Voting Machine Blues and the Connecticut Race

Has anybody done any analysis of why the Repugs didn't just steal the election for Lieberman? Or are we all politely not asking that particular question?

I mean it was a pretty close race.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

Otherwise I'd have no doubt they would have stolen it from him

voter registrations...Repugs changing shirts just to cast a vote for Lieb.

Republicans needed to register no later than May 8 at which time Lieberman was way ahead in the polls. That is, anyone registered as Republican. Among non affiliated voters I suspect some were Republican leaning. But certainly not all of them. I was unaffiliated myself and changed to Democrat to participate. Only non afillated and new voters could register up until noon on Aug. 7. The closeness of the race I think has to do a lot with the power of incumbency. A lot of Democrats don't like the war but think Joe Lieberman is a good guy and just couldn't bring themselves to vote against him.

they did roll out a new system for tallying votes coming in from different precincts and that opens the door for the possibility of ERRORS or fraud. I don't know what procedures they have to double-check the results, but they should be using multiple systems -- the new software system and old-fashioned Excel spreadsheets.

I would *BEG* that people think consistently and seriously about the "election fraud issue" -- it is not all-or-none: If any Dems win that proves there were no election errors/fraud anywhere in the country. If the Dem wins there were no election errors/fraud in that race.

Errors in software can occur in ANY election that uses computerized voting and/or computerized vote tallying. We must work to have double-checks on the systems throughout the country.

Voter-verified paper ballots & mandatory manual random audits to make sure that the machines & tallying software is working accurately.

:kick:

The problem nearly everywhere else is with computer based vote counters.

It must have been terribly frustrating for bushco to not be able to alter the vote in Ct the way they can nearly everywhere else, and every good democrat should be seeing to it that bushco's frustration continues to grow state by state.

I think conyers book "What went wrong in Ohio", in the background section, mentioned that even lever machines aren't safe. Teeth on the counting gears can be chiseled off. Symptom is an unusually high under-vote. Course, unlike computer voting equipment, this leaves inconvenient physical evidence behind if the results are suspicious enough for someone to check.

But levers can't be hacked via a modem or through programmed software capable of 'chiseling' hundreds of votes with the click of a mouse.

No voting system is beyond the reach of bushco but the computerized counters are at their fingertips no matter where that counter is plugged in.

Say you have 1000 levers in a state. It would take a few people days upon days to alter those counters and they might be seen by any number of people. On the other hand, the computer hackers can do their dirty deed in seconds from a hidden room where no one can see them, and alter any number of votes.

I'd take levers over computers any time, and think Conyers would say the same.

Unless that result was double-checked we can't be sure. Maybe there were errors in the tallying software and Lamont won by a bigger gap...

:kick:

momentum. Why did he win by only 4%? That would be a very good question to ask of the CT stats.

CT is similar to Mexico. CT has tried and true, old-fashioned lever machines for the voting (almost impossible to rig), but electronic tabulation of the totals. Unless there is careful auditing, fraud can occur in that case. Perhaps they tried and failed (didn't have enough of an e-voting system in place to overcome Lamont's overwhelming win*)--or perhaps there was fraud or fraudulent intent in all those last minute "Democratic" registrations. In Mexico, they have a very insecure paper ballot system, combined with a highly manipulable central electronic tabulation system (in which Calderon's brother had an interest). Ballot boxes were stuffed (or emptied), sealed, and false totals reported--sometimes a 90% or 100% or more vote for Calderon, which the electronic tabulation system hid until the last moment. But Mexico's election theft system is not as seamless as some ours are--Lopez Obrador's supporters found some of the discarded ballots, and alert techies caught the anomalous tabulation numbers.


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*Diebold/ES&S touchscreens obviously work best with the Diebold/ES&S central tabulators (for fraudulent totals). We can know this by inference, if nothing else--for instance, the vicious lengths the fascist cabal has gone to, in California, to get touchscreens in place. Especially in paperless voting, touchscreens create a smooth, seamless and completely invisible and undetectable election theft system. ONE THIRD of the U.S. voted this way in 2004! Touchscreens with some sort of "paper trail" are only slightly more secure--a very minor deterrent effect--because the central tabulators run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code are still in place, as they are with optiscans. Optiscans are a few degrees more secure, but the paper ballots they provide are dropped into a box--separating the vote from the evidence of the vote--and are almost never seen again. Optiscan security also depends on the deterrent effect of possible recounts (extremely rare; very expensive; blockaded in many ways, and also manipulable), and on audits, which are currently non-existent in many places, and extremely inadequate in others.

That e-voting was never tested with a 100% audit--yet was used nationwide in 2004--tells you how useful minor "fix its" are now, for instance, trying to ADD ON a 1% or 2% audit of this high speed, invisible vote counting system, with fascist media pressuring for instant results.

Some election reform activists would have us support HR 550, the Holt bill, in the hope that the Diebold Congress will vote itself out of power. It ain't gonna happen. The best thing to do is massive Absentee Ballot voting in November, to bring this election theft system to its knees, and get rid of these machines! --ALL of them, touchscreens, optiscans and central tabulators!

This NON-TRANSPARENT e-voting system was INTENDED to steal our elections, and HAS stolen them. You only have to watch Congress for a day or two to know that (--not to mention watching Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld). There is no "fixing" it. There are only DEGREES of SECURITY--all far less than 100%--that can be achieved through MITIGATION. This system can never be made truly secure. Those who put it in place and are running it are too corrupt. They and their goddamned election theft machines need to be entirely EVICTED from our election system.

CT is almost unique, in the difficulty of e-rigging there (difficult but not impossible). I think NY also has lever machines (and is fighting the Bushites to keep them), and Oregon has very secure all mail-in voting. The irony is that CT's OTHER Senator, Christopher Dodd, was a key player in the imposition of Bushite corporate control over our elections everywhere else. He was a main architect of the $4 billion electronic voting boondoggle, passed by the Anthrax Congress, that started all this--the destruction of our election system, nationwide.