My Final Harris County (Houston) Early Vote Thread

[thevoiceofreason]

The early voting season in Houston is over. Wow. Harris County had over 170,000 vote early, with another 8000 votes by mail (still about 300 mail ballots out). These numbers are huge. Our entire 2006 primary vote was 35,000; in 2004, about 78,000. If early voting continues as about 1/3 of the total vote, we are looking at a very long day of March 4, with maybe over 1/2 million votes in the Harris County democratic primary alone. Note to Republican judges in Houston: be afraid, be very very afraid.

PRECINCT CONVENTION GOERS, PRECINCT CAPTAINS AND PRECINCT CHAIRS:

Be ready for a long night. Bring snacks.

[Peace Patriot]

1. Reality check: has early voting been made easier, recently?

It might be important to know this, in judging the import of these stats.

The reason I ask is that I am familiar with the situation in Los Angeles, whereby Diebold shill Conny McCormack (resigned as head of L.A. elections this last Dec 07), had hoped to deploy a new Diebold touchscreen (paperless) system for early voting all over L.A.--in shopping malls, etc.--and was stopped by our new reforming Sec of State Debra Bowen. The system was NEW, or was planned for expansion. It would have made early voting a lot of easier (though more hackable!), and was only recently to be implemented on a large scale.

Have Houston (or other TX) early voting stations been increased lately? Have mail-in vote rules been liberalized? And if so, to what extent might the increased early voting be attributed to increased convenience? I think it's likely--given all the reports of huge turnouts (and other evidence)--that there HAS BEEN a big increase in voting, and a lot of excitement around this primary (largely spurred by Obama's challenge of the establishment candidate). But I just wondered how much is attributable to that, and how much to increased early voting opportunities--and, also, how vulnerable are these votes? On they voting on paperless touchscreens? (And are mail-in votes being scanned into the riggable electronics, as is the case in most states?)

[Igel]

2. Ok.

I don't think that early voting stations have been increased lately, and I'm unaware of any change in mail-in vote rules.

In 2004 when I moved to Houston motor-voter was in place (however unethically the clerks where I got my license may be implemented it). I have to assume that if it hadn't been implemented sufficiently long before 2004 that motor voter might have led to an uptick in voter registration. All told, no, no great increase in convenience, not that I can see.

Voting is done on e-Slates, which is a dismal technology. E-voting, but you don't touch a screen. No, you have a cursor that you can scroll across the page using a little dial. Then you punch a button when you choose, and you go to the next office/measure. At the end a page or two are displayed that show what you've selected. Then you punch another button to say, "Yeah, that's what I want." They're also all networked; you get a passcode to get you logged in, and if your passcode expires you might be SOL, and if the network is done, you can't vote. I'm not sure, but I get the impression that the pollworkers' equipment is real-time linked to the voter database.

No clue about absentee voting. Just lament the lack of absentee caucusing.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Thanks! So that means that the turnout is not just great, it's awesome!

But it sounds like you have no paper trail in early voting. (That's why CA SoS Debra Bowen banned these systems.) With no paper trail, your vote is extremely vulnerable to insider hacking. With a paper trail, it is still very vulnerable--especially with zero audit (many states) or 1% audit (the best states), but at least a recount is theoretically possible, which may help deter fraud, and, if you can overcome the hurdles to getting a recount, you can, theoretically, catch fraud.

A lot of attention should be paid to demographics, political trends, registration, pre-election polls, exit polls, and any and all inferential evidence that can be gathered, to monitor paperless results. Paperless systems SHOULD BE illegal. Period. They are completely non-transparent. And, simply having a paper receipt is not enough. You need a real ballot, with legal standing as the vote of record, against electronic results. And even if you have a ballot, if they don't count them, they are worthless, and if they count only 1%, they are nearly (but not entirely) worthless.

Big turnout is pretty much our only defense against these inherently fraudulent electronic systems--so big turnout is a wonderful development. Fraudulent code has to be programmed into them. The closer we get to elections, the harder that is to do. So turnout can overcome poorly written fraudulent code. Also, depending on the stakes, the election theft industry has to be cautious, so as not to tip its hand and lose its control over future elections. I think it is very worrisome that Obama won 10 out of 11 early caucuses but only 9 of 21 primaries. The primaries are counted by the election theft industry. The caucuses are not. I am not accusing--or even hinting--that Clinton's campaign might be involved in election fraud, but there are definitely motives of these far rightwing e-voting corporations that we need to consider. They possess the EASY capability of changing the outcome of any election. They are, of course, not the only factor in elections--nor the only grave problem--but their power is real, and it is scary.