FOLLOW-UP: ‘Orange Alert’ on Diebold, LHS Associates & the Vulnerable Senate Race in MA…

A quick follow up, as I’ll be on the road for most of today, on the mess I warned about on Friday concerning Tuesday’s Special Election for the U.S. Senate in MA, the terrible optical-scan Diebold voting machines in use there, and the company with a dubious, criminal background which sells, services and programs them:

UPDATE 1/19/10: More on early reports and other developments on Election Day, now here…

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18 Responses

  2. I suspect the White House will tell Coakley to concede quickly if it looks like she is losing because they can “take care of HCR in other ways.”

    Fact is, the “smartest guys in the room” in the West Wing don’t BELIEVE in electoral fraud.

  3. The way the corporate media is pushing that last minute “surge” in the polls is very telling, isn’t it? and the way they have a record of making a horse race out of horse shit is telling also. (see ’08 presidential race)

    According to what I’ve seen is that the Republican can only win if there is a low turnout. With a “Kennedy” in the race, there is a 5% ignorant voter offset and another 5% in vote tally shenanigans…There’s that pesky 10% again.

    We’ll see.

  7. Does anyone else think the media is totally 24×7 pushing Brown over Coakley? Just like Bush vs. Gore? They practically christened Brown the victor before anyone voted! Something funny is going on here in my opinion.

  8. Tell me what makes sense about the bluest state, which Obama won by 26% only a year ago, and a seat held by the Kennedy’s for 46 years…suddenly is (supposedly according to the media) going to vote Republican? Does that make any sense to anyone?

  10. Consider this: Bush NEVER had a majority as big as 18 and did whatever he wanted, but the Democrats are saying that if they lose and only have an 18 advantage in the senate, they can’t pass health care reform. So, the Democrats are either spineless wimps or they don’t want to pass health care reform and this will be a convenient excuse.

    And there has been NO positive media about Coakley, all the media stories are negative from the “liberal press”. And Coakley herself seems to be throwing the race by doing a poor job campaigning.

    This whole thing is weird in my opinion.

    This Brown guy comes out of nowhere to close a huge lead for Coakley. Why did that (supposedly) happen?

  11. Brad: Yeah, but we’re talking Kennedy’s old seat. You’d think it would be a landslide. You’re talking about the seat of THE guy who wanted health care reform.

  13. Gray said:

    Already two reports about voting machine breakdown at the Globe’s PollWatching forum: Boston/Jamaica Plains and Chelmsford/Drum Hill. Check for more here:
    http://b3.caspio.com/dp….10001f168068ac644737a10d

    Unfortunately your link doesn’t seem to work, Gray. Got another?

    Hmm, does someone keep track of such incidents?

    We try to, Gray! Your reports, those on the ground, and what others are seeing out there helps! Please leave your links here. And, if necessary, we can open up another thread devoted to them…

  14. This is how I phrased it on a gun-rights board I frequent…I was trying to cram it all in a nutshell for people completely new to election integrity issues:

    ———
    Regarding the MA elections, there is something that has me concerned. And understand, this is a non-partisan sort of concern, that it could be hacked. BY who, FOR who, God only knows.

    See, MA has a population of only about 6.5mil…more or less identical to AZ. But the population is a lot more spread out in MA. 56% of the AZ vote is piled up in Maricopa County where Phoenix is. Boston really isn’t that big, not much bigger than Tucson.

    MA doesn’t handle vote counting at the county level, but rather the city level. So if this election were handled in AZ, there’d be 13 vote counting centers to keep track of, one per county. In MA, over 300. Nobody, not even the Dems or GOP has the kind of election-knowledgeable manpower to keep track. That’s problem one.

    Problem two is that a lot of these 300+ agencies are tiny, with no computer skills to speak of in-house in way too many cases. So they outsource the entire vote handling process to a fairly shady election services company in the northeast called LHS Associates…who are very secretive about how they do business, have made many weird statements about how they deal with election issues AND have had executives get busted for drug sales not long ago…and kept ’em on staff after. See also:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiiaBqwqkXs

    LHS rents devices just like what are seen in the above video all over MA. You can see ’em being hacked in the segments above from the HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy”. And you can see LHS execs making security claims that don’t hold water at all.

    http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/71236.html

    Now, every vibe LHS gives off are “criminal” rather than “ideologues on one side or the other”. So I have NO clue whatsoever which candidate is at risk.

    But I am quite concerned that the election is at risk, with LHS having that much control over a bunch of small, clueless election agencies. I believe LHS can pick the winner in this race, pure and simple.

    Full disclosure: I’m a member of the board of directors at http://blackboxvoting.org
    ———

    The very next response:

    ———

    Man, that’s some great information, but now I feel bummed. 🙁

  17. UPDATE: Bev Harris at BBV responds:

    “The media outlets often have something that looks like results before the polls close, but those are usually testing their results Web site with dummy numbers. Only if the numbers actually end up matching the real results is that relevant — but that would be very important if it happened, so it is always a good idea to get a screen shot of such early postings.”

    Righto. Good to know. We’ll see.

    However, of interest: John Zogby called it for Coakley by less than 1%, and on the Sean Hannity show, no less.
    Audio here:
    http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/xbwtx2

    …well, this is getting saucy already, ain’t it?