Patterns of Touchscreen Voting Machine Vote Fraud Identified and Documented in F

[Guest guest]

T

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 11:26:48 -0800 (PST)

Patterns of Touchscreen Voting Machine Vote Fraud Identified

and Documented in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and Elsewhere

 

 

 

 

 

Patterns of Touchscreen Voting Machine Vote Fraud

Identified and Documented

in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and Elsewhere

 

http://www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html

 

 

 

 

Patterns of Touchscreen Voting Machine Vote Fraud

Identified and Documented

in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and Elsewhere

 

If you already understand what happened in the 2004 Presidential

Election, and you want to start doing something about it, click here

to proceed to a coalition Action plan. If you need to see the proof

that the Florida election was racked with manipulation and fraud, read on.

 

Activists investigating the 2004 Presidential election have identified

hundreds of preceincts in Florida, Ohio and other states where the

voting results do not match the exit polls. These inconsistencies

occurred primarily in precincts where electronic voting machines with

no paper trail were used. In Florida, these discrepancies appear to

have amounted to enough to have been responsible for George Bush's

statewide " victory " margin. Many of them were in precincts with a

strong Democratic majority. Some media commentators have explained the

gap between the exit polls and the final vote counts by claiming that

the exit polls were flawed. However, in those precincts where there

was a machine that produced a " paper trail, " the exit polls almost

exactly matched the actual vote and there were few discrepancies

giving George Bush extra votes. When a voter casts his or her ballot

for someone other than the candidate they intended to vote for, this

is called a " misvote. " Misvotes in Ohio,Florida, and New Mexico appear

to have given George Bush his winning percentage. (Misvotes favoring

George Bush reached as high as 40% on some vote machines in some

Florida, Ohio and New Mexico precincts. There were also high misvote

totals in other states.)

 

On November 22, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the

Verified Voting Foundation (VVF) announced that they had sent letters

to voting officials in eight counties around the country urging them

to allow independent testing of their electronic voting machines. The

two groups were among the 60 organizations in the Election Protection

Coalition (EPC), which ran an Election Day hotline and the web-based

Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS). The Coalition received

40,002 reports of election irregularities, including 2,242 incidents

concerning voting machines. Click here for an analysis of some of

these incidents by a team of computer scientists. (This link requires

Adobe Acrobat Reader.) According to EFF and VFF, the most serious

problems were reported in Mahoning and Franklin counties in Ohio,

Broward and Palm Beach counties in Florida in Florida, Mercer and

Philadelphia counties in Pennsylvania, Harris County in Texas and

Bernalillo County in New Mexico. Florida and Ohio were the big swing

states that gave the election to George Bush.

 

While any form of voting fraud or interference is bad, a

malfunctioning voting machine can prevent hundreds of people from

casting their votes -- or change the votes of those who do. Most

computer experts who have studied electronic voting do not consider

the systems used in the 2004 election to be secure or reliable. The

state of California has successfully sued Diebold, the manufacturer of

one touchscreen voting machine over this very issue, after machines

that were purchased for California turned out to be unusable.

According to programmers and engineers who have investigated the

security of electronic voting machines, touchscreen machines can be

set up with a default choice for any candidate that would not be

visible to the voters. (The Black Box Voting site explains some of the

ways in which this can be done.) Their votes would automatically be

cast for the default candidate -- such as George Bush -- unless they

could successfully override the hidden default choice programmed into

the computer. For example, if a voter deliberately chose not to vote

for any Presidential candidate, the touchscreen voting machine would

count the non-vote as a default vote for George Bush.

 

Reports from voters in Florida, New Mexico, Ohio, and elsewhere

(especially other swing states) documented that many touchscreen

voting machines appeared to have been set with a " Default to Bush " .

The " Default to Bush " could be changed only if a voter successfully

selected another candidate. But it appears that in many cases the

voters did not successfully override the " Default to Bush, " in some

cases because they did not notice the problem and in other cases

because it was difficult or impossible to get the machine to accept

another candidate. This was a major problem in New Mexico and Mahoning

and Franklin counties in Ohio. There were also problems with " Default

to Bush in the " Big Three " Florida counties: Palm Beach, Broward and

Dade, and elsewhere in Pinellas, Hillsboro, Pasco, Sarasota and Lee.

In fact, Florida was the state with the most reported incidents in the

Election Protection Coalition/Election Incident Reporting System

database. (There are state-by-state links below.)

 

Election officials had to replace some of the machines in Mahoning

County (Ohio) after repeated attempts by technicians to " recalibrate "

them failed. This also happened in Florida and New Mexico. The EIRS

system also identified patterns of default away from Kerry and the

minor party candidates elsewhere. The same pattern was also found in

some U.S. Senate races, including the race in Florida, which elected

Republican Mel Martinez over Betty Castor.

 

One of the two most severe touchscreen voting machine errors reported

to EIRS involved voters who selected Kerry on an ES & ampS electronic

touchscreen and saw their vote changed to Bush on a summary screen.

ES & ampS machines are the most commonly used in Florida. Florida's

other worst touchscreen problem was with the Sequoia AVC Edge machine

where voters saw preselected default choices presented to them. (Those

incidents are also listed in the link above.) In C Edge machines

changed Kerry votes to Bush votes. Sequoia AVC Edge machines are used

in 4 Florida counties: Palm Beach, Pinellas, Hillsborough and Indian

River.

 

If a voting machine were programmed to " Default to Bush, " he (or any

other default candidate) would get the benefit of misvotes from voters

who didn't notice that their intended candidate wasn't selected, along

with misvotes from any voter who intentionaly did not vote in the

Presidental race, any accidental non-votes AND unsuccessfully

completed votes. Quite an advantage! Under normal circumstances this

would result in a swing of 2% to 4%, depending on the precinct. But

since it is a matter of record that in many precincts the default was

hard to override and sometimes impossible, only the most watchful or

purposeful voters may have been able to successfully vote for a chosen

non-Republican candidate. EIRS collected reports verifying these

incidents from poll workers as well as voters. Poll Workers reported

that some machines in minority precincts appear to have been targeted

to produce high levels of misvotes, so the swing was likely much

larger in those precincts. EIRS documented a large number of incidents

in minority precincts. There were also a few cases where precincts had

machines set to default for a minor party candidate, but none reported

to default to John Kerry. These patterns of misvotes in counties using

touchscreen voting machines have been confirmed by analysts and

computer experts using EIRS data and other information from Ohio,

Florida, New Mexico and elsewhere. In the big South Florida counties,

out of those who reported misvotes from machines that defaulted to

Bush or changed votes to Bush, between 33% and 50% were unable to

correct the problem. Since these statistics represent people who

noticed the misvotes, among voters in general the percent of misvotes

must be even higher. It was also noted in the EIRS reports that many

voters did not know they had to complete their vote by pressing a

button before they left the booth, and it was reported that thousands

did not finalize their vote. In a " Default to Bush " situation, the

touchscreen voting machine would count an incomplete vote as a vote

for Bush. (Read EIRS reports here.)

 

Computer security experts and engineers from the International

Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) found evidence that the

manufacturer's technicians or representatives have remote access to

some vote machines while they are in service, and can change defaults

and other settings remotely. Furthermore, some of the voting machine

manufacturers monitored the election results remotely on election day.

(By default, the password for Elections Systems and Software (ES & ampS)

machines is said to be " 1111 " -- not a secure password at all!.)

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University found tampering with Diebold

machines (which fortunately were not used in Florida during the 2004

election).

 

Many computer systems are designed so that service technicans are able

to make changes to the software through a remote connection, but this

is not an appropriate feature for a voting machine. The actual

security of electronic voting machines is difficult for the general

public to determine. Voting machine designs are certified by two

highly-secretive consulting firms which have refused to disclose their

procedures for testing machines for accuracy and security. Even when

they certify a machine, the certificate applies only to the design of

the hardware and software -- any individual machine may be altered

before an election.

 

Vote Machine Fraud documented in the

Big Florida Coastal Counties Using Touchscreens

 

The biggest Democratic counties in Florida are Palm Beach, Broward,

and Dade. Each of these counties had dozens of precincts where

vote-switching was reported. Most involved switches from Kerry to

Bush, but there a few reported cases of votes switching from Kerry to

a minor candidate or no vote. (Recall that non-votes were likely to be

switched to Bush. A smaller number of reports documented votes

switched from Betty Castor to Mel Martinez in Florida's U.S. Senate

race. Poll workers and poll watchers told frustrated voters who were

having trouble that " this has been going on all day " . EIRS found that

these problems were so widespread they were reported throughout

Election Day on local Florida radio and TV stations. A smaller number

of vote switching cases were reported in Hillsboro, Sarasota,

Pinellas, Pasco, and Lee counties. Some of these were votes switched

in the U.S. Senate race. (Click here to see the EIRS report Florida's

voting machines.)

 

If a significant number of machines were programmed for " Default to

Bush, " this would mean fewer than normal undervotes. (In an undervote,

nobody gets the vote.) In fact, undervotes decreased by over 50% in

all Florida touchscreen counites except Broward. The experience of

Mahoning County in Ohio, which used ES & S Ivotronic touchscreen

machines, is a good comparison. In Mahoning, EIRS reports of switching

include many affidavits. The majority of machines defaulted to Bush,

but some defaulted to " blank " (an undervote). Thus voters for Kerry,

who chose Kerry but didn't notice that the vote later switched to

Bush, would end up either voting for Bush or " blank " (an undervote),

depending upon the machine default. Kerry would lose all of these

votes, but the pattern of undervotes would not look so unusual. The

default to blank might also be considered less suspicious than the

" Default to Bush " pattern and would be less likely to get reported

through the hotline system (which most voters were not familiar with

-- many disasterous irregularities were never reported). A focused

search of the Florida EIRS data has confirmed the same pattern also

exists in Florida, especially Broward County. Several computers

defaulted to blank after Kerry was initially chosen, as seen in the

EIRS cases.

 

The EIRS cases for each county reported here are based on a limited

search of the thousands of incident reports, and it is likely that

these are just a small fraction of the total number of incidents.

 

These documented cases of vote-switching prove that the " Default to

Bush " was programed into a number of the touchscreen vote machines of

the big touchscreen counties. Computers don't consistently do

something unless they are programed to do it. This appears to explain

the big gap between the exit polls and final vote counts in the big

touchscreen counties. The exit polls appear to have been correct, just

as they matched the final vote counts in all the non-touchscreen

counties. The only questions are, Who was responsible? and What can we

do about it?

 

My previous study examined Presidential votes by county in 2000 and

new registrations by party from 2000 to 2004. It pointed out an

ususual swing to Bush inconsistent with previous voting patterns and

new voter registrationsin these counties.

 

This vote machine fraud pattern is consistent with the unusual shift

to Republican candidates, which is documented by several detailed

studies of voting and registration patterns, along with the exit poll

data that also documented this unusual and unexplained shift in the

official votes.

Widespread systematic Dirty Tricks --

Voter Supression and Malfeasance

 

Minority voters in at least twenty states were targeted for voter

supression, including Florida, New Mexico and Ohio. This was well

documented from the EIRS investigations. The following cases and

analysis also have further documentation on the voting machine

manipulation patterns. (Read about the dirty tricks here.)

 

Florida County-by-County Reports

Votersunite.org

Palm Beach County

Broward County

Dade County

Other Counties

Media Reports

Comparing Florida in 2000 with Florida in 2004

 

I've done an analysis of the Florida election data comparing 2004

results for President to the 2000 results and also to the increase in

voter registration for Democrats and Republicans between 2000 and 2004.

 

As previously noted in a study by researchers at the University of

California-Berkeley, there are some large and unusual patterns in the

big touchscreen counties and a few of the big optical scan counties.

They had a big Repub vote swing that was not consistent with the 2000

vote and the Democratic and Republican registration increases between

2000 and 2004.

 

The touchscreen counties with unusual Republican vote increases

include: Palm Beach, Miami/Dade, Broward, Hillsboro, Duval, Indian

River, Lake, Martin, Pinellas and Sarasota, Bay, Brevard, Manatee,

Orange, Osceola, Polk, Citrus, Escambia, Hernando, Marion, Seminole.

There were documented cases in some of these counties of minority

voters targeted by dirty tricks and absentee ballot irregularities.

 

The only explanations for this pattern other than irregularities would

be that the Republicans hugely beat the Democrats in get out the vote

or a lot more Democrats voted for Bush in 2004 than in 2000. The

Democrats had a record get-out-the-vote effort in Florida, and the

number of Democratic voters in Florida in 2004 exceeded their turnout

in 2000.

The data I used in these studies came from:

USCountVotes.org

The Florida Division of Elections Voter Registration Data

The Division of Elections: " Floridians Rate the 2004 Election "

Floridacountiesmap.com

Other States

Here is a link to more FLCV data on dirty tricks around the country.

The types of election fraud committed in Florida can be found in more

than 20 states.

 

Ohio

Votersunite.org

FreePress.Org has an archive of articles documenting cases from all

around Ohio.

Mahoning County

Cuyahoga County

Franklin County

Hamilton County

Lucas County

Summit County

Youngstown

Mahoning County Official Results

Cleveland

Columbus

 

New Mexico

Phantom Votes

Additonal Data from Votersunite.org

The HelpAmericaCount.org report on New Mexico

The Votersunite.org report on other election problems in New Mexico

See the EIRS investigative reports that include such offenses and the

voteprotect.org cases: Ohio, New Mexico, and Florida.