Problem-plagued ballot scanners could impact Coleman-Franken recount

Franken won the election. A Coleman Somali translator telling Somalis how to vote for four hours. Ballot scanners favoring the Republican. I thought I was in Minnesota, not incest-plagued Appalachian country where DNA can be manipulated by aliens to influence voters. I think Coleman should do the honorable thing and resign.

These faulty machines could be responsible for flipping races throughout the country. We should call for hand recounts in GA, and AK immediately.

The M-100s are tested before every election for accuracy, and serviced if necessary. Machines that reveal they aren’t correctly scanning ballots are not put in the field. Obviously, they are machines and can be subject to mechanical failure.

That’s why the recount is part of the process in close elections. When a race is close, we verify the result with human eyes. There is also a random audit procedure, even if a recount would not have been triggered.

The election officials I know in the state of Minnesota are professionals who are committed to accuracy and legitimacy. Now all eyes are on them, and I just hope the partisans can appreciate their commitment to preserving the integrity of our democracy.

WHEN will we all demand that all software-driven machines be thrown out of our elections?
Year after year, election after election, races are stolen, and we the citizens are defrauded.

How does it feel to have been “ruled” by an unelected usurper of our White House for 8 years?
Has he not raped the nation and left us bereft of our Constitutional protections and stripped of our savings and common wealth for generations to come? How is our morality and standing in the world? We will continue to have traitors in our government until and unless we achieve real elections. Real elections can only be achieved through public transparent counting of our votes. By definition, counting by machines IS NOT transparent nor verifiable- unless a hand recount is done.
Why delude ourselves in the first place? Just hand-count in public the FIRST time around and get it over with. How can it be that some developing nations have much clearer ways of counting their votes? E.g. transparent boxes for each candidate, covered during the voting, uncovered at end of voting- shows immediately if there was a landslide. Just one possible way to process votes where there is NO POSSIBLE WAY TO MISREAD THE RESULTS.

I’m sorry, but I feel like I need to get some corrections added here about MN and the electronic voting systems in use. I am certainly no fan of Mary Kiffmeyer, but she did not “put” the ES&S machines anywhere. The choice of voting machines is made either at a county or a municipality level (varies by county as to who is allowed to choose voting systems, I believe). Ramsey County uses a Diebold system called the Accu-Vote. Hennepin County uses ES&S machines. What the ES&S and Diebold machines have in common is that they have met the certification requirements of the state, which are administered by the SOS office. And that vetting process involves an advisory committee of experienced election administrators, among others, and a testing process. So I’m pretty sure that all Mary Kiffmeyer and her staff would have done back in ‘06 was certify that these electronic voting systems met the requirements laid out in the statutes, and thus were adequate for use in the counties and municipalities according to the legislative standards. I’m a Ramsey County guy, where we’ve been using the Accu-Vote since at least 2001, but I don’t think the ES&S machines are actually new since ‘06, either (though a call to Minneapolis’ elections officials could verify that). For those wishing to dig into the statutory language, the relevant statutes can be found at this link, and I’d direct people more specifically to M.S. 206.57, 206.58, 206.80 and 206.805 (http://www.sos.state.mn.us/docs/2008_chapter_206_-_6-24-2008_final.pdf) So I think on this count, the former Sec’y of State is being used as a strawperson. As bad an SOS as she was, she’s hardly at fault for these machines and their possible role in this recount.

I’ll also point out that both the ES&S and the Accu-Vote are not known to be perfect machines among the election officials that chose them (and as if such a machine exists). I believe that the Accu-Vote is considered to be the more accurate and reliable machine, but even the Accu-Vote is acknowledged by Ramsey County’s top election official as having a reading/scanning failure rate of 2 per 1000 ballots. (http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=528872&catid=2). And if you follow this link, the article extrapolates a potential of 6000 new votes which the recount could “find” due to scanning failures, but I must note that I think most precincts use the ES&S system, not the Accu-Vote, so they are using an incorrect measuring stick, in my opinion, to make that extrapolation. Don’t know if that would influence the number to be higher or lower, but I’m sure it makes their suggested number inaccurate.

Bottom line, I would suggest that this is all far from sinister. Minnesota runs very solid, very clean, very well administered elections. As a long-time election judge, I can’t say we run perfect elections here (again, as if that would be possible when human beings are involved), but the problems I see on Election Day tend to arise from the complexity of the process and the occasional failures of some election judges to understand that complexity. And considering that this is work that is only done (at most) two times a year, I’d say that most people handle the complexity fairly well.

I do NOT believe that Michelle Bachmann WON, either! We should call for an investigation into THAT race. Who here really believes that we elected Tim Pawlenty, Norm Coleman, and Michelle Bachmann?

All three of these people are KNOWN Rove-Bush pals. Michelle practically gives Bush tongue-jobs. INVESTIGATE THESE RACES!!!

It seems that these electronic voting machines are a quick and easy way to tally votes in races that AREN’T within a few hundred votes. Of course, the votes first have to be counted to determine just how close the race is. This is where the hand recount comes into play.

To hand count every single race from the start is time and $$$$ consuming. I don’t believe this would properly serve the citizens’ best interest (Pat G). Allowing the TIME (a.k.a. patience everyone) to properly recount races that are “too close to call”, is the best way to make sure the proper candidate wins the election. Jumping to conclusions only draws attention away from the task at hand, which is a proper, accurate and precise recount

I apologize in advance if my comment is duplicated….

Just weighing in about the 6th CD race between Bachmann and Tinklenberg. I am struggling with doubt about Bachmann’s win, too. No matter how much I truly dislike her style of politics, I believe if she won fair and square then she does deserve to be the winner. I am currently waiting for the MN SOS to provide me with answers about why three family members now have had their ballots rejected by the optical scanner voting machine at our polling place’s in the 6th. I was concerned enough in 2006 to ask the poll worker if my vote still counted after she looked over the ballot and reinserted it into the machine after it spit it back out. She said the ballot looked fine, shrugged her shoulders a bit, because the machine took it the second time. My other family member had the same thing happen that day too, a few miles away, same district. I did ask a friend who was poll worker in another district what that was about. She told me that she hadn’t heard of that happening without an error being present on the ballot. I explained that the ballot’s were correctly filled out. No answer to my question, so I decided to let it go and chalk it up an odd coincidence that two of us could have this happen for the first time in 2006. Never happened before 2006. And then another close family member had the same thing happen again on Tuesday November 4, 2008. The poll worker looked over the ballot and reinserted it back into the machine. No problem and no correction was needed said the poll worker. I’ve been plagued with this awful feeling that the votes were voided out in 2006 and this time in 2008. I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist or a sore loser, but something is not right about what happened with our ballots. I was elated the day my husband and I went to vote on Tuesday and in a flash it was replaced with a heavy deflated feeling. I’ve been voting for a long time and now thoroughly doubt the integrity of our districts voting process. The family member who had a problem with their ballot in 2006 decided to do an absentee vote, because luckily they would be out of town. Wished we had been too. Thank you.

I’m so looking forward to this recount. I really want Franken in there, but it’s so dang close, and I know a lot of people who split their vote that I could believe a Coleman win. His “acceptance” speech, though, was so slimy and low-class. If I didn’t already know he was such a douchenozzle, I would find it very revealing about his character.

As for Bachmann…there are so many people in her district who vote on abortion/religion alone that I can believe it. She’s crazier than a sh*thouse rat, and it saddens me that those folks chose their single issue over the overarching eliminationist witchhunt frame of mind that she embodies.

Uh, yes. It does make you guys sound like conspiracy theorists and crazies. Sometimes, the ballot won’t go through the opti-scan the first time because of folds. Think about a dollar that you put in a soda machine. Sometimes, the machines rejects the dollar but if you smooth out the folds, it takes it just fine. You would probably have more credibility if you didn’t blather about every single election that your side lost being rigged and fraudulent. You’re bound to lose some election here and there. Stop saying that every election where your side loses is fraudulent or keep looking like a kook. It’s up to you.

Check the lobbying expenses for ES&S. They boosted up to $40,000 and sold all counties, Diebold? nothing and sold none. Kiffy did ‘put’ them in. Sure, up to each county but
the county copies what is recommended and what the rest of them do.