# Voter Machine Fraud Starting Already
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [October 19, 2008, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587 "2008-10-19T00:50:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@interface2x](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/interface2x)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2008, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/41 "2008-10-20T00:08:14Z")
> [@Drain\_Bead](#):
>
> The electronic voting machines that we use in my precinct in Ohio have a printout that runs alongside the screen. You can see, in real time, the paper result of every button you press. If you change your mind and press another button, it’ll mark that clearly.
>
> I don’t understand why they all don’t do that.
FWIW, I voted today and we had a very similar type of machine there. It displayed all of the choices I made on the screen, I hit “print results”, and then it displayed the printout with my choices selected.
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### Author:  [@askeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/askeptic)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2008, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/42 "2008-10-20T04:25:18Z")
> [@](#):
>
> 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.
[http://wvgazette.com/News/200810180251](http://wvgazette.com/News/200810180251)
Nope, no pattern, nothing to see here at all it’s just a tempest in a teapot…:rolleyes:
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### Author:  [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2008, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/43 "2008-10-20T20:24:56Z")
[quote=“Sage\_Rat, post:21, topic:468587”]
I mean, for any level of needed security and redundancy, you can always get precisely that, regardless of whether you are using human or computer labor. Historically speaking, though, compromising humans is easier than computers.
[QUOTE]
Exactly true. I do not understand the distrust of voting machines. We trust computers to do bank transactions and stock exchange transactions worth billions and trillions and someone compromising that could make himself very rich. And yet we do not trust an election recount? That’s just silly. The (hardware and software) technology to implement vote counts with any degree of security neeed exists and is not terribly complex. All you need is a system which is open and verifiable by all parties involved.
That this is not being done correctly speaks of the politics and the human element involved but does not mean the technology to do it is not there and ready.
It would be extremely easy to have everybody vote by internet to a central place and have the results be guaranteed. It could be made much safer than having the results counted at the local level.
This is just link in the whole mess that are elections in the USA. Another is the whole issue of voter rolls and who is or is not authorized to vote. It is an inexcusable mess which would shame any third world country.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2008, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/44 "2008-10-20T20:34:30Z")
> [@Frank](#):
>
> In the [original story](http://wvgazette.com/News/200810170676), it appears that this sometimes happens, and that recalibrating the machine fixes (and has fixed) the problem.
>
> Tempest. Teapot.
Only if the problem with a machine is noticed prior to e-day, as it was in some WV precincts. It might not be, in all of them, and the fact that all the errors so far detected run in the Pubs’ favor makes this one Teapot Dome of a tempest.
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### Author:  [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2008, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/45 "2008-10-20T20:59:20Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> Only if the problem with a machine is noticed prior to e-day, as it was in some WV precincts. It might not be, in all of them, and the fact that all the errors so far detected run in the Pubs’ favor makes this one Teapot Dome of a tempest.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think that there should be some onus on the voter to ensure that their votes are showing as what they what they selected. Which people are apparently doing, and they’re making the poll workers aware of the problem, and the problem is being fixed.
Y’know, there are a lot of honest people all over this country doing hard work every day to ensure that the elections are fairly conducted, and I for one am getting sick and tired of seeing them demonized as only out to make their party the winner.
Voting errors occur everywhere, believe it or not, it’s what happens when we have a system created by humans, and administered by humans. All that can be done is to minimize those errors, and it sounds to me like they’re trying their best.
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2008, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/46 "2008-10-20T21:21:30Z")
> [@Frank](#):
>
> Maybe it’s just me, but I think that there should be some onus on the voter to ensure that their votes are showing as what they what they selected. Which people are apparently doing, and they’re making the poll workers aware of the problem, and the problem is being fixed.
But the fact that there is a problem occurring often enough for a story, and that it’s _always_ in the Republican’s favor, is awfully suspicious, don’t you think?
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2008, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/47 "2008-10-20T21:28:25Z")
> [@Frank](#):
>
> Y’know, there are a lot of honest people all over this country doing hard work every day to ensure that the elections are fairly conducted, and I for one am getting sick and tired of seeing them demonized as only out to make their party the winner.
:dubious: It’s Diebold and suchlike e-voting machine companies who are being demonized here, and based on [what we’ve seen to date](http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040816/dugger) they are **not** honest.
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### Author:  [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2008, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/48 "2008-10-20T21:39:23Z")
> [@Captain\_Carrot](#):
>
> But the fact that there is a problem occurring often enough for a story, and that it’s _always_ in the Republican’s favor, is awfully suspicious, don’t you think?
It’s worth keeping an eye on, certainly. But we’ve got - what? - six reports from two counties? That’s not much of a sample.
And, as a programmer who writes systems that people use every single day and they _still_ screw up, the concept of user error is not totally foreign to me either.
And, lastly, the later article that **askeptic** quoted states that voters have a choice: touch-screen or optical scan. If they don’t trust the touch screen, don’t use it.
Unless there is actual evidence of malice, as there was in Florida in 2000, my default assumption is going to be that shit happens. Minimize it, fix it, avoid it - as much as is humanly possible - but don’t assume that just because there are mistakes and accidents that they are caused by evil.
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### Author:  [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2008, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/49 "2008-10-20T21:44:47Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> :dubious: It’s Diebold and suchlike e-voting machine companies who are being demonized here, and based on [what we’ve seen to date](http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040816/dugger) they are **not** honest.
That’s four years old. We all bitched about the lack of a paper trail; we’ve now got one. The screens show the vote, giving you the opportunity to correct or complain if they’re not working right. The screens review your casted ballot, giving you the opportunity to correct or complain if they’re not working right, before you finalize your vote. The paper trail shows in a window beside the screen, giving you the opportunity to correct or complain if they’re not working right, before you finalize your vote.
What do you want, voting-eye dogs?
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### Author:  [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2008, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/50 "2008-10-21T00:30:20Z")
> [@Frank](#):
>
> That’s four years old.
Has Diebold ever put out a machine that is verifiable and error-free? Every single article I have read on the topic (up to and including a couple months ago) says no. I’m constantly reading about the security vulnerabilities, or even as recently as August 2008 when they admitted they had a bug that had been dropping votes for a long time.
It’s not that they are evil, but it’s not a simple problem to solve. The more robust you need the solution the more time and money is required to get it to that point, especially when software is involved.
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### Author:  [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2008, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/51 "2008-10-21T04:45:26Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#):
>
> Has Diebold ever put out a machine that is verifiable and error-free?
I presume their ATMs usually work OK. The banks would have complained.
Ed
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2008, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/52 "2008-10-21T05:14:20Z")
Which makes it especially puzzling that their voting machines are so buggy… The hard parts of making a good voting machine are shared by good ATMs. So if they’re competent enough to make good ATMs, why aren’t they competent enough to make good voting machines?
Unless it’s a matter of something other than competence?
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### Author:  [@lee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lee)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2008, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/53 "2008-10-21T05:19:22Z")
Back when I worked at a bank in the late 1990s, Diebold ATMs had a reputation for high quality. I think that if they wanted they could make a reliable voting machine.
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### Author:  [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2008, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/54 "2008-10-21T22:24:39Z")
> [@suranyi](#):
>
> I presume their ATMs usually work OK. The banks would have complained.
>
> Ed
I should have said “voting machine” as that is what I really meant.
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### Author:  [@Dogzilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogzilla)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2008, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/55 "2008-10-22T01:07:33Z")
> [@Zakalwe](#):
>
> Even though Florida has become the byword for screwed up elections, I’m lucky enough to live in a county with a great supervisor of elections. We’ve been using optical scan for years (he fought with the FL Legislature over touch screens after 2000) and every time there’s been a recount, the new count has matched the old exactly. We get results in all races before midnight.
Yes, and that great supervisor of elections (who I love too!) was featured in _Hacking Democracy_. They showed the undetectable tally (heh!) problem on voting machines that tally our votes in _this_ county. Where you and I live. Ion Sancho was flabbergasted.
Like the poster above said, it’s about the most depressing movie ever.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2008, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/56 "2008-10-22T17:39:26Z")
[And more . . .](http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/22/votes)
> [@](#):
>
> AMY GOODMAN: Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University is our guest. His most recent book, Loser Take All. Who is Stephen Spoonamore?
>
> MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Stephen Spoonamore is a conservative Republican, a former McCain supporter and, most importantly, a renowned and highly successful expert at the detection of computer fraud. That’s his profession. He works for major banks. He works for foreign governments. He works for the Secret Service. Those are his clients.
>
> He knows personally the principal players in Bush-Cheney’s conspiracy to subvert our elections through electronic means since 2000, and he has named these principal players. Specifically, he has named a man named Mike Connell. Mike Connell, according to Spoonamore, is Karl Rove’s computer guru. This is the guy who has helped Bush-Cheney fix election results through computers since Florida 2000, in Ohio in 2004, also in the stolen re-election of Governor Don Siegelman in Alabama in 2002, also in the stolen re-election of Senator Max Cleland in Georgia in 2002.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: How?
>
> MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, basically, they use a kind of architecture that’s called Man in the Middle, and it involves shunting election returns data through a separate computer somewhere else. This is something that computer criminals do all the time with banks. Spoonamore explains that the Man in the Middle setup is extremely effective and basically undetectable as a way to change election results.
>
> Now, the scariest thing is that Connell told Spoonamore that the reason why he has helped Bush-Cheney still these elections for the last eight years has been to save the babies. See? We have to understand that there’s a very powerful component of religious fanaticism at work in the election fraud conspiracy. We saw a little bit of that in Greenswald’s film, where Paul Weyrich was talking about how we don’t want people voting.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: The conservative activist.
>
> MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, because the majority is a majority of unbelievers. They’re pro-choice. They’re corrupt. They’re evil. They don’t get it. It’s therefore necessary to fix election results in order to prevent the unjust and the unrighteous from taking over.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: Professor Mark Crispin Miller, you keep saying the election was clearly stolen in 2004. This is not a widely held belief. Why do you think more information is not known about this?
>
> MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Because the press and the Democratic Party have steadfastly refused simply to mention, much less discuss, the evidence.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: You talked to John Kerry.
>
> MARK CRISPIN MILLER: I talked to John Kerry. In fact, the last time I was with you, I was here to talk about that conversation with him. On October 28th, 2005, we met. I gave him a copy of my book Fooled Again, and we discussed the last election, and he told me, with some vehemence, that he believed it was stolen.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: In Ohio in 2004—and Ohio, key battleground state right now—
>
> MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Right.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: And we remember at Kenyon, for example, those long, long lines in 2004, people waiting for hours.
>
> MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Right.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: When you talk about the computer setup for 2004, explain further.
>
> MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, what happened was, with the election results that were coming into Ken Blackwell’s website, right, in real time—
>
> AMY GOODMAN: The former Secretary of State of Ohio.
>
> MARK CRISPIN MILLER: The former Secretary of State.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: The former chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign there.
>
> MARK CRISPIN MILLER: And co-chair of Bush-Cheney and a big-time election thief and an ardent theocrat, by the way. The election returns went basically from his website to another computer that was in a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee, under the control of Spoonamore and a guy with another private company, another evangelical. The data was shunted through that computer and then back to the Secretary of State’s website.
>
> Spoonamore says that this Man in the Middle setup has only one purpose, and that is fraud. There’s no other reason to do it. And he believes that such a system is still in place in Ohio, it’s in place in a number of other states. And the crucial fact to bear in mind here, since we’re talking about John McCain attacking ACORN and so on, is that Mike Connell is now working for John McCain.
>
> Now, on the strength of Spoonamore’s testimony, right, it’s driving a RICO lawsuit in Ohio. On the strength of his testimony, Connell has been subpoenaed. He was subpoenaed last week for a deposition, so that he can answer questions on the record, under oath, about what he’s been up to. He and a bevy of Republican lawyers have been very, very vigorously fighting this subpoena, because, of course, they don’t want him to testify ’til after Election Day.
Mark Crispin Miller’s book: [_Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008_](http://www.amazon.com/Loser-Take-All-Subversion-Democracy/dp/0978843142)
---
### Author:  [@maladroit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maladroit)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2008, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/57 "2008-10-23T17:36:03Z")
> **[Avi Rubin's Blog](http://avi-rubin.blogspot.com/)**
>
> Welcome to my blog. Here, I will post items of interest to me most likely focusing on:
>
> Security in Healthcare Information Technology
> Electronic Voting Security
> Computer and Network Security
> Sailing
> Poker
> Sports: Soccer, tennis, golf,...
this guy is a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins Univ, and favors paper ballot w/electronic scan. His blog is a good read.
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### Author:  [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2008, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/58 "2008-10-23T18:22:04Z")
[http://www.math.uic.edu/~jbaldwin/pub/vote3.pdf](http://www.math.uic.edu/~jbaldwin/pub/vote3.pdf) This is a mathematical analysis pointing out our problems. After vote polling has shown to be very accurate. The UN relies on them to determine if an election is fixed. It only fails in America. The mathematicians who set the system up in 2004 said it was near impossible to have the wrong numbers again. Yet, they do not follow. That is what caused so many to question whether the voting machines themselves are giving out bad results. Since then many have found stories about programming and counting problems. .
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### Author:  [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2008, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/59 "2008-10-27T19:13:13Z")
> [@Frank](#):
>
> In the [original story](http://wvgazette.com/News/200810170676), it appears that this sometimes happens, and that recalibrating the machine fixes (and has fixed) the problem.
>
> Tempest. Teapot.
It’s nice to know that our democratic rights are easily minimized and trivialized by others. :rolleyes:
---
### Author:  [@Critical1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical1)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2008, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voter-machine-fraud-starting-already/468587/60 "2008-10-28T04:13:57Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#):
>
> It’s not that they are evil, but it’s not a simple problem to solve. The more robust you need the solution the more time and money is required to get it to that point, especially when software is involved.
open source software, open to all of America to read through, look over, and modify in millions of ways. I think this was suggested up thread but why would this cost so much money? the reason its expensive is because they are doing all the work in house.
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