Will Elections Be Stolen?

[puma guy]

With so many close races this election cycle it will be interesting, perhaps even frightening to watch the aftermath in tightly contested races with slim margins. Especially conserning to me will be the military votes cast absentee, since some districts have ignored the deadlines for getting the ballots to our Armed Service Personnel. Absentee votes have always been a "tool" to swing elections so that whole area bears scrutiny in my opinion. I am of the opinion that many elections, sadly, will be decided in the courts this cycle. I am not taking sides here, but one party seems to be more effective in closing the gap after the polls close.

[The Annoyed Man]

Any such attempt to steal an election is likely to end in litigation, which could ultimately go to SCOTUS, which found for the plaintiff the last time this happend. Several seats on the court have changed hands in the interim, but the majority (if one includes Kennedy, who voted with the majority in Bush v. Gore) is still conservative, and they are likely to find for the plaintiff again if there are any liberal shenanigans.

[puma guy]

Any such attempt to steal an election is likely to end in litigation, which could ultimately go to SCOTUS, which found for the plaintiff the last time this happend. Several seats on the court have changed hands in the interim, but the majority (if one includes Kennedy, who voted with the majority in Bush v. Gore) is still conservative, and they are likely to find for the plaintiff again if there are any liberal shenanigans.

That's the most famous, but many never make it to SCOTUS. ie Washington State , Minnesota stayed in State Courts. Illinois also comes to mind and is infamous for curious election results.

[HankB]

Al Franken was selected - NOT elected! - as senator from Minnesota in the last election. Dozens of precincts reported more votes than voters ("stuffing the ballot boxes") and yet the result was allowed to stand.

I understand there was some funny stuff going on in Seattle during the Washington state governor's race as well . . .

[i8godzilla]

The elections are just a week away. Here are some of the 'early' problems:

http://www.newbernsj.com/articles/machi ... voter.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.breitbart.tv/okeefe-top-unio ... ter-fraud/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?sectio ... id=7747590" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.fox5vegas.com/news/25511115/detail.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opini ... 15608.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://azstarnet.com/news/blogs/pueblo- ... 002e0.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[philip964]

I long for the days of the paper ballots or punch cards. At least there is a record. With these computer machines anybody under the age of 25 can change the totals.

[MR Redneck]

I have been reading a lot of stuff today about voters finding out their stuff has already been marked!
Nevada, Houston, South Carolina just to mention a few.
Its unreal how this mess keeps happening.
What will happen as a result you ask??
Tea Party's are a peaceful protest to get politics back in controll by the people.
If the peaceful effort doesnt work, then whats next?

[nitrogen]

Al Franken was selected - NOT elected! - as senator from Minnesota in the last election. Dozens of precincts reported more votes than voters ("stuffing the ballot boxes") and yet the result was allowed to stand.

I understand there was some funny stuff going on in Seattle during the Washington state governor's race as well . . .

SO was George Bush. It happens on both sides.

[baldeagle]

Al Franken was selected - NOT elected! - as senator from Minnesota in the last election. Dozens of precincts reported more votes than voters ("stuffing the ballot boxes") and yet the result was allowed to stand.

I understand there was some funny stuff going on in Seattle during the Washington state governor's race as well . . .

SO was George Bush. It happens on both sides.

That is simply false. Multiple media outlets investigated the count in Florida. Not one found that Gore would have won the election. And it wasn't for a lack of trying or hoping or wishing it were not so.

[Mike1951]

It's no accident that every instance linked by i8godzilla benefits the Dems.

It is rare to hear of any wrong doing that would have a pro-Republican effect. But then, the Democrats have more than a century's head start to learn the craft.

Go back to organized crime controlling the unions, or to corpses voting for LBJ, or current shenanigans, it's almost always the Democrats.

Go back to the last legislative session in 2009. The Dems were willing to block and kill important bills all to make sure that Voter ID did not pass.

Ask yourself why they were against proving a voter was legitimate.

[MR Redneck]

It's no accident that every instance linked by i8godzilla benefits the Dems.

It is rare to hear of any wrong doing that would have a pro-Republican effect. But then, the Democrats have more than a century's head start to learn the craft.

Go back to organized crime controlling the unions, or to corpses voting for LBJ, or current shenanigans, it's almost always the Democrats.

Go back to the last legislative session in 2009. The Dems were willing to block and kill important bills all to make sure that Voter ID did not pass.

Ask yourself why they were against proving a voter was legitimate.

I like your post. Democrats are not honest. They call everybody racist, but its a documented know fact that they are the ones who created the Klan.
Anyone who gets cought screwing with the voting process should be hung at the town square in my opinion.
What good is voting if people are going to pull this kind of mess?

[skub]

I have been reading a lot of stuff today about voters finding out their stuff has already been marked!
Nevada, Houston, South Carolina just to mention a few.
Its unreal how this mess keeps happening.
What will happen as a result you ask??
Tea Party's are a peaceful protest to get politics back in controll by the people.
If the peaceful effort doesnt work, then whats next?

Actually, I think the progression is...
-----> -----> -----> ----->

[jimlongley]

I long for the days of the paper ballots or punch cards. At least there is a record. With these computer machines anybody under the age of 25 can change the totals.

Even paper ballots can be defeated.

I spent some time, a few years ago, traveling around the ountry teching election districts how to use a variety of electronic balloting devices, from touch screen voting machines to paper ballot counters.

Every one of those machines must be calibrated before use, and practicality demands that calibration be a function performed locally by relatively untrained people. There will always be "technologically advanced" folks around, not necessarily under 25, BTW, who will figure out that a slight miscalibration can be caused on purpose and can be used to "adjust" the results.

Each machine is SUPPOSED to give some sort of record of what it recorded for each voter, so that the voter can check it before actually casting the ballot, as in the first example above, where the votor saw the wrong straight ticket come up over and over. The above mentioned straight party line problem is one instance where it appears that a mis-calibration of the touch screen resulted in a wrong ballot being shown, but in that instance the votoer was paying enough attention to not go ahead and record the vote the wrong way.

Some, even most, of the electronic balloting machines even provide a paper printout of the record of the ballot, if the machine is set to do so. All of the paper ballot counters keep the actual ballots in case of a protest, for a manual count.

It was funny, as I went around the country teaching these classes, how many people wanted to know how easy it would be to fudge the results. Since there are multiple audit trails in every system I am acquainted with, it would be verging on impossible to purposely set a machine to record merely a few votes wrong, most, if not all, votes would be wrong and the resultant skew would be very noticeable.

Also remember that there are supposed to be representatives of both, or several, parties, as poll watchers and judges, which is supposed to guarantee fairness. For one party to successfully change votes would necessarily involve the other party, not impossible, just lower likelyhood.

I was in one county where two sisters had been feuding politically with each other for years. Feelings were so bad between them that they had not spoken to each other in a long time. Each accused the other, during class, of wanting to cheat and being there to learn how to do so.

To post change results in the systems I know of would involve more than just getting into the hard drive and changing some numbers, it would mean recomputing the hash sum and changing that, and defeating the encryption of the on site audit record, and its hash sum and the mutual cross check hash sum, and the off site backup would have to be changed too. Not an easy thing to do even for someone over 25 with much more hacking experience.

So, yes, given my knowledge level and the fact that I was trained to fix such problems, I could set some of the machines a little off so that they would give erronous ballot responses, but if the voters paid attention they would notice their ballots being wrong before casting them, and any machine consistently giving errors would be taken out of service, and its prior results called into question.

And I could do the same with paper ballot counters, and punch card counters, and just about everything except maybe, but only maybe, human ballot counters.

[i8godzilla]

It's no accident that every instance linked by i8godzilla benefits the Dems.

It is rare to hear of any wrong doing that would have a pro-Republican effect. But then, the Democrats have more than a century's head start to learn the craft.

Go back to organized crime controlling the unions, or to corpses voting for LBJ, or current shenanigans, it's almost always the Democrats.

Go back to the last legislative session in 2009. The Dems were willing to block and kill important bills all to make sure that Voter ID did not pass.

Ask yourself why they were against proving a voter was legitimate.

If I found any news stories about questionable Republican, Libertarian, or independent voter practices, I would post them.......

All politics are local:

http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/vo ... lott-fraud" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Daytona Beach City Commissioner Derrick Henry and his campaign manager were arrested Wednesday, charged with committing absentee ballot fraud during Henrys 2010 re-election campaign.

How about our current President's home state? Has anyone told him, he is the Commander In-Chief?

http://biggovernment.com/capitolconfide ... -delivery/
Over 35 counties in Illinois missed the deadline to mail military ballots to our soldiers defending America. But in Chicago, county election officials have taken special steps to ensure that no inmates at the Cook County Jail are unable to cast a ballot.

Forgive me as I leave the room to puke................