RHP: From the Verified Voting website that I have been using religiously since 2004. All the information is there, county by county. Begin with the national map, click on the desired state, then click on the desired county.
JB: Great. Thanks for sharing that resource with us. Let's get back to those darned machines and what would motivate anyone to insinuate them into our precious elections?
RHP: I do not know anyone's motivations for wanting these devices. But I explicitly stated, in my letter to Alex Padilla, that I can think of only three: (1) in the name of "fairness," that is, all voters should be equally subjected to the same unverifiable voting system; (2) because voters four years ago were impatient with the length of time it took to reliably count the ballots; or (3) because some nefarious actors want to clinch their ability to rig our elections.
JB: So let's examine the possibilities you lay out. Number one doesn't make any sense. Since when does every voter have to use an inferior, more opaque and less verifiable system when it is totally unnecessary? The second reason, in my opinion, does not justify investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in the already described inferior and insecure system. And number three, well, what would you say about that? That the Secretary of State of California has, inadvertently or not, opened wide the barn doors and invited all with less than stellar intent to do their worst?
RHP: Well, the first argument is pure sophistry, but that doesn't mean they won't say it. The second argument I find unpersuasive; we will have already suffered through a lengthy and tedious primary process, and we ought to be willing to wait a few days, if necessary, to find out who really won the election. The real reason, I suspect, is to make election rigging undetectable.
JB: Oh no! Tell us more!
RHP: Let me explain how an election with hand-marked paper ballots is supposed to work. The poll workers fill out and swear to a ballot accounting chart. The number of used ballots, plus the number of spoiled ballots (in which case the voter gets a new one), plus the number of unused ballots, are supposed to equal the number of ballots they had at the start of the day. Each ballot has a numbered stub which gets torn off and placed in a separate box when the ballot is handed to the voter; and the stub number is written down next to the voter's name in the poll book. Everybody still gets to cast a secret ballot, and if all the used and spoiled ballots (and their stubs) and all the unused ballots (with their stubs still attached) are accounted for and retained, we know that the hand-marked ballots being counted are the same ones that were actually handed to the voters.
But now, elections officials have insinuated unverifiable computer printouts in place of actual paper ballots marked by actual voters, and I fail to see how a proper accounting is possible. All we know is what the computer tells us. We are supposed to believe in the system as an act of faith, based upon no reliable paper record, no forensic evidence whatsoever.
JB: Scary and very very disturbing. How did this come about? Who spoke up against this system besides you, Richard? Was it widely favored? Who weighed in, who was consulted? Or did it all just unfold without proper vetting and nary a peep from voters and those in the know?
RHP: I don't know who else spoke up, other than Brad Friedman and his listeners, and other persons with a long-standing interest in election integrity. The reason I don't know is because the so-called "public comments" have not been made public. Some have posted their own statements online, for example, Brad Friedman, and the National Election Defense Coalition.
I contacted Alex Padilla's office asking to read the public comments, expecting to be able to view them online. The office of the Voting Systems Manager called me back and informed me that I must submit an application to obtain the public comments, and if my application is approved, I would have to pay to obtain photocopies of all of them at once. In other words, I would have to submit a public records request to look at public comments, and pay for the privilege. Surely there is someone in their IT department who can figure out how to post them online. They must not want anybody to see them, surely not before the California primary takes place.
JB: That certainly doesn't pass the sniff test. At least, not for me.
RHP: This is what I told Alex Padilla in my "public comments" which, as it turns out, are not public: An election that cannot be verified can be rigged, and is as much of a threat to the consent of the governed as an election that is rigged. (emphasis in original)
Fourteen states will be voting on Super Tuesday (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia). It will be difficult to monitor them all at once. Four of these states will make widespread use of touch screens with "ballot marking devices" or with no "paper trail" at all -- namely, Arkansas, California, Tennessee and Texas, so I will try to monitor these, at least.
Three days before Super Tuesday was the primary in South Carolina, where "ballot marking devices" were forced upon all the voters. Four years ago in South Carolina, touch screens with no paper trail were forced upon all the voters. What am I supposed to do? Compare the results, county by county, of one unverifiable primary with another? This is the insidious nature of unverifiable elections. If it happens more than once, we don't have reliable baseline data to compare with.
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