11/29 Irregularities roundup

David Cobb (G) and Michael Badnarik (L) have filed to recount NM and NV.

There’s a detailed count of the provisional OH ballots (not related to the OH recount) here.

The GAO has agreed to investigate election irregularities.

AP’s Ohio Election Still Contested

(Same report here as “One Month Later, Fight Over Ohio Continues”; Keith Olbermann comments here.)

Olbermann’s previous report (11/21) includes the following concerning the Berkeley study:

Also, a less biased source might want to investigate the claims made in “Voting Machines Count Backwards in Okla.”

And, from NE’s WOWT: “Sarpy County election officials are trying to figure out how they ended up with more votes than voters in the general election. As many as 10,000 extra votes have been tallied and candidates are still waiting for corrected totals… Johnny Boykin lost his bid to be on the Papillion City Council. The difference between victory and defeat in the race was 127 votes.” An interesting computer error may be involved.

Berkeley researchers: "Irregularities May Have Awarded 130,000 - 260,000 or More Excess Votes to Bush"

From their press release:

ComputerWorld has a report similar to the press release here. The study gets dismissed here.

The study itself is available here. Perhaps someone who’s familiar with statistics can weigh in.

UPDATE: CalInsider publishes a reader email about the study here. Keith Olbermann discusses the study here.

UPDATE 2: Wired has a report including a few quotes here. The blog Who Really Won? is covering these topics. The 11/20 entry here (no permalink) raises potential problems with the study. This says the CalInsider letter is from Dafydd ab Hugh, an author. There’s a MetaFilter thread on the study here.

The study is discussed from a statistics perspective here; perhaps someone who’s familiar with the field could give a summary. That last link includes several other links, charts, etc.

Potential statistics-oriented problems are presented here, here, here, and here.

The AP’s report is “Academia still fixated on November 2”. CNET reports on two academics have different views of the study in “Report: Florida data suggests e-voting problems”

UC Berkeley To Challenge E-Vote In Florida

This from a PR agency email:

Here’s the story: A research team at UC Berkeley will report that irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000-260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The study shows an unexplained discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting methods. This is the first time that an academic institution has formally challenged the e-voting system, and the University is calling on local voting officials in Florida to investigate. The research team – which comprises some of the top minds in voter research – will disclose full results of the study and the raw data at the press conference tomorrow.

I’m not going to be able to make the press release, but we’ll try to have it covered …

11/18 Irregularities roundup

From the press release UC Berkeley Study Questions Florida E-Vote Count: Research Team Calls for Immediate Investigation

See the link for the call in number.

Ohio provisional ballots seem legitimate: Of the 11 counties that have completed checking provisional ballots, 81 percent of the ballots are valid, according to an Associated Press survey Monday. Counties that have completed partial tallies also said most of the provisional ballots were being counted…

Ohio finds possible double votes, counts

Lawsuit questions ‘discovery’ of 78,000 absentee votes in Broward

Bush won Iowa by 10,000 votes

“Vote fraud investigators visit Volusia [County FL]”: Representatives of a Seattle-based organization investigating possible election fraud visited the Volusia County elections department Tuesday after being provided reprints of voting machine records instead of originals. The reprints issue is explained in the “Volusia County on lockdown” section here.

From 11/1’s “Computer Chip Blamed For Voting Problem In Volusia County”: A computer chip is getting the blame for some voter problems in Volusia County. Those ballots will have to be re-fed. The defective chip was found Monday morning as poll workers fired up the machine for the last day of early voting… The chip was escorted by deputies to Daytona Beach and is in use right now.

Conspiracy Theories Abound After Election quotes a spokesman for a trade organization: “The fact is, electronic voting machines worked great … this is an enormous success story.” It also quotes John Fund of the WSJ: “There are 200,000 precincts in this country … there are going to be problems. You know, there was a computer in North Carolina that actually ate 4,500 votes… There are genuine problems but we shouldn’t be distracted, if we can, by Internet fantasists.”

Did lawyer-observers on Election Day miss fraud incidents? says Kerry lawyers were only trained to look for voter intimidation and similar incidents, not possible computerized fraud.

Justice through Music is offering a $100,000 reward for evidence of vote fraud. See the site for the fine print.

33,000 ballots lost in shuffle:

UM Regents results: off by two.

The University of Michigan Board of Regents results are wrong. The State of Michigan received wrong results from Washtenaw County. Washtenaw County inaccurately tallied the results of Ann Arbor’s Ward 5 Precinct 9.

This is because our County Clerk failed to modify electronically reported results based on improper writein votes. A larger problem is that Ann Arbor does not train election inspectors to look for such modifications.

I spoke about the votes in question here. (FYI, I spoke about the election experience here and here.) Here’s what happened:

• One voter did not quite understand the instructions. Instead of connecting arrows to the right of candidates’ names, (s)he crossed out entire candidate names. One of the lines (s)he drew to vote for a candidate in the right column strayed into an arrow in the center column. The arrow errantly marked indicated a vote for a writein candidate for UM Regent. That voter also selected two valid candidates in that vote-for-two office.
  
• The voter fed his/her ballot into the vote tabulator. The machine saw three votes in the vote-for-two category of UM Regent. It made a unique beep, spit the ballot back at the voter, and printed a message indicating that the ballot was overvoted for the office of UM Regent. We told the voter that s/he overvoted UM Regent and that the machine would not tally that office. We asked whether the voter would prefer a fresh ballot or would prefer to cast the ballot as-is. The voter chose to cast the ballot as-is. We pressed the “3” button on the keypad; the machine accepted the ballot and counted all the votes except for the UM Regent votes.
  
• Upon closing, a member-of-another-party and I studied the machine tape printout. We also examined all the ballots with writein votes. One of the ballots we studied was the ballot mentioned above. We determined that the machine saw three votes for UM Regent on that ballot. We noticed that one of the overvotes was for an invalid writein candidate. As per Michigan Law (in the Special Handling section, near the bottom), we “undid” that writein vote. We noted that the machine was wrong; the ballot was not overvoted. We wrote “+1” on the official machine tape printout next to the names of two candidates selected by that voter.
  
• We sealed everthing up and delivered our materials to City Hall. The City Clerk sent the tape to the County Clerk.
  
• The County Clerk’s office loaded the electronic results from our machine’s memory pack. They modified those electronic results based on the “+1”s on our tape printout. They failed to notice our manually written “+1”s in the office of UM Regent.
  
• The County Board of Canvassers examined our tape. They certified the election without catching the County Clerk’s omission.
  
• The county sent the incorrect results to the state.
  

Two votes may not seem like much, but to me these two votes are symptomatic of a structural flaw in the system which needs to be corrected.

One structural flaw is at the precinct level. Election day is long enough as it is, and election inspectors make enough mistakes without having to examine writein votes. The city did not train us to examine them October 28 and likely will not train us to examine them in the future. My guess is that Ann Arbor tallies were off by 200-250 votes. IMO, barring a change in the law, I would expect this error to continue.

Note: this is 200-250 total votes. Many of these “lost” votes canceled each other out. Many of these are probably in offices where the incumbent ran unopposed. Further, I arrived at the 200-250 estimate by multilpying the number of precincts in Ann Arbor, 48, by the number of write in votes we found, 5. If other precincts did look for invalid writeins, this number is overstated.

Another structural flaw is at the county level. I spoke with people in the County Clerk’s office. They examined the official tape marked with the “+1”s and agreed that the results were off. (They also printed out a copy of my most recent Command Post post to assist their efforts.) IMO, I expect them to change their procedures to guard against such mistakes in the future; this may prompt Ann Arbor to change their policies.

Warren Mitofsky Confirms "No Evidence" of Voter Fraud

Today at Colby College, Mayflower Hill conducted an exclusive interview with Warren Mitofsky— one of the architects of the National Election Pool Exit Polls— about the questions surrounding this year’s numbers, leaks to bloggers, computer voting machines that don’t leave paper trails, and more.

What is important is that Mitofsky puts the conspiracy theories to rest by declaring- categorically- that after extensive analysis, he believes his numbers were off and sees NO EVIDENCE of systematic voter fraud.

The full interview is here.

Mystery Pollster is also covering Mayflower Hill’s interview here.

11/15 Irregularities roundup

The Greens have raised enough money to recount Ohio (also here).

11/11: 2 N.C. candidates request recount: “Feds to check out flaws in Mecklenburg, other N.C. counties”

How to Hack the Vote: the Short Version gives step-by-step directions, including screen shots. See also the pre-election Scientists worry about reliability of e-voting.

The NYT editorial “About Those Election Results” (also here) discusses various problems with eVoting, mentions the blogosphere, and suggest reforms to make the process more trustworthy.

There’s a 10Meg video of Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and the NYT’s John Schwartz on Charlie Rose here. Nadler was one of the congressmen who sent the letter to the GAO requesting an investigation of voting irregularities.

This unconfirmed report on Taos County, NM says: For the early voters on the paper trail/optical scanner machine, 100% of the voters cast a vote for President. For the Election day voters on the no-paper-trail machine, 14+%, about one in 7, showed no vote for president…

Warren County, Ohio is reportedly doing a recount. This was the county that prevented reporters from observing the initial ballot counting due to a supposed terrorism threat.

On 11/5, the AP reported 22 voting machines have less-than-intact seals: seals were missing or broken on 22 impounded voting machines… This is for a NY state Senate race in Yonkers between powerful incumbent Republican Sen. Nicholas Spano and Democrat Andrea Stewart-Cousins in the 35th District… On 11/9 came As Voting Machines Are Checked, Spano’s Lead Shrinks. On the same day came With most machines recounted, Spano trails Democrat. On 11/13 came “Spano maintains lead over Stewart-Cousins in 35th District”. The counting continues.

In Keith Olbermann news: he gets dissed here; includes a few additional links. See also Keith Olbermann’s Dan Rather moment. Olbermann reports on his supposed firing here.

11/13 Irregularities roundup

From 11/13’s “State election officials approve Nader recount”: State election officials agreed Friday to a last-minute recount of the presidential race requested by Ralph Nader. Nader asked for a recount in 11 wards last week…Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said the campaign would consider requesting additional recounts after reviewing the results of the initial 11. (A “ward” appears to correspond to a precinct or similar, not a county.)

From “Democrat wins council seat after election error corrected”:

And, from Fidlar admits election blip: …Fidlar officials went to Franklin County on Wednesday to assist in a recount and told Flaspohler a programming error was the culprit. After adjusting the program, the ballots were run again, and more than 600 votes that previously went to Libertarians were added to Democratic tallies…

This post contains several links about possible voting fraud from the 1980’s. That links to 11/9’s “Carteret ballots are gone forever”: The problem was blamed on misinformation supplied by the manufacturer. Unilect told elections officials that the early voting unit’s storage capacity was 10,500 votes when, in fact, the actual limit was 3,005. On Nov. 6, Carteret Board of Elections Chairman L.E. Pond said all early votes cast after No. 3,005 were lost… Pond also said the problem could have been avoided with a single keystroke of the county’s central computer, which would have increased the storage capacity. Elections officials attributed that mistake, too, to Unilect. UniLect, which acknowledged the problems, said this is the first time any of its customers has lost votes in an election - and, further, that the equipment operated just as it was set up to do…

11/9’s “Voter fraud uncovered in New Mexico” discussed several instances of double voting and other forms of fraud in Bernalillo County. On Friday, that county’s results were certified: …[after the certification] the president retains a statewide lead of 6,120 votes in an Associated Press unofficial tally late Friday that did not include final numbers from a few other counties.

To put some perspective on Howard Troxler’s “Internet post-election rumors missing one little thing: evidence” (also here as “‘Bush Stole Election’ Conspiracy Theories Debunked”), he’s also the author of July 25, 2004’s “Touch screen opponents are great at ignoring facts”. On the other side, see “Worst Voter Error Is Apathy Toward Irregularities”

On the completely unconfirmed and quite possibly wrong side, see: “Unofficial Audit of NC Election: Comprehensive Case for Fraud” and “Bush stole Ohio through absentee ballots”.

And, from Broward County 11/13: “Inquiry urged after 30 voters tried to cast ballot twice”

(Lonewacko comments: Anyone who attempts to completely dismiss the possibility of fraud committed through eVoting probably isn’t a computer programmer.)

11/12 Irregularities roundup

“Washington Post’s Sloppy Analysis” takes issue with “Latest Conspiracy Theory — Kerry Won — Hits the Ether”.

There’s a brief interview with a Cincinnati Enquirer concerning Warren County Ohio here. All of that information appears to have already been covered in that reporter’s article.

The NYT’s “As Fast as Blogs See Vote Fraud, Web Is Proving Rumors Wrong” is mainly a “wacky bloggers with wacky theories” piece.

The Caltech-MIT/Voting Technology Project has a few reports on the 2004 elections which have been referenced elsewhere including in the last article. Unfortunately, as discussed here, they appear to be advocates for electronic voting or they at least have such articles at their site.

The PDF at “The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy” by Steven F. Freeman, PhD apparently attempts to answer the exit poll report from the latter source.

“Glitch causes Franklin Co. [IN] recount:” Election equipment counted straight-party votes for Democratic candidates as Libertarian votes, an error that could affect election outcomes in as many as nine counties, the Richmond Palladium-Item reported today.

(Editorial content: The Caltech-MIT group appears to be located somewhere on the continuum between impartial observers and a trade group. I only looked through a few things on their site, but I only saw the upside of eVoting. I’d imagine within a 1 mile radius of Caltech there are hundreds of hackers who could spend all day thinking up ways to hack into eVoting, and I didn’t see anything about, for instance, security at the Caltech-MIT site. The report Voter Verifiable Audio Audit Transcript Trail by one of their principals makes the suggestion that a three-head tape recorder should be used as part of the audit trail of voting machines. One can only imagine all the problems inherent in this idea. Jammed tapes, tapes having to be changed, tapes being recorded over, tapes not being changed when they had to be, poll workers forgetting to put the tape in, poll workers running out of tape, the cost of the tape, transporting, cataloging, and archiving the tapes, copying over the tapes on a yearly basis to guard against deterioration, putting the wrong type of tape in, the mechanism not working, the power plug to the mechanism failing, the mechanism spontaneously combusting… you get the picture.)

11/11 Irregularities roundup, Part 2

From today: Kerry campaign lawyers checking Ohio vote. According to Kerry’s Ohio counsel: “[this is a] fact-finding mission… We’re not expecting to change the outcome of the election…” And: “Green & Libertarian Presidential Candidates to Demand Ohio Recount”

This unconfirmed report says:

Changing the rules after the election might be a violation of state or federal law. Yesterday’s “Even without national scrutiny, counting Ohio’s provisional ballots a tough job” has more on the counting, but doesn’t mention the supposed new rule.

That pesky 16-bit bug has unconfirmed instances of “short vs. long” overflows previously described here. These concern Franklin County, Ohio rather than Broward County as did the other suspected incident.

For big media coverage, see 11/09’s “Election conspiracy theories persist”, 11/10’s generally content-free “Ignore voting conspiracies and move on” and 11/11’s “Internet post-election rumors missing one little thing: evidence”. The latter discusses specific claims, some of which have been shown to be false and some true. This Hardblogger post discusses exit polling and rehashes yet again the Dixiecrat effect previously shown here in table form. Wired News also has several articles in this category.

11/11 Irregularities roundup

The WaPo’s Latest Conspiracy Theory — Kerry Won — Hits the Ether attempts to pour some cold water on the various conspiracy theories. Tenor sample: Even as Sen. John F. Kerry’s campaign is steadfastly refusing to challenge the results of the presidential election, the bloggers and the mortally wounded party loyalists and the spreadsheet-wielding conspiracy theorists are filling the Internet with head-turning allegations.

CBS’s Dem Reps Seek Election Review mentions the letter from Democratic congressmen described here and the “Reagan Democrats,” described here using the “Reagan Difference” as well as ballot spoilage.

Ann Coulter attempts to discredit Keith Olbermann’s reports here. As with other attempts to discredit his reports, the “Reagan Difference” is involved.

The column “Hackers rigging voting machines a real possibility” discusses the questionable reliability of eVoting and has some words for those who want to sweep this issue under the rug.

Curious voting totals in Cuyahoga County Ohio are said to be innocuous in “Cuyahoga board deflates vote suspicions”. Someone who purports to be a former Board of Elections official in that county says he’s examined the data and agrees that while Cuyahoga’s way of representing data is confusing, the numbers do add up.

However, questions (and more questions) remain.

Aaron Brown of CNN reportedly says that one of the problems in Cuyahoga was due to a data input error, which doesn’t fit the other explanation offered by the county.

And, “Ohio honchos are trying to figure out how to suppress the facts” has an unconfirmed and possibly innocent report on a conference call held by elections officials in Ohio.

Also see Losing by 335,000 in N.H., Nader Demands a Recount. Apparently the Green Party will announce their plans for a recount as well.

From “State Police investigating voter fraud”: New Mexico State Police are investigating allegations of voter fraud – including one instance in which an as-of-yet unnamed woman is being connected with up to 200 bogus ballots…

47 State Exit Poll Analysis Confirms Swing Anomaly discusses the exit polls in swing vs. non-swing states.

Links to Keith Olbermann’s 11/10 broadcast on voting irregularities and other broadcasts are here.

And, see the unconfirmed “Al Franken mentioned 20,000 votes wrongfully going to Kerry in N.C.”

(Suggestion: what’s really needed here is some way to organize all these reports and rank them by severity and credibility. So, the problems in Cuyahoga county could be ranked by how many votes might have been affected and by whether the explanation offered holds up to scrutiny. This would require the assistance of impartial experts in political science, statistics, and other fields. That way, unconfirmed reports of two people not being able to vote would sink and verified reports of thousands of votes having been lost would rise. Without something like this, anyone who looks into this is going to soon suffer from information overload.)

11/10 Irregularities roundup, Part 2

Salon (“Was the election stolen?”) and the Boston Globe (“Internet buzz on vote fraud is dismissed”) offer similar articles. They both discuss the buzz about voting fraud, discuss the current known problems, and come to the conclusion that while problems occurred there’s no evidence of widespread fraud that would tilt the election the other way. This blog, this, and this all take generally the same tack.

UPDATE: The Wikipedia entry on 2004 irregularities is here. Note the disclaimer and the talk page about the entry itself.

“Warren Co. defends lockdown decision” includes this FBI quote: “The FBI did not notify anyone in Warren County of any specific terrorist threat to Warren County before Election Day.” See this for the previous coverage of Warren County Ohio’s decision to bar reporters from viewing the counting of the votes in that county.

Keith Olbermann says he will have more coverage of these issues tonight.

(Editorial note: Some Kerry partisans outright claim there was fraud. Some Bush partisans outright claim there was no fraud. In any case, voting machines shouldn’t count backwards. All of these instances of possible voting fraud or error need to be thoroughly investigated. Those who attempt to sweep this under the rug might end up on the other side of a future election, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to carefully examine all cases of potential fraud or error.)

11/10 Irregularities roundup

For a categorized listing containing thousands of possible fraud and other voting problems, see this.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s category on eVoting is here. Their roundup on possible fraud or errors is here.

Here’s another roundup of voting reports.

This page discusses the exit polls and says: “A statistical analysis of exit polling conducted for RAW STORY by a former MIT mathematics professor has found the odds of Bush making an average gain of 4.15 percent among all 16 states included in the media’s 4 p.m. exit polling is 1 in 50,000, or .002 percent.”

David Corn offers the overview “A Stolen Election?”.

From Nov. 3, PC World’s “More E-Voting Problems Reported” describes several reported problems.

And, from My experience as an Election Judge in Baltimore County on November 2, 2004

From “12,000 votes uncounted in Gaston”:

See also this collection of links and this one and for less serious coverage of this issue go here.

11/09 Irregularities roundup

Keith Olbermann devoted 17 minutes to possible voter fraud on his show last night; the video is here.

A 60 Minutes segment on blackboxvoting is here.

There’s a concise, categorized roundup of voter fraud stories here. All of them contain links to media reports.

This post has very many links to other DU posts on voting fraud.

This page discusses possible overvotes in Ohio.

This post discusses 19,000 more votes in Miami County, FL.

This post has something about an elections commisioner in Nevada.

“An Examination of the Florida Elections” has a great deal of charts and graphs and looks like it might contains some useful information, but it seems to lack a summary.

There are lots of links here and here.

And, finally, this from Ohio:

UPDATE: Keith Olbermann discusses the episode of his show referenced above in Electronic voting angst.

Florida 2004 and the "Reagan Difference"

This table compares the number of Bush votes in each Florida county with the percentage of registered Republicans for that county.

Look at, for instance, Liberty county. Liberty is apparently a small, rural, panhandle county.

In that county just 7.9% of registered voters are registered as Republicans. However, in 2004 Bush received about 64% of the vote. As the table shows, this is seven times what would be expected if people had voted as they were registered.

However, whatever other questions the table raises, this appears to be part of a pattern.

I downloaded the data for each of the presidental races from 1980 to 2004 and computed the percentage that voted for the Republican presidential candidate in each year, as shown in the table below. So, in Liberty county ("LIB"), 68% voted in 1984 for Reagan and 66% voted in 1988 for Bush I, while 64% voted for Bush II in 2004.

Looking at the table, for most counties support for the Republican presidential candidate peaks in 1984 and 1988.

The final column of the table below computes the "Reagan Difference" as follows:

1. Compute the average of 1984 and 1988.
2. Subtract that average from Bush's 2004 percentage.

Or: RD = 2004_result - average( 1984_result, 1988_result )

As the table shows, support for Bush II has fallen - in many cases by more than 10 points - in most Florida counties from the Reagan-era highpoint of support for the Republican presidential candidate.

Notes:
1. There's no guarantee the input data was correct or was correctly manipulated.
2. This offers no explanation for the differences between the Op-Scan and E-Voting counties as shown in the first table.
3. Only Democrats and Republicans and only the presidential race and only the general election were considered when doing the computations.

1. County code
2. 1980: reagan/carter
3. 1984: reagan/mondale
4. 1988: bush/dukakis
5. 1992: bush/clinton
6. 1996: dole/clinton
7. 2000: bush/gore
8. 2004: bush/kerry
9. : "RD", the "Reagan Difference"

"House Dems Seek Election Inquiry"

Wired News:

Irregularities roundup

Warren County, Ohio:

Warren appears to be a largely rural county with no large towns located between Cincinnati and Dayton. 2000 population: 158,383. In 2002 there were 101,207 registered voters, 50% of whom voted in 2002. In 2004, 91,922 voters went 72% Bush, 27% Kerry.

LaPorte, Indiana:

Craven County, North Carolina: Election problems due to a software glitch:

South Florida OKs Slot Machines Proposal:

See also Palm Beach County Logs 88,000 More Votes Than Voters

And, this chart shows the (unconfirmed) differences between the numbers of votes cast for president and the total turnout for each Florida county.

The county-by-county Florida results are analyzed statistically here.

"Broward [County FL] machines count backward"

Note: That sounds like it might be a “short vs. long” issue. Without going into too much detail, a “short” can only represent a much more limited range of numbers than a “long.” A “signed” short or long uses the same bits to represent both positive and negative numbers. This post from over 12 years ago describes the difference and suggest using longs except when memory is critical or otherwise dictated. While there are certainly situations in which using a short would be advisable, this wouldn’t appear to be one of them. If the wraparound is indeed because a short was used where a long would be advised, this is clearly a major error resulting from very poor design, very poor coding, a major uncaught bug, or something else.

If this is a database column, it’s clearly a very major design error.

Otherwise, it could be a casting /conversion problem or an arithmetic error or a transmission problem or something else. One would think this bug would have been caught the first time they tested to see if the machine could handle a large number of votes, if they did indeed test that.

That's... odd

Somewhere in Ohio (Franklin County?) there’s a precinct named “Gahanna 1B”.

Here are some of the results from Gahanna 1B:

Senate:
Fingerhut (Dem) 180
Voinivich (Rep) 422

House:
Brown (Dem) 185
Tiberi (Rep) 408

Prop. 1 (gay marriage)
No 255
Yes 352

President:
Kerry (Dem) 260
Bush (Rep) 4258

Raw data from this. See pages 23 & 285.

Links from this.

UPDATE: Drudge links to the AP report “Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes”. See also this.

A Day In the Life of an Ohioan "Poll Observer" aka Challenger/Witness

Thirteen hours today I sat and watched and watched and watched. Why …what did I see? Sounds like the beginning of a good nursery rhyme but this story isn’t one the kiddies would find very captivating. However this is a historical change to our method of voting never before seen. Hear what it was like being a “Poll Observer” for the Republican Party in a largely Democratic voting precinct.

Basically a lot of people voted and that isn’t a very likely candidate for the next sweeps week reality show. Some people had problems with their addresses (11 out of 288) or with ID (also 11 out of 288) and were given a provision ballot (one that requires a later inspection at the County Board of Elections Office). There was no blatant fraud that I witnessed. There were no issues with people claiming to be a person who died during the last year nor people coming in to vote who had been issued an absentee ballot (double voting - felony). There were some blatant Kerry groups getting too close to the polling areas and reports of 527 groups inappropriately “electioneering”. What that means is that groups like Acorn, ACT, and Moveon.org were found distributing Kerry literature, wearing Kerry adverts, approaching voters trying to get to the polls …and more of the same in areas that are to be kept free of such things so as not to intefere with voters who disagree with the ideologies and potlitical views of such groups. So NO voter will be “disenfranchised”. Still hopefully Ohio was civil and showed that you can be passionate and controversial while still getting along with your neighbor. I suspect a lot of out-of-state political motivated groups will make the headlines this week. There are tons of lawyers preparing for the Mother of All Voter Disenfranchisement Lawsuits here in the heartland. Say it with me “disenfranchisement”. Heh …Julie Andrews sing out loud. …”even though the sound of it is really quite attrocious” …

Media maroons get the facts straight this election …PLEASE! No, Ohio is not Florida. Our Secretary of State won’t be accused of gaudy makeup application. Ken Blackwell good luck on the road to filling the shoes of Katherine Harris.

Tomorrow, once I’ve gotten a chance to get some sleep and a better chance of writing clearer strings of thoughts, I’ll tell you about the High School Social Studies teacher who lashed at me for my role while I helped insure the legitimacy of the vote at the polls in his school. Are all High School teachers still nerds?

My hope was the freedom is preserved in our demonstration of democracy in action.

International Monitors Find Fault with US Elections

From the International Herald Tribune :

he global implications of the U.S. election are undeniable, but international monitors at a polling station in southern Florida said Tuesday that voting procedures being used in the extremely close contest fell short in many ways of the best global practices.

The observers said they had less access to polls than in Kazakhstan, that the electronic voting had fewer fail-safes than in Venezuela, that the ballots were not so simple as in the Republic of Georgia and that no other country had such a complex national election system.

“To be honest, monitoring elections in Serbia a few months ago was much simpler,” said Konrad Olszewski, an election observer stationed in Miami by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

“They have one national election law and use the paper ballots I really prefer over any other system,” Olszewski said.

Olszewski, whose democratic experience began with Poland’s first free election in 1989, was one of 92 observers brought in by the Vienna-based organization, which was founded to maintain military security in Europe at the height of the cold war.

Two-member observer teams fanned out across 11 states and included citizens of 36 countries, ranging from Canada and Switzerland to Latvia, Kyrgyzstan, Slovenia and Belarus.
[…]
“Our presence is not meant as a criticism,” said Ron Gould, Olszewski’s team partner and the former assistant chief electoral officer for Elections Canada. “We mainly want to assess changes taken since the 2000 election.”

Speaking as voting began at 7 a.m. in the Firefighter’s Memorial Hall for precincts 401 and 446 of Miami-Dade County, the observers drew sharp distinctions between U.S.-style elections and those conducted elsewhere around the world.

“Unlike almost every other country in the world, there is not one national election today,” said Gould, who has been involved in 90 election missions in 70 countries. “The decentralized system means that rules vary widely county by county, so there are actually more than 13,000 elections today.”

Variations in local election law not only make it difficult for election monitors to generalize on a national basis, but also prohibit the observers from entering polling stations at all in some states and counties. Such laws mean that no election observers from the organization are in Ohio, a swing state fraught with battles over voter intimidation and other polling issues.

As for electronic voting, Gould said he preferred Venezuela’s system to the calculator-sized touchpads in Miami.

“Each electronic vote in Venezuela also produces a ticket that voters then drop into a ballot box,” Gould said. “Unlike fully electronic systems, this gives a backup that can be used to counter claims of massive fraud.”

Venezuela had trouble implementing the system, Gould added, because the ticket printers kept breaking down.

The United States is also nearly unique in lacking a unified voter registration system or national identity card, Gould said, adding that he would ideally require U.S. voters to dip a finger in an ink bowl or have a cuticle stained black after voting.

“In El Salvador, Namibia and so many other elections, the ink was extremely important in preventing challenges to multiple voting,” Gould said. “In Afghanistan it didn’t work so well, because they used the dipping ink for the cuticles, so it wiped right off.”

MoveOn.org Moves In on Polling Places

First-Hand Reports from GOP partisan bloggers are starting to come in about MoveOn.org representatives setting up shop at polling places.

From RedState :

I got up early to go vote in order to avoid waiting online at Ward 3 in Manchester NH. I was the 5th person there.  Just before the polls opened I saw a woman with a `Kerry’ - `MoveOn. Org’ and `Bush lies’ buttons on her coat.

Another person was quick to point out to her that she was not allowed to be wearing them in the polling place. She thanked them for the reminder and walked away. On my way out I see the same women at a table set up next to the door. It has a MoveOn.Org poster hanging from it.

I went right back inside and found the person wearing the `election moderator’ ribbon and complained to her. Initially she agreed with me that they had no business being inside the polling place. When we got out to where the table was she changed her mind saying that they are a non-partisan group and could be set up inside the polling place.

Non-partisan??? I asked “How can you say they are non-partisan? Have you ever been to their web site?” The reply I got was “As long as they are just signing people up and not politicking they are allowed to stay there.” I came home and called the Bush-Cheney campaign they took down my information.

Shortly after that I got a phone call back from who I believe was a lawyer. The caller ID showed he was in Missouri. I also called the NH Attorney Generals office. I ended up leaving a message after making 3 calls and giving up talking to a person. The local Bush-Cheney Campaign called me back and told me that they have contacted the Attorney General office and that this is a top priority for them.

From Powerline :

I’m writing from the Bush-Cheney ‘04 command center in downtown Minneapolis, led by BC ‘04 Minnesota chairman Ben Whitney. The phones are manned by several of the most outstanding conservative attorneys in the state. We are fielding calls from Republican poll watchers around the state. The phones have been ringing hot and heavy since the polls opened at 7:00 a.m.. MoveOn.org is out in force and testing the limits of legal behavior at polling places around the Twin Cities. At least in Minnesota, the BC ‘04 team has organized a sophisticated defensive operation.

DNC Making Fraudulent Calls Falsely Claiming Schwarzkopf Backs Kerry

United Press International reports that Retired U.S. Army Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf demanded the Democratic National Committee stop telling voters he endorsed John Kerry for president:

“The Democratic National Committee is making fraudulent phone calls claiming that I have endorsed Sen. Kerry,” Schwarzkopf said. “Nothing could be further from the truth, and I demand that they stop immediately.”

An audio copy of the call, given to UPI with a copy of a statement from Schwarzkopf, says it was “paid for by the Democratic National Committee.”

According to ABC’s “Noted Now,” the DNC’s robo call says, “Hello, this is Norm Schwarzkopf. In 2000, I voted for George W. Bush. This year, I’m voting for John Kerry. George Bush took his eye off the ball in the war on terror…”

UPDATE: The plot thickens.

ABC’s “Noted Now” now posts:

DEMS ALLEGE CALL WAS EDITED FROM GEN. McPEAK ROBO CALL: “Hi, I’m General Tony McPeak and as Chief of the air force during the first Gulf War, I worked closely with Colin Powell and Norm Schwarzkopf. In 2000, I voted for George W. Bush. This year I’m voting for John Kerry. George Bush took his eye off the ball and the war on terror and took us into a poorly planned war in Iraq.”

DNC Communications Director Jano Cabrera issued the following statement:

“This is a desperate, pathetic, 11th hour dirty trick by the Republicans. In an effort to gin up a last minute media controversy and smear the Democrats, the Republicans intentionally spliced a recorded call by Four Star General ‘Tony’ McPeak and tried to peddle it to the press. This type of dishonesty is a fitting end to George W. Bush’s failed Presidency, a Presidency that unfortunately for the American people, was also defined by deceit and deception.”

General McPeak’s recorded telephone call is available for download at:

http://a9.g.akamai.net/7/9/8082/v003/democratic1.download.akamai.com/8082/audio/20041101_mcpeak.wav

Transcript of General McPeak’s call:

Hi, I’m General Tony McPeak and as Chief of the air force during the first Gulf War, I worked closely with Colin Powell and Norm Schwarzkopf. In 2000, I voted for George W. Bush. This year I’m voting for John Kerry. George Bush took his eye off the ball and the war on terror and took us into a poorly planned war in Iraq, letting Al Qaeda, the people responsible for September 11th attack on us, regroup. John Kerry has a real plan to make the military stronger and to go after the terrorists wherever they hide. On November 2 we need to vote for change, a vote for John Kerry.

More as it becomes available.

From California Yankee.