One of the more bizarre incidents we’ve come across this election…
Karl Bradfield Nicholas, 50, was taken into custody around 1 a.m., Lt. Lyn Tomioka said. He was not cooperating with authorities, and none of the ballots have been recovered.
Nicholas was in charge of a polling site in the city’s southern most district when he inexplicably made off Tuesday afternoon with the ballots, a memory pack that records information from the ballots, the voter roster and another poll worker’s cell phone, said John Arntz, San Francisco’s director of elections.
Authorities have not determined a motive for the alleged theft.
…
Without the voter roster, Arntz said officials would not be able to determine whose ballots were taken. But he added that so far, it does not appear the missing ballots would have changed the outcome of the election. There was no contest for supervisor in that district, and all the citywide ballot measures appear to have been decided by considerably more than 75 votes.
Nicholas has been booked on three felonies, including burglary. He’s being held in the county jail.
UPDATE: In response to the inevitable cries from e-voting apologists citing this report to say “See! Paper ballots can be stolen!” please note that the MEMORY CARD from the op-scan system was also stolen. It’s a helluva lot easier to make a quick get away with a single memory card (about the size of a credit card) than it is with tons of paper ballots. Just thought I’d point that out.
UPDATE 11/5/10: Ballots found in a pond at the Palace of Fine Arts. Soggy. Broken chain of custody. Very valuable memory card still on the loose. Details at San Francisco Chronicle…
This has been a really whacky election, starting with NC GOP suing North Carolina State Board of Elections over voting machine failure, up to a Pennsylvania man in ambulance has drivers stop by polling place and he votes from his stretcher.
Oh, and in Canada, municipal voters are upset because of long wait to vote via internet.
Crazy election year.
AP quote above includes: “Without the voter roster, Arntz said officials would not be able to determine whose ballots were taken. But he added that so far, it does not appear the missing ballots would have changed the outcome of the election.”
This implies there is no privacy in such voting systems!!!!!
article says he made off with the ballots and the memory card on Tuesday afternoon. Who knows how many votes were on the card. Could have been 75 or any other number.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Scoop-on-Election-Thef-by-Josh-Mitteldorf-101103-827.html
The above link is for info about discrepancies between exit polls and poll results, showing a one in a million chance that there was not election fraud helping republican senator and governor victories.
x93fe @ 2 said:
No, I think you may have misread that graf. Or, perhaps, over read that graf.
If the voter roster showed who signed in to vote that day — presumably 75 voters at that point — it would tell us who the 75 voters were whose ballots were stolen. I don’t believe it would tell us which ballot was cast by which voter. In fact, I’m sure it wouldn’t, since it would be illegal to have a system which allows for matching ballot to voter in CA.
Perhaps he wanted to see if the votes on the data card matched the ballots? Maybe he was trying to be a hero?
Ballots reportedly found in the pond at the Palace of Fine Arts. Memory card still missing.
For those intrigued by this mystery and searching for clues, I offer the following: The Palace of Fine Arts is the home of the science museum known as The Exploratorium. This museum began with an exhibit known as Cybernetic Serendipity. That sounds like a clue, doesn’t it?
The article says it’s unclear if the ballots will be counted because the chain of custody has been broken. Ya think?