Kathy Dopp's Blog

WHO: League of Women Voters, UT and US Count Votes
CONTACTS: Kathy Dopp, kathy@electionarchive.org 435-658-4657, or Alice Steiner, akarsteiner@aol.com

The public is invited to attend both these events where Jim March from Arizona, and Paul Lehto from Michigan are coming to Utah to speak:

1. The League of Women Voters of Utah Convention Workshop on "Election Equipment Integrity: Protecting the Right to Vote"

WHAT: Paul Lehto and Jim March will be speaking at the 10 a.m. workshop
WHEN: Saturday May 16, 10 – 10:50 a.m.
WHERE: the Red Lion Hotel
161 West 600 South
Salt Lake City, UT
CONTACT: League Office at 801-272-8683
COST: $10 donation to reimburse the speakers’ travel expenses.


2. The Film Fatally Flawed – Election Fraud: The Problems are Inside. The Solutions are Outside.

WHAT: A documentary story about the process of uncovering the evidence of foul play and tampering with election data by Pima County, Arizona election officials. One of the key researchers in this Arizona effort, Jim March will be present at the film showing. Elections in Utah use the same Diebold/Premier voting systems. This film educates the audience in a few of the ways available to tamper with elections when public transparency and oversight is missing from the electoral process. The Pima County Elections Division has operated for years without public scrutiny or oversight, and requests for transparency appear to have prompted drastic measures involving the control and removal of election data and records from the public. Paul Lehto will also be available after the film for discussion. Those who would like to join the speakers for dinner (pay your own way) may do so at Buca de Beppo, 300 South 200 West at about 7:00 p.m.
WHEN: 3:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon May 17th
WHERE: Unitarian Church on 1300 East 600 South

Paul Lehto is an author, speaker, and scholar in the area of election law whose work is cited in the anthology “Loser Take All”, an Amazon bestseller about the 2000 Presidential election Bush v. Gore. A frequent op-ed writer and guest on talk radio, Lehto is currently writing a book, and completing a documentary film on principles of democracy and elections. In his former home county of Snohomish, Washington Lehto co-authored a scientific study of election irregularities that gave a glimpse at how voting systems that ought to be neutral measures of voter intent in fact skewed the results of the closest governor’s contest, with a hand count reversing the result of the statewide machine counts. Data from this study is featured in the 2005 book, “Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?” With a WWII veteran of the Aleutian Island battles, in Lehto v. Sequoia, Lehto sued to invalidate the purchase contract for touch-screen voting machines and was a major factor in eliminating the use of touch-screen voting machines in Snohomish County. Lehto has been lead counsel in election contests on behalf of both Democrats and Republicans and was a member of the Board of Governors of the Washington State Bar Association. Since 2006, Lehto has focused on issues regarding elections, transparency, and democracy because he believes that freedom consists in citizens’ status as sovereign voters in elections in order to ensure that public servants remain accountable to the American people. Lehto challenges any election official, professor, or other person to the bar of public reason, to a videotaped debate anytime.

Jim March is an experienced computer technician who has been active in electronic voting reform since mid-2003, working closely with Blackbox Voting’s Bev Harris and a founding member of the BlackBoxVoting.org board of directors. He currently serves as member of the Pima County Election Integrity Commission chartered by the Pima County Board of Supervisors and has been investigating, writing, and creating video on election related matters. Jim March was the lead plaintiff in the California litigation against the Diebold (now Premier) voting machine company that netted a $2.6 million refund to the state of California from Diebold in 2005. In 2006 Jim March was involved in the investigation into Emery County Utah’s voting machines that uncovered what computer scientists termed “the worst security flaw ever discovered in a voting system” as reported in the NY Times, Newsweek magazine, etc. and the fact that Diebold/Premier had sold Utah a mixture of new and used voting machines, some containing old election data and Asian fonts – for the price of new machines. He is currently helping to research evidence of vote tampering in Pima County, AZ.

Plea for Small Donations: Jim March is coming up from Tucson by motorcycle. If at all possible, he could use about $200 in expense money to cover everything - that's still less than half what airfare alone would be. That covers meals and gas, and he'll be camping out one night each way to further cut expenses. Jim March is a dedicated and effective election integrity volunteer currently out of work and could use the help to make these events. Please donate any small amount in order to help. Tax deductible checks can be made out to “US Count Votes” and mailed to P.O. Box 682556, Park City, UT 84068 or non-deductible cash or checks given directly to “Jim March” at the film.

RE: The “Voter Confidence & Increased Accessibility Act of 2009” (VC Bill)

Please Vote "YES" to Representative Rush Holt's bill so that PDA will officially endorse federal election reform:
http://blog.pdamerica.org/2009/03/holt-bill-yes-or-no/

BENEFICIAL FEATURES OF HOLT'S VOTER CONFIDENCE BILL

Requires voter-marked paper ballots

-Replaces all paperless voting systems by 2010 with paper ballot voting systems

-Requires voter-marked paper ballots shall be available at all polling locations by 2010

-Requires voter-marked paper ballot voting systems by 2016

Gives individuals a private right of legal action to file complaints about violations

Requires manually counting the ballots in 3, 5, or 10% of all precincts in post-election audits, allowing and giving incentives for using a more scientific alternative mechanism for conducting post-election audits that are approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

-Requires the entity conducting the audit to meet the GAO independence standard

Unlike today’s DRE voting machines, the Voter Confidence bill requires ballot secrecy

Makes Paper ballots the official ballot and the true and correct record of votes cast and says that in the event of damaged paper ballots the electronic tally may not be the sole basis

Requires recounts of Federal elections to count ballots by hand

Includes absent uniformed services voters and overseas voters in all requirements

Requires accessible paper ballot verification for voters with disabilities

Requires public disclosure of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) test protocols, all communications with the vendors, and to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and the results of the testing

Requires public disclosure of voting system technology (w/ a NDA) to “government entities with responsibility for the administration of voting and election-related matters”, “a party to pre- or post-election litigation challenging the result of an election or the administration or the use of the technology…”, “a person who reviews, analyzes, or reports on the technology solely for an academic, scientific, technological, or other investigation or inquiry concerning the accuracy or integrity of the technology.”

Requires that any technology developed under its grants are non-proprietary public property, including

- a study overseen by the National Science Foundation (NSF) of accessible ballot verification for voters whose primary language is not English and for voters with disabilities

- research for development of “election-dedicated voting system software”.

Decentralizes Power Over Elections, Giving it to Local Jurisdictions by:

- Prohibits the use of election-dedicated voting systems not certified by the State

- Requires States to reimburse local jurisdictions for costs for conforming to the requirements (Thus removing the ability of States to force all jurisdictions to purchase the same voting system)

Prohibits wireless communications devices in voting systems

Prohibits Internet voting

Requires public disclosure of secure chain of custody for ballots and machines

Prohibits conflicts of interest of Federal testing labs & establishes a process for voting system testing to meet Federal Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSGs)

Requires the EAC to promptly notify Congress, State election officials, and the public when a testing laboratory accreditation is revoked, suspended or restored or experiences a security failure

Funds the replacement of voting systems in non-conforming precincts


----------------------

For exact quotes from the bill and a link to the bill see:
http://electionmathematics.org/em-legislation/2009-federal/AnalysisHoltElectionAudit2009-2.pdf

The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act would provide more voting rights and more election transparency than American’s have had in US history.

Please do not be misled by the forces that oppose federal election reform. Urge Congress to increase the transparency and verifiable accuracy of US elections by passing this bill. The Voter Confidence & Increased Accessibility Act would ensure that voters accurately determine who takes Federal office.

Background

The Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) method often eliminates the majority-favored candidate, as happened recently in the Burlington, VT IRV election http://rangevoting.org/Burlington.html IRV increases election costs and commonly results in voters causing their first choice candidates to lose by ranking them first instead of ranking a least preferred candidate first. See (non)Monotonicity and Instant Runoff Voting . The constitutionality of IRV is being challenged in the Minnesota Supreme Court due in part to its violation of the equal protection requirement of the US constitution.

North Carolina BOE develops new method to count IRV

I had to laugh out loud after figuring out (partially) these instructions that Chris Telesca of NC sent me: "Instant Runoff Voting, Single‐Seat Contests, ES&S Optical Scan Tabulation Procedures"
http://electionmathematics.org/em-IRV/NC/IRVcountingProced.pdf

The procedures in this document (originally named OS1-2009.1.0.pdf) were developed by the NC State Board of Elections staff who figured out how to count the NC variety of IRV - where all but the top two candidates are eliminated in the first round and voters may only rank up to 3 candidates on the ballots - using today's precinct-based optical-scanners.

I am impressed by the cleverness it took to figure out how to count an IRV contest using today's optical-scan machines in this simple case wherein two candidates are vying in one round.

However, I have some issues with their method. Here is what I would ask:

1. Are election officials and poll workers going to be able to comprehend and carry out the complex instructions without making errors?

Link to the almost incomprehensible instructions:
http://electionmathematics.org/em-IRV/NC/IRVcountingProced.pdf

2. Just how sturdy are the paper ballots?

This "opti-scan" machine IRV counting method requires (to accomplish just this one simple counting round for only one election contest) feeding each ballot one at a time by hand through the precinct opti-scanners up to FOUR TIMES with the optical scanner needing a differently programmed PCMCIA card in it for each of these four "counts", during which poll workers must pay close attention to whether or not each ballot is "rejected" or "accepted" and put each ballot in a correct pile depending on which stack it comes from and whether it is rejected or accepted by the M100.

Note this procedure is used to only count one (1) IRV counting round - round #2. The first round is tallied by the central county office and then the two continuing candidates are announced to the polling locations so that the process for counting round #2 in the polls can begin.

The local scanners, the M100s, or the PCMCIA cards (or both) must be reprogrammed by the poll workers between each of the four times that ballots are fed into the optical-scanners. The PCMCIA cards seem to need to be "burned" in three separate configurations (to count each of the three ballot rankings) at the poll locs only after the two winning/continuing candidates are announced. The instructions left out the exact details of how to "burn" the PCMCIA cards.

So the ballots must be resorted and re-fed one at a time into the optical scanner four (4) times the number of IRV election contests. E.g. If there are three IRV contests on the ballots, then many individual ballots could be scanned and resorted up to twelve (12) times each!

The four ballot runs through the opti-scanners for each IRV contest are done to determine the:

1. over-votes in each ballot position
   
2. 1st choice votes for the two continuing candidates
   
3. 2nd choice votes for the two continuing candidates
   
4. 3rd choice votes for the two continuing candidates
   

I hope those ballots are sturdy. Imagine if there is a need for a recount too!

3. What length of time is it going to take to count all the ballots in each precinct for each of the IRV contests for just this one IRV round?

I.e. the ballots would have to be accurately sorted into four piles during the first feed (one ballot at a time) into the precinct scanners,

and then sorted into five piles (sorted to four piles coming out of the optiscanner plus one pile not run through it) during the second feed (one ballot at a time) into the precinct scanners,

and then sorted into six total piles (sorted to three piles coming out of the optical scanner plus three piles not run through it this time) during the third feed (one ballot at a time) into the precinct scanners,

and then sorted into seven total piles (sorted to two piles coming out of the optiscanner plus five piles not run through it this time (one ballot at a time) into the precinct scanners.

It will be nothing short of a praise the Lord miracle if this process is performed accurately in all polling locations.

These IRV polling location counts can not begin until after as late as perhaps 11 p.m. when the initial first round counts have been tallied by the central county election offices to determine who the top two 1st choice vote-getters are.

The press might as well go home and come back in the a.m. and the poll workers might as well plan to stay up all night to try to get this process right for EACH IRV contest. I hope that they plan on an all-new shift of poll workers coming in to every polling place to accomplish this task of counting all the IRV contests by running the IRV ballots through the M100s one at a time four times for EACH contest and reprogramming M100s numerous times to do it.

BTW, studies by the University of New Mexico in conjunction with the New Mexico Election Office found that it is quicker to hand count paper ballots than to feed them individually through a precinct-based optical scanner.

4. Are the election officials going to create the three PCMCIA cards accurately for EACH precinct or poll loc for each IRV contest, label them accurately and make sure that the right card is inserted at the exact right time in the process?

Purchases must be made of at least 3 extra PCMCIA cards for EACH polling place and buying 3 backup PCMCIA cards for each polling place would be helpful as well in case any of them fail when poll workers are trying to configure and burn them all.

I suppose another option in case the poll workers can't figure it out, would be for the central county office to burn all the extra PCMCIA cards after it is known which candidates did not receive the top-two 1st choice votes and poll-workers can simply wait until someone from the county office delivers all the correctly programmed and correctly labeled PCMCIA cards.

5. Do the poll workers have to reprogram the M100 optical scanners between each of the four separate counts they'll have to do for EACH IRV contest for EACH precinct or polling location (from what I can tell they do)?

6. How much extra money is it going to cost for extra poll worker training, extra poll worker pay, extra PCMCIA cards, and extra support from the voting vendor?

7. What happens if any late-counted provisional ballots changes who the top-two 1st choice vote winners are several days after Election Day, and the entire polling location counts have to be thrown out and all the ballots recounted?

How are all those poll workers who are going to stay up most of the night feeding ballots into opti-scan machines, sorting, and programming PCMCIA cards and programming optical scanners going to feel when their counts are entirely scrapped whenever the number of first choice votes is so close for the candidate with the second most and third most first choice votes that late-counted ballots necessitate starting the entire count from scratch again?

In SUM

It would probably create a gargantuan mess if NC townships or counties attempt to use this clever method to count IRV ballots.

Combined with the recent evidence from the Burlington Nov 2008 election showing how IRV (including the NC variety) fails to elect majority winners, fails to solve the spoiler problem, and can be nonmonotonic, I hope that this proposed process will help to rescue NC from being subjected to the fundamentally unfair and overly complex Instant Runoff Voting method.

The financial benefits to voting vendors if IRV were adopted are enormous but IRV's costs to election integrity and fairness are enormous too. It is interesting to see from their IRV counting document how poorly designed the ES&S programming is for doing things like checking the accuracy of its machine counts after elections. ES&S obviously was given the same design specifications as Diebold, Hart Intercivic, and Sequoia, were given.

It might be fun to see IRV proponents try to generalize this counting method to count any number of IRV counting rounds that have any number of candidates continuing in the round.

Berkely University Statistics Professor Philip Stark, also warns against using a spreadsheet* to tabulate the instant runoff results. In a Dec 26, 2008 email http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/12_26_08_Philip_B_Stark_Comment_Exel_Workaround.pdf


Tom Dahlberg, of Dahlberg Business Logic Inc. (his business IS spreadsheets) also warns against using the excel work around http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/12_28_08_Tom_Dahlberg_Comment_Exel_Workaround.pdf
to tabulate the instant runoff results.

The good news from all of this - is that election integrity advocates in North Carolina have probably won the battle to keep the fundamentally unfair voting method, Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), out of North Carolina because NC's statute requires that ballots cast in the precincts on Election Day shall be counted in the precincts/poll locations.


The use of IRV is being challenged now in the Minnesota Supreme Court on the basis of its violations of the US and Minnesota constitutions. Additional information on Instant Runoff Voting is available at http://ElectionMathematics.org and more information about IRV counting difficulties are mentioned here

If the presidential results are close, the number of yet-to-be-counted ballots may be larger than the spread between candidates in swing states.

If the vote count is close on Tuesday night, there's a good chance Americans will become as familiar with a special kind of voting - known as a provisional ballot - as they were with hanging chads in Florida in the aftermath of Florida's disputed 2000 presidential election.

That is because in several battle ground states the number of provisional and uncounted mail-in ballots - which have to be checked one by one after Election Day to validate the voter's registration information before counting - plus the number of uncounted mail-in ballots are likely to exceed the margins of victory.

In other words, if it is a close vote, you can expect Republican and Democratic Party lawyers to start fighting over the state-by-state and county-by-county rules concerning provisional ballot eligibility. Provisional ballots were created by Congress after the 2000 election, but each state was given the leeway to implement its own rules for accepting or rejection these ballots.

Read the entire article here:
http://www.alternet.org/democracy/105724/if_tuesday%27s_vote_is_close%2C_get_ready_for_a_slow_count/?page=1
or
http://tinyurl.com/6nvamy

SOURCES

Provisional Ballots, Where to Watch in 2008
http://www.demos.org/pubs/provisionalballot_brief.pdf

Provisional Ballot Problems Loom As 2008 Election Approaches, New Report Finds
http://www.demos.org/page670.cfm

Provisional Ballots May Be the Hanging Chad of ’08
http://www.tcf.org/list.asp?type=NC&pubid=1817

Provisional Voting: Failsafe Voting or Trapdoor to Disenfranchisement?
http://www.advancementproject.org/pdfs/Provisional-Ballot-Report-Final-9-16-08.pdf

Top Officials 'Doing The Right Thing' For Voters
Friday, 31 October 2008, 2:38 pm
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0810/S00438.htm

The 2006 Election Administration and Voting Survey - A Summary of Key Findings
December 2007 http://www.eac.gov/clearinghouse/docs/eds-2006/edsr-final-high-res-for-printing.pdf/attachment_download/file

Problems with voters purged from election rolls
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_5376.shtml

This election could be worse than 2000 Florida
http://newsok.com/this-election-could-be-worse-than-2000-florida/article/3317412

Provisional Ballots Could Decide Election This Year
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/provisional-bal.html

Provisional balloting could slow elections - Tabulation differences threaten election results
http://www.mydesert.com/article/20081031/NEWS0301/810310308/1008/news03


Pima vote count could be a slow, painstaking ordeal - Full results may take days given large turnout, provisional ballots, new oversight guidelines (Arizona)
http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/265199

Judge orders Colorado secretary of state to stop voter purge - Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman must stop canceling voters from the state registration rolls http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20081031/NEWS/810319932/1062&title=Judge%20orders%20Colorado%20secretary%20of%20state%20to%20stop%20voter%20purge

Federal judge rails at Secretary of State Coffman to stop purges (Colorado)
http://coloradoindependent.com/13576/federal-judge-rails-at

Colorado Judge Angered Over Secretary of State's Continued Purging of Voter Names
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/colorado-judge.html

Judge orders Coffman to stop continued voter purge (Colorado)
http://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_10866716?source=commented-news

Think your vote will count? IDs, purges, provisionals oh my (Colorado)
http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/rockytalklive/archives/2008/10/think_your_vote_will_count_ids.html

Colorado Agrees to Restore Voters to Rolls
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/us/politics/31colorado.html?em

Election snafu roundup: Lots of tricks, some treats for voters (Colorado)
http://coloradoindependent.com/13533/election-snafu-roundup

Judge orders Coffman to stop continued voter purge (Colorado)
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_10866716

Colorado Agrees to Restore Voters to Rolls
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/us/politics/31colorado.html?_r=2&ref=us&oref=slogin&oref=login

Provisional ballots are piling up, but many may never be counted (Colorado)
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/oct/31/provisional-ballots-are-piling-up-but-many-may/

Purged Colorado Voters Will Be Able to Vote
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/10/30/21730/508

Some Summit County ballots lost in the mail (Colorado)
http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20081030/NEWS/810309953/1078&ParentProfile=1055&title=Some%20Summit%20County%20ballots%20lost%20in%20the%20mail

Purged voters can cast provisional ballots in Colorado
http://coloradoindependent.com/13332/some-hope-for-purged-voters-in-court-settlement

Voter Purge Rejected in Colorado
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/us/politics/31colorado.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin

Deal ensures 20,000 taken off rolls can to vote (Colorado)
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/oct/30/deal-ensures-20000-taken-off-rolls-can-to-vote/

More than 3,000 registered Coloradoans barred from voting
http://coloradoindependent.com/13152/more-than-3000-registered-coloradans

Voter Reinstated After State Purges Her Registration - Colorado Voters Fight For Their Voices This Election Cycle
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/17824470/detail.html

Democrats sue to stop challenges to voters (Florida)
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/state/epaper/2008/10/30/1030electionssuit.html

Duval County - 500 Duval County Ballots Rejected So Far
Absentee Rejected For Signature Problems, 'Overvotes' (Florida)
http://www.news4jax.com/news/17859130/detail.html


Democrats join lawsuit to block GOP challenges to Florida voters
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-democrats-sue-republicans-in-florida-103008,0,1782300.story

Democrats sue GOP over voter challenges (Florida)
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/state/epaper/2008/10/31/1030electionssuit.html

Election revolt over provisional ballots (Florida)
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/state/article881423.ece

90% of Hillsborough absentee ballots rejected so far (Florida)
http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=53b0de6c-4e38-4f47-a084-fb6140f2ebbe

Federal Court Intervenes in Handel's Voter Purge (Georgia)
http://www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/news/0395.html

Georgia to 4,770: Your vote is ‘challenged’
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/stories/2008/10/29/georgia_votes_challenged.html

State to notify 4,770 their votes are ‘challenged’ (Georgia)
http://www.ajc.com/services/content/printedition/2008/10/30/citizen.html

Judge rules for GOP on absentee ballots (Indiana)
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081101/LOCAL18/811010463

Flood of absentees may delay election night results (California)
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1351906.html

Marion County - Judge to hear ballot suit today - Election officials say lawsuit over absentee voting is overreaction; Republicans say they just want to see the law followed (Indiana)
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081031/NEWS0502/810310446

Voter registry concerns emerging (Indiana)
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2008/oct/30/voter-registry-concerns-emerging/

ACLU Stops Illegal Voter Purges in Michigan
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0811/S00007.htm

Voting Rights Watch: Georgia tells 4,770 voters their votes 'challenged,' allows voters to contest citizenship of other voters on Election Day
http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2008/10/voting-rights-watch-georgia-tells-4770.asp

In Ohio, Provisional Ballots May Prove Pivotal
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/us/politics/31ohio.html?hp

Ohio tally to go past midnight?
Secretary of State Brunner says all that early voting might actually hold up count
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20081031/NEWS0106/810310404/-1/frontpageElexTakeover

Election results may not be in on Tuesday (Ohio)
http://www.middletownjournal.com/hp/content/oh/story/news/local/2008/10/31/hjn103108votedelay.html

Ohio results likely to go past midnight
Secretary of State Brunner says all that early voting might actually hold up count
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20081031/NEWS0106/810310404

Directives driving up election costs (Ohio)
http://www.mountvernonnews.com/local/08/10/31/directives-driving-up-election-costs

Ohio homeless must be allowed to vote, federal judge says
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/10/court_says_homeless_must_be_al.html

Democrats allege voter purge (Louisiana)
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/politics/33486504.html

Officials urge off-peak voting - More than 50,000 absentee ballots expected; voters can request one in person through Election Day (Maryland)
http://www.gazette.net/stories/10292008/montnew185421_32477.shtml

Lawyers Eye Missouri on Tuesday
http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/867805.html

Recent news articles have reported:

I. Tens of Thousands of Eligible Voters Purged from Electronic State Voter Rolls

II. Purged Voters Must Use Provisional Ballots That Are Not Necessarily Counted

III. Electronic Pollbook Problems Prevent Voters from Voting, or Force Voters to Use Provisional Ballots

IV. Straight Ticket Voting Causes Vote-Flipping & Undervotes

V. Discernible Touch-screen Vote Flipping

VI. Indiscernible Vote-Flipping - No Rational Reason to Trust the Integrity & Accuracy of U.S. Election Results

VII. Voting Machines Not Working

VIII. Voter Intimidation & Dirty Tricks

IX. Unequal Allocation of Voting Resources

-------------------------------------------------------------------


I. TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ELIGIBLE VOTERS PURGED FROM ELECTRONIC STATE VOTER ROLLS


"Some voters 'purged' from voter rolls"
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/26/voter.suppression/index.html

... more than 50,000 registered Georgia voters who have been "flagged" because of a computer mismatch in their personal identification information. At least 4,500 of those people are having their citizenship questioned and the burden is on them to prove eligibility to vote.

"What most people don't know is that every year, elections officials strike millions of names from the voter rolls using processes that are secret, prone to error and vulnerable to manipulation," said Wendy Weiser, an elections expert with New York University's Brennan Center for Justice.

Thousands Face Mix-Ups in Voter Registrations In New Databases, Many Are Wrongly Flagged as Ineligible
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/17/AR2008101703360.html

Block the Vote - Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23638322/block_the_vote

USA Today cited "accusations of voter fraud and voter suppression" but omitted examples of voter suppression
http://mediamatters.org/items/200810170017?f=h_latest

States' Attempts to Clean up Voting Lists Result in Unlawful Voter Purging and Suppression
http://www.civilrights.org/library/features/033-voter-purge.html

Voter Reinstated After State Purges Her Registration Colorado Voters Fight For Their Voices This Election Cycle
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/17824470/detail.html

Treasure Coast officials calling residents on 'no match, no vote' list
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/oct/18/officials-calling-no-match-no-vote-list/

Judge Rules Michigan Voter Purging Program Illegal
http://www.ombwatch.org/article/blogs/entry/5453/53

Ohio GOP loses fight to contest new voters, The Supreme Court on Friday threw out a lawsuit brought by the Ohio Republican Party that could have made it easier to challenge tens of...
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/presidentialrace/2008281507_campdig18.html

The Real Issue Isn't Voter Fraud, Its Vote Suppression (Joe Rothstein's Commentary)
http://uspolitics.einnews.com/article.php?nid=561852

Update on voting rights cases
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/national/stories/DN-votingbox_28pol.ART.State.Edition1.4a98892.html

Voter Database Glitches Could Disenfranchise Thousands
By Kim Zetter Email 09.17.08
http://www.wired.com/print/politics/onlinerights/news/2008/09/voter_registration

Some voters 'purged' from voter rolls
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/26/voter.suppression/

Courts are packed with cases of people whose voter registrations aren't on file for some reason By RICK KARLIN, Capitol bureau
http://timesunion.com/TUNews/author/AuthorPage.aspx?AuthorNum=82

Brennan Center: 2008's Voter Suppression Incidents So Far
http://www.alternet.org/election08/104413/brennan_center:_2008%27s_voter_suppression_incidents_so_far/

Democratic Party questions voter cancellations
http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/politics-0/122523145756690.xml&storylist=topstories

Democrats allege voter purge
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/politics/33486504.html

Florida counties split over voter verification
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/741884.html

White House Asks for Scrutiny
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/24/AR2008102403659.html

Lawmakers Urge DOJ Not to Intervene in Ohio Voter Dispute
http://www.pubrecord.org/nationworld/428-lawmakers-urge-doj-not-to-intervene-in-ohio-voter-dispute.html

Coffman sued over voter purge
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_10815894

Colorado Faces Suit on Voter Purges
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/us/politics/25brfs-001.html?_r=2&ref=us&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Ohio group drops lawsuit over voter ID
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/article/20081024/UPDATES01/81024025/-1/newsfront2

Bush Orders DOJ To Probe Ohio Voter Registrations, October 25, 2008
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/esk/2008/10/bush-orders-doj-to-probe-ohio.php

Over 1,500,000 NYS Voters Purged, October 21st
Have you been purged from New York State’s database?
http://www.nyvv.org/boblog/2008/10/21/over-1500000-nys-voters-purged/

Some voters 'purged' from voter rolls
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/26/voter.suppression/

12,165 now on Florida's 'no match' vote list
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/state/article877094.ece

Tipping the Scales -- Up to 10,000 Registrations Deemed Incomplete in Colorado
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-markovits/tipping-the-scales----up_b_138508.html

Voter rolls at center of clerk's race
http://www.northjersey.com/news/njpolitics/33344799.html

Colorado Secretary of State sued over voter purges
http://www.koaa.com/aaaa_top_stories/x1589514438/Colorado-Secretary-of-State-sued-over-voter-purges

Federal judge will hear voter purge case Wednesday
http://www.examiner.com/a-1659209~Federal_judge_will_hear_voter_purge_case_Wednesday.html

Latest developments on Colorado voting issues
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/oct/28/latest-developments-on-colorado-voting-issues/

Voting rights group sues Colorado secretary of state over purges
http://coloradoindependent.com/12872/voting-rights-group-sue-colorado-secretary-of-state-over-purges

CNN: Error purges 50,000 Georgia voters from rolls
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/10/cnn_error_purge.html

Court: ‘Flagged’ citizens may vote
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2008/10/27/voters_verificiation_ruling.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab

Colo.'s Katherine Harris threatens '08 election [another attempt to disenfranchise voters on a technicality]
http://www.politicswest.com/32023/colorados_katherine_harris_threatens_08_election

Lawmakers Urge DOJ Not to Intervene in Ohio Voter Dispute
http://www.pubrecord.org/nationworld/428-lawmakers-urge-doj-not-to-intervene-in-ohio-voter-dispute.html

II. PURGED VOTERS MUST USE PROVISIONAL BALLOTS THAT ARE NOT NECCESSARILY COUNTED

Provisional Ballots Get Uneven Treatment
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122515651921374669.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Increase in provisional ballots could stress election systems
Eligibility questions may delay results
http://news-press.com/article/20081024/NEWS0107/810250424

Watchdog Groups Urge Voters to Reject Provisional Ballots Groups hope to settle challenges at polls; feds will monitor fraud claims
http://www.wibc.com/News/Story.aspx?ID=101696

Rockingham County - 79 Rockingham voters given provisional ballots
http://www.news-record.com/content/2008/10/28/article/79_rockingham_voters_given_provisional_ballots


III. ELECTRONIC POLLBOOK PROBLEMS PREVENT VOTERS FROM VOTING OR FORCE VOTERS TO USE PROVISIONAL BALLOTS

Voters turn out in force for historic campaign
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6068201.html
Among the problems was a malfunction in the machines that scan voters' identification … where about 300 people stood in line waiting to cast ballots.

Long lines, glitches reported during early voting
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/24/voting.problems/?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail

Your vote faces challenges like never before
http://www.times-standard.com/othervoices/ci_10820484


Early voters overwhelm poll workers
But touch-screen machines functioned just fine, county election official says
http://www.parkrecord.com/todaysheadlines/ci_10808045

Glitch reported in early voting in Park City
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=4631731

Summit County residents show up at polls only to find they've already voted
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_10830698

Card glitch snarls early voting
http://www.thespectrum.com/article/20081021/NEWS01/81021005

Long lines, few machines [and Diebold’s crashing poll books] hamper voting in Georgia county
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/28/georgia.voting/


IV. STRAIGHT TICKET VOTING CAUSES VOTE-FLIPPING & UNDERVOTES


NC: Watch out for a separation between the straight-party vote and the presidential vote on your ballots!
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/79161

Straight Ticket Voting Causing Problems
http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/straightticket.asp

Confusing North Carolina Ballot Leaves off Votes for President
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-tucker/confusing-north-carolina_b_138073.html

Vote Count Error Caught in New Mexico Machines
By Kim Zetter October 07, 2008
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/vote-count-erro.html

Officials find, fix glitch in New Mexico voting machine
http://www.rep-am.com/news/elections/370744.txt

Day before early voting, glitch found with machines
http://www.dailymail.com/News/election08/200810140217



V. DISCERNIBLE TOUCH-SCREEN VOTE FLIPPING – mostly on ES&S machines in SC, WV, MO, TN, and TX


Law Center Sends Letter to States About Vote-Flipping Machines
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/law-center-send.html

Citizens face major problems when polling machines malfunction
http://www.elon.edu/pendulum/Story.aspx?id=1198

Texas county's machines causing concern for some voters
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/28/tx-countys-machines-causing-concern-for-some-voters/

Tennesseans report voting problems
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081025/NEWS0206/810250366/1009/NEWS02

Early e-voting results in vote flipping in three states so far
http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2008/10/27/early_voting/

Good with Crayons? Then you can vote in Kanawha County
http://sundaygazettemail.com/News/200810240716

W. Virginia Gave E-Voting VP an Award While Machines Were Malfunctioning
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/w-virginia-give.html

Votes being stolen from Obama in Early Voting, October 23, 2008
http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2008/10/votes-being-stolen-from-obama-in-early.html

Some early W.Va. voters angry over switched votes
Jackson County touch-screens switched votes, 3 residents say
http://wvgazette.com/News/200810170676

More W.Va. voters say machines are switching votes
In six cases, Democratic votes flipped to GOP
http://wvgazette.com/News/200810180251

Vote Flipping in Davidson County, Tennessee
http://uncountedthemovie.com/blog/2008/10/20/vote-flipping-in-davidson-county-tennessee/

Voting Machines Switch Votes; Officials Blame Voters
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/voting-machine.html

Voters in W.Va. Say Electronic Voting Machines Switched their Obama Votes to McCain
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-mckay/voters-in-wva-say-electro_b_136332.html

Voting Is a Touchy Business
Some machines showing wrong choices in W.Va.
http://www.news-register.net/page/content.detail/id/515728.html

Early-voting problems in Putnam, WV
Touch-screen votes switched, then corrected
http://sundaygazettemail.com/News/200810200711

W. Virginia Gives E-Voting [ES&S] VP an Award While Its Machines Malfunction
http://popmartian.com/techpile/2008/10/28/w-virginia-gives-e-voting-vp-an-award-while-machines-malfunction-2/

W. Virginia Video Testimonials of Vote Flipping
http://videothevote.org/video/?state=WV&tag=&year=2008&search=Search

Early Voting Can Be Fun! And Crowded! And Confusing! Also, Troubling!
Tue Oct 21, 2008
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2008/10/voting_is_fun_and_confusing_al.php

Vote Flipping in Davidson County, Tennessee, 21 October 2008
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0810/S00304.htm

Problems with Voting Machines
http://www.ktsm.com/news/local/33423489.html

Testing OKs touch screen voting machines
http://www.herald-dispatch.com/news/briefs/x1125636459/W-Va-Testing-OKs-touch-screen-voting-machines

Voting Rights Watch: One company's machine behind vote-switching reported in early balloting across the South
http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2008/10/voting-rights-watch-one-companys.asp

Voters using e-voting machines urged to check printouts to verify their choices
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9117645&intsrc=news_ts_head

Voters turn out in force for historic campaign
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6068201.html

Letter to Secretaries of State re: iVotronic “Vote Flipping”
http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/letter_to_secretaries_of_state_re_ivotronic_vote_flipping/

Concerns raised over electronic voting
http://www.mineralwellsindex.com/local/local_story_298161535.html

Problems Plague Early Voting System
Elections Commission Says Blames Calibration
http://www.wsmv.com/politics/17803172/detail.html

Voters confused about presidential vote on TN county's machines
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/26/voters-confused-about-presidential-vote-on-tn-countys-machines/

Surprise, Surprise: E-Voting Glitches Found In Early Voting
Techdirt - USA
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081024/1456192641.shtml
In this case, the machines are supplied by ES&S whose machines (like both Sequoia and Diebold) have a relatively long history of screwing up at election ...

This demo by a voting official shows what can happen when a machine’s touchscreen isn't calibrated. Then to make his point that a properly calibrated machine works perfectly, he calibrates the machine, then he votes straight republican and the machine votes for Ralph Nader probably because his prior vote for Nader can not be overwritten afterwards by voting the straight party option.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q9NSVUu8nk



VI. INDISCERNIBLE VOTE-FLIPPING EASY - NO RATIONAL REASON TO TRUST THE INTEGRITY & ACCURACY OF U.S. ELECTION RESULTS


There is motive and ample opportunity for insider vote manipulation in all current U.S. voting systems. The elections industry may be the only major U.S. industry that is not subjected to independent auditing. No human being, not even the most skilled computer scientist, can tell after an election what instructions executed on current U.S. voting machines during elections, so the only way to check the accuracy of US election outcomes is by manual counts of voter-marked ballots.

E-Voting Made Scary
[Nice summary of the work of UCal Santa Barbara’s Computer Security Group]
http://www.independent.com/news/2008/oct/23/e-voting-made-scary/

NY Times: Casting a Ballot, and a Wary Eye
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/27/business/media/27link.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Interactive Map of US - How Hackable is your State's Voting System?
http://dvice.com/voting/index.php

7 scariest problems with today's voting machines
http://dvice.com/archives/2008/10/seven_scary_fac.php

Electronic Voting Machines Leave Room For Manipulations, Warns Europe's Biggest Hacker Group
http://blogs.dw-world.de/acrossthepond/michael/1.7275.html

Part1 to 3: hack a Sequoia Advantage with Andrew Appel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxM_QNGF1dE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NHQHMXca9E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA3J9qlVuBM

Princeton Warning on E-Voting Machine Hack Shows Human Touch Can Be a Good Thing
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Princeton-Warning-on-EVoting-Machine-Hack-Shows-Human-Touch-Can-Be-a-Good-Thing/

SC Voting Machines Prone to Problems, Warns USC Computer Science Chairman
http://www.wspa.com/spa/news/local/article/sc_voting_machines_prone_to_problems_warns_usc_computer_science_chairman/10365/

A Vote for More Secure Elections (discusses hackability of optiscan voting machines)
http://advice.cio.com/seisenstadt/a_vote_for_more_secure_elections

Princeton report rips N.J. e-voting machines as easily hackable
Vendor challenges research, says its machines are safe and reliable
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9118204

E-Voting Complaints Heat Up With Early Voting
http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/government/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=211600865

South Carolina among 10 least ready for voting glitches
http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/102108/met_480256.shtml

Did Washington waste millions on faulty voting machines?
http://www.bnd.com/breaking_news/story/508139.html

While flagging illegal practices, don't overlook machine error
http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1224017708102750.xml&coll=1


VII. VOTING MACHINES NOT WORKING


Voting machines absent on first day of early voting
http://www.pro8news.com/news/local/31328619.html

Boulder County - Greenlee: Will our votes count?
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/oct/26/will-our-votes-count/

Optical Scan Machines Not Working but at least there are paper ballots that could be counted if candidates contest and if state laws allow manual counts to check the machine tallies.

Ballots not being recorded at two Leon County polling places
http://www.tallahassee.com/article/20081020/BREAKINGNEWS/81020024

Early Voting off to Rough Start
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/breaking/news-article.aspx?storyid=121489&catid=17
optical scan readers - those machines were indicating the ballot was too long.

Film, panel highlight errors in electronic voting machine software
http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=63924&comview=1



VIII. VOTER INTIMIDATION & DIRTY TRICKS


Denounce dirty tricks: Ensuring a fair vote is a responsibility, too
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20081027_Denounce_dirty_tricks__Ensuring_a_fair_vote_is_a_responsibility__too.html

New Mexico GOP Sued For Voter Intimidation
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/27/new-mexico-gop-sued-for-v_n_138199.html

Phony flier says Virginians vote on different days
http://hamptonroads.com/2008/10/phony-flier-says-virginians-vote-different-days

Civil rights groups file suits on voter harassment
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/Civil-rights-groups-file-suits-on-voter-harassment#

GOP lawyer refuses to deny private eye visits (updated)
Two in ACORN controversy say investigator's visits were intimidating
http://newmexicoindependent.com/6457/nm-gop-accused-of-voter-intimidation

Voter Suppression Hits the Web
E-Mails Sow Disinformation As Voting Groups Prepare To Monitor Polls With Web Apps, Twitter And Mobile Video
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/no_20081027_9705.php


IX. UNEQUAL OR INSUFFICIENT ALLOCATION OF VOTING RESOURCES


NAACP Sues Officials over Vote Preparations
High-Minority Areas Affected, Group Says
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/27/AR2008102702289.html?hpid=topnews

A Voting Rights Disaster?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/27/AR2008102702405.html

Some states are not providing adequate voting equipment, machines, stations and staff
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1331/t/6410/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26109

Election Watchdog Group Warns of Ballot Shortage
http://www.myfoxcolorado.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=7743482&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1

U.S judge hears Pa. ballot lawsuit
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20081029_U_S_judge_hears_Pa__ballot_lawsuit.html
-------------

Not all election problems are reported by voters or officials. Unfortunately, in most states there is no requirement for poll workers to report problems to county and township election officials, no requirement for county election officials to report problems to the state election officials and no requirement for anyone to report election problems to the US Election Assistance Commission or to the public.

An independently compiled similar list of news articles also organized by voting problems occurring in this 2008 November election is available here: ELECTION COMPLAINTS ARE POURING IN October 28, 2008 http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/2008/10/election-complaints-are-pouring-in.html

Review in real-time reports of voter assistance calls made to 866-OUR-VOTE, Election Protection's toll-free hotline. http://www.ourvotelive.org/home.php

SUMMARY

U.S. election problems are extensive enough to possibly cause candidates to be certified for office that were not accurately elected by voters in U.S. presidential, congressional, and state election contests.

US election officials have, in the past decade, turned over vote reporting, vote counting, and even vote casting, in the case of electronic ballots, to private vendors using trade-secret software. Election officials close relationships with voting machine vendors may explain why some officials are resisting the public cry for increased public transparency and public control over elections, including ballot security that is necessary to ensure accurate election outcomes.

Independent scientific manual post-election audits and public oversight would ensure that voters decide who governs.

It is only by protecting the right to vote for everyone, that any individual’s right to vote can be protected because the secret ballot prevents any voter from being able to check that his or her own vote was counted accurately and thus makes elections very difficult to secure.

Thanks in large part to the Daily Voting News efforts of John Gideon for alerting election integrity advocates to many of these articles.

Due to the large number of voters wrongly purged from voting rolls who will be forced to count on provisional ballots that are not usually counted until weeks after the election, and due to the unaudited nature of machine counts, candidates should not concede any election contest until after all provisional ballots have been counted and after detailed election data has been obtained from election officials by open records requests and analyzed to detect any anomalous patterns consistent with vote miscount.

I will follow-up this email with another giving advice to voters, including how to report the problems that you experience during this election.


Kathy Dopp

The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author Kathy Dopp's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at

P.O. Box 680192
Park City, UT 84068
phone 435-658-4657

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://electionarchive.org

How to Audit Election Outcome Accuracy
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/VoteCountAuditBillRequest.pdf

History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf

I thought persons might be interested in reading these articles on voter suppression tactics that are currently being used nationwide.

Thousands Face Mix-Ups In Voter Registrations In New Databases, Many Are Wrongly Flagged as Ineligible
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/17/AR2008101703360.html

Block the Vote - Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23638322/block_the_vote

USA Today cited "accusations of voter fraud and voter suppression" but omitted examples of voter suppression
http://mediamatters.org/items/200810170017?f=h_latest

States' Attempts to Clean up Voting Lists Result in Unlawful Voter Purging and Suppression
http://www.civilrights.org/library/features/033-voter-purge.html

Treasure Coast officials calling residents on 'no match, no vote' list
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/oct/18/officials-calling-no-match-no-vote-list/

Judge Rules Michigan Voter Purging Program Illegal
http://www.ombwatch.org/article/blogs/entry/5453/53

Ohio GOP loses fight to contest new voters, The Supreme Court on Friday threw out a lawsuit brought by the Ohio Republican Party that could have made it easier to challenge tens of...
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/presidentialrace/2008281507_campdig18.html

The Real Issue Isn't Voter Fraud, Its Vote Suppression (Joe Rothstein's Commentary)
http://uspolitics.einnews.com/article.php?nid=561852

Voter Database Glitches Could Disenfranchise Thousands
By Kim Zetter Email 09.17.08
http://www.wired.com/print/politics/onlinerights/news/2008/09/voter_registration


-------------

FYI, electronic-ballot voting systems are discernibly switching votes in WV and TN in early voting - and other voting machine problems:

Did Washington waste millions on faulty voting machines?
http://www.bnd.com/breaking_news/story/508139.html

Some early W.Va. voters angry over switched votes
Jackson County touch-screens switched votes, 3 residents say
http://wvgazette.com/News/200810170676

More W.Va. voters say machines are switching votes
In six cases, Democratic votes flipped to GOP
http://wvgazette.com/News/200810180251

While flagging illegal practices, don't overlook machine error
http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1224017708102750.xml&coll=1

Day before early voting, glitch found with machines
http://www.dailymail.com/News/election08/200810140217

Vote Count Error Caught in New Mexico Machines
By Kim Zetter EmailOctober 07, 2008
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/vote-count-erro.html

Officials find, fix glitch in New Mexico voting machine
http://www.rep-am.com/news/elections/370744.txt
----------

My Personal Advice to Voters:

Check your voter registration status now. Some states allow same day voter registration during Early Voting or have in-person registration through Oct. 20.

Otherwise, for security reasons, I recommend voting in the polling place on Election Day.

Fully fill out your ballot but do not use any "straight party" voting option because of possible programming errors and because in some states like North Carolina the straight party option does not record a vote in the presidential contest.

Use a paper ballot rather than an electronic-ballot voting machine if that option is available to you.

Evaluating the Security of Electronic Voting Systems - Are your votes really counted?
http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~seclab/projects/voting/

The films produced by The Computer Security Group at the University of California at Santa Barbara show how easily U.S. voting machines can be used to fraudulently manipulate votes *in a way that no election official would notice or be able to detect - even with valid post-election audits*.

The UC Santa Barbara students shows how the paper roll ballot records can be also easily be fraudulently manipulated to match the fraudulent electronic tallies and thus the fraudulent election results are not detectable by any post-election manual audit.

The Santa Barbara students have discovered and showed how to implement two all-new methods of fraudulently manipulating touchscreen e-ballot votes in ways that no valid post-election audit can detect by the method of "Fake Fleeing Voter" and "After the Fact Vote".

These Santa Barbara Security Group videos are well-worth watching for anyone that believes that touchscreen e-ballot voting machines are OK as long as they have a voter-verifiable paper ballot record.

While the computer voting machine used to demonstrate these concepts is manufactured by Sequoia, the same four methods of fraudulently manipulating vote counts in ways that no manual post-election audit could detect and no election official would notice, can be accomplished on any touchscreen e-ballot (DRE) voting machine.

Carefully watch this video to understand fully why e-ballot touchscreen voting is not secure, not auditable for vote fraud, and not trustworthy.

Evaluating the Security of Electronic Voting Systems - Are your votes really counted?
http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~seclab/projects/voting/

A cost-effective Solution to give confidence that election outcomes are determined by voters is Optical scan systems that use voter-marked paper ballots, public oversight over all aspects of elections including ballot security and ballot reconciliation, and independent, scientific post-election auditing.

---
Kathy Dopp

The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author Kathy Dopp's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://electionarchive.org

How to Audit Election Outcome Accuracy
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/VoteCountAuditBillRequest.pdf

History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf

By The National Election Data Archive
Park City, UT June 16, 2008

Summary: After its report criticizing the increasingly popular instant runoff voting method aroused cyberspace debates and flame wars last week, the National Election Data Archive released a second version “Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting - 17 Flaws and 3 Benefits”.

The National Election Data Archive, on June 9th, 2008 released a report “15 Flaws and 3 Benefits of Instant Runoff Voting or Ranked Choice Voting” that provoked criticism and comment on the Internet, including a web page called “De-Bunking Kathy Dopp's 15 Flaws of Instant Runoff Voting” by the organization Fair Vote. On the other hand, computer scientists, voting system experts, and election methods experts responded to the report by providing additional insight and information on alternative voting methods, including the flaws of instant runoff voting.

Instant runoff voting (IRV) is a method for counting “ranked choice” ballots where each voter ranks the candidates – first choice, second choice, etc. The IRV counting process proceeds in "rounds" where the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated in each round and that candidate’s votes are reassigned to the remaining candidates using voters’ choices. IRV sounds enticing to voters who can express their preferences, but according to the new report, IRV does not solve the problems it is promoted as solving and causes significant new problems.

The National Election Data Archive recommends restoring verifiable integrity to elections first before implementing alternative voting methods, and reminds readers that not one U.S. State today utilizes all the basic measures required to ensure fundamental election integrity such as public access to election records, observable post-election manual audits, ballot reconciliation, and public oversight of ballot security.

The revised new report differentiates between the ballot style and the counting method, discusses alternative voting methods, describes an “IRV-like” solution that would solve some of IRV’s counting problems, and responds to Fair Vote’s attempt to rebut the first version of the report.

According to Kathy Dopp, the report’s author, “Instant runoff voting is a threat to the fairness, accuracy, timeliness, and economy of U.S. elections. The U.S. needs to solve its existing voting system problems and then carefully consider the options before adopting new voting methods.”

The full report “Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting - 17 Flaws and 3 Benefits” is found on-line at
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf

The National Election Data Archive is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organized for educational and scientific purposes of promoting fair and accurate elections by researching, developing and promoting methods and procedures to detect voter disenfranchisement and vote count inaccuracy. Such methods include independent manual vote count audits, exit poll discrepancy analysis, and the public release and scientific analysis of election data along with public release of election records necessary to verify the integrity of elections. NEDA relies on the donation of time by volunteers who donate their time and expertise because of their dedication to vote integrity and public service. The project depends on donations from from citizens who are concerned about fair and free elections in the U.S. in order to continue its work. All donations are tax deductible. To make a donation or become involved in the project, please visit http://electionarchive.org

--

Park City, UT June 9, 2008
The National Election Data Archive

The National Election Data Archive has released a research report “15 Flaws and 3 Benefits of Instant Runoff Voting or Ranked Choice Voting” which concludes that “Ranked choice voting (RCV)/instant runoff voting (IRV) is not worthy of consideration and its use should be avoided” because “there are simpler, fairer, less costly, more auditable alternative voting methods.”

According to Kathy Dopp, the report’s author, “The RCV/IRV method creates serious obstacles to implementing measures to detect and correct machine vote miscount, such as post-election audits. If counting complexity, increased potential for undetected vote fraud and error, increased costs, and difficulty of auditing were not important factors for elections, then RCV/IRV could be considered an improvement over today’s voting method.”

"Instant runoff voting" or “ranked choice voting” is a system where each "vote" is a rank ordering of all the candidates. The counting would proceed in "rounds" where in each round, the candidate with the fewest votes in that round is eliminated (both from the election, and from all orderings inside votes).

RCV/IRV is billed by its proponents as a solution to the “spoiler problem”. The “spoiler problem occurs when two candidates have overlapping support and both candidates are penalized. When a third party candidate receives an amount of votes that is more than the vote margin between the two major political party candidates, it may tip the balance of votes to the major political party candidate who is favored by fewer voters overall.

Support for RCV/IRV has grown since the 2000 election, and it is being tested or considered for adoption in some jurisdictions within Minnesota, North Carolina, and California.

According to Dopp the flaws of IRV/RCV include that it does not solve the “spoiler” problem except in special cases; it requires centralized vote counting procedures at the state-level; it encourages the use of complex high-tech voting systems; it confuses voters and increases over-vote rates; it s complex and time-consuming to implement and to count; it makes post election analysis difficult to perform; it is difficult and time-consuming to manually count; it is difficult and inefficient to manually audit; it could necessitate counting all presidential votes in Washington D.C. if a national popular vote compact were passed; it entrenches the two-party system; it could deliver unreasonable outcomes; not all voters’ ballots are treated equally; it is costly; it increases the potential for undetectable vote fraud and erroneous vote counts; and it violates some election fairness principles.

The benefits of RCV/IRV over today’s U.S. voting method, called “plurality voting”, include that RCV/IRV eliminates the spoiler scenario in situations where the minority party candidate is behind both frontrunners; it will not elect a candidate who loses pair-wise to all other candidates; and it gives voters an opportunity to express their preferences among all candidates.


The National Election Data Archive recommends that fundamental integrity of elections should be restored first before considering any alternative voting methods, and notes that today, not one State utilizes all the measures that are required to ensure fundamental election integrity such as:

1. public access to all election records and data necessary to evaluate the integrity of the electoral process,

2. observable post-election independent manual audits of machine vote counts,

3. post-election ballot reconciliation of all printed, counted, unused, and spoiled ballots with voter process records, and

4. public oversight of ballot security.

The eight page report “15 Flaws and 3 Benefits of Instant Runoff or Ranked Choice Voting” explains the flaws and benefits of instant runoff voting in detail plus provides appendices with examples of how RCV/IRV violates fairness principles, plus provides three pages of endnotes of references and additional facts.

The full report is found on-line at http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf

This release is also posted online at
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/FlawsIRV-PressRelease.pdf

Press Contact: Kathy Dopp 435-658-4657 kathy@electionarchive.org

About The National Election Archive:
The National Election Data Archive has been organized for educational and scientific purposes of promoting fair and accurate elections by researching, developing and promoting methods and procedures to detect voter disenfranchisement and vote count inaccuracy. Such methods include independent manual vote count audits, exit poll discrepancy analysis, and the public release and scientific analysis of election data along with public release of election records necessary to verify the integrity of elections. NEDA is a completely non-profit organization that relies on the donation of time by its volunteers who donate their time and expertise because of their dedication to vote integrity and public service. The project depends on donations from from citizens who are concerned about fair and free elections in the U.S. in order to continue its work. All donations are tax deductible. To make a donation or become involved in the project, please visit http://electionarchive.org

As of about 8:10 p.m. E.T. Clinton was slightly leading Obama in the exit polls 51.6% to 47.8%. This was too close to call according to news media. We will be releasing a more detailed commentary of the PA exit polls soon. Current adjusted exit poll results are available here:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/#PADEM

Regardless of whether Obama or Clinton "wins" the PA Democratic Primary according to PA official machine counts, what we will never know is whether or not PA voters' ballots were accurately cast or counted because 90% of PA voters voted using invisible e-ballots without any voter-verifiable paper ballot record that could be used to verify the counts and for independent auditing. And we will never know what trade secret instructions were compiled into humanly unreadable machine language and were used to secretly cast and count invisible e-votes in PA.

We know that there were many problems with PA's voting systems today. Some of PA's election problems are listed here by BradBlog.com:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5918

Some PA election officials are reporting "few problems. However, mainstream news reports show otherwise.

Problems (from most recent to earliest) Include:

4:12pm PT: Wrong machine deliver, machine failure, court-appointed machine inspector denied entrance to polls. http://www.electionjournal.org/

3:54pm PT: Voter-service phone lines jammed across state.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/politics/22cnd-campaign.html?_r=3&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

3:45pm ET: Machines down, get jammed, in Bucks County. http://blogs.phillyburbs.com/blog.php/?p=28259&cat=0

3:09pm ET: More machine breakdowns in Philly, voters only allowed provisions if both machines malfunction. http://cbs3.com/topstories/polling.places.pennsylvania.2.705732.html

3:01pm ET: Obama camp reporting problems, difficulty getting machines started, voting probs, Philly official says "all is well". From http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_camp_charging_voting_problems_in_0422.html

12:28am ET: Machines down in African American area of Philly, voters leave without voting, registration probs. Via Email from computer security, e-voting expert, Dr. Rebecca Mercuri...

11:00am ET: Registration roll probs in Philly, provisionals only handed out if both machines malfunction. From Philly Inquirer/Daily News PA Primary Blog... http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/politics/Vote_early_to_avoid_problems.html

10:50am ET: Both machines break down, 100's leave without voting, Obama's name not on provisional ballot! From Philly Inquirer/Daily News PA Primary Blog...
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/politics/More_voting_machine_malfunctions.html

10:45am ET: Electrical probs lead to ES&S iVotronic machine malfunctions, use of paper ballots in Green Tree. From CBS affiliate KDKA 2...
http://kdka.com/local/Poll.Green.Tree.2.705572.html

10:44am ET: Machine breakdowns in Delaware County and South Philly. From Philly Inquirer/Daily News PA Primary Blog...
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/politics/18002279.html

9:45am ET: Ballot design probs in Palmer Township (Northhampton County). Delegates not listed under candidates. From Lehigh Valley Live...
http://blog.pennlive.com/lvbreakingnews/2008/04/palmer_township_voter_reports.html

9:43am ET: Fewer machines in Northhampton County this year. From Lehigh Valley Live...
http://blog.pennlive.com/lvbreakingnews/2008/04/voters_might_need_to_wait_in_l.html

9:14am ET: Voting machines malfunctioned, votes lost in Bethlehem. From Morning Call...
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-n-l-voters-042208-cn,0,4187550,full.story

6:15am PT: Machines "on fritz" as Philly polls opened, voters given provisionals. From Philly Inquirer/Daily News PA Primary Blog...
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/politics/Grumbling_at_the_provisional_ballots.html

To read the Brad Blog article in its entirety see:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5918

More reported problems w/ PA election today

http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2008/04/philly_voting_t.html

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/politics/Extended_Hours_Paper_Ballots.html

Voter Action, asked a Philadelphia judge to extend poll hours until 10 p.m., is making its case with voter affidavits. One Richard Brown, of the 5700 block of N. 12th Street in Philadelphia, swore an affidavit that both voting machines at his polling place were broken when he arrived there at 6:55 a.m. It took nearly two hours for the machines to be either repaired or replaced, according to Brown's affidavit, and more than an hour for election officials to produce paper provisional ballots. Roughly 75-100 would-be voters left before that, according to Brown's affidavit. However, the judge denied the request.

---------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND INFO

Blackbox Voting (http://blackboxvoting.org) named PA the worst state to vote in. Other articles re. the flawed PA voting systems include:

Major flaw in State of Pennsylvania online voter registration puts user data at risk
Posted by Nathan McFeters March 18th, 2008
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=965

Election Fraud in Pennsylvania?
Michael Collins, Sunday, 20 April 2008
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0804/S00288.htm

Pennsylvania - State of Denial
Marybeth Kuznik
http://votepa.us/

The Pennsylvania Primary: Democracy of the Gods
Tuesday's Election Will be 'Unrecountable, Unverifiable, and Unauditable'...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5916

Pennsylvania's Primary: Paperless and Unverifiable
By Verified Voting Foundation April 15, 2008
http://verifiedvoting.org/

Video - Voting Trouble in PA? (Re. Clueless PA Officials who claim that PA's machines are "HAVA-approved" and that "I got elected on them, so there are no problems.")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHfnLXAOjDA

Long Lines expected:
Pennsylvania Voter Registration Total Hits Historic High for a Primary Election
http://www.foxbusiness.com/article/pennsylvania-voter-registration-total-hits-historic-high-primary-election_569836_1.html

--
Without any routine post-election independent check of the machine counts, we can assume that PA's election results are inaccurate, even if there were no attempt to manipulate votes, because we've seen that often central tabulators fail to count memory cards or incorrectly transfer counts between internal databases, and most cannot print a report of the individual voting machine counts, so that means that the only way to detect these errors is to manually audit voter verifiable paper ballot records for entire precincts - which is impossible, given the lack of any voter-verifiable paper ballot records on the vast majority of PA's voting machines.

Kathy Dopp

The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author Kathy Dopp's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis.

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://electionarchive.org

History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf

The National Election Data Archive (NEDA) urges the Colorado Legislature to pass legislation to favor voter marked paper ballots and to promote ballot marking devices for voters who can benefit from a computer enhanced voting interface; and to require valid independent election audits in Colorado.

According to NEDA, DRE voting machine-printed paper ballot records do not accurately record voter choices because:

DRE voting machine ballot printers jam, run out of paper, may be incorrectly loaded with paper, or otherwise fail to print

The “three strikes you’re out” rule for DRE voting machine printed records, which give the voter only two chances to refuse to approve the machine’s paper ballot, can prevent the most diligent voter from having a valid printed paper ballot record

Studies show that only approximately 30% of voters take the time to verify DRE printed ballot records and that about 30% of these voters are able to accurately verify all their ballot choices correctly. This means that perhaps 10% of voters accurately verifying DRE printed ballots.

There are several ways that programmers can fraudulently switch the votes of the up to 90% of voters who do not accurately verify their DRE printed ballot choices.

* There are several ways for voters or other attackers to undetectably damage DRE printed ballot records and electronic ballot records that would be unobservable until after elections.

Full Letter to the Colorado Legislature:

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/CO/Ltr2ColoradoLegislature.pdf

---

NEDA also pointed out flaws of the Colorado auditing procedures and explained some fundamental concepts of election auditing to the Colorado Secretary of State's Office:

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/CO/NEDA-Response2CO-AuditingRules.pdf

Discrepancies between exit polls and vote counts in the February 5th, 2008 “Super Tuesday” U.S. presidential primary strongly suggest that a vote miscount may have occurred, favoring Hillary Clinton at the expense of Barack Obama, and on the Republican side favoring John McCain at the expense of Mitt Romney.

States with the least likely (most suspicious) election results given their exit polls are Massachusetts and New Jersey in both the Democratic primary election in the Republican primary elections. Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York are just a few states that did not conduct any post-election manual audits to check the accuracy of machine vote counts, leaving their primary elections susceptible to undetected manipulation consistent with their exit poll discrepancies. Not one U.S. State currently uses all the fundamental measures that are required to ensure accurate elections – paper ballots, scientific post-election manual audits, verifiable ballot security, ballot and voter reconciliation, and public access to election records. The Super Tuesday discrepancies between exit polls and the actual vote counts are startling.

Read the FULL REPORT here:
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/exit-polls/SuperTuesday2008/SuperTuesday2008DemPrimary.pdf

NEW HAMPSHIRE’S DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY ELECTION RESULTS ARE SUSPICIOUS

Pre-election polls projected that Barrack Obama would win the New Hampshire Democratic primary election. An average of seven opinion polls predicted that 38.8 percent were going to vote for Obama, while 30 percent would vote for Clinton. The opinion polls came close to predicting the final results for New Hampshire’s hand-counted votes - 39.2% for Obama and 34.9% for Clinton - but New Hampshire’s Diebold/Premier machine-counted votes reversed the outcome.

The reversal of the machine and hand counts is consistent with programming errors counting votes cast for Obama, for Clinton and votes cast for Clinton, for Obama.

To see this consistency of New Hampshire’s election results with programming error, analysts examined Clinton and Obama vote shares out of votes cast only for Obama and Clinton. Overall, Clinton’s hand count share of such votes is 47.07% to Obama’s 52.93% share and a virtually exact reverse pattern occurs with machine counts where Clinton’s share is 52.95% to Obama’s 47.05%.

A statistical analysis of New Hampshire’s Democratic primary by the National Election Data Archive rules out precinct-size and seems to rule out demographic factors as possible causes for the reversal of Obama and Clinton’s machine and hand-counted results; and shows that the pattern is consistent with vote miscount favoring Clinton.

The National Election Data Archive’s New Hampshire analysis and raw data is posted on the Internet at ElectionArchive.org

http://electionarchive.org/ucvData/NH/DemPrimary2008-PairedPrecinctStudy.pdf

and

http://electionarchive.org/ucvData/NH/

About 80% of New Hampshire ballots were counted by Diebold/Premier optical scanning machines without any post-election manual audits to verify the machine count accuracy.

Press reports hypothesized theories for why Clinton beat Obama in New Hampshire including:

1. the "Bradley effect" (closet racism) that white voters lie to pollsters and "say" they'll vote for a Black, but given a secret ballot don't,

2. the “damsel in distress” theory that Clinton's tears brought women voters out for her,

3. the “good weather” theory, and

4. the “economy was key” theory.

It would be interesting to know why these effects would only occur when ballots are counted by Diebold/Premier voting machines but not when ballots are counted in public view by hand.

The “electronic miscount” theory could be a more plausible explanation for the discrepancies between the opinion polls and the machine-counted results.

Could someone have mis-programmed – by accident or on purpose – the optical scan machines such that Hillary’s votes went to Obama and Obama’s votes went to Hillary?

UPCOMING RECOUNT OF THE TUESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2008 NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY ELECTION

The Secretary of State (SOS) of New Hampshire announced that there will be a statewide recount of the paper ballots beginning on Wednesday, January 16, because presidential candidates Democrat Dennis Kucinich and Republican Albert Howard requested it.

http://www.sos.nh.gov/recount%20press%20release.pdf

It is imperative that, not only ballots, but poll books and absentee and provisional voter records be inspected for a representative sample of recounted precincts. Post 2004 election investigations of "recounted" (and non-recounted) precincts in Ohio discovered large numbers of "phantom" ballots for which no voting records could be found, and disenfranshised voters for whom no ballot could be found - see http://baiman.blogspot.com/

U.S. Representative Kucinich asks for a Recount of NH machine counts in the interest of election integrity

http://www.dennis4president.com/go/homepage-items/kucinich-asks-for-new-hampshire-recount-in-the-interest-of-election-integrity/

Kucinich is asking for donations to pay for the Democratic Primary recount

http://www.dennis4president.com/go/homepage-items/help-defend-the-integrity-of-our-voting-system/

CONCLUSION:

Is the suspicious pattern in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary results caused by voting machine counting? We have no clear idea, because we have no confidence in the unaudited machine vote counting process. Knowing how easy it is to corrupt machine-counted election results, it is appalling that New Hampshire and other states do not routinely conduct post-election manual checks of the accuracy of machine vote counts. Human mistakes and worse are inevitable, and without routine post-election measures to detect and correct mistakes, and without public oversight over security and chain of custody of ballots, inaccurate vote counts and incorrect election results are inevitable.

The full analysis of the National Election Data Archive is available at ElectionArchive.org

http://electionarchive.org/ucvData/NH/DemPrimary2008-PairedPrecinctStudy.pdf

QUESTIONS THE PRESS COULD ASK DURING EACH ELECTION ARE:

Does this state conduct any publicly observable post-election independent manual counts to check the accuracy of machine counts? (This would require voter-created, or at least voter-checked, paper ballots.)

Were the detailed vote count data and raw polling data made publicly available immediately after the election for analysts to detect any possible suspicious patterns?

Were the invisibly-machine-counted vote counts checked, audited, provably correct?

Is there public oversight over chain of custody procedures for election records and ballots?

What are the state’s procedures for securing paper ballot and election records; and how may the public participate?

DATA AVAILABLE FOR ANALYZING THE NEW HAMPSHIRE JANUARY 8, 2008 PRIMARY ELECTION RESULTS

Another Statistical analysis which reaches the same conclusions as the National Election Data Archive, with links to vote count data

http://call-with-current-continuation.blogspot.com/2008/01/statistical-exploration-of-new.html

New Hampshire Secretary of State Web Site

http://www.sos.nh.gov/presprim2008/index.htm

2008 New Hampshire Republican & Democratic Primary Results

http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=REPUBLICANS

http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS

The type of voting method each town uses:

http://www.bbvdocs.org/NH/state/Jan-08-votingsystems-NH.txt

http://www.sos.nh.gov/voting%20machines2006.htm

National Election Data Archive
http://electionarchive.org/ucvData/NH/

Pre-election opinion polls:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/nh/new_hampshire_democratic_primary-194.html

Note: No exit poll data was publicly released after the election unless it had been adjusted to match the final unofficial vote counts. I.e. No public exit poll data is available to use to judge the accuracy of the election results as occurred after the 2004 presidential election.

CNN Exit poll info:

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/index.html#val=NHDEM

FOX News Exit Polls: Women and Seniors Like Clinton

http://youdecide08.foxnews.com/2008/01/08/fox-news-exit-polls-independents-like-obama-mccain/

SOME OTHER ARTICLES ON THE NEW HAMPSHIRE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY ELECTION

NY Times on the planned NH recount on

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/candidates-push-for-a-nh-recount/

Keith Olberman Covers the Story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMJB4OCE1fo

Diebold Again: Did Hillary Really Win New Hampshire?
by Dave Lindorff

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2008/011108Lindorff.shtml

New Hampshire to Recount Ballots in Light of Controversy
by Kim Zetter January 11, 2008

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/new-hampshire-t.html

Do NH Primary Statistics Show Election Fraud?

http://salonesoterica.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/do-nh-primary-statistics-show-election-fraud/

Informative article w/ good links to exit poll info

http://www.margieburns.com/blog/_archives/2008/1/9/3455407.html

Diebold favors Hillary, hand count for Obama

http://presscue.com/node/38034

Election Integrity Questioned in New Hampshire - Dennis Kucinich formally requests recount
By Michelle Wolski, Epoch Times Florida Staff

http://en.epochtimes.com/news/8-1-11/63935.html

Electronic voting machine results questioned in New Hampshire primary
Dan Kaplan

http://www.scmagazineus.com/Electronic-voting-machine-results-questioned-in-New-Hampshire-primary/article/104145/

Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/story/73551/

Primary Concerns - Hoisting a few red flags about the elections
by Robert C. Koehler, Tribune Media Services, January 10, 2008

http://www.commonwonders.com/archives/col429.htm

Ben Mosley’s Blog

http://benmoseley.blogspot.com/2008/01/do-nh-primary-statistics-show-election.html

Analysis of Hand-counted versus Diebold-counted Precincts

http://i4.tinypic.com/823g1mt.gif

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/rahmainepugh/CWg

Where Paper Prevailed, Different Results, By Lori Price

http://www.legitgov.org/nh_machine_vs_paper.html

European press: It wasn't a miracle - Hillary won via a rigged vote by Michael Carmichael, Global Research, January 14, 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7794

PLEASE DONATE

US Count Votes, DBA National Election Data Archive urgently needs your donations if it is to continue its work to try to obtain public oversight over the integrity of election results via mandatory routine vote count audits and public access to election records and election data, and public oversight over ballot security procedures. Donating money to get out the vote efforts, to political candidates, or to efforts to educate voters on issues, makes little difference if votes are not accurately counted. NEDA can not continue its efforts without funding.

http://electionarchive.org/fairelection/donate.html

THANK YOU. PLEASE PASS ON THIS ANNOUNCEMENT.

CONTACT: Kathy Dopp kathy@electionarchive.org 435-658-4657

A new analysis using Utah's 2004 General Election results, finds that obtaining 95% confidence-level in federal and state election outcomes only requires auditing a reasonable 5.5% of all precinct races overall.

The National Election Data Archive has created a Powerpoint presentation showing simply "How to Determine Initial Sample Size for 95% Confidence-Level Vote Count Audits"

Mandatory Post-Election Vote Count Audits

and a smaller pdf version of the powerpoint presentation:

Counting overall 5.5% of Utah's precinct-race counts using this method achieves a higher confidence-level (95%) at lower cost than any flat manual election audit such as the 10% audit Connecticut uses.

Utah's overall audit rates to achieve 95% confidence-level for the 2004 general election are:

For all federal and state races audited - 5.5% of precincts for all federal and state-level elections.

Federal & Statewide Races total audit required - average 3% of precincts

State Senate Races total audit - average 11.2% of precincts

* State House Races total audit - average 30.9% of precincts

The minimum required audit rate for a race is 1.5% (due to Utah's having total 29 counties and 1958 precincts) and maximum audit rate is 100% for one close Utah State House race. Audit amounts will vary state by state depending on the number of close races and how many vote counts there are in each race.

Typically a larger overall percentage of precincts must be audited, but not a larger "amount" of precincts, for races with fewer total number of precincts. The last slide in NEDA's powerpoint presentation explains why a flat percentage audit of precincts (or other vote counts) - the approach adopted by most states currently - is mathematically incorrect.

A general rule of thumb that can be applied without using any fancy mathematics was suggested by M.I.T. Professor Ronald Rivest: Estimate the audit sample size for any race by dividing one (1) by the margin (in percentage of ballots) between the winning candidate with the least number of votes and the runnerup (the losing candidate with the most votes). This easy calculation (1/margin%) is not precisely accurate but provides a confidence-level of roughly between 70% to 100%. Eg. if the margin is 1%, then manually audit 1/0.01 = 100 vote counts; and if the margin is 50%, then manually audit 1/0.50 = 2 vote counts. More precise methods to determine vote count audit sample sizes are described in the National Election Data Archive's powerpoint presentation.

The powerpoint presentation also includes a description of a new method by Aslam, Popa, and Rivest for weighting random selection of precincts by the amount of possible error that the precinct could contribute to the margin between the winning and losing candidates.

NEDA is also releasing a spreadsheet to make it easy to see how to calculate vote count audit sample sizes using unofficial election results:

MODEL LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL FOR 95% CONFIDENCE-LEVEL VOTE COUNT AUDITS:

After developing legislative language for election auditing since January 2008 in consultation with various experts, the National Election Data Archive finalized a legislative model for election auditing:

Legislative Text Requiring 95% Confidence-Level Election Audits.

The National Election Data Archive recommends combining its bill text with a
Legislative Request for PUBLIC ACCESS TO ELECTION RECORDS:

http://utahcountvotes.org/legislature/PublicAccess2ElectionRecords4Utah.pdf

Currently no state yet subjects its election results to scientific independent election audits.

The 95% confidence-level vote count audit legislation proposed:

1. uses a flexible definition for "vote counts" so that precincts, machine counts, batch counts or even individual ballots can be audited - depending on the capabilities of the voting systems (most systems are not auditable on the ballot level currently).

2. uses scientific definitions for "random selection" and "confidence-level" to flexibly permit any valid auditing procedure that will assure that at most 5% of incorrect election outcomes would be certified (since we expect far fewer than 100% of outcomes to be incorrect, this assures that well more than 95% of election outcomes are correct)

3. specifies procedures ensuring that audits cannot be manipulated or overcome

4. specifies responsibilities for auditors and election officials, and establishes an expert State "Election Audit and Recount Committee" that is appointed by expert department chairs of math, computer science, and political science departments

5. specifies publicly observable manual counts and random selections

Colorado SOS Announcement
http://www.bradblog.com/Docs/CO_CertificationResults_121707_Final.pdf

Overview - Premier/Diebold
http://www.elections.colorado.gov/WWW/default/Voting%20Systems/certifications/2007/Premier%20Election%20Solutions.pdf

Detailed Report - Premier/Diebold
http://www.elections.colorado.gov/WWW/default/Voting%20Systems/certifications/2007/01-A2_project_overview_binder_premier.pdf

This is an initial assessment of the CO SOS study of Diebold/Premier voting systems by Computer Scientist David Webber.

From: David RR Webber (XML)
Date: Dec 19, 2007 1:35 PM
Subject: RE: [vote-technology] Question re. CO Voting Study & Diebold

Kathy,

OK - the detailed report reveals that Diebold was given a conditional "Yes" pass on accuracy and security - but did in fact fail or partially fail many tests in those categories. Overall it appears they were not approved for use because of failing in other areas.

So it seems inaccurate to say they passed all the tests.

Eg:

"At some point, the Testing Board had to come to a final conclusion with respect to GEMS. They chose at the end to change the "suspended" items to a "fail" status. That approach is perfectly valid in a test methodology, under the condition that it is applied consistently. In reality, if Diebold does not rectify the problems associated with its GEMS election management software, it will not be able to provide any of the voting devices.

Those devices require GEMS for use in an election".

For me - the tests also did not prove the Diebolds DREs are safe. The Smartcards remain a huge area of concern. Just because the ones used in testing passed - you have no idea what is on the encrypted smart cards used for a live election - nor how they effect balloting. The smartcard provides an almost perfect means of introducing changed behaviour on election day - that is practically undetectable.

The VVPAT printer records offer some recourse - but would the following tests detect descrepencies between the VVPAT records and the digital counting records that could prove tampering / malfunctions?

BOTTOM LINE - if Diebold was an airplane - it would not be getting FAA approval for passenger use - although you could probably taxi it around the runway OK!!!

DW