Some have approached me wanting to check out the "paper trail" from Diebold DREs. These, "our official ballots", each one possibly holding up to 300-500 voters' "official ballots" do not print in whole, or are otherwise illegible, approximately 10% of the time, as was proved by July's ESI Report, and re-demonstrated again recently.
We do not need a re-demonstration again but a method of assuring that each voter gets an official ballot, as long as we're forced into using these unreliable and completely non-transparent DREs, that have been proved riggable, also by ESI and many computer experts.
Also, Board of Elections workers in every county using these unreliable printers, need exact instructions of how to get an official ballot for every voter. According to law, and previous Attorney General opinions, the "official ballot" is "the "voter verfIED" "paper trail."
Once it is found that the machine has eaten it, crushed it, not printed it, etc., it is too late. What are citizens to do? Certainly not blanketly allow people inside a board to possibly pick out the wrong memory card, or the wrong data base, or even the wrong machine, to without the voters' supervision, supposedly "recreate" hundreds of official ballots at a time.
Voters, board workers, elections need a far clearer method of getting our official ballots. And this, just one of numerous problems with Diebold DREs, does not seem possible with them.
In fact, their lack of reliability, along with legs crashing, screens freezing, votes being switched by the machine, termed "a calibration problem," and the software that's counting never having been seen by any truly independent expert, let alone by us, all are just a few of the (more minor) reasons that these machines do not belong in any citizens' election. There are many others.
Some nationwide election integrity activists are studying some of these other reasons these machines do not belong in our elections.
I post a beginning sample of "official ballots" from one Beachwood (suburb) precinct. (There are other precincts in Beachwood.)
With a Public Information Request to the Cuyahoha elections board, and the truly wonderful cooperation of Interim Director, Jane Platten, working with a staff who now feels supported, and thus, free to cooperate well with citizens, I got hundreds of pages of such copies - each "ballot" from one precinct, and each taking two pages. I have not yet counted how many ballots I have.
Here are the first 25.
They are numbered 1a, 1b; 2a, 2b, etc. The number being the ballot number in order of my scanning, the a - the first page of that ballot; the b - the second page.
These are in jpeg format.
For those studying, I did not want to reduce, combine, omit, etc. for I know it might be important to see these ballots in their original form, with all original choices, and as copied.
I have absolutely NO reason believe that the copies are anything but accurate representations of the originals, with only the limits of copying machine capabilities, now scanner capabilities, intervening.
Hope this helps those of you in WA and NH, etc.
By right-clicking on each choice, you'll find the pages downloadable.
http://www.box.net/shared/va6liy
mh0s
Next 20 ballots
http://www.box.net/shared/h4ku3vabsh
Showing posts with label audit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label audit. Show all posts
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Will An Independent Expert Audit of the Cuyahoga November Election Be Independent? Expert? an Audit?
In addition to agenda items on the Monday 11/27 meeting, (see entry directly below,) a group of election reform advocates of which I am a part, who have been working on getting an independent expert audit after this election, I think will be at this meeting again requesting one - a truly independent audit.
It was after I kind of "hounded" the Cuyahoga County Commissioners for a few months at the end of 2005, that they decided, before May's election, to do an independent audit for May - to check out on their own the lack of security inherent in electronic voting systems and the enormous, and constantly rising costs of it. (I did not suggest any vendors for that audit.) That resulted in the very enlightening Election Science Institute report, (see postings below) bringing to light many critical questions - that still remain - about the accuracy, operability, transparency, security and others in Cuyahoga's election system - about the Diebold system and some of the BOE leadership running our elections.
An actual audit - including not only comparing "somethings" from unknown software inside of black box machines to other such machines, but also to the voters' will - after every election - needs to be built into every county's election system after every election, so real voter confidence may truly ensue, or not.
What could be more important to democracy than knowing that the people in office as "the deciders" - even the deciders of election laws and systems - are the people that "we, the people" have chosen?
The "rub now?
On October 2, at the that meeting, Mr. Bennett said they certainly would do this "independent" audit. But the board decided that this "independent" audit will be owned and oversighted by the CCBOE! An inherent conflict of interest.
And Mr. Bennett announced that THEY will hire a firm, that will be under the direct direction of some of the same people causing all the confusions noted in earlier posts here, and the same people so scared and vested with keeping their jobs - and that the so-called "independent" firm will be hired through the 2008 presidential election! (see video link at bottom of this post.)
If one just takes a look at what happened to ESI, for saying honest things that put the board and its methods in less than perfect light in this video , you can see readily, that "the perfect light" to supposedly "maintain voter 'confidence'" is Mr. Bennett's at least, very highest priority - not the truth.
The small group of election reform advocates who have looked over the CCBOE audit RFP have made some "suggestions", like not just comparing machines to machines, and declaring "all is very well in Cuyahoga," but really trying to make our entire election system - one of the largest voting districts in the nation - a REAL democratic election. There are many specifics added to theirs, about absentee ballots, provisionals, etc. - as well as an imploring to let the Commissioners again own it and lead it.
I was at the Commissioners meeting on November 16, and they seem to have no interest (things are thick in the "dealings" of Cuyahoga.)
Their reason? They've already spent more than $14 on this election...(!!! and I add that a true looking at all expenditures would show the vast majority of that money has flowed directly from worthy taxpayer interests into Diebold's pockets. See "Mr. Vu's Next Gig?" below)
Commissioner Dimora even suggested that citizens get together and "pool our money" for such an audit! Hard to believe, but it's on tape.
I've suggested to the "RFP for independent audit advocate group" that since the CCBOE claims they have the funds for their form of "independent" audit, and since the money (to use in our best interst, not in Diebold's/or the CCBOE's) is being presented as the issue for actual independence - then we need to let the Commissioners know that since THEY appropriated those/our funds to the CCBOE, THEY need to ask for them back, and take independent ownership/oversight of this important election function.
To see the 10/2/06 CCBOE decision/version of "independence" for yourself, and some reform advocate speakers for security, immediate and post-audits - about 35 minutes in all- (I'm at the end of this one) click here. It may all sound reasonable, but if you follow along through these posts, it will become clear that what you see is not always what you get in Cuyahoga. The buzzer you hear is the 5 minute kitchen timer they run on citizen speakers. What you don't hear is the loud ticking behind us as it goes along.
It was after I kind of "hounded" the Cuyahoga County Commissioners for a few months at the end of 2005, that they decided, before May's election, to do an independent audit for May - to check out on their own the lack of security inherent in electronic voting systems and the enormous, and constantly rising costs of it. (I did not suggest any vendors for that audit.) That resulted in the very enlightening Election Science Institute report, (see postings below) bringing to light many critical questions - that still remain - about the accuracy, operability, transparency, security and others in Cuyahoga's election system - about the Diebold system and some of the BOE leadership running our elections.
An actual audit - including not only comparing "somethings" from unknown software inside of black box machines to other such machines, but also to the voters' will - after every election - needs to be built into every county's election system after every election, so real voter confidence may truly ensue, or not.
What could be more important to democracy than knowing that the people in office as "the deciders" - even the deciders of election laws and systems - are the people that "we, the people" have chosen?
The "rub now?
On October 2, at the that meeting, Mr. Bennett said they certainly would do this "independent" audit. But the board decided that this "independent" audit will be owned and oversighted by the CCBOE! An inherent conflict of interest.
And Mr. Bennett announced that THEY will hire a firm, that will be under the direct direction of some of the same people causing all the confusions noted in earlier posts here, and the same people so scared and vested with keeping their jobs - and that the so-called "independent" firm will be hired through the 2008 presidential election! (see video link at bottom of this post.)
If one just takes a look at what happened to ESI, for saying honest things that put the board and its methods in less than perfect light in this video , you can see readily, that "the perfect light" to supposedly "maintain voter 'confidence'" is Mr. Bennett's at least, very highest priority - not the truth.
The small group of election reform advocates who have looked over the CCBOE audit RFP have made some "suggestions", like not just comparing machines to machines, and declaring "all is very well in Cuyahoga," but really trying to make our entire election system - one of the largest voting districts in the nation - a REAL democratic election. There are many specifics added to theirs, about absentee ballots, provisionals, etc. - as well as an imploring to let the Commissioners again own it and lead it.
I was at the Commissioners meeting on November 16, and they seem to have no interest (things are thick in the "dealings" of Cuyahoga.)
Their reason? They've already spent more than $14 on this election...(!!! and I add that a true looking at all expenditures would show the vast majority of that money has flowed directly from worthy taxpayer interests into Diebold's pockets. See "Mr. Vu's Next Gig?" below)
Commissioner Dimora even suggested that citizens get together and "pool our money" for such an audit! Hard to believe, but it's on tape.
I've suggested to the "RFP for independent audit advocate group" that since the CCBOE claims they have the funds for their form of "independent" audit, and since the money (to use in our best interst, not in Diebold's/or the CCBOE's) is being presented as the issue for actual independence - then we need to let the Commissioners know that since THEY appropriated those/our funds to the CCBOE, THEY need to ask for them back, and take independent ownership/oversight of this important election function.
To see the 10/2/06 CCBOE decision/version of "independence" for yourself, and some reform advocate speakers for security, immediate and post-audits - about 35 minutes in all- (I'm at the end of this one) click here. It may all sound reasonable, but if you follow along through these posts, it will become clear that what you see is not always what you get in Cuyahoga. The buzzer you hear is the 5 minute kitchen timer they run on citizen speakers. What you don't hear is the loud ticking behind us as it goes along.
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