At In These Times, author and journalist Rick Perlstein covers reports from some Chicago voters claiming that they received paper ballots today that were pre-marked for Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) in his runoff election against the more progressive Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D):
“I just said to one of them, the one who gave me the ballot, ‘This has already been filled out. I want one that’s blank.’ And he acted surprised. He said, ‘I don’t know how that happened.’ And he even said there had been other ballots with similar problems.’ He gave me one that was blank, and I told him more than once that they should look at all the ballots, the ones that hadn’t been handed out yet, to see if this happened.”
Dreessen says he was too shocked to even take a picture. “And I thought, ‘I don’t know, this must be happening to other people.’ It just seemed to be so crude.”
Perlstein details a few other similar reported incidents of pre-marked ballots from around the city in the election which the local CBS affiliate is now calling for Emanuel. The Chicago Board of Elections website currently shows Emanuel leading Garcia 56% to 44% with over 79% of precincts reporting at this moment.
The website DNAInfo, however, dismisses the reports as “Facebook rumors”, bluntly describing them as “false”, based largely on a response from a Board of Elections official…
“If someone is suggesting that the judges somewhere are trying to slip one past our voters, I think you’re insulting the intelligence of our voters,” Board spokesman Jim Allen is quoted as telling DNAInfo. “If it were a conspiracy, it would probably be the least effective conspiracy in the history of conspiracies.”
The website also reports “voters at the precinct in question, at Kozminski Community Academy…also hadn’t heard of any problems.” They go on to quote a single voter who says “There were no problems at all, totally routine.”
While it seems a bit quick to describe the reports (Perlstein describes several) as “false” with comment from the Board of Elections and a single voter as evidence of that, Allen does make a good point. In fact, there were only two races, max, on each ballot, as I understand it. One for mayor and another for City Alderman. While it’s certainly possible some ballots could have been illegally pre-marked, it seems unlikely that voters voting on the only two races on the ballot wouldn’t notice.
To that end, Allen’s description of this as “the least effective conspiracy in the history of conspiracies” would seem to have a ring of truth to it.
Moreover, it seems reports of a massive scheme to steal the election in this way would be much wider spread by this point in the day, at least if the conspiracy was large enough to have an affect on the outcome of the race. Emanuel currently leads Garcia, according to the Board of Elections website, by some 50,000 votes.
The votes, of course, were either cast on Chicago’s touch-screen voting system, or on hand-marked paper ballots which are then optically-scanned by a computer (either correctly or incorrectly — nobody can know unless the ballots are counted by hand.) I’d be far more worried about whether the results reported by the tabulators are correct than the pre-marked ballot scheme, even if it happened as reported.
When it comes to the systems used in Chicago, made by Sequoia Voting Systems, it wouldn’t be the first time that company’s tabulators reported completely inaccurate results. Only a hand-count of the paper ballots, presuming the chain of custody has been secure since the close of polls, can let anybody know for certain whether the computer-reported results actually reflect the intent of Chicago voters. But, of course, nobody ever bothers to count ballots by hand, except in cases where, like the story linked above, election officials actually notice something isn’t adding up.
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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Use of touch screens has produced official results that are patently absurd. Those absurd official results have been upheld precisely because, absent access to trade-secret protected source codes, there is no way to verify that the machines inaccurately counted the votes — or for that matter, whether the machines simply reported a pre-determined result without any “counting” taking place.
In light of that reality, it seems highly unlikely that anyone who desired to throw an election would, instead, choose to engage in a transparent fraud via pre-marked paper ballots — an election fraud that would have to be widespread and which could be easily exposed.
Since Rahm Emanuel calls himself a Democrat, maybe the media will jump on the story, but I think protecting the integrity of voting machines at all costs would probably prevent that from happening.
We have years of evidence that the reporters are required not to put a bad light on the machines. Well around here, anyway.
Pre-marked ballots. Rahm Emanuel is a disgrace to the Democratic party.
Does every know that the optical ballet scanner has a black box that’s stuffed into the electronic voting machine which then “transmits” the votes downtown? But all over many precincts reported that they weren’t transmitting and it get sorted out later. Supposedly.
Or only the electronic votes got transmitted.
Tom @ 4 –
That “block box…stuffed into the electronic voting machine” is otherwise known as a modem. And not all e-voting systems use them (though most do have the capabilities built in.)
Don’t know if Chicago’s systems use (hackable) transmission by Internet or wireless or not, however.
Tom here: They used transmission by wireless. Is that not hackable? I mean, many of these machines were not transmitted anything. Or they would transmit only the electronic machine numbers.
I’m telling you, this is a fucked up election. Why did Rahm win but most of the Rahmbot aldermen won their runoffs? So, people came out to vote FOR Rahm but against his Aldermen? Makes no sense. And Berrios could’t elect his machine hack alderman? Suarez.
Excuse me, most of the Rahmbots Aldermen LOST their elections. The voters voted FOR independent aldermen but FOR Rahm? I don’t think so.
Tom said @ 6:
It is absolutely hackable. (Doesn’t mean that it was hacked, of course. And, if it was, it would suggest, though not guarantee, that the bad guy was not Board of Elections insiders doing it, but rather, an “outsider”, since the BoE wouldn’t need to game results through such a difficult means if they wanted to flip numbers. There are much easier ways for them to do it with a few keystrokes nearer to the central tabulator level.)
I hear ya. But short of a hand-count or evidence of hacking, this is the very problem I’ve been warning about for years on these systems. Even if the results are accurate, voters have little to no way of knowing.
Only Democracy’s Gold Standard, hand-marked paper ballots publicly hand-counted at the precinct with results posted at the precinct, can help assure citizens that the results reported actually reflect the intent of the voters.
So,what’s the next step? I’m sick of complaining about it. I’ll file FOIA’s, I don’t mind. Usually they screw up the stealing — can’t get their numbers straight.
What do I do to investigate this and get some evidence? I’m pretty sure these numbers won’t add up. Has anyone successfully investigated one of these elections and gotten anywhere?
Tom @ 9 asked:
BlackBoxVoting.org used to have a page listing how best to proceed with public records requests after an election and what things to ask for, but I can’t find the page I remember.
Instead, see this PDF from them: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.pdf
Page 35 details the stuff you can ask for that may be helpful (Page 35 of the PDF is actually page 69 of the toolkit booklet.)
I’ve also sent a note to Bev Harris there to alert her to your concerns. She may be able to stop by to offer some more advice here.
Yes. Problems can be found. But it can be difficult. a) The elections officials are usually not as helpful as they should be (and almost never fast enough to get you the info that is needed before it’s too late to legally challenge the election) and b) The information you get, if you get it, can be complicated if you’re not a computer database person and c) Much of this stuff can be proprietary and/or they incorrectly will tell you that its proprietary.
But, in addition to Bev, I’ll see if I can alert some others who have done the same thing in the past and see if they may be able to jump in with advice as well.
I am very curious to know about any EXIT POLL results in the Chicago election.
Are there any?
And, if so, how do they jibe with the “official” results?
I’d really like to know.
COMMENT #11 [Permalink]
… nikto said on 4/9/2015 @ 1:30 am PT…
There was an exit poll at my precinct on the northside but working as a pollwatcher on the south side in 20 precincts I didn’t see any. But even that would be useful to compare. Unfortunately, based on the questions (I took the poll) it was pretty clear that it was a Rahm sponsored poll.
The second I heard he won I thought…too bad everybody doesn’t understand how hackable electronic voting is. I’d bet my life he didn’t really win.
Cmon, chickago question this election.
The guy who reported the pre-marked ballot (1) was a volunteer for Emmanuel’s opponent; (2) was “too shocked to even take a picture”. (3) Have we any independent witness’s verification that this event even took place? (4) If it did, do we know whether the ballot left the table and was brought back with the “discovered” pre-mark, or had it discovered there at the table upon handover?
In case it’s not obvious, I am just a tiny bit suspicious of this claim.
This alleged rigging of a lottery drawing reported today:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/prosecutors-suspect-man-hacked-lottery-computers-to-score-winning-ticket/
So if one guy can do it with all the security measures (and lottery dollars are government money) and only get caught because he can’t figure out how to cash the ticket…
He did this for a measly $14 mil; what’s a state wide or national election worth? Either in dollars for the mercenary, or in effort for the true believers?
Explain again how electronic voting is secure? This sure looks like a contrary proof to me.