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| (MI) 12/09 - DETROIT: BALLOTS COUNTED... |
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Message |
    
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10923
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 8 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, December 18, 2009 - 10:53 am: | 
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You know, the CPAs are great allies for voting rights. Marilyn Marks, the plaintiff in a controversial ballot open records case in Aspen Colorado is a former CPA; we now have a Detroit candidate who is a CPA. His campaign manager is also a CPA, and they refused to buckle under when they ran into the ol' buffalo shuffle in Detroit.
The article below details fascinating problems with ballot and vote accounting in the recent Detroit mayoral election.
MY PERSONAL FAVORITE: Votes were counted and certified from two absentee ballot boxes which happened to be empty.
Unfortunately, Michigan can be one of the most obstructive states in the nation when it comes to requesting public records. I take my hat off to these guys for digging their heels in and insisting on a careful examination of the records.
I just got off the phone with Tom Barrow to confirm the authenticity of this information. I think we can all look forward to follow-up information on this:
BARROW RECOUNT OF MAYORAL BALLOTS FINDS WIDE-SPREAD VOTER IRREGULARITIES
Empty Ballot Boxes, Breached Seals, Missing Absentee Ballots, Mar November 3rd Election
December 18 (Detroit) --- Former mayoral candidate Tom Barrow has turned a routine recount of election precincts into a sweeping indictment of the entire conduct of elections in Detroit when he discovered empty ballot boxes and numerous ballot boxes with security seals which been breached, disqualifying tens of thousands of votes in the November 3, 2009 general election from being recountable.
"The problems we had suspected since the Primary pale in comparison to what we have discovered so far with nearly 52% of Absentee ballot boxes we have tested so far being uncountable because of breached security seals," said Barrow, 60, "what is at stake is the very foundation of our representative system of government and administration of what should be transparent fair and verifiable elections."
One egregious discovery by the professionals on the Wayne County recount team Thursday was that the Detroit Board of Canvassers and Detroit's Election' S Officials had actually certified two ballot boxes that were empty of the several hundred votes they were certified to contain.
In a statement before the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, Barrow cited numerous violations that could jeopardize the certification of the election and installation of what had been the presumed winner, Interim Mayor Dave Bing.
Barrow also requested that the panel exercise its duty under MCL 168.872 and MCL 168.870 to report suspected criminal activity, and notify the Chief Judge of the Wayne County Circuit Court and the Wayne County Prosecutor's office of its findings. Barrow also urged the Board to formally notify the appropriate federal authorities about the potential voter fraud and ballot box stuffing.
The recount is expected to be completed by next week when the Wayne County Board of Elections, who meets today at 2pm at the Belle Isle Skating Pavilion where the recount is taking place, must rule on the final certification of the disputed election. Their ruling then goes to the Michigan State Board of Canvassers for a final decision.
After two weeks before the county panel recounting precincts with a team of volunteers, certified public accountants and election experts, Barrow submitted over 200 challenges to the Board to declare almost 40,000 absentee and poll votes ineligible to be counted due to the breach of a state-mandated seals on ballot boxes (as detailed in MCL 168.721, MCL 168.735 and MCL 168. 871(2) (a) and MCL 168. 871(2) (c). Barrow also challenged many ballots that appear to be identical in the method it was fulfilled including identical penmanship.
Barrow's team of lawyers, accountants and volunteers also challenged dozens of precinct's whose election results "computer tapes", normally summarizing election results at the closing of the polls, had in fact actually been run hours before the closing of the polls indicating that the results were being electronically manipulated and the numbers being shown not the final results. The Board is expected to rule on those and nearly a hundred other questionable issues today. If the board upholds Barrow's challenge, it could disqualify another 14,200 votes bringing the total to nearly 57,000 votes.
Barrow filed for a recount on November 18, 2009 seeking to include absentees and certain voter precincts citing potential fraud, computer manipulation and electronic ballot stuffing by person or persons unknown.
"Our exhaustive review of just half of the absentee ballots thus far has revealed that the Detroit Board of Elections had not secured the ballot boxes, deliberately misled Wayne County elections officials and the people of Detroit about security seals, " declared Barrow, an accountant. "Due to our discovery that dozens of second seals on absentee ballot boxes had been
breached, as evidenced by the fact that several seals do not match the records makes it is impossible to verify the ballots cast by the voters and the efficacy and security of every ballot in those boxes."
Among the numerous additional issues of concern are the following:
- The disappearance of election data from 1989; that information is used to ascertain how the mayoral general election results of 1989 (Young
versus Barrow) had the near exact percentage for the winning candidate (56.23%) as Bing's 2009 tally of 56.22% a one thousandth of 1 percent difference (when the population differential and voter differential of 30% less voters), inferring potential computer manipulation. Barrow had retained his own data to discover the pattern;
- Approximately 47 percent of the absentee voter ballot boxes could not be opened and examined due to the discovery that state-required seals did not match the poll books or were breached;
- thousand of unused pre-stamped absentee ballots are missing from numerous cases and numerous of those in polling precincts are out of sequence from that received from the printer;
- The computer tape generated by the M-100 machine on election night that is supposed to be activated only after polls close at 8 p.m., were actually run during mid-day, run before the polls opened and run after the polls closed into the wee hours of the next day, but being misrepresented by the City as the final results from election day.
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10924
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, December 18, 2009 - 11:00 am: |
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Update:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2009
TOM BARROW WILL BE PRESENTING THE FOLLOWING CHALLENGES TO THE WAYNE COUNTY BOARD OF CANVASSERS TODAY:
1. RECUSAL: Recusal of Board member CHRISTA HARTOUNIAN: Her father is EDWARD HARTOUNIAN who serves on the Detroit Board of Canvassers that CERTIFIED 2 EMPTY BALLOT BOXES and included the count in the final results. She is in conflict in having to rule on her father's decisions.
2. CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION: Board to decide if it has ability to call for investigation of criminal conduct.
3. MORE BREACHED BOTTOM SEALS: Decision to re-look at ballot boxes for breached bottom seals that were not detected previously.
4. COMPUTER TAPE: Decision on how to regard why there are varying times when "final" tapes were run before closing of polls.
5. MISSING AV BALLOTS: Decision on why unused ballots cannot be located.
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10925
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, December 18, 2009 - 11:07 am: |
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I forwarded this information to Richard Hayes Phillips, author of WITNESS TO A CRIME, the book that details an examination of the Ohio 2004 presidential ballot accounting. He called to let me know that examinations like that being performed in Detroit just "make his day."
And Phillips took the opportunity to remind me of the surreal nature of some of the Ohio anomalies, such as the sudden necessity to take ballots to the dump after a "pot of coffee spilled on them." Phillips and cohort Paddy Shaffer excel at follow-up. As they say, it's always helpful to ask the right questions. Like, "Why was there a pot of coffee in a double-locked ballot vault?" (One also has to wonder how a single pot of coffee can ruin thousands of ballots kept inside a whole bunch of sealed ballot boxes...)
When I noted that Michigan is following the reckless example of other states, and expanding its absentee voting, Phillips provided a great quote, which I agree with entirely: Absentee voting is the new growth market for election fraud. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3369
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, December 18, 2009 - 11:18 am: |
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"Absentee voting is the new growth market for election fraud."
New? NEW? I don't think so, Bev. Maybe being generally AWARE of it is new, but monkeying with an election via absentee ballots is an art form of long long standing in HUGE swaths of the country.
==========================================
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10926
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, December 18, 2009 - 11:25 am: |
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Well you're right, of course Kurt, that using absentee voting for fraud is an old playground. But now 26 states have expanded it -- that's new -- and the database technology and sig matching technology is fairly new, and opens up broad new fraud vectors. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10932
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, December 19, 2009 - 9:16 am: |
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UPDATE: This is huge.
Yesterday, in an unprecedented move, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers threw out 100% of the Absentee Ballots cast in Detroit's November 3, 2009 election due to the seals on the containers having been breached by parties unknown.
The Board also threw out another 4,600 ballots yesterday from cases which could not be opened due to similar breaches, unexplained discrepancies and other improprieties.
When coupled with the prior breaches, unexplained discrepancies, seal mismatches and other discrepancies which they saw as clear and compelling anomalies from last week, nearly 61,234 ballots could not be recounted. That is nearing 50% of the votes cast in last month's election.
There is only a 9,641 vote difference between what Mr Barrow received and that of Mr. Bing who is the beneficiary of the improprieties. |
Tom Courbat
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Leftisbest
Post Number: 111
Registered: 6-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, December 19, 2009 - 3:55 pm: |
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A good example of how loose the chain of custody is on absentee (VBM) ballots.
Somehow there has got to be a way to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
We should all inquire as to what security measures our individual counties have for VBM, and maybe bring this to the attention of all Secretaries of State as well (even if they already know about it, this way they will know WE know about it).
I attached a photo I took with my video camera and then made a still shot, but when it posted to BBV is was HUGE and very pixelated. Left msg for Bev to see if she can fix it. Riverside County on 3-8-08 was processing thousands of absentee ballots (Vote by Mail or VBM) outside of public view. I was quickly escorted out of the area after having asked several times for permission to view the activities and waiting a half hour each time for an "authorized staff person" to escort me in there. It was never going to happen. You just have to be bold sometimes. |
Marian Beddill
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Uu7thprinciple
Post Number: 212
Registered: 8-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, December 19, 2009 - 8:58 pm: |
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Tom;
Give me the link to that photo - I'll see if I can fix it.
And on the chain of custody for VBM - our county (elected official, staff, and the public) have crafted a system which almost everyone sees as about as good as you can get. We are 100% VBM (with 3 DRE's to meet the accessibility law.) There is good signature verification and tight chain-of-custody once the ballots are in the County's possession, and a bit (I wanted more) of a mini-audit of the OpScan counting machines. 110,000 voters in 120 precincts. WA State has a good "Voter-Intent" law.
One loose end is ballot marking - where there can be undue pressure. But there have been NO reported cases or claims - surely there would be someone speaking out, if there were wholesale intimidation.
http://noleakybuckets.org/
Marian
Marian
http://NoLeakyBuckets.org
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10934
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, December 19, 2009 - 10:10 pm: |
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Tom's pic, smaller:
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