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Title: I am a Diebold Voting Machine Poll Judge
Source:
Daily Kos
URL Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/1/195919/737
Published: Oct 1, 2006
Author: Blue Tide
Post Date: 2006-10-01 20:04:52 by Zipporah
Keywords: None
Views: 50
Comments: 2
I am not saying that the safeguards of Washington State will prevent Republicans from using the Diebold voting machines for fraud. Theoretically, a renegade computer programmer or hacker could program the computer to miscount the vote. But Republicans can also tinker with the optical scanning voting machine that counts the paper ballots. So no matter what kind of ballots we use, voting fraud can always occur. In a manual vote count, humans make mistakes. In Washington State, 5-10% of voted absentee ballots are invalidated. In Snohomish County (which includes the northern Seattle suburbs) 20% of voted absentee ballots were invalidated in this year's primary. In the 2004 gubernatorial race, King County Council Chair Larry Phillip's absentee ballot was mistakenly rejected. Fortunately, they counted his vote on the subsequent recounts. I would also like to remind you of the 2000 Florida vote controversy. Remember the hanging chads? Remember that the Democrats allowed late absentee ballots casted by the military to be counted and not other late casted absentee ballots? But most of all, do you remember the infamous butterfly ballots? So if you live in a state where the Diebold leaves no paper trail, do urge that politicians in your state make the reforms, but remember, one of the primary reasons for the Diebold is to allow certain disabled Americans to vote at the polls. The GOP voter suppression campaign is worse than the Diebold. As a poll worker, I've witnessed the voter suppression campaign with my own eyes. This is how the voter suppression campaign works: When a challenge is made against a voter, the voter can still vote. I must tell the voter of the challenge then inform him or her that he or she must vote provisionally. Voting provisionally is cumbersome and time consuming. Moreover, often times the poll workers are unsure about provisional voting procedures. When a number of voters are challenged, voting slows down and long lines form. Many challenged voters decide to give up trying to vote rather than deal with the hassle. Sometimes, Republican poll watchers will roam around the polling area. They will accost certain voters and warn them that they can be arrested for voting illegally. For voters who discover that they are being challenged, this can be very intimidating. Many voters will give up and go home without voting on this account. The Republicans will aggressively use voter suppression techniques because it's legal to do so. Reprogramming Diebold machines are illegal and with a paper trail difficult to get a way with. Thus, I'm confident that Diebold machines can be used without much fraud at all. My guess is that in Washington State more fraud and mistakes are made with regular paper ballots and optical scanners. In fact, I've seen paper jams lead to voting irregularities on the accuvote optical scanning voting machines. Additionally, if you don't fill in the circle just right on the paper ballot or accidentally make a mark outside of the circle, the optical scanner may record your vote wrong. Finally, there are no hanging chads when you vote by Diebold. The Diebold machines I inspect have printers. Thus, the voter can check whether the screen matches the printout. If the printout does not match the screen, then the voter can request that the machine be shut down. At the end of the day, I check whether the vote count on the Diebold matches with the number of voters who signed in to vote and the number of ballots printed on the tape. I then get three printouts of the voting results. The paper trail is then sent to the vote counters. The printed ballots are treated just as if they were paper ballots. I also do the same procedure with ballots that were read by the optical scanner. At the end of the day, we match whether the number of paper ballots matches the machine vote count. We can also read the results that the optical scanner has recorded. When reading the results from the accuvote counter and the Diebold machine, I've never seen any unusual voting behavior. I've been a poll judge in mostly Democratic precincts and the tape always record that Democrats get more votes than Republicans. If cheating is to occur, the Republicans must program only for a small change, otherwise people would become suspicious of illegal behavior. They also must rely that voters do not check the printed tape against the screen. Should the screen not match the printed tape, it's the vote on the tape that is counted. I am a Diebold Voting Machine Poll Judge
by BlueTide
Sun Oct 01, 2006 at 04:59:19 PM PDT
I am a poll judge. My duty is to set up the Diebold voting machine and make sure no voting irregularities occur. I am also the accuvote poll judge and make sure that the optical scanning voting machine that count the paper ballots works properly on Election Day. I hope all states keep the Diebold voting machine and adopt the rules of my state - Washington State. In my state, all electronic ballots casted must be copied on paper in its entirety. Moreover, every voter has a choice of using a paper ballot. From my experience as a former campaign worker and poll judge, Republicans would make a big risk to try tamper with the Diebold machines in Washington State. In fact, the Diebold should stay because for the first time, many disabled Americans can now go down to their voting poll and vote. On the other hand, I've seen the GOP's voter suppression campaign successfully and legally squash democracy.
The Republicans target the most heavy Democratic precincts in a state. They scrutinize the voter rolls and challenge any voter who may have made a technical mistake on their voting registration form. They also challenge homeless people who make up an address when registering to vote; business people who write a PO Box for their address; and voters where a county clerk made a typo mistake recording their name on the voter registration rolls. As a poll worker, I receive a list of people from the county of registered voters who are being challenged before the poll is opened.
We should be concerned about voter fraud. But remember, voter fraud can occur under any voting system. It's the excuse that Republicans use to require all voters to have photo IDs when they vote. As you know, the people who won't have photo IDs are people who tend to vote Democratic. In an all mail voting system, many ballots casted by senior citizens are not counted because their signatures have changed over time. If a voting judge believes that your signature on the absentee ballot envelope does not match with your signature on your original voter registration forms, your ballot is invalidated and your vote does not count. Thousands if not millions of ballots have been rejected on this basis. On the other hand, voting by Diebold is easy and fewer mistakes are made on the Diebold than using paper ballots. Voting on the Diebold is so easy that for the first time many disabled Americans can now vote at the polls.
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#1. To: Zipporah (#0)
She's delusion, of course. She's also a fool if she believes that an electronic machine, which NO ONE gets to inspect the programming on, is a safe and guaranteed correct way to vote. The problem with the merikan sheeple is that they want results instantly, hence, just run it thru some machine. The proper way to handle paper balloting, and then counting is that you have an equal number of counters from EACH interested party to observe. I count 5 for #A and 7 for #b; at the same time, you count 5 for #A and 7 for #b......it matches or you go no where til the numbers match. It is bullshit to think that only 'r's get to count the votes or 'd's get to count the votes. This broad thinks that because a machine prints a voter out a list of who they voted for that the vote is calculated correctly! So, if there is a protest what do you do? Tell all the people in the precinct they have to come show their paper ballot? Puleeze.......I have more faith in the tooth fairy than having all voters show up to turn in their 'paper trail' ballot. As I said, the problem is every one wants instant gratification in knowing who won.
All this verbiage just goes to show what a sham, a fraud, and a joke, is our current "voting" system.
#2. To: Zipporah (#0)
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