I agree. I’m not a big fan of the DREs.
I predict that they’ll go through another couple of generations of development before we see them in nationwide use. Maybe a decade from now.
I’m going to be a PollyAnna here, but is it really that big of a deal for blind/elderly/disabled people to get the help of an election official when voting, and thus, cast a less than secret vote? I guess I’m enough of an optimist to think that voting officials are there to help, and won’t influence or truly won’t care which candidate someone votes for. However, I do realize there’s the possibility for abuse here.
When last I voted, there was a lady who was having trouble with the ballots, and she got so frustrated she nearly left in tears. However, the voting officials (and the other voters in line) encouraged her to stay, and she cast her ballot, with the help of one of the officials. I was saddened that she was so upset, but happy that she was persuaded to stay and vote.
Let’s take this one first.
For starters, if you are going to use web sites like that one as the basis for your information, you are going to be misled a fairly large amount of the time.
Here are the facts. We will start with the facts that the web site gives, and move on to those it fails to consider.
The (Columbus) Dispatch conducted one of its mail-back polls Oct. 24 through Nov. 3. These polls are different from standard telephone samplings in that the poll is mailed out to selected recipients who are asked to fill it out and return it. It has been unusually accurate compared to standard phone polls, such as those conducted by the University of Akron. In the published poll results, certain of the statewide initiatives pushed by a group called Reform Ohio Now were shown to be favored by large margins. Specifically, Issue 2 was favored 59% to 33%, Issue 3 was favored 61% to 25%. However, Issue 4 was losing 31% to 45% and Issue 5 was losing narrowly, 41% to 43%. The missing %'s are the undecideds.
I will interject here that another poll was published not much earlier by the University of Akron. You can read it here {warning: PDF}. It is part of an ongoing study of statewide initiatives. As you can see, the numbers are a bit different: It shows Issue 2 winning 2 to 1, Issue 3 winning with somewhat less support, and Issues 4 and 5 going down to defeat. This was a phone poll done over the period of 9/28 to 10/20.
The actual results on Nov. 8? All four issues went down to defeat, by large margins. Issue 2 garnered only 36.5% “yes”, Issue 3 33.0%, Issue 4 30.2% and Issue 5 29.8%.
Now, on the basis primarily of the results for Issue 2 and Issue 3, some people have cried “foul!” They assert that the discrepancy between poll results prior to the election and vote tallies from the election mean that there was a “rigged” result. You will note from a look at the types of web sites involved (e.g.: Michael Moore’s take on it, Brad Friedman’s take on it) that this is simply an extension of a theme they have asserted since the 2004 election: Republicans are “stealing” elections through vote fraud involving electronic machines.
Let’s look at some facts they fail to note:
First, not all of Ohio used touch-screen machines. This web site from the Ohio Secretary of State shows what counties used what systems in November, 2005. Only 40 counties used them. And these counties weren’t for the most part in liberal bastions like Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Franklin Country (Columbus), Hamilton County (Cincinnati). Only Lucas County used them among the traditional Democrat-held counties (some might include Dayton in that category, but Montgomery County often is less liberal than the 3-C cities and Toledo are). So, if vote fraud involving touch-screen machines occurred, it had to occur in less than half the counties (Ohio has 88).
Let’s sample some results. What I have done in the table below is group a sampling of counties who should produce roughly similar results, based upon similarities in voting habits. Lucas, Cuyahoga and Franklin are big city counties, traditionally liberal in voting patterns. Williams, Defiance and Allen are rural NW Ohio Republican bastions. Gallia, Meigs and Scioto are rural Ohio River (almost Appalachian in nature) counties that also are quite Republican by nature, Scioto somewhat less so because of the presence of industrialized Portsmouth on the Ohio River. The percentages are the “yes” votes on each measure. I’ve included Issue 1 (sponsored by the Taft administration) for comparison. I’ve also indicated what system each county uses.
County #1 #2 #3 #4 #5
TS - Lucas 54.1 39.7 46.0 43.1 44.6
PC - Cuyahoga 62.5 48.4 40.8 38.2 38.5
EL - Franklin 58.7 44.6 42.3 40.7 40.6
PC - Williams 53.9 19.3 18.0 16.1 16.7
TS - Defiance 55.0 29.2 27.3 25.4 25.8
OS - Allen 51.6 29.0 27.1 25.7 25.5
EL - Knox 44.9 27.5 24.4 22.8 21.8
TS - Gallia 55.7 29.9 23.7 20.8 22.0
PC - Meigs 55.2 26.4 21.0 18.2 17.9
OS - Scioto 56.6 37.6 35.4 32.0 31.9
TS: Touch Screen; PC: Punch Card; OS: Optical Scan; EL: Electronic Lever
Now, it doesn’t take much perusal to figure something pretty simple out: if the Republicans “stole” the results through vote fraud, they had to do it by rigging the results from all four types of machine. There simply is no indication in the table that touch screen voting machines produced abnormally “Republican” results. You’ll note that the liberal bloggers aren’t talking about this at all.
Another fact conveniently ignored:
Touch Screen machines used in 2005 in Ohio have a paper trail, mandated by the Republican Secretary of State that everyone accuses of having had a hand in “stealing” the 2004 election. That’s right; over the objection of some members of his own party and of some members of the Democratic Party, Kenneth Blackwell refused to certify touch screen machines for use in Ohio unless they came with a paper trail with which to audit the results. I’m not saying he went about it the most, um, organized way (the actual way the certification process went caused quite an uproar, and the number of counties which switched to the touch-screen machines was limited by the time factor involved). But the important point is: every voter could verify that a printed record of his vote was kept by the machine. (I know, I used one, saw the printed record, compared it carefully before “casting” my vote). You never saw the printed record on the old lever machines.
Why is this important?
Because if one wants to see if fraudulent results were reported from touch screen machines, all it takes is an FOI request and a review of a random sample of printouts versus reported results for the sample machines or precincts. Any person can make an FOI request of that nature. But you don’t see anyone doing it, or if they are, I haven’t seen them talking about it or reporting any results. Why?
Maybe because they realize how unlikely it would be that the accusations would be born out by the results. :eek:
So why, then, were the polls wrong?
Mike Blumenthal, aka the Mystery Pollster, has some ideas. So, by the way, does Ohio Citizen Action. Indeed, the information from Ohio Citizen Action is quite instructive: ballot initiatives almost always fail in Ohio. Off-year initiatives have passed on only two occasions: a repeal of workers’ compensation reform bills in 1997, and a ban on election-day registration of voters in 1977. In retrospect, the initiatives were doomed to failure. They were promoted by the party not in power, they were asking people to vote in favor of complex changes, and the proponents were outspent by the opposition, especially right as the election neared.
Indeed, you can see this reflected in the poll trends as the election approached. There was slippage in the support numbers for Issues 2 and 3 over the month of October, as indicated by the polls The (Columbus) Dispatch ran. You can read more about this in the treatment from Blumenthal. He also details how the poll run by The Dipatch was affected by changes in its procedure from prior election cycles.
The result? The facts do not bear out the theory that widespread vote-rigging occurred in Ohio in 2005 with touch screen (or any other) machines. Not that you’ll see the liberal web sites like you referenced in your post admit either the plain facts or the obvious conclusion. Live in a dream world if you prefer. :rolleyes:
People have been expressing concerns, yes. Many of the people who have expressed the concerns are precisely the people I was referencing. But even to the extent that reasonable voices have been raised, no one has asserted that rigging the vote results was an “easy” thing to do. It would involve relatively sophisticated scheming, especially given that the machines have paper trails, now.
Oddly enough, I don’t recall putting forward the claim that the 2005 Ohio election was proof of vote-tampering – just that the results were suspicious enough to raise an eyebrow or three.
But since you went through all that effort to attack a strawman (and ignore the other stuff in the process), here’s a softball for you: why is the division of Diebold responsible for developing their electronic voting machines led by convicted embezzlers, frauds, and felons?
Will people actually watch their ballots being fed into the scanner? Will they have some way of knowing if it was a good read or a bad read?
Seems to me if someone didn’t want candidate X to win he could “forget” or “accidentally misfeed” ballots for a particular candidate.
Now I’m probably getting too complicated, but how about a blind system?
I make my choice and it’s printed on a sheet that’s perforated. On the once half it says “My name is Joe and I voted for X Y and Z.” On the other half it’s just a bar code that contains all of the information above but isn’t human-readable.
I rip mine in half, Poll Worker Guy scans it, a green light flashes, and I drop my info into the paper-backup box.
-Joe
Really? Because the most reasonable interpretation of this statement, “The only thing they make easier is for untrustworthy people to steal elections,” coupled with the link you gave us is exactly that. That the November election in Ohio was in some way tampered with and that electronic voting machines, particularly those made by Diebold, facilitated that tampering.
Yes, you (the voter) feed it into the scanner yourself. The election officials actually refuse to touch your ballot at all (unless you ask for help).
Yes, the scanner kicks it back out at the voter & sounds a warning. Then the official looks at a readout on the machine and tells you what kind of error is on the ballot. If you still look confused, they will offer to help you find the error, if you are willing to show them your ballot. Also, there is an override button to force the machine to accept this ballot (good parts only) despite the error.
It’s only after your ballot is actually accepted into the lockbox on the machine that the election workers give you the “I VOTED” sticker to wear for the rest of the day. Here in Minnesota, people do wait to get that!
No, because the voter feeds their own ballot into the machine. And they want their own vote to count.
Plus there’s no way to ‘misfeed’ the ballots – the machine accepts them in any direction. And ‘forgetting’ would be hard, because there are workers from both parties at the polling place, working together, watching each other. Where would they put the ballots they ‘forgot’? – ballots are carefully controlled at polling places. Even the bad ones where voters made an error and had to revote are kept around, specially marked as void, signed by a poll worker from each party.
Finally, to do this they would have to know which ballots were for a particular candidate. But the ballots are kept inside sleeves, so you can’t see who the ballot is voting for. It would be real obvious if a poll worker started opening sleeves, looking at ballots, and sorting them into 2 different piles!
No. It’s suspicious, but it’s not proof. By itself, it may be nothing, but given the eyebrow-raising number of suspicions that seem to surround Diebold voting machines, IMO it’s not something to be dismissed as a one-off anomaly.
But then, I’m kinda dopey that way, since I actually believe all that Civics 101 stuff about fair and open elections…
We use the paper ballot and optical scanner system for municipal elections here. (Provincial and federal elections only have a single office being voted on so simple paper ballots are adequate, while municipal ones have multiple offices and are closer to the complex US ballots.) The voter places the ballot in a sleeve before passing it to the poll worker and watches (they make you wait) while it is inserted into the machine. Invalid ballots get kicked out immediately. It’s pretty much the same system as t-bonham@scc.net has posted about.
It’s easy to use, fast, provides a paper trail for audit and recount, provides for fast, simple recounts, and is fairly inexpensive. I don’t know how the vote totals are tallied up, however.
Going back to the OP for a second.
The only part of the system proposed therein that is different from what Ohio used would be the part where a paper ballot is printed out and taken by the voter to a scanner to be fed in and read. I consider this a bad idea. It would add an element of potential fraud. One could simply print out ahead of time appropriate ballots and have them scanned. No one would have to have created them as part of their actual “vote.”
Since you can see your vote printed out, though you cannot touch it, on the machines currently in use, you can’t have it tampered with, but you know that a valid printed record of your vote exists. And before anyone complains that you can’t have it in your hand when you leave the polling place, so what? You never did with any other, older system, either.