image source: organicconsumers.org
I had no problem voting. I went over to the place with my absentee ballot and envelope, signed my name on the back and gave it to the poll worker, who put it in a box. It didn't take very long.
So the GMO labeling initiative didn't pass. And California wants to keep the Death Penalty. Those are surprising results to me. In fact, they're somewhat chilling results. Some public servant types are saying people who are worried about the integrity of voting machines are just silly.
I went over to BradBlog.com to see what I could find out about L.A.'s voting machines. What I found wasn't encouraging. There's lots of good information over there---lots and lots of it. The problem is, the information isn't real current. It sort of looks like Brad of Bradblog voted in 2008 in L.A. County, had a debacle with it where four of his votes were flipped, and then there was an exchange with elections officials which I, for one, find pretty unsatisfying. And that's pretty much the end of it, unless I've missed something somewhere.
Why not start with a little context, since Bradblog.com is one of just a very few sites with the stones to publish "Occupy LA" demonstrator Patrick Meighan's account of the police bust on the City Hall camp the night of November 30th (a night I found Twitter to be mysteriously uncooperative).
Police beating on protesters during demonstrations last year via BRADBLOG.com
"Perhaps the most disturbing report to date comes from the written account furnished by Patrick Meighan, a writer for Fox' animated sitcom Family Guy and a member of the Unitarian Church of Santa Monica."
[W]e were all ordered by the LAPD to unlink from each other...Each seated, nonviolent protester beside me who refused to cooperate by unlinking his arms had the following done to him: an LAPD officer would forcibly extend the protestor’s legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor’s left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the LAPD officer would grab the protestor’s right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent protestor, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor.
Thoroughly terrorized, Meighan decided to voluntarily unlink from the others and "stood as instructed," only to have his arms "wrenched" behind his back. His wrists were "hyperextended" which caused Meighan to "involuntarily recoil in pain" before things began to get worse for the peaceful demonstrator...
[T]he LAPD officer threw me face-first to the pavement. He had my hands behind my back, so I landed right on my face. The officer dropped with his knee on my back and ground my face into the pavement...my face started bleeding...I begged for mercy.
....They forced us to kneel on the hard pavement of that parking garage for seven straight hours with our hands still tightly zipcuffed behind our backs. Some began to pass out. One man rolled to the ground and vomited for a long, long time before falling unconscious. The LAPD officers watched and did nothing.
So how did the voting go in this bastion of Democracy, the city of Los Angeles?
This letter describes problems with the Inka-Vote optical scanner system.
8.4.07
In 2007, the Inka-Vote system was decertified By Secretary of State Debra Bowen.
6.4.2008
BradBlog tries to vote using L.A.'s Inka-Vote Plus (for the hearing impaired) system. The results:
4 Out of 12 Ballot Selections Printed Out Incorrectly, Myriad Other Laws Violated
ES&S InkaVOTE Plus System Fails Miserably, Mars What Should Have Been a Simple Voting Experience During L.A. County's Very Low Turnout State Primary Election...
Though the certification document [PDF] reports that "expert reviewers demonstrated that the physical and technological security mechanisms...for the InkaVote Plus Precinct Ballot Counter Voting System were inadequate to ensure accuracy and integrity of the election results," and described "serious design flaws" along with myriad "vulnerabilities" and opportunity for malicious "attacks that could potentially be used to modify any of the information stored in the election results database," it's rather amazing that SoS Bowen ending up recertifying the system for use at all.
That the system was allowed to be used is perhaps even more amazing, given that ES&S spent months withholding it from review entirely by the Secretary of State's independent team of testers. It was finally recertified, at the last minute, just prior to last February's Super Tuesday Primary, largely when it was too late to move to another system in such a large county.
Nonetheless, no specific mandates (or recommendations) are listed in the recert doc requiring (or recommending) that more than one voter use the system, if anybody decides to use the "accessible" portion of the system. It is, however, required that "No poll worker or other person may record the time at which or the order in which voters vote in a polling place."
That requirement, presumably, is meant in order to make it difficult to track who voted when, so that it becomes more difficult to discover how a specific person had voted. That my ballot would have been the only one on at the entire precinct printed on thermal paper, however, means that no matter when I voted, it would have been a simple matter to determine who and what I had voted for.
The recertification also required that a number of "Use Procedures" be created by the voting machine vendors and county officials, though I was unable to find those documents at the SoS website, so can't report whether or not such procedures spoke to the particular privacy issue in question on the InkaVote Plus system.
After elections officials examined BradBlog's debacle with the Inka-Vote Plus system, this was the result:
'Human Error' to Blame for My Votes Being Flipped in L.A. County, According to Registar's Initial Investigation.....
Email from Acting Registrar Dean Logan Says Poll Workers Entered Incorrect Ballot Codes into E-Voting System
From: Dean Logan [mailto:DLogan@rrcc.lacounty.gov]
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 1:14 PM
To: Brad Friedman
Cc: Evan L. Goldberg; Lowell Finley
Subject: RE: Report on flipped InkaVote Plus votes
Mr. Friedman --
Brief update: As indicated last week, we have identified and secured the InkaVote Plus devices and other voting materials from your polling place at our Election Operations Center (photos attached).
Based on your report and photographs, our staff has conducted an initial assessment and review of what occurred. Our preliminary assessment is that what occurred was the result of human error in selecting and entering the ballot code and party selection when setting up the Audio Ballot Booth for your use. As a result you were presented a ballot with a ballot group designation that did not match the voting location/precinct you were in. This would account for a different rotation of candidate names from the rotation listed on your sample ballot and in the voting booths at your poll site. Using the photographs in your report, we were able to identify the incorrect ballot code printed on the VOIDED audio ballot slip and to match your selections to the rotation associated with the incorrect ballot code that was used. The incorrect ballot code and party identification also likely explain the reason you were not presented the partisan contests you requested as provisional ballot status should not affect your ability to cast a partisan ballot.
Had your voted audio ballot been inserted into the Precinct Ballot Reader (PBR) after it printed from the Audio Ballot Booth, it would have been rejected based on the incorrect ballot group identification and further action should have been taken to ensure the correct ballot was issued. In your case, however, since you were voting provisionally, procedures would have called for your ballot to be returned in a provisional ballot envelope for confirmation of voter eligibility. Once verification occurred, the audio ballot slip would have been duplicated to the correct ballot group format for the precinct in which you are registered to vote. Properly conducted, that process would have resulted in your selections being recorded and counted as you intended.
While preliminary indications are that this was not a system failure - rather, it appears to have been a process and training deficiency - it is clearly an issue that must be addressed. The complexity of the situation is further complicated by the variables and multiple party ballots associated with our Primary. Many of these factors will not apply in the November General Election. Your experience shows, however, that they do need to be improved for future primaries in which the InkaVote Plus system is used. Once our review and investigation is complete, we will demonstrate what occurred and show how the instructions were intended to be carried out.
This email is intended as an update only. A detailed report of these findings and an explanation of their impact will be prepared as part of our continuing review and investigation into the issues raised in your report. Additional review and analysis needs to be completed to ensure we have been thorough and complete in our investigation and findings. We will keep you informed of our progress.
I hope this information is helpful.
-- Dean
____________________________________
DEAN C. LOGAN
Acting Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk
Los Angeles County
Here's BradBlog's reply.
From: Brad Friedman
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 1:14 PM
To: Dean Logan
Cc: Evan L. Goldberg; Lowell Finley
Subject: RE: Report on flipped InkaVote Plus votes
Dean -
The information provided in your update/response, including photos, is very much appreciated. I look forward to the final determination and confirmation of what went wrong in the L.A. County voting system when I voted during the recent primary. It's especially troubling, of course, because, according to your description of the problem, it would never have been noticed by a vision-impaired voter for whom the system I voted on was generally supposed to serve.
The only reason I was able to notice the failure was because I was able to visually (and very closely) examine the computer-printed ballot to determine it had mis-printed my intended votes. If I understand your explanation, then it seems my incorrectly printed ballot --- since I was forced to vote provisionally --- would not have been noticed by anyone to have included four candidates for whom I did not vote.
While you suggest the failure, attributed to "human error", would have been caught had the ballot gone through the normal precinct-based op-scan procedure, mine would not have been noticed to have been incorrect because I was forced to vote provisionally, despite appearing accurately on the voter rolls and despite my own "precinct" being across the room from where I was forced to vote.
If your description of the problem is accurate, then it sounds like poll workers at any of L.A. County's more than 4000 precincts would have the ability to enter in codes for virtually any precinct (and/or ballot rotation) when they set up a voter to begin voting on the ES&S audio ballot system. If that is the case, it raises a number of serious questions and concerns.
For a start, it seems like this is a recipe for fraud. Particularly when the voter in question would usually be a visually-impaired orblind voter and would have no way to know that a poll worker has set them up to vote in a way that the audio tells them they are voting one way, but the computer-printed ballot results in different selections, unknown to the voter.
Why was I forced to vote provisionally, simply because the machine at my "precinct" --- across the room, in the same polling place --- was not in service all day? Since it was in the same room (polling place), and the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) only requires a single "disabled-accessible" voting device in each polling place, and since the machine could have had a code entered to match my real "precinct" (across the room), why should I, or any other voter have to vote provisionally in such a case? As you know, provisional ballots are not counted at the same rate as "normal" ballots, and as further information from your note mentions, such ballots are then (incredibly) "duplicated" by hand, by some unknown poll worker at county headquarters before they are ever even counted.
Since this was the second election in a row where the "disabled-accessible" ES&S voting device at my precinct was out of service the entire day, and since nobody used any of those machines at my polling place in either of those two elections other than me, wouldn't it be a better use of tax payer money to have a single machine serving all precincts at a single polling place? While you would still be following the letter of the law, the second machine could then be used for a backup at the polling place, since obviously these things break down frequently (or never work at all from the moment they were set up, as was the case in my own precinct in two elections in a row)? Doing so would help to ensure that disabled voters would have a better chance of being able to cast their vote without being forced to do so provisionally.
I am exceedingly disturbed to hear that --- had my provisional ballot gone through as it was supposed to, and had "verification" of my eligibility to vote occurred --- someone at election headquarters, who I do not know, and who I could not oversee to assure they were doing it correctly, was going to "duplicate [my ballot] to the correct ballot group for the precinct in which [I am] registered to vote."I hope you'll forgive my dubiousness that whether "Properly conducted" or not, and despite your assurance that "that process would have resulted in your selections being recorded and counted as you intended," there is absolutely no way for either me or you to know that as a fact. Nothing personal, but no, I do not trust a poll worker to "duplicate" my ballot properly by hand and I should not have to do so. Such a system is rife with the possibility for "human error" and/or fraud and, frankly, I take it as a personal affront that someone would "duplicate" my ballot before it is ever counted. I hope you will take a very serious look at that appalling practice prior to November, as it seems to me to be an outrageous and offensive practice, on a number of levels.
I look forward to your thoughts on the above, and I thank you again for the seriousness with which you have approached this unfortunate and disturbing matter. I also look forward to participating in the actual testing of your theory as to what went wrong as I requested previously.
On a final note, you should know that the poll workers at my polling place were exceedingly hard working, helpful and very engaged in the process. I'm troubled that, once again, it seems this failure may ultimately --- and inappropriately, in my opinion --- be attributed to the "human error" of the poll workers.
Time and again, in virtually every one of the thousands of instances of voting system failures similar to the one I encountered, and which occur with frightening regularity across the country, such failures are attributed to 'lack of' or 'poor training of poll workers.'You described it as a "process and training deficiency."
As I have pointed out time and again --- including in the testimony [PDF] I was recently invited to give to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) --- we need to implement simple, transparent voting systems that do not require patriotic, over-worked and under-paid poll workers to also be rocket scientists. We need to stop blaming them for the failures of the systems we have forced them to use. I would suggest that it's not the dedicated poll workers who are under-trained, but rather the voting systems, such as the one we use in Los Angeles County, that are overly-complicated.
If there is a "deficiency" anywhere, might I suggest we look firstat the voting machine companies --- in this case, ES&S --- who have provided us with voting systems that fail miserably, time and again, to meet the simple, specific, mission-critical purpose for which they were supposedly designed, at the cost of billions of L.A. County, California and federal tax-payer dollars.
Respectfully,
Brad
ColinJames commented on the above article:
OH MY SWEET LORD I just read Brad's testimony to the EAC and, not having been here for a while, was shocked to hear about the new guidelines they're developing- first, 600 pages is a joke, and those people are jokers, and secondly- and I cannot get my heartrate down 10 minutes after I saw this- these people FAILED TO INCLUDE ANY MENTION OF ASSURING THAT THE VOTES ARE COUNTED correctly.... and I swear to you I, and probably anyone here who read it who's not a dumbass troll, noticed the lack of that statement the very milisecond I finished reading the joke of a mission statement. But hey, at least they're making sure we're comfortable...
Well, after that, there's nothing much about L.A. County or its voting systems, that I could find at BradBlog.com.
The closest thing I found was this:
BradBlog's most recent post on L.A.-area voting, as applies to corruption-riddled Cudahay, CA: "Another Reason to Avoid Absentee Voting: CA City Officials Plead Guilty to Absentee Election Fraud"
"While there is no evidence of sensory deprivation in the Parker Center garage, if detainees were forced to kneel for seven straight hours on concrete with their hands cuffed behind their backs, it would amount to a classic form of KGB torture --- here applied by ostensibly civilian law enforcement against our own citizens for the act of peacefully protesting and petitioning their government for a redress of grievances, as per their First Amendment rights."
....If it were simply a matter of false arrests and excessive force by law enforcement, civil remedies to those wrongly treated might suffice. But the Meighan account, in particular, goes well beyond that. Torture is a war crime. If Meighan's account is accurate, U.S. citizens were subjected not only to brutal arrests but torture for a simple act of non-violent civil disobedience.
These allegations appear to be so serious that perhaps the only appropriate course would be a U.S. Justice Department investigation of the LAPD and the LASD.
Natural News reports: The California Secretary of State's website indicates that Prop 37 is behind by 559,776 votes.
And:
As of 2:30PM today, Thursday, November 8th, two days after the election, many votes in California remain uncounted.
I tried to find out how many.
It turns out that the Secretary of State of CA, responsible for elections in the state, doesn't know.
I was told all counties in California have been asked, not ordered, to report in with those figures. It's voluntary.
So I picked out a few of the biggest counties and called their voter registrar offices. Here are the boggling results:
Santa Clara County: 180,000 votes remain uncounted.
Orange County: 241,336 votes remain uncounted.
San Diego County: 475,000 votes remain uncounted.
LA County: 782,658 votes remain uncounted.
In just those four counties, 1.6 million votes remain uncounted.
The California Secretary of State's website indicates that Prop 37 is behind by 559,776 votes.
So in the four counties I looked into, there are roughly three times as many uncounted votes as the margin of Prop 37's defeat.
And as I say, I checked the numbers in only four counties. There are 54 other counties in the state. Who knows how many votes they still need to process?
So why is anyone saying Prop 37 lost?
Read more at the source.
And: Voters and FBI put on alert: Massive deceptions found in the No on 37 campaign, all documented/Tuesday, November 06, 2012 by: Summer Tierney
Here's a little of that article:
The agency reportedly contacted an attorney for the CA Right to Know campaign, in response to an official complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Justice on October 18, which cited numerous, and likely criminal, actions by the "No on 37" campaign.
Opponents of the Prop 37 ballot measure were reportedly caught red-handed spouting lie after lie in campaign advertisements distributed in recent weeks. In one advertisement - the one that's now getting the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation - campaign backers featured the FDA logo just below this direct quote: "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says a labeling policy like Prop 37 would be 'inherently misleading'."
The only problem is that the FDA denies it ever made any such statement... Woops. This means, as stated in the CA Right to Know official complaint, that "the use of the FDA's seal and authority for political purposes appears to be in clear violation of criminal statutes." Though the FBI has not yet said whether it will move forward with a formal investigation, the agency has referred the complaint to the FDA for further inquiry. At this time, CA Right to Know is confident the matter is "being taken seriously by all relevant agencies."
CA Right To Know is more confident than I am.
I mean, if one alphabet soup agency turns it over to another alphabet soup agency, like the FDA, and the FDA doesn't really seem to be doing much to keep food safe (no testing fish from the Pacific, despite Cesium 137 being found in bluefin tuna thanks to the Fukushima meltdown....)---well, then I don't know what the guys over at CA Right To Know are smoking, but I do not share their confidence.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/037858_No_on_37_criminal_fraud_deception.html#ixzz2Bn7yuzil
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/037858_No_on_37_criminal_fraud_deception.html#ixzz2Bn2erp6A
The author of the Natural News piece is:
Jon Rappoport
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
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