Olbmermann hinted he's concerned about secret vote counting tonight.

In the segment about Rove saying that he has "THE math" and that's why he knows the Republicans are going to win, Keith asked the guest if it was a hint of Stalin and referenced the infamous quote "Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

Unfortunately that was all we got. Just a little tease.

I have been waiting... waiting.... waiting.... for Keith to take up our issue. He did it briefly after 04 theft but hasn't mentioned it since.

This tease could be a good sign. Maybe he's ripe for it again. We REALLY need him to do this.

WE SHOULD ALL EMAIL HIM AND ***BEG*** HIM TO START COVERING THE VOTING MACHINES, AND THE SECRET VOTE COUNTING, SO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CAN FIND OUT WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON. SECRET VOTE COUNTING IS WHAT WE HAVE IN AMERICA. THAT'S ROVE'S MATH.

Keith's email:

countdown@msnbc.com
countdown@msnbc.com
countdown@msnbc.com
countdown@msnbc.com

Hopefully Keith won't let us down.

So it shouldn't be a biggie for Keith to do so, too.

Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate what Lou is doing.

But there are some significant flaws in their coverage. They focus only on the DRE machines and never mention that opscans are a problem too.

And they only focus on "hacking" which is when someone hacks into a voting system because of the lack of security. They have yet to mention an even worse problem which is secret vote counting and proprietary software. this is the essential difference between "hacking" and "rigging." They only focus on potential hacking and do not mention rigging.

still, Dobbs is doing a good job. In fact we at Solar Bus have a free DVD of 20+ Lou Dobbs segments. You can check it out here:
http://www.solarbus.org/election/dvd/

Optical Scans have the lowest number of spoiled ballots of any method. And they are counted quickly. Also, problems and fraud are easily detected, manually, with paper optical scan ballots.

And optical scan voting is very *cheap*. It doesn't cost counties much at all (especially compared to these fraud-prone, problem-prone, complicated DREs) to implement optical scan voting.

Opscans are not safe. We have all opscans in Vermont where I live. There is still secret vote counting on optical scans. Unless there is an audit on the system, there is no way to detect fraud. Most states do not have audits, and those who do, have ineffective audits.

Please learn the facts! It's not just the DREs! This is the absolute truth. In fact, in the 2004 election there was widespread evidence of fraud on the optical scan machines.

Democratic Party says on their website: "We know the Diebold optical scan machines are wide open to fraud"

The famous Harri Hursti Hack was on a Diebold optical scan machine.

The Brennan Report says "ALL THREE voting systems pose a real danger to the integrity of elections."

The Voting Systems Advisory Board found "serious security flaws" and "prohibited code" on Diebold Optical-scans

I could go on and on.

the bottom line is, there is secret software code on the machines counting the votes, whether it's opscan or DRE.

The biggest problem with DREs is that you can *never* run a valid audit on them.

Please don't attack very good systems. Do not lump auditable (hardcopy/paper ballot) systems in with non-auditable (mostly electronic/too complex for a politician to understand) systems.

in theory you are correct. I'm talking about reality. there is virtually no auditing of opscans in our country. the paper ballots are never checked. same secret software code.

opscans are not safe as they are now. period.

show me some good auditing that is going on and I'll concede that in that locale, the opscans are safe. otherwise we need to make people aware that opscans are NOT safe, so they can pressure their election officials to do something about it.

and until there are audits which turn in to a good system it MUST be trashed.

On edit: And the BEST system will always be hand-counted paper ballots which are verified by multiple people, that is what we should push for.

They are fed into a reader which gives a good tally of the votes. If the race is close enough, presumably these ballots would be hand counted which will give a more specific tally of the votes. That hand count is the audit.

I know what an optical scan machine is you don't have to explain it to me.

I also know that by far the vast majority of the paper will never be hand counted, so there is no audit.

And if you are going to hand count anyways, then what is the purpose of the machines?

As I said before:
Push for audits in more circumstances. Don't trash a very good system.

in case you haven't seen it, it's written by the heads of security for Microsoft and Lawrence Livermore Labs, and also computer professors from MIT, Yale, Berkeley, NYU. They all say, there has to be audits on every single election.

there are virtually NO audits going on right now. It is incorrect to say it's a very good system.

Think of it this way. Imagine the Space Shuttle without any heat shield. Would you say it's a very good system like that, just because they might put a heat shield on it in future missions? Of course not. Without the heat shield, it is TRASH, worthless, a disaster. You need the heat sheild or it's a bad system.

You are calling the Space Shuttle without a heat shield a good system. It is not a good system. It's a horrible system.

Would it be good with a heat shield? Would opscans be good with audits? Sure, I believe it's possible if they are done right. But they are not done right, and they're not done at all in most cases, so the Space Shuttle blows up and our election system is in the trash, including OPSCANS.

to say it's a very good system is just incorrect and unsupported by the facts and the expert reports.

Audits for every election are done with a statistically significant sample.

you can't just sit there and say "we need to get some audits" and and the same time say the "system is good."

why don't you say, 'the system WOULD be good or COULD be good if there were audits'

the fact is, as I have said way too many times, THERE ARE NO AUDITS. SO THE SYSTEM IS BAD.

You are, of course, absolutely correct that opscan without sufficient audit is bad.

But the generalization is that any high-level approach can be good or bad depending on how you fill in the details.

For example, HCPB without a proper chain of custody of the paper ballots is bad. A system based on voting on paper at the polling place and then letting the ballots travel across town with lax custody controls and lax inventory controls on the supply of ballots would be a bad system because it would be so easy to swap out true ballots with fraudulent ones that came from the uncontrolled supply of unused ballots.

My point is that we can't focus on just one aspect of the system. We really have to evaluate the system as a whole. The different parts of it interact and the question of whether it is secure and transparent can only be determined by looking at the whole system and sweating the details.

H. R. 6200, which is touted by some as a solution, leaves many details unspecified. We will never solve the problem if we can only get very high-level constraints in place and then leave the details to the thieves because if we do they will always be able to design in a hole that they can use to steal it.

_{Edit: minor wording}

Frankly, eomer, I am surprised.

When you say the "whole system" you are talking about many various systems. Grouping them all together, as you have, is like referring to all the wastewater systems in America as "America's sewer system."

There is the op-scan system, and there are many variations of that system.

There is the DRE system, also with many variations.

Hand Count systems........""............."""

Lever systems............"".............."""

You get my point?

Now, about the H.R.6200 bill. It is one system (HCPB) with few variations. What it does is narrow down to one system the way federal officials are elected. The key to this system which makes it far better than any other is that many eyes are upon the whole system and therefore secrecy is at a minimum. It is the very best system.

What I meant by 'whole system' was all the details -- the procedures, controls, physical parts, and all other aspects -- of a system being used in one location.

In other words, it's not enough to know just that it is an HCPB system. Some HCPB systems could be absolutely transparent and safe while other HCPB systems could be totally opaque and/or unreliable. You need to know all the details of that HCPB system before you can say that it is transparent or that it is not.

For example, if HCPB ballots are deposited during election day into a secure ballot box but then at the end of the day they are taken to some remote warehouse for counting with no public or media allowed then that system is not transparent.

So, just like it is true that an opscan system is not safe unless you have an effective audit, it is also true that an HCPB system is not safe unless you have [a whole slew of things that are needed to ensure that it is safe].

_{Edit: spelling}

But hands down HCPB systems are, compared to computer based systems, much easier to behold.

HCPB are systems that bring together many hands and eyes and in that regard there are many variables. But those variables can be minimized ahead of time through clear rules of engagement. Rules that would be followed pretty much nationwide.

In contrast the hodge-podge of systems we now labor under make the whole kit-and-kaboodle less clear than mud.

We must make a big step backward by the next election and that will require a giant leap over the DREs and opscans before we can say our voting systems -as a whole- are equal across the nation.

HR 6200 would be the pole we use to vault our way out of the hole in which we now find ourselves.

any secret vote counting is bullshit, the people who stole 2004 WILL BE HEARING FROM US ALL REAL SOON!!

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1577&Itemid=113

Do we audit the central tabulators? I'm just asking.

The central tabulator can be audited with a hand, paper count. We don't bother doing that now, but we SHOULD, and then we could use optical scan machines with confidence.

We can never use the current touch screens with confidence.

every single race!

Your premise - which has long been shown to be transparently false - is that there should be a presumption that the Optiscan voting machines are reliable. If they were, ther ewould be no need for a hand count.

However, even disregarding the massive record of fraud and malfeasance associated with every aspect of the use of electronic voting machines of any and every kind in the last 2 elections, by their very nature, such machines, even when fitted with maximal security protection, will always remain susceptible to villainous interference, and in fact, hackable.

I'm not aware that computer viruses are a thing of the past, to mention one point. With those machines, even certification was often considered redundant by the bodies set up for the purpose.

With all due respect, you have no idea what you are talking about.

you say

"They are fed into a reader which gives a good tally of the votes."

how do you know it is giving a good tally of the votes?

how?

how do you know this?

THERE SIMPLY IS NO REASON TO HAVE ANY THOUGHT THAT THEY ARE COUNTING THE VOTES CORRECTLY. WITHOUT AUDITS, (AND AGAIN THERE ARE VIRTUALLY NO AUDITS GOING ON) THEY COULD BE SWITCHING EVERY VOTE AND YOU WOULD NEVER KNOW.

putting an opscan ballot into a scanner is the exact same thing as touching a touchscreen. a computer reads your vote and converts it into an electronic ballot, on secret software code. Period. the same company wrote the software.

another thing is that opscans are in some cases MORE vulnerable to hacking because in many cases there is only one machine in an entire precinct. so each machine has more votes, and it's easier for a single hacker to affect more votes at one time. We KNOW that in 5 minutes a hacker can use the interpreted code on the memory cards to fix the vote counts on the machine. we also know that in most states, like here in Vermont, all the memory cards are sent to a central location before each election, where they could be programmed to do anything you could imagine.

Opscans are a little better than DREs, yes. I will give you that. But they are not a good voting system as they are being used today. WE CAN NOT TRUST THE ELECTION RESULTS FROM OPSCAN MACHINES ANY MORE THAN WE CAN FROM DRES. PERIOD. THAT'S WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY. READ ALL THE REPORTS. IT IS UNDENIABLE. Read the Brennan Report, the ESI Report, the Voting Systems Advisory Board report. they're all one click away on the right column of my website http://election.solarbus.org

in one week, if you watch the film on HBO "Hacking Democracy" you will realize, that optical scan systems are extremely vulnerable to hacking and rigging. The movie focuses on Diebold opscans and shows how in 5 minutes you can infect a machine to change the election results.

there are no audits!

if there were good audits, perhaps the system would be OK.

BUT THERE ARE NO AUDITS. SO THE SYSTEM IS CRAP.

do you get it now?

you shouldn't call it a good system when there are no audits. go back and read my analogy to the space shuttle.

He was saying that Optical Scan Machines are better than touch screens because they provide a paper-trail that COULD and SHOULD be used to verify the election. True.

You are saying that since no one will bother to verify the machine counts with a hand count, the machines can't be trusted. Also true.

There is no paper trail at all with touch screens, but we do have one with optical scans. Too bad we don't use it. A parachute only works if you open it. A security system only works if you actually turn it on. For some reason, the imbeciles who run our election think a recount is just running the cards through the optical scanner again, and they don't see the need for random verification with hand counts. But you COULD have a good system with the same machines if the election people gave a shit.

I hate to see DUers argue - when it appears to me you both really agree on the major points.

before you tell me what to do, why don't you check and see what I'm doing. I DO push for audits. that's what I do. That's what I breathe here in Vermont. I lead a group called Vermonters for Voting Integrity and we have written letters, emails, debated and done everything possible with our Secretary of State to get audits here.

It is not a very good system. Read the Brennan Report. Read about the Hursti Hack. don't just say it's a very good system without some reasoning behind it.

Vermont's optical scan system.

to rule in favor of counting ballots.

and simple COUNT THE GODAMN BALLOTS.

They need to pick a random 10% of machines and manually count the paper ballots and compare them to the machine counts. RANDOM machines. Something like that. Or even make the election night results preliminary dependent on verification from a 100% manual count. I could live with Optical scan machines and some procedures to actually take advantage of the paper trail. But, Americans are lazy - too lazy to protect our government.

Thank you, Keith.

And message for Karl: We know what you did last election.

:D

will be operating under completely new rules of engagement.

votes, for example, a very small example of amny. the 2000 vote was obviously stolen. When the enws agencies auduited florida votes, gore was the winner by a longshot. And...

But it wasn't "by a longshot". There were also circumstances where Bush was the winner in the media counts (also not by a longshot).

However, that count could not include the votes of folks who were turned away from the polls in Florida by being on an "ex-felon" list (of mostly law abiding african-Americans). Or the police blockades set up near polling stations meant to deter folks from voting.

say they lost, but You or I can't back these claims up with actual proof, but the fact remains, THE PEOPLE THAT STOLE 2004 WILL BE HEARING FROM US REAL SOON.

Stupid."

I don't understand why our Democratic candidates are not concerned about the voting machines? Republicans own them, program them, count the vote, and hack them? Why not more concern from Kerry? Those running for office spend millions, and for what? If is all for nothing if Repubs get away with another fixed election. We all know Gore win, Clelland won, Kerry Won, etc. and, if the elections are not fixed again, Dems will win again, only this time they will be allowed to take office. I will vote if I have to crawl to the polls. If enough of us vote, perhaps we will overwhelm the damned crooked crooks! I don't post much anymore, got kind of burnt out, but I will give money, talk to as many people as I can and get any who will vote to vote! Still, I am frustrated and nervous about the elections. Rove will not allow Dems to win the election, at least that is what I am afraid of. Yes, I heard Keith say what he said tonight, I hope he repeats is over and over again. Bush is a retarded nightmare!

or short zen slaps. Glad you're still around. :hi:

I used to look forward to your regular late-night posts. I hope you're doing well. :hi:

KnR

is the definition of a suspicious act.

Secret vote counting performed by your political enemy= the picture of tyranny.

Secret vote counting performed by your political friend= the picture of corruption.

therefore, secret vote counting has problems, no?

i heard that in the car before hearing olbie. big big wow. rove's brazenness!

btw -- it was rove's outsized brazenness and claims that he had "other numbers" that Flintoff keyed on.