11/22/2008 12:08:37 AM EST

Wow, Norm Coleman must be getting reeeaaaallly desperate

posted by jutewe

I know that politicians will look for dubious technical reasons as to why questionable votes should be counted for them and/or not counted for their opponent, but I find it hard to believe Norm Coleman or his lawyers can seriously expect any of these ballot challenges to succeed. Watch the video and be amazed:

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One possible explanation for these challenges is that Coleman wants to spin the outcome if Al Franken ends up winning the recount, by suggesting it was only "questionable" ballots that enabled Franken to win. Another possibility is that he intends to delay the rulings on these ballots, via legal manouvres, until after the cut-off date (if one exists) when the election must be declared by. Whatever the case, it is definitely bottom of the barrel stuff.
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Wow, Norm Coleman must be getting reeeaaaallly desperate | 17 comments (17 topical, 0 hidden)
If true, that's insane. (none / 0)
Voting is not obligatory in the U.S.  We can vote for any one position and ignore the others.  We can vote for persons, not parties, or vice versa. Isn't that perfectly clearly the case?

by Arna on 11/22/2008 04:54:42 AM EST

Battling the War of Public Opinion (none / 0)

What Coleman is doing is making sure that, at the end of the recount and before the Committee decides on challenged votes, Coleman will be ahead.  He wants to pressure the Committee by making it appear that they are deciding the election against the will of the voter, as was expressed in both the initial tally and the recount.  And he is willing to risk frivolous challenges to do it.

You're right - this reeks of desperation.  Bear in mind that this video was taken of ballots from just one precinct, and Coleman will be ahead by less than 100 votes at the end of the recount.  This video showed 7 challenges that will clearly be decided for Franken, which likely will represent more than 10% of Coleman's lead.

At the very least, we now know that these daily tallies we are seeing are really no indication of what the final vote tally will be.  There is no question that many of the ballots Franken challenged, maybe because of smudges or fingerprints on the ballot, will be decided for Coleman.  And there are already thirty times more challenged ballots than the vote difference will be at the end of the recount.

So, the election will be decided by the Committee review of challenged ballots, and all Franken will have to do is get, maybe, 3% more of the challenges in his favor to overtake Coleman in the vote tally.

Or possibly, the election will be decided by a judge in legal challenges after the recount, including challenged ballots, have been counted.

Let us hope that Minnesota has a new Senator by Christmas.

by rbruck on 11/22/2008 09:37:45 AM EST

The Winner Is... (none / 0)

the guy who gets to sit in the Senate for the next 6 years.

But you are 100% correct that our election system cannot determine who actually got the most votes when the election is that close.  Whoever ends up being the Senator will get the job because of luck and political and legal wrangling.  As far as the election is concerned, the difference is withing the margin of error of our election system - it is a tie.

He who loves sausages and politics should never watch either of them being made.

by rbruck on 11/22/2008 01:46:04 PM EST

[ Parent ]
I agree that it will finish a statistical tie (none / 0)

but the process is designed to give victory to the person who probably most voters cast ballots intending to vote for. In this case it might be 50.1% likely that candidate A had more votes than candidate B - roughly 50-50, but 50.1% is still more than 49.9%, and in the end it is better to choose the 50.1% candidate than simply declare it 50-50 and have a coin toss. However, I realise that the system doesn't even achieve this. For example, if the tally of certain votes is the same for each candidate, but candidate A has 10 questionable ballots, all of which just pass the threshold for being "valid", and candidate B has 100 questionable ballots, all of which just fail the threshold, candidate A would win by 10 votes even though it is probable that candidate B had more voters intending to vote for them.

 What would give a better outcome (if the goal is as I have described) is if each ballot was given a probabilities of being for particular candidates or for no candidate, so eg, an 80% likelihood of a vote being for candidate A would result in 0.8 votes for candidate A. Now for this to work there would have to be discrete levels, say 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1 being the valid allocations for votes, to prevent arguments over every vote. This would mean that the vast majority of votes would simply be classified as 1 vote for (whoever) or 1 vote for no-one at all. However, in my previous example you might end up with the questionable ballot tally being (0.8 x 10) = 8 votes for candidate A and (0.6 x 100) = 60 votes for candidate B, resulting in candidate B winning, satisfying the goal of giving victory to the person who probably most voters cast ballots intending to vote for.

Now I realise that this is tinkering around the edges and that the vast majority of contests, even close ones, result in a nigh on 100% probability that the candidate with most intended votes will win (assuming that ballots are well-designed and a proper process for accepting and rejecting ballots is followed, and ignoring various activities of voter suppression). I also realise that there could be a host of problems with the implementation of such a scheme and that this could result in more protracted legal disputes, but in principle, assigning probabilities to each vote, rather than declaring a vote to be either a vote for a particular candidate or no vote at all, results in a better outcome.

by jutewe on 11/22/2008 08:07:59 PM EST

[ Parent ]
Naive (none / 0)

jutewe wrote:

...the process is designed to give victory to the person who probably most voters cast ballots intending to vote for.

I wish I could believe this.  Having spent most of my waking hours during the last six months working on computer security for the election in Florida as a volunteer for the Obama campaign, I believe the process is designed to give an advantage of several percentage points to the political party that controls the election process and controls the companies who provide election equipment.  It is not designed to accurately count votes.

We can land a robot on Mars within inches of our intended landing spot - do you think that we cannot count votes with an accuracy of less than 1 vote?

Of course we can.  We can do Internet voting and within milliseconds we can know exactly who got the most votes, accurate to the vote.  And Internet voting would provide a complete audit trail so that if someone attemts any kind of election fraud we stand an excellent chance of catching them.  And every voter could double-check after the election to make sure his or her vote was accurately counted and is part of the total.

So, why do we mess with putting ink marks on pieces of paper, feeding the paper into optical mark reading machines and then manually transferring the counts from the OMR machines onto precinct tallies, and then combining the precinct tallies on Department of State computers?

We do this because all of this manipulation gives ample opportunity to push the system to favor the political party that is in control of the system.  It gives opportunity to disenfranchise voters on the basis of what neighborhood they live in or the color of their skin.  It makes it impossible in many cases for voters to even realize that their vote did not count.  Ignorance is bliss.

But what political party will give up their advantage by fixing the voting system?  It is a Catch-22.  Only the party in power has the ability to fix the system, but doing so might cost them their jobs.

by rbruck on 11/22/2008 09:49:18 PM EST

[ Parent ]
Clarify (none / 0)

I was not trying to suggest that there was no foul play in the 2008 election via purging, caging, having few voting machines in certain precints (and therefore long lines) and many in other precincts, dubiously designed ballots and voting machines etc...

I must say that I am not sold on electronic or internet voting though, although I am not an expert on this. From what I understand of the Minnesota process, it has worked (and is working) very well. Given that paper ballots are used (which I think is a good system), it is only a very small fraction of votes that appear to have been miscounted due to OMRs misreading ballots etc, and these errors can be rectified in manual recounts. The way of casting and counting votes in Minnesota seems perfectly reasonable, and if all the States' ballots were designed and counted like the Minnesota ballots, I think (at least this part of) the US election system would work well. At least as far as casting and counting votes in Minnesota (once all the hurdles to being able to cast a vote have been negotiated), I maintain that the process is designed to give victory to the person who probably most voters cast ballots intending to vote for.

What we are left with is a very small number of ballots where the voting intention is somewhat (or wholly) unclear (other than the problem of people who were disenfranchised by not being allowed to vote at all or not having their vote counted). This is due to things like voters partially filling in one candidate's voting circle as well as fully filling in another candidate's circle, voter's putting a mark next to a candidate's name but not in their circle, voters filling in 2 circles but underlining one candidate's name, etc... It is in these cases that the course of action taken by election officials is an "all or nothing" approach to counting votes, and it was comparing this approach to my "fraction of the vote" approach that I reasoned the "fraction" approach would produce a better outcome.

 

by jutewe on 11/23/2008 03:24:51 AM EST

[ Parent ]
Amen again... (none / 0)
Let's see the democrats actually support voting issues that MAKE SENSE!!! :)

by bobo1 on 11/23/2008 01:47:23 PM EST

[ Parent ]
Transparency at last (none / 0)
Mike Duncan, chairman
Republican National Committee
Nov. 23, 2008
 
Dear Chairman Duncan,
 
I recently became aware of your representative KenTx's offer to reform the electoral process, and am very pleased that you have taken this first step to end the uncertainty in the present chaotic system.
 
I do not speak for the DNC, and cannot conjecture how they will respond; in any case I always thought these matters were Congess' concern and not subject to bargaining by the major parties, but I could be wrong; in any case the universal paper ballot idea is acceptable to me although I think carbon copies would be superfluous as well as messy.
 
I am eager to hear your own thoughts on the matter, and am cc'ing the DNC for their reaction as well.
 
Yours truly,
Peter M___
 
(I will post the Chairman's response when received. Will be so relieved to see this logjam broken.)

by ashbul on 11/23/2008 02:29:14 PM EST

[ Parent ]
Why Do You Want to Exclude Voters? (none / 0)

There is only one reason to require driver's licenses or other ID, and that is to exclude voters from being able to vote who are entitled to vote.  Why do you want to disenfranchise voters?

My voting method would be very simple and transparent.  At any time within the 4 weeks prior to the election, you can login to the election website, provide your social security number, and vote.  You can then print out a receipt with your vote on it.

Then, at any time up to the election, you can check your vote to make sure there has been no funny business.  You should vote early, so that if anything strange happens (like your printer is out of ink) you can have it corrected in plenty of time before the election.

At 12:01 AM on the day of the election, all of the votes are tabulated, and your vote is locked in.  Any time during the day of the election, you can login to the election website and check to make sure that the vote that was locked in was the vote that you placed.  If it wasn't, either fax or personally take in your printed receipt by 7 pm the day of the election so that the problem can be resolved.  At 7:00:01 pm, the vote tallies will be published along with the statistics of how many discrepancies or challenges were reported.  If the margin of victory is greater than the reported discrepancies, then we know who the winner is.

Each discrepancy will be treated as a potential criminal case and will be investigated.  If someone is altering the vote, they will be brought to justice.

The system is simple.  Vote.  Verify your vote.  And know that your vote was counted.  Full transparency and verification.  Everybody who is legally entitled to vote can vote, and everybody denied a vote knows why.

Your proposal where you make up bullshit rules like the driver's license thing has no place in an honest democracy.

by rbruck on 11/23/2008 04:08:51 PM EST

[ Parent ]
More Double-Speak (none / 0)

KenTX Said:

Anyone who is against Voter ID is a prime suspect for voter fraud. Can I have your name and address for the FBI?

This is more of the same old Fascist double-speak scare-mongering tactic.  The ONLY reason that KenTX wants this useless Driver's License rule is so that he can disenfranchise voters, which is the real voter fraud.  Yet, he tries to make us believe that WE are the ones trying to fraud the public and that he will throw our asses in jail.

by rbruck on 11/23/2008 05:55:55 PM EST

[ Parent ]
Or (none / 0)

just maybe?

 "If you're opposed to Voter ID, its because you want to cheat."

Maybe you are apposed to living in a fascist society where government officials demand you produce "papers?!?!?". Goldwater Republicans understand this and that is why they no longer vote for Republicans.

I don't know if you are aware of this but there is a list of people who have been denied their right to vote including Catholic nuns and a sweet 100 year old retired school teacher. Some of them have been denied their voter ID card also.

Trust me the ACLU is aware of this and I have a feeling this is eventually going to blow up in the Republican's face just like all their other hair brained schemes. Timing is everything. I believe most of the Supreme Court members gave warnings about the possible repercussions of implementing a law such as this.

Ken, the thing I have learned from you is that you "so called conservatives" have no consept of the idea that what you do today will have reprocussions on what happens tomorrow. I find that fasinating.

by z1p101 on 11/23/2008 07:43:25 PM EST

[ Parent ]
I have done them all (none / 0)

without producing squat as far as producing "papers" in my life time.

What, did you go to some private school where  no one was educated in the art of getting around owning an official ID?

I believe there is a post around here where you brag about how your dad brought you to a strip club when you were only 16. Do I need to find it? 

by z1p101 on 11/23/2008 10:51:08 PM EST

[ Parent ]
I have? (none / 0)
No Ken. Within the last 5 years done everything you have listed  ("buying beer, flying, buying cigs, entering a gentleman's club, cashing a check") without producing so much as a library card, never mind a drivers license.

by z1p101 on 11/24/2008 03:24:56 AM EST

[ Parent ]
Oh Ken (none / 0)

Always using the personal attacks. Anyway......

"That’s a good thing, because the number of states requiring that voters present identification when they go to the polls is growing."

For it to keep growing, the Republicans are going to have to figure out a way to start winning again. That would mean getting people who think like I do to start voting for them again (Pssst, I don't know if you have noticed, there are quite a few of us "Ex Republicans" around here and that number is growing).

Republicans are not going to get my vote as long as they are the pro "papers!?!?!?" party.

See how this works? Republicans are alienating themselves the American people this this Fascist mentality and they don't even realize they are doing it.

by z1p101 on 11/24/2008 01:49:49 PM EST

[ Parent ]
Still not convinced by electronic voting (none / 0)
Firstly, your way to determine if election fraud has occurred is to reveal who you voted for, which goes against the principle of the right to a secret ballot. Secondly, a person can look at a computer screen an think "it's OK, my vote went to the right person", but have no idea if in fact their vote did go to the right person due to vote manipulation occurring at some other point in the process (eg at the point when all the votes are electronically tabulated). Thirdly, only a fraction of voters would check up on and print their votes, so the margin of victory being bigger than the number of mismatched votes wouldn't actually prove that the result was fair anyway. If you have all the ballots available to go over in a recount, as is the case with an all paper ballot system, this difficulty is eliminated.

by jutewe on 11/23/2008 08:23:16 PM EST

[ Parent ]
Private Ballot (none / 0)

The method I described does, indeed, tradeoff privacy for transparency to some extent.  But when you look at it, this system is as private as your bank account or credit card information.

Anyone who knows your social security number and date of birth can already get the details of your bank account.  So why do we need more protection than that to protect who we voted for?

If there is a problem with your bank statement, you take the statement to the bank to resolve the problem.  If there is a problem with someone tampering with your vote, you take your ballot to City Hall to catch the slugs who did that to you.

Of course we can make this as private and secure as we want, at the expense of making the system more complicated and the process to vote more burdensome.  I was trying to strike the right balance between privacy and convenience.

Next, you are concerned about the final vote tabulation, but this is no different than any method of vote tabulation.  If the computers at the Department of State are compromised, then all current votes and all future votes are invalid.

What my proposal does is simplify the system to a SINGLE POINT OF POSSIBLE FAILURE.  It is much easier to protect a single point of failure than to protect 8 or 10 places where the system can be compromised.

To your final point - the reason to allow individuals to verify their own vote is to increase the chances of finding anyone who tries to fraud the system.  Certainly only a fraction of voters will bother to verify their votes.  Currently, with the voting systems closed and proprietary, there is no possible way to catch people who fraud the system.  But with millions of people looking for fraud on election day, our chances of catching any widespread voter fraud is millions of times better.

I don't expect this brainstorm is perfect.  But it is a reasonable start, and illustrates how easy it should be to vote and count the votes.

It is time to quit listening to people who scream VOTER FRAUD just so they can disenfranchise people and create a voting system that is so complicated and convoluted that THEY can fraud the system.

This isn't rocket science.

by rbruck on 11/23/2008 09:01:53 PM EST

[ Parent ]
First (none / 0)

your system sets up a situation where your vote can be traced back to your "pin" and then to you. It is dangerous.

Second, I can get that web browser screen to tell you whatever you want to here with 0 effort. What really happened is a different story. 

You have to understand how computers actually work to understand the flaws in your idea. 

by z1p101 on 11/23/2008 09:09:59 PM EST

[ Parent ]
Wow, Norm Coleman must be getting reeeaaaallly desperate | 17 comments (17 topical, 0 hidden)
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