BALLOT SECURITY: Think about it before a CA-50 recount.

[sean in iowa]

I am obnoxiously cross-posting a comment on garybeck's post about a CA-50 recount, which was itself a copy of a comment I made on an old parallel-election thread. Annoying, but the issue is too damn important not to make sure that it gets as much circulation as possible.

San Diego had a high-profile "parallel election" in the mayor's race last year. The result showed a discrepancy from the official count. So the losing candidate, Councilwoman Donna Frye, got a recount which vindicated the Diebold op-scan total. No one had seemed to question the paper ballot chain of custody. And San Diego, as we all know, is CA-50!!

If you are willing to posit computer tabulation fraud, you should give equal weight to simple paper fraud. So if you ask for a recount, make sure that no one has already had time to fix the paper ballots!!!

After all, the vendors do quite a lot of plain old ballot printing for op-scan counties; see two examples.

1) Diebold

See the full article; it's a must read. But here is a sample:

The Dean's ballot printing company was acquired by Diebold in the Global Election Systems acquisition.


2) ES&S

Again, the full article is a must-read, but here is a quote that nails the issue:

Meanwhile early voting began in Indiana and Nebraska. 69 of the 93 counties in Nebraska have no paper ballots from their vendor, ES&S, and no ballot programming for their voting machines. 11 counties in Indiana have the same problems and they are threatening lawsuits. Prebel County Ohio reported they had not gotten their paper ballots. On March 29 the Texas Secretary of State sent an urgent memorandum to all county clerks, elections administrators and county chairs noting that many officials had not received electronic programming or paper ballots for primary runoff elections to be held on April 11.

Be ready for the recount. Know the chain of paper custody, and be ready to cry foul on its weaknesses-or you are setting yourself up to undermine the cause of election reform. One or two more paper recounts that don't turn up any significant discrepancies will hurt us badly.

NOTE: Updated to correct my error identifying Judy Alter as the losing candidate

[emlev]

1. Judy Alter was not a candidate. What else have you got wrong? EOM

[sean in iowa]

3. The candidate was Donna Frye, yes.

And I am not saying any of this to derail the drive for a recount; see my comment. Everything else in the post is linked and sourced.

[sean in iowa]

2. Clarification: I am all for a Busby recount, as long as it is done

with maximum vigilance.

[robinlynne]

4. the san diego recount in no way hurt election reform.

to know chain of custody is a good idea. but we need actual people to do that. human beings. we need people all day nd night to watch the tally here in LA county, and we just can't get volunteers interested.
so, instead of just having ideas, about what we should be doing, we need people to actually do it.
(not knocking your ideas; ideas are great!)
If in fact a machine gets something right, that does not un prove our point. We do not have to prove there is fraud, only that there can be. And we have already shown that quite clearly.
As brad says, about CA-50 prove Bilbray won the election, you can't.

[sean in iowa]

6. Of course; I doubt that the mayoral recount hurt anything.

A Busby recount would be a very big deal in the national media, though. Maybe the issue is getting enough traction that another vindicating recount wouldn't hurt anything, or would even help. But until very recently, it has seemed that recounts are resented by a great chunk of the public, and not just the Rs. Where I'm coming from: I still haven't gotten over the New Hampshire partial recount of 2004, where no one seemed to worry about ballot security at all, and the parial recount vindicated Bush's margin. I still freak out, as evicned by this post, when people start calling for a recount and no one says "Great idea! Who's got those ballots now?" as soon as the discussion gets underway.

Your comments about real commitment rather than suggestion is on the mark. I myself am getting involved more in my own local election process, and need to do much more. If a Busby recount happens, Godspeed. I think you will be able to get competent obsevers, esp. if you can drag the party into it (good luck with that, though!).

[BeFree]

7. Did you hear about...

...the recount in Iowa, sean?

At this point we don't control anything in San Diego. We will be lucky if we get a recount. So there is nothing to be careful about.

[sean in iowa]

8. Pottawattamie County, Iowa ,yes

I spoke to the auditor's office there this morning, and the error seems to have been a genuine programming error. The auditor's story is also corroborated by this article. The programming error was so obvious that it immediately aroused suspicion, and disadvantaged one Republican candidate over another. Not a smoking gun, unfortunately, though the election integrity movement is getting underway here in Iowa and will be pushing hard for state legislation requiring VVPAT, random hand audits, and maximal software disclosure.

[BeFree]

11. A genuine programming error? Do tell

And what other excuse did they give you? Was it that the ballots are shifted between precincts?

Question for them.... were the absentee ballots likewise shifted? Because that was the second indication that the machines screwed up. The officials ran the absentee and found it to be against common sense. I have info that the absentee ballots were not differently listed/shifted.

Why say this is NOT a smoking gun? The machine altered the votes, whether it was altered in the programming, or whatever, it changed the votes! What else is needed to make it a smoking gun, if not that?

I contend this case is a smoking gun with evidence that machines can not be trusted to be anywhere close to the trigger.

[sean in iowa]

12. OK, a smoking gun indicting an illegitimate system

But nothing proving malfeasance. One doubts that ES&S, which did the ballot programming, had it in for the Republican Pottawattamie County Recorder of two decades:-} Esp. since the anomalous results were so egregious that they got the immediate attention of election workers.

You are right, as an election integrity activist has communicated to me, that this should be trumpeted to discredit proprietary and paper-free elections. The only reason this was caught is that the race was not expected to be competitive. If this has happened in competitive races, whether by error or design, we would not know. And I do not trust ES&S at all.

[BeFree]

13. Ok, thats a good point

The thing is the machines screw up. The programming can be set up to count votes any which way, and all but one of them correct!

That is the smoking gun that most people don't have a clue that it just fired a shot at democracy. We can no longer be sure of any election as that bullet ricochets around the country.

[AndyTiedye]

5. Recounts Should be Televised

I can't think of a better use for all that "Community Access" equipment that we made all the cable TV companies buy.

[robinlynne]

9. That's a great idea! And cameras could watch over the ballots too, since

we don't have the people to.
When we do parallel elections with judy Alter, she gets 3 independent tv cameras watching the recount. with 3 separate people filming, you have a good guarantee.

[Peace Patriot]

10. Thanks so much for the caveat, "Sean in Iowa"! I will include it in all

my posts/comments, emails about this. I'm sure the election theft vendors and their Bushite buds have all sorts of backup plans to cover their deceit--including messing with whatever paper ballot evidence the public and good officials (like Kevin Shelley!) have been able to get. (Shelley is the one who got us the paper ballot option in California prior to the 2004 election.)

I really appreciate this heads up!

[garybeck]

14. you are correct about one thing

recounts require that the ballots are kept secure, and I agree there is reason to question this. most people I've talked to in NH have some suspicion that there was some funny business with the ballots in the NH recount 04.