More (& "Shakier") Recounts- Another Downside to Low Voter Turnout

Cuyahoga was certainly among the vast majority of counties, with our (approximate 18%,) low voter turnout at the polls on 11/6/07. It was a fairly local race in most places, which usually garners far less interest than the 4-year presidentials. Also there is the changing face of more people moving to now available, no-excuse absentee voting (which is NOT a good reason to move to highly fraud-potentialed, all mail-in voting - to be subject of another post.)

But generally decreasing voter turnout rates might also be signaling many things nationwide - none of them good for the future of democracy:
disgust to hopelessness and/or complete disconnection from the overwhelming amounts of very real political corruption, lies and sleaze in various incumbent administrations; disgust, hopelessness and/or complete disconnection from the corrupt insider dynamic, that elections tools and people have become nationwide; and disgust and/or complete disconnection from campaign lies, sleaze and "dirty tricks" that bombards us in years-long battles before voting days..and more.

Amazingly Cuyahoga has almost miraculously turned around the majority of its internal "people problems", as indicated in many posts found on this site - though it's still stuck with the operational and security nightmares of our vastly expensive, "proprietary" Diebold/Premier election system.

News clippings around Ohio reflect not only similar low turnouts on November 6, but also other seemingly new, possibly problematic issues that results from those moves to absentee voting, and low voter numbers, which can now let people take local elected offices at times with less than 200-400 votes- total! - hardly the kind mandates we need for elected officials to show themselves worthy of "leadership."

With small raw numbers, and given the OH law that if there is 1/2 of 1% margin or less between the winner and next highest vote count, there must be an automatic recount, and that candidates and issue committees may request a recount (which often happens in close races,) thus many more races are increasingly left hanging in the balance after election night announcements - dependent on a just few verified additional provisional ballots, and Monday and Election Day absentee ballots added to the official count, and then many more on recounts.

(For an extreme example of the implications, if a race garners a total of only 5 votes, 3 to 2, that one vote margin would necessitate a recount.)

Then, recounts - a fine public right, which in this trend, can on the other hand, begin a whole other series of many, up very close and personal, one-on-one competitive, massively time-consuming processes, and other problems - those which used to be the exception, now becoming a norm.
This is not what the people's elections were ever meant to be (but often is the way that candidates see them - to win at all costs.)

Additional to the massive amounts of time it may take to find the few votes needed to win, in Diebold DRE using counties, there is the problem of Diebold DRE's themselves, and their jamming, halting, flimsy long paper trails, which are hardly recount friendly, and are almost downright recount obstructive.

In fact the New Jersey Times Ledger reported on Sept. 5, '07, in an article titled, "State must come up with plan to replace 10,000 voting machines" it was was said:

A state law requires electronic voting machines to be refitted by January with printers, which would ensure accuracy. But printers from three vendors were found deficient this summer in tests by the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and the state Attorney General's Office told the judge today that retesting will take at least six more weeks.

Yet despite all the vendors' failing printers, the printed ballots on the Voter Verified Paper Trails are the DRE-users voters' official ballots for a recount in Ohio ( thus creating another important reason, among many, for paper ballots, humanly marked and read.)

In two separate Cuyahoga reports (ESI from May, '06, and the "collaborative audit" from November '06) it was shown that over 9% of all our Diebold "paper trails" are "unwhole" - smeared, scrunched, overprinted, torn, taped, unable to be validly used for voters, etc. from Diebold's malfunctioning printers.
Even today, incident reports from every Cuyahoga election show that DRE printer malfunctions including jams, occur with frequent and constant regularity.
The printers don't even give a warning that the jams are happening, so it could be overprinting and scrunching away, until some voter notices, by which time it becomes a major project for a diligent BOE to to try to find out what all was supposed to be on those paper trails, in this situation that's still non-clarified by the SoS .

At the Secretary of State's Columbus Summer Conference in June, Diebold malfunctioning printers were voiced as a signifcant problem among Diebold DRE users across the state.

Diebold's answer to aggravated and increasingly cash-strapped ( by Diebold) election officials who asked if Diebold was going to trade in the still new, but malfunctioning printers, for their newly touted "new improved - easier for poll workers models" (which I personally have never seen.) (According to Diebold almost all their machine problems are because of poll workers - the most important to elections, but also the most vulnerable since they have little voice in defending themselves with truth... Or Diebold blames anyone else up the chain, but themselves....)

With the mention of a "trade-in" (as in FREE exchange, trading good printers for their major malfunctioning ones,) the Diebold presentation leader, Ohio Sales Rep, Lois Donaldson, looked almost quizzically confused.

She eye-checked with other Diebold presentation leaders up front, to have them confirm they also "had never heard of any trade-in (!) program."
BUT like everything else there, she did assure counties that if they told her how many new printers they needed, she would give them a quote... to additionally sell these new "pigs-in-a-poke" for more thousands each, I'm sure.

Further the tens of feet long, flimsy, cash register-like tapes, with little thermal, hard to read print, not only tear easily, but are really difficult to inspect to even to find the particular races to be recounted - and just to unroll and handle.

(And I still even wonder what the bar codes under every ballot really say... Even the CCBOE does not know. Do those encode the voter's identity along with the voter's choices (yet...)? I'm sure that's coming, with the new national "Real ID card" (mandated in a Katrina Relief Bill (!)) for "Homeland Security," where we'll each have our own bar code to be used for all travel, major sales transactions, and even for voting....
To find out, why those bar codes are there, Diebold recommends that we buy bar code scanners, also run by their secret software, from them...for election counts....even though it's been found that the paper trail does not always even match the memory cards...)

I understand that recently, in a weekly phone conference which the CCBOE is now insisting on having with Diebold/Premier, this subject of their malfunctioning printers and how they were planning to solve it was discussed.
I also understand, that among Diebold's main recommendations were that every time a paper jam frequently happens, to just insert a new paper roll (bought from them)! Talk about a huge security and operational mess. And still what about the votes lost under the jam.

Another of their suggestions was that for every paper that is not whole, to just print another one at the CCBOE from the memory card! Never mind that this is against the law... to date. ( We don't know the SoS will do with this Diebold suggestion.)
This is hardly the poll worker-signed, voter veriFIED paper trail, which former AG, Jim Petro declared was the official recount ballot of voters..
Further, in less diligent more politicized counties, we would never know what a BOE would be printing those papers from.

In 2006 under the CCBOE old board, director and deputy, they gave themselves all kinds of permission to just "reprint" when they wanted to, - and never tell or show voters what they were doing. (Just like in May '06 when they had temp workers, some of whom it was later found were unable to read, press in voters choices onto DRE's from the 18,000 paper absentee ballots, which the Diebold scanners could also not read.)

I objected to this reprinting practice many times. On September 24, 2006, I presented to the CCBOE record...again...the following, among a list of questions, (with very long-awaited answers) :

21. I also noted on many of your reports now posted on the web page that Mr. Vu is pursuing the SOS’s OK to make a copy of a paper trail, where there have been paper jams or other printing problems on voting machines.
That seems to defy both AG past opinions and the law both about what constitutes the "official ballot" - which is the VOTER VERIFIED paper trail, which a copy is not - (and given the ESI report where some cards and paper trails and archives did NOT match); and the minimum necessities for the state Board of Voting Examiners to certify and to keep certified voting machines is that they can be relied upon to create each person's official ballot.

I quote, emphasis mine - "Pursuant to R.C. 3506.18(A), in such circumstances, “the voter verified paper audit trail shall serve as the official ballot to be recounted.” R.C. 3506.18(B) mandates that all voter verified paper audit trails “be preserved in the same manner and for the same time period as paper ballots are preserved under [R.C. 3505.31].”

Also - from AG opinion 2006-05
A vendor who desires to have equipment certified submits that equipment and pays a fee. R.C. 3506.05(C). The Board of Voting Machine Examiners examines the equipment and submits a report to the Secretary of State. R.C. 3506.05(D). “If the board finds that the equipment meets the criteria set forth in sections 3506.06, 3506.07 and 3506.104 of the Revised Code, can be used safely and can be depended upon to record and count accurately and continuously the votes of electors, and has the capacity to be warranted, maintained, and serviced, it shall approve the equipment and
recommend that the secretary of state certify the equipment.

With all the reports now coming out about the lack of safety of Diebold equipment, and the lack or dependability of their printers - rather than try to get around each voter having an official ballot, it seems more appropriate to decertify the machines that cannot produce them reliably.

I go on -

"42 U.S.C.A. § 15481(a)(2). Thus, to satisfy HAVA, a voting system must produce a permanent
paper record with a manual audit capacity, and the paper record must be available as an official
record for purposes of any recount. For a DRE voting system, VVPAT constitutes the
permanent paper record that is available for recount. See R.C. 3506.18(A) (“[f]or any recount of
an election in which ballots are cast using a direct recording electronic voting machine with a
verified paper audit trail, the VOTER VERIFIED paper audit trail shall serve as the official ballot to be
recounted”). For a system that uses paper ballots, including a PCOS, the ballots themselves
serve this purpose."

What is the CCBOE planning to do about following these laws?

Answer: The CCBOE will follow guidelines provided by ORC, SOS and HAVA.

22. In item 49 of your most recent issue log there appears a decision made by CCBOE managers not to print 2 long reports from each machine at election close, one of which you had planned to use if a memory card could not be read – and also NOT to print 2 long reports from each machine at election close, to allow one to to be able to post election results at the precinct per RC 3505.30.

First I refer you to HAVA and certification requirements above. If memory cards cannot be read often enough that such a discussion needed to ensue, the machines are not dependable/should not be certified. Second the manager’s decision was that when memory cards cannot be read, to reprint the report from the internal memory as “remakes”. Has anyone there read the ESI report enough to actually consider it and not just deny it? One of the glaring questions still left from May, now unable to be answered at all since you are “transferring data”to CD's – was non matching of the archive memory to their cards. How can the CCBOE validly defend such a bad decision to the public regarding accuracy of election results? If you are worried about running out of paper, change it before the report. If that is too difficult, that is a problem with the machines. If it is cost, I remind you that these thermal rolls cost $1 a piece, hardly a drop in the bucket to better assure accurate results, when compared with the millions that have been rolling out to Diebold. Just how do you defend that decision validly?

Answer: We are printing 2 long reports.

23. In May, the SOS and the CCBOE twisted the concept of ‘remakes” to allow you to have temps enter absentee ballots into DREs for counting. Now this. Where is the line which the CCBOE draws for itself regarding not doing whatever you want to do, despite security and reasonable readings of the law?

Answer: We are printing 2 long reports

It goes on.

Also in this increasing age of low voter turnout, and often tight margins of victory, what has occurred is bombardment of BOE's in the ten days between the unofficial count and the official, by candidates and the media to find out how many verified provisional voters there were, and how many last days' absentees had been cast - all trying to predict the results.

With all the confusion at the polls around provisional voting still, I can see an age coming for some boards (not the current CCBOE staff) to try to take advantage of results manipulation opportunities by again "feeding on" the poor and normally disenfranchised (who because of ID rules, frequent moves, etc. are those most likely to need to vote provisionally) - fooling with provisional verification- whose votes can count and not - or even trying to buy last-minute-made absentee votes.

Observers to this entire process are absolutely necessary.

Last Saturday, the PD ran an article about the prospective number of, and difficulty of, Cuyahoga recounts with Diebold DRE's. http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/isele/1195306447232120.xml&coll=2

(The problem is the bottom of the article is cut off online... (now frequently occuring - maybe a new plan to boost actual paper subscriptions?) I insert a hard to read version here.

It points out that Cuyahoga prospective recounts from election night results, currently, before the official results, number about 9, even given the new approx. 9,000 votes included in the official count - including such races as those of Lyndhurst Mayor; Beachwood City Council at Large; North Royalton City Council, Ward 6; Olmsted Falls Council at Large; Cuyahoga Heights Village Council; Garfield Heights City Council,; Solon School Board; Strongsville School Board, and others.

A few of the many other Ohio newspapers that headlined low voter turnouts, and lots of races that may be dependent on a few extra votes gleaned after the unofficial count, or on many prospective recounts include:

"Absentee and provisional ballots could change races"; ChillicotheGazette.com, Nov. 9,2007
"Provisional ballots tell tale for operating levy"; (Ashtabula) StarBeacon
"Conneaut (school) board votes may be recounted"; (Ashtabula) StarBeacon
"Close races may take weeks to decide; for many the election won't be over until after Thanksgiving" ; (Trumbull County) Tribune Chronicle
"Election watch: Some races, issue results could change"; (Dover-New Philadelphia, OH) Times Reporter
"Results too close in race for judge"; (Cincinnati) Enquirer
"Think not all votes count? 6 close races show they do"; Vindy.com; Nov. 8, 2007

There's no doubt, that lowered voter turn-out increases the chances for inside election fraud in this nation - through widespread inattention, cynicism, resignation, and acceptance of the falsehood that elections belong to the politicians.
And there's also no doubt that the moves to encourage absentee voting (where there's an application for ballot,) or all mail-in voting ( where horribly ballots are sent to every registered voter - the easiest opportunity for all party operatives to buy and sell blank ballots - along with a signed identity envelope - but accepted by most on the concept of "ease";) and to make it harder to vote for whole segments of the population without "acceptable" ID's, or who move around a lot, is offering entirely new ways for nationwide insiders to manipulate our election results.

Say It Isn't So... IT'S SO! Diebold Crashes AGAIN in Official Count

At the final, official 11/6/07 election count today, Sunday, 11/18, there was no reason to believe that the CCBOE Diebold/Premier GEMS tabulator, and their other equipment and election "help" would not flunk out again.

In today's preparing for the board's Election Certification 11/21, Wednesday morning meeting, there were the same amount of memory cards that needed to be uploaded into the Diebold/Premier tabulator, as were done for the unofficial, 11/6 election night count.
The layout was the same as approved by the Diebold tech ...and as was used for all previous elections. And because all of our 11/6 votes needed to stay sealed in the 10 day waiting period between the unofficial and today's official count - nothing could be touched - no, even cursory, analysis could be done about the election night GEMS crashes; nor about the 10 highly worrisome to election security, corrupted memory cards that came in blank, but which gave no poll workers any warning of memory card problems (an updated number from former post,); nor about all the other election day and night Diebold failures,

There was no reason to believe that this 10's of millions of dollars to Diebold system, (at least $20 million to Diebold just from 11/05-11/06) - which also literally holds our very elections, and our public election data in their "confidential," "trade secret" hostage - would not just crash again, bringing "their secrets" into greater ugly light.

How shocking, especially since most of those local millions still pour from county taxpayers' coffers, though Cleveland remains one of the poorest cities in the nation with greatest public financial, survival needs - for taxpayers - not for this irresponsible, incompetent, money-hungry company; and all while our (and all electronic) election systems quite deservedly are garnering increasingly less voter "confidence," thus participation, in a time we so urgently need a reawakening to democracy's basic principles. (On 11/6 there was only about 18% voter turnout in Cuyahoga, similarly very low in most Ohio counties, and across the nation.)

Yes it was "expectable," making it ever more unfathomable - that this company remains in business, still spreading their easy election manipulation potentials and operational failures across the country, instead of being sued, with their products recalled, so taxpayers could be recompensed our money, so we can develop something that brings accurate election results, provable to us, back into our hands, and securely. And the losses to the nation are far greater than even financial. To not be able to trust our "new, improved" election tools anymore - especially with '08 "presidential" elections AGAIN right around the corner - means cynicism, numbness, and often hopelessness in the face of power manipulation and abuse, replaces real hope for more.

And fail Diebold did - again!
And truly unbelievable, today, the CCBOE found MORE - "mysteries," and increasingly serious security and operational problems.

Also different, today however, (a Browns game day) we didn't even have the fleetingly, pretend furrowed brows of Diebold higher ups on hand, waiting to "help. " Guess they also knew what to expect....

Archie Williams, our tech help on hand was there. But even Larry Calvert, our regional tech rep who lives in nearby Canton,OH, though aware that today was CCBOE's official count day, was glaringly AWOL.

What happened today....
Basically at a final, official count, all the ballots previously counted get re-counted, plus the ballots that could not be counted on election night are included, the latter including the absentees that arrived at the BOE after 11/3 (this election, 5,000+,); provisional votes that needed to be verified after the election, but before the final count (this election, around 3,500); curbside votes; and votes from voters overseas.

Yesterday, Saturday, a full complement of workers were at the CCBOE, opening, sorting into precincts, and double counting (the ballot quantities, not the votes on) the almost 9,000 paper ballots not previously scanned, preparing them for inclusion into the Sunday count.

Yesterday late, the scanners were also again tested with a test deck that tests to make sure they can still properly read write-in votes, over- and under- votes, split precinct votes, numbers where there are multiple winners, etc.

One can't make too sure with Diebold.

After all, Cuyahoga leased enough to have 55 scanners working this election. But out of the scanners Diebold delivered, a full 19 failed their preliminary tests, (compared to what was said as 10-12 similarly failing last November) and some scanners were even sent with the wrong connector hook-ups. All those had to be put aside/packed back up, leaving us short again.

( The question of payment to Diebold for these scanners may come up again publicly with this new board, who've previously expressed huge displeasure and refusal to pay for such negligence.) Though I don't remember the exact number of scanners the CCBOE owns, thus, the number also leased, I know it was expressed that what Diebold delivered represented a 31% failure rate, (!) before the scanners were even used. ( I will seek a copy of the letter I understand was already sent by the CCBOE to Diebold, expressing that extreme displeasure.)

Just a bit about Provisionals - more later...
At shortly after 9am the official count of all paper ballots began. Our Candidate and Voter Services Department, though having finished verifying the bulk of the over 3,000 Provisional ballots over the past 10 days, was still working on some final "few" that were in question, trying (as personally observed) to let as many votes as possible be counted. All the rejected ballots had been checked at least 3 times to make sure that there was no way they could find the voter or count the vote, by law.

One example: for those they could not find in the registration database, (who would have had their vote not counted for not being registered,) they cross checked birth dates, street addresses, voter histories, etc. to make sure the names had not been "merged" with someone else's in the new statewide base - which at least for counties using the local Diebold registration system (DIMS,) now statewide uses another Diebold product (!) - DIXI.
(I have to do much more research on this statewide system... to know the prevalence of DIXI use.)

It seems that sweet-sounding DIXI, like (appropriately) dim-sounding DIMS (Diebold Information Management System,) also lets operators accidentally merge one voter's registration with another's, with no warnings, which would mistakenly wipe a person off the registration rolls/not have the vote counted, each time that happens.

At least now, with LOTS of local BOE time and diligence - only for those who are willing to pay attention and apply it - those merged names do not get trashed, but are held in "history" files, so voters can be properly reinstated. (In the relatively short time I watched the verification process, last Wednesday, I witnessed 2 such searchings and then appropriate registration reinstatements.)

So, at shortly after 9am today, about 50 workers started the official count - re-scanning the almost 24,000 previously scanned and first scanning the approximate 5000 + "new" absentee votes.

They then moved to the verified Provisionals, again around 3,000+ - a total of now around 32,000 paper ballots.

(I don't believe that any absentee votes came in from overseas (including military) in the 10 day waiting period for this rather local election, but still a fact to be checked, regarding whether proper outreach was made, or if overseas voters are just not caring about local elections any longer.)

They finished that paper ballot phase at about 2:30 pm.
The provisionals took the longest per ballot, since for every precinct, the workers must doublecheck that they have the correct number of ballots/ the tabulator is reading each precinct correctly, etc. But for provisionals there are usually only a few to zero ballots per precinct, while all the scanning double checking still must occur.

I will make a fuller report about provisional numbers later, and the still large problems they reflect/(they cause?) after the final numbers are released on Wednesday.
What I do know and can state definitively here is that once again, the two most frequent reasons for needing to reject provisional ballots, by law, are voters voting in the Wrong Precinct (though almost half the time they were in the right room (!), just the wrong table;) and voters who were not registered.

What has become known by many as the "Voter Suppression Bill" - last year's Ohio HB3 - nonsensically demands detailed ID's, and a statewide voter registration data base (see DIXI above) but still rejects the entire ballot of a person who gets to the right location, but the wrong table! Certainly there must be a way to code elections that truly are precinct-specific ( like certain zoning issues) and to let all other vote's count for all that apply for those people - even so long as a voter is in the right county, let alone, in the right room.


More Diebold Tabulator Crashes...and Worse...

After a lunch break, most workers returned for the infamous memory card re-upload. That process started out at about 3:30 pm, "rather swimmingly," actually making people question even more what happened on election night. Nothing had substantively changed - in the cards, the process, the layout. On election night, the tabulator crashed after only about 1/2 hour.

People were thinking/looking - what was different on 11/18; and what was different on 11/6 from all previous elections run on that system.
Some of the conjectures were that on election night there are usually a number of memory cards which had not been properly "ended"/closed-out at the polls, that are found by inserting them for uploading, then after rejection, sending to another tabulation station for "ending" so they can be uploaded. That was different on 11/6/07 from 11/18, but not different from previous election nights.
Another conjecture was that on 11/6 those 10 corrupted/blank memory cards were found by trying to upload them.

Another was that the sun was shining on 11/18....

But the questioning optimism began faltering a bit only about 15 minutes into the process, when many operators were noticing they were getting an "error/time out" message on their TSx screens - which seemed able to be made to go away, with no compromise to results, just by inserting the next memory card. Given Diebold's track records, this obviously could be quite worrisome.
That problem was determined, by it's approximate 5-minute intervals, to be probably caused because something called the "J-Report" (sp?) which runs in the background and updates by default every 5 minutes. The J-Report, is what puts results into reporting format, with charts, for projection onto the large screen in the CCBOE media area. It was felt that was probably a memory resource problem.

THEN another problem appeared - a memory card that had been OK on election night, was giving the error message on 11/18 that it was "bad media." The many various ways that could cause a card that had been locked up, to 11 days later, show up as corrupted could indicate a very serious system security problem, not just an operational one. Further, that card, one from Holy Redeemer Church in Cleveland, meant that again, the CCBOE had to on Monday, go out and retrieve all the approximate 12 machines from the warehouse or if not back yet, from location, re-set them up, match the corrupted card to the right machine, and again, burn another memory card to retrieve all those votes - just as they had to do for 10 cards/10 locations, until 11:30 am the day after the election to report those unofficial results.

(I checked. When they burned those new memory cards they did label them as recreated cards, and kept them with the original corrupted ones.)

Shortly after - but presently certainly not indicating definite cause and effect - and almost an hour into the uploading, the message that previously indicated the tabulator was about to crash appeared on the server.

I didn't quite catch the error message, something I know I can find out, but it was something like 00008.... a memory error...something like the "memory that the system was trying to reference could not be found!"

GEMS then crashed at about 4:25. This time, unlike election night, however, it did not bring the Tsx machines down with it.

After the crash and reboot, MORE problems showed up.

Three operators then noticed that when they attempted to upload cards they had not uploaded ( they have a system to keep track of what's done,) they got a message saying those cards had already been uploaded.
- At times those precincts DID show up in the tabulator.
- BUT when they checked the paper trail running on each machine, those precincts were NOT represented there!!!

Big and various errors, with the paper trails not even matching up....!!!

They stopped the entire process at that point again, ran a whole report, and checked it against the unofficial results.

And as they were finishing all 5,793 cards, they found that some of the cards that were in process while the tabulator was crashing, were showing in the end, as "missing precincts." Again, there were no pre-warnings. They had to go back and re-upload those again.

At about 6 pm, when no one was uploading anything, because they were finishing, and some workers were signing out...ANOTHER GEMS crash...

At about 6pm, with just the approximate 40 "missing precincts" left to do; about 20 more provisionals that had been in question and the CVS department had found they could verify, left to scan; and with the machines that needed to be brought back from Holy Redeemer to burn a replacement memory card left to do - the Diebold GEMS server crashed again.

The "perfect" end to the Diebold day.

Is this what you want tabulating our votes???

In the end, I saw that the CCBOE did everything they could possibly do - for hours - to make sure that the vote counts were accurate while being limited by these Diebold major failures. But is this what you want tabulating OUR votes???

I understand that Diebold DOES now want to come in after all recounts are done, to do their own analysis.
I'm sure they do...! .... to make up more of the same years long stories about what the CCBOE did "wrong" with their "fabulous" equipment.

And I think that the CCBOE needs to charge Diebold - Diebold-like exorbitant, rental fees on our machines - for doing their R&D, which should have been done years ago, before they paid their "certifying" labs for "testing", and before they sold their election-manipulatable stuff to anyone, including us.

The CCBOE needs to do their own independent evaluation, possibly now scheduled with the Secretary of State's testing. (Chris Nance, Assistant Secretary of State was there yesterday, witnessing the whole debacle, as you'll see in the video below, as soon as I can get the Google video uploader working again.) Maybe to get some

Conclusion

Diebold is no "Premier" company - far from it! We need to get our money back, trash these Diebold products, and move on...and quickly!

Hand counted paper ballots, that are humanly marked and readable and verifiable - for OUR elections, including for President - is the very best answer.

I would accept at this point, precinct based scanners - preferably from a company with pristine accountability, and preferably with open-source software (that which is not secret and can be checked by many computer experts, that all it's essentially doing is counting, not changing the voter's will.) - absolutely NOT from Diebold.

That way, everyone marks a paper ballot even at the polls, the ballots can be scanned at the polls to check for under and over-votes, and to create a preliminary count which would later be audited by hand; the ballots drop into separate, locked box; the precinct scanner results can be posted for viewing at every precinct on election night, so we can follow our results from the polls, to check for reasonableness against final totals; and with a truly very high speed scanner (thousands of ballots per hour) that also photos every ballot, the CCBOE can do it's pre-audited central election night count.

Any other conclusion - including that taxpayers would again have to pay for some other even good or another debacle decision that that may come from the Secretary of State's so far too closely held testing from the public - only including election directors, vendors (like Diebold) and testers some of whom are of unclear origin, but not regular citizens - would be completely insufficient for OUR elections.

Below is Official Count video, taken when I was NOT in the tabulator room as an official observer, but from outside the glass tabulator room windows - from the media area.

Opinions:Long-crafted, high-level "election" strategies?

When a friend read the below post about Diebold and SEC regulators he wrote, suggesting that this has all been planned: That Diebold is being ALLOWED to fail/to fold...The jobs they were set out to accomplish are done...
They've allowed key citizens' elections to be "properly" manipulated; have numbed the people into thinking these electronic voting systems are "normal" and possibly even "better;" they've disgusted large numbers of other citizens completely away from voting - and they've been paid very handsomely for it, without a penny coming from "the deciders"pockets - only ours.
Or at least it seems Premier is being allowed - the "black-sheep offspring - the "election division," that no one wanted to buy, so they gave it a similar family name, before allowing it to disappear - along with taxpayer billions. (Even the federal HAVA money, I remind all, was NOT "free" to states and counties (us) as it's been presented to us. It was OURS, that's now stuffing the pockets of these supposed makers of "election" systems - that have been unsatisfactorily operable, and undetectably able to change our election results "in a single bound" from inside the hallowed back halls of politics.

Interestingly it looks like Diebold's already planned for such contingency. If you go to Diebold's web site, right there as a choice under "Products and Services", they advertise "Diebold Premier" then comes the word "Services" - all a trademarked name. (And what's that lady pictured at the top secretly laughing about anyhow? That we've "been had"?)
When you get there, you see that's their "maintenance and installation" division, so they can keep that, and still pull in exorbitant amounts for "fixing" their junk, from people who rightfully, just can't afford to or can't stand the thought of trashing a brand new, millions of dollar purchase, despite the fact that they were fleeced.

To get to the actual Diebold Election Division, not even visible or available from the Diebold site anymore - that which is now, probably not accidentally, also called Premier, one must of course, find and go to a separate site - all the easier to quietly disappear it later, just as it was reported months ago, that they stopped putting their name on any new "election equipment" they made.

Such allowed folding certainly would allow them to avoid all kinds of liability and law suits and just quietly slip away... to the beaches and vacation homes all provided by our cash, while trying to save their previously good Wall Street reputation (who knows how well deserved) of the rest of their banking and ATM business.

SEC regulators frown on Diebold reporting methods& delays:Areas of potential fraud

Diebold delays 3rd-quarter report, and apparently the 2nd quarter too, while they "try to decide" how to report revenues - especially of stuff "sold" - but not yet delivered....
My Sirs, your handbasket awaits...

http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/business-0/119468750098290.xml&coll=2

From the PD:
BUSINESS DIARY
Saturday, November 10, 2007

MANUFACTURING

Diebold delays 3rd-quarter report

Diebold Inc. said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it will miss the deadline for filing its financial statements for the third quarter that ended Sept. 30. The company also has not filed a report for the second quarter that ended June 30. Discussions with the SEC over the company's use of the "bill and hold" method of reporting revenue delayed the filings. The Summit County maker of automated teller machines agreed last month to stop using bill and hold, which recognizes revenue after a product is sold but before it is shipped. Regulators frown on the method, which they say is an area for potential fraud. Diebold said it would file the reports after it determines the most appropriate method for recognizing revenue.

Diebold Unfit for Our Elections- Making A Really Difficult End to A Really Well-Run Election Day

What happened at the CCBOE on election night should NOT, from my visage in any way, be considered a CCBOE problem, but clearly more Diebold ones and very serious ones, but for which, I'm sure they will want to again take no responsibility and attempt to minimize.

What did happen was that as the crew of about 20 memory card uploaders, each standing at a Tsx machine networked into the server/tabulator, started uploading one at a time, and a precinct at a time, beginning the uploading of 5,793 memory cards from the 1436 precincts, soon the server crashed, bringing down all the Tsx devices too.

L- A look into the tabulation room, through the glass, to lines of Tsx devices with workers uploading memory cards. Board member, Inajo Chappell on right.
R- after the server crash, the second time, the TSx's went down again too. Blank screens. Workers waiting.

After they backed up the system and the votes, made sure nothing had been lost, they started bringing all the Tsx touchscreen devices back up for more uploading. Soon the system crashed again.

It crashed a total of 3 times. Robert Chen, national manager of the Diebold, DIMS unit (Diebold Information Management, their registration system subsidiary) was there from Sacramento; as well as the Diebold tech working with the CCBOE, Archie ______?

(Pictured above: Robert Chen, middle, the Diebold Edward Howard PR firm rep, Wayne Hill, former communications manager for former OH Sos, Celebreze, Jr. to the right.)

Together with CCBOE ballot department and I.T. they tried to figure out the problem.

As Robert Chen explained to me, the problem was one of information "collisions"/ "switching." When I questioned if it was one of "not having enough lanes on a highway," he explained that "no, it was more like not having good enough traffic cops to direct the traffic."

Chen did not seem upset or rattled. In fact during the last two hours, he, Hill and regional sales rep, Barry Herron (sp?) stayed mostly in an office behind the glassed tabulation room, possibly to get out of the way, possibly to rest, possibly to get out of the way of media cameras by then peering into the room, eager to get the news and results stories.

The CCBOE will continue with investigation of what really happened to their multi-million dollar system.

I also overheard Chen questioning if the CCBOE had stress-tested the system, which they said, of course, they had - in every election and often in between.

A good friend and computer expert was amazed to hear this. He said the question to ask Diebold is if THEY had stress tested their system, under a Cuyahoga County load, as they should have before they sold it as fit for Cuyahoga.
He was further amazed that such a basic problem as switching - having a really quality switch on our system - was not taken care of by Diebold long ago. That too, though adding expense to the seller, is basic to such a system, as laid out by Diebold/Premier. Their techs have been there consistently and regularly, helped plan the layout, and the prep.

The solution they jointly came up with after the crashes, was that they lessened the number of Tsx's used, but more, they had workers stop uploading every half hour, and after the last one finished the upload he/she had started, they backed up the votes onto another server (the one borrowed earlier this year from the Secretary of State, because our original server had crashed, and Diebold had them send it around the country, during which it physically crashed (was dropped,) and Diebold had not fixed it) they waited a few minutes, and began again. After a couple of these rounds of stopping and backing up, they finished at about 1:30 am.

But...then some larger problems came to light....
It was then that they found the few precincts with missing memory cards - which were found within 15 minutes, because the supply "transfer cases" had been put away in an orderly fashion after being brought in. Those poll workers had stored their memory cards for return in the wrong bag. CCBOE workers knew exactly where to go find the missing cards.

And....
throughout the then-halting upload process, it was found that 8 memory cards had come in blank - were somehow corrupted.
The reasons for that, according my computer guru friend, could be many, and could be very worrisome to election security. What would corrupt those memory cards? and why? and why was there no warning to poll workers?

This is very similar to the same problems reported by Election Science Institute in August of last year, when as hired by the Commissioners, they audited the debacle May election, and found corrupted cards, that gave no warning - a fact which was brushed aside, then later, as if waving a magic wand, was tried to be declared "untrue" by Mr. Bennett, Vu, Diebold, and the previous board.

Not "insurmountable" "glitches"?
As the memory cards were found blank, and to get a vote count, Platten began sending out crews to polling locations of each of those cards, to pick up all the Tsx devices from those locations. The CCBOE was going to have to set up all the devices, per location,(up to 15 machines each locale) to find the correct machine for the corrupted card, to first of all get the votes from that machine's archived memory.
When I left at about 1:45am they were just emptying the take-in area to begin that machine set-up/the matching process to get the rest of the votes.

Also when I left they had only reached 4 of those locations to regain access that night to pick up those machines.

At 1:45 am, and with worker exhaustion setting in, it was being found impossible to get the machines from the other 4 locations, schools and churches, until a more reasonable time that morning. They were forced to be there all night, and not finish until 11:30 am Wednesday - for a wonderfully run election, that by all rights should have completed at 11:30 pm. Tuesday night, all because of Diebold failures.

In Thursday's PD, a Diebold/Premier spokesman, Chris Riggall, (is it any wonder they could not sell their company, and had to spin it off under another name?) suggested votes were being downloaded "too fast."
Aside from the fact that votes were being uploaded, not downloaded, it's hard to even reply to such self set-up, computer company ridiculousness. He also said "It's not OK, and it's not insurmountable."
No skin off his nose. And then why didn't Diebold "surmount" long before?

He also said, "It's not how you want your vote tabulations to go." No, Mr. Riggall, these are your tabulations, and you guys screwed up ...still and again.

The PD also reported that SoS Brunner said election workers did not cause the glitches. (I really hate that word. These are not glitches. They are major, ongoing, recurring serious problems to our election results, with manufacturers taking NO responsibility, while no one with the authority to do so, like the Secretary of State, holds them accountable to the boards and to taxpayers who've paid them multi-millions for such debacles.)

The only good that may come out of this very public Diebold operational failure, is that it may finally prove to be the last straw against Diebold. After years of notices of their money-hungry actions, coupled mostly with little reliability, and the numbers of security holes also built into their election systems, it's time to rid ourselves of this system and this vendor.

With Brunner's statewide testing due to be done mid next month, it's certainly got to be time.

This country cannot afford another Florida 2000, and Ohio 2004, in 2008 - with people like Diebold driving the handbasket.

Tuesday's Election: Cuyahoga BOE-"10"; Diebold/Premiere -"Zero"

The only decent thing that's come from Florida, 2000 and Ohio, 2004 is that huge numbers of Americans are finally aware that the people we're told are the winners of our elections, has far more bearing on each of our realistic hopes for a future, and even whether or not we ourselves have a warm home in winter, food on our tables, healthcare when we're sick, and the ability to get to some sort of job - than any football games, clothes ads, or the latest big screen tv.
Of that growing number now concerned about elections, more are finally shocked out of the false primitive "spell" that the people's only election concerns "should be" with 1. contributing nicely to and volunteering for "our" candidates/"party" - too usually the ones we see as serving our own self-interested desires the best; 2. maybe, voting - just to be "good citizens" (though between elections we're rarely thought of, let alone listened to, other than whether or not we've paid our taxes) ; and 3. that we "should" listen to what we're told are our election results, but only to check whether or not "our" candidate or issue "won" - before going back to our sports, tv, (now, just a little, after paying for gas) shopping, and if one is lucky, our daily job of business as usual.

More are finally aware that our elections have been usurped from right under our noses; and that we have no idea - and every reason to NOT believe - that the results we're told truly represent our collective will; that our elections have somehow been variously stolen, at times with a combination of inside "dirty tricks" to doctored numbers created by the richest and/or most corrupt - sycophants, incumbents, and their appointees - completed with "doctored" stories from an often, also revenue-scared and sold-out national media.

The horrible news is of course, the lives lost; a living planet on last gasps; the majority of Americans steeped in unidentifiable fears, with thoughts of success having turned to those of survival, violence rampant among even our children, and discussions of whether or not human torture is torture being a norm. The horrible news too is that so many have just given up on, and dropped off of what is so suspected as now only the corruption that has become U.S. elections.

However... No longer in Cuyahoga!
Though Cuyahoga County, Ohio, the 15th-17th largest voting districts in the U.S., previously under Misters Bennett and Vu, Ms. Dillingham, et al, previous to this new director and board, certainly qualified as the U.S. poster child for questionable to bizarre election incompetence, and arrogant and blatant insider-"ownership"-political manipulations, that is no longer!

Under Platten and the new board, still to date, the CCBOE remains on track to becoming a model of what boards of elections can and must be: working hard to even publicly identify and quickly and thoroughly solve all sources of problems - for the voters and for election integrity; stabilizing policies and procedures - for the voters and for election integrity; training and promoting good use of employee talents and teamwork - for the voters and for election integrity; employing honesty, immense respect for the public and implementing transparency wherever possible - for the voters and for election integrity, etc.

What happened Tuesday
As an election Observer, I was completely notified of upcoming dates and times of BOE activity, and welcomed in to really watch. (Compare with last year: http://citizensboe.blogspot.com/2006/11/observers-as-suspected-criminals-at.html)
and
http://citizensboe.blogspot.com/2006/11/it-gets-worse.html

noted below, that we started on Sunday with absentee ballot opening and rectifying, but not counting.

Though actual absentee scanning and tabulating was to begin at 7:30 am, I chose to begin closer to home, first voting and checking out 3 additional polling places. All were comfortably up and running, welcoming, though slow in voter turn-out.

I noted a few poll worker/election day technician training issues yet to be addressed, but all 4 polls I visited had not even a hint of the mayhem or confusion experienced early in the day in both May '06 and November '06.

Also Platten and her staff address noted and solved problems immediately when possible, as they came up, and when not possible and not immediately critical, they listen and assuredly note and solve them later. Now even when there are problems there is someplace to actually call and get the call answered, and to actually get help.

All polls were open by 6:30 am.

Early in the day, Platten reported that the biggest problem to still be worked on is still getting all 6,000+ poll workers not only properly recruited, trained, and scheduled, but to have them show up for duty for this long, mission-critical, one-day stint - a huge logistical challenge for any organization.
Through concerted effort and outreach to high schools (17+ year old voters,) colleges, corporations and other organizations, the CCBOE went into election day, unusually, with sufficient and extra recruited and trained workers. For this election they wrote, called at least twice, sent reminder cards, had poll workers send back confirmations and called those who did not send them back, and still the Monday night meeting before election morning and the morning itself brought last minute surprises and needs to scramble, re-assign and fill in.

The biggest poll worker no-show problem was among the 1,000+ Election Day Technicians/people hired specifically to set-up, take down and troubleshoot ("babysit") Diebold's machines (and if not busy, help voters find their right lines.) My understanding is that approximately 20% of EDT's did not show up.

The CCBOE will be doing careful inquiry and post-analysis on what kept so many away to solve the problem. My guess is that it has to do with one or a combination of the following problems - most having to do with "Diebold-zero points"
1. The Diebold/Premiere machines are so "fragile" and necessitate so much oversight and troubleshooting to get them set up and minimally secure, and problem free throughout the day - that there is far too much detailed, critical information for people to intake in a four or five hours, too many detailed things to do in too short a period of time especially in large polling places, and then to feel responsible for throughout election day. So rather than risk not remembering everything properly, or having to use their manual too much, or risking what had been construed by the past board as the workers' public failure, people just don't show up.

In my opinion, this overwhelm is due mainly to the machines' user-unfriendly, cheapest construction, incompetent design and numerous built-in security holes that people need to try to make up for, (despite the machine's $2700/per price tag,) which makes the machines unfit for normal use, with normal people in a decent sized election. The printers are still jamming frequently, the screens still freeze, they need all kinds of logged written seals, incident reports, etc.
As example, at the Shaker Rec Center, my last of eight poll visits, a full 6 of their approximate 15 machines had to be taken off line/shut down by the end of the day. We don't know how many votes got overprinted with a machine jam before a voter noticed ( there is no alarm or error message) or how many voters (or EDT's) got confused when their machine froze.

2. And/or, far less likely, especially with the same day evaluation of trainees and various trainers, there was an EDT training problem to be solved.

On Monday night, during the Monday night pre-meeting of election day workers, the CCBOE fielded 2100 calls, mostly about missing workers - a problem they had to start solving immediately. On Tuesday morning , between 5:30-9:30am they took 1600 calls to solve mostly set-up and missing worker problems.

There were other minor poll worker training problems which I will note in my Observer report, to be addressed in training, including more visible posting of helpful signs provided for inside the polling place (like not needing to vote on Issue #1 - "the stripper bill" which didn't, in the end, have enough signatures to be validly on the ballot;) the campaigning 100-foot, mark-off flags being far too far from, or too close to the polling place; one's misunderstanding that voters don't declare a party affiliation in a non-partisan race; a few hard to find polling locations once inside a school, library etc. etc.

On the very positive side, even where poll workers may have been having machine problems they knew to provide paper ballots ( though most precincts had at least one machine operating at poll opening;) at my arrival as an election observer, not a voter, three polling places knew to have me sign-in in the back of the poll book as having been in their location; all poll workers seemed relatively happy; no one I experienced was having trouble with understanding voter ID's - they were in the main, calm .

Also, I visited one of the 5 pilot locations, where the CCBOE tried centralized voter sign-in, then "concierging" voters to the the proper precinct table. This experiment is one solution to a last-year recurring problem of voters getting to the right location, but having their votes not count because they voted at the wrong table/precinct; and to have a centralized location for taking off-line and really solving sometimes confusing provisional voting problems/actually finding the person's registration, directing them to the right location, etc.
Though only one voter came in while I was at this school set-up, the appearance of the poll looked more streamlined, organized, and welcoming. I've heard good things since about the experiment from a few voters and poll workers there.

Most of the 580+ polling locations and 1436 precincts were complete and workers ready to leave at the end of the day, as I remember by about 8:00 - 8:15 pm. ( The CCBOE has a call-in tracking system, calls those having trouble, reminds how to close down, and calls those who don't call in.)

The smoothness of the day was all due to systems put in place, written, and constantly refined in many small elections, most since March '07.

It was not due to low voter turn-out, since the same amount of prep needs to happen for all precincts, no matter how many people show up to vote.

It was truly well done, and is admitted to still be a work in progress - with suggestions truly welcomed. Platten's determined to get everything really solved and smooth - for everyone.

Back at the board Tuesday morning... absentee scanning.
When I arrived back at the board at about 10 am to observe the absentee scanning, they were just getting started with the actual count.

Kudos to Platten! She began that phase - even after all the "stress testing" and other types of testing of the scanners - with the testing of each scanner before they got started, to make sure, in public, that each scanner was working and reading correctly. She wanted it public, and with no time/"air" between the final "extra" tests ( even feeding the ballots in all four directions) and the tabulation, to make sure the count was one of integrity.

In this process each scanner is networked directly into the tabulator. The ballots for each precinct had been counted twice, and they were counted again to make sure they still had the same number of ballots per precinct that had been returned to the BOE by Sunday. (Monday and Tuesday's absentees will be included in the later certified count, as well as the approximate 3,600 Provisional votes, the approximate 360 votes cast on paper at the board on Monday and Tuesday (Tuesday's being Provisional, by law,) and any overseas that may come in the 10-day waiting period after election day.)

I have a few questions about this process, about such things as how the scanner knows what ballot style it's reading marks for, (what's on the greatly different ballots in different suburbs - which if off, could make a huge difference in a precinct's vote counts.) We began their very willing explanations, but I ran out of time. Though I have full confidence in that CCBOE process I witnessed, especially with their willingness and certitude in beginning their answers, I want to find out, since this could be a huge issue in less diligent boards or ones of less integrity.
I hope to interview the ballot department to get a fuller explanation soon. They remain very open and willing.

The entire absentee scanning/tabulation process went very smoothly. They double checked all numbers and finished by 1:30pm.

Highly unlike last year, members of the board were present to help and answer questions the entire time, as was the Director and Deputy Director.

Remakes
After a short lunch, the ballot department and the Director and Deputy Director began remakes - the ballots the scanners could not read when inserted in any direction, that had to be redone, matching voter intent so the scanners could read the new ones.

With all of the testing of the scanners, weeding out those that did not work perfectly, and lo and behold a written process (!) this year, there were only 33 remakes of the almost 24,000 ballots scanned, compared to multiple big grey bins of them - hundreds - last year.
http://citizensboe.blogspot.com/2006/11/it-gets-worse.html
That's when, with Mr. Vu, Ms. Dillingham and the board nowhere in sight, and with no overall or specific plans or policies thought-out for the board, the ballot department was left guessing what to do, what Mr. Vu may have wanted, and had to spend days with many workers on doing hundreds of remakes. Then when Mr. Vu arrived the next day, he had them doing bins of remakes of remakes, with ever-varying directions of how to interpret voter intent. It was not good - for anyone - and it was bizarre.

This time it took Jane and Pat McDonald, the Deputy Director, a relaxed but intent, less than one hour to remake the ballots with oversight, and get the originals and remakes filed correctly, etc.

Just like all other procedures that I've witnessed at the board, there were written directions pre-created by a team, and which were all signed off on by everyone involved in the process indicating understanding. (The ballot department and I were laughing, remembering the bizzarities of last year: Imagine! an actual procedure! that everyone understands! can do! and agrees that favors the voters!)

The problems with these 33 ballots, making them unable to be read the first time by the scanner included such things as possibly a paper fold, in just the "wrong position"; the voter using light check marks instead of filling in the ovals; a completely coffee stained but still humanly readable ballot; and someone who cut off the "timing marks" all around the margins, apparently thinking that these codes might identify him/herself.

Election night back at the board.... CCBOE still - 10; Diebold - really zero, or below
When I arrived back at the board from my second half of poll visits in the wind sleet and hail, the CCBOE again was ready. The media area for watching into the tabulation room was set up, along with the computer feed onto a large screen, with the absentee numbers already posted at poll close, badges were ready allowing people various points of access, the parking lot was just beginning to receive vans from the regional drop off sites (not a taxi cab was in sight, let alone with only a taxi driver hauling our votes as happened last year) etc. All workers were there, and there was a plan for everyone in the intake room - memory cards ( in a pre-marked business card holder, so workers could immediately see if one was missing) went one place for bar code checking-in and one designee passing to tabulation; poll books another, being filed correctly by precinct as they arrived; provisional ballots another place for counting and checking in; incident reports, another; paper trails, another; certificate ones, another; and supplies another place, all while the bags were re-filed properly in the basement etc. It was a well-oiled, diligent, very large team effort. I can't even begin to compare to the confusion last year.

On the third floor the IVR poll closing check-in was hopping. A bank of trouble shooter hotlines was manned for those having trouble shutting their polls down, and more.

It had been a very good election day in Cuyahoga. There were no 5-hour meetings taking managers away from their posts, so everyone could listen to or have to add to false claims of how "perfectly" things were going, or how bad voters or observers are. There was not even a set-up for the big election night press conference to do the same.

It was just a really good, smoothly working election day, providing fairness, access, help and order to the entire process.

And then entered the Diebold/Premier "more problems."

For Diebold/Premier-"Zero" grade - what happened election night - please see the next post, above.

And the 11/5 Recount Hearing Said?....

This morning's take about what would happen in court today (The Recount Trial Resumes?) regarding the '04 recount convictions of two former BOE officials is pretty much what happened, except for a few points, some of them majorly important.

• I arrived at about 9:10am for the 9am call for witnesses. I was told that the judge was not there yet. She appeared at about 10:10am.

• As noted in the earlier post below, nothing even appeared on the online court docket for this hearing. Very few, even those waiting for the other shoe to drop somewhere, knew about the hearing, also curious. I found out only because some I know had been subpoenaed as witnesses for 9am today.

• Also the fact that the hearing took place the day before a major election could also be considered very curious by some, well-planned by others.

• "No Contest" and "No Finding" - The two women did plead "no-contest" to the previously convicted 4th degree felonious and first degree misdemeanor mishandling of '04 recount ballots. Also today the defense asked that the judge make "no finding" on that pleading this morning.

Per the PD article posted at the bottom of this post, you will see that now, the previous, jury-found guilty verdict from early this year, which brought the18 month prison sentence, is as of today's "no contest" plea, with no finding, now being portrayed by the defense, as those ladies taking no responsibility since they did done nothing wrong.

That is saying that, as established at the earlier trial, their pre-selecting the only ballots that '04 recount witnesses could see, and even laying aside precincts they did not want witnesses to see, thus in a planned, not random, fashion, not allowing recount witnesses to see the vast majority of all the ballots that potentially could have had much wrong with them - was nothing wrong. The defense said, that was because it was "a long time practice," though the Prosecutor, reminded him, though it was attempted, that fact had never been proved in the earlier trial.

However, as has been reported by Ohio 2004 election researcher Richard Hayes Phillips, from over two years of research, findings and photographing across Ohio, he found such things as 2004 punch cards in primarily Democratic precincts, with an extra hole punched, always in the same place in the presidential race - discounting all those presidential votes as "overvotes." (The actual voter's punch would have in most cases made the discounting second punched choice for president.) The potential for Cuyahoga recount witnesses for not finding this kind of inside manipulation, should it have existed, or other types also found across Ohio, especially amidst the now infamous actions of Cuyahoga's now fired previous board, and their "executives" is far too huge to assume in Cuyahoga we got any adequate sample or valid recount.

Yet recount witnesses then legally asked for, and paid for a valid recount.

In Cuyahoga alone, above and beyond the over $100,000 salaries of previous Director Vu (reported as a person of questionable competence, ethics and integrity (http://bocc.cuyahogacounty.us/GSC/pdf/elections/CERP_Final_Report_20060720.pdf -Section 7) and now moved to San Diego's BOE, making $130,000/year) and then-Deputy Director Dillingham, both of whom had been demanded by some members of the board to leave at least twice before they were allowed to resign... with exit pay, and both of whom it is hard to imagine did not at least fully know about this recount mishandling; and above and beyond the millions taxpayers pay for actual elections fairly handled, the volunteers also paid another over $14,000 and spent days training and volunteering for just for a fair chance to see what all went wrong in the'04 election via at least a fair recount.

Similar evidence of '04 election and recount manipulations have been found all over Ohio. One county's recount was stopped early on because Mr. Blackwell, Bush's co-campaign manager in Ohio, declared ballots not to be public information; another had a Homeland Security Alert which the neither the FBI nor Homeland Security ever heard of; and on....

Some of these Ohio recount incidents, and more recently, the finding that the majority of Ohio's 88 boards threw away large portions of their '04 election data well before the legal retention period and despite a court order to keep them so '04 election research could continue- if nothing else, to be learned and handled in a protective way for '08, which it has not been - has only allowed such election injustices to continue.

• The 6 month Diversion Program and Their Records Are Expunged - And beyond the no-contest plea with no finding, the lawyers also had previously agreed that at today's hearing, these two women, Maiden and Dreamer would be put on a "Diversion Program," for six months, instead of proceeding with an appeals trial or going to jail.

The defense a few times in the earlier trial asked for the charges to be dismissed. That was denied each time by the previous judge, Judge Peter Corrigan. The defense had at one point after the sentencing to jail, called for the new trial based upon his claims of new evidence. The Prosecutor insisted there was no new evidence, and again, on and on...

Now this.

Apparently this last week's lawyers' agreement for a Diversion program is a far better deal for these election officials whom the jury found guilty - besides not going through a new trial and still having the prospect of jail hanging over their heads, or even just having to hope for a really easy probation officer.

At first glance, this Diversion just sounds like the latter an easy, short probation. But a little bit of research shows that the Diversion Program also allows for much more - their entire record to be expunged at the end of their 6-month, minimum time, program - as long as they're good. And who wouldn't be.

For a bit more info about Diversion see http://prosecutor.cuyahogacounty.us/Unit.aspx?uid=6&uname=General%20Felony

It says in part:
"Diversion and Early Intervention Programs (EIP)
These programs are for first time offenders. Diversion is for non-violent and non-drug related offenses and Early Intervention Programs (EIP) is for first time drug related offenses.

These programs are utilized to hold the offender responsible for their criminal conduct and place them in a supervised program. The goal is reestablish the offender in the community without a felony record after the successful completion of a number of requirements such as, but not limited to:
• Admitting to the crime
• Regularly reporting to a probation officer
• Completing community service
• Undergoing drug testing
• Paying all restitution to victims
• Paying all court costs


After successful completion of the program, which lasts from 6 months to 1 year, the offender’s record is expunged.
The Unit not only handles the largest volume but the widest range of cases. Cases include,
but are not limited to, the below listed offenses in the Ohio Revised Code: Offenses Against Person/Property


Attempted Murder
§2923.02/
§2903.02

Aggravated Robbery
§2911.01

Kidnapping
§2905.01

Felonious Assault
§2903.11

Domestic Violence
§2919.25

Aggravated Arson
§2909.02

Burglary
§2911.12

Breaking & Entering
§2911.13

Drug Possession
§2925.11

Illegal Processing of Drug Documents
§2925.23

Grand Theft Motor Vehicle
§2913.02

Receiving Stolen Property
§2913.02

Identity Theft
§2913.49

Forgery
§2913.31

Passing Bad Checks
§2913.11

Insurance Fraud
§2913.47

Criminal Simulation
§2913.32

Drug Trafficking
§2925.03

Illegal Assembly or Possession of Chemicals for the Manufacture of Drugs
§2925.04.1
Failure to Comply w/ Order or Signal of Police Officer
§2921.33.1

Bribery
§2921.02

Intimidation
§2921.03

Retaliation
§2921.05

Perjury
§2921.11

Tampering with Records
§2913.42

Obstructing Justice
§2921.32

Escape
§2921.34

Illegal Manufacture of Drugs or cultivation of marijuana
§2925.04
Carry Concealed Weapons
§2923.12

Having Weapons While under Disability
§2923.13

Improperly Discharging Firearm at or into habitation or school
§2923.161

Improperly Handling Firearms in a Motor Vehicle
§2923.16

Unlawful Possession of Dangerous Ordnance
§2923.17

Deception to Obtain Dangerous Drugs
§2925.22

Permitting Drug Abuse
§2925.13"

• What will be expected of them for the 6 months? We have no idea. The Defense reported today that Cuyahoga County program has agreed to oversight it....
Most with whom I've spoken, imagine the absolute least, with the women living at home in their normal daily lives, and reporting in. Will they even be asked to repay the recount monies contributors handed to the CCBOE for a fair recount per the restitution suggested above?

• And today's PD reported (see article below) that the defense also is now even starting to push for taxpayers to also pay their enormous legal fees for this end-run no justice to the voters of Cuyahoga.

In March, 07 the lawyer for the Rosie Grier who got acquitted at the earlier trial, Mr. Dominic Vinantonio came to the Cuyahoga Board and with a letter addressed to the Board/Bob Bennett, then-Chairperson, that referred to an earlier letter signed by Bob Bennett, (the latter letter to be uploaded soon) asking for Vinantonio's legal fees to be paid by the taxpayers because his client had been found innocent.

At that March board meeting, that board agreed to recommend that payment from the County taxpayer coffers. (That seemingly also gave Mr. Bennett the idea, when he sued to try to keep his job, when the SoS released him early this year, to have taxpayers pay his legal fees too.)

The letter said in part:


Also see (and to better see the above exerpt from the above linked letter): http://citizensboe.blogspot.com/2007/03/and-thats-not-first-time-weve-picked-up_30.html

My understanding, however, is that Assistant County Prosecutor, Dave Lambert wrote an opinion in response to that request, and denied such payment. I have not confirmed whether payment was tendered or not.

Now,the other defense lawyers are trying for the same thing. (?Expungement= innocence?)
And don't forget, we also paid for the Prosecutor too - by default.

Now, expungement could even allow Maiden and Dreamer back into election work.

In 6 months, we may or may not see where the "rubber" of politics may "hit the road " in our new board - so far excellent and extremely non-partisan. Will the two R-members suddenly demonstrate themselves to be more beholdin' to their GOP friends, Bennett and both defense attorneys, than to the people? We can only hope and insist not.

• So in short, now the "no contesting" women, with "no finding," are after "Diversion," due back in Court on 5/27, apparently to see how they "Diversioned"/allowed themselves to be somehow "monitored" for 6 months, and for expungement.

That is the "politics" of Cuyahoga and election justice.

One of the few very brightly shining spots since March however, for a touch of local light, breath and maybe even hope, has been the excellent performance of the new Director and Board to date.

• Here is the PD article from today.
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2007/11/elections_board_workers_to_tak.html

Elections board workers take plea deal
Posted by
Jim Nichols
November 05, 2007
11:26AM

Categories: Crime, Impact

A special prosecutor ended a two-year drive to convict two county elections workers for rigging a ballot recount during the hotly contested 2004 presidential election.
In a plea deal announced this morning, prosecutors let the two women take probation without admitting any wrongdoing.
Jacqueline Maiden, the board's third-ranking staff member, and middle manager Kathleen Dreamer each pleaded no contest to negligent misconduct and failure to perform official duties during that November general election. The charges are, respectively, a felony and a misdemeanor, punishable by up to 18 months in prison.
That's exactly the sentence Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Peter Corrigan imposed last March after a jury convicted Maiden, 60, and Dreamer, 41, of those same charges. But Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyer ordered that another judge hear the defendants' argument for a new trial because Corrrigan appeared biased toward the prosecution.
The upshot of that: Common Pleas Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold ordered a new trial, which was to begin on Monday.
Instead, the three-year-old case withered away.
Typically, after a no-contest plea, a judge finds a defendant guilty or not guilty. But under the plea deal's terms, Saffold made no finding. If the women don't break any laws during their six-month probationary period, the case against them will close, and they can have their records wiped clean.
Despite that, Baxter said he is satisfied and vindicated. The no-contest plea, he said, is an affirmation that the prosecution's facts and allegations are correct, Baxter said.
"As a prosecutor, you're looking for a fair resolution, not necessarily just a conviction," said Baxter, who is the Erie County prosecutor. "The bottom line that we still say today is that the recount was manipulated. We still believe that. But at the end of the day, these two ladies took some responsibility for their actions."
Dreamer, 41, and Maiden, 60, declined to comment afterward. But Dreamer's attorney, Roger Synenberg, emphasized that the defendants absolutely did not take any responsibility.
"If that had been a condition of this plea, we would've gone to trial," Synenberg said. "They're not accepting responsibility because they didn't do anything wrong.
"That might be Kevin's spin on this, but that's not the way it was."
Synenberg also said he will press the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections to pay his "substantial" legal fee.
"The board said it would pay if there was no finding of guilt," he said. "Well, there is no finding of guilt."
At issue was how the board and its staff conducted a sample recount of ballots after third-party candidates demanded a countywide vote recount. That sampling was meant as a test of the validity of tabulating machines; if a hand count of the sample - 3 percent of the county's votes - proved the machine count accurate, the board could assume the broader automatic tabulation was also accurate and forego a tedious, expensive and potentially embarrassing hand recount of all 600,000-plus votes.
The board staff rigged the sample count because the precincts actually were secretly selected in advance of the closely watched recount, said Baxter, who was brought in to try the case because Mason is the board's lawyer. The pre-count ensured the 3-percent sample included only precincts whose hand and machine counts matched.
Dreamer, Maiden and a third worker, Rosie Grier, were charged for the fudging. They countered that the board had always done things that way - with the knowledge of its attorney, one of Mason's assistants.
"There was no evidence to that effect - none," Baxter said.
He faulted the media for spreading that "convenient misrepresentation," and for falsely portraying the board managers as low-level employees. Such media portrayals, and a string of editorials in The Plain Dealer that blasted the prosecution as an "overreach, weakened the prosecution's moral foundation by persuasively misrepresenting the case's facts," Baxter said.


COMMENTS (5)

Posted by DKMcClurkin on 11/05/07 at 12:21PM

Wait just a minute! Mason's office approved this not-according-to-O.R.C. sampling rig, so these ladies are excused? Maybe it's time to bring Mr. Mason up on charges. I was a witness to the so-called recount and heard the announcement first-hand that the precincts had been selected "not-quite-randomly" in order to be "representative."
It's clear to me that these women were pushed out in front to take a rap for something the Chairman and Director contrived to hide reality. My concerns are: 1) What did they want to hide - the unreliability of the secretly coded electronic machines? 2) Why did they do this - to mask the fact of greater votes for the Democrat vs the Republican" 3) Did they know something the public did not - that Cuyahoga County was being much watched nationally and they didn't want the embarrassment of the truth?
Smoke? Yes. Fire? YES.


Posted by BelloStronzo on 11/05/07 at 1:14PM
The Board of Elections manages elections and counts/certifies the votes. Here we have Elected Judges. Elected Supreme Court Justices. Elected County Prosecutors. Everyone is pushing this quietly under the rug. Nothing happened. Everything's OK. No one's to blame. It was all a mistake.
Anyone else smell something rotten?


Posted by BastaPasta on 11/05/07 at 1:35PM
The corruption continues. Admitting they were wrong means Bush may not have been President. The questions were raised in 2004 why the election problems where the worst in majority black neighborhoods of Cleveland and Columbus and the liberal college town near Kenyon University. Here we are today saying something wasn't right but we're not going to push the issue. Disgusting.


Posted by steds5150 on 11/05/07 at 1:55PM
I am now officially disenfranchised. Why bother voting when it doesn't count?


Posted by mypinion on 11/05/07 at 3:38PM
If Judge and I use that term losely Stickland-Saffold had anything to do with this corruption was a definite that is one evil human being.

The PD article is Copyright Cleveland.com 2007

The CCBOE Recount Trial Resumes?

I understand that a few people who were previously witnesses in the last recount trial, have received subpoenas to appear in Judge Shirley Strickland-Saffold's courtroom at 9am today, apparently for the beginning of an appeals trial. In the last trial, two of the three defendants were convicted of both a misdemeanor and a felony, and were sentenced to 18 months in jail for their parts in mishandling the '04 presidential recount.

There is nothing of this date that I could find, on the Court docket online.

Some believe, though I have not been able to confirm, that what will happen today is that rather than going through another trial, where defense attorneys had said they had new evidence to present, the two former Cuyahoga BOE elections workers, Jaqui Maiden and Kathy Dreamer will plead "no contest," the convictions will stand, but they will agree to some sort of "program" that will keep them out of jail.
Should that be true, from what I understand, there would be no further court action on this matter.

Absentee ballot processing & Directive 07-21

I am serving as an Election Observer for this Nov. 6 election. In that stead, I was at the Cuyhahoga County BOE yesterday for the opening of absentee ballots - removing ballots (and possibly any other materials) from the ID envelopes/ flattening ballots for upcoming scanning, which will begin Tuesday morning, 11/6 at 7:30a.

What a difference a year and change of leadership makes! I was informed of the times, and was welcomed as an Observer - and I even got to see what was happening! And they had a process! - an amazingly efficient one - a process they've honed and documented over the past number of non-county-wide races this year. I do have observations for a few changes I'd like to see, which I will take to the board, before reporting them here.

To date, as of yesterday, Sunday, and not yet counting Monday and Tuesday arrivals (all except overseas will be due by 7:30p, November 6) there were approx. 23,000 absentees.
(By comparison, in May, 2006, under old guard and few procedures, when the absentees needed to be handcounted because scanners didn't read correctly, and it took them approximately a week to actually count that primary with no handcounting plan, there were about 18,000 ballots.)

Yesterday, there were approximately 80 workers there. They got directions and started at 9:00a, and finished opening at about 2pm (including a one-hour lunch hour.) The ballots, still in their ID envelopes had been verified for HB3 ID, and had been sorted by precinct by the absentee department. They worked one precinct at a time. All flattened ballots, once opened, stayed in precinct groupings apparently to ease otherwise potential computer confusions and memory capacities in the upcoming scanning and tabulation.

Especially in this odd year race, many cities/precincts each have completely different "ballot styles" - very different things on each precinct's ballot - ranging from court races in various suburbs to suburb or precinct-specific zoning issues. The scanner is going to have to recognize which kind of ballot is being scanned, to tabulate correctly, so they do one ballot style at a time.

They also counted all ballots again, to make sure they still had the correct number of ballots that were returned in each opened pile. They have been keeping a count of those requested and those returned. Return rates so far are at about 74%, with highest returns in cities with the most hotly contested races.

The CCBOE is thus, ready to begin scanning and tabulating absentees on Tuesday morning after the polls are open, per the law. The CCBOE estimates that with the number of workers and scanners they have ( a number I still have to check, though I think I remember it's around 20 scanners, each needing a D and an R) that process will take about 4-5 hours. Most of these ballots are only one page (some front and back.)

For comparison, last November's race, an even congressional year, the ballots were 3 and 4 pages, and there were less than 23,000 - less than 20K. It took about 1 1/2 days to scan those multi-pagers, at the Diebold "high speed" rate (not their very expensive - if I remember more than $30K each - highest speed scanners) of- if I remember correctly, about 200 sides of pages per hour.

As is usual, the absentee ballots received by Sunday, yesterday, will be included in the unofficial count. The Monday and Tuesday-received ballots, because they have not been yet verified, opened, sorted etc. and the overseas absentees will then be handled and included in the later official count.

Interestingly, last year because of all the problems (and embarrassments) around scanning previously experienced in May '06, and the length of the ballot in November '06, Cuyahoga, and I believe a few other counties asked Mr. Blackwell for permission to start scanning absentees a day early, so they would be ready for election night counts. As I remember, Blackwell said no, but later a court order by Judge Gaul permitted the early scanning - under certain conditions, like they were supposed to have observers there, they were supposed to have a "security plan" and most of all - they were not allowed to tabulate (count) the votes until the law said - after the polls were open.

They were only allowed to "process them" and have the scanners just read, but not count the absentees early. The concept here is that if any tabulations are known and/or get leaked before the polls close, it could in a number of ways, affect the way people yet to vote, would cast their ballots.

For November 6, SoS Brunner is allowing early processing too - like the opening, flattening, etc. AND she is allowing reading of the ballots before the polls open for all counties using any scanners - EXCEPT those using DIEBOLD SCANNERS/SYSTEMS. I will link Directive 07-21 soon.

Apparently Diebold scanners and/or the GEMS tabulator cannot assuredly just read-scan without counting. In last year's brief audit of the CCBOE November,'06 election, apparently information was found that although the CCBOE had been court ordered not to tabulate when they started scanning a day early, the audit showed they were getting tabulations which they did not let the public know about. This makes one also wonder why Diebold - if a responsible company - when hearing the court order last year, did not explain that their system could not comply, if it apparently cannot. What they did was, they leased the CCBOE more than 20 extra scanners, so while the board staff started to scan early, they could still finish by election close.

So this year the CCBOE and all BOE's using Diebold/Premiere scanners need to start scanning only after the polls open.

Also interesting about SoS Directive 07-21, is that I had to get it from the CCBOE. The SoS website continues to, more often than not, prevent access to her directives, advisories and memos. It errors out. I have advised that office at least four separate times over the past few months of this "glitch." Last time, when they were told they got the problem fixed pretty rapidly. Last time I checked , however, they were only up to Directive 07-18. So again, I know we're missing some.

The SoS office needs to get this frequently occurring problem fixed permanently and soon.