NYT, RE: Diebold setbacks in Maryland

Posted by DUer madinmaryland

Common Sense in Maryland

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/opinion/23thu3.html?_...

Published: March 23, 2006
Diebold, the electronic voting machine maker, suffered another sharp setback recently, when Maryland's House of Delegates voted 137-to-0 to drop its machines and switch to paper ballots. The vote came in the same week that Texas held elections marred by electronic voting troubles. Maryland's State Senate should join the House in voting to discontinue the use of the Diebold machines, and other states should follow Maryland's lead.

Maryland was one of the first states to embrace Diebold. But Maryland voters and elected officials have grown increasingly disenchanted as evidence has mounted that the machines cannot be trusted. In 2004, security experts from RABA Technologies told the state legislature that they had been able to hack into the machines in a way that would make it possible to steal an election. Senator Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat, informed the State Board of Elections in 2004 that voters had complained to her that machines had mysteriously omitted the Senate race.

The Maryland House's bill calls for replacing the Diebold machines with optical scanning machines for this fall's elections. Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr., once a Diebold supporter, has said he'll sign the bill if the State Senate agrees. Optical scanning machines would be a vast improvement. Voters using them fill out paper ballots, which are scanned electronically. Those ballots are a permanent record that can (and should) be used to double-check the machine results. Although time is short, Maryland should be able to get optical scanning machines operating by the fall. Even though the Board of Elections has been resisting the proposal, that should not stop the General Assembly and the governor from fighting for machines that voters will trust.

The Maryland House voted days after Texas held an election with the sort of disturbing electronic voting glitches that have by now become common. In Tarrant County, as many as 100,000 extra votes appeared on the machines — election officials insisted that they knew which ones to eliminate to make the results correct. In a hotly contested Congressional race in another part of the state, results were delayed by programming errors in the machines used in two crucial counties. Many states have passed laws requiring paper records for electronic voting. What is happening in Maryland is important, because not a single member of the House stood behind the once popular Diebold machines. It is just the latest indication that common sense is starting to prevail in the battle over electronic voting.

..snip

The Democratic ones no doubt!

I still wonder if my votes counted in 2004, when I voted last. We didn't have any local issues last year, and I was concerned with all of our major races this year here, if they would be counted.

to get lost.

"...voted 137-to-0 to drop its machines and switch to paper ballots." --YES!*

"...as evidence has mounted that the machines cannot be trusted." --YES!

"...not a single member of the House stood behind the once popular Diebold machines." --YES!

*However, we will not have restored our right to vote, and will not achieve transparent elections, and will not have saved our democracy, until we ban ALL "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming in ALL voting machines, including optiscans, and in ALL central tabulators, and have banished private, partisan vendors from our election system.

This is a great victory for democracy, but the struggle for restoring democracy is not over, and we have not achieved transparency, with a mere paper ballot BACK-UP to "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY vote tabulation. Recounts are too scanty--for a system in which millions of votes can be changed at the speed of light, by one hacker, leaving no trace--and serious recounts are too hard to obtain.

And the problem is more than likely in the central tabulators.

And we will also not be a democracy again until there is general understanding of the NON-TRANSPARENT conditions of the 2004 election, and that what we experienced in 2004 was NOT an election--it was a coup!

In 2001, the two biggest crooks in Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney, set out to entirely corrupt and destroy our election system, with the $4 billion "Help America Vote Act" boondoggle--and that's what they did. They pushed this bill through Congress with no paper trail requirement, no controls on "trade secret" vote tabulation software, no controls on partisan vendors, no controls on lavish lobbying and "revolving door" employment, no controls on private monopoly ownership of our election system, no controls on secret industry 'testing' of these extremely insecure and hackable electronic voting machines and central tabulators, and underfunded regulation with a Bush-appointed commission.

They thus turned our once public and transparent voting system into a private supermarket, where 'packaging', 'advertising' and hard-sell tactics are the keys to 'success,' not INTEGRITY! Not TRUTHFULNESS! Not HONESTY!

The result was that 80% of the nation's vote in 2004 was 'counted' by two rightwing Bushite corporations, Diebold and ES&S: Diebold, whose CEO Wally O'Dell, was a major Bush fundraiser--a Bush "Pioneer" and campaign chair--who promised in writing to "deliver" Ohio's electoral votes to Bush/Cheney in 2004. And, ES&S, a spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which, among other things, touts the death penalty for homosexuals). Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship--they are run by two brothers, Tod and Bob Urosevich.

These are the people who 'counted' most of our votes under a veil of secrecy!

And, to top this off, the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, acting in concert, through one polling organization (Edison-Mitofsky), shut down the election reporting system, late on election day, 2004, and FALSIFIED their own exit polls (Kerry won) to force their exit poll numbers to 'FIT' the results of Diebold's and ES&S's secret formulae (Bush won), and put those DOCTORED numbers on everybody's TV screens that night--thus denying the American people major evidence of election fraud, and helping to squelch protests and calls for investigation.

Exit polls are used worldwide to verify elections and check for fraud. Not here. Here, they CHANGED the exit polls to FIT the official result!*

They covered up the coup!

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*(In the Ukraine, for instance, people were able to see the two separate figures, exit poll vs. official result, and knew that something was very wrong.)

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Two things to keep in mind for the 2006 elections:

1. The electronic fraud CAN be beaten by big turnout, in some cases. Tell people the truth, and ask them to HELP BEAT THE MACHINES! But we should primarily focus on EVIDENCE-GATHERING in 2006, not just for challenging the results, but for building the case against these privately-run electronic systems, to pursue the vital long term goal of getting rid of them and restoring TRANSPARENCY. See resources, below.

2. INDEPENDENT exit polls are desperately needed in '06. The war profiteering corporate news monopoly exit polls are not to be trusted. They are promising to fiddle the results again, and this time to not let anyone capture the real exit poll numbers (as happened in '04) Pressure the Democratic Party to fund independent exit polls in all Congressional elections! (It's the least they can do for us--after letting the Republicans destroy our right to vote!)

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Some resources for American Revolution II:

Breaking--just announced: www.VoterAction.org is suing the state of California and 18 Calif county registrars on behalf of 25 California voter/plaintiffs, on the illegal Diebold "re-certification".
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2180496


www.votersunite.org (MythBreakers - easy primer on electronic voting--one of the myths is that HAVA requires electronic voting; it does not.)
www.verfiedvoting.org (great activist site)
www.votetrustusa.org (news of this great movement from around the country)
www.UScountvotes.org (statistical monitoring of '06 and '08 elections)
www.solarbus.org/election/index.shtml (fab compendium of all election info)
www.freepress.org (devoted to election reform)
www.bradblog.com (also great, and devoted to election reform)
www.TruthIsAll.net (analysis of the 2004 election)* :patriot: :applause: :patriot:
Sign the petition (Russ Holt, HR 550, great bill-has 169 sponsors). http://www.rushholt.com/petition.html
www.votepa.us (well-organized local group of citizen activists in Pennsylvania, where important legal issues are at stake, including state's rights over election systems)

www.debrabowen.com (Calif Senator running for Sec of State to reform election system)
www.johnbonifaz.com (running for Massachusetts Sec of State on strong election reform and antiwar platform)

*Some tributes to TruthIsAll, who is very ill:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x417007
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x417231
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x675477

Also of interest:

Bob Koehler (-- four recent election reform initiatives in Ohio, predicted to win by 60/40 votes, flipped over, on election day, into 60/40 LOSSES!--the biggest flipover we've seen yet; the election theft machines and their masters are now dictating election policy!)
www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20051124ctnbk-a.txt&catid=1824&code=ctnbk

Bob Koehler's latest: "Take this box and stuff it" (3/16/06)
http://commonwonders.com/archives/col337.htm

Amaryllis (Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia lavish lobbying of election officials - Beverly Hilton, Aug. '05)
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

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Throw Diebold, ES&S and ALL election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

:think: :patriot: :woohoo: :patriot: :think:

They posted the preliminary exit poll results around 7:30 PM ET, left them up for hours, then eventually reweighted to official returns as in previous elections. How does one say it? Lamest. Cover-up. Ever.

("shut down the election reporting system"? umm, whatever)

No, sorry, independent exit polls are not a high priority: unless you are anticipating double-digit fraud (and perhaps even then), they will not be accepted as strong evidence by folks who don't expect fraud in the first place. The aftermath of 2004 makes my point here, no matter what you think actually happened. You are convinced, most people aren't, you are left to complain about it.

boring 'ol complaint, all normal and lazily eventuated and 're-weighted' and...uh...ya-a-a-a-wn, move along, move along.

:puke:

You seem to have entirely ignored the actual content of my post and responded to some fantasized alternative post in which some imaginary adversary wrote that 'exit polls should be ignored.' Charitably, that seems careless.

If you think that independent exit polls should be a priority in 2006, then you need to make the argument. Animated retching will not suffice. If you can't justify your strategic recommendations, then they should be ignored.

And I think that portraying the exit poll/election return coverage as evidence of war-profiteering corporate media hostility dangerously warps your political analysis. Election integrity faces enough obstacles without inventing enemies.

Hey, another chance to respond to the content of my previous post: if the corporate media intended to cover up the exit poll results, why did they post them on heavily trafficked news sites first? And in what sense did they "shut down the election reporting system"?

If folks want to believe that everything you say is true because it makes them feel good, that is their prerogative. But let the record reflect whether you can answer simple questions. If not, why not stick to the points you can actually support?

large scale in 2004, it is undeniable that the election process is broken. We need to have independent, reliable and transparent exit polls and election systems for the public to ever have confidence in the outcomes of future elections.

Most of all, we need transparent election systems.

But if you want to call for independent exit polls, then you have to wrestle with some facts. One of those facts is that almost no polling experts regard the 2004 exit polls as evidence of fraud. Never mind "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" -- most of them don't even think the exit poll discrepancy is especially interesting.

Now, setting aside what this does or doesn't imply about 2004, it raises some questions for the future. Some folks here seem to be convinced that if Americans only Knew The Truth about the exit polls, they would believe that the election was stolen. I think that is a triumph of hope over experience. It is awfully hard to win that sort of argument if the experts don't agree with it. Maybe exit polls can help to support transparent elections, but we would need to exercise some intelligent judgment about what they can and cannot do. I would love to have a serious conversation about that; it is often very hard to have serious conversations on this board.

Also (a separate issue from the one you raised), people should reflect on why DRE problems are getting more press attention than exit poll evidence. There are lots of reasons, but an important one is that when reporters ask computer experts about DREs, they basically get a range of opinion from 'iffy' to 'catastrophic.' The range of expert opinion on the exit poll arguments is less favorable. Again setting aside what this does or doesn't imply about 2004, it influences a strategic analysis of media opportunities.

Folks are certainly entitled to believe that the world would be a better place if all the experts agreed with Peace Patriot. But I don't see how that is a useful basis for political analysis.

and details are made public it is impossible for experts, other than those that have access to this information, to reasonably judge the validity of the exit polls. It is the lack of transparency of the exit polls, as with the DRE voting machines, that is problematic.

The canonical argument for exit polls pretty much assumes that they are valid. The folks who trumpet the uncanny reliability of exit polls have more access to data, procedures, and details about the 2004 U.S. presidential exit poll than about any other exit poll. Many people allude knowingly to the Ukraine exit polls, but what do they actually know about the Ukraine exit polls?

If people need to actually examine the details before they are entitled to an opinion, hey, then we just might be done with the 2004 exit poll debate -- because most people haven't and won't.

You are entitled to think that we still don't know enough to be able to judge whether a 51:48 exit poll result in a 48:51 race offers strong evidence of vote miscount. AFAICT the consensus of polling experts is that we do know enough: it isn't strong evidence, regardless of any further details, given the inherent limitations of the research method.

Again looking to the future: If you think that you will be able to convince polling experts that exit polls prove fraud in some future election by being more transparent about the procedures and details... indeed you might, if the discrepancy is sufficiently large -- but in close races, that is not likely to work.

Now, if someone wants to spend several million dollars for this purpose and only this purpose, hey, I guess it won't hurt anything. And there may be useful ways of using exit polls and parallel elections. But I am not going to indulge anyone's fantasies about exit poll perfectibility if anything important is on the line. Let's please be reality-based.

(EDIT: I am as happy as anyone to see Diebold set back in Maryland. I think it shows that good arguments can have a lot of sway in the mainstream media -- which is why it bothers me to see Peace Patriot introduce bad arguments. I think we have no right to offer public arguments that we are not prepared to defend in detail.)

when you assume. I am an ex auditor and, based on your logic, I should never have reviewed anyone's work if they told me it was accurate since they were the experts and they had access to the information. If the exit poll people are so confident of their results, they should make their procedures and detailed results available to the public to remove any doubt. Anything less and doubt will linger as to the validity of the exit poll results.

Of course exit polls are not perfect and a slight swing in one close race does not prove anything. However, if the results predominately swing the same way throughout the country from the exit polls to the actual election results when many locales are using DREs, something is not right. Maybe you can't prove election fraud based on that but you can be pretty sure it is happenning.

It is the folks who use the exit polls to assert vote miscount -- not the exit pollsters themselves -- who are affirming great confidence in the preliminary exit poll results. Right?? The exit pollsters have built their projection system to not rely upon the preliminary exit poll results in close races. It is the outsiders who are second-guessing the insiders' decision not to call the election for Kerry.

My head is starting to hurt trying to modify your analogy to deal with that. It as if a firm told you that its books were probably wrong, and you insisted on assuming that the books were actually right -- because, as we all know, company accounts are uncannily accurate, generally within a fraction of a percentage point!

We can discuss whether more exit poll info from 2004 should be released and why, but it doesn't have any bearing on what future exit polls are likely to prove (and to whom), so perhaps we can set that aside. (Or not, as you prefer.)

There was actually no propensity for exit poll results to 'swing' more in locales (precincts or states) that used DREs. So the exit polls do not seem to support DRE-based fraud, at least no more -- and probably less -- than lever-machine-based fraud. Again, this perhaps has little bearing on what future exit polls are likely to prove.

Because the exit polls could be wrong there is not absolute proof of election fraud seems to be your point. I'll give you that but there are other very strong indications that enough fraud took place to swing the election, especially in Ohio. The manipulation of the recount in Ohio by one of the companies involved in the vote count as well as other recount rules that were ignored point to fraud. Is it absolute proof? No, but remember it would have only taken about 12 votes per precinct in the 10,000 or so precincts in Ohio to take the election from Kerry and give it to Bush and there were many problems on election day also (Warren County lockdown). You also had SOT Blackwell who served as co-chairman of Bush campaign and presidents of voting machine companies promising to deliver Bush the White House.

The only explanation for the swings from the exit polls to Bush in the election, other than election fraud, is the "Reluctant Bush Responder" theory put out by the exit poll company. There does seem to be much evidence to support this and they refuse to share any data that would back up this theory. This is why transparency is needed. With all their secrecy, they can create a shadow of a doubt that election fraud did not take place for those who wish to believe it.

In the end it does not matter if you believe election fraud took place or not if you believe that our current election system is broken. Chuck Herrin, a republican computer expert, summed it up perfectly with this statement:

"As of right now, 11-23-2004, there is no conclusive evidence that massive voter fraud took place, but there is overwhelming evidence that the weaknesses in our voting system could have allowed it. I hope it didn't happen, but the simple fact is that whether it did or not, our election systems, particularly those using DREs, appear to have been designed specifically to allow fraud, rather than prevent it."

Debating whether election fraud took place or not is counter productive and if you really believe that the election system is broken you should focus your efforts on fixing it. Having said all that, I'll leave it there.

Yes, it is easy for us to talk past each other as we steal time from other parts of our lives already in progress.

My point was that (1) if people are going to argue that the war profiteering corporate media covered up the theft of the 2004 election, they should provide evidence; (2) if people are going to argue that we need independent exit polls in future years, they should provide a rationale. If not, then people can withdraw those arguments (or tacitly concede that they are unsupported), and we can get back to working on election integrity.

If you seriously believe that debating whether election fraud took place is counterproductive, then perhaps you should be making that point to Peace Patriot, who injected the argument into a thread on a different topic. If you actually mean that only arguments on one side should ever be voiced, then I respectfully disagree. We pay a heavy price if we give up on being reality-based.

Frankly, I think your comments on the exit polls are misinformed. Polls are often biased; it isn't some bizarre aberration that requires some extraordinary effort to explain. ("Reluctant Bush Responder" was a phrase made up by election fraud theorists, not the exit pollsters.) And in fact, there is considerable analysis in the public domain (much of it has been discussed at length here) that tends to support the inference of bias rather than massive fraud. You are welcome to believe that the polls offer strong evidence of fraud, just as you can believe that the Grand Canyon offers evidence for a young earth. But I would not relish seeing either argument used in the presence of domain experts. It's great to be controversial, but being dogmatically fringe is not so helpful IMHO.

So, (3) if you really want to defend the premise (if I am reading this right) that the 2004 exit polls allow at most a "shadow of a doubt" of election fraud, then bring it on, and prepare to be surprised. Otherwise, you might take your own advice and focus on arguments that a wide range of observers actually agree on.

For those who don't know what the war profiteering corporate news monopolies did to us on election night 2004. For you, OnTheOtherHand...

:wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow:

We need to send this to all our state election officials!

:bounce: :kick: :woohoo: :bounce: :kick: :woohoo: :bounce: :kick: :woohoo:


Recommending!

But, I'll take anyway!

:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

No one standing up for that hot potato, must be getting really hot. Should be page 1 above the fold before long.

Thank you all for keeping pressure on.