Los Angeles County will replace hand marked paper ballots with unverifiable touchscreen BMDs

[diva77]

BMD = Ballot Marking Device
http://bradblog.com/?p=12855
SNIP

Los Angeles County, under Democratic rule, has already decided to move to a pricey and similarly unverifiable touchscreen BMD system before the 2020 Presidential election!

We're joined today by MARILYN MARKS, a national leader in the fight for HAND-MARKED paper ballot systems. She heads up the non-partisan Coalition for Good Governance --- which filed several landmark lawsuits last year against Georgia's current unverifiable voting systems and in hopes of preventing their new ones.

"The point is a very, very simple point that the SAFE Commission --- and apparently L.A. --- pretends that they are missing," argues Marks. "They all talk about how they want elections that can be audited. Well, when you use these Ballot Marking Devices, the election cannot be audited, because the source document [the computer-marked, barcoded ballot] is not an original transaction. It cannot be audited. Therefore you cannot audit the results."

Making matters worse, even if every single voter manages to correctly verify the computer-printed, human-readable summary of voter selections, "what's actually cast and the actual official vote is a barcode. Now, none of us can read barcodes. I don't know what vote I'm actually casting. I am casting a barcode, but what in the world does that barcode actually say? That, to me, is a Constitutional violation."

SNIP
============
Very BAD news considering LA County is largest county in the US

[elleng]

1. OH FFS!!!

[diva77]

3. My sentiments, exactly. It's not as if people, including computer experts, haven't been speaking

out, either.

[elleng]

4. HOPELESS!

We'll NEVER be able to rely on our elections EVER AGAIN!

[diva77]

5. It's an election heist in broad daylight.

[elleng]

7. largest county in the US!!!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

14. history repeats

Diebold CEO commits Ohio to Bush

Machine Politics In the Digital Age

By MELANIE WARNER (NYT) 2144 words
Published: November 9, 2003

Correction Appended

IN mid-August, Walden W. O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold Inc., sat down at his computer to compose a letter inviting 100 wealthy and politically inclined friends to a Republican Party fund-raiser, to be held at his home in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. ''I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year,'' wrote Mr. O'Dell, whose company is based in Canton, Ohio.

That is hardly unusual for Mr. O'Dell. A longtime Republican, he is a member of President Bush's ''Rangers and Pioneers,'' an elite group of loyalists who have raised at least $100,000 each for the 2004 race.

But it is not the only way that Mr. O'Dell is involved in the election process. Through Diebold Election Systems, a subsidiary in McKinney, Tex., his company is among the country's biggest suppliers of paperless, touch-screen voting machines.

[ ... ]

[DFW]

17. Remember also in Ohio, 2004

Diebold and ESS got court orders declaring their machines "private property," and their hard drives could not be verified without permission (which, surprise!, was not forthcoming).

After the voting was done, these Republican-owned companies reported their "results," and collected all their hard drives--except one. This was in some rural, out-of-the-way county in a precinct with 600 registered voters. THAT hard drive WAS examined. Of the 600 registered voters, that particular machine gave 3000 votes to Bush.

The Republicans "generously" deducted 2400 votes from Bush's margin of victory (which polls, both pre-election and exit, said he would not get in Ohio), called the one machine's reporting a "glitch," and then STILL refused to let any of the other machines be examined.

My brother, who does high-tech stuff for DARPA, told me in 2002, "give me a laptop and a cell phone, and I'll make any one of those machines give any result you want." Apparently, they haven't been updated much, either.


Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is supposed to have said, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." Forget "anti-kommanism." That's just a Republican phrase from their advertising agency. They always had the Soviet Union as their role model. Republicans are control freaks, and the Soviet Union was the ultimate control freak state.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

18. it would be slicker, now

You could examine the machines all you want after an election and not find a thing wrong, now. Whom the media calls "hackers" have demonstrated over and over that it's fairly trivial to have the machine erase all traces of tampering after the task is accomplished. The lines have long been blurred between software, firmware and hardware. (See, e.g., PLCs).

[AlexSFCA]

2. this is horrible

I don’t know the background on this but it seems some politicians got played by lobbysts.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. It's because the people making these decisions

know absolutely nothing about why these things matter. Or make a difference.

In recent decades, one of the things that has stood out is how those in elected office are singularly ignorant about technology.

Example: Hillary Clinton apparently hadn't a clue about emails when she was a Senator. And this was a decade or so after most people had started using emails.

She is only one of many such examples. I believe the Supreme Court has demonstrated equal ignorance about technology in recent years.

Here's the problem. People at the top, meaning those in high elected office, have most day to day things taken care of for them. Things like emails. Things like typing their own whatevers. Things like interacting with others on the interwebs, as we here on DU are interacting. The essential thing is that those at the top, those making crucial decisions are two, maybe three decades behind in technology. Think about it.

I got my first computer in 1991. When did you get yours?

And I actually started using computers in January, 1969, when I went to work for the very second airline in this country that went to a computerized reservations system. So I spent my 8 hours plus each and every day on a computer. Which means I was somewhat ahead of the curve in technology, compared to most people. Meanwhile those who became lawyers, who worked in law firms, were still using typewriters. And I suspect most attorneys (and probably Ms Clinton was one of them) depended on legal secretaries to type up the many documents required. Meaning they weren't doing that day-to-day typing themselves. And when computers finally showed up in the law offices, well, the legal secretaries were still doing all of that stuff.

I strongly suspect that most members of of Congress under the age of 50 don't really do much of their own typing of any kind. Which is sort of weird, in that in the real world outside of Congress, almost everyone under age 70 does know how to type, does know how to use a computer. But I bet a lot of those between 50 and 70 have somehow been exempt from that.

Which is why I keep on saying we need new leadership. We don't need to look to anyone over age 68 or so to run for President in 2020. We want someone who is a member of a younger generation.

End of rant.

[LakeSuperiorView]

16. I got my own computer in 1982, but had been using them for 5 years before that.

Hey, you asked.

[Kablooie]

6. Who the hell decided to do this?!

This has to be changed.

[elleng]

8. Democratic rule!!!

[fierywoman]

10. Is this one of Ivanka's machines?

[pazzyanne]

13. That was the first thing that sprang into my mind, too!

[ucrdem]

11. Welp, there goes that $14-billion rainy day fund Jerry's been crowing about the last few months.

I had a sinking feeling that as soon as he's out of office the vultures would descend like they descended on Gray Davis and scoop up all that cash Jerry socked away. And they'll move heaven and earth to get at it, mark my words. Local officials get rolled like marbles by these characters all the time. Even the good ones. It's not that they don't know; it's that the pressure exerted on them is overwhelming including no doubt lots of embarrassing stuff that would get splashed across the smartphones of every twitterer in Calaveras county and beyond if they didn't sign on the dotted line.

So they either find a way to sign or they resign in tears. It happens.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

12. dumbass techno-morons

You can NOT watch electrons zipping around electronic voting machines.

1. The voter cannot verify her or his vote when using electronic voting. The voter can only attest that something changed when an action was taken.

2. The public cannot verify the election when using electronic voting. The public can only see that some number comes out of the device, they cannot verify that the number has any relationship to any ballot whatsoever.

Those two facts cannot be changed by changing software, firmware, wiring, programmer, manufacturer or device.

Electronic voting is perfect for fast numbers that mean nothing.

[ananda]

15. I want to know where all the bribes and kickbacks went!

Nt

[Hortensis]

19. We take the LA Times and none of their coverage reports this.

NOR did googling the claims just now turn up corroborating coverage.

The system being transitioned to is called Smartmatic USA, which is part of a larger VSAP (Voting Solutions for All People) initiative toward a universal voting system.

Also, the Voters Choice Act is bringing more changes in 2020:

The California Voter’s Choice Act is a new law (PDF) passed in 2016 that will modernize elections in California by allowing counties to conduct elections under a new model which provides greater flexibility and convenience for voters.

This new election model allows voters to choose how, when, and where to cast their ballot by:
Mailing every voter a ballot
Expanding in-person early voting
Allowing voters to cast a ballot at any vote center within their county

This is all being discussed at length on the internet.

Regarding excitable reactions to just one interpretation over losing direct marking of paper ballots in favor of touch screen, I'd like to point out how highly unlikely a move TOWARD large-scale election corruption would be in California, a very blue state that is currently and usually a leader in liberal public policy. And one in which Democrats currently have a lock on state government, remember? The state would be stepping in and civil rights NGOs filing cases in court if anything really dirty were happening in LAC.

After all, DEMOCRATS WIN when elections are fair and the vote accurately counted.

[diva77]

20. California Voter's Choice Act is an open invitation for election "irregularities" to happen.

As for LA County's new BMDs, they clearly violate the fundamental right to vote -- if you can't check your votes and if you can't audit the votes, then the election is not legitimate.

It does take landslide numbers of dems (which we have, currently, in LA) to overcome rigged elections, but there may be issues and candidates in the future adversely affected by the new equipment. The different modes of voting -- early, and vote by mail are subject to election security and chain of custody problems.

Also, for the sake of climate change and the environment in general, the last thing we need are more circuit boards and plastic casings in our landfills.

Hand marked paper ballots counted at the precinct level with public oversight is still the gold standard.

Shame on the LA Times for its poor coverage of this. Most reporters don't understand election integrity issues - I guess the LA Times is no exception.

We can't forget, also, that when SOS Kevin Shelley decertified Diebold DREs, he received death threats and was driven out of office. There's always more to the story of vote-rigging equipment than meets the eye. I have to wonder what transpired to get SOS Padilla to certify the new machines for LA. https://lavote.net/docs/rrcc/news-releases/08212018_SOS-Certified-Tally.pdf

[Hortensis]

21. Well, wait and see. The LA Times is a world-class newspaper, and

your impression that their journalists are all incapable of understanding grave faults obvious to you is probably not valid. But, if you're right that one of the nation's most populous counties is moving TOWARD institutionalizing election "irregularities" in this era would be huge news, and it'll be reported in other national papers.

Pretty sure CA's Democratic Party reps in Sacramento and DC, and liberal-dominated courts, would also be interested since, of course, they are committed to reforming the election processes that our nation, and especially our party, depend on to survive.

[diva77]

22. It is an issue that is suppressed the same way exxon and tobacco industry have been able to

suppress reporting of the damage they cause.

Just because a paper is "world class" doesn't mean it is adequately covering all issues. There is a huge lack of coverage of election integrity. It's not a glamorous topic and it takes time to understand it.

When you observe the elections officials and vendors interacting and attend hearings and also try to lobby county supervisors and SOS's, etc. it's not a pretty picture. Some of it reminds me of the ongoing battle to have net neutrality - the majority wants it, but corrupt people are the gatekeepers.

[Hortensis]

24. I understand. But failure of the vote in LAC would hurt CA and DC,

Democrats across the nation. It could literally throw CA's electoral vote to the Republicans. I don't believe it would/will be possible to keep the truth of a deliberately corrupt multi-billion "election reform" project suppressed.

Remember, failure of the vote in LAC could be devastating to CA and national elections. This isn't Lincoln County, Nevada, or Foster County, ND. What happens in LAC is huge.

But again, we'll see. If true, perhaps this post will be the warning that explodes on the state and national consciousness. Election reform is a topic of very widespread, compelling interest right now. To Republicans also as they must stop it to survive.

[0rganism]

23. and suddenly their votes will shift Republican by 5-10 points

quite a coincidence, really, i'm sure. who could have seen this coming?