Here we go again! Huge numbers of votes are missing from E-voting machine tallies in Florida. Is anyone surprised?
Governor Jeb Bush and the Florida Department of State pledged on Friday to investigate tens of thousands of missing e-votes spread across at least four counties. This will be the second such investigation in only four years. A large percentage of the votes cast in Florida's just completed election came up missing. These are known as “undervotes” where the pick is not recorded on the machine, but all other races have selections. The affected e-voting machines were all manufactured by iVotronic.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - Jet in Columbus
Clavos I'm not implying anyone screwed with anything. I'm saying the machines are undeniably undependable and should be discarded for something else.
As for your margin, as much as you seem to "marginalize it" that's almost 1 in 5 votes tallied had a missing vote in the same race. As in my article, I told you that in some counties the ratio was MORE than 1 in 5.
Nothing suspicious there.
27 - Jet in Columbus
Clavos more details are now coming out of Florida...
On the day that would again cement Florida's reputation as ground zero for election oddities, Les-Lee Rowland walked into the polling station where she worked and realized there was serious trouble.
Some voters complained that the touch-screen machines weren't registering votes for Congress, prompting Rowland to shut two down briefly for inspection. And more than a dozen poll workers said voters complained of missing the race entirely due to how it was displayed on the screen - an issue so serious that Sarasota County elections chief Kathy Dent had pointed it out three days earlier in an e-mail to poll workers handling early voting.
Dent headlined her note: "CRITICAL."
On Election Day, Dent's office reinforced the point by calling each of the 156 precincts to remind poll workers to let every voter know the ballot design made it easy to miss the congressional race.
By then, it was apparently too late.
The result: 18,382 nonvotes in the race, a looming recount because of the tiny vote margin between winner and loser, and renewed criticism of the iVotronic voting machines - the same type used in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
For the rest of this article click anywhere in the underlined section
Nope nothing suspicious here either Clavos
28 - Clavos
As for your margin, as much as you seem to "marginalize it" that's almost 1 in 5 votes tallied had a missing vote in the same race.
Correct. Why were there problems only in these relatively small (except for Sarasota) counties, and not in the big Democratic stronghold of South Florida (Miami/Ft. Lauderdale), or the Republican strongholds of the Panhandle (Tallahassee and Pensacola) and Jacksonville?
Even Palm Beach, where all the doddering old farts are (god bless 'em, they're the reason we don't have an income tax!) didn't have screwups.
There were no (or very few) problems in the high volume counties.
Coincidence? The machines?
I don't think so. I think the elections officials in those small counties screwed up.
29 - Jet in Columbus
I'm stupid, I mean it. As I gay man even I should know better than to argue with a woman... any woman!
30 - Clavos
Jet, I just read the article you linked in #27.
I'm more convinced than ever that the election officials in those counties didn't set the machines up well--the consistent complaint, according to the article, are that the voters (especially the old farts) didn't see the race in question on their screens.
In Florida, the ballots (and the machines) are set up by each county registrar's office; they're not uniform throughout the state. Each county is different. Thus, only a handful of counties had a problem.
The article you linked does say that the machines all apparently worked OK.
31 - Jet in Columbus
Well then send a telegram or e-mail to your governor, I wouldn't have written this if he hadn't initiated the investigation in the first place.
sigh
32 - Jet in Columbus
Is Governor Bush initiating an investigation-Yes
Are over 48,000 votes missing-yes
Was the race that started this won by less than 400 votes-Yes
Did all the problems in that election appear on only one manufcturer's machine-Yes
Was the problem pointed out but not corrected three days ago, and brought to the attention of the board of elections-Yes
Over a four county spread were tens of thousands of votes unaccounted for-yes
I stand by the article as written.
your mileage may vary
33 - Clavos
He HAS to investigate it, and take the necessary steps to correct it.
Let's see how long Kathy Dent keeps her job.
In Broward (Ft. Lauderdale), after the 2000 fiasco, when the investigation determined that the then Broward elections supervisor had screwed up royally, Jeb fired her immediately.
34 - Clavos
Jet,
Are over 48,000 votes missing-yes
Was the race that started this won by less than 400 votes-Yes
The votes involved in the race for the FL-13 district are 18,382.
The 45,000 were in the statewide race for AG.
Did all the problems in that election appear on only one manufcturer's machine-Yes
True, and that same manufacturer's machines also successfully recorded the votes of several million voters in the large metropolitan areas I mentioned above.
Remember the old computer adage: "GIGO"--Garbage In-Garbage Out.
My money's on the gov's investigation will determine it was operator error(not the voters, the elections people).
35 - Jet in Columbus
I pity married guys
36 - Jet in Columbus
Uh, Clavos, note the next to last paragraph... you might want to read this before you blame the pollworkers or the voters...
On Monday Florida will begin its first recount for a federal election since the botched 2000 presidential contest, but this time there will be no hanging chads. It is the reliability of touch screen electronic voting machines that will be in the spotlight.
The disputed race in Florida's 13th Congressional District, south of Tampa, is one place where the kind of machines used by 40% of American voters this week may have malfunctioned significantly enough to alter the outcome of a seat in Congress.
The CBS News Investigative Unit has obtained an E-mail by a key election official indicating she may have known well before Election Day the machines weren't working properly.
Republican Vern Buchanan beat Democrat Christine Jennings by 373 votes with 237,842 counted, according to unofficial results from the Florida Division of Elections.
That tiny margin " less than one-half of one percent " triggered an automatic recount under Florida state law.
But the Jennings campaign believes thousands of votes in the district's most populous county went unrecorded. If they had been counted, the campaign says, Jennings would be on her way to Washington.
The red flag rose in Sarasota County, the heart of the district, where, if the results are to be believed, nearly one in every six (16%) Election Day voters either skipped or missed the hotly contested House race and were not counted in the final tally.
(Sarasota Herald-Tribune)
The Jennings/Buchanan race was hard to miss on the touch screen iVotronic machines supplied by ES&S. It was the second contest listed on the ballot, right between high profile races for Senator and Governor.
During two weeks of early voting prior to Nov. 7, election officials noticed that an unusually high number of voters using the machines " one in five " seemed to miss the House race.
For the rest of this CBS article click anywhere in the underlined section
37 - Clavos
Interesting that you're defending a Republican Supervisor of Elections about a race that appears to have unjustly shorted a Democratic candidate, Jet. I would have thought you'd be more suspicious.
Anyway, I never blamed the voters, but the preponderance of evidence, including interviews with voters, indicates a poorly designed ballot.
The same machine (but with a differently designed ballot) was used in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, where a total of over 800,000 voters (many of whom are elderly and poor, as in the FL-13 election), had no problems--that's strong evidence that there's nothing inherently wrong with the machines.
Just because a reporter for the Sarasota Herald Tribune's assessment is that it was hard to miss doesn't mean that that was true for the voters, many of whom are elderly, with poor eyesight, and many more of whom, in the poorer precincts, may have been unfamiliar with computers in general.
38 - Jet in Columbus
Well, it appears that no matter how many facts I present you're going to ignore them with opinions.
end of discussion
39 - Clavos
Other than the raw statistics of how many votes were undercounted, what you've presented so far has consisted mostly of anecdotal evidence, plus a healthy dollop of journalistic opinion.
Jet, you yourself have posted that there were problems with the layout of the ballot on the screen. This is from your #27:
And more than a dozen poll workers said voters complained of missing the race entirely due to how it was displayed on the screen - an issue so serious that Sarasota County elections chief Kathy Dent had pointed it out three days earlier in an e-mail to poll workers handling early voting.
Not very convincing. Sorry.
40 - Jet in Columbus
We're talking about two different races Clavos. I'm addressing this...
The Jennings/Buchanan race was hard to miss on the touch screen iVotronic machines supplied by ES&S. It was the second contest listed on the ballot, right between high profile races for Senator and Governor.
sheesh
41 - Jet in Columbus
To continue from above,
1. the one you're referring to was at the bottom of the page and couldn've been confused with the one directely above it. I'm talking about one that was listed 2nd on the ballot.
2.Some voters complained that the touch-screen machines weren't registering votes for Congress. These were people who made their selection and it wouldn't register so they showed a poling official
gads
42 - Clavos
Jet,
There is only one race at issue in Sarasota county, and it is the Jennings/Buchanan race.
Your cut-and-paste again:
And more than a dozen poll workers said voters complained of missing the race entirely due to how it was displayed on the screen - an issue so serious that Sarasota County elections chief Kathy Dent had pointed it out three days earlier in an e-mail to poll workers handling early voting.
My emphasis.
Read the articles you quoted again, Jet.
Sheesh
gads
43 - sr
Jet,I stand corrected. Sorry dude. sr
44 - Jet in Columbus
TOUCH DIDN'T REGISTER
But Rowland, other poll workers and voters say more than bad ballot design was involved. She said some people had such trouble getting the screen to register their votes that she devised other techniques for ballot casting.
''I was telling people to use their knuckles,'' she said.
She said she then turned the machines off and called technicians to check them out. When the machines were turned on again after 40 minutes, she said, the technicians gave her a frustrating explanation:
''They have to really press down hard. They're not pressing hard enough,'' she said the technician told her.
At another precinct on Election Day, poll worker Marie Glidewell said she had to repeatedly push the screen to activate the ballot page.
45 - Jet in Columbus
No prob SR
46 - RJ Elliott
"Dearest R.J. Re your comment: On one of your strings I asked you a serious question about Ohio State's chances tomorrow and also if you'd heard anything concerning Joe Paterno.
I even made a point of apolgizing because I new I was commenting on a string about the NFL.
I figured if anyone would know anything about the sports world you would and I respected your knowledge of the subject enough to ask.
You replied
Ohio State is favored over Northwestern by 113. And Coach Paterno is dead."
Dude, I was KIDDING with you!!! And I have repeatedly requested that you post your picks on my posts. I'm clearly not an "enemy" here.
Take a joke, brother...
47 - Jet in Columbus
R.J. I unfortunately was being serious. I'd heard that NW was slated to go down by a huge margin (Which they did) and skimmed over the prediction to when you said Paterno had died and believed it for about five seconds until I re-read the 113.
With my fading and bad eyesight I thought it said 43 at first glance and took you serious that "Pa" was dead.
I felt like an asshole and a fool, and resented falling for it, and took it out on you as one.
Do me a favor and label your jokes so I know when to laugh, then I'll be to take them better.
Brother
Jet
48 - Matthew T. Sussman
"label your jokes so I know when to laugh"
BURNNNNNNNNNNNN
49 - Jet in Columbus
Thanks Kelso
50 - RJ Elliott
Well, you weren't the only one to take that comment seriously. Maybe I should label my jokes...
BTW, Paterno really did die today. Bobby Bowden shot him in the face. <---JOKE!!!
51 - RJ Elliott
You know, Bowden would be likely to do that because "Paterno has 359 career wins, second all-time ... ... to Bobby Bowden, who has 363." And you know, college coaches are highly competitive, and that's sort of the implied humor in the joke, you know, that Bowden would want to retire soon and not have to worry about his record being broken by Paterno, and so he...aw, fuck it.
52 - Jet in Columbus
Okay R.J. just to show you there's no hard feelings, I'm going to tell you a riddle, a very old one as an ex Cleveland Browns fan before they become the Ravens and then ask a serious question.
First the riddle.
You wake up in a room. A small room that you're locked in and can't get out. Now you discover you're there with Art Modelle (sic) making excuses to this day as to why he moved the Browns, Saddam Hussein loudly and continuously protesting his innocence ad nauseum and Osama Bin Laden repeatedly screaming "Death to america!!!".
Under the couch cushion you feel something hard and you reach under it to discover a revolver with only two bullets in it.
What do you do?
... The answer in a moment.
I'm biased, so I can't answer this question seriously. Ohio State has one of the best defenses in the business. Michigan's will cancel them out. now... along with an equal offense on both sides, it's down to a chess game between the quarterbacks.
I see a very low scoring game, won by whomever DOESN'T make the first mistake. I also see no more than 21 points a side. I just can't figure out who'll win. We know where my money is.
your thoughts?
The answer to the riddle is to shoot Art twice.
Jet
53 - Clavos
Wait, wait! Finish it!! What happens next??
54 - Jet in Columbus
Oh Clavos, I can see it coming a mile away, a voting machine causes a short circuit in the hospital just as Perry Mason is about to announce who the real murderer is, and they both wind up dead on the floor with Chenney holding a rifle over them and claiming it was an accident.
sheesh
55 - Clavos
#53 was for RJ (#51), BTW.
Sigh.
I liked your joke, Jet. Didn't have to be labeled.
56 - Clavos
Damn, I can't keep up with you, Jet.
I liked the fried votronic (or whatever) too!
57 - Jet in Columbus
I can just hear Jackie whining at Suss/Kelso "Oh Michael!"
58 - Clavos
Now I'm REALLY confused!
I don't know who Jackie is.
And isn't Suss's name is Matthew?
59 - Jet in Columbus
Oh dear... Okay there's a popular show pupulated with teenagers called "That 70s show" there's a character named Michael Kelso, who when someone scores a good insult on someone else he like to yell "Burnnnnnnnnnn!"--re comment--48. His girlfriend's name is Jackie. Ergo when Suss yelled out Burnnnnnnn! I replied, thanks Kelso.
Jackie is a whining spoiled brat.
sigh.
60 - Jet in Columbus
You had to be there, which is true of most of my jokes........sigh
61 - Clavos
Well, the explanation worked...thanks.
I've never seen the show, obviously.
Hiccup.
62 - Jet in Columbus
IT's an acquired taste Clavos, I watched it initially for the 70s cars and the slang, and after a while realized I used to hang out with guys like that.
Ironically Kelso is always being made to wear a painted football helmet called the "Stupid hat".
63 - Jet in Columbus
R.J. as you can see by comment 59, I know completely what you mean by comment 51 Which refered to comment 50 concerning my comment 22 having to so with your comment 19, but then I understood after you posted comment 46 which.....
oh never mind
64 - Clavos
Sometimes (not often) I feel old.
By 1971 I was married and beginning my first serious job after college; it seems like a lifetime ago.
I guess it was...
65 - Jet in Columbus
I know the feeling well Clavos.
66 - RJ Elliott
"By 1971 I was married and beginning my first serious job after college"
By 1971 my dad was still six years away from forgetting to pull out...
You should feel old! ;-P
67 - Clavos
What did you say, kid?
68 - Clavos
Damn, RJ; I just did the math: you're not even thirty yet!
Sheesh...
69 - Jet in Columbus
I graduated highschool in 1973 oy vay.
70 - RJ Elliott
In 1973, my dad was still four years away from forgetting to wear a rubber! :-/
71 - sr
I graduated highschool in 1873. At this age Rodney Dangerfield said it best telling his dentist that his gums are shrinking. Seems Rodney was brushing his teeth with Preparation H.
72 - Clavos
I graduated highschool in 1873
Now I don't feel so old anymore...
73 - sr
Jet, what was the original intent of your Blog? Nuke the unborn old farts maybe.
74 - Jet in Columbus
#71 SR, No wonder Social Securtiy is going broke! You must have collected a fortune by now!
75 - Jet in Columbus
Nope, the intent was to highlight the problems hoping (probably in vain) that they'll ever be fixed.