No Paper Trails for Voting Machines in PA..Who Is In Charge of Final Votes?
Fri Apr 18, 2008 at 09:33:48 PM PDT
April 22nd is nearly upon us and it promises to be a knock down drag out fight to finish on voting day in Pennsylvania. Today on the Race to the White House Show, Rachel Maddow predicted that Hilary Clinton may have one more secret bomb to drop on Obama prior to the vote, perhaps on Sunday or Monday. This got me to thinking, after the obvious hit job conducted by ABC there probably would not be much more that could be thrown at Obama between now and next Tuesday. After all, HRC is now spreading the newest set of lies that Obama is whining about the debate and that he obviously cannot take the heat of hard questions. The debate was nothing more than a tabloid gotcha set up to knee cap Obama, and regardless of what others think, I believe HRC acted in collusion with George to ensure a final blow on Obama. Then I started thinking about the actual voting machines that will be used on Tuesday. I found out some rather interesting facts.
On April 7, 2008 Mary Kuznick wrote an article entitled: Pennsylvania, State of Denial about the fact that Pennsylvania is one of 12 states left in our country that do not have a back up paper vote for proof of voting. I have parts of this article that may horrify you, because it is very obvious to me that there could be some dubious and/or highly illegal voting tampering on April 22nd and I think we need to be forewarned and prepared.
With the national spotlight on The Keystone State's April 22 Primary, many heads remain buried in sand when it comes to electronic voting.
Following the inconclusive Ohio and Texas Democratic primaries earlier this month, the national spotlight turned swiftly to Pennsylvania's April 22 election as the next battleground. And in the glare of that white-hot national spotlight it is more apparent than ever that there is great risk for electoral disaster in The Keystone State.
With fifty-one of its most populous counties still voting on completely paperless Direct Record Electronic machines, Pennsylvania remains one of the last twelve states to have passed no law requiring every vote to be backed up with a voter-verified paper record or ballot.
Time and time again Pennsylvania has had to replace failed electronic voting machines, bailing out counties and vendors at taxpayer expense. Pennsylvania has been plagued with a rash of problems caused by failures of paperless, unverifiable voting machines. These problems have ranged from extremely high levels of undervotes (indicating a large number of voters are not having their votes counted), to faulty programming and ballot preparation, to outright loss of votes due to machines being set up improperly on Election Day.
With huge party machine politics entrenched on both the Republican and Democratic sides,
Pennsylvania had a long history of election irregularities and difficulties long before the rise of electronic voting.
And although one of the state's most prominent suppliers of voting machines and supplies was convicted of election fraud, the paperless electronic voting machines his company originally developed continue to count the votes of nearly two and a half million Pennsylvanians to this very day.
But despite past problems and current warnings from computer scientists and neighboring states, Pennsylvania officials from County Commissioners and Election Directors to the Governor himself inexplicably continue to embrace paperless electronic voting. Their public mantra is that Pennsylvania elections on paperless electronic machines are secure and accurate.
Excuse me, how do know they are secure and accurate? Will there be independent voter fraud investigators there to check the computers? To do any oversight? I don't think so.
Despite this difficulty in the state's third largest voting jurisdiction, as the 21st Century dawned a number of Pennsylvania counties were moving voluntarily to purchase touchscreen and pushbutton electronic voting equipment. And as more counties adopted electronic voting, the ranks of counties dealing with problems grew. Some incidents resulted in serious losses of votes.
During the election of 2004, it is estimated that at least ten thousand votes were lost by the UniLect Patriot touchscreen voting system in Beaver, Mercer, and Greene counties. Some precincts in Mercer County had undervote rates of over seventy and eighty percent. If this were true it would mean that, in the incredibly important Presidential election, eight out of ten voters in those precincts simply did not care to vote for President! The far more probable scenario is that the UniLect machine failed to count most of those votes. With no voter verified paper record available on those machines to recount or audit, there was simply no way to reclaim those lost votes or even to know for sure exactly what happened.
On May 17, 2005, a number of Danaher (formerly Shouptronic) DREs failed to record any votes in about half a dozen Berks County precincts during the Municipal Primary. Votes were apparently not recorded due to improper settings on the machine during the election, and improper memory cartridges being installed. With no paper records to audit or recount, a re-vote was called for, lawsuits were filed, and some voters never did get to cast a vote that was counted in that Primary.
Once again, if noticed at all, the loss of votes was dismissed by officials and media as a simple "glitch" or blamed on pollworker error.
With the Help America Vote Act taking effect for the first federal election of 2006, the rush was on to comply and get the federal money HAVA promised for the purchase of new machines. It seemed that no one in a position of authority wanted to buck the system by pointing out the electronic voting was an emperor without clothes.
The stage was set for a free-for-all as vendors readied themselves to vie for the windfall in voting machine sales, and denial became the order of the day in Pennsylvania.
This is a disaster waiting to happen, and it would appear to me that Hilary will not have to throw out another 'bomb' on Obama the day before the election. It would appear to me that based on this history of Pennsylvania's voting record and serious problems, that we, the voters will have no way of ensuring if the voting was done properly or counted properly, because there will be no back up proof to rely on. The 'fix' could already be a done deal, and how would anyone even know? The same old excuses could very well be used: Oh, it was a simple glitch, or it was errors by the pollworkers.
Wonder who the pollworkers are working for.
Just thought you might like to know. Thanks.
Badabing
Permalink | 86 comments