[VoteRescue] Straight Party Voting Can Flip Your Presidential Vote!

Thu Oct 30 18:03:40 CDT 2008

This story in WIRED by Kim Zetter includes audio 
tracts of voters' reports of vote flipping when 
trying to vote straight-democrat-party. A hand 
counted paper ballot clearly shows the voters' 
intent.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/straight-party.html

If you experience vote flipping, report it 
immediately to the election judges and county 
clerk.

This press release went nationwide today, FYI

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For Immediate Release              Contact:  Karen Renick, 512/496-7408 

                                                                     Vickie 
Karp, 512/775-3737   

Attention:  Political Assignments Desk   

EMERGENCY VOTER ALERT

   Straight Party Voting Can Flip Your Presidential Vote!

Austin, Texas, October 30, 2008

"Voting straight-party is not safe on electronic 
computerized touchscreen or rotary-wheel selector 
voting machines" states Karen Renick, Executive 
Director of VoteRescue, a grassroots citizens' 
organization that watchdogs elections in Texas.  

VoteRescue and its Coalition, Texans for REAL 
Elections, are issuing an emergency alert to all 
voters in Texas and across the country that 
voting a straight-party ticket may cause their 
vote for president to be "flipped" to the 
opposite candidate. Nine counties in Texas have 
already reported such incidents during early 
voting.

Voters in Travis, Harris, and Galveston Counties 
have experienced the "voteflipping phenomena" on 
Hart InterCivic voting machines; in Grayson, 
Collin, Dallas, Palo Pinto, El Paso, and 
Jefferson Counties, reports of "vote flipping" 
have come in regarding the other two major 
vendors of electronic voting systems that are 
certified for use in Texas:  ES&S and Diebold 
(now called "Premier".)  Incidents of votes 
flipping from Obama to McCain have been reported 
in several other states with Sequoia voting 
machines not used in Texas. 

Election officials and political party 
spokespeople have issued conflicting and 
confusing advice on this issue; but 
national electronic voting expert Bev Harris 
writes on her website, BlackBoxVoting.org, "Never 
choose the straight party vote option, because it 
alerts the computer as to your party preference 
and allows software code to trigger whatever 
function the programmer has designed."

This advice has been validated by other election 
experts who have reviewed scholarly studies of 
voting machine programming and software: Select 
each candidate and issue individually - do NOT 
choose the straight party option - to be on the 
safe side.  Selecting each individual candidate 
on the ballot is a simple precaution that voters 
can take, since there is so much conflicting 
information on whether or not straight party 
voting is safe. 

Citizens can learn more about the risks of 
straight party voting, as well as how to help 
monitor the November 4th election in "Protect the 
Count" on 
<http://www.blackboxvoting.org/>http://www.blackboxvoting.org 
and in the Austin, Texas area:

  <http://www.voterescue.org>www.voterescue.org 

###

The following is helpful information on what 
citizens should do if their vote "flips" to a 
different candidate than they chose when they go 
vote. Documentation also follows that explains 
why straight party voting is not a safe way to 
vote:

Advice on what to do if the machine flips your vote:

     * Call poll supervisors to observe the problem.
     * Fill out a problem report
     * Refuse to vote on that machine
     * Request that the machine be taken out of service
     * Get a serial number of the machine if 
possible (may be difficult in many cases).

     * Tell other voters in line which machine it 
was and that they should NOT vote on that 
machine! 

     * Report it to county/town election office and the Secretary of State 
     * Call local reporters and tell them the story
     * Call voter problem hotlines (eg. 
866-MYVOTE1 and 866-OUR-VOTE) to report it.

Correct Information About Straight Ticket Voting

The following information is also from 
Blackboxvoting on straight party ticket voting. 
This is the most accurate assessment of the 
problem we have seen. It is well documented and 
well worth the read. It is critical the public is 
alerted to this correct information during early 
voting as well as before election day!

<http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/78367.html>http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/78367.html

From  Black Box Voting an ELECTION ALERT 
REGARDING STRAIGHT PARTY VOTING. Here are the 
details and what to do about it:

THE PROBLEM: "Straight party voting" on voting 
machines is revealing a bad pattern of 
miscounting and omitting your vote, especially if 
you are a Democrat.

Most recently (Oct. 2008), a firm called 
Automated Election Services was found to have 
mis-coded the system in heavily Democratic Santa 
Fe County, New Mexico such that straight party 
voters would not have the presidential vote 
counted.

Straight party voting is allowed in 15 states. 
Basically, it means that you can take a shortcut 
to actually looking at who you are voting for and 
instead just select a party preference. Then the 
voting machine makes your candidate choices, 
supposedly for the party you requested.

Additional details follow, but first: PROTECT THE COUNT

1) NEVER CHOOSE THE STRAIGHT PARTY VOTE OPTION, 
because it alerts the computer as to your party 
preference and allows software code to trigger 
whatever function the programmer has designed.

2) SEND THIS INFORMATION OUT TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS 
YOU CAN, blog it, root n' toot it out there to 
get the word out.

3) ESPECIALLY GET THE WORD OUT TO PEOPLE IN THE 
FOLLOWING STATES, which have straight party 
voting options:

- Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina

Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah

West Virginia, Wisconsin

  (Missouri and New Hampshire had straight party 
voting in earlier years, but have cancelled the 
straight party option for the Nov. 2008 election; 
however, the Straight Party software is still on 
Missouri and New Hampshire election management 
computers.)

4) DEMAND COMPLETE AND CAREFUL TESTING OF THE 
STRAIGHT PARTY OPTION IN LOGIC & ACCURACY TESTS. 
Bring copies of the citations in this article to 
buttress your case for why this is needed, if you 
have to. Witnesses for L&A tests in the straight 
party option states should specifically watch for 
and note whether (a) the tests were done and (b) 
the results were accurate.

5) LOOK FOR UNDERVOTES (high profile races with 
lower-than-average number of votes cast) and flag 
them, post them, bring them to the attention of 
others for additional scrutiny.

Undervotes may reveal straight-party programming 
fraud after the fact, but can never be 
reconstructed to know who the voter would have 
voted for. Such programming malfeasance, when 
found, disenfranchises voters.

MORE DETAILS ON THE STRAIGHT PARTY TRAP

October 2008: In Santa Fe, New Mexico the 
machines were NOT counting straight party ballots 
correctly, and now it turns out that voting 
machines have been caught giving straight party 
votes to the other party's candidates, omitting 
the counts for some straight party votes, and 
generally creating mischief.

Most recent news on this can be found here:

More on that here:

<http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/30557559.html?elr=KArksac8P3iUec7Pa>http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/30557559.html?elr=KArksac8P3iUec7Pa 
P3iUqc8P3UU

with archive copy and commentary on the claims made in the article here:

<http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/159/78362.html>http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/159/78362.html

  California citizen Judy Alter discovered a high 
number of undervotes in the New Mexico 
presidential race in 2004. She traced these back 
to straight party votes that skipped counting the 
presidential race. Here is Alter's write-up on 
what she found:

<http://www.bbvdocs.org/US/avoid-straight-party-option.pdf>http://www.bbvdocs.org/US/avoid-straight-party-option.pdf

(46 KB)

This is the short version of Alter's study of the 
2004 Presidential Election of Santa Fe, New 
Mexico; It shows how Alter figured out that the 
straight party voting option did not contain a 
vote for president (or defaulted to Bush). She 
explains that the straight party option created 
the huge under-vote in NM and the other states 
with straight party voting.

According to Alter, most of the biggest exit poll 
shifts occurred in the straight party states.

Alter also has a long long version of the 
article, with charts and graphs as well as 
examples of the evidence she has from the hand 
filled out paper ballots counted on Sequoia 
scanners for early voting and absentee voting and 
the internal memory tapes of the Sequoia 
pushbutton DRE.

Her study in also posted on my website: 
<http://www.protectcaliforniaballots.org>http://www.protectcaliforniaballots.org

BOTH DRE AND OPTICAL SCAN SYSTEMS HAVE BEEN 
CAUGHT MISCOUNTING STRAIGHT PARTY VOTES

Alter provides evidence from the absentee and 
early voting reports from Sequoia optical scan 
machines (paper ballots) that the straight party 
option for minor party candidates omitted votes. 
Two votes for straight Green party showed no 
votes for Cobb (the 2004 Green Party presidential 
candidate) next to his name.

According to articles archived on Voters Unite, 
straight party votes have been caught miscounting 
straight party votes in Wisconsin and Alabama as 
well.

ES&S Optical scan system: In Medford, Wisconsin, 
ES&S ballot scanners failed to count 
straight-party votes at all. About 27 percent of 
all votes cast in Medford during the Nov. 2004 
election were not counted by voting system 
computers. -- 
<http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=5061>http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=5061

ES&S optical scan system: In Baldwin County, 
Alabama, the ballot programming for straight 
ticket voting went awry in November 2006 by 
identifying one Republican as a Democrat. 
<http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=6868>http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=6868

It's not just ES&S: The following overly cryptic 
Diebold Product Advisory does not reveal what the 
"issues" are that cause unexpected results from 
certain straight party voting programming methods:

  <http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/Product-Advisory-Notice-straight-party-voting.pdf>http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/Product-Advisory-Notice-straight-party-voting.pdf

(17 KB)

Something happens. Something unexpected. Quietly 
now, "call Diebold" it says, for more information.

BEWARE, THE STRAIGHT PARTY VOTE MAY NOT INCLUDE PRESIDENTIAL RACE AT ALL

In North and South Carolina voters a straight 
party ticket does not include any vote for 
president. Yes, it's the law there. Voters need 
to also vote separately for president.

EVEN IF YOUR STATE DOESN'T HAVE STRAIGHT PARTY 
VOTING, YOUR VOTING COMPUTERS DO HAVE IT

Instead of creating two different systems, voting 
machine vendors put the straight party software 
into ALL voting computers, and just turn it "off" 
in states that don't allow straight party voting.

Both kinds of straight party voting -- with the 
presidential race included and with presidential 
votes omitted -- are actually on the election 
management computer that programs the ballots. 
It's up to the programmer to to choose whether to 
use straight party voting and, if so, whether it 
will register a vote for president or not. While 
it's true that systems like the Diebold GEMS 
Election Management system provide a drop-down 
menu where election programmers can choose their 
state system, they can also opt to choose some 
other state's system, or the generic "US" system 
(whatever that is), thereby enabling a giant OOPS 
excuse if caught.

ENTER THE PRIVATE CONTRACTORS

New Mexico's recent problem has been attributed 
to Automated Election Services, a firm that 
programs memory cards for New Mexico's ES&S M100 
voting machines and also prints the ballots and 
provides election support services.

New Hampshire, which now prohibits use of the 
Straight Party function, uses LHS Associates to 
program their voting system. Therefore, whatever 
switches LHS flips on the election management 
system will be in effect, regardless of whether 
voters and New Hampshire election officials "see" 
a straight party option.

PERSPECTIVE, FRAME OF REFERENCE

The big "Oops" they dropped on this needs more 
perspective, a new frame of reference. For 
example:

You are counting the cash for a fund raiser. 
Somehow, it's discovered that $500 didn't make it 
into the count and someone put it in their 
pocket. They say "Oops" and tell you it was a 
mistake.

Really? Will you let them count the cash again? 
Probably not. Automated Election Services, and 
every other vendor that incorrectly programs 
voting systems such that they effectively steal 
people's votes should never be allowed to program 
the system again. Consequences! Where are they?

A LEHTOISM

From voting rights attorney Paul Lehto:

"One may breathe easier after November, if their 
favored candidate wins, but even if mine doesn't, 
I'll say it now: It will still be an illegitimate 
election, as a function of the secret vote 
counting ALONE, without the need for even an 
allegation of fraud, much less proof.

"The incumbents in office make all of our 
election law even those governing their own 
re-elections. Unless, of course, we uphold what I 
so often speak about, our own inalienable rights. 
Without those, we are all at the mercy of whoever 
is in power.

Being at the mercy of whoever's in power is not a 
definition of freedom, if I may seize on the 
power of understatement."

* * * * *

Black Box Voting

330 SW 43rd St Suite K

PMB 547

Renton WA 98058

###

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