[ale] [OT] evoting: South Carolina Primary Proves Unverifiable Electronic Voting Cannot Be Trusted

[Jim Kinney]

yep. we're boned.

On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Aaron Ruscetta <arxaaron at gmail.com> wrote:

> This story provides substantial evidence that one of the political
> parties has control over the zero evidence electronic vote counts
> from Diebold / ES&S DRE systems and is committing vote fraud
> on a massive scale to insure that competent and popular candidates
> of their opposition are eliminated in the primary election phase.
> Strong challenges to primary results are less likely than in general
> elections since they must be addressed by the Party authorities
> before they can be taken to the State.
>
> Explains a lot of the "results" of the past several election cycles.
>
> Remember that if you missed the window for getting your GA
> Absentee Paper Ballot, you can still vote with a Paper ballot
> by leaving your ID at home. When a voter cannot present
> photo ID, the polling place is required by law to provide a
> Paper Provisional Ballot.  The voter can then fax or show
> their ID to the County Registrars office within 48 hours.
> A unique added benefit of this voting method is that the
> Regiatrar's office is also required by law to inform you
> with cause if your provisional ballot is not counted.  Full
> details and Country Restistrar contact info lists can
> be found at <PaperCounts.org>.
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Garland Favorito <garlandf at msn.com>
> Date: Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 11:31 AM
> Subject: South Carolina Primary Proves Unverifiable Voting Cannot Be
> Trusted
>
> VoterGA Supporters,
>
> Mail-in paper ballot election results just received  from each South
> Carolina
> county under Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests confirm that there
> were enough voting discrepancies in the recent U.S. Senate Democratic
> primary to have reversed the election outcome.  That race had dramatic,
> inexplicable discrepancies between the verifiable mail-in absentee paper
> ballot results and the unverifiable electronic voting results recorded on
> Election Day, June 8.  In that race, Alvin Greene was declared the winner
> based on a near landslide 60-40% margin in  Election Day electronic voting
> results. However, certified mail-in paper ballot results received from the
> counties after a 15 business day response period allowed under South
> Carolina law, show that Vic Rawl actually won the verifiable mail-in paper
> ballot absentee voting by a solid  55-45% margin. The near 30% total point
> differential among the two candidates is unheard of in South Carolina
> election history and perhaps, nationally as well. Neither candidate
> emphasized absentee voting so there is no reasonable explanation for
> such a vast difference. VoterGA issued the FOIA requests because South
> Carolina counties do not report separate absentee totals for mail-in paper
> ballot votes and in-person electronic votes. While some of this information
> was previously known, here is what the official replies to the
> requests revealed:
>
> ·   In not one county did Alvin Greene win the absentee mail-in vote count
> and lose the Election Day vote count
>
> ·   In not one county did Vic Rawl win the Election Day vote count and lose
> the mail-in absentee vote count
>
> ·   In 41 of 46 counties, Alvin Greene’s Election Day vote percentage
> exceeded
> his mail-in paper ballot absentee percentage;
>
> ·   In 34 of those 41 counties, Alvin Greene’s Election Day electronic
> votes
> exceeded his mail-in paper ballot absentee votes by an abnormal margin of
> 15%
>
> ·   In no counties with more than 10 paper ballot casts did Vic Rawl have
> an
> abnormal margin of 15% or more (total for both candidates)
>
> The individual county results illustrate the differences between Election
> Day
> electronic voting results and mail-in paper ballot absentee voting results
> much more dramatically:
>
> ·   In Aiken County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote  60% to 40%
> but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 70% to 30%;
>
> ·   In Barnwell County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 63% to 37%
> but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 75% to 25%;
>
> ·   In Beaufort County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 60% to 40%
> but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 82% to 18%;
>
> ·   In Dorchester County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 60% to 40%
> but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 67% to 33%;
>
> ·   In Florence County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 70% to 30%
> but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 58% to 42%;
>
> ·   In Greenwood County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 76% to 24%
> but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by  51% to 49%;
>
> ·   In Lancaster County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 59% to 41%
> but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 90% to 10%;
>
> ·   In Newberry County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 55% to 45%
> but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 84% to 16%;
>
> ·   In Spartanburg County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 61% to
> 39%
> but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 72% to 28%;
>
> The differences between absentee in person electronic voting and absentee
> paper mail-in voting are similarly dramatic:
>
> ·   In Spartanburg County, Alvin Greene won the [early voting]
> absentee electronic vote
> 62% to 38% but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 72% to
> 28%;
>
> ·   In Jasper County, Alvin Greene won the [early voting] absentee
> electronic vote
> 56% to 44% but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 76% to
> 24%;
>
> ·   In Orangeburg County, Alvin Greene won the [early voting] absentee
> electronic vote
> 52% to 48% but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 72% to
> 28%
>
> ·   In Chester County, Alvin Greene won the [early voting] absentee
> electronic vote
> 71% to 29% but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 55% to
> 45%;
>
> ·   In Coleton County, Alvin Greene won the [early voting] absentee
> electronic vote
> 58% to 42% but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 70% to
> 33%;
>
> ·   In Berkeley County, Alvin Greene won the [early voting] absentee
> electronic vote
> 59% to 41% but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 73% to
> 27%;
>
> A spreadsheet on the www.voterga.org home page illustrates the
> discrepancies so
> that you can review them and make your own decision about the validity of
> this
> South Carolina election. However, the spreadsheet still does not take
> into account
> the extraordinary differences in the campaigns that were conducted. As you
> may
> already know Alvin Greene, an unemployed former military veteran who paid a
> $10,000 qualifying fee, did not even run a campaign.  Greene held no
> fundraisers,
> ran no paid advertisements, made no campaign speeches, hired no campaign
> manager, conducted no state wide tours, attended no Democratic Party county
> events, printed no yard signs and did not even establish a web site.
> Vic Rawl, a
> county commissioner, former judge and four tern state representative,
> ran a normal,
> aggressive campaign as his campaign manager, Walter Ludwig, has explained.
> He personally campaigned in at least half of the counties  made radio and
> TV
> appearances, attended the state convention, collected official
> endorsements,
> had 600 volunteers, printed 10,000 bumper stickers, established 180,000
> database contacts, created a 104,000 Email distribution list, had 3,300
> Facebook
> Friends, sent out 300,000 Emails just prior to the election, received
> 20,000 web
> site hits on Election Day alone and was more active on Twitter than the
> other
> Democratic Party candidates.
>
> So how did this happen? All South Carolina elections are conducted on
> statewide
> unverifiable electronic voting equipment manufactured by [the new
> owner of Diebold,]
> Election Systems & Software (ES&S) .  South Carolina’s voting machines have
> no
> independent audit trail of each vote cast. This is necessary to audit
> the accuracy of
> the vote recording mechanism that transfers the selections the voter sees
> on the
> screen to the vote storage areas. All precinct printouts, ballot
> images and any other
> forms of paper documents that can be printed are not created independently
> but
> produced internally from the machines after the vote was recorded and could
> have
> been corrupted. It is technically impossible for anyone in the state
> to claim that South
> Carolina’s Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines record
> accurately on
> Election Day since there is no mechanism such as a Voter Verified
> Paper Audit Trail
> [or other Paper Evidence] to independently audit the vote recording.
> No amount of
> pre-election testing can assure DRE recording accuracy. The Federal
> Election
> Assistance Commission’s (EAC) Technical Guidelines Development Committee
> concluded that: “The National Institute of Standards and Testing & EAC
> Security
> & Transparency Subcommittee do not know how to write testable requirements
> to
> satisfy that the software in a DRE is correct” The reason for such a
> conclusion is
> that many electronic voting machines, such as those used in South Carolina,
> can
> be programmed in a variety of ways to count differently on Election
> Day than during
> testing.  As a result, South Carolina voters cannot verify that the
> selections they
> see on the screen were electronically recorded, election officials
> cannot audit the
> actual vote counts and there is no directly created evidence of voter
> intent that
> can be used in a recount.
>
> Vic Rawl understood this and filed an election protest to have his claims
> heard
> by the leadership of the South Carolina Democratic Party on June 17. Expert
> witnesses testified as to the improbability of such results and they
> methodically
> eliminated other false explanations for the discrepancies such as
> ballot positioning,
> Republican crossover voting and racial preferences. None of those excuses
> would
> explain the vast difference in absentee paper ballot results and
> electronic voting
> results.  In addition, the office manager identified reports she had
> received from
> voters in a dozen different counties all of whom were impeded in some way
> from
> voting for Vic Rawl. One witness testified that Mr. Rawl was not on the
> ballot.
> Another witness testified that she successfully selected Vic Rawl in
> the race but
> Alvin Greene’s name on the confirmation screen. Still another witness
> testified that
> she received a confirmation screen indicating she had voted for Alvin
> Greene before
> she voted in the U.S. Senate race and immediately  after she cast her
> vote in the
> governor’s race. Alvin Greene was not present and no evidence was presented
> to argue that the results were correct, the leadership denied Mr.
> Rawl’s request for
> new election by a count of 38-7. The entire hearing can be seen just
> by searching
> for Vic Rawl on Vimeo.com thanks to John Fortuin and Defenders of
> Democracy.
>
> The hearing revealed that Vic Rawl’s expert witness was denied access to
> the
> machines at the county level. In addition, the State Elections Commission
> denied
> a petition by State Senator Phil Leventis to impound the machines
> until they could
> be checked. The commission claimed that they needed the machines for
> the run-off.
> However, they would not have needed all of the machines for the run-of and
> they
> would not have needed to impound all of them to run statistically
> significant tests.
> A spokesperson for the State Elections Commission said that they have done
> all
> that they could do in terms of testing and that they are confident in
> the results. The
> commission also issued a statement asserting that the  voting machines have
> always performed accurately and reliably, a claim that is technically
> impossible
> to establish since there is no way to independently audit the voting
> recording
> mechanism of the machine.
>
> [snip opinion item]
>
> I have sent a letter outlining the lack of credibility in this
> election to the State
> Elections Commission; the letter is available on the www.Voterga.org home
> page.
> South Carolina federal elections results could impact voters in every
> other state
> so even if you don’t live there, take a few minutes and do the same. The
> state
> elections commission can be contacted at elections at scvotes.org.
>
> Thanks,
> Garland
>
> 404 664-4044 CL
> www.voterga.org
>
> REPRINT AND POSTING PERMISSION GRANTED
>
> PS: This BradBlog link shows his interview with MSNBC’s Keith Olberman:
> <http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7890>
> Brad Friedman describes it as one of the most bizarre interviews ever
> seen on television.
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
I would rather stumble along in freedom than walk effortlessly in chains.
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