Navigation
Topics
Log In
Log Out
:
Special Search
New Today
New This Week
Advanced Search
Tree View
Your Account
Edit Profile
Register
Forgot Password
Tools
Help/Instructions
Policies
CLICK STATE TO SEE:
"WATCH LIST"
Marked with: 
"OPEN & HONEST"
Marked with: 
...
|
| (SC) Colleton County says people, not... |
|
| Author |
Message |
    
christine c reid
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ctwatcher
Post Number: 1396
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - 8:55 pm: | 
|
Here's the latest story I've seen on the huge discrepancy in the SC election Frank Heindel has been working to understand.
Here's hoping he stops by and gives us some local perspective on this article.
Panel: Human error, not voting machines, skewed Colleton County election results
By Dave Munday
dmunday@postandcourier.com
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
COLUMBIA -- Colleton County's election results were skewed by human error that had nothing to do with the electronic voting machines, according to an investigation by the S.C. Election Commission.
The Colleton County Board of Elections reported nearly 1,400 extra votes in the November election. The discrepancy came to light after the Election Commission certified the results.
The mistake happened when county election directors were counting paper ballots, also called emergency ballots, S.C. Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire said today. Instead of entering how many paper ballots were counted, they entered how many votes the candidates received, which inflated the numbers in the statewide elections, Whitmire said.
QUICK NOTE: Can somebody help me understand what they are saying? I can't think how the number of votes would ever be higher than the number of ballots, unless either it's total votes cast for anybody, or the vote total written on the form related to some other set of ballots. As I imagine this situation, I would imagine a stack of 100 ballots having 100 or less votes, not a total of 100 votes coming from less than 100 ballots.
[story continues}
The extra votes didn't affect any results, according to election officials with both the state and the county. But the discrepancy raised questions about the reliability of the process, and it especially cast light on the electronic voting machines.
Frank Heindel of Mount Pleasant, who maintains a website documenting problems with electronic voting machines, lined up an independent audit to see if the machines were at fault.
"Why do we have such poorly written software that allows candidates to receive more votes than the number of ballots cast?" Heindel said today. "Poorly written software creates human error."
He said the independent auditors were still waiting for the files to finish their work.
Whitmire's explanation differs from Colleton County Elections Director Eric Campbell's guess at what happened. Campbell had said he suspected some votes got counted twice when he held the memory cards from six smaller precincts in the machine too long while tabulating the votes. That raised questions whether the computer software was at fault. Whitmire said there's no indication the mistake had anything to do with the machine reading the memory cards.
"It wasn't a problem with the machines, and it wasn't something mysterious," Whitmire said. "Whenever there are humans involved, there is always going to be the chance of error."
NOTE: The narrative about sloppy humans and infallible machines continues. They work great, except when they don't.
The commission recommended more training before the next election.
Whitmire said the mistake could have been avoided if the staff had scanned the paper ballots instead of manually counting them.
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2011/feb/01/panel-human-error-not-voting-mach ines-skewed-colle/
#####
I'm still scratching my head... |
Mike LaBonte
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 580
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 3, 2011 - 5:54 am: |
|
I've been looking at the files posted by Frank and Chip, and really I have no trouble believing human error is a factor. Looking at the log files it is obvious that the system is so complicated it would take a miracle to get everything right. Look at the failure messages in Colleton County EL68 file. The log files are mostly scary, and with many entries like "11-02 10:22 pm Read PEB failed", I would say the machines are not off the hook as the cause, either.
How can anyone be confident everything was done right under those circumstances? |
christine c reid
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ctwatcher
Post Number: 1397
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 3, 2011 - 6:25 am: |
|
Mike LaBonte said:
How can anyone be confident everything was done right under those circumstances?
Hmmm....Ignorance is bliss?
Mike, how do you make sense of the higher number of votes than ballots question? |
Mike LaBonte
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 581
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 3, 2011 - 8:22 am: |
|
On the surface I agree with the analysis that Whitmire's explanation sounds completely backward: Instead of entering how many paper ballots were counted, they entered how many votes the candidates received, which inflated the numbers in the statewide elections It would make more sense if he reversed it: Instead of entering how many votes the candidates received, they entered how many paper ballots were counted, which inflated the numbers in the statewide elections But there could be other explanations. For example maybe "how many votes the candidates received" was a count for some larger group, not just from paper ballots. My question is always, why don't they just give full explanations the first time? Do they really think it only has to sound plausible, and not be a complete story? |
Frank Heindel
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Frankh
Post Number: 26
Registered: 8-2010
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 3, 2011 - 8:37 am: |
|
I attended a Legislative Delegation hearing Monday night in Colleton County. The one thing that is crystal clear is that our voting machines are unreliable and since 15 of them were beyond repair prior to the November election, voters were disenfranchised. That fact is indisputable.
Our broken system has also created distrust amongst the people in Colleton County, too.
I do not think anyone attending the meeting really understood what happened to create the over votes.
The independent auditors are still reviewing all the files.
Here is an article from this week's OpEd news about some more problems in SC.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/SC-Republican-Commodities-by-Joan-Brunwasser-11 0131-145.html?show=votes |
Frank Heindel
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Frankh
Post Number: 27
Registered: 8-2010
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 3, 2011 - 10:07 am: |
|
Here is another database file showing more detail .
|
Mike LaBonte
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 582
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 3, 2011 - 11:14 am: |
|
Can someone explain what everything in that EL68 file means? There are columns for "Old" and "New", which appear to have what might be vote counts for candidates (except where they appear next to a precinct name only). That would imply this is a report from some kind of incremental count, which was run almost 2 months after the election, according to the date stamp. I don't know what the GRP numbers are, and what is this precinct called "Failsafe" that added one vote for every candidate?
I guess the main question is, what is a "manual changes" log? |
christine c reid
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ctwatcher
Post Number: 1398
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 3, 2011 - 12:27 pm: |
|
Thanks for adding the new article, Frank -- an interesting and informative interview you'ved linked.
Can you shed any more light on the explanation about ballots vs. votes?
I am unclear because with paper ballots, one of the ways to cross-check your results is to compare the number of voters checked in to the number of ballots issued (in a perfect world, they would match), and further, the number of votes cast should be less than or equal to the number of ballots issued. To reconcile paper ballots, the categories would include each candidate's vote totals AND a category for adding up total blanks (no vote) for each race. For those unfamiliar with this practice, the "no votes" (usually called undervotes) added to candidate votes should equal the ballot total. Period.
Frank, does the system purport to provide all the data to allow this sort of reconciliation? Are totals produced affirmatively of # of undervotes, or must they be backed out by subtracting each candidate's total votes from the reported total of BALLOTS?
There are more undervotes the farther down the ballot the voter marks, typically. But if there are more votes than ballots, then an explanation is needed.
Either the reporter or official got the explanation backwards (saying more votes than ballots when he meant more ballots than votes), or one of the possible explanations is a stuffed ballot box. I'm not making that allegation -- my point is, you don't just blow it off without a cogent explanation.
Thanks again, Frank, for taking the bull by the horns and deliving into this issue. I know how much concentration it takes and how intense it can be to try to decipher and comprehend the laws, processes, and equipment of a voting system with no previous knowledge of it. |
Frank Heindel
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Frankh
Post Number: 28
Registered: 8-2010
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 3, 2011 - 3:24 pm: |
|
Here is the State Election Commission's report as to what happened.
http://www.scvotinginfo.com/colleton-county.html |
Frank Heindel
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Frankh
Post Number: 29
Registered: 8-2010
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, February 4, 2011 - 3:53 am: |
|
Watch this video clip of the Colleton County meeting for an explanation as to why the extra votes were tallied.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t254LVAPalc |
Frank Heindel
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Frankh
Post Number: 30
Registered: 8-2010
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 10, 2011 - 11:47 am: |
|
Another Colleton County news article regarding the over votes.
http://www.scvotinginfo.com/uploads/2/8/0/6/2806638/press__standard__feb_4_2011. pdf |
Dale McClain
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Dale
Post Number: 300
Registered: 10-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 10, 2011 - 5:15 pm: |
|
Frank, I just looked at the PDF clipping you sent.
It is about Election Problems in Colleton County .
It seems like a truthful account because it certainly hit’s the nail on the head regarding Colleton County residents not being concerned about election problems.
It is probably true that a few people in Colleton County have tried everything to create an adversarial environment for the Colleton County election commission et al. (not you I hope.)
It also seems possible that Colleton County could go back racially 50 years but a well run fair election is still a little out of reach.
The Colleton County spokes people seem to have all the answers about 1000 missing ballots, where they were printed on the wall, and the Colleton County clerks complicity with tabulation errors where more votes were counted than actual voters.
All this defense for the “infallible” Voting machines and why people would certify forms that might be questioned later even though they did not affect the outcome all seems so familiar.
I can not comment on matters such as Brown vs. Green because I was not there.
How voting machines are apportioned and why the
person who apportioned them is no longer employed
gets my attention .
The article probably calls attention the fact there is plenty of blame to pass around (or buck to pass).
For instance the state is accused of not providing needed assistance to some Colleton County individuals.
It is my personal belief that your voting system is bad
and I believe hackers can tamper with your votes.
In spite of all the smoke screen put out in this article
I must agree with a statement attributed to Buell.
You should treat those machines with an enormous amount of skepticism. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 11304
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2011 - 9:45 am: |
|
Chris - I'm with you, the explanations don't make sense in the article you provided. Am reading the additional links and articles now. What a mess. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 11305
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2011 - 10:36 am: |
|
I've just listened to the YouTube explanation (twice) and I confess it still doesn't make sense to me. I captured it in audio and am preparing a transcript for myself. Did you catch that at one point he claims also that there were more registered voters shown than there actually are? That's a different (and additional) problem than the more-ballots-than-voters issue. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 11306
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2011 - 10:39 am: |
|
One of the points made by - who is that, a commissioner? -- is very good. He is wondering how the election came to be certified since the numbers don't add up.
It was the issue of wrongful certification that went to trial in Memphis. The checks and balances are there for a reason. If the numbers don't add up, it seems that a lot of places just certify the results anyway. The point of the canvass and certification is to check the numbers, so one wonders what the point is for "certifying" an election when the numbers don't add up. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 11307
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2011 - 12:15 pm: |
|
transcript of YouTube - sheesh. (I'm not sure of name of voting tech and public official, who he refers to as "Senator"). The "Senator" is spot-on, and asks the right questions, and his questions are never really answered. The voting tech spins out an explanation in the beginning, but then the Senator cuts through the bull.
When reading the transcript, you might want to skim past the initial presentation right to the Senator's questions, then read the tech's lengthy explanation. It doesn't really even match the answers to the Senator's questions.
At one point the tech refers to numbers being "shifted", and at another point he says "in the flash data card, somehow or another, we don't know why, the state is, they are looking into it as well, we want to know why after the audit process that it caused those numbers to shift."
See below for transcript.
* * *
Voting tech: On Sept 20 2010, I began the process of clearing the machines and PEBs - Personalized Electronic Ballots - for the elections that were scheduled. In the process there were 15 machines that had some type of malfunction. They were not operable for the general election. The shortage of machines resulted in significant shortage of five of the largest precincts. In the most noticeable precinct was Wolfesboro #4, which was beyond my control.
The day after election tabulation, on the morning of November 3, 2010 I began processing the virtual precincts, votes, mainly, putting in the emergency ballots per precinct. While processing I called the state election commission for instruction. After speaking with an official at the state commission office I was informed that the emergency provisional was a virtual precinct and I needed to process those votes using the optical scanner machine.
I followed the Election Preparation and Result Accumulation guide Version 4.8, I continued the step, and missed the step that caused the tabulation doubling error for precincts. Although the error was made it went unnoticed during the certification process. As a result a wrong report was certified. Due to the law the office maintained the accurate report for each precinct and we invited the general public to come anytime to the office to review those reports.
Explanation of error - When the state election commission office began reviewing our 2010 election file, that report, it was discovered that I never properly reset the manual votes that were inputted prior to me uploading them by virtual precinct. Although I followed the manual instruction it was assumed that I understood the next step that was not clearly written in the manual.
Initially I was told that the flash card audit data process read the precinct twice, which caused the double error. But it was later determined that I didn't reset those precincts which caused the tabulation error that doubled.
Corrective actions: I am more experienced with the Unity tabulation process and I will formally begin my course of certification begin in March this year 2011. Overall the previous election results were never affected, I can assure the citizens of Colleton County, and the state of South Carolina that hopefully those errors will not occur again, however, there will never be a perfect election but I will work every day to obtain and maintain accuracy.
Senator: The night of the election there was votes, the total votes didn't seem to add up--
Voting tech: --The total votes on the night of the election were the unofficial result. It's always unofficial and the top of that it was stated "Unofficial results." Only thing that was missing on that night was the PEB from the absentee ballots but the tapes were printed, and it was on the wall, posted on the wall, however it wasn't included in the count but it was there on the wall that we had the night of the election. Other than that the emergency provisional ballots that I mainly input the next day, those are the only votes that weren't counted.
Senator: Let me go a little but further, a couple days later when the information was certified.
Voting tech: Yes sir, it's in the report. When they certified the totals due to the tabulation error what was going on initially, because of the reset process, there was an error in the system as well the commission, it went unnoticed by the commission as well as me, because the obvious problem was, there were more registered voters reporting in precincts than there actually were. When that line item lined up and reconciled, it moved over. That was the error. It moved over to seven precincts and doubled and we found out the error, which is in the report.
Senator: I don't - I have no idea what you're saying.
Voting Tech: It's in the report. This mistake, I'm saying--
Senator: --It makes no sense to me. The question I have is, the totals that were certified, it seems to me that the totals that were certified, the total number of ballots cast vs. the total ballots - let's say the two gubernatorial candidates, you add up the two gubernatorial candidates how many votes were cast vs. how many people voted, those numbers didn't--
Voting tech: --You're correct. You are correct, it's in the report--
Senator: -- There were a lot more votes than people voted.
Voting tech: There were seven precincts that the number doubled plus due to the manual input, it's in the report, that was the reason why it occurred, because it wasn't properly reset, me being a novice and it happened to me, an error, we're doing everything to correct it.
Senator: But the question comes, if you have a statistical impossibility, if you got more ballots, you want to certify that the candidates received more ballots than there were votes cast, why was there a certification? Why did people sign a form saying this is the certified total--
Voting tech: -- Sir--
Senator: --knowing that it was a statistical impossibility for that to be?
Voting tech: Senator [unintelligible] - As you will notice in the state reports it went unnoticed by our office as well as the state. We made an error which we will, we have addressed. We will rectify. And the state did too. Because when we recertified it went unnoticed until November the 10th, -- November 10th, we had someone locally call the state, that's when the state recognized it as well, so it was recognized locally, it was unrecognized locally as well as statewide. It was an error that we made and as I stated earlier, it was unnoticed during the time of the election, we apologize for that mistake but it never affected the total results of the election. So it was certified locally as well as state, so the state made that error as well.
Senator: That's correct.
Voting tech: That's it. The state -- we didn't recognize it, neither did the state.
Senator: That's the last of the questions, the election commission certified the statewide totals knowing that they were reporting more ballots come in than there were ballots cast on a statewide basis. And that is a grave discrepancy. You talk about there being an error in the system.
Voting tech: I said that in the flash data card, somehow or another, we don't know why, the state is, they are looking into it as well, we want to know why after the audit process that it caused those numbers to shift. Me being a novice that had a lot to do with it.
Senator: I understand that, I need to find out what mistakes were made to make sure that we don't ever make these mistakes again.
Voting tech: When they weren't properly reset what it ended up doing was adding the original votes plus the entered-votes and the provisional votes.
Official: The original votes plus the entered-votes. What would be the entered votes?
Voting tech: The entered-vote was the original vote. Not knowing that I only needed to add the additional provisional emergency ballots.
* * *
Regarding whether it was "human error" or not, it was an improper certification. |
christine c reid
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ctwatcher
Post Number: 1399
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2011 - 9:30 pm: |
|
Bev said: If the numbers don't add up, it seems that a lot of places just certify the results anyway.
I would speculate that imprecise results and fudging is probably far more common than people may think or realize.
I reply:
Bev, we have seen that in CT -- under the last SOTS, there were examples where problems KNOWN to the SOTS were not corrected for the certified vote. As far as I can tell, in our state, the process of moving to the certified vote is not real transparent.
Another activist told me recently that the new SOTS is going to add precinct-level results to the state vote reports. If that's accurate -- the result would definitely be increased transparency.
Looking forward to reading the transcript (it's late now)... |
Mike LaBonte
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 583
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 15, 2011 - 5:59 am: |
|
If the discussion is turning to what to do about certification when the numbers don't add up, I suggest that is a major general topic that deserves it's own discussion category. Looking at it from the election official's viewpoint, in some percentage of the cases the numbers don't add up, and efforts to discover why don't pan out. Yet the officials feel they can't just not certify; the law requires them to submit results.
It's worth exploring all the ways the numbers might not add up, and what recourse is possible when that is known. Elections are large projects with expectations of absolutely accurate results against hard deadlines, with limited expenditure. Everyone knows that between quality, time, and cost you can only have two at best. I think it would be good to explore questions like what to do when at the end of the day a machine says it has some number of ballots in it but it doesn't, for example (the machine vendors might say the hand count is wrong, but it came out the same 5 times).
I'm sure we can all agree that sweeping problems under the rug is not the best idea. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 11308
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 15, 2011 - 10:44 am: |
|
Chris - committing the data on precinct level results is important.
Mike - the issues in that interview are not just improper certification of results (ie certification without disclosure of mismatched numbers), but also, note that the explanation in the interview seems to shift -- it never really makes sense. His clarifications don't seem to match even the initial explanation. What does he mean when he says the figures are "shifted"? |
|
|
Colleton County el68ab file
