Another Leverless Bush-v.-Gore-Style Election in New York :-(

[Bill Bored]

We all know paperless e-vote counting is a bad idea. But watch what happens when elections go LEVERLESS!:



“Discrepancies” Found on Voting Machines in 7th Senate Race
Court moves closer to expanding audit, hand recount possible.

By Geoffrey Walter | November 30, 2010

-snip-

Johnson (D) campaign attorney Steve Schlesinger said that despite the presence of the referees, the "threshold issue" remains the counting of ballots and the audit of the electronic voting machines. At last count, Martins (R) lead the race by 431 votes.

There are 3,876 reported undervotes - where no vote was cast in the specific race - and 43 overvotes. Uncounted ballots also exist in at least three machines. Republican Board of Election chair John Ryan told the court that the machines subjected to audit were hand counted and compared to their respective tape recording. Two machines were found to have one extra ballot, while one machine had two extra ballots. "The question then becomes how did it get there?" Ryan said.

-snip-

According to Nassau County attorney John Ciampoli, of the seven machines in the 7th Senate District subjected to audit, six are complete, but two have failed ballots.

-snip-

"I am concerned that it's not moving quickly enough," (Judge) Warshawsky said. "Do we now set a precedent of hand counting every race that's close?" (DUH!) Warshawsky also acknowledged in court that the case would be moving to the appellate division for appeals shortly.

-snip-

Oh and there's more: This race determines whether the Republicans will control the NY State Senate! The best our Dems can hope for now is a tie because they conceded to the Repubs in another close race WITHOUT a full hand count. I guess they were afraid to set a dangerous precedent!:sarcasm:

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

1. about the discrepancies

Undervotes aren't unusual. The overvotes shouldn't have happened, the article didn't
say what the cause was. Was it confusion over Fusion voting, or what?

As for the discrepancies
"Two machines were found to have one extra ballot, while one machine had two extra ballots."

It is weird for machines to have extra ballots. How does that happen?
Do they mean there were ballots in the machines but no votes - i.e blank ballots?
Or do they mean that there were more ballots than voters?

[Bill Bored]

2. The article is a bit vague. It gets some points wrong, but...

...it clearly shows that our new election system is in a state of chaos in which apparent losers of close races have to go to court to try to get hand counts, and apparent winners try to stop them.

I can't explain the apparent existence of extra ballots, but I have heard reports that scanners have eaten paper ballots without incrementing their public or protective counters. And these ballots are single-page! Wait til they start scanning multi-page ballots!

What bothers me most is that in other close races, the Democrats have just conceded. Is this "count every vote" or "equal protection?" I don't think so.

The bottom line is that despite the paper ballots, the new LEVERLESS voting system is so hard to verify that no one wants to do it -- not even the apparent losers of some crucial close elections!

Look what the judge in this case said:

"Do we now set a precedent of hand counting every race that's close?" (DUH!) Warshawsky also acknowledged in court that the case would be moving to the appellate division for appeals shortly.

So even the Judiciary cannot resolve this in a timely manner -- if at all.

Will they set a precedent of NOT hand counting every race that's close?:wtf:
(Bush v. Gore already set THAT one of course.)

[Bill Bored]

3. And without a hand count, we don't know that the undervotes were really undervotes! nt