[IP] Lynn Landes' analysis of the 2002 Elections from RISKS

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 11:30:35 PST
From: "Peter G. Neumann" <neumann@csl.sri.com>
Subject: Lynn Landes' analysis of the 2002 Elections

  <[This item is included in its entirety with the permission of the author.]>

2002 Elections: Republican Voting Machines,
     Election Irregularities, and "Way-Off" Polling Results
By Lynn Landes, 8 Nov 2002

"The Republicans will never give up their voting machines," said a top
Republican party official to Charlie Matulka, the Democratic candidate for
the U.S. Senate seat in Nebraska. This statement was in response to
Charlie's very public protest against the conflict-of-interest inherent in
the candidacy of Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE). Hagel has held top executive
positions (and still has investments) in companies that owned the machines
that counted the vote in Nebraska this election and last.

Republicans dominate the voting machine business. So, I expected the
Republicans to take back the Senate... amid reports of voting machine
"irregularities" in several states and polling results that didn't come
close to election outcomes.  And with billions of dollars at stake, who
could resist the temptation to tweak results? It's duck soup.

Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, the nation's leading expert in voting machine
technology, says, "Any programmer can write code that displays one thing on
a screen, records something else, and prints yet another result." But they
do make mistakes as we know from the multitude of reports in this election
and past ones. Dr. Mercuri's real fear is that one day the "irregularities"
will go away, as programmers learn their clandestine craft all too well.

Then how can we tell if the "fix was in?"  An examination of exit polling
and pre-election polling versus election results could raise a few red
flags.

We can't use Voter News Service (VNS) this year. VNS is a top-secret private
consortium owned by ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News,
and NBC News that has "projected" election night winners since 1964. VNS
collapsed camp on election day due to technical problems... they said. Or
was it the glare of publicity since the 2000 presidential election that
brought the charade to an end? Questions have been raised since its
inception, that VNS was a cover for election day vote rigging or other
shenanigans. And it was strange that when VNS management made its
announcement on Tuesday, they didn't make a big deal over how the shutdown
affected the 64,000 temporary employees they claim they hired for this
election.

Anyway, that leaves us with pre-election polling to ponder. An intensive
effort to review and interpret that data is currently underway by Bev Harris
and her staff at Talion.com.

Meanwhile, I called John Zogby of the highly respected Zogby International.
I asked him if over the years he had noticed increased variation between
pre-election predictions and election results.  Zogby said that he didn't
notice any big problems until this year. Things were very different this
time.  "I blew Illinois. I blew Colorado (and Georgia). And never in my life
did I get New Hampshire wrong...but I blew that too." Or did he?

This year might instead be a repeat of the 2000 presidential election, when
the polls accurately predicted the winner (Gore), but the voting system in
Florida collapsed under the weight of voting machine failure, election day
chicanery, and outright disenfranchisement of thousands of black voters by
Republican state officials.

And for those who believed that the new election reform law does anything to
protect the security of your vote...think again. The federal standards to be
developed and implemented as a result of the new law will be VOLUNTARY. What
Congress really did was to throw $2.65 billion dollars at the states, so
that they could lavish it on a handful of private companies that are
controlled by ultra-conservative Republicans, foreigners, and felons.

Let's take a moment to look back rather than forward. In the last several
decades the rich have gotten richer and the poor poorer. This is not a
formula for a conservative groundswell. Yet both conservative Democrats and
right wing Republicans have long enjoyed success at the polls. While, most
of Europe still uses paper ballots, voting machines have been in America
since 1889. The use of computers in voting technology began around
1964. Today, less than 2% of the American electorate use hand-counted paper
ballots.

The question is...have elections in America been rigged to slowly, but
surely shift power to the right? In the secretive world of voting machine
companies, anything is possible.

The sad fact is that the legitimacy of government in the United States will
remain in question as long as over 98% of the vote is tabulated by machines
that can be easily rigged, impossible to audit, and owned by a handful of
private companies. Until we get rid of those voting machines, democracy in
America may be a distant memory.

Lynn Landes is a freelance journalist specializing in environment and
election issues on www.EcoTalk.org. Lynn's been a radio show host, a regular
commentator for a BBC radio program, and news reporter for DUTV in
Philadelphia, PA.

Lynn Landes, 217 S. Jessup Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 629-3553 / (215) 629-1446 (FAX)  lynnlandes@earthlink.net]

  [Lynn's writings often also run on alternative online media, such as
  www.CommonDreams.com.  She has a Web page for VotingSecurity at
  http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingSecurity.htm .  PGN]

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