Wisconsin: None dare call it vote rigging

[Huey P. Long]

COLUMNS
Bob Fitrakis

Wisconsin: None dare call it vote rigging
June 14, 2012

If vote-rigging prospers, none may call it vote-rigging. It simply becomes the new norm. Once again, the universal laws of statistics apply only outside U.S. borders. The recall vote in Wisconsin produced another significant 7% discrepancy between the unadjusted exit poll and the so-called "recorded vote." In actual social science, this level of discrepancy, with the results being so far outside the expected margin of error would not be accepted.

When I took Ph.D. statistics to secure my doctorate in political science, we were taught to work through the rubric, sometime referred to as HISMISTER. The "H" stood for an explanation of the discrepancy rooted in some historical intervention, such as one of the candidates being caught in a public restroom with his pants down and a "wide stance" soliciting an undercover cop. The "I" that came next suggested we should check our instrumentation, that is, are the devices adequately reporting the data?

Here's where U.S. elections become laughable. A couple of private companies, count our votes with secret proprietary hardware and software, the most notable being ES&S. Every standard of election transparency is routinely violated in the U.S. electronic version of faith-based voting. How the corporate-dominated media deals with the issue is by "adjusting the exit polls." They simply assume the recorded vote on easily hacked and programmed private machines are correct and that the international gold standard for detecting election fraud – exit polls – must be wrong.

They are not going to go through the rest of the acronym and check to see if the Sample makes sense, that the right Measurements are being taken, or whether or not there's been a breakdown in Implementing the exit polling. They won't check to see if the representative Size of the polling numbers are accurate, or if there are problems with the pollster's Technique, or if there was human Error, or if there's just bad Recording going on.

full-
http://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2012/1936

[Iggy]

1. Nice Try But,

Exit polling is seldom accurate-- because some people lie about who they voted
for while others are overly cooperative with the polling, both of which skew the
results.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14778.html

Bottom line: Democrats in WI did not turn out in huge numbers. You needed
a 65-68% turnout for a Barrett win. You got a 57-58% turnout. Not good enough.

Just like the regular election in 2010, Walker won more independents than
Barrett.

[madashelltoo]

2. Luv ya, Ig . . . but it was rigged.

[hrmjustin]

6. It is sickning to say but walker likely won. n/t

[Shagman]

3. missing the point

The main point is that we not only don't know the true vote totals, there is no way to verify the totals that the state announced. Those machines are designed to be unreliable. Think about that for a minute.

Add to that the totally unprofessional behavior of the election officials. One county official, in the last election, tabulated the results with a spreadsheet on her personal laptop computer. How could you possibly trust the results she had?

There's also no way to correlate the turnout with the totals, because the baseline numbers are equally suspect.

[Iggy]

7. Agreed, There Was

definitely a problem with what's her name in Waukesha in 2010.

That was an election for a judge, not the gubernatorial race.

If the democrats in Wisconsin have a problem with vote counts, or potential
fraud, the answer is more poll watchers. if there's a problem with the voting
machines, then change them.

I don't buy that there was rampant fraud in the recall election. here's the latest from
a blogger at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

In high-stakes Wisconsin elections, it often feels like the fiercest fighting occurs along the Milwaukee to Madison corridor.

That’s where the state’s three biggest counties are: Milwaukee, Dane and Waukesha. It’s where the state’s capital and largest city are. It’s where the geographic base of each party is. And it’s the most combative, media-intensive, politically polarized part of Wisconsin.

But that’s not where Gov. Scott Walker carved out his historic recall victory.

In geographic terms, the big story of the state’s June 5 election was Walker’s striking performance outside the Milwaukee and Madison media markets.

In demographic terms, it was Walker’s rural landslide.

It’s these two related factors that explain why this race wasn’t as close as many expected, and how Walker managed to win by even more votes in 2010 than he did in 2012.

Is what happened “out-state” a warning sign for Democrats — and President Obama — in November?

The answer depends on how you interpret Walker’s victory – how much of it you attribute to special circumstances (the big disparity in campaign spending, attitudes toward the recall itself, having a Democratic candidate so closely linked to the city of Milwaukee) and how much of it you attribute to broader factors that could be more relevant in the fall (partisan intensity, voter perceptions of the two parties and their policy differences).

One thing is clear.

No matter how huge their margins in Milwaukee and Dane counties, Democrats can’t win statewide if their geographic base is as narrow as it was June 5, when Tom Barrett won only 12 of 72 counties and only six outside the state’s southern tier.

Let's face it, Barrett was the wrong candidate in 2010 and this time as well. Even if there was fraud in some
of the sixty counties he lost, I doubt anyone can seriously claim or prove there was fraud in ALL sixty
counties.

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/159318735.html#!page=10&pageSize=10&sort=newestfirst

http://uppitywis.org/blogarticle/fraud-possible-waukesha-county-it-would-be-easily-detectable

[Huey P. Long]

4. Murder, Spies & Voting Lies (The Clint Curtis Story)

Clint Curtis was an everyday computer programmer in Florida until he was asked by Republican legislator Tom Feeney to create vote-rigging software for electronic voting machines. Curtis made the claim in a sworn affidavit and passed a lie detector test, yet mainstream media largely ignored the story. Curtis finally ran for Congress against Feeney.
For the first time, Patty Sharaf's terrifying documentary, Murder, Spies & Voting Lies, recounts the full, remarkable tale.

Winner of Best Documentary at the New Jersey Film Festival 2008

Available on DVD at http://www.votinglies.com/

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Electronic and Internet Voting (The Threat of Internet Voting in Public Elections)

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DVD
The DVD of Hacking Democracy was released on March 27th 2007, and is available from Docurama. The DVD includes a number of extras including footage from Georgia and California never seen before. The extras chronicle some of the struggles that didn't make it into the final version but should be of interest to anyone interested in democracy.
Play the trailer

HACKING DEMOCRACY NOMINATED FOR AN EMMY®
Hacking Democracy was nominated for an 2007 EMMY' Award in the category OUTSTANDING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM - LONG FORM
The full list of nominations for The 28th Annual Emmy Awards for News & Documentary can be seen here, and the winners are here


The Documentary
The documentary, first broadcast on HBO throughout November & December 2006, exposes the dangers of voting machines used during America's mid term and presidential elections. Electronic voting machines count approximately 90% of America's votes in county, state and federal elections. The technology is also increasingly being used across the world, including in Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Latin America. Filmed over three years this expos' follows the investigations of a team of citizen activists and hackers as they take on the electronic voting industry, targeting the Diebold corporation.
"Hacking Democracy" uncovers incendiary evidence from the trash cans of Texas to the ballot boxes of Ohio, exposing secrecy, votes in the trash, hackable software and election officials rigging the presidential recount.

Ultimately proving our votes can be stolen without a trace "Hacking Democracy" culminates in the famous 'Hursti Hack'; a duel between the Diebold voting machines and a computer hacker from Finland - with America's democracy at stake.


http://www.hackingdemocracy.com/

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

5. Forget vote rigging

Walker was given over $38 million. The election was bought.