Palm Beach Elections Overturned After Hand-Count Reveals Op-Scans Mistallied Results

[BradBlog]

9. Yet you still have no idea how precinct-based hand-counting works, it seems...

Since I've spent quite a few long days as an election judge, chairman, and coordinator...counting ballots by all means possible around here, and have been involved in hand recounts, I suspect I know as much as you do about counting ballots.

Um, apparently not, as your latest comment demonstrates yet again.

Sure, local counting is distributed and done by a lot more people, but that just means more errors with no easy audit trail and fatigued poll people still counting at two in the morning.

Right. As I thought. You have no clue about how precinct-based hand-counting works. No, you don't have the same people who have been working the polls all day do the counting at night. It's a different crew entirely. So, no, they are no "fatigued poll people still counting at two in the morning."

As to the "easy audit trail", don't know what you're talking about, since all of the counting is 100% public at the precint, with the public and all parties watching (and all video cameras rolling). The results are posted at the precint then before ballots are moved anywhere. What do you mean "there is "no easy audit trail".

As to "more errors", your assertion for that is based on what exactly? Any actual evidence to support it? Because I've got evidence to demonstrate just the opposite if you'd like me to offer to you. But I'll give you a chance to a redeem yourself first. Have at it.

We don't let the local polls count absentee ballots when they reach a certain point in order to reduce errors and get people home at a less unreasonable hour.

Right. That doesn't happen in proper precinct-based hand-counts either. I'm sorry you feel it necessary to keep offering opinions on stuff you know nothing about. Worse, that you accuse me of exactlly what you are doing.

Maybe I did assume too much thinking you also implied that computers were inefficient, but that makes absolutely no difference when you are just plain wrong about everything else.

Are you embarrassed yet? Or going to keep digging?

The problem is not scanning ballots (a technology perfected back in the punchcard days) but lousy equipment and/or software from certain vendors (at least one of whom makes ATMs-- so knows how to make accurate machines) and possibly mistakes at the BoE when they set up the candidates and lines.

Ah, well, that answers that. Yes, you are going to keep digging.

Not sure where you come across the evidence that optical-scan technology has been "perfected", but it's cute that you've got confidence in oft-failed, easily-manipulated technology counting your votes in secret. Cute, but sad.

Yes, the equipment and software is, in fact, lousy. That makes no difference when, even if it was great equipment and software there would still be no way for the citizenry to know if the tabulation it had done was accurate or not (short of, ya know, counting the ballots by hand.)

As to your vote of support for Diebold's ATM technology: A) That has nothing to do with op-scan technology B) Their ATMs have proven both inaccurate AND hackable on many occassions (when, ya know, they've been hacked) and that's with technology that allows for all involved in the transaction to assure it was correct, unlike secret ballot casting.

As to "possibly mistakes at the BoE when they set up the candidates and lines": A) What mistakes? In Palm Beach, where losers were recently named as "winners" by the optical scan technology, there were no mistakes at the BoE. The failure was in the software they used, as the company has now admitted in this case. B) The fact that it's even possible for BoE officials to make "mistakes" when they set up ballots that can result in the wrong candidates being named the "winner" (with nobody ever noticing) is reason enough to avoid such technology all together, it seems to me.

My county has had problems, but none so far have been with the machines of software-- it's all been unfamiliarity of the voters and poll workers.

What county is that? And why are you blaming voters and hard working poll workers for the failures of others? Should voters and poll workers need degrees in rocket science in order to cast a simple vote or to help citizens do so? Really?

We are NOT going back to hand counts or levers. It's just not gonna happen.

Thanks, Kreskin. Happy to hear you know what's going to happen in the future. Unfortunately, since you know so little about what is going on now or in the past, you'll forgive me if I ignore your unsubstantiated predictions. By the way, just one large county who has recently gone "back" to hand-counting is Columbia County, NY. You may wish to check out why they did.

If you must have a cause, let it be to identify the specific problems and fix the scanners. Whaddaya know-- it seems they're doing this in the case you mentioned

"If (I) must have a cause"??! You new here, amigo? For the record, I've been "identifying the specific problems" with the shitty technology used to tabulate our ballots in secret going on a decade now. And no, in Palm Beach County they are not "fixing" the scanners, as Susan Bucher, the Supervisor of Elections there told me this week (and as documentation from Dominion/Sequoia points out), the problem is not in the scanners, it is in the software, and even the latest (and still-uncertified) version of the software has the same problem the current version has.

Bucher would like to change vendors all together, but she correctly observes that the same problems exist with the technology made by ALL of the other certified vendors (ES&S and Diebold) in the state of Florida as well and, unfortunately, the Sunshine State, in all of its idiocy, has made transparent, reliable, public hand-counting of paper ballot illegal.

If you're still confused, even after this note, let me know, and I'll do my best to help you yet again. Or, you can tell me yet again how I don't know what I'm talking about, while you do. Clearly, you do not. But that's okay. You're just an election worker (if I take you at your word), not a hardware or software expert and can't be expected to know anything about the secret vote-counting technology you are foolishly touting.