Paper ballots and only paper ballots

I know I may sound like a techno-Luddite on this matter. I don't care. We need to be able to verify that our elections are sound and every legitimate vote counted. You cannot do that with electronic voting machines. That they are hackable has been demonstrated repeatedly. They can also be programmed to commit election fraud (not saying they have been, but they can be).

Now, check out this bit of news:

Following three months of investigation, California's secretary of state has released a report examining why a voting system made by Premier Election Solutions (formerly known as Diebold) lost about 200 ballots in Humboldt County during the November presidential election.

But the most startling information in the state's 13-page report (.pdf) is not about why the system lost votes, which Threat Level previously covered in detail, but that some versions of Diebold's vote tabulation system, known as the Global Election Management System (GEMS), include a button that allows someone to delete audit logs from the system.

Thanks to Raw Story (by way of Dependable Renegade)

--the BB

More smelling salts, please

It seems many Republicans and their followers are having a collective case of the vapors over "voter fraud." The recent decision of SCOTUS to NOT require the Ohio Secretary of State to verify registrations with other state databases has them all in a tizzy.

Why? Is it that voter fraud - which should actually be termed "registration fraud" because the issue is not yet over someone actually coming to cast a fraudulent ballot - is a huge problem or is it because they are busy trying to (1) suppress voting and (2) lay the groundwork to question the election when Obama wins?

First response: There are many, though hardly vast, instances where folks paid to register voters file phony registrations or turn in registrations of folks already registered. In the latter case the registered voter is still only going to get to vote once. In the former you then need to produce a fraudulent voter who shows up to cast a fraudulent ballot. I am sure it sometimes happens and there are instances in American history when lots of dead people cast votes. We do need to prevent that sort of behavior. Proportionally this is not a huge problem. Do instances such as these seem to threaten the election this time around? No one can point to sufficient examples.

Second response: Are the "remedies" proposed by Republican operatives helpful in addressing any actual problems? No. Let me repeat that in case it is too complex and needs repeating. No.

Matching to databases such as driver's licenses or other records places the voter registration and verification process at the mercy of clerical errors. If your signature is illegible or the records show a different spelling or different middle initial, the registration kicks out - but was it an instance of fraud? Seeking to purge voting lists of felons leads to similar errors as persons with the same (or similar) name as a felon may be disenfranchised. The intent may be valid and worthwhile but the implementation has, thus far, been far too riddled with errors. I won't even go into the game of telling foreclosed voters they cannot vote because the no longer live at their registered address (most states have grace periods for situations such as this and one does not lose the right to vote over this).

Consider the concluding portion of this passage by Mary Pat Flaherty in today's Washington Post:

Thousands of voters across the country must reestablish their eligibility in the next three weeks in order for their votes to count on Nov. 4, a result of new state registration systems that are incorrectly rejecting them.

...

Michigan must restore thousands of names it illegally removed from voter rolls over residency questions, a judge ruled this week.

Tens of thousands of voters could be affected in Wisconsin. Officials there admit that their database is wrong one out of five times when it flags voters, sometimes for data discrepancies as small as a middle initial or a typo in a birth date. When the six members of the state elections board -- all retired judges -- ran their registrations through the system, four were incorrectly rejected because of mismatches.

[Emphases mine]

So, four out of six valid voters were rejected when this sort of test was applied. This tells me such an approach is not only useless but dangerous as it disenfranchises thousands, probably tens of thousands, of legitimate voters. That cannot be the solution to much smaller problem.

This is rather like the fallacious crisis over social security and the alarmists who wanted to convince us that it is doomed and then recommend solutions that would be fatal - such as privatizing it. Wouldn't we all be happy today if our social security had been put in the market and then had huge portions evaporate? Wow, what a great idea that was!

Idiots.

No, the people putting forth these phony solutions are not idiots. They are malevolently at work to undermine the institutions of democracy. They are perpetrating evil.

Enough.

1. Do not buy into their fearmongering.

2. Look at the situation calmly and use your reason.

3. Reject phony solutions that make matters worse.

4. Laugh at them. Don't ratchet up the collective anxiety level.

5. If they won't go away on their own, kick them in the groin. really hard. Then walk away. They needed it, they deserved it, and you have better things to do than listen to them whimper.

6. Now that you have registered, be sure to VOTE. That is how we change things in civilized societies.

7. Know your rights. Don't let them disenfranchise you.

8. Did I say, VOTE?

h/t to georgia10 for a post noting:

The GOP in Ohio didn't ask for all name mismatches to be crosschecked and challenged. No, the Ohio GOP merely insisted only that those who registered since January 1, 2008 be targeted. And the numbers are clear: by vast margins, new voters who registered this year live in highly Democratic areas.

Update:
On the matter of clerical errors, a coworker came to me Thursday morning puzzled at not being able to find the in-house e-mail address of someone I had been training. Normally all we need to do is type part of the name and the rest comes up (or those options matching the fragment and we can then click the one we seek). He was having no luck. He was using the most recent update of the list that shows who is working on what part of the project and had already corrected the obvious typo on the person's last name. What he did not know is that the first name had been typed phonetically but not the way this person actually spells her name. We were thus dealing with a double typo. I knew how she spelled it, fortunately, and could point him to her name in the corporate database. Problem solved. If he had used only the "official list" provided to us he would never have found her. No one should love lose the right to vote over something like this.

[Thanks, Fran, for catching my typo.]
--the BB

A kick-ass response - updated (3x)

And the asses of anyone frothing at the mouth over "voter fraud" deserves to be kicked. Soundly. Repeatedly. Often.

The periodical hand-wringing that Republican operatives go through over "voter fraud" every election year is a flimsy mask (and reprehensible excuse) for their own efforts to suppress the vote of eligible voters. No one seriously thinks that some pathetic registration of Mickey Mouse in order to pad stats or earn money in a registration drive will eventuate in a costumed mouse showing up to vote on election day. Get a grip. Almost every instance (and they were very few) were allegations were made of this have proven insubstantial. It is not a real threat and it is not a real issue. But it is a great tool for fear mongering and diversion.

The activities that confuse, irritate, dishearten, and intimidate people who are entitled to vote, however, is a very real threat to the democratic process. It is a longstanding Republican pattern. It is aimed at minorities and likely Democratic voters. Discouraging people from voting seems, IMHO, eminently contrary to democratic principles. If we are allegedly promoting democracy around the world, why the fuck aren't they promoting it right here at home?

I think I know why. Because the fewer people who vote the easier it is to manipulate and control power.

Well, the Obama campaign has no interest in rolling over for these asshats. Here is a response to their bullshit. Oh, by the way, Senator Danforth (a fellow Episcopal clergymen) should be ashamed of himself for being in the midst of this.

Obama Campaign's Response to McCain's ACORN Letter

September 23, 2008

Honorable John C. Danforth

Honorable Warren B. Rudman

McCain-Palin 2008

P.O. Box 16118

Arlington , VA 22215

Dear Senator Danforth and Senator Rudman:

We have received your letter of September 15, 2008, informing us of the formation of what you call the "Honest and Open Election Committee" by the McCain-Palin Campaign.

However attractively labeled, this seems a starkly political maneuver to deflect attention from the reality of the suppression strategies pursued by national,state and Republican party committees. This has been the shameful history of the party from the Goldwater "Operation Eagle Eye" program to the present day—a history replete with instances of systematically planned and executed programs to block access to the vote for targeted communities of voters.

In 2004, the Republican Party, on the eve of the general election, mounted challenges to tens of thousands of voters in Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin based on "caging lists," that is, lists of returned mailers or based on similar information providing no legitimate grounds whatsoever for such challenges. None of these challenges, to our knowledge, was upheld and accusations of voter fraud by national Republican Party leaders were proven utterly baseless.

Now,in 2008, the Republican Party again appears determined to engage in tactics and strategies to deny the right to vote to qualified citizens:

· In Michigan, the chairman of Macomb County Republican Party has threatened to use lists of persons whose homes have been foreclosed to challenge those persons at the polls. Only after public exposure, did he deny that this was the plan for Macomb County, and this matter is now before the federal district court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

· In Florida, the RNC has mailed non-forwardable letters to Democratic voters asking them to "confirm" their party affiliation as Republican—thereby raising doubts about their registration status and creating the basis for possible challenge lists. Even top Republican election officials in Florida, including the Secretary of State,have publicly condemned this tactic.

· In Wisconsin, the Republican Attorney General, who serves as co-chair of the McCain-Palin campaign in the state, has filed suit challenging the refusal of the state’s own election administration authorities to throw thousands of voters off the rolls based on dubious and impractical matches of identifying information.

· In Ohio, Republicans are challenging the decision of the Secretary of State to allow first-time voters to obtain an absentee ballot at the time they register even though the law clearly affords this right.

Manifestly, the confusion,uncertainty, deprivations of rights and interference with efficient election administration created by these tactics, and similar ones that the Republican Party has used in recent election cycles, cannot be effectively addressed by the creation late in the day of "committees" with gloriously self-serving names. Rather, the best way to address them is for responsible Republican leaders like both of you to speak out, loudly and forcefully, to condemn these tactics, to insist that they be shut down once and for all and then to make sure that they are.

This is what we would hope that you could accomplish. If your concern truly lies with 'Honest and Open Elections", then your work is properly and effectively begins at home--with the Republican operatives who are planning and running these suppressive programs and who are being directed in these activities by the same national McCain and party leadership that recruited you to this "Committee".

Sincerely yours,

David Plouffe,

Campaign Manager, Obama for America

Election fraud - not voter fraud - is the real threat. It is about vote suppression, ballot manipulation, and untraceable and unverifiable voting machine manipulation.

PS:
If you know anyone freaking out over ACORN, they are required BY LAW to turn in ALL registration forms. They cannot toss out ones they think are fraudulent. Does this mean they turn in bad registrations. Yes, it does, because they have to. They alert election authorities of all the forms they suspect of being invalid. There is simply no attempt to perpetrate fraud there. Don't be bamboozled by lies. Sheesh.

h/t to drational

UPDATE:
Check out dday's article "What Actual Election Fraud Looks Like"

UPDATE 2:
And Digby's post "Forgetting Yesterday" (with links to more information)

I hope she will forgive me borrowing 4 entire paragraphs:

Their full blown propaganda campaign of the moment is aimed at furthering several different related goals. The first is to freak out the local registration offices, many of which are run by small town bureaucrats who are either subject to the propaganda or are GOP partisans themselves. They want to create a feeling of chaos around the voting processes and call the absentee ballots into question.

The second is to intimidate voters into not participating and making it difficult for those who do. They want people to believe that they will be grilled and scrutinized when they try to vote and perhaps make lines long and the process so arduous that people will give up.

Third, if the election is close, they will challenge its validity in court. After all, that worked like a charm in 2000. But barring that --- and it looks like it won't be close enough to do that --- they are laying the ground work to delegitimize the victory. That is an essential tool for rebuilding their movement and crating justification for the kind of character assassination and obstructionism that is their specialty.

If Ann Kornblut on MSNBC a few minutes ago is any indication the press sees this as a "both sides do it" sort of thing. Democrats complained about Bush vs Gore and vote caging and phone jamming and the vote suppression program in Ohio over the past two very close elections. Therefore, it's equivalent that the Republicans would complain about voter fraud and ACORN. The difference, of course, is that vote suppression was so inculcated in to the republican governing apparatus that they fired the US Attorneys for failing do their bidding and bring false voter fraud cases. That should be just a little bit of a heads up about who's doing what here.

Emphasis mine

Update 3:
This morning Big Blue has a post with this headline:
BREAKING: GOP Attempts to Disenfranchise 600,000 Voters In Ohio

Excerpt:

We need to promote this story and fight it tooth and nail. The GOP is intentionally undermining voter confidence in the electoral system despite having not a shred of evidence to prove any conspiracy to commit voter fraud. In fact, a five year investigation by the Bush Adminstration revealed only 120 prosecutable offenses of voter fraud in a nation where 100 million people turn out for presidential elections.

And now 600,000 people in Ohio could possibly lose their right to vote just so the GOP can "insure the integrity of the voting system." Just like the Clear Skies Act (which reduced air pollution controls) and the Patriot Act (which undermined the constitution), we can always be sure that whatever Republicans are claiming to do, they are really doing the exact opposite.

--the BB