Diebold touch-screen voting disasters continue in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. When will the new SoS Jennifer Brunner simply pull this plug on this entire mess?
From the Cleveland Plain Dealer…
More than 20 percent of the printouts from touch-screen voting machines were unreadable and had to be reprinted. Board of Elections workers found the damaged ballots when they conducted a recount Tuesday of two races, which involved only 17 of the county’s 1,436 precincts.
“If it is as close as it’s been for the last two presidential elections and it’s that close again in 2008, God help us if we have to depend on Cuyahoga County as the deciding factor with regard to making the decision on who the next president of the United States is,” said County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora, a longtime opponent of the county’s touch-screen voting system.
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“This is very much a cause for concern,” board member Inajo Davis Chappell said. “All the technology issues pose a challenge to us, especially given the volume of voters we expect in the primary.”
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The county still doesn’t know why its vote-counting software crashed twice election night. An investigation into the software problem could begin next week, once the county’s recounts are finished.
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“I wish those paper trails would come out pristine — and they don’t, and they’re not going to,” [Board of Elections Director Jane] Platten said. “We’re going to have to deal with it again.”
While the county was able to re-print paper trails on these machines to be counted in the recount, the practice completely defeats the point of such paper trails in the first place, since they are supposed to be verified by the voter (even though we know they usually aren’t, and even when they are, voters fail to notice vote-flips).
If the paper trails are re-printed from the internal machine numbers, which can’t possibly be verified by the voter, there is absolutely no point in even having such paper trails at all.
So again we ask, when is SoS Jennifer Brunner going to simply declare these machines uncertified all together. When will the rest of the election officials in the country declare same? It looks like it won’t be before the 2008 elections begin. So…here we go again…
(Hat-tip Ed Still’s VoteLaw. For much more continuing, detailed, on-the-ground, first-hand reports on these various latest disasters from the counting room in Cuyahoga, please see citizen Adele Eisner’s top-notch blog coverage!)
When will we go back to hand counted paper ballots? It’s the only solution.
Yup,yup, yup. #1
We know from last years Election Science Institute report on the Cuyahoga Co machines that in many cases the internal ballot images did not match the vvpat.
Can citizens force their precincts to give them the specks of the ballots, so that they can provide printed ones and allow voters to do the chosing?
Who wants to join me in building plexiglass, locked boxes to be counted with CITIZEN OVERSIGHT? Now whats that figure on precincts?
Hell…maybe we could employ the HOMELESS WAR VETS to do this!
I always wonder, how do they know if the paper trail is actually what the people voted for, even if they could read it?
They are in the same boat as you and I Dan. They don’t have a clue either. 🙁
Let us all pray that governmnt of the clueless, by the clueless, for the clueless does not perish from this earth like government of the people, by the people, for the people did. 😉
It just amazes me that any SoS would continue to allow these machines to be used. And it continues to amaze me that any citizens, disabled, handicapped, or whatever, would choose to support the contnued use of these machines, for any reason whatsoever. People who use them should be required to sign the following statement: “I understand that by using this machine, not only will I have no idea whether my actual votes will be reflected by the tabulation, whether my ballot will be tabulated accurately, whether it will be tabulated at all, or whether I will be able to get a receipt showing me how I intended to vote, I understand that I am supporting the manufacturing of these machines, as well as the purchasing of them with my tax dollars.”
Brad has told us how the “paper trails” run out of paper, there was no ink, ink too light to read, spool put on upside down, paper ripped, paper crumpled…. on and on. I’ve decided that they are NOT STUPID, they know and refuse to deal with it. They being MSM and elected officials. Remember Ken Blackwell defied court orders to keep 2004 records, paper etc. and he had a ton of them distroyed? See any outrage over that? Didn’t think so.
Bob Young #9
Well said.
When I see “Ohio” and “reading” in the same sentence I immediately think of the number of people there that can’t read anyway. Hell, a substantial number of folk there think that Kent State is a state south of Kansas in the North East.
Scott Bloch must be from Ohio:
(Bloch Blog). The theme song should be “I was looking back to see if you were looking back to see if I was looking back to see …” … a hit from an old Ohio Rovian Klansman. 😉
Well, December 12, I believe, is the day that Jennifer is supposed to announce the results of the audit. Being a careful and responsible person, she’s clearly not going to jump up and announce the dumping of the machines, with no alternative in the pipeline and no money to pay for any alternative, the minute problems crop up. There has been much talk here in Cuyahoga County about moving to optical scan but currently, there are no resources to do so. Without responsible systems in place and oversight, hand-counted paper ballots are just as unreliable and “hackable” as any other system — remember that it was most likely the physical stuffing of paper that stole the election in Ohio in 2004, since virtually no touchscreen machines were in use and I believe none were in the suspect counties.
I trust that Jennifer will do the right thing once she has gotten the information she needs to back her up and make her case.
I think people should be wondering why the Democrats didn’t jump on this problem after they held the majority in Congress .They knew as well as the rest of us that Bush rigged both his elections .
Makes one wonder if they haven’t known all along that our votes don’t count and they don’t care.