However, there is definitely something rotten in Denmark - or more precisely, Wyoming. Check this out; if you look down the registered voters column for general elections you will notice that Wyoming's citizens are amazingly enthusiastic about voting - in fact 106% of eligible voters had a vote recorded. That's 231,876 more voters than were registered - spooky!
If you check out BlackBoxVoting.com, one of the major advocates of a transparent voting machine system prior to the election (and affiliated with Bruce Schneir and other luminaries of the security community), one can find a number of interesting strories. A Join-Select-Committee has been appointed to investigate voting machines. The General Accounting Office of Congress is auditing them. The New York Times are running a story on buggy machines. It seems that the world is finally starting to notice!
Noticing not a moment too soon, to be honest. In the past, late exit polls have consistently (for 100 years!) been an accurate barometer of voting trends - accurate to an average of 0.5%. This time, however, they are way off - and more off in the states that mattered. Ohio (a Diebold state), for example, shows around a 6% discrepency between exit polls and the final result. This could be indicative of a fundamental change in exit polling success rates, but that would be without historical precedent. The UC Berkley Quantitative Research Team (supported by MIT) agree, finding a significant likelihood that election machines helped Bush win the Sunshine State. (Unfortunately, statistical evidence isn't perfect - but in a secret ballot, it's the best evidence we have for now).
One reason that this is the best evidence that we have can be found in the outright obstruction of justice coming from several election official's offices. Combining several sources of data already cited, you can come up with the following list:
- The Supervisor of Elections has unreasonably delayed providing information.
- The certification was based on inadequate and incomplete information regarding the election results.
- Some or all of the information requested on Nov. 2, 2004 by Black Box Voting is still missing from 59 of the 179 voting precincts, including portions of or all of the voting machine tapes for those 59 precincts, which are a vital part of official paper record of the election results from those precincts.
- Complete information on problems with the voting machines prior to and during the election has not been provided.
- Complete information relating to memory card failures during the election has not yet been provided.
- Only a partial list of the transmission logs from the Accu-Vote optical scan server has been provided. Despite repeated requests, the Elections office has refused to provide to the Volusia County Democratic party the official election results, now stating that those results will not be available until December 1, 2004.
- The Elections office has provided incomplete data regarding Early Voting and Absentee ballots. The Supervisor of Elections, for example, reported that the total number of absentee ballots and Early voting ballots, combined equaled 89,999 votes, yet the published figures for those totals is 84,100 votes, leaving over 5,800 votes unaccounted for.
- In addition to the pattern of delay in providing the requested information, the true election results are in doubt because of numerous violations of election law procedure and unanswered questions concerning the results.
- Many public records, including one signed results tape from a voting machine were found in the trash. Many of the requested records not furnished by the Elections office have been found in the trash. Results from the tapes found in the trash do not match the results of the copies of tapes furnished.
- An email from Mark Earley, of Diebold Elections Systems, Inc., to the Elections office was provided which asked the recipient for an explanation of why Volusia County had more memory card failures than all of their other Florida customers combined, and then asked why the 17 memory card failures which the Elections office reported on November 3, increased to 25 before November 12, 2004.
- The reported memory card failures were significant and troubling and included reporting zero votes after one week of voting, requesting permission to upload votes before the voting began, and messaging whether the card should be reformatted.
- According to a statement by the Supervisor of Elections on November 17, 2004, the GEMS computer is not networked, and is "stand alone." The furnished computer logs show evidence of at least two attempts to remotely access the GEMS central tabulator, which is claimed to be secure. A computer screen shot printout on November 17, 2004 (found in the trash) shows that the GEMS computer at that time had two networked hard drives.
- Franklin County, Indiana, have actually reversed an election result. Voting machines gave a Republican victory by switching Democratic votes to the Libertarians - a manual recount showed that the Democrats had won the County Commissioner seat.
- Carteret County, NC, has admitted that users were allowed to keep voting after voting machines had run out of storage space - and none of the later votes were counted. North Carolina is considering a state-wide re-election as a result.
I could go on, but that's enough grist for the mill for now. Bear in mind that the media aren't reporting it particularly well at all, but there are recount requests pending in New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio and New Mexico - all voting machine states. Now that the New York Times has noticed the problems with machines, I think the rest of the media will catch on to the story that's brewing: the election is not provably won, yet. Both major parties need to wake up, and support investigations (Kerry/Edwards' campaign has been quietly supporting recount efforts, but hasn't peeped publically).
Mood: relaxed
Music: Iron Maiden - Run to the Hills
No comments:
Post a Comment