# Assuage my paranoia. Explain to me why I should have faith in E-voting machines **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 23, 2006, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532 "2006-10-23T04:33:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![spazattak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8e8cbc/32.png) [@spazattak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spazattak)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2006, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/201 "2006-10-31T14:34:30Z")
[QUOTE=Cheesesteak] If your grocery store was selling expired meat for 10 cents a pound, would you buy it? Cheapness is a lousy excuse for ditching technology that works for technology that doesn’t. They’re also going to have to transition, at some time, to technology that actually does the job right, aren’t they? [/QUOTE] I can’t really respond to that. What I was telling you was the reality of the situation. The facts - what I’ve learned from my local board of elections. Now we can monday-morning quarterback it all we want, but that doesn’t change the reality of the current situation. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2006, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/202 "2006-11-02T01:25:54Z")
This just in: [Primary and early e-voting problems point to gathering storm](http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061101-8131.html) > [@](#): > > After three months of exhaustive research, empirical evidence supports the key definitive finding: The machines’ four sources of vote totals – VVPAT [voter-verified paper audit trail] individual ballots, VVPAT summary, election archive, and memory cards – did not agree with one another. > [@](#): > > The lack of machine IDs and proper labeling on the canisters containing the paper rolls may not sound like a big deal, but it’s huge. According to one common reading of an Ohio statute that is almost certain to be litigated in the aftermath of the coming electoral disaster, these paper print-outs are the official legal record of the vote in the state; they’re the ultimate and final authority on voter intent… I certainly hope it’s not because someone with access to a common roll printer of the type used in the AccuVote went and printed out a bunch of counterfeit votes, stuffed them into canisters, and passed them to the BOE. > [@](#): > > Shortly after my recent election fraud article went live, I got email from a Texas woman whose daughter reads Ars. This woman claims that during early voting she voted a straight Democratic ticket at a precinct in Collin County (in Dallas), but the touch-screen that she used kept flipping all of the votes to a straight Republican ticket at the confirmation screen. She and a poll worker were unable to resolve the issue, so she wound up voting for Republicans across the board. > > A local TV station in Jefferson County, Texas is running a report that indicates that others have had this exact same problem. In some cases, a straight Democratic ticket has Republican candidates mysteriously mixed in with it. > > The Miami Herald reports that this exact same phenomenon is occurring right now in early voting in Florida, complete with the same Democrat-to-Republican vote flipping. > [@](#): > > We present an independent security evaluation of the AccuVote Optical Scan voting terminal (AV-OS). We identify a number of new vulnerabilities of this system which, if exploited maliciously, can invalidate the results of an election process utilizing the terminal. Furthermore, based on our findings an AV-OS can be compromised with off-the-shelf equipment in a matter of minutes even if the machine has its removable memory card sealed in place. The basic attack can be applied to effect a variety of results, including entirely neutralizing one candidate so that their votes are not counted, swapping the votes of two candidates, or biasing the results by shifting some votes from one candidate to another. Such vote tabulation corruptions can lay dormant until the election day, thus avoiding detection through pre-election tests. > [@](#): > > By way of finishing off today’s litany of positively awful e-voting news, I bring you step-by-step instructions for casting multiple ballots on any Sequoia machine. No computer skills needed; just reach around the back of the machine and hold down the yellow button. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2006, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/203 "2006-11-02T02:43:10Z")
[QUOTE=Weirddave] No, actually, it’s not. It’s the same old bullshit. You really need to read a dictionary and learn the meaning of the word “proof”. Hint: It’s not "Hey, I agree with that! [/QUOTE] Some rebuttal. Other than the freely added _ad hominem_ with respect to my knowledge, I noticed you’ve completely avoided tackling a single issue raised by Dr. Ron Baiman’s excellent and thorough exposition. Then again, I expect no more from the likes of you and most of your blind cohorts. However, I must admit that you take your cyberbeatings quite well. Years of practice I suspect. ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2006, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/204 "2006-11-02T06:24:21Z")
[QUOTE=RedFury] Some rebuttal. Other than the freely added _ad hominem_ with respect to my knowledge, I noticed you’ve completely avoided tackling a single issue raised by Dr. Ron Baiman’s excellent and thorough exposition. Then again, I expect no more from the likes of you and most of your blind cohorts. However, I must admit that you take your cyberbeatings quite well. Years of practice I suspect. [/QUOTE] If this is your idea of administering a “cyberbeating”(whatever the fuck that is), then you must think the Arizona Cardinals are a championship football team. And the whole presentation was based upon the tired old “one in a zillion odds” exit poll nonsense that has been repeatedly debunked since 2004. Again, proof does not consist of someone agreeing with your paranoia or pointing out statistical anomalies. You need a [link](http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid=Mozilla-search&va=proof)? The key word in most of those definitions is “evidence”. And you still don’t have any. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2006, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/205 "2006-11-02T18:30:09Z")
Exit poll nonsense? Do you know any thimg of statistics. Exit polling is very reliable and is used around the world with excellent results. Because of the supposed beat down given to the polling companies after 2000,they tripled the polling. The results are statistically sure. You reject because you want to. it is not about truth. Polling has been used for years because it works. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2006, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/206 "2006-11-02T19:07:57Z")
[QUOTE=gonzomax] Exit poll nonsense? Do you know any thimg of statistics. Exit polling is very reliable and is used around the world with excellent results. [/QUOTE] Polling only works when the people are randomly selected, and the results accurately recorded. Can you guarantee that there was no polling bias, intentional or not? Can you guarantee that the polling numbers weren’t tampered with at the source? We’re all so quick to suggest that there’s some vast unknown Republican conspiracy affecting the votes in a dozen states, that used two dozen different types of machines and tallying methods. Why? Because the vote tallies disagreed with the poll that was conducted by ONE group using ONE methodology. A group made up of a consortium of news agencies. Hmm… I don’t suppose that these news agencies have an interest in the election being controversial, do they? Wouldn’t that boost their ad revenues as everyone tuned in for the next report? Yes, the consortium of news agencies that would directly benefit from a messy election conducted a poll that implies there was election fraud. Shocking. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2006, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/207 "2006-11-02T19:45:03Z")
Read. Learn: [Footprints of Electoral Fraud: The November 2 Exit Poll Scam](http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE411A.html) > [@](#): > > The National Election Pool’s own data—as transmitted by CNN on the evening of November 2 and the early morning of November 3—suggest very strongly that the results of the exit polls were themselves fiddled late on November 2 in order to make their numbers conform with the tabulated vote tallies. > > It is important to remember how large the discrepancy was between the early vote tallies and the early exit poll figures. By the time polls were closing in the eastern states, the vote-count figures published by CNN showed Bush leading Kerry by a massive 11 percent margin. At 8:50 p.m. EST, Bush was credited with 6,590,476 votes, and Kerry with 5,239,414. This margin gradually shrank. By 9:00 p.m., Bush purportedly had 8,284,599 votes, and Kerry 6,703,874; by 9:06 p.m., Bush had 9,257,135, and Kerry had 7,652,510, giving the incumbent a 9 percent lead, with 54 percent of the vote to Kerry’s 45 percent. > > At the same time, embarrassingly enough, the national exit poll figures reported by CNN showed Kerry as holding a narrow but potentially decisive lead over Bush. At 9:06 p.m. EST, the exit polls indicated that women’s votes (54 percent of the total) were going 54 percent to Kerry, 45 percent to Bush, and 1 percent to Nader; men’s votes (46 percent of the total) were breaking 51 percent to Bush, 47 percent to Kerry, and 1 percent to Nader. Kerry, in other words, was leading Bush by nearly 3 percent. > > The early exit polls appear to have caused some concern to the good people at the National Election Pool: a gap of 12 or 14 percent between tallied results and exit polls can hardly inspire confidence in the legitimacy of an election. > > One can surmise that instructions of two sorts were issued. The election-massagers working for Diebold, ES&S (Election Systems & Software) and the other suppliers of black-box voting machines may have been told to go easy on their manipulations of back-door ‘Democrat-Delete’ software: mere victory was what the Bush campaign wanted, not an implausible landslide. And the number crunchers at the National Election Pool may have been asked to fix up those awkward exit polls. > > Fix them they did. When the national exit polls were last updated, at 1:36 a.m. EST on November 3, men’s votes (still 46 percent of the total) had gone 54 percent to Bush, 45 percent to Kerry, and 1 percent to Nader; women’s votes (54 percent of the total) had gone 47 percent to Bush, 52 percent to Kerry, and 1 percent to Nader. > > But how do we know the fix was in? Because the exit poll data also included the total number of respondents. At 9:00 p.m. EST, this number was well over 13,000; by 1:36 a.m. EST on November 3 it had risen by less than 3 percent, to a final total of 13, 531 respondents—but with a corresponding swing of 5 percent from Kerry to Bush in voters’ reports of their choices. **Given the increase in respondents, a swing of this size is a mathematical impossibility**. You’re welcomed. ---
**Author:** ![Random](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/57b2e6/32.png) [@Random](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Random)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2006, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/208 "2006-11-02T20:09:24Z")
[QUOTE=RedFury] Read. Learn: [Footprints of Electoral Fraud: The November 2 Exit Poll Scam](http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE411A.html) [/QUOTE] This is the best that you can do? A bloglike article posted on November 5, 2004 (3 days after the election) by an associate professor of English? Which says nothing more than “the actual election results didn’t match the exit polls, so therefore the Rupublicans committed fraud”? (That’s a paraphrase of the main thrust of the article, not a direct quote.) Please. **Diogenes** said essentially the same thing on election night. He didn’t have any evidence either. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2006, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/209 "2006-11-02T20:41:21Z")
[QUOTE=Random] This is the best that you can do? A bloglike article posted on November 5, 2004 (3 days after the election) by an associate professor of English? Which says nothing more than “the actual election results didn’t match the exit polls, so therefore the Rupublicans committed fraud”? [/QUOTE] Well, to be fair, it also said that the exit poll results were themselves manipulated, though it didn’t support that assertion very well, either. ---
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2006, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/210 "2006-11-02T20:54:06Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] An [add-on](http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040816/dugger/3) to the electronic machines would print a paper sheet as soon as you registered your votes; it would be displayed under glass so you could verify it represented your actual choices; then it would drop into a sealed storage box in case a recount is called for. That system might not be flatly impossible to rig, but it would be much more difficult. [/QUOTE] Exactly the system I used to vote in California yesterday. The paper sheet verifying my vote was on display, behind a plastic window, for me to be able to read it clearly and verify it, but neither I nor the poll workers had physical access to the paper record of my vote. Once verified, it scrolled forward into the machine kept, I’m confident, safely. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2006, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/211 "2006-11-02T22:39:07Z")
For those of you that get HBO: [Hacking Democracy](http://tv.yahoo.com/tvpdb?.src=my&d=tvp&lineup=us_DITV501&channels=us_HBO&id=170090489&chspid=166030370&chname=HBO+501&progutn=1162519200&.intl=us) First showing tonight at 9:00 PM ET ---
**Author:** ![stochastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e19b73/32.png) [@stochastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stochastic)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2006, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/212 "2006-11-03T03:45:39Z")
Just watched “Hacking Democracy”. I’m sitting here fuming mad; they showed clear evidence of the lies, deceit and underhanded manipulations underlying our electoral process. If there’s one whiff of these shenanigans in next week’s election, I’m going to exercise my rights to do whatever it takes to reclaim our democracy. :mad: Who’s with me? ---
**Author:** ![stochastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e19b73/32.png) [@stochastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stochastic)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2006, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/213 "2006-11-03T03:57:38Z")
[QUOTE=bienville] Exactly the system I used to vote in California yesterday. The paper sheet verifying my vote was on display, behind a plastic window, for me to be able to read it clearly and verify it, but neither I nor the poll workers had physical access to the paper record of my vote. Once verified, it scrolled forward into the machine kept, I’m confident, safely. [/QUOTE] Except, as shown in “Hacking Democracy”, you’re trusting that those paper records are kept for later verification and that they actually match the real votes cast. The documentry showed that in fact, those things did not occur in Volusa County, Florida. The elections officials threw away the original paper tape rolls for the 2004 election(signed by each polling precinct worker), these were recovered by the subjects of the documentary from the trash behind the elections office. These paper records are supposed to be kept for up to 22 months, per federal law. When the original paper rolls were compared with freshly-printed rolls that were obtained through a public documents request, there were many descrepancies in the tallies of votes between the two, with Bush being given hundreds of votes on the new rolls that were not on the original, official print-outs that were in the trash. Why this is all being found out by a small group of free-lance concerned citizens and not investigated by someone with more authority is what’s really bugging me. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2006, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/214 "2006-11-03T04:04:05Z")
[QUOTE=stochastic] Just watched “Hacking Democracy”. I’m sitting here fuming mad; they showed clear evidence of the lies, deceit and underhanded manipulations underlying our electoral process. If there’s one whiff of these shenanigans in next week’s election, I’m going to exercise my rights to do whatever it takes to reclaim our democracy. :mad: Who’s with me? [/QUOTE] As did I. If I had any doubts left, they are now defunct. Not that’ll make a bit of diffence to the True Believers. Major point in the documentary – the inquiries made by Bev Harris and her highly qualified team of computer experts – highlights just how easy it is to hijack an US election under current conditions. Witness the two minute demo with Dean. In any event, for those of you who you whose sole mission in life seems to be excusing and adoring Dear Leader, I’ve no doubt that you wouldn’t bother to sit through 90 minutes of naked truth. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2006, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/215 "2006-11-03T04:09:51Z")
PS-Highly ironic that the **only** requisite they managed to skip was none other than (paraphrasing here, no transcript) the security of their systems to be tampered with – which obviously should have been the number one issue. Yet they still got the contracts. Amazing. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2006, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/216 "2006-11-03T12:04:07Z")
And now y’all begin to understand what I’ve been saying. ---
**Author:** ![Common\_Tater](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/common_tater/32/13846_2.png) [@Common\_Tater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Common_Tater)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2006, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/217 "2006-11-03T17:20:39Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] The thing is, though, the Republicans can easily eliminate the potential for Democrats to cry foul about election results by simply going along with legislation requiring paper trails. It would actually be _good_ for them in the long run if the had the paper to wave in the Democrats’ face. I can’t think of any good reason for them to _not_ want a paper trail unless they have something to hide. [/QUOTE] Election integrity isn’t a partisan issue to my way of thinking. But you have to be careful in defining your terms here - a “paper trail” or “receipt” could be problematic in that this might be a method of buying votes. If such a paper trail still ensured a secret ballot, it’s difficult to see how anyone could object. But then, that’s what a paper ballot is anyway, it sounds again like “we’re trying to reinvent the wheel.” I’m not a crook, so I am at a disadvantage in seeing how this might be effected, either in the past or the future. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/218 "2006-11-06T00:01:37Z")
Exit pollers are in a business. They have been doing it for many years. Unless you have woken from a coma lately ,you will remember that TV stations called the elections with the information given them by the companies. The methods are proven and work Now in 2000 they dont work. This of course proves polling does not work. Did for 50 years but no more. So when they tripled the people in the polls it was just more proof of methodology problems. I think not. Something is wrong and I dont think it ois the polling. The Bradblog has coverered this since about 2001. They were told by Diebolt insider and have persued it since. The story and proof just continue to grow. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532/219 "2006-11-06T00:31:36Z")
[QUOTE=Common Tater] Election integrity isn’t a partisan issue to my way of thinking. But you have to be careful in defining your terms here - a “paper trail” or “receipt” could be problematic in that this might be a method of buying votes. If such a paper trail still ensured a secret ballot, it’s difficult to see how anyone could object. But then, that’s what a paper ballot is anyway, it sounds again like “we’re trying to reinvent the wheel.” I’m not a crook, so I am at a disadvantage in seeing how this might be effected, either in the past or the future. [/QUOTE] How is a paper trail any less secret or secure than paper ballot? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuage-my-paranoia-explain-to-me-why-i-should-have-faith-in-e-voting-machines/377532.md?page=10)