[ale] [OT] evoting: South Carolina Primary Proves Unverifiable Electronic Voting Cannot Be Trusted

[Aaron Ruscetta]

This story provides substantial evidence that one of the political
parties has control over the zero evidence electronic vote counts
from Diebold / ES&S DRE systems and is committing vote fraud
on a massive scale to insure that competent and popular candidates
of their opposition are eliminated in the primary election phase.
Strong challenges to primary results are less likely than in general
elections since they must be addressed by the Party authorities
before they can be taken to the State.

Explains a lot of the "results" of the past several election cycles.

Remember that if you missed the window for getting your GA
Absentee Paper Ballot, you can still vote with a Paper ballot
by leaving your ID at home. When a voter cannot present
photo ID, the polling place is required by law to provide a
Paper Provisional Ballot.  The voter can then fax or show
their ID to the County Registrars office within 48 hours.
A unique added benefit of this voting method is that the
Regiatrar's office is also required by law to inform you
with cause if your provisional ballot is not counted.  Full
details and Country Restistrar contact info lists can
be found at <PaperCounts.org>.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Garland Favorito <garlandf at msn.com>
Date: Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 11:31 AM
Subject: South Carolina Primary Proves Unverifiable Voting Cannot Be Trusted

VoterGA Supporters,

Mail-in paper ballot election results just received  from each South Carolina
county under Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests confirm that there
were enough voting discrepancies in the recent U.S. Senate Democratic
primary to have reversed the election outcome.  That race had dramatic,
inexplicable discrepancies between the verifiable mail-in absentee paper
ballot results and the unverifiable electronic voting results recorded on
Election Day, June 8.  In that race, Alvin Greene was declared the winner
based on a near landslide 60-40% margin in  Election Day electronic voting
results. However, certified mail-in paper ballot results received from the
counties after a 15 business day response period allowed under South
Carolina law, show that Vic Rawl actually won the verifiable mail-in paper
ballot absentee voting by a solid  55-45% margin. The near 30% total point
differential among the two candidates is unheard of in South Carolina
election history and perhaps, nationally as well. Neither candidate
emphasized absentee voting so there is no reasonable explanation for
such a vast difference. VoterGA issued the FOIA requests because South
Carolina counties do not report separate absentee totals for mail-in paper
ballot votes and in-person electronic votes. While some of this information
was previously known, here is what the official replies to the
requests revealed:

·   In not one county did Alvin Greene win the absentee mail-in vote count
and lose the Election Day vote count

·   In not one county did Vic Rawl win the Election Day vote count and lose
the mail-in absentee vote count

·   In 41 of 46 counties, Alvin Greene’s Election Day vote percentage exceeded
his mail-in paper ballot absentee percentage;

·   In 34 of those 41 counties, Alvin Greene’s Election Day electronic votes
exceeded his mail-in paper ballot absentee votes by an abnormal margin of 15%

·   In no counties with more than 10 paper ballot casts did Vic Rawl have an
abnormal margin of 15% or more (total for both candidates)

The individual county results illustrate the differences between Election Day
electronic voting results and mail-in paper ballot absentee voting results
much more dramatically:

·   In Aiken County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote  60% to 40%
but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 70% to 30%;

·   In Barnwell County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 63% to 37%
but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 75% to 25%;

·   In Beaufort County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 60% to 40%
but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 82% to 18%;

·   In Dorchester County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 60% to 40%
but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 67% to 33%;

·   In Florence County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 70% to 30%
but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 58% to 42%;

·   In Greenwood County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 76% to 24%
but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by  51% to 49%;

·   In Lancaster County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 59% to 41%
but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 90% to 10%;

·   In Newberry County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 55% to 45%
but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 84% to 16%;

·   In Spartanburg County, Alvin Greene won the Election Day vote 61% to 39%
but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 72% to 28%;

The differences between absentee in person electronic voting and absentee
paper mail-in voting are similarly dramatic:

·   In Spartanburg County, Alvin Greene won the [early voting]
absentee electronic vote
62% to 38% but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 72% to 28%;

·   In Jasper County, Alvin Greene won the [early voting] absentee
electronic vote
56% to 44% but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 76% to 24%;

·   In Orangeburg County, Alvin Greene won the [early voting] absentee
electronic vote
52% to 48% but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 72% to 28%

·   In Chester County, Alvin Greene won the [early voting] absentee
electronic vote
71% to 29% but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 55% to 45%;

·   In Coleton County, Alvin Greene won the [early voting] absentee
electronic vote
58% to 42% but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 70% to 33%;

·   In Berkeley County, Alvin Greene won the [early voting] absentee
electronic vote
59% to 41% but Vic Rawl prevailed in the mail-in paper ballots  by 73% to 27%;

A spreadsheet on the www.voterga.org home page illustrates the discrepancies so
that you can review them and make your own decision about the validity of this
South Carolina election. However, the spreadsheet still does not take
into account
the extraordinary differences in the campaigns that were conducted. As you may
already know Alvin Greene, an unemployed former military veteran who paid a
$10,000 qualifying fee, did not even run a campaign.  Greene held no
fundraisers,
ran no paid advertisements, made no campaign speeches, hired no campaign
manager, conducted no state wide tours, attended no Democratic Party county
events, printed no yard signs and did not even establish a web site.
Vic Rawl, a
county commissioner, former judge and four tern state representative,
ran a normal,
aggressive campaign as his campaign manager, Walter Ludwig, has explained.
He personally campaigned in at least half of the counties  made radio and TV
appearances, attended the state convention, collected official endorsements,
had 600 volunteers, printed 10,000 bumper stickers, established 180,000
database contacts, created a 104,000 Email distribution list, had 3,300 Facebook
Friends, sent out 300,000 Emails just prior to the election, received 20,000 web
site hits on Election Day alone and was more active on Twitter than the other
Democratic Party candidates.

So how did this happen? All South Carolina elections are conducted on statewide
unverifiable electronic voting equipment manufactured by [the new
owner of Diebold,]
Election Systems & Software (ES&S) .  South Carolina’s voting machines have no
independent audit trail of each vote cast. This is necessary to audit
the accuracy of
the vote recording mechanism that transfers the selections the voter sees on the
screen to the vote storage areas. All precinct printouts, ballot
images and any other
forms of paper documents that can be printed are not created independently but
produced internally from the machines after the vote was recorded and could have
been corrupted. It is technically impossible for anyone in the state
to claim that South
Carolina’s Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines record
accurately on
Election Day since there is no mechanism such as a Voter Verified
Paper Audit Trail
[or other Paper Evidence] to independently audit the vote recording.
No amount of
pre-election testing can assure DRE recording accuracy. The Federal Election
Assistance Commission’s (EAC) Technical Guidelines Development Committee
concluded that: “The National Institute of Standards and Testing & EAC Security
& Transparency Subcommittee do not know how to write testable requirements to
satisfy that the software in a DRE is correct” The reason for such a
conclusion is
that many electronic voting machines, such as those used in South Carolina, can
be programmed in a variety of ways to count differently on Election
Day than during
testing.  As a result, South Carolina voters cannot verify that the
selections they
see on the screen were electronically recorded, election officials
cannot audit the
actual vote counts and there is no directly created evidence of voter
intent that
can be used in a recount.

Vic Rawl understood this and filed an election protest to have his claims heard
by the leadership of the South Carolina Democratic Party on June 17. Expert
witnesses testified as to the improbability of such results and they
methodically
eliminated other false explanations for the discrepancies such as
ballot positioning,
Republican crossover voting and racial preferences. None of those excuses would
explain the vast difference in absentee paper ballot results and
electronic voting
results.  In addition, the office manager identified reports she had
received from
voters in a dozen different counties all of whom were impeded in some way from
voting for Vic Rawl. One witness testified that Mr. Rawl was not on the ballot.
Another witness testified that she successfully selected Vic Rawl in
the race but
Alvin Greene’s name on the confirmation screen. Still another witness
testified that
she received a confirmation screen indicating she had voted for Alvin
Greene before
she voted in the U.S. Senate race and immediately  after she cast her
vote in the
governor’s race. Alvin Greene was not present and no evidence was presented
to argue that the results were correct, the leadership denied Mr.
Rawl’s request for
new election by a count of 38-7. The entire hearing can be seen just
by searching
for Vic Rawl on Vimeo.com thanks to John Fortuin and Defenders of Democracy.

The hearing revealed that Vic Rawl’s expert witness was denied access to the
machines at the county level. In addition, the State Elections Commission denied
a petition by State Senator Phil Leventis to impound the machines
until they could
be checked. The commission claimed that they needed the machines for
the run-off.
However, they would not have needed all of the machines for the run-of and they
would not have needed to impound all of them to run statistically
significant tests.
A spokesperson for the State Elections Commission said that they have done all
that they could do in terms of testing and that they are confident in
the results. The
commission also issued a statement asserting that the  voting machines have
always performed accurately and reliably, a claim that is technically impossible
to establish since there is no way to independently audit the voting recording
mechanism of the machine.

[snip opinion item]

I have sent a letter outlining the lack of credibility in this
election to the State
Elections Commission; the letter is available on the www.Voterga.org home page.
South Carolina federal elections results could impact voters in every
other state
so even if you don’t live there, take a few minutes and do the same. The state
elections commission can be contacted at elections at scvotes.org.

Thanks,
Garland

404 664-4044 CL
www.voterga.org

REPRINT AND POSTING PERMISSION GRANTED

PS: This BradBlog link shows his interview with MSNBC’s Keith Olberman:
<http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7890>
Brad Friedman describes it as one of the most bizarre interviews ever
seen on television.