- In this article you will find tools to help you analyze
the numbers as they come in from Kentucky and Oregon's May 20 primary elections.
New info: 2008 Tool Kit: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.html. You
can find more Oregon & Kentucky tools, and discuss here: http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/74040.html
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- Kentucky is a big problem, Oregon is just plain strange.
I'll start with Oregon's all mail-in voting system before I tell you the
news about Kentucky. In Oregon, 100 percent of votes are absentee, or mail-in,
although citizens do have the option to take their mailed ballot to an
elections office to drop it off.
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- OREGON'S SURPRISING ELECTION DATA*
-
- *Source:
- http://www.eac.gov/files/Eds2006/eds2006/Copy%20of%20eacdata(3).xls
(Excel spreadsheet, huge mamajama, allow time to download. And see end
of this article for tips on how to use.)
-
- 1. EVER WONDER ABOUT SIGNATURE VERIFICATION? Here's a
little pop quiz: Out of 1.4 million Oregon votes in 2006, and knowing how
people's signatures change over the years, how many signatures would you
expect to mismatch?
-
- ANSWER: Out of 1.4 million, the state of Oregon claims
that 29 counties had ZERO mismatched signatures, and in the 10 remaining
counties that reported mismatches, the grand total was (drum roll please).....
34 ballots.
-
- Yes, out of 1.4 million, just 34 signatures did not match.
With those figures, it seems equally plausible that the dog's pawprint
that made it through a couple election cycles in Washington State as would
have fared just as well in Oregon. Heck, a scribble drawing or a blob of
spaghetti might work fine too, we just don't know.
-
- But what we do know is that according to data submitted
by the state of Oregon to the EAC, Clackamas County had 146,968 ballots
cast and not a single signature was too squiggly, scrawly or tilted to
mismatch, and that Oregon has one of the lowest signature mismatch rates
in America.
-
- We're not wanting to disenfranchise people, but accepting
every signature that floats in the door may not be a good thing. It puts
extra pressure on the validity of the voter registration database and the
postal delivery system, that's for sure.
-
- 2. FALSE: Oregon's claim that forced mail-in voting gives
them higher turnout figures is simply not true. Oregon is squarely in the
middle of the pack when it comes to voter turnout, when compared to the
other 50 states in the same election.
-
- 3. MIRACLE POST OFFICE: Oregon also has a remarkably,
some would say impossibly effective postal service. Here's what I know:
Black Box Voting does periodic mailings, and we consider a mailing of 8,000
pieces to be spectacularly large, for us. Thirty-one of Oregon's counties
mail more ballots in every election than we ever do, yet they never seem
to have ballots arrive late or flop around battered and bruised, to be
returned months later.
-
- That's not our experience. Some of our mailers arrive
late, some probably not at all, and a few look like they've taken a bruising
trip to Mongolia before they belatedly return to us.
-
- Yet out of 2.5 million ballots mailed out in the 2006
general election, Oregon reports ZERO ballots returned undeliverable, and
only 54 reportedly came in after the deadline. Oddly, 44 of those were
in one county. (Not Mulnomah, the biggest county, where Portland sits.
It was Washington County).
-
- 4. VOTING MACHINES: Contrary to many citizens' beliefs,
Oregon uses computerized voting machines statewide, almost all ES&S
scanners, and if you'd like more information on the hackability of those,
check out the EVEREST Report, choose the 334-page Academic Report and look
up Election Systems & Software. Every component of the ES&S machines
were found to be tamperable.
-
- MOONSHINE MATH IN KENTUCKY
-
- Kentucky never has accounted for its 2006 election math,
as can be seen by examining the data reports published by the Election
Assistance Commission (EAC) in the above link.*
-
- (*See end of this article for hints on how to use the
two EAC Inspector Gadget obstructo-matic secret decoder rings needed to
make sense of this file)
-
- That file contains the raw data submitted by each secretary
of state, with details right down to the number of absentee ballots in
the wrong envelope and the reasons voters were taken off lists. What it
DOESN'T contain, however, is the number of votes counted in Kentucky in
the 2006 General Election. When you search the minimal information presented
in news reports back then, you see a glimmer of a hint that Kentucky had
a statewide voting computer meltdown in 2006.
-
- Kentucky submitted thousands of data points for the EAC
2006 survey for every one of its 120 counties but omitted -- you guessed
it -- the votes. Results have been posted on Web sites, but I find myself
wondering, given the all-too-real 2006 meltdown of the voting tally system
in 96 counties, whether people in the Kentucky Secretary of State's office
may have been reluctant to sign a federally required report committing
to those very problematic results.
-
- THE BULLITT COUNTY MISMATCH WENT STATEWIDE
-
- Bullitt County, Kentucky citizen Kathy Greenwell could
have told you that was going to happen. Her husband ran for sheriff in
November 2006, and while she obtained copies to match up the voting machine
results tapes with the announced results she discovered they didn't match.
None of them.
-
- Here's the article by Black Box Voting on that situation:
- http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/47065.html
- "Elections give you: The Judge, the Prosecutor & the Sheriff"
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- HERE'S HOW THE KENTUCKY VOTING MACHINES ARE SUPPOSED
TO WORK
-
- Voters cast their votes into paperless touchscreens at
the polling place. At the end of Election Day, each voting machine spits
out a results tape. Then, the cartridges from each voting machine are fed
into a cartridge reader. It reads all the cartridges and transfers the
data into a tallying program that adds them all up. And that's when Kathy
Greenwell got her dander up in 2006, because the information coming out
of the tally system didn't match the results on the poll tapes for any
race.
-
- As the evening progressed, the mismatches began to hop
around like frogs on electronic lily pads. In addition to wildly fluctuating
results, a bunch of questionable individuals started wandering in and out
of the back room, many of whom were related to the Tinnell family, which
had three members of the family on the ballot (Donnie Tinnell: Sheriff;
Sherman Tinnell: Mayor; Melanie Roberts: Judge Executive). All the Tinnell
people won, but none of the results ever did match up.
-
- Kathy Greenwell keeps demanding answers, but never has
gotten any. At one point Bullitt County Clerk Kevin Mooney gave her a new
results tape which, he claimed, made things match up. Unfortunately, this
new tape only balanced the mismatch out for Kathy's husband Dave Greenwell's
sheriff's race. All the other races are still out of whack.
-
- Bullitt County -- and the other 96 counties in Kentucky
serviced by a voting machine services firm called HARP ENTERPRISES -- claimed
that the incorrect vote totals were due to a "fusion problem"
when the computer tried to add up the totals from the old Shoup/Danaher
1242 voting machines combined with the new Hart eSlate machines.
-
- WHAT YOU DIDN'T READ IN THE NEWS ABOUT THIS:
-
- 1. Pennsylvania also has locations that use both these
machines, and their fusion program works. Or at least so we are told --
Philadelphia County got the bright idea to charge the public to look at
results there, restricting viewing to those who purchase a password, and
we don't know if anyone did the same thing Kathy Greenwell did, matching
up each tape to the published results you have to purchase.
-
- Nevertheless, we have no evidence that Pennsylvania's
system, same machines as Kentucky, is unable to match its own results up.
-
- 2. Kentucky then "solved" the problem by deciding
to stop printing the reports so no one can check to see if they match.
-
- Yes, that's what I said. Kentucky decided to use ONLY
the poll tape results, hand entering them into a computer in the back room,
and never put the cartridges into the reader, never generate that second
report. With only one-half of the check and balance, you can neither check
nor balance the poll tapes against the cartridge reader.
-
- For "transparency", at least in Bullitt County,
observers wait in a lobby with a small video picture of people sitting
in a different room typing "you-can't-see-what" onto "screens-you-can't-see",
with people occasionally wandering in and out of the videotaped area into
completely unviewable areas, carrying items that look like poll tapes.
On at least one occasion when Black Box Voting was there, they turned off
the camera for a bit while they did "we-don't-know-what."
-
- ELECTION WRANGLERS
-
- They also had the Wrangler active that night. For those
of you newbies to the activity known as "election monitoring"
(also accurately termed "smacking into a brick wall") -- well,
here's what a "Wrangler" is in Election lingo:
-
- Government insiders, who are in there counting votes
in secret on the computers they control, have a designated wrangler, or
in trouble spots a couple of them. Their job is to distract observers if
something interesting is going on. Blip-lights flicker -- out comes the
lady with the candy tray. I once watched the "blue screen of death"
appear on a crashing King County, Washington vote tabulator and while trying
to write down the time and particulars, was accosted by the Republican
Party observer who out of the blue left the computer room to engage me
in a stubbornly aggressive conversation about nothing. In Bullitt County,
Kentucky it was the candy tray lady, a trick reported by activists in other
states as well.
-
- 3. And now we get to the best part. Scratch that. The
worst part. The machines used in 96 of Kentucky's 120 counties, the Shoup/Danaher
1242s, can be tampered with rather easily by anyone with access during
or shortly after the testing phase, but this could be caught -- unless
you skip the step of loading in the cartridges to produce the tally report.
-
- And that's just what Kentucky decided to do. In Kentucky,
it was decided to stop reading the cartridges and use only the poll tape
results. And this is precisely the check and balance cited to show that
these old 1242 machines are "safe."
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- THINGS TO DO TO HELP MONITOR KENTUCKY
-
- 1) Wear a helmet. You'll be running into the brick wall.
-
- 2) Ask the officials to read the cartridges into the
cartridge reader and print out a report to prove to you that the cartridge
results match the voting machine results. The cartridges contain what is
supposed to be the actual vote data.
-
- 3) Ask to inspect or get copies of the "poll tape"
results. Ask for copies of the cartridge reader results.
-
- 4) Record the order in which Kentucky counties deliver
their results tonight. Late results -- especially when accompanied by a
trend reversal -- are associated with fraud.
-
- 5) Get screen shots of any tallies that go DOWN as results
are coming in.
-
- 6) Hunt for "impossible numbers." Here are
examples of impossible numbers found by Black Box Voting, the media, and
citizen observers:
-
- a) Barnstead, New Hampshire, 2008 primary. Fifty percent
more votes than voters in the Democratic Party presidential race.
-
- b) Election location in Harlem, New York: Obama got zero
votes. Greenville, New Hampshire: Ron Paul got zero votes, and when citizens
came forward swearing they'd voted for him, the Town Clerk found the missing
votes. Sutton, New Hampshire: Ron Paul got zero votes. When citizens came
forward swearing they'd voted for him, the Town Clerk found the missing
votes. Note the pattern, hunt out the zeroes, onesies and twosies because
they happen in every election.
-
- THE IMPOSSIBLE NUMBERS HUNT
-
- You can get lost inside that EAC data set for weeks,
but in moments when you come up for air you'll be able to raise red flags
that may help prevent problems this fall.
-
- Black Box Voting is not a fan of the EAC, but the data
surveys are actually quite terrific. They show that some locations are
refusing to comply (like the entire state of New Hampshire, which refuses
to provide even basic numbers like voter registration or number of votes).
They provide at least the skeletal framework that has potential for quality
control and fraud research.
-
- And the data can be used, in conjunction with other data
you find, to identify potential hotspots for trouble this fall.
-
- Remember sixth grade math and story problems? The EAC
data tables are a like a set of Lego's for constructing all kinds of interesting
story problems. Which counties are most likely to binge and purge voter
registration lists? You can get a good idea of that using these data tables.
Which counties appear to have been stuffing the ballot box in the past?
Yep, that can be divined as well. Hint: Lake County, the Indiana location
that couldn't seem to find its votes for so many hours in this year's primary,
is one.
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- THE CRACKERJACK EAC DECODER RINGS FOR THE DATA TABLES
-
- And you'll need them, because they for some reason did
not bother to put the labels on the columns to define what data each column
contains. For that, you need to download this file:
- http://www.eac.gov/files/Eds2006/eds2006/Survey_Data_Code_Names.xls
(Excel file)
-
- Then you get to do the fun and tedious activity of looking
up the secret code in the decoder table to insert it on the top of each
column.
-
- But that's just the first decoder ring. Secret Agent
Natalie, from Black Box Voting, wondered why none of the data could be
summed up or divided for percentage analysis, and found that the EAC, in
its infinite wisdom, converted the numeric data to text. What that means
is that instead of reading the number "5" your computer reads
it as text, like "f-i-v-e" and since it doesn't know how to perform
math functions on alphabet letters, you can't perform simple tasks like
ranking smallest to biggest, or dividing one number into another to get
a percentage.
-
- Black Box Voting has applied both decoder rings to all
the data, and is providing the complete decoded, correctly labeled, numerically
converted EAC data table as part of our 2008 Tool Kit
-
- * * * * *
-
- More information:
-
- For more on Kentucky:
- http://www.blackboxvoting.org/moonshine1.pdf
- http://www.blackboxvoting.org/moonshine2.pdf
- http://www.blackboxvoting.org/moonshine3.pdf
- http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/47065.html
- Print story: The Hunt for Joe Bolton
- http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/54541.html
- Black Box Voting YouTube video - Kentucky, The Hunt for
Joe Bolton: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpzahSVY_GM
- Moonshine Elections: Family-run Government
- http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/54610.html
- Moonshine America: Collapse of the "Trust Me"
Model
- http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/70968.html
- Black Box Voting YouTube video - Kentucky's Kathy Greenwell
confronts New Hampshire Sec. State Bill Gardner, face to face
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrdzXp3Zbmk
-
- Black Box Voting 2008 Tool Kit:
- http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.html
-
- Oregon tools, thanks to John Howard:
-
- http://www.bbvdocs.org/OR/state/Oregon-74022.htm
-
- Bev Harris
- Founder - Black Box Voting
-
- Please help us protect 2008, muster up the "Dream
Teams" for field work, print the Tool Kits...
- We are supported ENTIRELY through small citizen donations.
-
- TO DONATE: <http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html>http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
- to mail:
- Black Box Voting
- 330 SW 43rd St Suite K
- PMB 547
- Renton WA 98057
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