(SC) 6/10 - QUESTIONS TO ASK IN SOUTH...

Author Message   Bev Harris Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 11105 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 5 (A keeper?) Posted on Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - 4:19 pm:        As you've probably heard, a South Carolina election yielded implausible -- some would say impossible -- results this month. I'm following up on tips provided by some people on the ground there, and Brad Friedman, of the Brad Blog, has been doing an excellent job of reporting the daily updates on this unusual situation; I've included several links to his stories at the end of this article. Just a note or two on the questions that really need to be answered at this point in time: 1. The profile of this particular anomaly appears to rule out voting machine malprogramming at the county level. Whatever went wrong in South Carolina voting machines happened (most likely) in Omaha, or (less likely) at the state board of elections level. Therefore, it's about time that we find out the name(s) of the programmers in Omaha who coded the iVotronic cartridges that went out to South Carolina. Typically, ES&S programs its iVotronics in Omaha, or sometimes with a subcontractor. 2. A results flip on voting machines can be caused by inverting candidate ID numbers in the internal mapping. This can happen either at the voting machine level (and could produce a global effect, transversing all precinct machines), or it could happen at the central tabulation level. - To shed more light on this, more specifics are needed on the L&A testing, to learn the number of machines tested and whether a script was used for the L&A test or real voters physically entered votes. MY BET: Not many machines were tested, perhaps 1-3 percent of them, and they made ample use of scripts to test. More on why this could be important in a minute. I also want to see a complete comparison of 100% of the poll tape results with the final tabulation. This helps pinpoint any source of any voting machine misprogramming. The candidate ID number assigned on the memory cartridges needs to be compared with the number assigned on the Unity tabulation system. Here's how internal Candidate ID swapping works. Note that it can be purposeful or accidental: Let's say the candidate mapping is supposed to go as follows ... Name of Candidate / Internal mapping number Vic Rawl / 820 Alvin Greene / 670 With this mapping, each vote for Vic Rawl is tagged to internal ID number 820, each vote for Alvin Green is tagged to internal ID number 670. On the screen, you see the names spelled out, but the computer inserts the data into a candidate ID number field, which is hidden from public view. Now, without changing any spelling on the names, nor any positioning on the ballot, you simply swap the internal ID numbers in the data table(accidentally or on purpose). Like this: Vic Rawl / 670 Alvin Greene / 820 Vic Rawl's votes get mapped into the data tables corresponding to ID 670, Alvin Greene's to the 820 portion of the table. The beauty of using the candidate ID field to swap votes is that the references in all other parts of the system will automatically swap the data as well. I've experimented with candidate ID swapping in the Diebold GEMS system. It's a gorgeous little hack - and you can do it in any precinct, or even just with the absentee votes, a perilous process here in Washington as votes float in AFTER election day to be counted. Any time the absentee results have an opposite trend from the Election Day results, internal ID mapping may be the place to look. Now, this ID mapping swap can happen on the front end from the election management system used to program the memory cartridges, or it can happen on the back end, on the central tabulation machine as votes are added up on Election Night. The reason I'm so interested in Omaha's potential role in South Carolina is that if there was a candidate ID mapping swap, if it came through the state board of elections into the tabulator system through some patch or update, the poll tape results would NOT match the Election Night results. A complete set of matching poll tapes would point AWAY from any state involvement in the tabulator (or any middleman results reporting system), and TOWARDS Omaha's front-end programming. If an internal candidate ID swap took place on the front end, it would have been the vendor that programs the cartridges. There is one additional wrinkle: A Logic and Accuracy Test should catch this. But as we know, L&A tests don't always catch voting machine miscounts, and the DRE machines often use a computer script, rather than real voter input, to execute the L&A test. In other words, a scripted L&A test would not necessarily catch either accidental or deliberate internal candidate ID swaps. MORE DIAGNOSTICS Copies of all Unity and iVotronic audit logs need to be printed out and examined. The memory cartridges need to be examined by dumping their contents and reviewing the code and data. I think we'll be seeing some interesting forensics on this one. Check out the Bradblog stories here: •SC Election Commission Hoodwinks Local Media http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7895 •UPDATE: More Statisticians Focus on 'Tampering, Malfunction' of E-Vote System in SC Primary http://www.vicrawl.com/vicrawl/post/1023-statement-of-judge-vic-rawl •BREAKING: U.S. Senate Candidate Files Challenge to SC's 'Unreliable, Unverifiable' E-Vote Results http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7894 •'Experts' Eye 100% Unverifiable E-Vote System in 'Win' of SC's Mystery U.S. Senate Nominee http://www.vicrawl.com/vicrawl/post/1023-statement-of-judge-vic-rawl Clyburn: SC's E-Vote Computers May Have Been 'Hacked'; Rawl: 'Systemic Problem in Software' http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7896   Dale McClain Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Dale Post Number: 253 Registered: 10-2008 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - 6:52 pm:        Bev Quote: “I think we'll be seeing some interesting forensics on this one.” ========================== Please allow me to refresh some information I have Discovered on BBV. From Philadelphia in part: =============================== Anyway, the "van voter scam" goes on cycle after cycle until the polls close and near 100% turnout is achieved. In some precincts, more than twice as many people vote than the census says people exist there, and the census includes kids. If you knew Philadelphia, you would know that the city has 1681 precincts and they are geographically minuscule. There is NO REASON for able-bodied young men and women to arrive at polling sites by the van loads, and mini jitney loads, but they do all day, every election. This, even though being able to walk to the polls is a precinct design criterion. ===================== Also I found a search for a Kentucky programmer with a great video. Maybe Joe has moved to South Carolina. The music is great! www.blackboxvoting.org/moonshine1.pdf =================================== Dale   Tom D'Ambrosio Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Mugsy Post Number: 16 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - 10:56 am:        I haven't read all the information above yet, but here is some information that may prove useful. I actually went looking to see if Republican voters in SC voted en masse in the 2010 Democratic primary, by comparing turnout in prior years. Proof of this would be reflected by fewer GOP votes than normal, and visa vie for the Democratic primary. But there was no Senatorial race in 2006 to compare results to, and 2004/2008 were Presidential years, which normally have a higher turnout. What I found instead were similar turnouts for '04, '06, & '08, and an absurd 32% increase in GOP turnout for the 2010 midterm over 2008... a presidential year, and a whopping 40% increase over the 2006 GOP Governors primary, whereas Democratic turnout stayed essentially the same every year. I don't like anomalies, and ones this big in a midterm should raise eyebrows: ------------------------------------ 2004 votes cast, SC Republican primary for Senator: 294,669 votes cast, SC Democratic primary for Senator: 167,790 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_South_Carolina,_20 04 2006 - no Senate race votes cast, SC Republican primary for Governor: 247,281 votes cast, SC Democratic primary for Governor: 138,343 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Carolina_gubernatorial_election,_2006 2008 votes cast, SC Republican primary for Senator: 278,945 votes cast, SC Democratic primary for Senator: 146,660 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_South_Carolina,_20 08 2010 votes cast, SC Republican primary for Senator: 410,808 votes cast, SC Democratic primary for Senator: 169,698 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_South_Carolina,_20 10 -*- Mugsy -*-   V. Kurt Bellman Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Formerelecdir Post Number: 3600 Registered: 4-2006 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 1 (A keeper?) Posted on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - 12:21 pm:        Conclusions regarding 2004 and 2008 are invalid, because both parties in SC used a bifurcated primary in 2008, and the Dems did also in 2004. The Repubs had a unified primary in 2004 but had no oposition to Bush. The Presidential race was long gone and decided by the "regular" primary date, so it could NOT help turnout. See this link and note the dates in January. http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2008/scprim08.html Many voters "miss" second primaries. Conclusions regarding 2006 are specious also because as you said, there was no Senate race. Plus, 2006 was a low ebb for Republican and conservative enthusiasm generally and nationally. To say they are unusually energized this year would be an understatement. There's political blood in the water. Sharks are getting frenzied. ========================================== "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan "Public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed". --Abraham Lincoln   linda crawford Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Danusgram Post Number: 1 Registered: 8-2010 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Thursday, August 26, 2010 - 7:25 pm:        This needs to be understood by the general public what could have happened in the South Carolina election will you please find a way to do that. Secondly, there has to be a way to secure these machines and stop this immediately.   Catherine Ansbro Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Catherine_a Post Number: 5664 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, August 27, 2010 - 5:16 pm:        Does anyone have any recent news about this?

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