Blogged by Brad Friedman from Salina, KS…
There was some pretty decent press coverage of my speaking event last week in St. Louis as sponsored by Missourians for Honest Elections.
The full front-page feature article “Voter Beware”, by Fran Mannino of the Webster Times, was the most complete in describing the “packed house” event, offering a very good description of some of the issues we face, and featuring a bunch of good quotes from myself and other sources as well.
It also offered a pathetic and shamelessly untrue quote (an out and out lie actually) from St. Louis County Election Director John Diehl, who was invited to share the podium, as were St. Louisans Thor Hearne of the GOP voter-suppression front-group ACVR and Paul DeGregorio, the former chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) who parlayed the gig into his next one as chief of an Internet Voting Company. All three were no shows, but that didn’t stop Diehl from trying to bullshit the voters he’s supposed to be serving, as revealed in Mannino’s report…
“We would hear some of the same conspiracy theories, and we thoroughly checked those out and found them not to be the case,” said Diehl. “In November, we had hundreds of thousands of people vote on these machines on multiple ballot issues – a few million touches on the screens – and didn’t receive a single complaint on election day that the machine didn’t register their vote as intended.”
As an Election Official, we understand that he’s either under contract, or sworn oath of fealty to his bosses as the Voting Machine Companies (they use ES&S in St. Louis County), and thus legally required to use the phrase “conspiracy theory” in at least one sentence when speaking to anybody in the media, so we’ll forgive him that. The rest of of his lying and disservice to his voters we won’t overlook quite as easily.
Diehl did not and could not have “thoroughly checked…out” anything and “found them not to be the case.” Had he bothered to check anything, other than the delivery orders for his ES&S voting machines, he’d have found — beyond a scientific shadow of a doubt — that his machines are susceptible to tampering and impossible to use transparently.
As to his claim that he “didn’t receive a single complaint on election day that the machine didn’t register [votes] as intended”…well, he’s just lying. Or derelict in his duty as Election Director. He can take his choice. The “Issues Reported” section [PDF] of MO Sec. of State Robin Carnahan’s Report on the 2006 Election in the Show Me State lists several complaints by voters using ES&S touch-screen systems in St. Louis County showing votes registered for Republican Senator Jim Talent when the voters were attempting to vote for the Democratic challenger, Claire McCaskill. For example, “Voter reported he touched screen for McCaskill and it registered as a vote for Talent,” and “Voter attempted to vote for McCaskill, but touchscreen registered vote for Talent,” and “Touchscreen was registering vote for Talent rather than McCaskill.”
McCaskill eventually won the election in a squeaker, helping to give the majority in the U.S. Senate to the Democrats, even while there were no complaints in the MO SoS report describing the reverse situation of attempted votes for Talent flipping to McCaskill. As well, the folks from Mo Honest had told me they had received stacks of complaints, via public records records, collected by the County themselves which Mr. Diehl, apparently, didn’t see fit to share with the SoS.
UPDATE: It’s been pointed out to me that the SoS report also includes an entire series of snail mail letters [PDF] sent to St. Louis County Elections Officials, right from the SoS office, passing on some of the complaints received from voters concerning touch-screen voting machines flipping votes, showing them incorrectly on the confirmation screen, and other related problems. Thus, further confirming the fact that Diehl is simply out and out lying to the media when he says he “didn’t receive a single complaint on election day that the machine didn’t register their vote as intended.”
He knows he did. And if he doesn’t, he should be out of a job for dereliction of duty.
As well, we’ve been told on very good authority that of Missouri’s 116 counties, St. Louis County — the state’s largest — is the only one in the state which has more DRE touch-screen systems than paper-ballot op-scan systems and that they’re hoping to go all touch-screen in the future…unless someone stops them. Hardly a surprise for the county where democracy-hater Thor Hearne resides and pulls his vote-suppression strings behind the scenes.
And beyond that, as Diehl knows well, it is strictly impossible to know whether or not any of the county’s DRE touch-screen systems registered a single vote “as intended,” since nobody can ever know one way or another. Except for Diehl via his Amazing X-Ray Electronic Vision apparently.
I had hoped Diehl would be one of those rare Reality-Based Election Directors interested in democracy and assuring voter confidence and accurate elections. I am disappointed, though unfortunately not surprised at this point, that he does not appear to be. Good luck, St. Louis County.
But thanks for the good coverage nonetheless to Mannino and the Webster Times.
Over at the Riverfront Times, on their blog, Aimee Levitt filed a short but decent piece the day after the event, comparing me, oddly enoughly, to Barack Obama (the resemblance is obvious!)…
The puzzling part of her item though, was its headline: “Elections and Self-Promotion: The American Way.”
For those who know me or this blog, it wouldn’t be difficult to make the case of “Self-Promotion,” even if those who really know me and this blog understand both the necessity and the satirical elements built into the The BRAD BLOG’s “Self-Promotion.” Yet beyond the headline, Levitt didn’t even mention, much less make a case for, the “Self-Promotion” mentioned in the headline. That, even while I had mentioned during my remarks that I have no book and nothing to sell, other than hopes of supporting the Mo Honest folks and democracy in Missouri. I sent Levitt an inquiry on the headline, asking for specifics or explanation, but she hasn’t bothered to write back. So it’s a mystery for the ages, I suppose.
At least she showed up to report on the event, which is more than I can say for the folks at the big boy St. Louis Post-Dispatch, whose editorial board I had met with, upon their invitation, the day before. That meeting went very well, I believe, so either they didn’t come because they’d heard enough, or they didn’t come because it didn’t go as well as I might have thought. I believe it’s the former.
I should add that one reporter from the Post actually did turn out, but when he introduced himself to me after the event — mentioning that he agreed with a few of the shots I’d taken at his once-great paper during my remarks — I believe that he pointed out he was not there to cover the event, but simply because he was interested in the topic. So I’m much obliged to him for both coming and saying hello afterwards. As I am to the Mo Honest folks for inviting me, and to the loads of folks who turned out.
As the Governator of my current home state famously said: I’ll be back…
(ADDENDUM: Wow, just noticed this is article number 5000 here at The BRAD BLOG! And yet, I’m still scrounging to pay the rent each month. Perhaps I should do more self-promotion.)
Brad,
Way cool. Hometown boy makes good!
The lying by the election official illustrates the point that the problem is bi-cameral, at a minimum.
If that election official will lie in this instance why would he not lie in a paper ballot system?
Like Stalin and his paper ballot elections?
Thus, the problem is two fold: 1) we need paper ballots, and 2) we need election officials who are honest and can do simple arithmetic.
Without both it is still a faith based system. “Trust us” or “trust the machines” is a symptom of the same election disease.
Anyway, congrats on the good effect you are having on election matters across the country.
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Bradbloggers:
Can you believe that GWB compared Iraq to Nam and used that as a reason to stay in Iraq? This man is delusional. He’s looney. Why have we stopped blogging about this?
I cannot afford to leave my job and march on Washington and you probably cannot either, but we can make a statement. I can afford to buy a 41-cent stamp every day and send a letter to thw White House with three words: END THIS WAR! We can send millions of letters. They cannot ignore that. Let’s get these huge mail deliveries on the 6:00 news. Let’s call every talk show host and pass the word. Do you have a better idea? Let’s do something big.
Dredd sedd #1 –
Only slightly disagree with you, Dredd. Whether or not we have paper ballots, there is never a reason to trust Election Officials. (This is not an insult to Elections Officials, as the best ones will tell you not to trust them either, as you shouldn’t have to, since the system should be transparent and not require trust.) Hence the point of the transparency of paper ballots in the first place.
You may be a Republican, and thus trust your Republican Election Director. Until the new one, a Democrat, takes office, and then you won’t trust him/her. Shouldn’t matter if they are an R or a D or a supposed “non-partisan” public official. We shouldn’t be forced to trust them and thus have faith-based elections in the bargain.
ThickWittedLiberal asked #2 –
We haven’t. Jon Ponder of Pensito Review expertly guest blogged that very issue for us a day or two ago right here.
Yes, Brad and there were only nine comments. You write about a 9/11 conspiracy and you get 200 comments. What is happening? We have the numbers now. We have blogs, radio, some tv and print media. We need to do something big now!
I was in St Louis 3 weeks ago, too bad I missed ya.
Brad #3
The point I was makeing was that a belief in paper ballots per se is superstitious.
As I said, just ask
AliceStalin, who did just fine with paper ballots, if you know what I mean.“The people who vote on paper ballots decide nothing, the people who count the paper ballots decide everything.”
You are deluding yourself if they think just having paper ballots will solve the problem. It is not brilliance that recognizes that honesty by definition must be a component of honest elections. Honesty in this context comes from honest election officials.
I agree that faith (“trust us”) must not be a part of elections, scientific observation and proof must replace faith based elections.
Brad,
“Big” Diehl and “Thor” Hearn crashed and burned on the way to the talk.
Rumor has it that they were practicing their speeches when the smell from the lies ignited the whole mess spontaneously and they were forced to “take a break”.
For passerby… meet Dredd… an unfortunate individual afflicted with a peculiarly post-modern condition: the implicit belief that e-voting can be made to work somehow 🙂
Meet Dredd… still putting words in people’s mouths while twisting logic and reason into a non-Euclidean distortion more suited for the interior of a wormhole than anyplace on this world… all for the purpose of getting someone, anyone, to agree with him that e-voting and paper ballots are somehow equal in their risk factors… and/or that HR 811 (Holt’s Fiasco) does anything other than what the plain language of the bill says it does…. (which said same plain language often does the exact opposite of what Holt claims it does)
I’m aware of no one here who has claimed that paper ballots will somehow magically solve all problems. That is Dredd’s imagination… at best.
There are those hereabouts who strongly believe that paper ballots must be the first step, and that that step must be taken now, and that it will make weeding out bad actors much easier. But… they have both past precedent and current examples globally to back their assertions.
Dredd has neither.
All Dredd has to present in return is Stalin… but Dredd obstinately (and consistently) fails to understand that what Stalin actually illustrated was that when you exercise complete control of the State and its mechanisms then elections become irrelevant.*
(*For current references to this phenomenom see K. Rove: “A Permanent Republican Majority”; see also his papers on “Electoral Fraud”, “Voter Disenfranchisement” and “Partisan Government Agencies”)
Dredd sedd:
Who in the world has ever said that “just having paper ballots will solve the problem”? What blog have you been reading every day, Dredd?
Election integrity begins with a paper ballot — one that is actually counted — for every vote cast. It does not end there. Not by a long shot. But it doesn’t even get off the starting line if there is nothing but an invisible, completely-unverifiable “ballot” on which to hang our hats.
Dredd further sedd:
Complete and utter nonsense. Democracy and elections with integrity demand that the most honest elections officials in the world should be considered completely dishonest.
Thus, the process must be 100% transparent and the citizenry must participate in that process (ie. watch like a hawk) every step of the way.
An honest election official has nothing to do with it. A paper ballot is just the beginning. But it’s a beginning without which nothing else matters.