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Saturday, February 23, 2008

NH Vote Recount Report by WTP


Optical Scan Machines Violate Federal Law


With an interest in defending the individual's constitutionally guaranteed Right to have and to know that his vote is being accurately counted, this Foundation determined the 2008 New Hampshire Primary recount offered an excellent, real-world opportunity to independently assess the statistical performance of optical scan, electronic vote counting machines relative to hand counting of ballots.

WTP has just completed its analysis of the data. Our principal findings are as follows.

Of the 347, 905 total ballots processed during the recount 305,207 (87.7%) came from towns and cities that use machines to count the votes, and 42,619 (12.3%) came from towns that use People to count the votes.

New Hampshire's vote counting machines violate federal accuracy standards. New Hampshire's machines experienced an error rate approximately 163 times greater than the error rate allowed under federal Election Law.

The probability that an individual's vote was accurately counted during the Primary was much greater if his vote was counted by hand than by machine.

Statewide, taking into consideration all the ballots that were included in the recount, the number of machine counts that were in error by more than 2 votes was 9.81 times greater than the number of hand counts that were off by more than 2 votes. The number of machine counts that were in error by more than 1 vote was 3.37 times greater than the number of hand counts that were off by more than 1 vote.

We identified 38 instances of apparent fraud where votes were being hand counted.

We were not able to determine if intentional or unintentional error was behind the more substantial discrepancies in machine counts. Nor were we able to determine the impact of the 21 machines that failed on Primary Day, or if other machine failures occurred but were not reported to the Secretary of State's office.

In brief, the analysis data supports the conclusion that not only are machine counts of votes much more likely to result in error, but the machine errors are of a significantly larger magnitude and variance than those observed for hand counting.

When the much higher frequency of machine-counted errors is coupled with the statistically disturbing magnitude of the machine errors, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the use of optical scan machines to count votes has robbed many citizens of New Hampshire of their Right to Vote and their Right to have their Vote counted accurately.

Our analysis of the state's data and election practices suggest that there are numerous steps that the government of New Hampshire can take to bolster the integrity of its election process - whether votes are counted by hand or by machine. Although hand-counting of votes is clearly not yet a perfected art, in keeping alive the practice of hand-counting, New Hampshire has served its citizens well. Beyond this, the state should not subject its People to further enduring electronic voting machines that grossly fail to meet even the minimal accuracy standards mandated by federal law.

We hope our analysis has provided some much needed light onto a matter that substantially affects the future of freedom in New Hampshire - and our entire Republic.

Click Here To Access the Full WTP NH Recount Report

& the supporting analysis

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Under counting of votes in NY State from another blog

The Burgh Report 2008 Obama Undercounts in the New York Primary

Friday, February 08, 2008

Team 4 Investigates Voting Machine Security Issues - Pittsburgh News Story - WTAE Pittsburgh

Team 4 Investigates Voting Machine Security Issues - Pittsburgh News Story - WTAE Pittsburgh The way things are shaping up, Pennsylvania's presidential primary could be a deciding contest. But before you go to the polls, there's something you should know about the personal safety and security of your vote.

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Range Voting

Some in possession of big mathematics insights have insist that range voting is fundamentally better than ranked voting. If you're interested, see http://rangevoting.org.

Range Voting is the best of any known voting system, where "best" means that it produces the greatest overall happiness/satisfaction. This holds true even if people try to game the system by doing things like ranking their top choice as 100% and all other choices 0%. (In fact, it's rational to do this if you know that your top choice is polling just barely behind your #2 choice.)

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Progress in MN in a neighborhood email list kick-off

Last night was a thrill in Minnesota. It was caucus night as part of the "Super Tuesday" in our presidential selection process.

Like many of you, I am about to volunteer to host a local forum - in this case E-Democracy's second neighborhood forum in Minneapolis (in the area where I live - http://e-democracy.org/se ). Walking the talk.

While I've recruited a bit online and last weekend the neighborhood association included a plug in their print newsletter sent to the few thousand households in the neighborhood, registrations sat at 25 people. Last night I signed up 116 more members so we can now open to posting.

Last year, the Canterbury, New Zealand launch reminded us of the importance of promoting paper sign-ups at the right public events to recruit people. What might you do in your community to bring in new members?

Here are updated sign-up forms/templates you can all use in your in-person recruitment efforts:

* US PDF: http://e-democracy.org/if/issuesforumsignupform.pdf

* US Word: http://e-democracy.org/if/issuesforumsignupform.doc (if you want to change text)

* UK/NZ A4 Word: http://e-democracy.org/if/issuesforumsignupformuknz.doc (you can adapt text)

More details: http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/138

The upload process is pretty easy - all you need to do is type up the results in a spreadsheet with columns for "first name," "last name," and "e-mail" and send them to us: team@e-democracy.org

I'll report back on how the Standish Ericcson Neighbors Forum opening goes. One caution is that in-person recruitment may be too effective and bring in people who don't want a lot of e-mail or are not quite sure what they signed up to receive.

My plan:

1. Type the results into a spreadsheet to prepare for uploading to GroupServer.

2. Send a Bcc: e-mail to everyone confirming that they are about to be added to the online group. Letting them know that they can easily change their settings to digest or unsubscribe and add a few lines to get them excited about what is next.

3. Add the new e-mail addresses while the group is still closed to public posting.

4. Send a "Want only one e-mail a day? Digest option" note. Setting digest is super easy via e-mail.

5. Send a "How to change your password to something you'll remember" post

6. Send a "We about to open, but first let's each invite someone on our block to join"

7. Ask keepers of area e-mail announcement lists (police departments community policing list, neighborhood association, local city council member) to pass on the invite and provide announcements to the forum when appropriate. I think it is easier to get e-officials on a forum before you launch.

8. Send a reminder about digest mode with a sample digest and introduce the web-based no e-mail option as an alternative (I want to keep as many people on digest as possible). By keeping the group on moderation initially you can stop the lemming effect of one person saying (if often not so nice a way) take me off this darn thing leading to a series of me-too replies. It may only be five to ten people, but wayward unsubscribe efforts sent to group by mistake creates a false impression of a negative movement.

9. Keep group on temporary moderation for the "Introductions" phase to manage _voluntary_ introductions over a week or two. I strongly recommend a series of introductions both when opening forums and re-introductions every year or so. This humanizes the forum and builds trust and accountability to real, known people. You'll find roughly twice the number of people are willing to say hello than post their opinions on a regular basis. People who post introductions have now broken the ice and are more likely to post again. The first call will generate 10-15 or so introductions, but don't stop there - thank those how found it easy to say hello and you'll prompt another 10 or more people to say hello.

10. Make the "Introductions" topic "Sticky" via the web so it is listed a top the web view to help new and prospective members get a sense of who's who.

11. Open to the forum to a fully unmoderated mode for general discussion and exchange of announcements.

12. Tune in particularly closely to early rule violations - off topic posts, uncivil behavior, etc. - and act decisively early to put the whole group on notice that the forum charter and rules will be enforced. This will actually improve self-policing and reduce the management required over the long-term.

13. Keep the setting, "moderate new members" in place to avoid fly by night posters, but actively set them to unmoderate with their first legitimate post.

14. Down the road, introduce the opportunity for participants to upload a photo to there member profile page which will stick their picture next to there posts on the web view.

Cheers,
Steven Clift
Chair, E-Democracy.Org

Steven Clift
Ericsson, Hennepin
Info about Steven Clift: http://forums.e-democracy.org/contacts/stevenclift

This topic's messages may be viewed at: http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/2rcxB7h01P342hRKBVeEeP

Third Party Watch � Blog Archive � Historic Primary Election in Arizona

Third Party Watch � Blog Archive � Historic Primary Election in Arizona: "The Arizona Libertarian Party is one of three fully ballot qualified political parties in the state and therefore legally entitled to participate in the presidential preference primary election proceedings on Super Tuesday. Unlike the Democratic and Republican parties, Arizona Libertarians aren’t conducting their election process in the traditional polling booths or at taxpayer expense.

“This is believed to be the first time in U.S. history that a state-wide election has been held via the Internet, only,” stated party chairman Michael Kielsky in a press release."

Dave says let's not play that game. Harold like the instant run-off voting component, as an aside

Apparently the Arizona LP has succumbed to a computer virus... namely, Internet voting: http://thirdpartywatch.com/2008/02/02/historic-primary-election-in-arizona/


Hopefully we can agree not to do that in PA?

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

States Prepare for Tests of Voting System Changes

States Prepare for Tests of Voting System Changes: "After California ordered a switch to paper ballots from touch-screen voting machines for Tuesday's primary, election officials in the sprawling, 7,200-square-mile Riverside County had to decide the best way to pick up the ballots so they could be centrally counted on time: helicopter or truck?

They chose land rather than air, because the last time the helicopter had been grounded by fog. But then they encountered another problem: 60,000 absentee ballots had begun to fall apart at the fold lines.

'They may be high-tech or they could be low-tech, but the problems are always there,' said Barbara Dunmore, the county registrar of voters."