Mareseatoatsanddoeseatoatsbutlittlelambseativy.

Friday, November 05, 2004

Evoting Fraud?

I had avoided posting this because I really didn't know how true it was. Some part of me thought this is some cognitive dissonance on the left, but after talking to a friend in New Mexico this morning who worked as a poll worker and hearing her story I feel this might really be an issue.


First my friend’s story. She worked at a polling place with several precincts and around 10 or so paperless evoting machines. All the precincts are in a substantially democratic area. At the end of the day they print a tally from each of the machines of the vote. What they found was that for 9 out of 10 machines the vote was something like Bush: 35% Kerry: 65%. But there was one machine that gave Bush 49% and Kerry 51%. First, for those who know a little bit about probability and statistics, this result is quite unlikely, particularly when you consider that there were as many votes on the one machine versus the others.


But that's not all... (Think Ginsu Knife Commercial! :) )


In New Mexico they allow you to check a single box to vote straight party line (that's not allowed in Colorado). What they found was that when people checked this box of the evoting machine for the Democrats the presidential vote would go to Bush. Let me repeat, I talked to my friend this morning and she told me this unequivocally. When people pressed vote all Democratic (on ANY evote machine) Bush would be their selected presidential vote. What she found was that they would need to press this button FOUR TIMES before Kerry would be selected as their choice for President.

So in that light let's start investigating evoting fraud in this past election (Remember, keep an open mind about it folks). We might not be able to change the outcome nor the fake mandate (narrowest margin of victory for a sitting president since 1916) but we can record this crime, if it is true, for a future Truth and Reconciliations Committee.

1 comment:

gberke said...

1) That would be a good time to shout: this machine is stealing my vote! This machine is stealing my vote. And get arrested. However certain the person was that the machine was not working, that person was not THAT certain, and so we cannot be certain either.
It is really hard to get that certain. (eg, Why would the machine show the vote for Bush? why not just hide the fact)... 20/20 hindsight could say that two people should go into the booth, one to vote, to to witness. Or one could be called into the booth to verify the error, and then have certainty.
2) Likely, IF the machine did steal votes, it would not be repeatable consistently: it would be set so that it did that on a count, time of day, whatever. Since you cannot see the code, you cannot determine what the machine is doing. It's much like internet ads that come up on a page, and everytime you go to that page, you get a different ad, maybe.
Again, I note, that a touch machine can be programmed to "escape" on any number of conditions, like a small 5 point cluster hit at the lower right of the panel.
Some people believe in their positions so strongly they will kill, go to jail: it's no leap at all to say that altering the voting machine is a totally non violent act to save your country.
My conclusion: it is not true.