The local Charleston, South Carolina, NBC affiliate, WCBD, was hoodwinked by someone; apparently it was the SC Election Commission. In the following report, WCBD’s Larry Collins says that he has checked on the claim that “there is no independent paper back up from [South Carolina’s] touch machines.” He then goes on to inaccurately report, presumably from information given to him by the state election commission, that “there is a paper trail” on the state’s ES&S iVotronic voting systems…
Collins’ reporting is patently inaccurate.
The pieces of paper seen hanging in the background behind him are end of the day reports or possibly some “poll tapes,” printed out after polls close, showing the purported tallies from each machine or precinct. They are not auditable “paper trail” records of voters’ votes, and they are not verified in any way, shape, or form by the voter.
Those printouts can say absolutely anything, as printed, including the actual vote counts, erroneous vote counts due to machine malfunction or misprogramming, or, as seen in the following Fox “News” clip, vote counts that have been purposely manipulated by tampering and/or the inclusion of a virus implanted on one of the voting machines’ memory cards…
The example of the hack/virus seen above was on a Diebold AccuVote TS system, one that was given to VelvetRevolution.us by a company whistleblower and passed on to Princeton for their study. We broke the story of that hack back in 2006. [Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is co-founder of VR.]
The 100% unverifiable voting machines used in the SC Democratic primary were ES&S iVotronics, made by the “Nebraska company” referred to in WCBD’s report, not Diebold. Both machines, however, are Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, touch-screen) systems which do not offer a “Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail” (VVPAT). Even if they did offer a VVPAT, they would still be 100% unverifiable, but we’ll save that explanation for another day.
For now, suffice to say, WCBD was apparently hoodwinked by the SC Election Commission. There are no “paper trails” on SC’s e-voting machines, and there is no way for anyone to prove that a single vote cast on them was recorded as per the voter’s intent, as we’ve been trying to point out for years.
In the meantime, as we reported earlier today, Vic Rawls has filed a formal protest against last week’s primary election for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination said to have been won by candidate Alvin Greene who had no job, no campaign website, and ran no campaign. Among the concerns Rawl outlined in announcing his protest is his correct assertion of “the well-documented unreliability and unverifiability of the voting machines used in South Carolina.”
He also mentioned in his statement today that the campaign has received reports of “poll workers who had to change program cards multiple times” on Election Day.
Given what can be done with one of those “program cards,” as seen in the demonstration on Fox posted above, there is every reason to be very concerned about the reported results of the election, and we hope that Rawl’s campaign has ensured those cards are securely quarantined for investigation by computer scientists and security experts.
Rawl’s formal protest will be heard by the South Carolina Democratic Party’s executive committee on Thursday, where, Washington Post reports, the “burden of proof” will be on Rawl to prove that the unprovable election “victory” by Greene was illegitimate. Good luck with that.
In the meantime, if anybody out there has proof that Alvin Greene actually won the election we’d be delighted to see it. Unfortunately, none exists.
Rawl appeared on tonight’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. Olbermann was woefully uninformed about the election systems used in South Carolina. We were happy to see that Rawl was much less so, and repeated his concerns that the results were due to some form of software or hardware malfunction or tampering.
Here is that interview, followed by links to The BRAD BLOG’s previous coverage of this story to date. Hopefully someone at MSNBC bothers to read one or more of those detailed articles on this mess. Please feel free to Tweet the links to any of them to either @KeithOlbermann, @MaddowBlog or any other mainstream media outlet you know of. They may contact us via email or even via Twitter for more information, including actual facts and stuff…
Previously related at The BRAD BLOG:
- ‘Experts’ Eye 100% Unverifiable E-Vote System in ‘Win’ of SC’s Mystery U.S. Senate Nominee
- UPDATE: More Statisticians Focus on ‘Tampering, Malfunction’ of E-Vote System in SC Primary
- BREAKING: U.S. Senate Candidate Files Challenge to SC’s ‘Unreliable, Unverifiable’ E-Vote Results
Good for you Brad… keep blowing the horn about this.
On Monday, Greenville SC Channel 4 reported that the State Election Commission said this in the face of Rawl’s official protest:
“The system is protected, the system is secure, and most importantly, the system is accurate. We are confident in the system’s ability to perform…”
Here in Pennsylvania we’ve heard these same lines time and time again from officials talking about the SAME PAPERLESS VOTING MACHINES. We’ve even heard officials call printouts of the DRE results “paper records” and watched counties foolishly try to conduct so-called recounts by comparing two printouts of the same data out of a DRE.
Enough of this. It’s long past time. We all need to wake up and finally protect every vote nationally with a basic voter-verified paper ballot and an audit of every election. Then we can move on and improve from there.
In the meantime, what readers everywhere can and should do right now is jump in to the discussion about this situation in SC wherever possible. Add comments on every article, blog, talk show, etc that you can, urging full investigation and removal of these DREs, and support software independent paper-based voting.
Let’s all NOT let them push these DRE shenanigans under the rug again.
The new motto for Rawls may have to be:
The saddest thing is that with the burden of proof being that evidence-less machines left behind evidence, it only confirms Dr. Shamos’s oft-quoted line:
There is no EVIDENCE of election machines being hacked.
Well, he’s not lying–the system was designed to elect Republicans.
– Tom
SC is a gift that keeps on giving as the MSM loves to interview Greene. Kinda’ like putting up Tiger’s newest mistress every few days. Looks bad for the black guy in the WH. Sometimes the best laid plans go awry.(sp?)
Anyway, they went too far in their belief that the MSM and justice dept. would continue to cover for them. Some things are just too weird for even the most gullible to believe.
Maybe Greene can do what all the activists couldn’t . Bring attention to the US phony voting system.
Not sure what you’re trying to say John, there’s plenty of evidence that the machine count was invalid. And the system can be audited, it’s a cheap sloppy windows box running an access database.
Trouble is, ES&S hide behind the “Trade Secrets” shield and government is unwilling, thus far, to challenge this shield. So, the underlying code has never been fully analyzed.
but the electronic ballot and the database themselves can and should be analyzed as quickly as possible.
And these machines removed from service permanently.
A patriot like yourself should be able to appreciate the verifiable simplicity of paper ballots. No?
I want to clarify, when I say audit, I am NOT referring to an audit of the votes. I am referring to a line by line audit of the database and the source code….
The votes that thing has stored are meaningless.
Faith based voting is an insult to democracy.
“The voting machines have been used in thousands of elections since 2004”
really? the USA has had THOUSANDS of seperate elections since 2004?
where was I? and how come the whole citizenry of the USA are not flat on their backs from voter fatigue?
Perhaps our disagreement stems from the word “evidence” I was think of evidence in the sense of something you could bring to court or present to a skeptic to persuade him to your point of view.
With the unverifiable DRE’s currently on the market the machines provide not evidence which allows an election official or an election critic to support and of the following statements of faith:
1) I believe the machines captured, encoded, records, and counted the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
2) I believe the machines encountered a malfunction and, thus, failed to capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
3) I believe the machines programming contained a mistake which caused the machine(s) to incorrectly capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
4) I believe the machines were maliciously manipulated in way which caused the machine(s) to incorrectly capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
The paper trails are not evidence which support or refute any of the statements above.
The audit logs (windows or ES&S) not evidence which support or refute any of the statements above. Though I would believe the windows event s logs more than the ES&S event and audit logs. Still this is thin gruel from an evidentiary stand point
The line by line source code review is not evidence which support or refute any of the statements above because there is a unique executable for ever jurisdiction / ballot style administered by the machine. How do you know the examined executable is the one which ran on election day?
The row by row review of the database entries is not evidence which support or refute any of the statements above.
The main reason none of this is evidence is that all were produce from the same poisoned well: the un-reviewed and untested software which ran on the machinery on election night and which (because there is no chain of custody) may or may not exist today. The execution of software is a fundamentally unobservable process. Watching a CPU be warm is not the same a observing the votes it is supposedly counting.
Yes, voter marked ballots would be software-independent evidence which could support any of the the statements of faith above. In SC though a large chunk of the election records are/were generated under software control. Because of that the best you can prove is the software generated records are consistent not that the software generated records are correct or accurate.
Consider the these consistent electronic records:
I read the BradBlog everi day.
I read the BradBlog everi day.
I read the BradBlog everi day.
Consistent, but not correct.
I stand by the statement there is no evidence.
1) There is no evidence the machines captured, encoded, records, and counted the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
2) There is no evidence the machines encountered a malfunction and, thus, failed to capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
3) There is no evidence the machines programming contained a mistake which caused the machine(s) to incorrectly capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
4) There is no evidence the machines were maliciously manipulated in way which caused the machine(s) to incorrectly capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
This is the most dangerous aspect of these machines. Even people of good will and honest can disagree about the performance of the election machines and there is no evidence available to support or refute the claims. Because of this the disagreement the body politic is wounded and the wound festers because there is no Truth or Facts with which to clean the wound. There is only persistent uncertainly.
Vox Machina. The machines have spoken in SC as the Onion predicted the machines would.
2) There is no evidence the machines encountered a malfunction and, thus, failed to capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
……..
however there is evidence the machine failed to capture,encode,record,or ACCURATELY count the votes…assuming brads earlier reporting is correct and 25 precincts turned in more votes than voters..because we know that is physically impossible
To karenfromillinois:
Yes, but it is evidence you could bring to court or which would help persuade a skeptic to your point of view.
Maybe the second,but not the first.
so results that are physically impossible could not be introduced as evidence that a system simply does not work….why not?