We’ve been reporting for the last week or so on the ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines which are flipping votes from Democratic candidates to others in, so far, at least four states. We’ve showed you actual footage of it and how even after being “recalibrated” these machines still continue to flip votes.
(See our special coverage page here for links to our many recent stories on this issue, and advice on what to do if the problem happens to you.)
Unfortunately, it’s not just the error-prone, hackable, wholly unverifiable iVotronics from ES&S which are failing. Error-prone, hackable, and wholly unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems made by Hart InterCivic, Diebold, and Sequoia Voting Systems are also having the same problems across the country. And the Democrats, who have the most to lose, continue to do nothing about it…
On Monday, we posted a video of a WV county clerk demonstrating the vote-flips on the ES&S iVotronic and suggesting that the problem was due to touch-screen calibration issues on the machine. The video then shows the clerk inserting a cartridge into the machine to recalibrate it, after which the machine still mis-records a vote.
We also pointed out, in that article, that it doesn’t matter what the screen (or even “paper trail” that some of them have) displays. The computer can record any vote it wants, any way it wants, despite what the voter is shown.
While recalibration has been ordered in many of these cases, it needs to be pointed out that there is no way that any touch-screen voting machine should ever have a cartridge inserted into it, for any reason, by anybody, after it’s already been programmed for an election. That is the very moment these machines are the most vulnerable to malicious software and other forms of tampering and attack. That recalibration is being advised where these problems have occurred — instead of complete removal from service, to be replaced by paper ballots — is insane.
Recalibration, so far, has been the response prescribed by election officials and, to their shame, we have seen absolutely no sign that the DNC and Barack Obama attorneys have done anything to take appropriate action on these matters up until now.
But it’s not only the ES&S machines that are failing. We now have reports of vote flipping in Texas on both Hart InterCivic DREs and, of course, the always unreliable ones made by Diebold.
Last week, from the Houston Chronicle:
In the report, Kaufman, as expected, tries to play down the reports of problems. Harris County (Houston), the largest county in the second largest uses the Hart InterCivic eSlate DRE. Though the eSlate is not a touch-screen — voters use a wheel and a button to select candidates from the computer screen — it’s still an unverifiable DRE voting system.
Our friend Pokey Anderson, an election integrity advocate in Houston and host of KPFT/Pacifica’s Sunday Monitor program, confirmed with one of the first 30 or so voters to vote on the first day of early voting at the West Gray Multi-Service Center that her straight ticket Democratic vote was flipped to McCain.
Fortunately, “the voter caught it, and finally called for help from a pollworker, and they got the machine’s McCain choice changed back,” Anderson told us. “She said the pollworker told her she was not the only one who had had this problem.”
We’ve received reports that some locations in TX, using the Hart eSlate, have taken to taping signs on the machines which read “This is not a touch-screen!” Whether that’s meant to deceptively ease voter concern about the systems — which are still unverifiable DREs, just like touch-screens but with a wheel to make selections, instead of a touch-sensitive screen — or simply an attempt at a helpful instruction to keep folks from trying to select candidates by tapping the screen, we couldn’t tell you. Either way, Hart’s DRE is as unverifiable and susceptible to tampering and vote-counting error as those made by ES&S, Sequoia, or Diebold.
Speaking of Diebold, this in on Tuesday from another part of TX, El Paso County, as reported by the local NBC affiliate KTSM, NewsChannel 9:
But when he reviewed his finished ballot he noticed that all votes were cast for Republicans.
El Paso county election administrator Javier Chacon says the machines are user-friendly but mistakes can happen. Chacon says make sure you don’t have anything hanging off your clothing or wrists that could inadvertently change your vote. If you want to be more precise you can ask for a stylus pen to cast your vote.
El Paso County uses the hackable, error-prone, unverifiable Diebold AccuVote TS touch-screen DRE.
Finally, for good measure, and by way of a reminder, the ES&S iVotronics continue to flip votes in TX also. Adding to the reports on that from last week on that, CNN reported yesterday that a caller from Beaumont, TX, called the CNN voter hotline (877-GOCNN08) to report the now-too-familiar problem which occurred when he took his mother to vote.
“She went to punch the selection for Obama and it flipped to McCain,” the caller said, according to CNN. “They need to do something about this.”
But again, the Democrats, to our knowledge, have taken no action to remove these machines from service and demand voters be provided instead with verifiable hand-marked paper ballots.
UPDATE: Seven TX counties are now reporting vote flipping. Kim Zetter at WIRED has the details…
Our special coverage page on DRE Failures 2008 is right here…
Hey Brad, I caught you and Harvey on Democracy Now, Great Show! We’re showing Uncounted tonight at our garden center in Westmoreland County PA where I’ll get to talk to Marybeth who testified yesterday in Philly at the case for emergency paper ballots. You know what really bugs me about the deal is…we had them for the primary, so isn’t the actual presidential election as important???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Brad, I also heard you on DemocracyNow! One question about this “callibration issue” with the machines. I was wondering, if the machines are truly not properly callibrated, does that mean that a voter hoping to vote for John McCain would likewise experience problems? Was this tested? Listening to you speak, Is this really a conspiracy against Democrats, or does it affect all candidates and all parties?
Thanks,
Jonathan
Spreading exit poll disinformation…
Hey, Brad Bloggers, check out this appalling article by David Paul Kuhn which bends over backwards to explain away exit poll discrepancies yet never considers the obvious–the polls were right.
http://www.buzzflash.net/story.php?id=76913
The best part is there’s a link to respond to the author. Click on his name and an e-mail link pops up. Let’s all school this dope (firmly but politely). Deluge him with mail!
hea ancient,
since u r in pa u might be interested in this…during the primarys i had watched alleghany county in the ap reports and was surprised when the last precinct reported showed ovr 10,000 votes(mathmatical tag) so i printed off the early results from their sos,found some odd stuff like 2 reformers show up to vote when no reformers were registered,2 peops that voted in a precinct that bbv’s kurt said was a grassy hill over looking a casino,some other odd stuff
anyways couple monthes pass and bbv has story about 3 memory cards nevr being found so i figure wt heck i wll look at that precinct but when i go to print primary official results,this is what i get
[Ed Note: Long paste of zeroed precincts deleted. Please read our rules for commenting. Thank you. –99]
http://www.county.allegheny.pa....04pri/eI52.htm 10/23/2008″
lol all zeros now…i have no idea what this means but my guess is someone didnt want those pages printed and im always suspious when someone is hiding something
The sad, sick thing about this, in Houston, is this: we can’t even vote these people out of office.
Hey Jim, wasn’t one of the first cases of polls being wildly off happen when everybody was stunned by a lagging g walker bush (he came in third in Iowa) but in New Hampshire he pulled off a come back in the primary and the governor was some computer whiz republicon in 88? Like father like son like mcsame. 🙁
Whoooaaa Karen, I too am not quite sure what that means (wink wink) but agree somebody doesn’t want to show us something. 🙂
and before someone yells at me for lol..i would rather laugh than cry
as to tx vote flipping,after the tx primary which was evidence of a program on machines simply because while hillary won the vote,obama won the caucuses i watched the tx sos site for couple days,
printed off results from 3-5
in psd 19 in early voting clinton had 12,619 votes obama had 23,834 votes
on 3-6 i printed same sos page again but now in early voting in psd 19,clinton has 27,413 and obama has 16,919
i faxed the print outs to vicki karp(the activist with the radio show in tx)
heck i emailed it to brad too,vicki did mention it on her show and im glad of that but i dont understand why this isnt a news story,but then i dont understand why nhs screwed up numbers have nevr been reported FULLY
btw brad ty for the audio reply as i tried for the umtenth time to get u to read my 6 handwritten pages
my work in nh shows the sos (who controled everything in the recount)delivered ballots that when counted and reported on the sos web site were ovr 100 percent for both dems and reps in hillsborough county
maybe peops r confused thinking this shows old fashion ballot stuffing but thats not the case at all…i believe the sos delivered the ballots needed to match the tape(predetermined results)and thats why they ended up with a mathmatical tag
for these 6 handwritten pages i used the sos recount reports and the ballots cast foias posted on bbv (not to be confused with the “corrected” report currently on nhs sos web site which seems to have been “corrected ” w/o any back up paper work as nancy has done 3 foias that i know of asking for the reasons for the changes from the recount)and still has recieved no answers
i am not trying to diss anyone,brad,bev,vicki and others r my heros
brad( or anyone) if u can find an error in my overall conclusion that hillsborough reported ovr 100 percent i will pay 100 bucks to u,im that sure
here is the catch that confuses peops,remember when a precinct/town has an undervote ,thats a physical ballot that is blank in the presidental race
I’ve been trying to find the article I read about my post @ 6, but to no avail. I did find this though, The governor was j h sununu who was a mechanical engineer. “He earned a BS in 1961, a Master’s degree in 1963, and a Ph.D. in 1966 from MIT, all in mechanical engineering. Sununu is a member of Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Sununu
And then there’s this
“When Bush had arrived in Manchester the night of the disastrous Iowa result, Sununu had promised a nine point victory for Bush in his state. Oddly enough, that turned out to be exactly right. The final result was 38% for Bush, 29% for Dole, 13% for Kemp, 10% for DuPont, and 9% for Robertson. Was Sununu a clairvoyant? Perhaps he was, but those familiar with the inner workings of the New Hampshire quadrennials are aware of a very formidable ballot-box stuffing potential assembled there by the blueblood political establishment. Some observers pointed to pervasive vote fraud in the 1988 New Hampshire primaries, and Pat Robertson, as we shall see, also raised this possibility. The Sununu machine delivered exactly as promised, securing the governor the post of White House chief of staff.”
http://www.tarpley.net/bush22.htm
And this is the best article I could find about the polling meltdown:
http://www.margieburns.com/blog...9/3455407.html
Just trying to document my dots.
I just got a call from one of the lawyers on the PA emergency paper ballot case….
WE WON !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
best news i have heard today ancient!!!
great job!
OH YEAH! THANK YOU JUDGE HARVEY BARTLE!
As scary as this issue is, be careful about encouraging people to take picture/video phones into the polling place. In some states, like Texas, it is forbidden and can cause the voters problems.
Ancient!! WHooHOOOooo! Congratulations and thank you so much! I’m over-the-top proud of you. What a huuuuuggge victory–wonder how many votes you just rescued? Well, we’re certain to find out on election day, and we will be toasting you here, that’s for sure.
Add this to the growing list preemptive victories we have running state by state, and maybe…just MAYBE this election will actually BE the landslide it already IS.
Let the Dems sit idle by. I never expected anything deviation from their past, shameful negligently criminal behavior on this issue, anyway. I always knew it would be BRADBLOG that changed the world. And it is.
quote from Mike Rivero[what really happened [dot]com]:
“If two different machines, from two different companies, are showing the same behavior, then it is not an accident.”
Is this not true?
Jonathan Kemmerer-Scovner (#2)~
Brad has a really interesting report on that from just last week, here:
https://bradblog.com/?p=6559
Very few, if any, incidents of vote flipping from R to D. In fact, the brilliant statisticians here in this very thread often confirm the sheer impossibility of that hard data; the probability of such a high rate or D to R being so statistically anomalous that”poor calibration” as an explanation–most of them seem to agree–is a piss poor joke.
Then, add in the whirl-wind perspective of our own computer experts/ systems tech analysts, and THEY (with the exception of one I can think of) weigh in with one voice on this issue: THESE MACHINES ARE FAULTY BY DESIGN.
That being said, I’m sure these pieces of utterjunk we vote on are likely to give ANY voter a difficult time. That’s under the sub-section I like to call–“haul ’em off by Oompa-Loompas”. They’re just bad eggs.
We did have an incident in Sarasota’s now notorious CD-13 race, where the REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE’s WIFE reported (and then quickly rescinded) her own account of having difficulty getting her vote for her husband to register on ES&S’s touchscreen, paperless machines. Her husband won, whattaya know, by 369 votes
after the ES&S machines dropped 18,412–and from just one, democratic leaning County.
At first I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of malfeasance, because if it was a hack, it just seemed so OBVIOUS and DUMB! To win by just the amount that’s needed? Voter’s WITNESSING their vote “flip”?
But, according to every national pre-election poll, Congressional Dems led Repubs by 13%–the number of Dem votes that would have to be shaved for a victory in 50-50 swing districts. Sarasota, the only district in the county without PAPER OF ANY KIND(thanks to Katherine Harris and her Succubus Sibling Protege Kathy Dent) had an “undervote” rate of 14.5 percent.
And then we learned the data base was hit by an “early voting Slammer Worm”….and that the phones lines went down for several hours. Yes, they stole just as many votes as it would take. Right in front of the voter’s disbelieving eyes.
There’s no doubt about it. The machines put the wrong candidate (R) in office over the rightful POTENTIAL winner (D) who lost her Congressional seat as a result of these voting machines. It’s personal, it’s intentional.
And them Dems let it go…
Wilburrr… ~ Why can’t I download my own paper ballot … fill it out in the privacy of my stall … drop it off at the polling place … That’s horse sense.
Ancient ~ Congratulation !!!
The video of Jackson County clerk Jeff Waybright demonstrating that calibrating the machine solves all its woes does not,m as I too first thought, show votes flipping after the calibration.
It shows Nader being retained since Waybright selected Nader right before he selected straight Republican ticket.
This is, apparently, a feature of the software to allow voters to select a candidate or more from another party and then choose straight ticket for the rest.
This is a confusing, poorly implemented “feature.
But it is crystal clear what happened in that in the high res video-which you can download from Video the Vote’s website-shows the machine stating that: “Candidates you have selected from a different party will be retained.”
You can download the high res video here:
http://www.videothevote.org/video/384/
So, to recap, after the recalibration, dude selected Nader, then straight ticket, but Nader was retained. No flipping.
Which raises another valid concern: The person in charge to demo the machine didn’t even know how it worked. He thought it had flipped again too.
These machines are an atrocity.
Re: the Wired story on vote “flipping” on Hart Intercivic machines, here:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke...ght-party.html
and the following passage:
As a former technician for Hart I have seen this happen on Hart’s eSlate machines. By making such a blanket statement Pete is simply lying. Though it is rare, in my personal experience, Hart machines are quite capable of switching votes without voters making a deliberate specific change. There are several ways this can happen, and I’ve personally seen it both happen and in one case been able to “correct” the errant behavior.
In the situations I’m familiar with I’m thinking of an older version of the firmware – however the underlying problems with the design are still present. (And nobody with any experience with electronic devices will believe that any odd behavior is actually “impossible”.)
Now while Pete might simply not remember being told about these problems (by me and others), his perchant for lying (about my employment and concerns with respect to Hart) after being promoted to his current PR role leads me to believe that he is again, deliberately, lying. I’m ashamed of you Peter.
William Singer
oooooh I would SO like to see that code!!!
Be curious to see what it was written in too.
Troubling news. Why the Dems continue to sit on their hands is baffling and infuriating.
I voted today in New Hanover Co, NC and arrived to an unpleasant surprise. Previously, and even through this year’s primaries, my polling place used M100 optical scan machines, which was bad enough. But they just rolled out new iVotronic machines for the general election.
This may be old hat for some, but it was a new experience for me. After checking in and giving my name, address and birthdate, I was given a printed “no-excuse absentee” form which had a ballot number on it. The poll workers escorted each voter to a machine, plugged in a cartrige to log in with the ballot id number, pulled it out, then demonstrated how the machine works. They did this with every voter. This may not sound like that big a deal to some, but I find it interesting in that Brad stated that no machine should ever have a cartridge inserted at any time after a machine has been programmed for an election. They inserted a cartridge each time a new voter stepped up. No reported vote-flipping, but does it really matter??
I have no reason to believe my vote was recorded as cast. In fact, I’m left to pretty much assume that odds are it wasn’t – not so long as these damned DREs are used.
It was also a revelation to realize that it wouldn’t be hard at all to match a voter’s ID with their vote selections. So much for the idea of a secret ballot.
The Democrats think they can overwhelm the election fraud by the Rethuglicans with bigger numbers. Bigger numbers will just mean more votes for the Rethuglicans when they are flipped.
The same Democrats who wanted to look for 500 undervotes in Florida in 2000 instead of 50,000 spoiled OVERVOTES (like picking Gore and writing in Liberman or Gore as well).
The same Democrats who told Kerry to concede on Wednesday morning rather than look into the missing and provisional votes that were TWICE the margin of theft.
When will we stop listening to these people?
SMASH THE MACHINES AND SECURE YOUR FRANCHISE ON PAPER!!!
God works in strange ways.
I have known the Republicans to have started comitting election fraud since 1981. It could have started before that. But I remember the news covering it in 1981. I also remember in 1986 they were caught again and prosecuted. They were found guilty.
This has been going on for a long time. If we all just sit idly by and watch our rights get thrown into the garbage, we are no better than the criminals on behalf of our children.
If this election somehow gets stolen, it is our duty to take action. Even if it means recreating the Red Dawn movie. I am all for using a gun to protect our rights.