How confident are you in the American Electoral System?

[ParanoidPat]

How confident are you in our electoral system? Do you trust that the results announced after an election accurately represent the will of the people or do you fear that fraud may be influencing the outcome? Please vote and post your opinion here.

[Fovea]

1. Between the Butterfly Ballots and the Voter Scrubbing and the

hack the vote movement. I'd say that 40% confidence is justified.
Sure, I will vote. But the Pugs do not get a second bite at this apple.


I think that a lot of bad shit will go down if it looks like a repeat of 2000.

[Doogie]

2. There's always been fraud

But with each passing trick that's caught, the system changes, the rules change, things get better.

Don't be so pessimistic, things are getting better :party:

[ParanoidPat]

3. You say there's always been fraud.....

.....but believe it's getting better. Why do you think it's getting better?

Where do you see the improvements taking place? :shrug: :)

[ParanoidPat]

4. Kick for a larger statistical sample......

.....for an unscientific poll. :evilgrin:

:kick:

[Unforgiven]

5. 20%

In states with large populations and Blackbox voting, I'm not hopeful that there is much good news on the horizon, unless we of course sink to their level and hack the living hell out of every Blackbox in the the system. Two states that need hacking in our favor are CA.and FL. CA. just to be sure FL. just because it's Jebworld and this state is full of rightwing bluehairs and rednecks that don't give a shit about anyone or anybody except their portfolio or hunting dogs. Yeha!

[ParanoidPat]

6. At least we have a decent SoS out here in California.....

.....Kevin Shelly made a great statement about BBV several weeks ago when he appeared before the Voting Systems Panel. I'll dig up the transcript and post it.

OnEdit: Here's the address.


Members of the Voting Systems Panel and Ladies and Gentleman behind me, I understand, from staff, that I, as Secretary of State, am breaking precedent by appearing before this panel. I appreciate all of the sage advice that you give me and recommendations that you make, but I felt it appropriate to break precedent, given the circumstance of the item you are hearing and discussing at the moment. My concern is beyond the individual item that is being discussed as it applies to Diebold and the recommendations to be made in that regard. It's much larger than that.

The core of our American democracy, members, is the right to vote. And implicit in that right is the notion that that vote be private, that vote be secure, and that vote be counted as it was intended when it was cast by the voter. I think what we're encountering is a pivotal moment in our democracy where all that is being called into question – the privacy of the vote, the security of the vote, and the accuracy of the vote. It troubles me, and it should trouble you.

Now, initial presentation was just made on the findings of the report, and I want to thank you very much for conducting the study and for the important review you provided. I know the VSP will soon be asking questions and then making some recommendations, but there are a number of things that this report details that are very troubling. There were unqualified uses of software that had not been approved by the Federal government; there were uncertified uses of software that had not been certified by the State government; and the software was used in a number of instances. That is deeply troubling because it's a violation of the elections code. There were lax accounting procedures, whether it be by counties or whether it be by this very agency, where we have not had a sufficiently extensive mechanism to assess, on a regular basis, what systems were in use.

I think that, on the county level, the audit reinforces my comments on American democracy – that on the county level, the physical security of the voting is sound and the county registrars and their excellent staff are doing a very good job in ensuring that security, but that the technical security is less sound, and the procedures that should be and must be in place at the county level are not sufficiently in place now.

At the same time, we – the Secretary of State’s office, the entity the election code charges with the responsibility to certify systems – bear responsibility if we're not on a consistent and regular basis assessing what software systems are in place. I believe we have the finest elections staff of any Secretary of State operation in the country (no disrespect to the other forty nine). Having said that, for every state election program, it's a new era and we must adjust our procedures, our assessment mechanisms, our approaches towards assuring the privacy, accuracy, security, and integrity of those votes. Now I know a number of recommendations will be made today. I look forward to implementing the recommendations of this panel to provide, from this office’s perspective, stronger mechanisms to address them – be it bi-annual assessments, be it regular auditing, be it spot checks, be it a number of things that came out of the recommendations of the touch screen task force.

You know it's very interesting that, recently when I made the decision to require a paper audit trail, a number of county officials very respectfully denounced them and a number of vendors, many of whom are represented behind me, said it wasn't necessary, said their machinery was secure. At the same time, a number of those within the community, the voter advocacy community, have oft times alleged Armageddon if we don't make immediate changes. Well you know, I don't know who's right.

I'm like the average voter. I don't know. And because I don't know, I want the confidence that a paper trail provides. And like an average voter, I want the confidence that a stronger assessment mechanism at the state level will provide. And like the average voter, I want the confidence that stronger procedures at the county level will ensure the accuracy, integrity and privacy of those votes. Once again, the right to vote is the most precious demonstration of our democracy. We must take it seriously, we must cherish it, and all of us, at the county level, at this office, and in the election vendor community, must act accordingly.

Now the audit is not complete. We don't have all the findings as yet, and we don't know what's occurred comprehensively. I would hope that the end result sanction that we suggested we might make today, pursuant to this hearing taking place, won't be the suggestion of de-certification of Diebold systems. I would hope that won't be the case. I certainly hope that won't be the case with other vendors as well. But if we find that there are gross discrepancies and violations, I am prepared to go down that road, and so this needs to be taken very, very seriously. And with that, I thank you for your time and I'll let you continue with your hearing.

:kick:

[ramapo]

7. 2000 was a wakeup

Millions of votes are miscounted/lost in a general election. Nothing much has been done to correct the problems that were so apparent in 2000. I had hoped Gore would've become a champion for reform but he walked away from the issue. Maybe it was too painful.

[eridani]

8. Just ask yourself this

WHY IN BLEEDING HELL WOULD VOTE COUNTING SOFTWARE EVEN NEED A CAPACITY FOR COUNTING NEGATIVE VOTES, FERCHRISSAKES!! There is no such thing as pi votes or square root of two votes, and there damned well shouldn't be -16,022 votes either.

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/volusia.html

If you strip away the partisan rancor over the 2000 election, you are left with the undeniable fact that a presidential candidate conceded the election to his opponent based on a second card (card #3) that mysteriously appeared, subtracted 16,022 votes from Al Gore, and in some still undefined way, added 4,000 erroneous votes to George W. Bush, then, just as mysteriously, disappears.

Black Box Voting reveals for the first time that it was the Volusia and Brevard County anomalies that caused TV networks to call the election for Bush. An internal document from CBS, combined with timelines and interviews from Agence France-Presse and internal Diebold memos show that:

- A replacement set of votes was uploaded on the Diebold machines (then called Global Election Systems) in Volusia County about one hour after the original votes.

- The original votes were on “copy 0” of the memory card containing the vote database. The replacement votes were tagged to a “copy 3.”

- According to an internal memo written by Diebold Election Systems Sr. V.P. of Research and Development Talbot Iredale, the second set of votes should not have been done and may have been “unauthorized.”

- In the replacement vote set, totals for all races were correct except for the presidential race.

- According to CBS documents, the erroneous 20,000 votes in Volusia was directly responsible for calling the election for Bush.

- Brevard County, Florida also used Global Election Systems (now Diebold) voting machines. Brevard omitted 4,000 votes for Gore from its tally, which contributed to the decision by the networks to call for Bush.

- The two erroneous county totals came directly from the central tabulating system for the county. The GEMS program is Diebold’s central tabulation software.

One journalist was doing his job correctly that night: Ed Bradley, a CBS correspondent best known for his work on “60 Minutes.” Bradley sounded alarm bells over discrepancies in the data, but no one paid attention to him. CBS also ignored independent data from The AP; had CBS and the other networks used AP data instead of Voter News Service (VNS), they would not have called the election for Bush.

The election was first called by Fox analyst John Ellis, who had earlier conferred with his two cousins, George W. Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Ellis was privy to the numbers from VNS, and presumably knew the margin that would be required in order to call the election.

During the evening, a 55,000-vote spread evaporated into just hundreds of votes.

Al Gore called George W. Bush around 3:15 a.m. and conceded the election. Between 3:30 and 3:45, he boarded a motorcade to make a public concession. Votes were melting away at a rate of some 5,000 every 15 minutes, and Ed Bradley from CBS was telling everyone in sight that someone needed to check the figures. When Gore was two blocks from Memorial Plaza in Nashville, Tennessee, where he planned to issue a formal concession, word of the disappearing votes reached him.

He chose not to concede: Thus we had a recount in Florida.

If this isn’t disturbing enough, consider these three points:

1) We don’t know if this is an isolated incident. It may have occurred in other locations in smaller, less spectacular totals
2) The errors were correctable because paper ballots existed.
3) The fact that “negative votes” could be applied to a candidate’s total demonstrates such a fundamentally flawed software model that it calls into question the competence and integrity of the programmers, the company and the certification process itself.

According to the memo from Talbot Iredale, there were two uploads from two different cards.

• The votes were uploaded on the same port approxiately 1 hour apart.
• Only one memory card was supposed to have been uploaded.
• “Copy 0” uploaded some votes.
• “Copy 3” replaced the votes from “Copy 0” with its own.
• Iredale believes the second one is the one that caused the problem.
• The “problem”: 16,022 negative votes for Al Gore

I uncovered an 87-page report called “CBS News Coverage of Election Night 2000: Investigation, Analysis, Recommendations prepared for CBS News.”

According to the CBS News report: “These 24,000 votes would have nearly eliminated the 30,000-vote final Bush margin the CBS News Decision Desk has estimated. There would have been no call if these errors had not been in the system.”

Breakdown of the 24,000 votes: <20,000 from Volusia -- 16,022 negative votes for Gore and 4000 erroneous votes for Bush, plus 4000 omitted votes for Gore in Brevard County, which also used GES/Diebold voting machines. [br />
According to the CBS report, “the call for Bush was based entirely on the tabulated county vote” . “There were several data errors that were responsible for that mistake. The most egregious of the data errors has been well documented. Vote reports from Volusia County.”

“The mistakes ... which originated with the counties, were critical,” says the report. “They incorrectly increased Bush’s lead in the tabulated vote from about 27,000 to more than 51,000. Had it not been for these errors, the CBS News call for Bush at 2:17:52 AM would not have been made.”

[bvar22]

9. At the national level, elections rigged before you get to...

...the poll. The Corporate Controlled Media will ensure that ONLY A CONGLOMO-CORPORATE SUPPORTING BIG MEDIA FRIENDLY candidate will win the PRIMARIES.

[ParanoidPat]

10. Almost 3 to 1 feel less than 50% sure about their vote.....

....being counted correctly, so far. Anyone else care to weigh in? :shrug:

:kick:

[BevHarris]

11. And you'll be overjoyed to know: Florida spent millions on wireless

http://wireless.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16104.html

The contract is worth US$23.7 million and is the company's largest agreement to date, ES&S vice president Steve Bolton told Wireless NewsFactor. ES&S claims it is the largest single purchase of election equipment in the history of the U.S.

Tabulations Sent Wirelessly

Bolton said that the iVotronic system uses CDMA (code division multiple access) and CDPD (cellular digital packet data) wireless technology to send the tabulations from ballots to an elections board or central election site.

"The iVotronic terminal holds the results from thousands of individual ballots, the data is collected from each precinct on a memory device and is then sent to the central election office," Bolton explained. The modem technology, provided by Sierra Wireless and Novatel, is still under development, he said.

Bev Harris

[ParanoidPat]

12. No paper ballots AND wireless......

.....Just freakin' wonderful! :(

Thanks for representing my family and I in that lawsuit. Anything we can do for you just give us a shout. :)

[BevHarris]

18. How far are you from Sacramento?

I'd like to shout at you next time I'm there.

Bev

[ParanoidPat]

20. Two and a half hours......

.....give or take, time of day and all. The redwoods and streams around here are worth the trip! :evilgrin:

[Tank in Texas]

13. Not Very

Well, I would like to cast my vote here but since I am a newbie you won't allow me to have my say.

I am not confident at all in our election system. I am also losing confidence in Democratic Party leadership and their rigged front-loaded coronation of a primary system.

[newyawker99]

16. Hi Tank in Texas!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Tank in Texas]

19. Hi back atcha!

Hello newyawker99!

[seventhson]

14. Zero confidence - But I still believe in voting

on the off chance that it will count or matter

[ParanoidPat]

15. 3/4 of the respondents so far have less than 50% confidence......

.....but what I find strange is the people who have 100% confidence in elections that they KNOW have been rigged through a number of methods.
Perhaps one or two of them would be so kind as to explain their position in light of the known facts.
What is it that gives them so much faith in the system? :)

[ParanoidPat]

17. With close to 100 votes.....

.....still 3 to 1 with an under 50% confidence level. Anyone else care to check in? :shrug: :evilgrin: