Rightwing, partisan, conspiracy theorists* and bloggers (and, perhaps, sore-losers*) such as Powerline’s John Hinderaker have suddenly found religion when it come to the integrity of elections. At least now that it looks like MN’s Sen. Norm Coleman (R) may be in trouble in his razor-thin re-election contest against challenger Al Franken (D).
At last check, there were just 221 votes between the two candidates, with automatic hand recount triggered and scheduled to begin November 19th.
The only thing that’s particularly clear from Hinderaker’s desperate and ill-composed screed over at his Republicanist blog, is that he has no clue what he’s talking about. Being the generous fellow that I am, however, and more interested in helping to assure the person who actually received the most votes gets to be the winner of the election than I am in any particular candidate “winning” it, allow me to help him with a few of his misconceptions about the U.S. Senate race in MN, and about elections in general…
You’ll have to make sense of his scribblings yourself, in general, as they seem more intended to inject partisanship and distrust into the race than anything else. But as “trust” in election officials or elections in general should never be required for citizen confidence in election results, I’ll try to clarify a few points of confusion for the poor man.
The Myth of ‘Secure Phone Lines’
First, his assertion that results from the flawed, error-prone and hackable optical-scan systems used across the state of MN to tabulate ballots have their “totals…uploaded electronically, via a secure phone line connected to the box, to the county where the precinct is located” is just silly.
What “secure phone line” has he been deluded into thinking exists? Or could even be afforded by all of these small precincts scattered around the state? Does he think the Dept. of Defense is now running elections in Anoka County, Minnesota?
If MN uploads totals via the Internet for “snap-tallies” to give quickly to the media on Election Night, that’s a shame, since numbers can be easily tampered with during that telephonic transaction. That’s why states like OH have banned such Internet transmission of results. Whether they do it in MN or no, I believe I can assure Hinderaker that there is no such “secure phone line” available to election officials to transmit Election Night results. So his faith in such technology (versus human beings, who he doesn’t seem to trust) is misplaced.
Conspiratorial ‘Democrats Fraudulently Adding New Paper Ballots’
Second, as reported totals have fluctuated over the last several days since the election, as precincts have been canvassed and vote totals and memory cards checked and double-checked, etc., the numbers have gone up for Coleman at times, and up for Franken at times. Where a margin favoring Coleman by some 700 votes out of appx. 3 million ballots cast existed on Election Night (that’s not a “725-vote win” as Hinderaker misleadingly characterized it) has now shrunk to just over 200 votes total in favor of Coleman.
So Hinderaker asks this series of questions, some legit, some not, some misinformed, but all of them underscoring the need for transparency in our election process, and how much we’ve lost since officials — including Republicans like Hinderaker who still seem to love electronic systems — began entrusting our vote-counting to private companies and their flawed, untested, difficult-if-not-impossible to oversee, electronic systems using entirely secret software…
Many of those questions are good ones, but it’s a shame Hinderaker felt necessary to present them as the basis for a conspiracy theory*, suggesting Democrats are trying to steal the election, rather than contacting officials and/or filing public records requests in hopes of answering those questions on his own, on behalf of his tin-foil hatted* readers.
It’s unfortunate that he’s such an unapologetic, divisive partisan (of the type soundly rejected by a mandate of the electorate last Tuesday) that he would ask: “What assurances are in place to prevent Democrats from fraudulently adding new paper ballots?”
Does he similarly care what assurances are in place to prevent Republicans from fraudulently adding new paper ballots? I do. I don’t want anybody to cheat. Can the same be said for John Hinderaker? Or is winning at any cost all that he cares about?
But here’s just one way he can begin to find out answers to all of those questions, if he really cares. He can make public records requests, in every MN county, for the invoices and receipts for the ballots as they were printed by the printing company. He can ask for an accounting of voted, spoiled and unvoted ballots and he can reconcile them against the numbers of ballots that were printed, and the numbers of voters who signed into the poll books on Election Day. The number of voted, spoiled and unvoted ballots, in each county, should be exactly equal to the number of ballots printed by the county, as demonstrated by their receipts from the printing company.
I hope that helps, John. BTW, the same needs to be done up in Alaska. But more on that mess — much more — soon…
Whacko Use of the ‘F-Word’
In an UPDATE to his item, Hinderaker describes what he believes is “Hot off the presses, the first apparent evidence of fraud.”
He points to an increase by 100 votes in a precinct in Mt. Iron, an area of St. Louis County, MN. The poll-tapes which offer the evidence that votes were mistallied by the county when they were originally phoned in are apparently dated “11/02/2008”, two days prior to the election. Officials explain that the clock on one of the op-scan machines was set incorrectly, and that the “Logic and Accuracy” tests performed on that machine prior to the election also has a misstated date in the bargain.
That is not the “first apparent evidence of fraud.” That is reason to ask questions and demand answers and transparency. Is it “evidence of fraud”? I suppose if you were desperate to make a prima facie case for concerns, one could, even if the explanation given by officials does make some sense, and there seems more evidence of administrative error and lousy voting equipment than “fraud”. But if Hinderaker is going to use the “f-word” here, one wonders why he hasn’t bothered to use it before, say, in Ohio 2004, or in any of the other myriad of elections before and since in which signs of actual fraud were both enormous and still-inexplicable (eg. See the mess in all races in Alaska tonight, or Al Gore, back in Volusia County, FL in 2000, receiving -16,022 votes on a Diebold tabulator — that’s negative 16,022 votes and it’s never been explained by anyone to this day. Happy to offer a dozen more, completely unmentioned on PowerLine, if Mr. Hinderaker would like.)
The Non-Existant ‘Universal Optical Scan Systems’
As to Hinderaker’s stated faith in a “nearly universal” “optical scan system”, whatever that means, as he refers several times in his piece, his love for electronics is dangerously and naively misplaced. Since he’s suddenly concerned with election integrity, I’ll suggest he click here to read a bit about the highly flawed and error-prone op-scan systems and computer tabulators used in Minnesota. He can learn a bit, quick like, both about the ones made by Diebold (which Diebold recently admitted drop thousands of votes without notice when they’re uploaded to the central server) and the ones made by ES&S (on which “The same ballots run through the same machines yielded different results each time” such that they “reported inconsistent vote totals” during pre-election tests in Michigan just before last week’s general election.)
I’ll further hope Hinderaker will join me, and the rest of patriotic citizens of this nation who actually care about free, fair, accurate, verifiable and transparent elections in which every voter and every political party can have confidence.
If so, perhaps he’ll even soon realize that the easier way to oversee and assure accurate election results is by counting ballots at the polling place, with everyone in the community watching and verifying everything, before the ballots are moved anywhere. That would allow for a decentralized, transparent count that could be publicly well-documented before any Democrats or Republicans or even Russian or Chinese hackers, were able to “fraudulently add new ballots”.
But, somehow, I don’t think Hinderaker gives a damn about any of that. He just wants to assault democracy — and Democrats — by spreading his whacko, rightwing conspiracy theories*. That goes for his PowerLine conspiracy theorist* partner, Scott Johnson who today wrote, without a shred of evidence for such a remarkable assertion, that “the election seems to be in the process of being stolen.”
If they do care, I hope they’ll read the above again closely, since it contains some help for both them and Democrats, including actions that each can take. I’m happy to advise any of them if they really want to try to ensure that this elections is counted accurately, as per the voters’ intent.
* – All references to “conspiracy theories”, “tin foil hats”, “sore losers” and “whackos” etc. are meant as tongue-in-cheek ironic satire, and should never be used as a cynical and obnoxious bludgeon against any citizen who has legitimate concerns about the integrity of elections. All evidence, however, suggests that John Hinderaker does not fall into that category.
Are we having karma yet? 8D
brad, your arguments are sound with respect to hinderaker’s insanity, but the question of a conspiracy might not be so insane.
go here:
http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/34116044.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUT
here’s a quote of interest, via tpm:
An Associated Press analysis of the nearly 25,000-vote difference in Minnesota presidential and U.S. Senate race tallies shows that most ballots lacking a recorded Senate vote were cast in counties won by Democrat Barack Obama.
that smells mighty fishy; check it out, as only you can do.
After reading that article, it mentions that all three counties that constitute the majority of the drop off votes were counties that Obama won by about 63%. Wouldn’t it seem likely that the drop off votes would tend more toward the Democrats than the Republicans in those counties? Looking for something that isn’t there is too X-Files for me. This vote is too close for a conspiracy, who is setting themselves up for a tie? Of course this Hinderaker gentleman is a partisan nut whose ideas bring about this inane conversation.
Associated Press is a discredited fascist entity with close ties to Karl Rove. Quoting them has as much credibility as quoting Rush Limbaugh, or the whores who served Mussolini’s thugs. Anyone associated with AP or Fox News must be quite red-faced and flustered now. Associated Press is internationally despised, and rightfully so, the way they’ve cheerleaded unjustified military adventures and dangerously unreliable voting machines. AP is the Diebold of the news world.
Voting-machine firm sued for GPL violations
Nov. 07, 2008
Yet another Linux device maker has been sued over alleged GPL violations. Diebold subsidiary PES allegedly used a GPL-licensed copy of the Ghostscript Postscript interpreter in its optical-scan voting machines, without abiding by the license’s terms, claims Ghostscript copyright holder Artifex Software.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2554621839.html
[ed note: Cut and paste deleted. Chris, please read our rules for commenting. Thank you. –99]
It appears that the mere title of your blog leans to the left and smacks of the typical mad Leftist who is going to have a problem explaining the problem so they try to push it off as the Republicans did it. As you probably know, but will not publish, ACORN appears to have not had one problem registering voters in MN, while they produced numerous false ones elsewhere ( Nevada and Terrel Owens, Tony Romo ) and it is the Attorney General for the State of MN who is on the ACORN board, hmmmmmmmm can someone say ” The Fix is IN?” The ACORN people who set up the ballots for their “people” were too stupid to also vote for the Senate race, I would wager that there was only a vote for Barack on those ballots and nothing else..FIX, FIX, FIX.
Now we know why we need voter idea cards to be scanned, with a finger print (like we did with the Iraq voters) to assure that we are getting Brad Friedman’s vote and not long dead Joe the Plumber’s who died in 1950. That brings up another interesting issue, why are the Democrats so concerend about Joe the Plumber, is it because, like Toto, he dared to go behind the curtain?
voter idea cards — OMG!!! 😛
Poor Tom has no “idea” that the ACORN talking point du jour has already been de-bunked for this election cycle and has been shelved by his leaders in der party until the next election cycle?
IMO, if the voters had any idea, we would not have anything to worry about 🙂
I wouldn’t want a filibuster-proof majority for any party. We need the “Balance”.
Al Franken is an idiot by the way and I can’t see him in the Senate. Bush really hurt the country by pushing so many over to the left. Now we will have to live with rabid left wing nuts in the White House!!
How anyone could give Obama a pass on his associations, i.e. Ayers, etc. is beyond me. In addition he lied like a dog about those associations so he must have plenty to hide. Where was the media when we needed them to investigate this????? Our democracy is in real peril when our media falls head over hills in love with any politician. They gave Obama pass after pass on his record while doing their best to discredit McCain/Palin.
God Help Us All!!
I rest my case.
Here is a story about the “Minnesota nice” I once knew before Rush came on the air there and turned about half of them into a bunch of dickheads
Its pretty obvious # 6&9 haven’t read anything but their partie’s propaganda (msm’s included.) I would suggest they do their due diligence and use the toobz they already know how to use and start researching facts not fictions! One of the great steps into the twenty first century is, we can all be reporters now using documentation of FACTS. When no clear documentation is available, all of us in a nonpartisan way should be asking those with the answers to prove their claims. Brad as usual, points them in the right direction. This country desparately needs to come together on the facts, not multibillion dollar fictions. You know, I wish someone could explain to me what was wrong with the FAIRNESS DOCTRINE.
More evidence the Republican Party is the party of S-T-U-P-I-D
Bill, you ask for balance in the Senate, yet in the last two years, the Republicans have used record breaking numbers of filibusters to stop initiatives needed to start repairing the damage. The action of the republicans don’t show balance, only a sign of desparation. This country (we) need to make the necessary changes to fix this unbelieveable financial and constitutional mess we are in. At this time, the progressive agenda demands a 60% majority.
Dear Tom and Bill,
Cryx blck mxx nur trbl rignnurf boo boo Franken chrq prtr. Furthermore, frckx und prcks und styx an netflix but fools and you nd brricks. Keep up the good work.
Re #9
“I wouldn’t want a filibuster-proof majority for any party. We need the “Balance”.”
As we have seen in the recent past with the current incarnation of the GOP, there is no responsible balance in opposition, only uber-partisanship and obstructionism. After eight years of radically politicizing and wantonly undermining every area of public life, of defaming and running roughshod over the opposition, Republicans suddenly start crying out for “balance” and bipartisanship.
Short of those 60 seats, we had better hope that they don’t use similar breathtaking disconnects from reality to justify endless filibusters down the road. I don’t count on it.
But more important than what either you or I wants is the need for the actual will of the voters to be reflected in the final outcome of these senate races.
Bill, in case you are ready to lift the lid a crack and let in some light, here is why the so-called Ayres Affair didn’t have legs in the MSM–the facts don’t support the accusations:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/790/
Hate and fear, fear and hate- right wing media is so omni-present that’s all some people ever hear, and like the good patriots they think they are, cry foul on the Left despite all evidence to the contrary. Poor souls don’t know any better.
Excellent piece of writing Brad. You back up your words with a knowledgeable understanding of modern election theft be it riggable electronic computer voting machines and tabulators, or other methods of theft after the fact in a close election.
Of course, the overall lack of transparency in the inaccurate US systems of elections is another massive problem undermining the corrupted US election process. You address this issue as well as the others like an expert defense attorney protecting the American voter.
While these people defiently try to use their anger to both divide and mis-inform their readers, your called them out every step of the way as the independent (as opposed to partisan) US election problem solving watchdog that you are.
I started coming here sometime after the Bushit administration stole the 2004 presidential election. Early on I became aware that your blog exuded integrity, credibility, and was unafraid to expose treasonous election criminal cheats like Thor Hearn or big mouth Ann Colter.
I want to thank you for your great efforts and persistance as a modern American Patriot to bring attention to the sham US system of elections and vote counting currently used to defining the will of the people.
Hear hear, GBD.
Actually the Nov. 2 date does beg for more investigation. Just coming up with a possible explanation doesn’t mean it is the right explanation. More documents need to be provided for the 100-vote discrepancy too. Poll tapes alone aren’t sufficient.
I’ve been saying for some time now that we need to start requiring the audit logs and other corroborating documents to accompany anomalies and/or adjustments in the totals.
Brad,
Thanks for your great reporting before, during and after the 2008 election. I appreciate your sleuthing skills in keeping us all informed about what is going on around the U.S.
I’m looking forward to seeing how the hand-counting of Minn. ballots turns out. If anything, it will reveal the terrible flaws in the optical scanners ability to accurately count ballots. Which scanners are used by MN?
What happened in Sarasota 13 with Jennings this election?
The Mike Connell story is very interesting for many reasons.
In the context of the Minnesota election there are rumors trickling in that many of the precincts in the urban and heavily democratic voting areas of the state did NOT transmit their results over the internet from the voting machines to the respective county vote tabulators. Apparently many of the memory cards were hand delivered.
Doing this obviously prevents any man-in-the-middle attacks. What I find fascinating is why this was done. Was it because of what was found out on Monday during the Mike Connell testimony??
GailJ~
Sadly, she got trounced by double digits, defeated again with by ol’ carsalesman-unelect, Vern Buchanan–despite 7 lawsuits recently filed against him re: unethical buisness practices.
NOTE: Sarasota County BARELY went McCain–practically 50-50, and we know there were reports of massive machine malfunction in more than 10 counties; so I have a lot of questions about some of these down-ticket races.
Just like the commenter (from WV?) who was wondering how some of these local races were in such contrast to the McCain/ Obama margin of victory? Anyone here looked at some of that data, yet?…
206.845 Ballot recording and counting security.
Subdivision 1. Prohibited connections. The county auditor and municipal clerk
must secure ballot recording and tabulating systems physically and electronically against
unauthorized access. Except for wired connections within the polling place, ballot
recording and tabulating systems must not be connected to or operated on, directly or
indirectly, any electronic network, including a local area network, a wide-area network,
the Internet, or the World Wide Web. Wireless communications may not be used in any
way in a vote recording or vote tabulating system. Wireless, device-to-device capability
is not permitted. No connection by modem is permitted.
Transfer of information from the ballot recording or tabulating system to another
system for network distribution or broadcast must be made by disk, tape, or other
physical means of communication, other than direct or indirect electronic connection of
the vote recording or vote tabulating system.
Subd. 2. Transmission to central reporting location. After the close of the polls,
the head election judge must create a printed record of the results of the election for that
precinct. After the record has been printed, the head election judge in a precinct that
employs automatic tabulating equipment may transmit the accumulated tally for each
device to a central reporting location using a telephone, modem, Internet, or other
electronic connection. During the canvassing period, the results transmitted
electronically must be considered unofficial until the canvassing board has performed a
complete reconciliation of the results.
http://www.sos.state.mn.us/docs/2008_chapter_206_-_6-24-2008_final.pdf
In Minnesota the optical scans read paper ballots, which are preserved, and will be counted by hand during the recount process.
I’m told that they are routinely sampled by a hand recount during normal elections to verify that the tally conforms to machine count. It is a system that works and is hard to game, even if you could tamper with phone. Don’t worry. Recounts take time.
According to the Secretary of State verified tallies reported to the State often vary from those 1st reported. Norm Colman’s previous elections saw shifts in his favor of 2000 votes between initial reporting and verified results. This time it shifted the other way.
The shift of 100 votes occurred because of “typo†of someone reporting 24 votes that should have been 124 votes. Again, if you doubt it, they are going to count all the ballots by hand to make sure. The recount allows some ballots to be counted that machine missed where someone circled (for example) the dot rather than fill it in. If the voter’s choice is clear, we count it.
Once again Minnesota had the highest percentage of voter turn out in the nation. It did not reach the 85% record or even the 80% expected, but a lot higher than Alaska. Perhaps it has something to do with our laws that encourage voting by allow voters to register on election day at the polling place. Imagine that; a government that trusts its citizens and encourages them to take part in elections.
Man these freeper comments sure are hilarious.
Fun fact: Registration fraud does not have any impact on election results.
I appreciate all the info on your site Brad. I think anyone who disregards even the loss of one persons vote needs to stop and think. Nobody should lose their vote. This is ridiculous. Why is anyone still posting about Acorn? You can’t add voters. Fake people do not show up to vote. That was very much discredited. The only thing one could do is lose votes that are cast. So if one person out of this entire nation lost their vote then this entire election should be redone.
I think every possible voting check should be used. Electronic machines to count the vote are not a bad idea but they need to work. They are not doing a good job. Even if they do work it is stupid not to keep an original paper ballot. Print out a receipt so you have proof. It’s stupid to not have checks and double-checks to ensure accuracy. A clerk at the convenience store has to give you a receipt for your Pepsi but you can’t get a receipt for your vote.
The most amazing thing about the election of Barack Obama was in how many people focus on his race. It’s nice but it’s being used to avoid the reality about he actually won because people want change and we wanted a president we could trust and change the direction we’re headed. I saw a Republican pundit do that on Fox Sunday. He was asked about the mandate for liberalism and he said it wasn’t about that at all but wasn’t it real nice the black man won. It felt dirty to watch someone use his race as a political tool.
Also I believe the Dems should have a Senate majority. The Republicans need to get a lesson handed to them. They were corrupt and stupid and greedy for 8+ years. They alienated most of the people who voted for them. The anti-abortionist, pro-war, free trade, low tax wealthy, pro-corporate,anti world peace narrow minded principles they stand for are not really anything
Americans really agree with.
So if they want to win again they have to change and be a party of the people again. Good luck with that. Because if they don’t change they’ll never fairly win again.
I hope Barack cleans out all the fascism Bush and Cheney stamped on the Constitution.
Viva Democracy!