The November 3rd Election Day is nearing, so naturally the words “glitch,” “hiccup,” “snafu,” and “snag” are back in the headlines, instead of the word “failure,” which would be the appropriate one to use in such cases.
Today, it’s our old friends in Sarasota, under the continuing and now-legendarily failed direction of Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent and her latest failed voting system, this one an optical-scan system made by Diebold, featured in the Charlotte Sun’s “Scanning glitch in vote machine test”:
In one test a ballot with both blue and black ink was unable to be scanned. Officials pulled that scanner from service and substituted another. It didn’t work either.
The machine that didn’t work — no, it’s not a “glitch,” it didn’t succeed in carrying out the purpose for which it was designed and purchased anymore than a car which didn’t start, or whose brakes failed could be said to have a “glitch” — was the old, failed Diebold Accuvote optical-scan system, similarly used in hundreds and hundreds of counties in dozens and dozens of other states.
The “solution” Dent ultimately settled on in response to the failure of the machines made by Diebold (now calling themselves Premier and recently purchased by their larger competitor ES&S) is as bad, and as offensive, as the original failure itself…
That’s exactly how Dent’s office plans on dealing with any blue-ink ballot problems on election day.
…
Ballot booths will have black felt-tip pens to be used, but just in case you are an absentee voter, she recommends using black ink.
“If the absentee ballots have the blue ink, we will know if the scanner is not reading that and we will duplicate that ballot” to run through the scanner, Dent said.
Got that? If an absentee voter’s ballot is filled out in blue ink and doesn’t get read by the scanner, and election officials happen to notice that, someone from the office will “duplicate” the ballot by hand (presumably accurately, but who can know for certain?) onto another ballot that will then be run through the op-scanner to be counted (presumably accurately, but who can know for certain?).
All of that in lieu of simply counting the damned thing in front everyone, with that other type of tabulator so rarely used: Human eyeballs.
As to what will happen at the polling place — where ballots are run immediately through the op-scanner — if someone uses blue ink, instead of the black ink pens the county will endeavor to provide, the “solution” is similarly pathetic…
But what if there is mark in one race but not the other? Sarasota inventor Skip Parish said that could go unread.
Former testing has shown the county’s Premier’s OSX models have run into this problem before, and it has yet to be resolved, he said.
Parish is absolutely right. The Diebold/Premier op-scan systems have had this problem for a long time. So have other scanners made by other companies, such as ES&S for example, the company which recently purchased Diebold/Premier and which, if the sale is not stopped, will own a virtual monopoly in controlling the tabulation of nearly every vote in the U.S.
And, as if it’s not already all bad enough, there’s this additional thought from the article: Even with the “correct” ink, ballots are only sometimes read correctly by the scanners…
The real solution, of course, is to simply use a system similar to the one used when a race is believed to be so close that candidates and voters demand every ballot be counted and counted accurately, the gold standard for elections, hand-counting — hopefully at the precincts and in front of the entire citizenry.
But Dent would rather move her voters from the ES&S touch-screen system which infamously failed by losing 18,000 ballots wholesale in 2006 during a U.S. Congressional race decided by just 369 votes for the Republican candidate, to a Diebold op-scan system that loses them … um … whenever it wants.
Or, whenever she wants! This is the same system which was found to have a number of failures which allow for the wholesale deletion of ballots without notice to anybody, and allow the supposedly “permanent” audit log system to be re-written at any time, without notice to anybody. That’s just one of the reasons that Velvet Revolution is asking you to join their “Diebold: Return Our Money!” campaign
[Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VR].This is also the same system as seen being exploited in the 2006 HBO documentary Hacking Democracy. In that film, the machines were hacked in such a way that only a hand-count of ballots would have ever revealed the results had been entirely flipped. You can watch the infamous hack from the film right here. Yes, those machines are still being used in Florida, and virtually every other state in the union, despite what was revealed by that years-old hack.
Speaking of years-old hacks, good luck to ya on November 3rd, Kathy Dent! And good luck to Sarasota voters this year! And to all the others around the country using identical, or nearly identical equipment to tabulate their paper ballots in lieu of human being actually counting them accurately and publicly.
That’s democracy! Or…whatever.
Until we can truly have an automated computer voting system, we need to stick with what has worked for decades in the voting booths. Let’s implement some strict identity laws for who is voting on election day.
Um, Stephen, we have automated computer voting systems. They don’t work. None of them. And it’s 100% impossible to verify if/when they do.
Other than that, did you fail to read the article above? Or any other that we’ve ever written here at The BRAD BLOG? What do “strict identify laws for who is voting on election day” have to do with failed voting systems? In fact we already do have such strict laws. So pardon me if I ask: What the hell are you talking about?
This may affect other states.
The problem is that Sarasota’s Diebold OSX cannot read blue ink nor can they read #2 pencil markings. It affects several counties in Florida any likely any jurisdiction in the US using the same newer version Diebold OSX.
Intermittent electronic vote tabulation devices lead to intermittent US Constitution, intermittent justice, intermittent monetary system, intermittent health care, intermittent leaders, and an intermittent lifespan for our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan.
These electronic vote tabulation devices are the cause of every problem we currently have.
Get rid of these devices, and start cleaning the problem, keep these devices and look forward to more ponzi, oath breaking, death and mayhem.
Kathy Dent does not serve the public interest. And neither does anyone who pushes these devices on our elections.
In the past I might have called such people domestic terrorists, but there is no better “name” I can think of. While Kathy is not out there strapping on a suicide bomb backpack, her actions lead ultimately to deaths. (Our soldiers, and sick)
So what do you call that?
If not a terrorist. These devices bend the will of the people for political ends and prevent the public from holding anyone corrupt responsible. (The cops don’t arrest the corruption, and you can’t vote them out anymore.)
So what do you call that?
Florida isn’t the worst place to vote. Anywhere these devices are is the worst place to vote. And if your vote can’t get counted correctly, what do you call that? It sure the hell isn’t called voting anymore!
A waste of time?
Terrorism?
Corruption?
What is it called? And after a freaking decade why can’t we arrest these people?
National Hiccup day?
Or a revolution?
Who knows…Not even God ;o)
* ORIGIN: In loving memory of FRAVIA
— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fravia
Justice Dept. is busy investigating ACORN.They have no time for Election fraud. All the AGs are still “Loyal Bushies”.
electronic counting machines do not give accurate results,we know this and yet our most basic voice in the descion making process in this country is repeatedly sabotaged
if i am remembering correctly,dent does more than buy inaccurate machines,she arrests her opponents if they have the audacity to want to “watch” the vote counting process
jeanie dean,this would be great thread to repost that video!!
HeeehHHEE, Karen! WHICH video of Kathy Dent trying to block public observation do you mean? I have about 40…
Still, this one’s a Dandy:
“Kathy Dent on Transparency: ‘A Word to the Wise’…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhMbrZ1VvQA
This gem of a video opens with a 2007 clip caught on tape by the magnificent Ginny Ross (Oregon Voters Coalition) at a creepy vendor / S.O.E. conference in Colorado. Here, Dent defends her “open and transparent” recount process in 2006 to her in-house sympathetic colleagues, I guess unawares that there was any evidence out there to the contrary…
Shocked and amused that she would even assert such a thing after that bread-n’-circuses recount I filmed, (where thanks to the ES*S iVotronic touchscreen machines there was nothing to recount), I took Ginny’s unbelievable Dent excerpt and spliced it with clip after clip from the recount that proves what a “distortion” (lie) that really is.
(This version does not contain Dent’s infamous temper tantrum at observer Susan Pynchon. That video, laden with more freaky-deaky “distortions” and fun “incrimanations” caught on tape from that utterly bogus FL-13 Recount is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQv7CmBp5kk)
For those of us with election video A.D.D., here’s a quickie – Dent blames BBV and (us?) for “all her woes”: “Kathy Dent: Those Pesky Activists…” (2:35)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83TGawMwJhQ
…a similiar video, but one I personally adore because Dent was the best unintentional comedian I’ve ever met, is here: (2:12) “Kathy Dent: Lessons Learned in Sarasota”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXMgjrOeEUE
(again, thanks to Ginny Ross!)
The following clip has less to do with Dent’s attempts to block observation, but points to what may be behind her almost obsessive need to hamper it. A video we spent months trying to get to the bottom of – with the help of my hero of heroes Susan Pynchon (“Hacking Democracy”)- still shocks and confounds me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oehEKXpupA
…On the second day of the recount, Dent tries to hand the Parameters of the Jennings / Buchanan election over to ES&S via contract she drew up with her husband:
To be fair, Karen, I don’t think Dent ever threatened to have anyone arrested. But you don’t have to travel far in Florida to find two S.O.E.’s who have – one BRENDA SNIPES in (FUBAR) Broward Co. who arrested Ellen Brodsky last year for nothing – false charges, and ANNE McFALL in Volusia County who threatened to arrest her opponent, SUSAN PYNCHON, for filming the vote count in her own Florida Election.
(The filmmakers behind “Hacking Democracy” did a fantastic follow up piece on Susan re: this very issue for People and Power (Al Jazeera) at the time of the her S.O.E. election in 2008. Highly recommended viewing for everyone, but especially BradBloggers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DEQfEQ-lG4)
…and thanks for asking, Karen. Ain’t Dent a piece of work? Her re-election last November was such a bummer. Her name is synonymous with “Failure” in Sarasota. We all thought for sure she’d be off and away, lobbying for ES*S by now.
Hm. I guess now that Diebold is now ES*S, Dent wins some more.
I like to think she can’t work for them because they would never offer her a position; she’s such a bad liar – way too many “tells”.
She’s no Bachmann, that’s for damn sure.
OH~! Oopsy! Do you mean the DIEBOLD MANUAL OVERRIDE VIDEO from the 2008 Primaries?
Oopsy! Yeah, That one:
(3 parts) actual override is in the last two:
Diebold Override PT 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRFtYGJtOEQ
Diebold Override PT 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNHE7H0DMxo
(Gee. Sorry, all, for the round-about-the-rosy-Magical Mystery Dent Tour!)
I would like to say, in Kathy Dent’s defense, that the failures of Sarasota County’s voting systems, past and present, ARE NOT HER FAULT.
The State of Florida has absolutely the worst Bureau of Voting System Certification, which continues to certify faulty systems, ignores problems that arise during and after certification, and DOES NOT COMMUNICATE known problems to the counties.
Instead, the state covers up problems and leaves each county to flounder on its own.
Where Kathy Dent IS AT FAULT is doing just what the state does — hiding and covering up problems, as she did in the 2006 election and continues to do.
We are sympathetic that election administrators are trying to deal with lousy equipment, but they are not doing any favors to anyone pretending that this lousy equipment is accurately counting votes.
We understand that they think democracy will be destroyed if voters know the truth, but that simply isn’t the case.
I would be the first to cheer Kathy Dent if she simply starts acknowledging real problems when they occur. Kathy Dent wants her touchscreen machines back, not because they work, but because it’s impossible to tell when they don’t. And THAT is where she’s got it all wrong.
Perhaps someday we can all work together towards verifiable, accurate elections with complete transparency.
Meanwhile, activists have to be careful to place blame where blame is due. It’s fine to go after election administrators for NOT disclosing problems with voting equipment, but we have to remember that they are being handed this lousy equipment as a result of a failed state and federal certification process.
When Skip Parish, Sarasota resident, asked an employee at one of the federal testing labs if they were aware of some of the bugs that he’s discovered in the Premier voting system, the employee responded that she was aware of some of the bugs but that the lab didn’t address them in their testing because they “weren’t one of the questions.” WHEW! So, if the machines burst into flame when someone tries to vote on them it won’t be disclosed because it’s not one of the questions?
This is an indictment of the entire certification process.
And Florida, which doesn’t require federal certification of its voting systems, has a state certification program that’s even worse than the federal program, if that’s possible.
If election administrators and activists would join together to “out” the voting-system problems they find and demand that those problems be corrected, the whole nation would benefit. We’re all part of “we the people,” and we should all be working towards verifiable and accurate elections.
Susan Pynchon
Florida Fair Elections Coalition
The thoughts from on the ground there are much appreciated, Susan.
My main beef with Dent in this case was her “solution”. I am *extraordinarily* offended by the idea that ballots are “duplicated” at some secret location by some unknown election official.
It doesn’t only happen as Dent has now ordered it to happen. It happens other places as well when ballots can’t be read by machines for whatever reason. And I find the practice absolutely appalling and, yes, offensive.
Beyond that, of course, I’m happy to associate myself with your opinions expressed above.
Brad, I absolutely agree with you and should have addressed the “secret duplication” of ballots in my first comment. Secrecy is the BIG PROBLEM in our elections. Most election procedures are done outside the view of the public and of course the machines count our votes on secret software.
Kathy Dent prevented everyone from observing the absentee ballot process in 2008, saying there “wasn’t enough room” in the absentee ballot area for even one observer. I don’t defend her tactics or her cover ups — my only point was that shoddy voting equipment makes it through the certification process and gets dumped on the counties.
Kathy Dent has consistently operated on lies and cover ups, which is the other big problem with elections — they’re only as honest as the person or people running them in each jurisdiction. Dent’s talk at the Oregon election conference in 2007, for example, in which she gave her version of how 18,000 votes were lost in Sarasota in 2006, was riddled with inaccuracies and untruths from the beginning to the end. (Dent’s Oregon talk was filmed by Oregon’s Ginny Ross and parts of her talk are linked in Jeannie Dean’s comments above).
Unfortunately, Dent is not alone in covering up problems. Numerous supervisors of elections knew in 2006, for example, that the iVotronic ADA (Americans with Disabilities) machines were not working — the video ballot didn’t work properly and votes cast on the ADA machines were inauditable because, instead of linking each vote with a PEB (Personalized Electronic Ballot) serial number, the ADA votes simply registered as “0 VTR.” During our investigation of the 2006 election, each supervisor gave a different reason why the votes on the ADA machines were thousands fewer in the general election than they had been in the primary — and several of those explanations were false. The truth was they had prevented people from voting on the ADA iVotronics in the general election because they knew they weren’t working and were inauditable, but only one honest soul admitted that to us. He was an IT employee from Pasco County, the county where our now Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, was then Supervisor of Elections. Remember that Browning took 40 iVotronic machines out of circulation in Pasco County before the 2006 election, but then never admitted there were problems with the machines and blamed the Sarasota undervote on the voters.
Last but not least, a tip ‘o the hat to Jeannie Dean and her relentless election coverage, which has resulted in an amazing video archive exposing the secrecy, inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and lies that exist around our elections and particularly around election problems. Great work, Jeannie!
Susan Pynchon
Florida Fair Elections Coalition
Florida Statute 101.5614(5) covers the procedure for duplicating absentee ballots that cannot be read by tabulators. Like her or not, Kathy Dent’s “offensive” solution is what the LAW requires. “Who can know for certain” if the duplicated ballot is “presumably” accurate? Read the statue. Each ballot, duplicate and original, are serial numbered so that any challenge to their accuracy can be checked later.
I do find, however, your presumption that hand-duplicated ballots are not accurate and should be looked upon with suspicion completely contrary to your own argument that all ballots should be hand-counted! If you think electronic tallies can’t be trusted, just wait until you see hand-tallied results! Ask Iraq and Afghanistan how much better hand counting is!
Also, your assertion that “this is the same system” that had editable audit logs and that was hacked by Hari Hursti is completely false. I guess by #4 of your own “Rules for Posting,” that you should delete this entire post as misleading.
Those security holes–genuine as they were–have long since been closed in subsequent versions certified by Florida well before the 2008 elections. Firmware has changed, software has changed; and the OSX equipment is in no way “the same” as the OS equipment Mr. Hursti revealed security flaws in. The OS machines may still be in widespread use in Florida and elsewhere, but the firmware changes make them more secure and not “the same.”
Those “old” OS machines, by the way, can read blue ink and pencil just fine. Heck, they can even read green and red and purple ink, too.
amazing work jeanie,thank you so much for posting those valuable videos
yes i had brenda snipes mixed up with dent,so many non transparent peops in charge of our democracy it is hard to keep track
phil n doval says/
and we should just take diebolds word for that since they have been so open and honest up til now right?
Warning on voting machines reveals oversight failure
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/50485.html
……………….
susan says,
in my reply let me first state that i am a fan of susan’s work in election integrity but i disagree that it is not dents fault for the system she has in place to count votes afterall if my county paid me to go buy a bumblebee with golden wings and i looked and looked but i could not find a bumble bee with golden wings…what would an honest person do? should i buy a bumble bee with regular wings and have a vendor paint them gold? or should i just fess up and tell the county..there are no bumblee bees with golden wings?
i am not a strictly hand count only gal,i think if you used a counter with an open source,like mitchs,kept everything open and transparent and hand counted the top race along with random race on same ballot(and re counted everything if a difference came up)i could feel secure that the actual winner won
karen
I’ve edited four of your latest comments so they can be more readily understood by readers… AND added the links where you failed to show a source for quoted material.
Would you PLEASE make more of an effort to be comprehensible?
Golly gosh, our new friend “Phil N. D’Oval” sure does sound a like our old friend “Wally O’Diebold”, whose initial appearance as a Diebold Troll/Pimp at The BRAD BLOG, way back in 2006, was detailed here, before he would later be outed by Black Box Voting, in an exceptional investigative report [PDF], as Diebold employee and undercover propagandist, Rob Pelletier.
“D’Oval” sure sounds/writes like him, but I couldn’t tell you if it’s him or not at this point.
In any case, to the substance of his comment @ #13 above…
If Dent stood up for the voters the way Ion Sancho, (SoE in Leon County, FL), for example, does, instead of undermining them at every possible turn, perhaps such laws could be either changed, or worked around. State law or not, I find the practice extraordinarily offensive and — in the case of the problem where it occurs at the polling place — entirely ineffective, since there’s no real way to know if a ballot is rejected because of purposeful undervotes on the ridiculous ink problem.
I think you mean IRAN and Afghanistan, but I’m just guessing. Either way, apparently you failed to read the article that I linked to twice in the original post above: “Democracy’s Gold Standard: Hand-Marked, Hand-Counted Paper Ballots, Publicly Tabulated at Every Polling Place in America…” wherein I discussed how it was, in fact, Iran’s recent election that was the last straw for me when it comes to the way elections are secretly tabulated, be it on Kathy Dent/Diebold-style optical-scanners, or equally-as-secret central-based hand-counting behind closed doors.
“Hand-tallied results”, at the polling place, in full view of the citizenry, do quite well, thank you, where they are still done, be that in 40% of New Hampshire’s precincts, in Canada, or elsewhere.
That you and your friends are unlikely to enjoy millions/billions in tax-payer dollar welfare to privatize our public elections if we use people instead of secret corporate software to tally results, is not really my concern. I believe in the Constitution and the self-governance called for therein. If you enjoy a different system, might I suggest you move to Iran or Afghanistan instead, where you can have all the secretly-controlled election results you like.
#4 in our Rules for Posting at The BRAD BLOG concerns the posting of “knowing dis-information”. Are you suggesting that I’m knowing posting dis-information? If so, what is your evidence for that? Feel free to share.
“Karen in Illinois” already pointed you towards the March, 2009 article in which Diebold/Premier admitted that all of their current GEMS systems allow for the deletion of ballots without notice to the system operator and/or rewriting of “permanent” audit logs, etc.
Do you know something that Diebold doesn’t? Do you have evidence to back up your assertion? I’d be happy to review it, and post a correction to the article above where merited.
Well, there are so many different “genuine security holes” when it comes to Diebold’s systems (and ES&S’ and Sequoia’s, etc.) that it can become difficult to keep track of them all. That said, are you asserting that there is no more interpreted code in the Diebold systems? (Code which was expressly banned by the Federal Voting System Standards which Florida chooses to ignore?) If so, that’s swell. And if the system in question here is the one which the U.S. EAC certified in August of this year, I’d point you to this article posted here last week, in which it’s revealed that the federal certification tests didn’t bother to test security issues. Did Florida? Have any independent testers, such as those who carried about CA’s “Top to Bottom Review” been allowed to do so? Or should we just take your/Diebold’s word for it?
Too bad they were so easily hacked and so often failed and in such extraordinary violation of both federal standards and standards for publicly overseeable elections.
From Feburary, 2007:
VID: “David Drury (Chief/ Florida Bureau of Voting Systems and Certification) Admits Limits of Florida State Software (Security) Testing”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkSg2-8kurE
(**very poor quality video / camera was on it’s last legs – subtitled for accuracy.)
Susan Pynchon #12 said,
Actually it’s secret “hardware and software.”
Software doesn’t work without hardware. Which is why I have always said “electronic vote tabulation device” Ignoring one is ignoring half the picture here.
Phil N. D’Oval #13 said,
A serial number for each ballot is the removal of transparency. If you can track a serial number, you have no transparency, as the ballots are now unique and identifiable.
Nonsense, the voter can not see the electronic signal which represents the vote. Such a state is a broken chain of custody because of electronics and physics. Which is why none of these “electronic vote tabulation devices” (hardware, Software, firmware) are suitable for elections, and they never will be.
None of them.
Phil!
You too? You too! I edited your comments’ format.
Sheesh.
If yer gonna be quoting things, including on the thread, PLEASE blockquote it unless it’s just a couple words or a phrase. Ideally you should blockquote it AND italicize it, but at least do one or the other. It’s much easier to read this stuff if you do it that way.
Try to think of all the people trying to make their way down through the thread. Just paste the text, then highlight it and hit the blockquote button. So EASY and saves people so much work.
Especially people whose eyesight is not so good… not to mention those whose synapses are all but seized up on this stuff….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNHE7H0DMxo
phil d oval said,
(side note to 99,i tried it sorry if i don’t get it right)
jeanies video shows a manuel back door override of the tabulation of votes,so even if the actual counters were fixed,which they are not,ANYTHING can be “adjusted” at the tabulation stage
btw brad u rock!