Make Sure Your Vote Is Counted!

  The following are a few more ways to make sure that you do not get fucked at the polls tomorrow.

      From DKos

I just received this article from Truthout. The McCain campaign is mixed up with a firm in Ohio currently in court on this issue.

I became aware of how bad current voting machine problems through an email from Black Box Voting.

Below I highlight 3 types of problems reported with the machines: straight party voting, vote flipping, and undercounting, which includes some Diebold machines that give you 150 seconds before you're ejected from the voting machine.

If you encounter any of these problems or any kind of voter suppression tomorrow, call the Obama hotline at 1-877-US-4-OBAMA or the Election Protection Hotline at: 1-866-OUR-VOTE

If you go to the Election Protection website you can find out how to report problems using Twitter.

In the case below, note how straight party voting consistently undercounts Democratic votes in a number of states.

THE PROBLEM: "Straight party voting" on voting machines is revealing a bad pattern of miscounting and omitting your vote, especially if you are a Democrat.

Most recently (Oct. 2008), a firm called Automated Election Services was found to have mis-coded the system in heavily Democratic Santa Fe County, New Mexico such that straight party voters would not have the presidential vote counted.

Straight party voting is allowed in 15 states. Basically, it means that you can take a shortcut to actually looking at who you are voting for and instead just select a party preference. Then the voting machine makes your candidate choices, supposedly for the party you requested.

Additional details follow, but first: PROTECT THE COUNT

1. NEVER CHOOSE THE STRAIGHT PARTY VOTE OPTION, because it alerts the computer as to your party preference and allows software code to trigger whatever function the programmer has designed.

1. SEND THIS INFORMATION OUT TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN, blog it, root n' toot it out there to get the word out.

1. ESPECIALLY GET THE WORD OUT TO PEOPLE IN THE FOLLOWING STATES, which have straight party voting options:

- Alabama - Indiana - Iowa - Kentucky - Michigan - New Mexico - North Carolina - Oklahoma - Pennsylvania - Rhode Island - South Carolina - Texas - Utah - West Virginia - Wisconsin

(Missouri and New Hampshire had straight party voting in earlier years, but have cancelled the straight party option for the Nov. 2008 election; however, the Straight Party software is still on Missouri and New Hampshire election management computers.)

1. DEMAND COMPLETE AND CAREFUL TESTING OF THE STRAIGHT PARTY OPTION IN LOGIC & ACCURACY TESTS. Bring copies of the citations in this article to buttress your case for why this is needed, if you have to. Witnesses for L&A tests in the straight party option states should specifically watch for and note whether (a) the tests were done and (b) the results were accurate.

1. LOOK FOR UNDERVOTES(high profile races with lower-than-average number of votes cast) and flag them, post them, bring them to the attention of others for additional scrutiny.

Undervotes may reveal straight-party programming fraud after the fact, but can never be reconstructed to know who the voter would have voted for. Such programming malfeasance, when found, disenfranchises voters.

MORE DETAILS ON THE STRAIGHT PARTY TRAP

October 2008: In Santa Fe, New Mexico the machines were NOT counting straight party ballots correctly, and now it turns out that voting machines have been caught giving straight party votes to the other party's candidates, omitting the counts for some straight party votes, and generally creating mischief.

...snip...

California citizen Judy Alter discovered a high number of undervotes in the New Mexico presidential race in 2004. She traced these back to straight party votes that skipped counting the presidential race.

...snip...According to Alter, most of the biggest exit poll shifts occurred in the straight party states.

...snip...

BOTH DRE AND OPTICAL SCAN SYSTEMS HAVE BEEN CAUGHT MISCOUNTING STRAIGHT PARTY VOTES

Alter provides evidence from the absentee and early voting reports from Sequoia optical scan machines (paper ballots) that the straight party option for minor party candidates omitted votes. Two votes for straight Green party showed no votes for Cobb (the 2004 Green Party presidential candidate) next to his name.

According to articles archived on Voters Unite straight party votes have been caught miscounting straight party votes in Wisconsin and Alabama as well.

ES&S Optical scan system: In Medford, Wisconsin, ES&S ballot scanners failed to count straight-party votes at all. About 27 percent of all votes cast in Medford during the Nov. 2004 election were not counted by voting system computers.

ES&S optical scan system: In Baldwin County, Alabama, the ballot programming for straight ticket voting went awry in November 2006 by identifying one Republican as a Democrat.

It's not just ES&S: The following overly cryptic Diebold Product Advisory does not reveal what the "issues" are that cause unexpected results from certain straight party voting programming methods. (snip)

BEWARE, THE STRAIGHT PARTY VOTE MAY NOT INCLUDE PRESIDENTIAL RACE AT ALL

In North and South Carolina voters a straight party ticket does not include any vote for president. Yes, it's the law there. Voters need to also vote separately for president.

EVEN IF YOUR STATE DOESN'T HAVE STRAIGHT PARTY VOTING, YOUR VOTING COMPUTERS DO HAVE IT

Instead of creating two different systems, voting machine vendors put the straight party software into ALL voting computers, and just turn it "off" in states that don't allow straight party voting.

Both kinds of straight party voting -- with the presidential race included and with presidential votes omitted -- are actually on the election management computer that programs the ballots. It's up to the programmer to to choose whether to use straight party voting and, if so, whether it will register a vote for president or not. While it's true that systems like the Diebold GEMS Election Management system provide a drop-down menu where election programmers can choose their state system, they can also opt to choose some other state's system, or the generic "US" system (whatever that is), thereby enabling a giant OOPS excuse if caught.

Now, I put this information in a diary the other day, and someone accused this of being a hoax so that people wouldn't vote straight Democrat. Black Box Voting is a legit organization, and just check out their website if you find this too weird to be true.

Probably the most common problem we've heard about is vote flipping: you vote for one candidate but the machine registers another one. Again, the Democratic vote is always under counted. Here are some problems reported from early voting.

Here's an interesting one, in this section of Tennessee the votes are being taken from Obama and registered to McKinney. That's a new one, isn't it.

Summary: This was the ES&S iVotronic, same voting machine caught flipping votes in two West Virginia counties. Votes peeled off to the other major party candidate, or to any smaller party candidate have the same effect: Disenfranchisement for the voter and political disadvantage for the candidate the voter was trying to vote for. You can find all counties with iVotronics by skimming through the state sections at Black Box Voting. If you will vote on a DRE, bring a cell phone camera and start capturing the screen, discreetly, BEFORE you see any votes flip. Prove it, this is important.

Sent by e-mail to Black Box Voting, from David Earnhardt, producer of the film UNCOUNTED - Oct. 20 2008

Vote Flipping in Davidson County, Tennessee

" My wife, Patricia Earnhardt, had an early voting experience here in Nashville, Tennessee, where she saw her vote momentarily flip from Barack Obama to Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney. She voted on a ouch-screen paperless machine. Here is her story:

"A poll worker directed me to a touch screen voting machine & instructedme how t o use it. I touched "Obama" for president & nothing lit up. I
touched 2 or 3 more times & still nothing lit up. I called the poll worker back over to tell him I was having a problem. He said I just needed to touch it more lightly. I tried it 2 or 3 more times more lightly with the poll worker watching & still nothing lit up. The poll worker then touched it for me twice — nothing lit up. The third time he touched the Obama button, the Cynthia McKinney space lit up! The McKinney button was located five rows below the Obama button. The poll worker just kind of laughed and cancelled the vote. He hit the Obama button again & it finally lit up. I continued on to cast the rest of my votes. After completing the process & reviewing my votes, I went to the VOTE page, hit the VOTE button & nothing happened. Again after several tries, I called the poll worker over & he finally got the machine to register my votes. Hurray — I voted! — or did I? I left the polling place feeling uncertain." Patricia Earnhardt -
Friday, Oct. 17 - Howard School Building - Nashville, Tennessee

More typical is this story from West Virginia:

Voters allege ballot trouble
More say machines changing their votes

WINFIELD - Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week.

This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for "Barack Obama" kept flipping to "John McCain."

In both counties, Republicans are responsible for overseeing elections. Both county clerks said the problem is isolated.

They also blamed voters for not being more careful.

"People make mistakes more than machines," said Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright.

Shelba Ketchum, a 69-year-old nurse retired from Thomas Memorial Hospital, described what happened Friday at the Putnam County Courthouse in Winfield.

"I pushed buttons and they all came up Republican," she said. "I hit Obama and it switched to McCain. I am really concerned about that. If McCain wins, there was something wrong with the machines.

"I asked them for a printout of my votes," Ketchum said. "But they said it was in the machine and I could not get it. I did not feel right when I left the courthouse. My son felt the same way.

"I heard from some other people; they also had trouble. But no one in there knew how to fix it," said Ketchum, who is not related to Menis Ketchum, a Democratic Supreme Court candidate.

Ketchum's son, Chris, said he had the same problem. And Bobbi Oates of Scott Depot said her vote for incumbent Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller was switched to GOP opponent Jay Wolfe.

"I touched the one I wanted, Rockefeller, and the machine put a checkmark on the Republican instead," Oates said of her experience Thursday.

These stories ALWAYS involve undercounting the Obama vote, always.

Remember in Ohio where voters had to wait hours to vote, which made some of them go home. Well, I'm suspecting a version of this is beginning with some Diebold machines (surprise, surprise), where they will kick you off if there is no activity for 150 seconds, and force you to cast a provisional ballot. Get enough people thinking about their votes, and you have a recipe for chaos. Here's more:

TWO-MINUTE WARNING ON VOTING

USA - Diebold/Premier says too late to fix a new voting machine 2-minute warning and "time-out" feature which can kick voters off the machine, forcing them to accept a provisional ballot. "At least 15" voters were booted off the machine in Johnson County, Kansas recently, and Diebold/Premier says this is due to a software "upgrade" which sets a timer on voter inactivity. According to the company, the machines receiving the upgrade are used in 34 states and 1,700 jurisdictions.*

*This seems inflated, though. Unless the optical scan machines are also outfitted with a 2-minute warning, which doesn't make sense, it would seem that this should only apply to the DRE states and locations.

JOINING THIS PROBLEM TO MAKE IT BIGGER:

A study on DRE allocation from Ohio indicates that it takes an average of four to nine minutes per voter to cast an average-length ballot, and ballots in many locations will be longer than average this fall. Each additional ballot question can add 30 seconds to the time a voter must monopolize the DRE.

Diebold's 2-minute timeout kicks in when the voter does not make a selection quickly enough. (Welcome to 21st Century literacy tests: Speed reading.)

According to a Sept. 10 Kansas City Star Article, Johnson County upgraded touchscreen voting machines with a new software release from Diebold subsidiary Premier Election Solutions Inc. Buried in the release notes was a mention of a new "time out" feature that makes the voting machine eject a voter card if there has been no activity for 150 seconds. The machine emits a warning sound at 120 seconds.

Additional Tools:Black Box Voting has a tool kit you can use, for one. It's very informative, so read the whole thing.

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