If you are reading this online, you may have heard that curiously both Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney got a lot higher percentage of the votes in precincts which were counted on computers than they did in precincts which were counted by hand, and even more curiously, all of the other candidates showed exactly the opposite trends. If someone printed this out and handed it to you to read, then get online and look at the links that I am providing at the end of this article.
Many who look at these New Hampshire results think that it looks like the results from the machines were tampered with. In case this is the first time you are reading about how votes are counted on computers and you are thinking that these fears are unfounded, take a minute and think about three things: (1) How does a computer count votes? (2) Do computers sometimes malfunction? and (3) Do you have any security measures on your computer to protect against hackers?
The last two questions are really easy, but just in case you haven’t yet thought of how computers count, it is really simple. Computers count inside their case, with no oversight, just like they are told to do, unless of course, they malfunction or are hacked.
So, she wanted to know whether or not I thought that anyone could do anything about it. I told her that I would take a look, that I could write a story about it, and maybe shed some light on it. I told her that she might have some luck getting Congressman Dennis Kucinich to speak out against it, or maybe even take legal action. After all, there is legal and historical support for making sure that the votes are counted accurately. Congressman Kucinich has taken action to obtain a recount in New Hampshire, and he has been a truly great leader who has consistently worked to preserve your right to have your vote counted accurately.
I told her that Senator John Edwards has spoken out against touch screen voting machines, and that since he is also a well respected trial attorney, he might also be aware of current cases which seek to prohibit the use of computers to count votes in secret. She mentioned that she had heard that he was not happy that Senator Kerry conceded so quickly in 2004 especially with all of the reports of problems. But, she thought that since he is from South Carolina, he must have been aware of the implementation of touch screen voting machines there, and that if he were going to do anything, he would have already taken action.
So, I told her that I would take a look, let her know what I found, and write an article about South Carolina’s use of touch screen computers to count the votes. I really didn’t expect to find much other than the usual implementation of touch screens after passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), but I was very pleasantly surprised. That’s right. I said, "pleasantly surprised."
I scroogled South Carolina elections. (Yeah, it’s not mispelled. See the link below.) I quickly found the State Election Commission’s web site. I noticed that South Carolina was using the notoriously unreliable iVotronic touch screen computers made by ES&S to conduct its elections. These were the same machines which had numerous problems recording votes accurately in Sarasota County, Florida in 2006.
I made a call to the office of South Carolina’s State Election Commission, and I was immediately connected with Chris Whitmire, its Public Information Officer. I explained I was doing research for an article on the upcoming election that I was going to write for Op Ed News, and he courteously answered my questions about what, when, where, why, and how South Carolina ended up using the iVotronic touch screens for its elections.
He informed me that after HAVA passed, South Carolina passed a statute, § 7-13-1655, which allowed the State Election Commission to decide how to conduct elections throughout the state and that the Commission decided to use touch screen computers to conduct elections. I asked who the Commissioners were and whether they were elected or appointed. They were appointed by the Republican Governor. It seems a little ironic that appointed bureaucrats decided how to preserve and protect democracy in South Carolina, doesn’t it?
I asked Chris whether the Commissioners were aware of the Everest report, the fact that leaders in other states have expressed concern about using computers to count votes, and about the problems with touch screen voting machines that have occurred in a variety of elections such as in 2006 in Sarasota, Florida. He told me that the commission was aware of all of that, but that they still had confidence that the touch screen computers would work in South Carolina.
Since they were appointed, I asked whether there was any rule requiring any diversity of backgrounds or parties. Chris informed me that at least one member had to be from each party. So, I said, "please tell me who is the Green, the Libertarian, the Socialist, and the Communist." We laughed as obviously the requirement only applies to membership in major parties, and Chris confirmed that the statute said that.
Although we hear about how we allow open debate and want tolerance and diversity, when it comes to who is in a seat of power, somehow you have to be either a Republican or a Democrat and of course, pro war. If we weren’t fighting them over there, we’d be fighting them over here, or something like that, right?
I asked whether there was any provision in South Carolina’s Constitution which prohibited the legislature from delegating its legislative power to the executive branch. Like most of you, Chris said, "what?" I said that the Founders had this belief that power should be split between the three branches of government. You know, that system of checks and balances thing.
A branch should not usurp the power of another branch or delegate its power to another branch. Don’t worry, most people don’t know about that. I wonder, could it be that lack of competition in education thing? Of course, Congress delegates its power away all the time now, so it must be OK, right? (It’s not me. I’m busy working to bring home the bacon here in DC. You need to contact the Department or the Court about that because they made that rule or issued that order, not us.)
Any way, I explained that some state constitutions specifically prohibit this, but he hadn’t heard of anything like that in South Carolina. Between us, no one really worries about separation of powers anymore except for the Federal Judiciary. The judges really do not want Congress to take back its role of reviewing complaints about judges and removing them by impeachment when they exhibit a lack of good behavior by blatantly ignoring the law, or the facts, or both.
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