Lawsuit seeks to ban ballot-counting machines in Arizona

[brooklynite]

Source: Arizona Daily Star

PHOENIX — Two Republicans seeking statewide office are asking a federal judge to block the use of machines to tabulate the votes in Arizona in the 2022 election.

The machines are unreliable because they are subject to hacking, contend Kari Lake, a gubernatorial hopeful, and Mark Finchem, who is running for secretary of state. And the use of components in computers from other countries makes them vulnerable, they say.

The is an even more basic problem, says Andrew Parker, the attorney who filed the lawsuit on their behalf.

The tabulation of votes is an inherently governmental function, he said. Yet by using machines built and programmed by private companies the state has effectively farmed that out that obligation.

Read more: https://tucson.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/lawsuit-seeks-to-ban-ballot-counting-machines-in-arizona/article_58f173c6-c329-11ec-885e-4fbec7079e8d.html

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This is apparently what Mike Lindell was pitching earlier this week.

[KS Toronado]

1. Get rid of all the vote counting machines

and replace them with grade school kids so they learn of the importance of voting at an early age.
Or at least use them for any recounts.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. LOL!

Although I know exactly what you mean, I want to tell you that several years ago when voting in the primary in my state, I went to a polling place at a local middle school. Kids at the school were working the polls, under the supervision of adults, and I thought it was wonderful. The kids could get a sense of how important voting was, compared to my generation (I'm 73) when voting was mysterious and hidden. I was absolutely delighted to see the kids helping out.

[questionseverything]

3. The scanners wouldn't be so bad if it was easy to get a hand count to dbl check but

In many places, if it is run through the scanner hand counting is not allowed, that’s not right at all

Florida is one of those places, so is Wisconsin.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

4. Get rid of all voting. It's anti-authoritarian.

Just let the Republicans appoint all of the office holders, as God intended.

[Effete Snob]

5. Hey, you seem like management material

The GOP needs bold new thinkers like that.

[usonian]

6. Ban voting machines, ballot-counting machines and mail-in ballots, and then what?

Show of hands? Show of handguns?

[Retrograde]

9. "show of handguns"

I think you’re on to something here!

[Walleye]

7. They have hissy fits if the results aren't known by the next morning

[lees1975]

8. Arizona Republicans are so stupid

they elected Karen Fann as Senate president. That says it all.

Bottom line Arizona GOP. Your guy lost in your state. Get over it, move on or move to Russia.

[Retrograde]

10. Have they thought this through?

Arizona will have at least 2 elections in November, US Representative and Senator, as well as any state or local ones. Do they plan to have a separate ballot for each race, and hand count them separately (and just how many voters are there in Maricopa county?)? This makes it harder on the voters and probably on the election officials who'll have to separate the ballots for the separate races. Or do they plan to have all the issues on one ballot, and they rely on the tabulators to count the right results for the right races?

Why do I get the feeling that 1) no one has thought this through, or 2) whoever is proposing this doesn't have a clue about how elections are run.

[Novara]

11. I bet they'd replace paper ballots with hackable voting machines

Ballot counting machines are much, much simpler and more reliable. AND THERE IS A PAPER TRAIL. If you want to do a recount, there is physical evidence.

Voting machines can be - and have been - hacked. Remember the accounts of people's votes changing on the screen to R right before their eyes? You think a paper ballot counter will do that? Think again.

No, these motherfuckers want hackable voting machines with no paper trail.

Why oh why do we not have a set of basic voting standards nationwide? I know, I know: "state's rights." But it seems to me, the Federal government can and should set a minimum baseline set of standards, leaving the rest up tp the states. And that basic minimum should be paper ballots in every single election so there is a paper trail for any audits. So what if we don't get results until several days later? Have a little patience. I'd rather have the count RIGHT than FAST.

[oldsoftie]

12. Machines can only be hacked if they're on the internet. NO votes were changed in '20.

Voting machines are stand alone machines. They're safe as long as they're secured & no whackos are allowed access to them.. And if they're the type we used here in GA, they also print out a paper ballot. NOBODYS votes were changed by a machine in the last election.

[questionseverything]

16. You realize when Georgia's votes where hand counted, lots of votes were found?

Biden’s win margin went from about 14,000 to about 12,500


Brad blog had full coverage of the whole deal

If you have a machine only certain trusted people can be around obviously it can be manipulated

[oldsoftie]

18. Those issues were human error, not machine error.

[questionseverything]

19. half and half but it took a human count to find the human error

and the second county seems to be machine error

The previously uncounted votes were cast during in-person early voting at the Floyd County Administration Building, which includes the county’s elections office, said Luke Martin, chairman of the Floyd County Republican Party.

Over half of 5,000 printed-out ballots cast on an optical scanner weren’t initially recorded.


“It’s very concerning,” Martin said. “But this doesn’t appear to be a widespread issue. I’m glad the audit revealed it, and it’s important that all votes are counted.”

The uncounted ballots in Floyd County is the most significant issue found so far during Georgia’s recount. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has said that other counties' recounted figures closely match their original numbers.

The ballots will be rescanned and tabulated before results are finalized Friday, said State Elections Director Chris Harvey.

“You want every vote counted right the first time, but that is one of the goals of the audit: to identify problems,” Harvey said. “All the votes will be uploaded, and the results will be what they are.”

https://www.ajc.com/politics/georgia-recount-uncovers-2600-new-votes-in-presidential-race/I75NSPYYGNF43HQZBPYKJWJ5MA/


https://bradblog.com/?m=202011

[oldsoftie]

20. the machine error was a count error not a voting machine error

And the staff knew about it & didnt rescan.
The others were votes not uploaded from machine thumb drives.
Its still not an error by any voting machines.
When we used to use paper ballots everyone screamed that we needed machines.
GA proved that they could e trusted.
Only Trump thinks they were wrong.

[questionseverything]

21. No it's not only trump that thinks it's wrong

I have been a democratic hand count paper advocate for years and I don’t appreciate the implication that somehow I am aligned with any repub

I have provided links for everything I have said, you are not providing any proof for anything you have said

One thing for sure electronic counting and reporting remains an excuse for glitch after glitch when we could have fourth graders hand counting paper ballots in full public view

You say Georgia proved the machines work but they were off by thousands, what if the mistake was in the other direction? We have to have a system every American can oversee and understand with no special expertise

[oldsoftie]

22. I got the info from the link you provided. The system worked; it was recounted.

NO voting machines made errors in votes cast. The missing votes were the result of HUMAN error. I agree with paper ballots to accompany the machine vote. Its what proved the machines DID work
You really think we can have 160 million votes hand counted accurately in a reasonable amount of time?

[questionseverything]

23. No the votes had to be scanned twice but no one knows why they didn't register the first time

For over thirty years Georgia had paperless dre voting machines and republicans were elected

Then we got machines that produce a paper ballot and a democratic candidate won and because we had paper it could be proven

Can you imagine what repubs would say if all the sudden a democrat had won on the paperless machines and there was no way to prove it?

Counting paper ballots precinct by precinct isn’t difficult, just don’t make the precincts huge

As I said up thread I don’t mind using a scanner as long as some races can be hand counted to check but that is illegal in many states

Btw after Hillary’s lose , she said, we need paper ballots ( we will never know if she lost Wisconsin back then because so many precincts had machines with “ toilet paper rolls” for ballots)

[ShazzieB]

24. Are you aware that there are PAPER ballots that are COUNTED by MACHINE?

That way you have the efficiency of tallying the votes by machine AND the ability to do a recount by hand on the very RARE occasions when it's necessary. Best of both worlds.

Counting ALL ballots exclusively by hand EVERY time is not practical, sensible, or reasonable in thus say and age.

[questionseverything]

25. Are you aware the in some states such as Wisconsin and Florida

If ballots are run through a scanner it is illegal to actually hand count the ballots, a recount consists of running the ballots through the scanner again?

Kind of defeats the purpose of paper doesn’t it?

I could live with scanned paper ballots if the top two federal races were hand counted and actual hand counts were available for any other races that were questionable but that’s not close to what we have

[ShazzieB]

26. No, I was not aware of that.

Now that I am, I think what needs to change are the laws you're talking about. I still think exclusively hand counting all presidential ballots is a very tall order, and I question the practicality of that. But those laws definitely need to change. I don't see the point of even using paper ballots or retaining them if they can't be used as a backup for recounts.

This points up what I think is the biggest problem with our elections, especially federal elections: the lack of standardization and the crazy quilt of inconsistencies that results from that. Giving the states free rein to conduct elections as they saw fit made sense when the country was founded. Considering how hard it was to communicate over long distances, I don't know how they could have done things any differently. But in the world of instantaneous communication we live in now, it's just plain archaic to have 50 different sets of rules, laws, and procedures governing how federal elections are conducted, who is able to vote in them, and who has access to things like early voting and voting by mail.

I think there should just be ONE set of rules, laws, and procedures for conducting and voting in federal elections, and if there was, pretty soon everything would be standardized, because it would be too big of a headache for states to naintain different sets of rules for different levels of elections.

As long as federal elections are not standardized and each state is allowed to do its own thing, I think things will continue to be a mess, unfortunately.

[questionseverything]

27. It's not just those two states either , they are just two horrid examples

Most precincts have less than a thousand voters so counting two races shouldn’t take more than an hour or two at most, a small price to pay for democracy

I do agree we need a national standard both for who can vote and how those votes are counted

One thing we have in Illinois is same day registration, this really benefits low income people as we tend to move more often

We also have a huge variety of things we can use for id , from your drivers license to a utility bill or a student id

Another reason for paper ballots, hand marked is it really cuts down on the wait time, no waiting for a machine

[Icanthinkformyself]

13. Privatization?

The people who have been advocating privatizing EVERY government function and/or service, are upset that a private company supplies the machines that count the votes? Hmmm.

[thenelm1]

14. "the use of components in computers from other countries makes them vulnerable, they say"

Now it's the "evil" computing components that are an issue. Kind of like the non-existent "bamboo in the ballots" problem wouldn't you say?

Notice they didn't mention or include the fact that the "Cyber Ninjas" were given full access to the machines by order of the Repub state Lege fools, led by Ms. Fann. Wasn't there something about all the machines now needing to be replaced due to that access? (Lord only knows what those fools might have done to the machines.)

[twodogsbarking]

15. They want to release the results of the election the day before the election.

[jmowreader]

17. Okay...

Let's say we hold the election using computerized tabulators, and both Lake and Finchem lose. "We won the election! The ballot counting machines stole it from us!"

What will be their excuse if the election is run with votes cast on ballots printed with American-made equipment and supplies then counted three times by Republicans and three by Democrats, and they still lose?