As of today, following yesterday’s off-off year Election Day 2013, the race for Virginia Attorney General is still uncalled by the media, and for good reason. Out of some 2.2 million votes cast in VA yesterday, the Democratic candidate for AG, Mark Herring and the Republican candidate, Mark Obenshain are now reportedly just a hair’s breadth apart.
Depending on whose numbers you look at, as of 2p ET this afternoon, Obenshain is reportedly ahead by either 965 votes, according to the State Board of Elections (SBE), or by 286 votes, according to AP (which was often well ahead of the SBE numbers during reporting of results last night), with all precincts now said to have been accounted for in unofficial results.
The last numbers I had seen before going to bed last night at around 4am ET, showed Herring up over the Republican by 616 votes, but there were still said to be about 4 precincts out at that time, according to AP. The SBE’s numbers had several more precincts unreported at that hour, as it looks like they had knocked off for the night several hours earlier.
Given the tightness of these reported numbers, and the fact that Republicans are certainly hoping to deny Democrats of a “clean sweep” win last night (the Ds took both the Governor’s and Lt. Governor’s race), a Commonwealth-wide “recount” is almost certain in the Attorney General’s race. Current AG, and last night’s failed Gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli will likely oversee that “recount,” as luck would have it.
But a “recount” in VA, may offer much less than one would think. So, here’s why I put the word “recount” in quotes. This is what the map of Virginia looks like, courtesy of Verified Voting’s 2012 database, as identified by types of voting systems used across the state…
As you can see, most of the counties and cities in the state vote on 100% unverifiable touch-screen systems. “Recounts” on those systems are largely little more than pressing the computer buttons again to regurgitate the same unverifiable numbers that were reported in the first place. There may be paper-based absentee and/or provisional ballots to be re-tallied (or tallied for the first time) in those jurisdictions, but, by and large, those numbers are unlikely to change too much, short of memory card or tabulator errors being discovered in the process or book-keeping errors on the few paper-based ballots.
So “recounts” in those jurisdictions that use touch-screen systems (officially known as Direct Recording Electronic or DREs) exclusively won’t tell us much. It won’t even tell us how the voters in those jurisdictions actually intended to vote. (More on that in a second.)
The quotes around the word “recount” are also accurate in regard to the paper ballot optical-scan system jurisdictions as well, since the ballots in most of them were not “counted” in the first place. Rather, they were run through computerized optical-scan systems which either tallied them correctly or not. There is no way to actually know either way until the paper ballots — presuming the chain of custody is kept secure — are actually counted publicly by human beings.
“Recounts” on op-scan systems are sometimes a matter of re-scanning the same paper ballots through the same easily-hacked, often-inaccurate optical-scan computers that scanned them in the first place. Other times they actually involve hand-counts. I’m not yet sure how Virginia’s “recount” process works in that regard.
[Update: Bad news. Virginia’s “recount” of paper ballots includes largely little more than re-scanning the same paper ballots again with the same op-scan systems that tallied them the first time — either correctly or incorrectly, who knows? — once again. See final section of this story for details on VA’s election code.]The map above, based on Verified Voting’s database, is up to date as of last year. Some jurisdictions in the county have been moving to paper ballots systems, and some voters reported using paper ballots this year for the first time. But, for now, we’ll take Verified Voting’s stats to be largely accurate.
The largest single jurisdiction in Virginia is Fairfax County and that county, at least,uses optically-scanned paper ballots for the most part — the easily-hacked ones made by Diebold — though some voters there may vote on unverifiable DREs. According to AP’s latest numbers, there were almost 300,000 votes cast in Fairfax County, with the Democrat Herring trouncing the Republican Obenshain in the county 61% to 39%.
Still, the majority of Virginians cast 100% unverifiable votes yesterday, and no amount of “recounting” will ever either change that fact or allow the citizens to know who actually won or lost this race. That, of course, is just one of the reasons I have railed against the use of these types of voting systems for almost a decade now.
But, for now, here’s what I’m interested in. Yesterday, we highlighted some early scattered reports of votes flipping on those 100% unverifiable touch-screens. One voter — Col. Morris Davis, the former Chief Prosecutor at Gitmo, in fact — reported that he had to try over and over for the screen to record his vote for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, as the computer kept repeatedly marking the option for the Republican Ken Cuccinelli instead.
“Took 4 tries to vote for McCauliffe[sic],” Davis tweeted. “I’d touch his name but it would mark Cuccinelli.”
Davis said he voted in Prince William County, one of four counties that — for some reason — still had one unreported precinct as of 4am ET last night.
A commenter at The BRAD BLOG, David Hutchinson, jumped in quickly after we published our report, to say that he too had similar problems voting in the VA Lt. Governor’s race. “I touched Northam [D] for lieutenant governor, but on my summary page the machine indicated I had chosen E.W. Jackson [R],” he wrote, continuing…
Quite frequently in elections, problems with electronic voting systems don’t come to light until days, weeks, or even months after elections. So we’ll be keeping our eyes on Virginia in the days ahead. For now though, I’d like to ask any of you who may have come across media reports of problems yesterday in Virginia, or, even better, those of you who may have experienced them yourself, to describe the problem in our comments section below. If you include your email address in the field when leaving the comment, I’ll be able to follow up with you privately, but your email address won’t be visible to others. Alternately, if you prefer, you can drop me an email here.
Finally, just days before yesterday’s election, Virginia carried out a purge of some 40,000 voters from the rolls, said to be voters who were also registered in other states. It was Cuccinelli who oversaw and approved that purge, and it’s unclear at this time how many legitimate VA voters were knocked off the rolls, kept from voting, or forced to vote by provisional ballots (which may or may not be counted after an election). That too could have an effect here. So if you are a voter who found yourself missing from the rolls yesterday when you went to vote in the Old Dominion, I’d love to hear from you as well…
I’m sorta thinkin’ the only way this ongoing bullshit will change is if some Tea Party people come to believe THEIR candidate has been slighted, do their due diligence on how undemocratic our voting machines are, and make the kind of big stink forever that is their calling card.
I’d love for them(or anyone) to be the tipping point for the change necessary to reclaim our voting system.
Here’s what the Democrat in the race says–
Looks like you can bet your vote that neither candidate will actually have a clue about the impossibility of the “recount” task.
Anyone know the whereabouts of Rove yesterday?
Brad: Actually, Virginia’s recount rules ensure that it is virtually impossible to verify who won via a recount.
The rules provide:
Brad has repeatedly explained why VVPATs are useless, so I won’t cover them again.
Fairfax County does use the Premier (formerly Diebold) AccuVote optical scan systems. That county happens to be where Democrat Jennifer Boysko is trailing by just 56 votes and has requested a recount. So no problem, exercise a tight chain of custody, publicly hand count the op scan paper ballots and we’ll know who really won–just like they did in Palm Beach County, Florida where three losing candidates turned out to be the winning candidates, right?
No, not in Virginia [emphasis added]:
And the absolute kicker is that the State of Virginia, in its infinite wisdom, added a legislative provision to insure that, at least, per statute, no court will ever question the wisdom of trusting the outcome of our supposedly public elections to whatever takes place within the electronic bowels of the machines.
I experienced the same problem at Precinct 005 in Madison County, Virginia, whereby the machine flipped my choice 3 times in a row. I then engaged the official and reproduced the problem twice more.
Eventually, the summary screen showed the selections as I intended them to be,but upon hitting the submit button, the screen went black and the machine powered itself down.
I was told by the official that my vote was counted, but of course there is no way of knowing whether they were counted as I intended them.
I was told that this was an isolated incident that has never happened before.
I do not know for certain, but based on conversations I had with other voters as they left the polling place, I believe that the machine was turned back on and put back into service without further examination.
Brad:
I’m not certain about your claim that most of the state uses touch-screen machines.
I’m an election official in XXXXXX County. Your map shows us as using a mix of touch-screen and paper ballots counted by an optical scanner.
IN FACT, in our county, there’s one touch-screen machine per precinct and they are rarely used. When a voter checks in, we hand them a paper ballot and point them to the privacy booths. In my five years as an election official, I have seen ONE vote cast on the touch-screen in my precinct and I’m certain the rest of our county is the same.
In my county and our four neighboring counties, it’s the same . . . paper ballots with the touch-screen available but rarely used.
QUERY to OLD REDNECK @6.
What percentage, if any, of your op scan paper ballots are counted by hand?
https://twitter.com/Redistrict
people in Virginia are paying attention to the compiling of vote totals
looking at the states web site and the huge dem win in Fairfax in the state races no way district 86 only went to boysko 9159 to rust 9063
look at the ag race http://electionresults.virginia.gov/resultsPREC.aspx?type=SWR&rid=169&cty=059&osn=6
in ag race dems are winning 60 plus % but in district race they only squeak by….close enough 2 precincts in Loudoun county make up for it? to swing the win to the repub…no way
btw 31,32 and 34 need checked also
Old Redneck @ 6:
I saw your post elsewhere about this. If you’re in Northumberland County, then, yes, you are one of the minority of counties in VA that use paper ballots. Take a look at VerifiedVoting’s interactive map to see the counties around you (and around most of the state) that use touch-screens for the majority of voters, not just for disabled voters.
That database is updated as of 2012 Presidential Election, though I know some counties are moving towards paper ballots since then and the database may not yet be updated to reflect them.
What percentage of our paper ballots are tabulated by hand?
We tabulate by hand ONLY the write-ins.
The optical scanner sits atop a big plastic box with two bins. When a ballot with a write-in vote is fed into the scanner, the optical scanner drops it into one bin. Ballots without a write-in go into the main bin.
We remove the two stacks of ballots and TABULATE the write-ins by hand . . . that is, one vote for Sam, one vote for Sally, . . .
WE COUNT the non-write-ins by hand, however, by this I mean we count only the NUMBER of ballots to ensure (number of ballots without write-in) + (number of ballots with write-ins) = (total number of ballots on the machine counter). We do not tabulate by hand, we rely on the machine tape to tell us how many votes for each candidate.
In case of a recount, the paper ballots would be tabulated by hand.
Old Redneck @18 wrote:
Are you saying that in your county, during a recount all op scan paper ballots are tabulated by hand?
If so, how do you square that procedure with this provision of Virginia’s recount rules