December 06, 2004
Recount Madness
Today's Associated Press story confirms what we learned from Sec. of State Sam Reed two weeks ago: Snohomish and Yakima Counties will conduct their hand recount by printing out paper records of tens of thousands of electronic votes for which no original paper existed, and then counting all of those pieces of paper by hand
Starting Wednesday, election officials will begin downloading the data to create a computer file for each ballot, saved in portable document, or "pdf," format, [Snohomish County official Carolyn] Diepenbrock said.
The ballots will then be printed out, each on its own sheet of 8 1/2-by-11-inch paper.
"We are going to have five different computers with five printers, and they are going to be printing for five days," Diepenbrock said.
...
Diepenbrock said she isn't convinced the hand recount will be more accurate than the machine recount.
"Humans make errors," she said, "and as soon as you put a human element into any sort of process, the potential for error goes up."
No wonder the Democrats demanded a hand recount. Without introducing massive sources of human error, they have no other possibility of overturning the two counts that legitimately determined that Dino Rossi won the election.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 06, 2004
02:51 PM | Email This
2. The good news is that every idiocy like this is another arrow in the quiver of GOP lawyers if the need to go to court arises. As long as we're plugging posts here, I've got a post up about that very thing...
3. I'm waiting for Goldy to explain to us how the hand recount of Snohomish and Yakima Counties will be more accurate than the original counts.
4. Jeff B - Gregoire is hoping that the hand recount is LESS accurate. That is the only way she can win.
5. Or another way of looking at this. Why the hell do thing things not have an automatic paper trail as many in Congress have called for.
6. Ray - Did you not read the article. It does have a paper trail. They have to print out every single ballot and count them by hand. Are you suggesting having automated voting, but then either ...
1) Have voter print off ballot and put in ballot box.
2) Have every voter bring in their "receipt" and have them recounted.
Uh, call me crazy but doesn't that defeat the purpose of automated voting? So to summarize, Democrats don't want punchcard ballots (too hard to punch out the chads), don't want automated voting (no paper trail), and don't want optical scan (some people don't know how to fill in the bubble). I guess we should just count all 120 freaking million votes by hand every election.
7. Or more precisely, Democrats don't like counting methods that are harder to cheat, game, etc. DREs in the form of Computer Automated Voting machines are a Democrat's nightmare.
Especially when they are in widespread use and the outdated law of hand counting is changed after it is noted that the Automted vote count is much more accurate, and much less likely to allow idiots to make mistakes on their ballots that can be exploited.
8. Marc,
I think you may be missing Ray's point. The electronic voting equipment should have a paper trail. This doesn't mean that the paper is what you would normally count. The counting would be done by adding all the digital bits and whatnot. The paper trail comes in for random audits to assure that the computers haven't been monkeyed with and are giving accurate results. And if for some insane reason there were to be another hand recount (I hope the law is changed in the future to avoid this less accurate counting method), they could just count the paper receipts.
9. I don't know why we're all playing cat and mouse about this - Sam Reed said certain members of certain parties had been caught literally sneaking lead under fingernails to change ballots. That'd be REAL hard to do using a computer. Even hackers lead trails - but lead under fingernails???
Dark ages rule for the dark side.
10. Wow, had not heard about the lead under the fingernails trick. Democrats are truly amazing. A win at any cost.
Don't listen to any of the whacked out conspiracy theories from posters that claim that they are programmers or computer professionals and that Automated Vote machines would be easy to hack. There are many safegaurds in place to keep this from happening. First and foremost, the people who program the machines are not the same as the people who load the machines with the candidates for a particular election. The Automated Machines are by far and away the hardest of all voting machines to cheat. Their only problem is that they are more expensive than the status quo, so adoption will take another decade or more.
I expect King County to be the very last county to have Automated Voting technology.
11. I've been gone a few days..please help me out. Does anyone know the difference between "recounting" and "re-evaluating" ballots??? I thought "recount" meant to recount what was already counted??? I don't blame the Dems for trying to defy Webster and redefine the term re-count but come on! I have been an observor at many election counts. I can assure people that the canvassing boards of each County carefully looked at each ballot. A decision was made to count it or not...they have the legal power to make that decision. I see nothing in the law that allows re-evaluating. IF WE ARE GOING TO RE-RE-EVALUATE ALL THE REJECTED BALLOTS, SHOULDN'T WE ALSO RE-RE-EVALUATE ALL THE PREVIOUSLY COUNTED BALLOTS??? My belief is there have already be many illegitimate ballots counted. How are we going to weed them out??? This is insane. Computers did not conspire to screw Gregoire. Each County independently ran them twice thru their computer. The Secretary of State added them up...Gregoire lost. The human element of a manual recount is inevitable...either intentional or more likely many simple goofs. BUT TO RE-EVALUATE PREVIOUSLY REJECTED BALLOTS BEGS THE QUESTION TO BE ASKED ABOUT RE-EVALUATING PREVIOUSLY ACCEPTED BALLOTS. Don't we want a truly accurate count??? If you add new "good ones" then subtract "old bad ones". You can't!!! Counting every legitimate ballot is imperfect...both ways.
12. I haven't seen any other report about Sam Reed claiming that some people were sneaking in lead under their fingernails. When did he say this?
13. Skor - I hear ya, but isn't that what they are basically do for this hand recount? They are printing off the individual electronic ballots and then counting them by hand. I don't see how that is any different from a "paper trail system". Plus, in a secret ballot system how could you tell if they counted the right number of votes for each candidate unless the specific voter, after voting, prints off the "receipt", checks it, and puts it into the ballot box. What if someone forgets to put their receipt in the box? Would their vote not count? Or would you just assume the computer total was correct?
14. Stefan--
Don't allow these Dem activists to push you off the trail of those King County provisional ballots Judge Lean Dum allowed them to go get affadavits way after the election. This is a prime example of needed to re-re-evaluate ballots already accepted if you are going to re-re-evaluate votes already rejected under the guise of a recount???? When the canvassing board had the power & authority to do this???
Sounds like the Gregoire camp obviously wants to count until they are ahead...and really doesn't want to face the fact that since illegitimate votes have almost certainly already been counted..let's just let theresult stand.
15. Jeff,
Unfortunately, EVERY SINGLE COUNTY in the U.S. that is controlled by Demoncrats has the same problem.
You NEVER, EVER hear of Republicans helping Alzheimer's patients, other comatose patients and dead Voters to pad the voter rolls. Those tactics are the DEFINING Articles of Faith for all Demoncrats. They used dead voters to elect John F. Kennedy in 1960 (among many other fradulent elections of the last 75 years).
16. Mr. Cynical. Unfortunately the law is the law, and therefore we are having a third recount. However, what will be interesting is to see what the courts say when the Perkins Coie lawyers whine about trying to get a hold of more ballots to re-evaluate.
I'm choosing to just imagine that in the end, it all sort of washes out and Rossi still wins the second recount and Gregoire and the Dems lost another $$$ million+. It's a much better vision to keep in mind for now.
17. leaddog2, I've got more faith in the honesty of Americans than to think fraud is a part of every Dem County in the US, but there's certainly a "win at any cost" mantra that fuels the litigious posture we've seen in these past two elections.
And there's definitely vote welfare such as accepting ballots without signatures, bussing voters to precincts, Get Out The Vote and other brainwashing sessions, etc.
I do think we should check up on the voters of the provisional ballots in King County, just to make sure......
18. Marc,
One way that a paper trail system might work would be for the machine to print two copies of a receipt of each ballot. These are displayed under a glass window inside the voting machine for the voter to verify before finalizing their vote. If they are correct, one is dropped into an internal bucket, the other is spat out to the voter. If they're incorrect, they're both destroyed.
I agree that the electronic machines are the most secure method of voting, but I also would like to see a system like this so they can be audited. I don't see why people have such a big problem with this...
19. It is totally illogical to believe that the Election Supervisors and Canvassing Boards who were imperfect in rejecting some ballots....were somehow perfect in evaluating every ballot they did accept. The problem is we cannot go back thru every absentee signature, provisional ballot or at the poll signature....because even if we find some (which we surely would) that were previously accepted but, upon further review, were actual illegitimate, they are co-mingled in the huge sea of ballots. They cannot be pulled out!!!!! So how can you re-re-evaluated rejected signatures...without re-re-evaluating accepted signatures. It isn't logical. We should not re-re-evaluate previously rejected ballots. The Dems logic is not!!! But I can't blame them for trying!!
20. This forum makes Republicans seem petty and having a major inferiority complex. We can do better guys!
21. And how many trees are dying for this?????
Where's the outrage?
Where's the tree-huggers?
22. I for one don't trust Democrats anywhere...they are not the party of integrity....they are the party of thievery, abortion, Indian gambling, etc..
what I want to know is anybody checking to see if there are people voting in this election that have also voted in other states?....I think college kids and probably some Indian people have great opportunity to just show up, and claim they are living here, etc...
all it takes is for a few hundred...maybe just one hundred people to do this to throw this election ....
we must check the authenticity of all ballots.....I don't trust Democrats .....
and this comes from a person who was democrat crazy back in the 70's...went door to door for McGovern...at least then, democrats had ideals....
23. "I for one don't trust Democrats anywhere...they are not the party of integrity....they are the party of thievery, abortion, Indian gambling, etc.." Nice words lee. If I remember right, and tell me if I am wrong, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Enron Execs, De Lay, Ronald Reagan are not Democrats. Some of the biggest crooks of all time and you seem to just forget who they were crooking for.
24. Sam Reed made the comment right around the beginning of the second count - I saw it on NWCN. He was saying that he hoped there would not be a hand recount, because they are prone to fraud. He mentioned the lead under the fingernails as just one of many ways unscrupulous people can change the outcome of an election. My mother said she watched the same thing - but she was not with me when I saw it and she seldom watches NWCN, so I am guessing it was carried on another channel as well.
25. Jim and Jeff,
The VAST majority of those serving time for election fraud in every state in the U.S. are Demoncrats. That is a FACT that cannot be ignored.
26. Excuse me, Jim, but Ronald Reagan was NOT a crook. And the Enron execs ran afoul during the Clinton administration of lax regulation and overenthusiasm.
Not much offends me, but attacking Reagan is not cool. He wasn't a perfect president, but he was one of the greatest.
Megan
Olympia, WA
27. "five computers with five printers printing for five days...."
Am I the only one who thought of "a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters for a thousand years...."?:~)