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[MIMIC]

Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes

COLUMBUS, Ohio - An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said.

Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush's total should have been recorded as 365.

Bush won the state by more than 136,000 votes, according to unofficial results, and Kerry conceded the election on Wednesday after saying that 155,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted in Ohio would not change the result.

Deducting the erroneous Bush votes from his total could not change the election's outcome, and there were no signs of other errors in Ohio's electronic machines, said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.

[...]

In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost in this election because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did.

[...]

Damschroder said people who had seen poll results on the election board's Web site called to point out the discrepancy. The error would have been discovered when the official count for the election is performed later this month, he said.

The Washington Post

And it's absolutely LUDICROUS to suggest that this could have happened elsewhere.

 

[Alcibiades]

1.800.941.7326

call and serve your complaints, a good time to rip Bush and conservatives a new one...

 

[Star Power]

Could you post thr whole article, I don't want to sign up.

 

[Alcibiades]

Could you post thr whole article, I don't want to sign up.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20041105/D865R1DO0.html

 

[explodet]

The reader also recorded zero votes in a county commissioner race on the machine.

Every vote counts!

 

[Particle Physicist]

"Deducting the erroneous Bush votes from his total could not change the election's outcome"

well. it wouldnt have changed a thing.

 

[nathkenn]

That is, if that’s the only instance of mishandled votes
I would really like to believe that it was fixed; I just can’t wrap my mind around that many people being so completely incompetent

 

[shoplifter]

Posted in the election thread, but it's appropriate on it's own I suppose.

I got the info from the Franklin County Libertarian Party.

 

[Ferd]

 

[Smiles and Cries]

this is total bullshit let it go already OHIO

Bush depresses me but this even more

 

[Raven.]

I see someone found the tip of dah iceberg... nice.

The Ghost Votes in the Machine

...

=====================================================================
Findings: The GEMS central tabulator program is incorrectly designed and highly vulnerable to fraud. Election results can be changed in a matter of seconds. Part of the program we examined appears to be designed with election tampering in mind. We have also learned that election officials maintain inadequate controls over access to the central tabulator. We need to beef up procedures to mitigate risks...

Diebold claimed its voting system was secure. It is, in fact, highly vulnerable to and appears to be designed for fraud....

It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks. It is not too late to do so, and the corrective measures are relatively simple.



How and when did the double set of books get into GEMS?

Black Box Voting has traced the implementation of the double set of books to Oct. 13, 2000, shortly after embezzler Jeffrey Dean became the senior programmer. Dean was hired as Vice President of Research and Development in September 2000, and his access to the programs is well documented through internal memos from Diebold. The double set of books appeared in GEMS version 1.17.7.

Almost immediately, according to the Diebold memos, another Diebold programmer, Dmitry Papushin, flagged a problem with bogus votes appearing in the vote tables. The double set of books remained, though, going through several tweaks and refinements. From the time Jeffrey Dean was hired in September, until shortly before the Nov. 2000 election, GEMS went through over a dozen changes, all retaining the new hidden vote tables.

For four years, anyone who has known how to trigger the double set of books has been able to use, or sell, the information to anyone they want.

the GEMS central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 percent of the votes in the election, in 30 states, both paper ballot and touch screen.
Elections were run on this tamper-inviting system for more than three years, and anyone who knew could sell the vote-tampering secrets to anyone they wanted to, at any time.

Whether you vote absentee, on touch-screens, or on paper ballot (fill in the bubble) optical scan machines, all votes are ultimately brought to the "mother ship," the central tabulator at the county which adds them all up and creates the results report.

These systems are used in over 30 states and each counts up to two million votes at once.
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/11/05/loc_warrenvote05.html
=====================================================================
from blackboxvoting.org, IIRC, a few months ago.
.

 

[Willco]

Bigfoot votes for Kerry! UFOs stole absentee votes! Vampires hate gay marriage!

 

[videogamer]

I see someone found the tip of dah iceberg... nice.

The Ghost Votes in the Machine

...

The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.

IIRC, Diebold is in only one area of Ohio. But still, this is a freaking conflict of interest right here.

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cach...ines03/0828-08.htm+diebold+bush+elected&hl=en

 

[fart]

only terrorists would commit electoral fraud.

americans aren't terrorists

hence, no fraud.

[x]

 

[Desperado]

this is total bullshit let it go already OHIO

Bush depresses me but this even more

So you want people to stop reporting news like this?

 

[Raven.]

IIRC, Diebold is in only one area of Ohio. But still, this is a freaking conflict of interest right here.

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cach...ines03/0828-08.htm+diebold+bush+elected&hl=en

Well, diebold ain't the only one...

In a recent interview with LA Weekly Gore Vidal was asked this question: “Speaking of elections, is George W. Bush going to be re-elected next year?” Vidal answered: “No. At least if there is a fair election, an election that is not electronic. That would be dangerous. We don't want an election without a paper trail. The makers of the voting machines say no one can look inside of them, because they would reveal trade secrets. What secrets? Isn't their job to count votes? Or do they get secret messages from Mars? Is the cure for cancer inside the machines? I mean, come on. And all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. Is this not corruption?”

Vidal said, “So Bush will probably win if the country is covered with these balloting machines. He can't lose.”..

 

[Iceman]

daily show already covered that: trade secrets = prevent hacking the system.

But if you want to continue creating conspiracy plots pretend I wasn't here.

 

[Nerevar]

this is total bullshit let it go already OHIO

Bush depresses me but this even more

are you kidding? Yeah, voter fraud is something we just ignore and pretend it doesn't happen.

 

[StoOgE]

gee, the exit polls had Kerry winning big.. I guess they should ad a question to the exit poll..

"Did your vote actually go towards the person you didnt vote for 10 times?"

 

[teiresias]

trade secrets = prevent hacking the system.

Because as we all know, the numerous trade secrets that keep most of the Windows and IE code under wraps has prevented those from being hacked.

 

[Outlaw Pro Mod]

Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush's total should have been recorded as 365.

Regardless of whatever happened, Kerry won that county.

Straight from CNN:

Franklin

Updated: 12:11 p.m. ET

Kerry - 275,573 - 54%

Bush - 234,196 - 46%

100% of precincts reporting

State and county election officials did not immediately respond to requests by The Associated Press for more details about the voting system and its vendor, and whether the error, if repeated elsewhere in Ohio, could have affected the outcome.

Wait and see.

 

[fart]

trade secrets are to protect money making interests. hence, trade secrets. the best way to prevent hacking is to make something logically and mathematically secure within some reasonable tolerances. how to do this is not a trade secret unless the method itself depends on obfuscation of the method, which is, of course, not logically or mathematically secure.

another reason it might be a trade secret is because it does not work as advertised or leave a trail that might incriminate it. if your real trade is not, in fact, your advertised trade, then it follows that you would have to keep it a secret.

 

[Discharger]

Wow, that's pretty scary. I hope they ensure something like this doesn't happen next time

Now we'll never know for sure if this was fair or not. Regardless, what's done is done

 

[olimario]

I don't think there was fraud. My father is a stat crunching machine and followed this election more closely than the whole of you on a statistical level.

He was corrisponding with an NYU Professor and Conspiracy Theorist who believed the election was rigged. Here was his second e-mail.

Thanks for the courtesy of a reply.

To set the record straight, I normally vote republican, but am not associated with any organization, nor do I donate to any candidate. In this case, my interest is more academic than partisan. I am interested in voting patterns, and it seems to me that the patterns don't show any statistical evidence that supports your case. Bush's percentage of the vote was up across the red and blue country 3-5% with remarkable consistency. He increased his proportion of the vote in 46 states, and in a vast majority of the individual counties. Therefore, if there were fraud, it would either be very obvious, or else so incredibly widespread that it would have involved election officials of both parties from the precinct chairmen on up. We simply do not see such a pattern. The Franklin County, Ohio incident had to be a glitch, because if it were fraud, it would be absolutely transparent and no one would be willing to accept such a result. The Franklin County, Florida incident, also reported on DU, is no story at all, since the voting pattern is consistent with previous elections and the general trend of this election.

I do agree that fraud does happen, so I appreciate the analysis on the electronic machines that shows it would be theoretically possible, I just don't believe in this instance that the data support the premise.

Thanks again for the response.

oli's daddy

 

[shoplifter]

I don't think there was fraud. My father is a stat crunching machine and followed this election more closely than the whole of you on a statistical level.

Regardless of whether there was 'fraud' or not, an additional 4000 votes here, and a lost 4000 votes in NC can't be the only issues that occurred. This thread isn't about fraud, it's about serious issues with eVoting that could have easily been alleviated but have not been.

eVoting with no verifiable trail is like walking into a room, telling a guy behind a curtain who you vote for, him attempting to remember, then having 5000 other people do it. Finally at the end of the day, he tells election officials the tally from memory. You HOPE he got it right, but there's no way to prove he did.

FWIW (I live in Columbus and Gahanna is fairly well-to-do) this is obviously a glitch, but that doesn't change the fact that I have no proof that my vote actually went to Kerry. I just have to trust that it was tallied correctly.

Also, keep in mind that in a Presidential election, widespread fraud doesn't have to occur to affect results. A few select counties in certain states could be targetted, swinging electoral votes one way or the other, especially in close states like Ohio. I don't believe it happened here with eVoting since there are only a few counties that use it.

 

[StoOgE]

well thats it.. its official, Olimario's daddy cleared it up for all of us.. and in case you DONT think he is qualified to comment on this, he actually e-mailed it to an NYU professor.. I bet you havent sent your opinion to an NYU prof.. therefore your opinion is less factually correct.. plus, as Oli tells us, his dad is smarter than us.

 

[olimario]

well thats it.. its official, Olimario's daddy cleared it up for all of us.. and in case you DONT think he is qualified to comment on this, he actually e-mailed it to an NYU professor.. I bet you havent sent your opinion to an NYU prof.. therefore your opinion is less factually correct.. plus, as Oli tells us, his dad is smarter than us.

He is very smart and he did follow this election as close as possible statistically. His words aren't fact, of course, and he admits that. He's just providing an objective statistical viewpoint.

 

[NohWun]

Here's how it works:

http://boomchicago.cyso.net/images/Voting_Machine.mov

 

[Loki]

Well, if nothing else, I think we can surmise that Oli's dad graduated from HS legitimately.

 

[3phemeral]

Pic of ballots from 40 Ohio precincts loaded onto a truck to be taken to the Ohio State Board Of Elections to be counted.

I spy...

 

[ShadowRed]

He is very smart and he did follow this election as close as possible statistically. His words aren't fact, of course, and he admits that. He's just providing an objective statistical viewpoint.

Yeah he's so smart he let you get kicked out of school for no fault of your own, rather than fight to get his son back in school where he could get a high school diploma, versus a shitty GED. Yeah I'm going to take his word for it.

Well, if nothing else, I think we can surmise that Oli's dad graduated from HS legitimately.

:lol

 

[Hitokage]

daily show already covered that: trade secrets = prevent hacking the system.

:lol If it was the Daily Show it was clearly being sarcastic.

 

[videogamer]

Pic of ballots from 40 Ohio precincts loaded onto a truck to be taken to the Ohio State Board Of Elections to be counted.

I spy...

Is that real? That sticker is disturbing.

 

[maharg]

daily show already covered that: trade secrets = prevent hacking the system.

But if you want to continue creating conspiracy plots pretend I wasn't here.

Any system that relies, for security, on secrecy is doomed to failure. If the daily show said that wasn't the case, and they weren't joking, the daily show was wrong. It's as simple as that. This is a well established principle of digital security.

The logic is simple to follow here, as well. A system that has open criteria and can be mathematically or logically proven to keep a secret has no need to be secret itself. And open processes encourage the system to be rigorous.

Anyone actually well versed in security technology would laugh at the notion that trade secrets keep secrets.

 

[Do The Mario]

Was bush responsible for counting those ballets?

Don’t be too harsh guys he does struggle to count without his fingers and toes.

 

[iapetus]

daily show already covered that: trade secrets = prevent hacking the system.

I'd be interested in knowing who made that claim. Because the one thing it shows is that they know absolutely nothing about software security.

 

[pestul]

Pic of ballots from 40 Ohio precincts loaded onto a truck to be taken to the Ohio State Board Of Elections to be counted.

I spy...

That sticker has to be fake.. I mean seriously. The perspective doesn't quite look right on it.

 

[DJ Sl4m]

Impressive

 

[Forsete]

Hah! The US seems like a 3rd world country when it comes to your elections.

 

[nathkenn]

in the place i was voting they were loading the ballots into the trunk of a car covered in crazy religous stickers, like the end is near kind of stuff

 

[3phemeral]

That sticker has to be fake.. I mean seriously. The perspective doesn't quite look right on it.

I don't know It was posted on another bored and it hasn't been verified as authentic or not yet.

 

[Raven.]

in the place i was voting they were loading the ballots into the trunk of a car covered in crazy religous stickers, like the end is near kind of stuff

I wonder...

 

[nathkenn]

there were more votes counted for President in Florida than ballots cast.

Total votes cast: approx 7,460,556
for Senate: 7,409,542 (-51,014)
for Amendment 5: 7,277,832 (-182,724)
for President: 7,586,995 (126,439)

http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

counties using e-voting machines experienced 422% increase in GOP turnout, 22% decrease in Democratic turnout.

I'll say that again.

422% increase in GOP turnout, 22% decrease in Democratic turnout. Only in counties using e-voting.


Calhoun County, FL:

Type: Op-Scan Diebold
% Rep Increase (Decrease) 433.2%
% Dem Increase (Decrease) -56.9%
Rep Votes: 3,780
Dem Votes: 2,116
Total Votes: 5,961
Registered Rep: 11.9%
Registered Dem: 82.4%
Total Registered: 8,350
Rep Votes Expected Based On Reg %:709
Dem Votes Expected Based On Reg %:4,911

 

[Matlock]

We've got whoops on a collision course with oh shit.