Election Fraud 2012 – Voting Machine Fraud
As we all know, there are some very wealthy and powerful interests in this country who would hate to see us elect many candidates for public office who care about the interests and well-being of average Americans and are willing and courageous enough to use the power of their offices to benefit the American people. That would disrupt the status quo by reducing the power that the American oligarchy exerts over our lives.
These wealthy and powerful interests are not going to just sit by and watch democracy take its course. Recent history has shown (and not so recent history as well) that they will go to great lengths to prevent the election of candidates who are antagonistic to their interests – that is, who act in the interests of the majority of their constituents – including the rigging of our election system to elect the candidates of their choice.
These people arranged for the election of George W. Bush in 2000, and did so again in 2004. You can bet that they will do whatever is within reach of their considerable power in 2012 to disrupt the democratic process. They have many methods at their disposal for that purpose. In this post I’ll discuss election fraud mediated by voting machines.
Vote switching on electronic machines that produce unverifiable results
Electronic voting machines that record and count your vote with no intervening process (for example, voters punching holes in or making marks on ballots prior to the ballot being read by a machine) are called direct recording electronic (DRE) machines. Unless they produce a paper record of your vote which you have the opportunity to verify, there is no way on earth to verify that the vote total claimed by the machine represents a true and accurate vote total. That’s why they call it “black box voting”.
In 2012, 25% of American voters residing in 17 U.S. states will be voting on these machines, with no accompanying paper record. The owners of these machines are private corporations – most of them with strong ties to the Republican Party. Voting experts unanimously agree (including even those who don’t agree that the 2000 or 2004 Presidential and other elections were stolen) that voting on these machines represents a travesty of democracy.
In addition to the 25% of American voters who will be voting on these machines in 2012 with no accompanying paper record, another 8% will be voting on the same kind of machines, but with an accompanying paper record that the machine produces and provides the voter with an opportunity to verify. This is called a "paper trail" or a "voter verified paper audit trail" (VVPAT). The VVPAT takes many different specific forms, some better than others. But all have problems. Some problems with the various VVPAT systems include: 1) some do not provide ballots directly to the voter for verification. When that is the case, the voting machine can be programmed to produce fake electronic votes that do not correspond to the image shown to the voter; 2) evidence has shown that even when the paper vote is provided directly to the voter, many voters don’t take the time to verify its accuracy; 3) paper trails are of use only when they are recounted (i.e. audited) by hand following an election. Many states have non-existent to poor procedures for doing this, and even when such procedures exist on the books, they may not be executed.
Potential solutions
By far the best solution to this problem is to disallow the use of DRE machines to count our votes. Period. Our elections are public functions that represent the heart of our democracy. To entrust that responsibility to private corporations with their own set of interests makes a mockery of democracy. But it is too late for 2012. Voting precincts in the United States have already established what methods of voting they will use on Election Day.
In the minority of cases where a VVPAT accompanies the use of a DRE machine, procedures should be in place to make sure that voters understand how to verify their vote and what to do when their paper record doesn’t match their intended vote. An audit system of routine recounting of a statistically valid sample of ballots should be in place to verify the accuracy of the machine count. The audit should be completed before the final results are certified.
Exit polls have often been used – in other countries – to verify the accuracy of machine produced vote counts. When the exit poll diverges substantially from the official vote count, that should signify a serious problem in need of investigation. Extensive hand vote recounts should then be performed (but of course are not possible where DRE machines without VVPAT are used). The use of exit polls to act as checks on national elections seemed to work very well in Yugoslavia in 2000 and in the Ukraine in 2004. A large discrepancy between exits polls and the official vote count in Yugoslavia was used, in part, to topple Slobodan Milosevik from power in 2000. A similar large discrepancy between exit polls and the official vote count in the Ukraine was used, in part, to elevate Victor Yanukovich to the Ukrainian Presidency over Victor Yushchenko in 2004. The government of the United States was happy to facilitate both processes, using the exit poll discrepancies as a major rationale. Yet in the United States, exit polls are not seriously considered as a means of monitoring elections. When exit polls in 2004 showed John Kerry winning the U.S. Presidency, our national news media was silent about it. Instead we were shown TV graphics of adjusted exit polls, indicating George W. Bush as the winner. TV viewers had no way of knowing that these weren’t really exit polls at all, but rather they were numbers statistically adjusted to fit the machine recorded vote count. When knowledgeable people pointed out the huge discrepancies between the official vote counts and the results of the exit polls, we were told that the exit polls were wrong – with almost no evidence shown us to back up that claim. Exit polls should be used in this country, as they are in other democracies, to monitor elections.
Tabulation of vote counts
Even when voters produce paper records of their vote, the vast majority of counties in the United States tabulate the final (and official) vote count by adding up the counts from each of their precincts by machine. These machines, just like the machines that register and count our individual votes, can be programmed for fraud. And as is the case with individual DRE machines, there is much evidence that these county “central tabulators” have been used for the purpose of election fraud.
Potential solutions
In theory, the solution to this problem is very simple. Just obtain the vote count for every precinct in every county as soon as the results are posted, before the final and official county vote count is tabulated. Then, when the official count is announced, see if it matches the totals from the individual precincts. But what is simple in concept can be very difficult in actual practice. We need airtight comprehensive systems for doing this. Whatever systems were in place for doing this in 2004 did not work. Election integrity organizations were unable to obtain the original (pre-tabulator) vote counts from way too many precincts following that election.
Where paper records are produced, hand recounts of the vote can be conducted to verify the results of the county tabulated votes. As discussed above, good thorough systems must be in place for doing this.
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