How Karl Rove fixed the FBI investigation of his theft of the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio

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150. They changed the thickness of the punch card paper at the mill.

Last edited Fri Mar 29, 2013, 06:07 PM - Edit history (1)

There's a video out there... That Dan Rather did where they talk about the paper where the punch cards was manufactured. They said the substrate thickness of the paper roll changed making the punch cards more difficult to use contributing to the "hanging chads" and "dimples" and other anomalies with the punch cards in Florida specifically.


Here's part of the transcript below the rest can be found here http://election-reform.org/dan_rather.html#palm_beach


Sequoia: Switched to substandard paper ballots for 2000 Presidential Election

38:35 Dan Rather: The idea that finding the best voting system is an engineering problem is not new. In fact it was some of the best engineering minds in the country, at IBM, who perfected the old Votomatic punch card system decades ago. Those punch cards, when they had been used by IBM for data processing, had been precise enough to help land a man on the moon. That's how reliable they were.

But by 2000, in an avalanche of hanging and falling chads, the punch card voting system was proclaimed to be "unreliable", old hat, out with the old and in with the new. Yet seven years and billions of dollars later, the public, especially in Florida, the public is clamoring for paper ballots again. Only this time, there is no IBM quality control, no quality control standards in the background. And each machine now costs thousands of dollars not a few hundred, as in the punch card era.

How did we get here? It all happened so quickly, in a matter of weeks, maybe months, starting in Florida. Was this rush to convert even necessary? There may be some disturbing answers to that question, in events that unfolded long before Bush vs. Gore.

Tonight we hear from a group of people who think they know what happened in Florida, 2000, and why.

The following is not on the video, but is in the HDnet transcript: It all sounds familiar, too familiar. Taxpayers being asked to throw out millions of dollars worth of voting equipment, start over again, and pick up the tab. With no guarantee the new equipment will provide a solution to the problems. Technology can often offer a solution to a complicated process, in this case, accurately recording votes. But technology poorly conceived, designed, integrated and tested is a recipe for failure. In this instance, subsidizing the same outfits that couldn't get it right the first time, giving them more chances could lead to the further waste of millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars. And just as important, the further loss of confidence in our nation's ability to use technology to provide solutions for mission-critical applications, none more important to our nation than accurately recording each of our votes.

Now, back to a core question: was the rush to these expensive and perhaps ill-conceived new voting systems necessary?
End of section on the transcript, but not on the video

40:00 Dan Rather: Our investigation took us into the heart of California's central valley, to the tiny town of Exeter, where for over thirty years Sequoia voting systems, at this factory, made hundreds of millions of punch card ballots, up until 2003. Punch card ballots dominated the voting landscape in 2000. Among many other places they were the most common voting system in Florida. The system seemed idiot proof. You simply took a stylus and punched out holes, or chads, as they are known, and the cards were then run through a computerized tabulator. Couldn't be simpler, or so it seemed.

What really struck voting experts about the 2000 election in Florida were the many tens of thousands of ballots that had overvotes or undervotes for president. Where voters appeared to have voted for more than one presidential candidate or none at all. Over 50,000 Sequoia punch cards statewide were discarded as invalid because voters appeared to have overvoted. In fact, on fully 17,000 of the Sequoia cards, voters seemed to have voted for three or more presidential candidates! Meanwhile, in Palm Beach County alone over 10,000 voters had not voted for president at all.

Experts scrambled for possible explanations, confused voters, confusing ballot layout, like the infamous butterfly ballot. But no one was looking at the punch cards themselves.

We recently met up with a group of former Sequoia employees who actually made the punch card ballots, who feel they have the real answer as to what happened in Florida 2000, and why.

They have never had a chance to tell their stories. Until now. Thanks for doing this. I appreciate each and every one of you being here. Well first of all, tell me who you are and how many years you had at Sequoia.

Tom Ayers: I'm Tom Ayers and I was at Sequoia for 33 years. I was the shipping and receiving foreman.

Linda Evans: I'm Linda Evans I was at Sequoia Pacific for 7 or 8 years and I did quality control.

Suzy Keller: Suzy Keller. I worked at Sequoia for 25 and a half years and I was the controller.

Giles Jensen: Giles Jensen. I worked for Sequoia Pacific for 25 years and I had several positions in management.

Cy Turner: Cy Turner. I was the pressman at Sequoia for 13 years.

Greg Smith: Greg Smith. I worked for Sequoia Pacific for 32 years and I was a pressman trainer.

E. Washington: E. Washington, I was a pressman at Sequoia pacific. I worked there 26 years.

Dan Rather: Well have you added up how many years experience you have cumulative total between you?

Workers: (laughter) A lot.

Dan Rather: John Ahmann, the biggest punch card expert in the United States says that Sequoia Pacific made the best voting ballots anywhere.

43:25 Cy Turner: We took great pride in the quality of ballots we put out; there was no leeway. It had to be right and it had to be on time. And they took a great pride in doing that from top to bottom.

Dan Rather: Well, the company told customers that Sequoia produced, and I quote, "a no defect product." Now, what did that mean to you?

Suzy Keller: No defects? That means punch cards would punch properly. They would go through the card readers properly. It's a no fault, what they said. And they did it for years.

Dan Rather: They did it, these workers say, until the months leading up to the 2000 presidential election, when they say they saw many things changing, but none more troubling than the paper itself.

Linda Evans: The paper would come through the press looking like it was doing, like jello. It would just kinda, and we'd have to go throw away both ends of the paper, cuz we couldn't run it.

Greg Smith: The paper? The paper is a large factor in the quality of the ballot.

Cy Turner: It's the flour for the bread. I mean you can't make good bread without good flour. If you don't have good paper, you can't make good ballots.

Dan Rather: Did you have input, you know, as rank and file workers in the plant, did you have input on what kind of paper was acceptable and what kind wasn't.

E. Washington: Yes.

Dan Rather: The policy was workers could reject rolls that were imperfect or damaged and they say they often did send rolls out for salvage trying to insure top quality ballots.

Cy Turner: A pressman running a press could reject a roll, kick it back to raw stock, say this roll was no good. We had rolls come off in huge logs and they're marked by position when they slice a, b, c, d, e. Right about early '99, maybe middle of '99 started getting rolls marked x and z. We couldn't figure that out, but man they were terrible.

Greg Smith: We had quite a bit of input, but towards the end, we had no input whatsoever.

Dan Rather: So things changed.

All: Yes they did.

Greg Smith: After 1999, it was all over. It was like we were all put on the shelf.

Dan Rather: And your opinion didn't matter after that.

All: Exactly.

What changed in 1999?

Greg Smith: The paper changed. They decided that they wanted to go with a certain brand. And I think that everybody's opinion was this 2000 election was going to be our demise. Because of the poor quality of what we put out the door.

45:55 Dan Rather: For decades Sequoia had ordered its punch card ballot paper from James River or International Paper; the only mills that had traditionally offered voting punch card stock. In 2000, the company switched to a new mill, Boise Cascade, which had virtually no experience making tab card stock. Workers say they were told to stop testing paper samples. Traditional quality control standards were relaxed.

Linda Evans: There were a lot of things that we were told to let go. And there was card bins I wouldn't sign off. I refused to sign em. They'd sit there overnight and they would say, "you gonna sign em?" and I'd go "no". Come in the following morning, all the bins had been signed off and moved to the front.

Dan Rather: Which means they're being made into ballots.

Linda Evans: Right. Which means someone else signed em off and said let em go.

Dan Rather: But the workers say the problems they were having with the paper went beyond a mere change in suppliers. They say they were suddenly seeing paper rolls that weren't clearly even Boise Cascade paper, because these rolls had Xeroxed Boise shipping labels, rather than genuine ones. Where was all this terrible paper coming from? They say they were baffled that so much paper could be bad, until one day, they got a clue.

E. Washington: One of the pressman is not here. Bob Krause. He had a thing if the paper was real bad, that he would write little nasty letters on the side of the roll. Well, we got one of those rolls back, with the same letter that he had written on it. So, then, that's when it went through our mind that some of that paper was getting rewound and sent back.

47:40 Dan Rather: Not only that. Mr. Washington says this roll, and many of the worst rolls, had a Xeroxed Boise packing label on it. Let me understand this. Your fellow worker, he gets paper he knows is not up to quality?

E. Washington: He's disgusted with. Yes.

Dan Rather: So he marks on it?

E. Washington: Yes.

Dan Rather: This is bad or whatever. That presumably leaves the plant or goes somewhere and then it comes back with one of these Xerox Boise labels on it?

E. Washington: Yeah.

Dan Rather: Did you know about this as well?

Greg Smith: Well, I had the same suspicions as everybody else did as far as the paper. Felt that it, it was rejected and it was taken out of the plant and stored somewhere and then relabeled and brought back.

Dan Rather: Well let's just go down the line is there any doubt in your mind that the company was aware that the ballots for the 2000 general election, including the Presidential vote, were being made with inferior paper? You don't think there's any doubt that they knew that?

Various: No doubt. They were told every day. Yeah. They were told everyday.