Bilbray vs. Busby: So How About a REAL Audit?

[Bill Bored]

OK kids, 500 precincts, 4.24% margin, advantage: Bilbray
Or at least that's what they WANT you to believe, right?

Now if this were a 2-candidate race, assuming the possibility of a 20% vote shift in each precinct, as little as 10.6% or 53 corrupt precincts could reverse the outcome of this race. So what are the odds of finding even ONE of them with a 1% California-style audit? 43% (Less than half.)

How much auditing to get to 99% certainty? That would be 8% or 40 precincts, randomly selected of course.

Want to be 99.9% sure? Audit 12%. That's 60 precincts.

I'm not sure what the CA activists are planning to do about this, but I don't think requesting a random audit of say 50 precincts is too unreasonable, do you?

So what's the plan?

If you don't have one now, better get one by November for the REAL RACE!

And tell them to stop taking the voting machines home too!

Does anyone know what the results of the 1% audit are yet?

[msongs]

1. has any elected democrat demanded an audit? haven't heard of any nt

[Wilms]

2. VR: Petition Demanding 100% Hand Recount of Busby-Bilbray Special Election

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x434003

[lindisfarne]

3. The biggest issue is lack of voting machine security in ALL of San

Diego county - not just this one district. How can we possibly win any election if we're giving Republicans opportunities right and left to tamper with machines?
For more info., see
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1429264

The 4 month house seat just voted on between Bilbray and Busby is important as the winner will undoubtedly get a boost in the Nov. election for the same seat, but voting machine integrity affects every election.

[Bill Bored]

4. These are pre-election issues.

I'm talking about post-election auditing now.

CA has VVPATs to preserve voter intent independently of the machines. The damage to the pre-election chain of custody has been done. We can only stop that for the next election -- not this one. The issue now is to see if it affected the machine counts. The way you do that is by comparing VVPAT totals to DRE totals. I.e., AUDIT.

The problem is that CA law only requires a 1% audit and this will not be effective in verifying the count in anything the size of a Congressional district.

You can scream for a full hand recount, and that's fine, but if a judge says NO, you need a contingency plan. I'm suggesting that a random audit of about 10% will have a VERY HIGH PROBABILITY of detecting miscounts. So why don't you do one, with bi-partisan teams of auditors and all that good stuff?

If you tell me that the chain of custody was broken AFTER the election as well as before, then it's hopeless. But let's not conflate pre-election tampering with post-election auditing, which could detect such tampering.

I'll ask this question for perhaps the THIRD TIME on this board:

What are the results of the MANDATORY 1% audit? It's NOT enough, but it's a start. Even with no discrepancies, a smart lawyer should be able to convince a judge to audit 10%, based on the voting machine custody evidence alone.

[Einsteinia]

5. Here's a preview of CEPN Plan:

SAN DIEGO DESERVES A *FREE COUNT* -- NOT A *RECOUNT*
in the 50th Congressional District to Determine the Replacement for Congressman "Duke" Cunningham

“Free of tampering” and “free of cost” are two essential guarantees to any voting system of any genuinely “free society.”

However, by this standard San Diego County presently does NOT qualify.

Secty of State Bruce McPherson and Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas have wantonly refused to take adequate protections to assure a fair election in the County of San Diego in the contest of Busby versus Bilbray seat to replace Duke Cunningham in the 50th Congressional District. .

The California Election Protection Network (“CEPN”), a non-partisan organization of over 25 groups across California coming together to achieve their mutual election integrity goals demands an immediate *Free Count” in San Diego’s 50th Congressional District to restore confidence in our voting systems. Because what is at stake is not only the the lofty ideals of a concept we call democracy, but also at stake is the proper transfer power, including the control of billions of taxpayer dollars.

What is a “Free Count”? A “Free Count” relies on counting the paper of each of voting transaction (whether the ballot or paper trail of record), and the cost shall be paid by the State and/or County.

Why do we need a “Free Count”? On February 15, 2005, California Secty. of State Bruce McPherson first revealed the results of his own “Brand X” computer expert team, which were asked to confirm or deny the first draft of a hackability report drafted Harri Hursti, a Finnish computer scientist commissioned by Blackboxvoting.org. Not only did the McPherson’s “Brand X” team affirm the concerns outlined in the draft, but they also revealed there were other vulnerabilities. Soon it was proved that not only were Diebold’s TSx (DRE) and OS (optical scan) systems’ fraught with vulnerabilities ranging from their memory cards through to a non-transparent and illegal form code called “interpreter code,” but Johns Hopkins’ computer scientist Avi Rubin declared the significance of the vulnerabilities on a scale from 1 to 10, were 100, and later he exclaimed that they were the “nuclear bomb” of vulnerabilities.

McPherson’s Response: McPherson responded to his “Brand X Team’s Report” by saying that counties may still use the flawed Diebold Election equipment, IF followed strict chain of custody controls, etc.

The Problem: Despite the advisory about massive vulnerabilities to the Diebold voting system memory cards and its general ease of hackability, San Diego’s voting equipment was sent home as usual with poll workers. Given our greater understanding of the ease of hackability, business as usual or token attempts to provide the appearance of security can longer be trusted.

[Bill Bored]

6. So what are the results of the 1% Audit of this race please?

I have nothing against 100% hand counts. But when you don't get them, what are you going to do next? Do you want to know who won this race or not?

And what are you going to do in Nov?

Audit the Ballot Definition Settings? (This should have been done before the present "disputed" race and still can be done to see why the the third party candidate(s) got so many votes.)

Have an Exit Poll?

A parallel election?

Keep the poll workers from taking the voting machines home?

How about proper Logic and Accuracy tests? (Also should have been done before the last election.)

All these have various degrees of success.

But as of RIGHT NOW, we need to know how the 1% Audit came out. For all we know, it may have ALREADY found a discrepancy that should trigger additional audits but is being swept under the rug.

I would like to know the facts of the case as it stands please.

Thanks. :)

[Einsteinia]

7. Well, in response:

We did perform an exit poll on some of the state races, but we're not releasing that data right now.

We do have a pilot program on an election verification and security protocol. More soon on that.

The 1% is a joke. In San Diego, they choose the "random" counties before the election. Also, in mot of CA it does not include "early voting" which means the absentees because outlaw county clerk extraordinaire Con-ny McCormack decided to interpret the code that says the 1% shall be inclusive of the official canvass or "all precincts" to be exempt of early voting. Why? Because she decided early voting is precinctless. Unbelievably corrupt, YES, it is.

The No. 1 thing anyone who is looking for CA for leadership is to give some $ to DebraBowen.org

If she wins as Secretary of State, lots of heads will roll.

[Bill Bored]

17. You need is to audit ~10% of everything in this race and you will know.

As far as the 1%, I thought a law was just passed to make it mandatory for absentee ballots. Does this not apply to early voting too?

As far as heads rolling, does MacCormack REPORT to the SOS directly? If not, how can she be fired by Debra Bowen?

Look, forget the exit polls because this race is close to call with those.
Audit 10% of the precincts, including the "virtual" ones, and you'll have about as certain an answer as you can get, without all the yelling and screaming.

BTW, the VSTAAB team suggested changing the encryption key on the Diebold DREs. Instead of worrying about Brand Loyalty, why don't you go after McPherson for NOT implemented that suggestion. Unless he did???

[Wilms]

13. What is “Brand X Team" supposed to mean? n/t

More to the point, who are you alienating, and to what end?

[Einsteinia]

14. Brand X = Non-name brand

and this case the name brand was the Hursti Hack sponsored by BBV

But more to the point, why do you assume I am trying to alienate someone?

If you're referring to the Brand X name, it as an attempt to keep clear who did what in the simplest terms possible.

If it was more confusing, then that was not the intent.

[Wilms]

15. Oh. Then it's not a "Non-name brand". It's "Harri Hursti".

But you wrote,

"...California Secty. of State Bruce McPherson first revealed the results of his own “Brand X” computer expert team, which were asked to confirm or deny the first draft of a hackability report drafted Harri Hursti...",

and "Not only did the McPherson’s “Brand X” team affirm the concerns...",

and "McPherson responded to his “Brand X Team’s Report” ..."

So it's hardly clear. Seems like you're acutually referring to the VSTAAB, the Voting Systems Technology Assessment Advisory Board.

Say so. It's acknowleging of the authors, informative to the reader.

Analysis of Volume Testing of the AccuVote TSx / AccuView
.pdf
http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/vstaab_volume_test_report.pdf

VoterAction Summary
http://www.voteraction.org/States/California/Documents/Information/vstaabanalysis.html

[Einsteinia]

18. I didn't think the general public would

know what the VSTAAB was and so I was trying to make it simpler to grasp.

Well, fortunately our press release isn't finalized yet--I'll be certain to fix this.

Thanks!

[garybeck]

8. the problem appears to be the candidate

is not asking for a recount or audit or anything. dejavu.

[lindisfarne]

9. None of the candidates are asking for a recount. Davis, Filner were

also affected by the breach of security, as were all other candidates, Dem or otherwise, in San Diego county. I'm surprised Libertarian, Independent, Peace and Freedom, and other parties aren't concerned, but most of all, I'm surprised that the Democrats aren't concerned.


Voting machines will be sent home with poll workers in Nov - no doubt about that - it happened in 2004 as well.

[robinlynne]

11. You are so very right.

[iconoclastNYC]

10. This is a national issue! Where's the leadership on this? Gore? Kerry?

Clinton? Feingold? Warner?

I'm sick of the silence.

[McCamy Taylor]

12. Has anyone contacted the candidates? Do we have emails so we can?

Ilove to write letters. Does California have a Democratic Attorney General? If so, why haven't criminal charges been pressed against the worker who took the machines home?

[emlev]

16. Busby, yes. Don't know about the others. Excellent idea.

Busby issued a statement that's reprinted at bradblog. Sorry I'm too tired to find and link to it.
Contacting the other candidates is a great idea. I'd recommend going to the San Diego County registrar of voters website and getting their names there, then googling for their websites and gleaning their emails from the websites. Or call 411 and see if they have listed numbers.

But don't ask them to request a "recount." Ask them to demand a "hand count." You can't recount something that hasn't been counted yet, and IMHO, what they're doing doesn't count as counting.

[riqster]

19. Any Californians know WHAT laws were broken by rushing Bilbray in?

If it is a serious enough offense, and he could be forced to step down, that might alter the recount dynamic.

[Einsteinia]

20. Specific law? I dunno, BUT

somewhere the election code does says that as Secty of State McPherson has a fiduciary responsibility to provide leadership for secure CA elections.

After the VSTAAB verdict, he conditioned certifcation of the Diebold junk on strict chain of custody, etc., which has proven to be woefully inadequate.

Citizens have the right for fair elections--not a game of charades.

[lindisfarne]

22. The Constitution. See #21. n/t

[lindisfarne]

21. The Constitution says that the citizens of each state have the right

to choose their own House members. The "choosing" cannot be considered to have occurred before the state certifies the election results. (Article 1, Section 2)

Section. 2.

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

[Wilms]

23. Kick

[BushSpeak]

24. In the mean time, audit the machine logs

I just sent this message to the California Election Protection Network and hopefully, this could be a starting point to understanding the inner workings.

Things are somewhat complicated in that both Dre's and optical scan machines were used, but to each his hack.

Did the Dre's have a paper trail for a recount?

So here goes, "may the truth be with you!"



During the 2004 debacle, I picked up several pointers that might be revelant in relation to possible hacks.

This could be a trial balloon to see if it can be used nationally in November (the GOP has used this quite often in the recent past) and this could provide interesting insight as to how it's done.

Basically, the question is "were all the machines hacked or just certain ones"? Everyone assumes that all the machines were hacked. But this would give a certain uniformity across the board and might be easily detectable. Also, more difficult to keep under wraps.

So you will need to get the individual machine records for key precincts (polling places) to see if all the machines (that were side by side) give approximately same results or do they fall into two categories (hacked & normal).

I believe that the fact that election board workers took the machines home is a smoke screen to cover the fact that some of the machines were hacked. It's hard to believe that all the workers in question would be part of the fraud. Drown the smelling fish in the ocean.

This came up in Florida in 2004, I believe with the Black Box Voting case in Voulsia county. Anyway, it came out that there was large discrepancy in the results from machine to machine in the same polling place, when random use should indicate a fairly similar result.

A FOIA request could get the preliminary information to see if this should be followed up countywide and to find which workers took home the questionable machines.



Keep the heat on. Make them work for it. Sooner or later, someone will forget to cover all bases.