Slashdot Log In
Florida Voting Machine Logs Reveal Anomalies
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Feb 24, 2006 09:18 AM
from the please-do-not-be-shocked dept.
from the please-do-not-be-shocked dept.
boot1780 writes "Having 'successfully sued former Palm Beach County (FL) Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to get the audit records for the 2004 presidential election,' Black Box Voting reports that the 'internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.' Besides the date discrepancies, they claim to have discovered countless other errors and anomalies, including a case of one voting machine being 'powered down 128 times during the election'." Given the findings here, can we have a do-over?
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
The house limit... (Score:3, Funny)
Dealer: Sorry - the house limit is 3 do-overs.
Oh, quitcher whinin' (Score:5, Insightful)
Guinness Voice: Brilliant! (Score:5, Informative)
Diebold [wikipedia.org]
.
I think I'll buy "C++ Programming for Dummies" and faxes a quick resume to Diebold
Parent
Re:Guinness Voice: Brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno, how exactly would you make 65,000 pieces of paper disappear without anyone noticing? I think you could probably hide a few in your pockets, but what about the next few thousand pounds of votes? You certainly couldn't do it in a few seconds or without a lot of accomplices.
I appreciate you trying to put things in perspective -- but the entire point of electronic voting is that it was supposed to be MORE secure and MORE fraud-resistant than paper. What we have right now is, if anything, the worst of both worlds -- just as tamper-able as old voting machines, with the added bonus of being able to magically change thousands or millions of votes with no more skill than it takes to do a basic card trick.
When an entire city's electorate is represented on a chip the size of a postage stamp, the requirements for physical secrity are much greater than they ever were for what was literally truckloads of paper. And the requirements for auditing and athenticity verification are that much higher.
Parent
Re:Oh, quitcher whinin' (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the operative phrase here is "Never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence." These machines just plain don't work, like so many other system out there.
I do agree that a FOSS voting system would be the best way to ensure accountability and reliability of the software.
Two words (Score:3, Interesting)
Anybody can join the Democratic party. It doesn't mean they belong there.
Re:Oh, quitcher whinin' (Score:4, Interesting)
Sequoia can't even build machines that pass the federal standards, and you're blaming the local volunteer operators? Funny how whenever these black box voting machines "just don't work", they error in favor of republicans.
Parent
Re:Oh, quitcher whinin' (Score:3, Informative)
BTW, don't try to educate me about Palm Beach County elections. I live in PBC and am intimate with local politics. It doesn't surprise me that the case was made here because you don't have lawsuits without complainants, and people here are very suspicious of the process because of the crap that happened in 2000. You can basically assume that every election from now until
Take back our elections (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anybody still beleive that this election wasn't fixed? I mean, really. Of course it'll never be proven, but it's so freakin' obvious. Incompetence can only explain so many problems - I think we've passed that point a long time ago.
And once again - no matter what your political persuasion, you need to demand that your representatives introduce or support legislation that requires a voting machine to produce a paper receipt for each vote, or some equally verifiable and recountable paper trail. Any politician that objects to a fair election needs to be fired and replaced.
Re:Take back our elections (Score:5, Insightful)
Its an appealing thought. I mean, the alternative is to believe that more than half the country was dumb enough to believe that the same jackasses who failed to stop 9/11 and royally screwed up in Iraq were the best guys to protect us from further terrorist attacks and the best guys to fix Iraq.
There's something very comforting about conspiracy theories in general. I mean, if it's a conspiracy you at least have a chance to fight that; it's just the actions of a few people. But if the problems of the world emerge from the apathy, stupidity, ignorance, greed, and hate of billions of people, including ourselves... well, that's a little more difficult to tackle and a little more depressing to think about.
It must all be the CIA's fault.
Parent
Re:Take back our elections (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder, do you consider FDR to be the "jackass" who failed to stop Pearl Harbor?
-jcr
FDR (Score:4, Informative)
Now that you mention it, FDR, along with General Marshall, General Gerow, Admiral Stark and Admiral Turner, did fail to stop the attack. It was strategically obvious that Pearl Harbor would be the target when (and if!) the Japanese attacked... On December 5, 1941 FDR received the decrypted Japanese declaration of war, and he did nothing about it. The message was never sent to Admiral Kimmel and General Short, the commander in chief & commanding general, respectively, of the pacific fleet. Our jackass-in-chief FDR wanted to go to war on the 'moral high ground,' in the eyes of the public.
But that'll never make it into high school history books. History is written by the winners, and it's common knowledge that we were taken by surprise, and that FDR was (overall) a really swell guy.
Parent
Re:Take back our elections (Score:5, Informative)
The main quibble here is the use of the word "the", which implies uniqueness. If you read the histories about the Pearl Harbor attack, you'll find that there's general agreement that there was widespread incompetence all along the US chain of command. They pretty much had the evidence in the hours before the attack, but a combination of failure to understand and failure to believe the evidence led to the disaster. But it wasn't one person's failure; it was failure of the entire system to use the information that it had.
This is similar to our current situation with 9/11, Katrina, the Iraq war, etc. George Bush isn't the sole "jackass" responsible for any of these. It's a systemic problem, with incompetence combined with corruption at all levels.
One of the clearest examples is the admission that they had tapes of the perpetrators' conversations days and weeks before the 9/11 attacks. But they didn't have enough translators fluent in Arabic to get them translated in time. This problem existed despite several decades of growing problems with Arabic-speaking radicals, including the earlier bombings of embassies, the Cole attack, and the earlier attempt to bomb the World Trade Center. Anyone competent saw the need for more Arabic translators, and there are at least a million Arabic-speaking Americans who could have been hired.
Further incompetence is shown by the fact that there aren't nearly as many Arabic-speaking Americans willing to do the job now. The widespread anti-Arab attacks and discrimination of the past few years have made sensible Arabic speakers very wary of getting involved with the US government. If you want a clear example of why, google for "Sibel Edmonds". Her story isn't an anomaly; it's a good example of a government agency attacking and driving out out of the people who could have done the most to help. There are a number of other similar stories.
But there isn't a single "jackass" responsible for this. It's a systemic problem that can't be solved by replacing just one high-up jackass.
(The widespread "English only" attitude of Americans is also part of the problem, but that's a different issue.)
Parent
Re:Take back our elections (Score:3, Interesting)
I think we've passed that point. The port scandal is gonna get bigger and bigger, and the consequences this November could be catastrophic for the Republican party. Die hards like
Coup_d'etat! (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop whining.
Bush stole the election fair and square. It's our (Americans') fault for not creating a massive landslide against him. The fact that a near plurality of people voted for the wanker created an opportunity for Bush 43, his brother, Kathleen Harris and the Republicans to seize power.
History will show that this election was a coup d'état [wikipedia.org], and that we were the fools who let it happen.
Want to prevent this from happening again? Andrew Tobias is the DNC treasurer: http://www.andrewtobias.com/ [andrewtobias.com], send Andy a message and he will tell you how to get involved.
Stop whining - indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Something many people here and in other predominantly-left forums seem to be missing is that many Americans truly, honestly believed that Bush was the better candidate. I doubt that your average Republican voted for Bush any more automatically than the typical Democrat voted for Kerry, and yet everyone seems to think that only Republicans were partisan voters. Well, guess what: there are sheep on both sides of the fence. Singling out one group of them will only alienate the bloc of voters you should be trying to persuade.
I voted for Bush for various reasons, but I would probably stand alongside you if a recall vote were held today. The time for partisan sniping is over. We need to work together if we want to make a difference.
As a side note to fellow Republicans, his closing advice is just as valid for us. Contact the RNC [gop.com] and make your opinion known. Write to your representatives [house.gov] and senate [senate.gov] and let them know that you disagree with executive branch policies. This is your party: step up and take charge of it.
Parent
Re:Stop whining - indeed. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a great point! While I think Kerry is a democrat who is on par with the rest of his party's values, etc., Bush is WAY out of line with what the republican party was known for - and what longtime republican voters were assuming.
When I think traditional republican, I think personal privacy, constitutional protection, fiscal conservatism, and social conservatism. But Bush, who got all those always-vote-republican votes, has completely departed from those first three key traditional republican values!
I wouldn't mind so much if traditional republicans were in power, but the Republican party has been hijacked. Just like they used Colin Powell's reputation to trick people into believing them, they're using the Republican party to push their own selfish, money-driven agendas instead of what the Republican party used to be about and what voters were expecting.
Longtime republicans should be careful who they're voting for in the coming elections. You can't just trust the (R) next to a name anymore.
Parent
Democratic Socialism vs. Republican Facism (Score:5, Insightful)
The current Democratic party is Socialist, to the extent that they favor using public money to provide services to people that private companies could have provided - like health care, education, construction, retirement benefits, etc.
The current Republican party is Facist, to the extent that they favor using public money to benefit large corporations and their leaders, and they collude with the media to keep the public in a misinformed frenzy.
I'll take Democratic Socialism over Republican Facism ANY day.
Parent
Re:Stop whining - indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
What does that have to do with anything? Many Americans believed Ross Perot was the better candidate, but nobody argues that he deserved the job or - if he managed to force his way into office - that we should shut up about it.
I voted for Bush for various reasons
Ahh... now I see where you're coming from.
The fact is, about a half-million more Americans voted for Al Gore than for George Bush. As for who was more partisan, consider the relentless smear campaigns carried out against Bush opponents Anne Richards ("she's a lesbian!"), Al Gore (everything you can think of from "he claims to have invented the Internet" to "he grew up in a fancy Washington hotel"), and John Kerry (the Swift Boat liars).
Consider the shenanigans carried out in Florida in 2000 that exposed the weaknesses in American democracy and showed just how open to abuse the system is. The Republicans were simply more partisan, beating on the system without regard for the spirit and principle of the rules to get the result they wanted.
Consider the (more subtle) shenanigans in the 2004 election, particularly in Ohio, where voters in Democratic districts had to wait as much as 8 hours to vote and had their right to vote challenged in massive numbers by Republican partisans at the polling stations. This was made possible by Republicans in the Governor's office and Republicans in control of the election. Voters in Republican-leaning districts did not face these modern-day Jim Crow measures.
Now, consider all the shady stuff that's so difficult to prove - it took years just to get logs from these electronic voting machines, and they're FULL of suspicious data. Consider the 11th-hour "correction" in the voting data on election night 2004 - we're asked to accept that the exit polls were way off for the first time in history, and somehow the numbers jumped just enough in just the right places (all at the same time!) to put Bush over the top. Yet anyone who talks about this is smeared as a "nutjob"...
Who is more partisan? Republicans. One of the great failures of the Democratic party in the last 5 years has been to underestimate the ruthlessness and lack of principle on the part of the Republicans. Anybody who claims "well, both sides do it, everybody is partisan these days, a pox on both their houses" has either not been paying attention, or has drunk the Republican kool-aid.
Parent
Who counts the votes/Who decides what's important (Score:5, Insightful)
Something like "Who finds out about corruption is irrelevant; who gets to decide what kinds of corruption are "Serious Stories" versus "Tinfoil Hat" material decides the rest."
Or something like that. Since the media refuses to acknowledge that there are serious questions about legitimacy under electronic voting, pointing out the problems probably doesn't matter any more - any evidence of problems is perforce "nutty conspiracy theory material" and so is a non-starter.
Re:Who counts the votes/Who decides what's importa (Score:3, Insightful)
Something like "Who finds out about corruption is irrelevant; who gets to decide what kinds of corruption are "Serious Stories" versus "Tinfoil Hat" material decides the rest."
You've hit on something very interesting here, and at the risk of an aptly-modded OT ramble, I'd like to expand on it.
Do you ever pay attention to those 'News of the Weird' or 'Offbeat News' sections of your local website / newspaper? While some of it is truly in the oddball category, there is something else going on, and it's
Devil's Advocate... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why this is instantly regarded as some sort of conspiracy rather than either hardware problems or incompetent voting machine vendors. Folks might want to consider the more mundane potential causes of these problems before heading for their tinfoil hat drawer.
Re:Devil's Advocate... (Score:5, Funny)
Probably more likely that they were having "moron operating the machine" issues.
Parent
Re:Devil's Advocate... (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is that black box voting machines can not be checked and are open to fraudulent/faulty actions.
All these issues should have been identified on election day so that appropriate actions could be taken (revote, dismiss votes, no issue, etc...)
TRANSPARANCY is the key,
Parent
Re:Devil's Advocate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Devil's Advocate... (Score:5, Informative)
No, actually, the key [avirubin.com] is F2654hD4.
rofl.
Parent
Re:Devil's Advocate... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Devil's Advocate... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Disingenuous (Score:5, Insightful)
You know as well as I do that this isn't so.
I don't know it at all, and I posit that you don't, either. Everything I've read from Black Box has been focused entirely on the machines, without respect to which race or who won. They've published as much about congressional and even city council races as they have about the presidential election. If you have some evidence that they have a political agenda beyond making sure the voting is honest, cought it up. Innuendo is just a waste of time.
Parent
Re:Devil's Advocate... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the outcome of an election is important. All the parties in the election have very strong motives to do whatever it takes to win, and they will all "adjust" the results if given the opportunity. There's just too much at stake to not do this. If there's anything "funny", the first assumption should always be that it's not an accident.
Yes, sometimes problems
Re:Devil's Advocate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we'd be stupid not to at least consider the possiblity.
Look, if you've ever dealt with government contracting, you know that having friends in the right places is huge. Over the past decade or so it's gotten worse -- I won't say worse than ever, but the trend is definitely the wrong way. If you don't think that people go as close to bribery as they can legally manage you're naive If you don't think that some people when tempted to step over the line do it, you're a fool.
Once you've stepped over that line, you've accepted doing business illegally. The question is what is the most economically way to deal in corruption on the scale you practice it.
Only partisan pinheads automatically believe every accusation or conspiracy theory that comes up, but these accusations and theories serve an important purpose. Sometimes that creaking sound you hear downstairs is a burglar.
Parent
No National Voting System? (Score:5, Informative)
In Canada we have a national voting system. Voting is the same wherever you go, no matter what part of the country you are in. Each person writes a little X on a piece of paper next to the cantidate of his choice, then you put it in a box. There are serial numbers on the ballots, so if any ballots are missing, duplicated, or anything else is funny, there is a way to tell. (Not tracable, though, -- ie you can't tell who voted for whom.)
There are no computers in national elections and there is a paper trail that can be recounted as many times as anyone wishes. And results don't take weeks to come in either... or months for that matter. We always seem to have our Prime Minister and government chosen within a few hours after the polls have closed...
Re:No National Voting System? (Score:3, Informative)
The big difference is that in the US the ballot contains an awful lot more than just "pick your local candidate". They vote on all kinds of stuff (school board, municipal, etc.), making the ballots way more complicated.
Yep (Score:4, Funny)
Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my gun!
-Thanks folks, I'm here all afternoon.
Do over? (Score:3)
I'd rather a recount/do over of past elections in the Chicago area.
Palestine had more democratic elections (Score:3, Informative)
European Election Observation Mission, Final Report [eu.int] (pdf format).
Even with all the illegal restrictions that Israel imposed on movement in the West Bank and Gaza and most importantly, Palestinian citizens living in East Jerusalem***, the Palestinian elections have a valid paper trail that can be checked as well as having independent, neutral monitors observe how the voting took place.
Does this mean that the Palestinian elections were perfect? Of course not. No election is. However, they made a good faith effort to have as free and open an election process as possible under the occupation conditions. They allowed the monitors full access to every aspect of the vote including the final vote counts.
One would think that if we're trying to spread the benefit of democratic elections to the world we should first start by taking a serious look at our own election process and bring in outside monitors to help us get a handle on this kind of nonsense. There is absolutely no excuse for these kind of activities to take place other than to manipulate election results.
*Investigation into the 2004 U.S. Election [cooperativeresearch.org]
**Palestinian Monioring Group, Israeli Obstructions of the Palestinian Election Process [nad-plo.org]
***Observer Report, Norwegian Assocation of NGOs [elections.ps] (pdf format)
So did Chile (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the more heinous human tragedies occured on September 11, 1973.
The democratically elected government of Chilean president Salvadore Allende was overthrown in a coup d'etat by General Augusto Pinochet. The new regime killed thousands of dissidents and other "enemies of the state".
The reason? Allende was a Marxist, and the CIA (and by extension, Richard Nixon) were keen to keep Latin America firmly in the American camp during the Cold War, even if installing fascist dictatorships was necessary.
I
Re:How hard is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
With a bad machine you can just as easily blame the machine as you could someone going in and changing the results.
Re:How hard is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's massively inefficient, which is a good thing in elections. Efficiency only makes cheating easier.
Parent
Re:How hard is it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Heres a nice article I wrote [galwayadvertiser.ie] on that very issue, and this got mass media publication baby, not just a blog. Ireland removed the voting machines by the way.
Re:What's new... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What's new... (Score:3, Insightful)
Caution in your Commentary (Score:3, Insightful)
Inappropriate caution, IMO (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
crime/motive/opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, just imagine,if the scumware guys OWN the computer that you and everyone else uses. Now imagine the scumware guys are looking at CONTROLLING THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT by OWNING that computer.
How much is that worth? Really, how much motivation is there to control TRILLIONS of dollars, not thousands, TRILLIONS and the largest war machine on the planet? Do you see any incentive there, or is all this just another series of "coincidences"? Coups don't happen around the world all the time? Where's the magic document from the truth fairies that says the US can never fall to coup plotters?
Now look at the track record so far of what we have found out these folks, how many lies have been drug out of them? How many people have perished based on the lies, how may large corporate insiders connected to the government have profitted immensely?
You can't do the math on this? What's it going to take, them coming on TV and just announcing it? You fail to be able to take into account all the other information out there? This latest is just another large chunk of evidence, look at ALL of it together, what do you see? I see some serious crimes right up into treason,and the probable perps with the clear motive and the clear opportunity.
Parent
Re:Caution in your Commentary (Score:5, Insightful)
While I applaud you for trying to maintain a sane and rational outlook and avoid falling into these conspiracy theories, this issue has far too many coincidences for you to dismiss like that. What would it take for you to change your stance from "no biggie, just a little smoke, no fire" to "fuck me, that's an awful lot of coincidence, maybe I should entertain the possibility that something is wrong here."
Hell, even assuming there's zero conspiracy, just a lot of blunders, should still make you nervous as it still means there's been a perversion of democracy.
Parent
The flaw with 'conspiracy theorist' (Score:4, Insightful)
By definition, to not believe in conspiracies would mean that you don't believe illegal p2p filesharing takes place. So, lets see who seems more logical.
Person A: Believes that a machine who's design should be extreamly simple consistantly makes errors in favor of the group who is most adament about using them indicates likely fraud.
Person B: Believes that illegal p2p fileshareing does not happen.
(Now, if your going to argue that you DO believe that p2p filesharing exists, then you too are a 'conspiracy theorist', and your post becomes totally nonsensical.)
Parent
Re:What's new... (Score:3, Insightful)
If anyone believes that these sorts of discrepencies are new, or limited to computer voting, he is hopelessly naive. And the assertion that computer voting will make these disrepencies harder to uncover is pure bullshit, as proved by this episode. If a bunch of paper ballots were filled out before election
Re:ZOMG HAX (Score:5, Insightful)
If there were only one or two instances where people said "Hm, something slightly fishy seems to have happened..." then you'd likely have a point.
But when there are dozens of reports of voting machines not working correctly, and when each and every time the errors seem to be in favor of the party that won... Yeah, I'd say calling shenannigans is justified.
Maybe it'll turn out that the errors didn't actually occur - maybe it'll turn out that the tracking software is fucked, but the votes were counted correctly. Maybe it'll turn out that there was some vast conspiracy. Maybe it'll turn out that the Democrats would have gotten *fewer* votes if the machines had worked properly. Whatever the results, what's important is this:
The machines don't seem to be working correctly when handling a very important task. We need to investigate this, no matter what. It isn't a matter of sour grapes (well, except for some people, maybe) but it IS a matter of finding out what the hell is going on.
Surely you don't think that we shouldn't investigate anomalous situations?
Parent
Re:Get over it already! (Score:3, Informative)
You don't have to vote in every race in an election. Look at the poll results sometime and you'll see that there will be many more total votes for President in a particular district than for the local school board candidates.