be known as the "October surprise". To stop Carter getting the credit for securing the release of the 52 US embassy hostages seized after the Iranian revolution, members of the Reagan campaign flew to Paris to meet Iranian and Israeli representatives in October, less than a month before the election on 4 November. Several sources, including the New York Times (15 April 1991), confirm that not only did William Casey, the CIA director, attend those meetings, but so did the vice-presidential candidate George Bush (father of George W).
It was agreed with the Iranians that the hostages would not be released before the election. In return, the Reagan-Bush team promised to supply $40m of military equipment if elected. Military equipment started to flow to Iran from Israel on 21 October, the proffered release of the hostages was withdrawn, and Carter was defeated. The hostages were finally released on 21 January 1981, minutes after Reagan was sworn in as president.
The Iran-Contra affair followed in 1986-87. After the US Congress had passed the Boland Amendment in 1982 forbidding direct military aid to the Contras in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration again ferried arms secretly to Iran (then subject to a US arms embargo), and then used the proceeds to fund weaponry for the Contras. Even when this deal, illegal at both ends, was later exposed, the administration's web of deceit managed to shield Reagan and Bush from the consequences of their conspiracy.
Once elected, Bush junior used his authority to keep this material hidden for ever. In November 2001, he signed an executive order that limited freedom of information by allowing either a past or sitting president to block access to White House papers. He then vetoed access to Reagan's papers, which would otherwise have been opened to public scrutiny in January 2002. Under this order, Bush's personal papers, detailing the decision-making process in the war on terrorism, could remain secret in perpetuity.
The most recent example of Republican manipulation is notorious. After the Bush-Gore race for the presidency in 2000, it later emerged that, under the governorship of George W's brother Jeb in Florida, around 30,000 black voters (overwhelmingly Democratic) had been illegally excluded from the voting rolls. When a stop was put to the recounts in the state, Bush was declared the winner by fewer than 540 votes.
So can we really be sure that this year's result was an accurate reflection of the popular will? It has emerged that the Diebold Gems software and optical scan voting machines used in counting a high proportion of the votes may not be tamper-proof from hacking, particularly via remote modems. Two US computer security experts, in their recently published book Black Box Voting, argue 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". After the Florida fiasco four years earlier, the US Congress voted $3.9bn to improve the quality of voting systems. Perhaps the latest revelations about what happened where electronic systems were used may become known as the "November surprise".
Michael Meacher is Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton
This article first appeared in the New Statesman. For the latest in current and cultural affairs subscribe to the New Statesman print edition.
Pliablemoose
Lifer
- Oct 11, 1999
- 25,195
- 0
- 56
Electronic Voting 1.0, and No Time to Upgrade
By JAMES FALLOWS
Published: November 28, 2004
I TRUST computers. When I first used A.T.M.'s, nearly 30 years ago, I carefully saved receipts in a folder and matched them with the bank's monthly statement. Now I sometimes stuff the receipts in my wallet, but I almost never look at them again. The only banking error I've encountered in all those years was when a human teller left a final zero off a deposit I had made.
I still pore over credit card statements, but mainly to see whether some person, not some machine, has issued the proper refund credit or made an improper charge. I've sent e-mail messages to the wrong people by mistyping an address or hitting the oh-so-dangerous "Reply All" button, but never because the system routes it where it shouldn't go. When I travel, I assume that the e-ticket I booked through my computer will be valid and that frequent-flier miles will show up in my account.
Yet when I went to my polling place in Washington on Election Day, I waited an extra half-hour in line to cast a paper ballot, instead of using the computerized touch-screen voting machine. Am I irrational? Perhaps, but this would not be the evidence.
A columnist in The Washington Post recently suggested that nostalgia for paper ballots, in today's reliably computerized world, must reflect a Luddite disdain for technology in general or an Oliver Stone-style paranoia about the schemings of the political world.
Not at all. It can also arise from a clear understanding of how computers work - and don't. The more you know about the operations of today's widely trusted commercial computer networks, the more concerned you become about most electronic-voting systems.
The phenomenal reliability of the systems we trust for banking, communication, and everything else rests on two bedrock principles. One is the universal understanding in the technology world that nothing works right the first time, and maybe not the first 50 times.
When I worked briefly on a product design team at Microsoft, I was sobered to learn that fully one-fourth of the company's typical two-year "product cycle time" was devoted to testing. Programmers spend 18 months designing and debugging a system. Then testers spend the next six months finding the problems they missed. It is no secret that even then, the "final" software from Microsoft, or any other company, is far from perfect.
Today's mature systems work as well as they do only because they are exposed to nonstop, high-stakes torture testing. EBay lists nearly four million new items each day. If a problem affects even a tiny fraction of its users, eBay will be swamped with reports immediately.
Millions of data packets are being routed across the Internet every second. If servers, domain-name directories or other components cannot handle the volume, the problem will become apparent quickly. Years ago, bank or airline computers would often be "down" because of unforeseen problems. Now they're mostly "up," because they've had so long for flaws to become exposed.
The second crucial element in making reliable systems is accountability. Users can trust today's systems precisely because they don't have to take them on trust. Some important computer systems run on open-source software, like Linux, in which the code itself can be examined by outsiders.
Virtually all systems provide some sort of confirmation of transactions. You have the slip from the A.T.M., the receipt for your credit card charge, the printout of your e-ticket reservation. If your e-mail message doesn't go through, there is still the copy in your "Sent" folder. This is the technology world's counterpart to the check-and-balance principle in the United States government. The first concept, robust testing, protects against unintended flaws. The second, accountability, guards against purposeful distortions.
Which brings us back to electronic voting. On the available evidence, I don't believe that voting-machine irregularities, or other problems on Election Day, determined who would be the next president. The apparent margins for President Bush were too large, in Ohio and nationwide. But if the race had been any closer, we could not have said for sure that the machines hadn't made the difference. That is because many electronic systems violate the two basic rules of trustworthy computing.
By definition, they have barely been exposed to real-world testing. The kind of thorough workout that Visa's or Google's systems receive every hour happens for voting machines on only a few special days a year. By commercial standards, the systems are necessarily still in "beta version" - theoretically debugged, but not yet vetted by extensive, unpredictable experience - when voters show up to choose a president.
Four years ago, about one-eighth of all votes for president were cast electronically. This year, nearly a third were. How the system would handle that large increase in scale could not have been tested until the presidency was at stake. Worse, most of the electronic systems are not accountable. When I voted this year, I fed my paper ballot through an optical scanner and into a storage box. In a recount, those ballots could have been pulled out and run through the scanner again. If I had used the touch screen, I would have had no tangible evidence that the vote counted or was recountable.
Is that a problem because the chief executive of Diebold, the largest maker of such systems, is a prominent Republican partisan? No. It's a problem because it defies the check-and-balance logic built into every other electronic transaction.
AN inherently untrustworthy voting system might not be the worst distortion in modern politics. My nominee for that honor would be the structure of the United States Senate, where each state has two votes. When it was set up, there was a nine-to-one imbalance in voting population between the largest state, Virginia, and the smallest, Delaware. (Counting slaves, Virginia's edge increased to 12 to 1.) Now it's nearly 70 to 1 (California versus Wyoming), making the Senate our own equivalent of the United Nations General Assembly as a forum for overrepresented small states.
But the spread of voting systems that further erode Americans' faith in their democracy is serious enough. And while the Senate isn't going to change anytime soon, electronic systems can change - and, for the sake of credible democracy, must change - before we choose another president. Extensive discussions are under way at sites like VerifiedVoting.org, CalVoter.org, and the "news for nerds" forum Slashdot.org about inexpensive, practical ways to make automated voting as reliable as, say, buying books online. Their recommendations make sense. But you don't have to trust my opinion. Read them and see.
By JAMES FALLOWS
Published: November 28, 2004
I TRUST computers. When I first used A.T.M.'s, nearly 30 years ago, I carefully saved receipts in a folder and matched them with the bank's monthly statement. Now I sometimes stuff the receipts in my wallet, but I almost never look at them again. The only banking error I've encountered in all those years was when a human teller left a final zero off a deposit I had made.
I still pore over credit card statements, but mainly to see whether some person, not some machine, has issued the proper refund credit or made an improper charge. I've sent e-mail messages to the wrong people by mistyping an address or hitting the oh-so-dangerous "Reply All" button, but never because the system routes it where it shouldn't go. When I travel, I assume that the e-ticket I booked through my computer will be valid and that frequent-flier miles will show up in my account.
Yet when I went to my polling place in Washington on Election Day, I waited an extra half-hour in line to cast a paper ballot, instead of using the computerized touch-screen voting machine. Am I irrational? Perhaps, but this would not be the evidence.
A columnist in The Washington Post recently suggested that nostalgia for paper ballots, in today's reliably computerized world, must reflect a Luddite disdain for technology in general or an Oliver Stone-style paranoia about the schemings of the political world.
Not at all. It can also arise from a clear understanding of how computers work - and don't. The more you know about the operations of today's widely trusted commercial computer networks, the more concerned you become about most electronic-voting systems.
The phenomenal reliability of the systems we trust for banking, communication, and everything else rests on two bedrock principles. One is the universal understanding in the technology world that nothing works right the first time, and maybe not the first 50 times.
When I worked briefly on a product design team at Microsoft, I was sobered to learn that fully one-fourth of the company's typical two-year "product cycle time" was devoted to testing. Programmers spend 18 months designing and debugging a system. Then testers spend the next six months finding the problems they missed. It is no secret that even then, the "final" software from Microsoft, or any other company, is far from perfect.
Today's mature systems work as well as they do only because they are exposed to nonstop, high-stakes torture testing. EBay lists nearly four million new items each day. If a problem affects even a tiny fraction of its users, eBay will be swamped with reports immediately.
Millions of data packets are being routed across the Internet every second. If servers, domain-name directories or other components cannot handle the volume, the problem will become apparent quickly. Years ago, bank or airline computers would often be "down" because of unforeseen problems. Now they're mostly "up," because they've had so long for flaws to become exposed.
The second crucial element in making reliable systems is accountability. Users can trust today's systems precisely because they don't have to take them on trust. Some important computer systems run on open-source software, like Linux, in which the code itself can be examined by outsiders.
Virtually all systems provide some sort of confirmation of transactions. You have the slip from the A.T.M., the receipt for your credit card charge, the printout of your e-ticket reservation. If your e-mail message doesn't go through, there is still the copy in your "Sent" folder. This is the technology world's counterpart to the check-and-balance principle in the United States government. The first concept, robust testing, protects against unintended flaws. The second, accountability, guards against purposeful distortions.
Which brings us back to electronic voting. On the available evidence, I don't believe that voting-machine irregularities, or other problems on Election Day, determined who would be the next president. The apparent margins for President Bush were too large, in Ohio and nationwide. But if the race had been any closer, we could not have said for sure that the machines hadn't made the difference. That is because many electronic systems violate the two basic rules of trustworthy computing.
By definition, they have barely been exposed to real-world testing. The kind of thorough workout that Visa's or Google's systems receive every hour happens for voting machines on only a few special days a year. By commercial standards, the systems are necessarily still in "beta version" - theoretically debugged, but not yet vetted by extensive, unpredictable experience - when voters show up to choose a president.
Four years ago, about one-eighth of all votes for president were cast electronically. This year, nearly a third were. How the system would handle that large increase in scale could not have been tested until the presidency was at stake. Worse, most of the electronic systems are not accountable. When I voted this year, I fed my paper ballot through an optical scanner and into a storage box. In a recount, those ballots could have been pulled out and run through the scanner again. If I had used the touch screen, I would have had no tangible evidence that the vote counted or was recountable.
Is that a problem because the chief executive of Diebold, the largest maker of such systems, is a prominent Republican partisan? No. It's a problem because it defies the check-and-balance logic built into every other electronic transaction.
AN inherently untrustworthy voting system might not be the worst distortion in modern politics. My nominee for that honor would be the structure of the United States Senate, where each state has two votes. When it was set up, there was a nine-to-one imbalance in voting population between the largest state, Virginia, and the smallest, Delaware. (Counting slaves, Virginia's edge increased to 12 to 1.) Now it's nearly 70 to 1 (California versus Wyoming), making the Senate our own equivalent of the United Nations General Assembly as a forum for overrepresented small states.
But the spread of voting systems that further erode Americans' faith in their democracy is serious enough. And while the Senate isn't going to change anytime soon, electronic systems can change - and, for the sake of credible democracy, must change - before we choose another president. Extensive discussions are under way at sites like VerifiedVoting.org, CalVoter.org, and the "news for nerds" forum Slashdot.org about inexpensive, practical ways to make automated voting as reliable as, say, buying books online. Their recommendations make sense. But you don't have to trust my opinion. Read them and see.
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