[Comments turned back on, but the first 57 may have been lost when our server crashed under the straight of huge traffic on Saturday. We’re trying to recover, but my apologies if we cannot get them back. Please repost as needed. 🙁 – BF]
Well, now, finally we may be able to get rid of these damned things, now that it’s actually happened to Oprah. Via Huff Po…
She then simulated her meltdown, shaking and breathing heavily while stuttering out the words, “It didn’t record my presidential vote.”
Here she is explaining what happened on video, followed by me explaining that it’s not her fault (as she suggests in the video), and what both she, and every other voter in America needs to know about what happened to her, and how to keep it from happening to them…
I don’t know where Oprah votes precisely, but if in Chicago, her vote was probably lost on one of Sequoia Voting System’s touch-screens. If out in the burbs, it was likely Diebold’s touch-screen. Either way, it’s a 100% unverifiable vote. Even after she succeeded in making her selection.
I’m happy to advise you on what actually happened, Oprah. Anytime. Gimme a call. But I promise, it wasn’t your fault, so please stop blaming yourself. Educate yourself instead — here’s a fine place to start — so you can educate your millions of viewers, so we can finally begin restoring transparent, verifiable democracy in America.
(Readers may suggest she cover this topic on Monday before the election, by dropping her a note here. I’m happy to help her, of course!)
UPDATE: 11/1/08 For those, um, misinformed commenters who have posted here to say:
The electronic voting machines used in cook county have a PAPER REGISTER. Your entire vote is PRINTED OUT BEFORE YOU to confirm it.
100% Verifiable, and you’re 100% full of it!
(Now, if it didn’t have the paper register, I’d agree with you that it was unverifiable. But that’s entirely NOT the case here!)
We won’t call you “an idiot”, but we will help you be explaining how you are 100% wrong.
It’s not necessarily your fault, or Oprah’s, that you have been wholly misled about the the type of voting system on which Oprah seems to have tried to cast her vote. The fact is, she cast her vote on a machine on which it is strictly 100% impossible to verify that any vote ever cast on such a Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting machine for any candidate or initiative on the ballot during any election, has ever been recorded accurately, as per any voter’s intent.
Allow me to politely explain…
DRE voting — with or without the so-called “voter verifiable paper audit trail” (VVPAT), that are created by some of these machines — is strictly, 100% faith-based voting. Period.
I have asked and asked for any such evidence to the contrary from election officials, voting machine company officials, so-called “elections experts” and, to this day, no such evidence has been offered, because no such evidence exists, as they all well know, or should know.
In Oprah’s case, if she voted in Cook County, IL, as suggested by the misinformed commenter, she would have voted on an unverifiable DRE machine made by Sequoia Voting Systems — the Seqoia EDGE with Verivote printer, to be exact. That machine is a 100% unverifiable DRE which produces a so-called “paper trail”.
That same machine was decertified across the state of California in 2007 after it was determined to be fully insecure, easily hacked, and completely unverifiable. UC Santa Barbara’s Computer Security Group analyzed that machine, on behalf of the state, and found that it could be hacked — including its so-called “paper trails” — such that even if those “paper trails” were 100% hand-counted (and they are almost never counted at all, in any case) the hack would likely never be revealed and the “paper trails” would match up perfectly with the hacked internal numbers.
UCSB released their video tape on how to do exactly that, just last month, as we reported at the time. Here’s that video again, for you misinformed naysayers out there…
Please see the article we wrote at the time, including the “‘Paper-Trails Are Meaningless…” section therein, for much more info, as well as other similar hacks of other similarly 100% unverifiable voting systems.
The Democratic Party Doesn’t Get It Either…
It’s hardly the commenter’s fault that he/she was confused. Just as it’s not necessarily Oprah’s fault. That they are misinformed on these things is not a surprise. Even Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada (where they use these same, wholly unverifiable Sequoia systems across the entire state) doesn’t get it.
I was on a radio show recently, with Christiane Brown on Reno’s KJFK, where Reid was the guest just before me, and he said, incorrectly, when asked about the wholly unverifiable machines in his home state: “I think Nevada is more fortunate than a lot of states because we have a paper back-up, paper trail for our votes, and that’s important.”
Download MP3 here, or listen below (appx. 3 mins.):
[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/ChristianBrown_HarryReid_KJFK_101608.mp3]
No, they are not “more fortunate” in NV. The voters there are as unfortunate as any state that allows 100% unverifiable votes to be cast, as Reid’s state across its entirety.
Reid also incorrectly discusses paper ballots, and his offensive interest in “mak[ing] people feel that their vote is counted”. We don’t hope they feel that way, Senator. We want them to know it, and be able to verify — as much as needed — that every vote actually has been counted, and counted accurately. That’s strictly impossible with the voting machines that Reid feels Nevadans are “fortunate” to use.
And btw, those Sequoia EDGE w/ VeriVote printers were first used in this country, in Nevada, in 2004 after they were illegally certified by NV’s then Sec. of State Dean Heller and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Heller is now a U.S. Congressman. I exposed the illegal certification of those systems — Nevada was the first in the world to use the so-called “voter verifiable paper trail printer” back 2004 — in an exposé written by myself and Michael Richardson, with VotersUnite.org’s John Gideon in a chapter of Mark Crispin Miller’s recently released Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 – 2008
Unfortunately, our exposé was never published by the corporate media, despite my offering it to plenty of them.
And again, I remind you to see our Special Coverage page on “Touch-Screen Vote-Flipping 2008”, which also offers information on what you (and Oprah) need to do when this happens to you!
Here are some of those tips since the DNC and Obama campaign refuse to take any steps to assure your vote may actually be counted accurately on one of these machines…
What to do if it happens to you:
- Call poll supervisors to observe the problem.
- Fill out a problem report.
- Refuse to vote on that machine.
- Request that the machine be taken out of service.
- Get a serial number of the machine if possible (may be difficult in many cases).
- Tell other voters in line which machine it was and that they should NOT vote on that machine!
- Report it to county/town election office.
- Report it to the Secretary of State.
- Call local reporters and tell them the story.
- Call voter problem hotlines (eg. 866-MYVOTE1 and 866-OUR-VOTE) and report it.
- Contact bloggers and Election Integrity websites.
- Raise holy hell.
REMINDER: Please bring a video camera/cell phone camera when you go to vote so you can document these problems on video tape, and then upload them to VideoTheVote.org and YouTube!
(Thanks to VelvetRevolution.us and TrueVote.us for help in compiling these recommendations!)
Brad — can you spell out for us exactly how a voter-verified paper ballot printed out by the electronic voting machine does not provide protection? You mention in various places here and in other articles that computer scientists e.g. at UCSB have shown there are hacks which can flip votes and *not be detected by auditing the paper trail*, but I can’t find where it is explained how that is possible. Just trying to understand this better…
The paradox, is that as we all get REAL careful about double checking, etc., that is in fact no assurance anything is recorded correctly, and simultaneously makes lines LONGER and thereby increases voter suppression.
THAT’s the sheer brilliance of making part of the hack VISIBLE — increasing lines and de facto suppression the more people try to be careful and fight it.
I can “spell out” why a voter-verified paper “ballot” offers no assurance. It has to do with the fact that all the studies agree there’s a huge difference between voter-marking your own ballot and reviewing a printout of any kind (especially the fine print typically seen with voting systems). In one study of voters, there were 108 errors in the paper trails.
108 errors in the paper trail “ballots”. They were told to be careful.
How many did they catch?
ZERO, nada. none. Zip.
We are very poor proofreaders of our own stuff. If we think we pressed the buttons correctly, we’re extremely poor proofreaders of our own stuff. To be efficient, it’s well known that the brain/eye see WHAT THEY WANT TO SEE and skip over parts to be efficient. See my article on this subject for links to caltech studies, DC testimony, etc. http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_paul_leh_070521_ultimate_nightmare_f.htm
Even if through massive education we get people to really get anal about those printouts, it just makes the lines amazingly longer. Massive education might, maybe, increase catching of error from 0% to say 66% (thinking VERY optimistically). But this means, then, that 1 of 3 errors slips through and is APPROVED and VERIFIED by the voter, making the error or fraud bullet-proof fraud because the fraud was specifically approved by the voter! But, we all pat ourselves on the back for a good election, even though it’s just perfect fraud, in fact.
It all boils down to huge differences in how humans perform with secondary printouts versus primary voter-marked documents, but it’s a difference that makes a huge difference!
Matt
No matter what the receipt says, the machine can count whatever someone has programmed it to count. It is feasible you could get everyone together with their receipts and figure out what the count should have been… in a small town… or a small precinct… where everyone saved their receipts… and then see if it matches the machine count, but not likely, and not useful on a massive scale.
Get it? In a race between Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, the machine can be programmed to print receipts that match exactly how each voter voted, but count, say, half Mickey’s votes for Donald and all Donald’s votes for Donald. So Mickey actually won 60 to 40, but the machine made Donald the winner 70 to 30. The machine was also programmed to erase the programming for the theft AFTER it executed. Unless you can get all hundred voters back together with their receipts, how are you going to show the theft?
If it is a paper ballot, it can be counted and recounted by people and machines until everyone agrees who really won.
Paper trail and paper ballot are two different things.
Paper trail is a receipt, but the machine counts and there is no way to check it in 99.99% of the cases.
Paper ballot is the permanent record that can be counted by humans, even if a machine counts it to begin with.
You can’t rely on computers for the count because computers can be programmed to erase evidence of rigging, and they can be hacked very, very easily, by anyone with just a little knowledge, again with no trace.
THIS MEANS THERE CAN NEVER BE EVIDENCE THAT YOUR VOTE WAS COUNTED AT ALL, OR IF IT WAS COUNTED THAT IT WAS COUNTED CORRECTLY, IF YOU VOTED ON A COMPUTER.
Matt asked:
Agent 99’s response seems to have missed what you were asking. The videos from UCSB, included in the article above, show precisely how a machine can be hacked in such a way that even the paper trails — if anybody bothered to count them — would not reveal the hack. So give that video a look.
There are a number of ways to do it. But ultimately (as Paul Lehto alluded) even if voters check their “paper trails ” (and MIT/Caltech tells us 80% don’t) as we learn via the Rice University study, two-thirds don’t notice when the votes have actually been flipped on that final summary.
But the biggest prob is even if they check the paper trail, and even if they notice any vote flips on it, there is no way for you or I to know that they did afterwards in the event we need to count those “paper trails” to determine whether the election was counted accurately or not. We’ve simply got to trust in that fact, and as all the studies show, there is no reason for that trust. Further, our system out government and elections is not built on trust. Both are built on citizen oversight and checks and balances.
With electronic touch-screen voting, the ability to perform both oversight and have any checks and balances is entirely gone, entrusted to private companies with secret software that can never been overseen by anybody.
The big O made that up just for ratings
Yes, Matt, Brad is completely correct. I missed what you were asking. My brain has this stubborn habit of kicking out items it deems frivolous, and so I plum forgot about the having-a-computer-print-you-up-a-voted-ballot gambit. Since I decided long ago that computers have absolutely no business in our polling places my brain, evidently, has taken up spitting out that sort of stuff. I might have remembered if I’d read Paul’s responses to you, but I was busy being flummoxed by chief among my redneck friends just emailing me this YouTube link. Sorry.
Ultimately in the end the paper trail would definetly identify that the vote has been changed. Just because a group of people say it wouldn’t doesn’t make it so. Get the spool from UCSB and run thee entire spool through an imaging device and place the results on your page. So we can all see that infact it would deffinetly show that there was something going on that shouldn’t of been.
Then take Paper Ballots and place them in a lab of Paper experts to see if they can find a way to Hack them. Manipulate of course. what we need is an unbiast study of all materials not just one material. We need a study that has a constant involved, Wait that would mean that it would be a scientific study. No one here wants that, they want their ideas of truth to prevail not actual truth.
Corruption in government or positions of power will always be there. The fact that we all have to be on our toes is one that SUCKS. The simple fact is most people want to live there lives and not worry about this Bull Shit.
Also the next person who tries to attack one of my computers from this site will reap the consiquences. I will not warn you again!!
For the life of me, I can not understand why a paper ballot with optical reading capability for tabulation is not used. Simple, easily tabulated and with verifiable audit trail. The technology has been around for decades. Oops, I forgot that there is money to be made and elections to be stolen.
I would like to use this space to beg for understanding for all poll workers tomorrow. I’m a presiding judge, and I have at least one poll worker joining us who has never worked the polls. Our job is to help people vote, and we’ll do everything that is legally possible to do that. I know that poll workers are sometimes seen as obstructionist, but I do everything I can to ensure fairness, accessibility, and correctness. Please try to view the election workers as being on your side. We get paid $95 for a non-stop 13-hour day – which doesn’t count coming in an hour early to set up and staying as late as necessary if there are lines.
… Charles said on 11/3/2008 @ 12:33 am PT…
“Ultimately in the end the paper trail would definetly identify that the vote has been changed. Just because a group of people say it wouldn’t doesn’t make it so.”
The scientists at UCSB offered a study with mathematical evidence and examples and a video demonstration… and you offer…?
“Get the spool from UCSB and run thee entire spool through an imaging device and place the results on your page. So we can all see that infact it would deffinetly show that there was something going on that shouldn’t of been.”
… you offer nothing?
“Then take Paper Ballots and place them in a lab of Paper experts to see if they can find a way to Hack them. Manipulate of course.”
Yes, and compare them vs e-voting in that regard!
“what we need is an unbiast study of all materials not just one material. We need a study that has a constant involved, Wait that would mean that it would be a scientific study.”
Yes, it was.
“No one here wants that,”
Fail.
Apparently you didn’t bother to read the various parts of the e-voting studies where the evm’s,”paper trails” etc were rigorously compared with their paper ballot counterparts.
“Also the next person who tries to attack one of my computers from this site will reap the consiquences. I will not warn you again!!”
Strange… after your extensive attempt to appear knowledgable about computers you then engage in a massive display of ignorance…? Or perhaps this was actually a clever and subtle strategy of some kind?
Or do you really believe that the techs at Brad’s web hosting provider are out to “attack one of your computers”…?
Maybe this will get the problem enough publicity that we will FINALLY get FEC regulations requiring that all electronic voting machines have their hardware designs and software source code publicly diclosed and that they generate a recountable, auditable paper trail.
I am an IT professional and I’m here to tell you that computers are not to be trusted with something as important as the conduct of our elections unless every single aspect of their operation is subject to public scrutiny. The government has plenty of ways to guarantee the exclusivity of the manufacturer’s rights in their intellectual property without resorting to “trade secrets.”
Check out Verified Voting for more information.
Trust in e-voting is simple. Would you trust an ATM machine enough to say $1000 cash. Yes you type into the machine that you are putting into it $1000 in cash and therefore the receipt will say you deposited $1000, but it will not let you withdraw that money. You must place trust that whoever opens your deposited envelope to verify the transaction is honest otherwise without that envelope you have no proof of your depsoit. only you’r eword against the banker.
The same goes for E-voting. You put you’re vote in and a given a reciept but their is no ay to validate that what is taken out (vote count) is what was put in the machine. In the e-vote case we have no envelope to be examined that holds the voter’s true intentions.
Oprah is a fat lying O-bot kunt
this nation is in big trouble no matter who gets elected but ESPECIALLY the practiced LIAR and MARXIST gun grabbing baby killer Obama
and fuck all of the usa that supports him or any of his bullshit….I dont think ive ever been more ashamed of our country not even by the Nazi Bush…
Stalin was way worse than Hitler
one more t hing – Are Oprah and her viewers just now figuring out that there has been rampan vote fraud for decades?
fucking stupid bitch, I dont think theres anyone I hate more in the world than this fake WITCH
PS – your comment form sucks donkey dick
Unfortunately not hard enough to discourage you from using it….
I’m not going to bother asking you to read the rules since there seems to be almost no chance you’ll keep it up.