voting system, for the upcoming primaries, with an evaluation of election integrity, and a prognosis re potential vote counting (or rather, electron counting) and other election system problems.
We are extremely concerned that all of these votes, which will likely determine party candidates for president, are occurring on extremely insecure and insider riggable voting systems, run on "trade secret," proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by corporations with very close ties to the Republican Party and rightwing causes (Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia).
In the best of states--the ones that have a ballot, and an audit--99% of the ballots will NOT be counted. California, for instance. A 1% audit is woefully inadequate to detect error or fraud - especially with "trade secret" vote counting. In the worst states - for instance, South Carolina - the system is completely opaque. It CANNOT be audited or recounted. All ES&S touchscreens with no paper trail of any kind. (ES&s is even worse than Diebold, in my opinion, for rightwing connections.) Even in states that can be recounted, recounts are rare, expensive and hard to get, and it is never even close to a full recount - usually just 3% or so. (Kathy Dopp - stats expert - says a 5% to 10% audit is the minimum needed to detect error or fraud.)
By way of comparison, Venezuela handcounts a whopping 55% - four times the minimum needed - as a check on machine error and fraud, and they have an "open source" code system (--anyone may review the code by which the votes are counted) --unlike our private, corporate, "trade secret" system.
We will be providing detailed information on what systems are being used, the level of transparency, where to look for problems, and what to look for.
There are, of course, many potential problems IN ADDITION to the almost total non-transparency of the system - the security of the machines, the security of the code, the security of the ballots (if there are any), disenfranchisement through machine failure or too few machines, failure to provide paper ballots in case of machine failure (as is happening in SC), voter intimidation, bad attitude of election officials ("culture of secrecy"), etc., and some states, and some counties within states, are worse than others.
Our election integrity evaluation for the state would be a good place to start, in following the results on Feb 5. Look for more our coverage of more states in the Election Forum, in the coming week. Here are two examples - South Carolina and Florida:
South Carolina 2008 Democratic Primary Election Integrity Estimate
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x493832Primary Election Integrity Estimate: Florida
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x494806 DU member SFexpat2000 originated this idea, and is organizing it. Our summaries of states' voting systems will also come in handy in November.
Here's the starting thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x493017(This thread contains a list of the Feb. 5 primary states, and other upcoming primaries and caucuses in the comment section.)
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If you have local knowledge of the voting systems in any of the upcoming state primaries, please PM us, if you are available to answer questions or offer insights. Local knowledge can be important. (For instance, who knew that NH had a 20% handcount (mostly in rural areas)? On-line info said the state was all "Diebold optiscan." This became important for comparison of handcount vs. machine totals - which differed significantly in NH (Obama vs. Clinton). I only knew about the handcounting because someone from NH mentioned it, by chance, in a DU thread.) If you have info about your state's voting system, that may not be obvious and obtainable, by distant reviewers, please help if you can.
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