Oprah's Vote Lost & How You Can Fight to Assure It Doesn't Happen to You!

Last night, HuffPo posted a video showing Oprah Winfrey reacting to the fact that the touch-screen voting machine she voted on failed to properly register her vote on the screen.

"When I voted yesterday electronically, the first vote that you vote for on the ballot is the presidential candidate. It was my first time doing electronic, so I didn't mark the X strong enough, or I held down too long. Because then when I went back to check it, it had not recorded my presidential vote," Oprah explained, before re-enacting her meltdown and shouting: "It didn't record my presidential vote!"

That same incident has now happened to countless voters around the U.S. this year, in 2006, in 2004 and years prior. But now that it's happened to Oprah, perhaps we may finallybe able to get rid of these damned things. But not as long as even Oprah doesn't seem to understand what happened to her and her vote.

Here's the video again, and below it, the information that she and the rest of America need to have to understand that her vote, even if she managed to select the candidate she preferred, is 100% unverifiable in every way, shape and form....

I don't know where Oprah votes precisely, but if in Chicago, her vote was probably lost on one of Sequoia Voting System's touch-screens. If out in the burbs, it was likely Diebold's touch-screen. Either way, it's a 100% unverifiable vote. Even after she succeeded in making her selection.

I'd be happy to advise her on what actually happened. Even happy to do so live on her show on Monday if she'd like to inform America of the dangers of these machines before voters hit the polls in historic numbers on Tuesday.

(Readers may suggest she cover this topic on Monday before the election, by dropping her a note here. I'm happy to help her, of course!)

But I promise, it wasn't her fault, as she suggests in the video, so I hope she'll stop blaming herself and will educate herself and her viewers, instead. Here's a fine place to start, with links to information that will help educate her and her millions of viewers, so we can finally begin restoring transparent, verifiable democracy in America.

Since I posted the video last night at The BRAD BLOG, I've received some, um, interesting comments from some misinformed folks. For example, this commenter said:

Brad, you're an idiot.

The electronic voting machines used in cook county have a PAPER REGISTER. Your entire vote is PRINTED OUT BEFORE YOU to confirm it.

100% Verifiable, and you're 100% full of it!

(Now, if it didn't have the paper register, I'd agree with you that it was unverifiable. But that's entirely NOT the case here!)

Well, we won't call the commenter "an idiot", but we will help him or her by explaining how they are 100% wrong.

It's not necessarily theh commenter's fault, or Oprah's, that they have been wholly misled about the the type of voting system on which Oprah seems to have tried to cast her vote. The fact is, she cast her vote on a machine on which it is strictly 100% impossible to verify that any vote ever cast on such a Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting machine for any candidate or initiative on the ballot during any election, has ever been recorded accurately, as per any voter's intent.

DRE voting -- with or without the so-called "voter verifiable paper audit trail" (VVPAT), that are created by some of these machines -- is strictly, 100% faith-based voting. Period.

I have asked and asked for any such evidence to the contrary from election officials, voting machine company officials, so-called "elections experts" and, to this day, no such evidence has been offered, because no such evidence exists, as they all well know, or should know.

In Oprah's case, if she voted in Cook County, IL, as suggested by the misinformed commenter, she would have voted on an unverifiable DRE machine made by Sequoia Voting Systems -- the Seqoia EDGE with Verivote printer, to be exact. That machine is a 100% unverifiable DRE which produces a so-called "paper trail".

That same machine was decertified across the state of California in 2007 after it was determined to be fully insecure, easily hacked, and completely unverifiable. UC Santa Barbara's Computer Security Group analyzed that machine, on behalf of the state, and found that it could be hacked -- including its so-called "paper trails" -- such that even if those "paper trails" were 100% hand-counted (and they are almost never counted at all, in any case) the hack would likely never be revealed and the "paper trails" would match up perfectly with the hacked internal numbers.

UCSB released their video tape on how to do exactly that, just last month, as we reported at the time. Here's that video again, for you misinformed naysayers out there...

Please see the article we wrote at the time, including the "'Paper-Trails Are Meaningless..." section therein, for much more info, as well as other similar hacks of other similarly 100% unverifiable voting systems.

The Democratic Party Doesn't Get It Either...

It's hardly the commenter's fault that he/she was confused. Just as it's not necessarily Oprah's fault. That they are misinformed on these things is not a surprise. Even Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada (where they use these same, wholly unverifiable Sequoia systems across the entire state) doesn't get it.

I was on a radio show recently, with Christiane Brown on Reno's KJFK, where Reid was the guest just before me, and he said, incorrectly, when asked about the wholly unverifiable machines in his home state: "I think Nevada is more fortunate than a lot of states because we have a paper back-up, paper trail for our votes, and that's important."

(Listen to the MP3 here. Appx. 3 minutes.)

No, they are not "more fortunate" in NV. The voters there are as unfortunate as any state that allows 100% unverifiable votes to be cast, as Reid's state across its entirety.

Reid also incorrectly discusses paper ballots, and his offensive interest in "mak[ing] people feel that their vote is counted". We don't hope they feel that way, Senator. We want them to know it, and be able to verify -- as much as needed -- that every vote actually has been counted, and counted accurately. That's strictly impossible with the voting machines that Reid feels Nevadans are "fortunate" to use.

And btw, those Sequoia EDGE w/ VeriVote printers were first used in this country, in Nevada, in 2004 after they were illegally certified by NV's then Sec. of State Dean Heller and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Heller is now a U.S. Congressman. I exposed the illegal certification of those systems -- Nevada was the first in the world to use the so-called "voter verifiable paper trail printer" back 2004 -- in an exposé written by myself and Michael Richardson, with VotersUnite.org's John Gideon in a chapter of Mark Crispin Miller's recently released Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008. I urge you all to buy it, read it & educate yourself (that goes for you, Sen. Reid and Ms. Winfrey! It'd be a great selection to add to the Oprah Book Club!)

Unfortunately, our exposé was never published by the corporate media, despite my offering it to plenty of them.

And again, I remind you to see our Special Coverage page on "Touch-Screen Vote-Flipping 2008", which also offers information on what you (and Oprah) need to do when this happens to you!

Here are some of those tips since the DNC and Obama campaign refuse to take any steps to assure your vote may actually be counted accurately on one of these machines...

What to do if it happens to you:

• Call poll supervisors to observe the problem.


• Fill out a problem report.


• Refuse to vote on that machine.


• Request that the machine be taken out of service.


• Get a serial number of the machine if possible (may be difficult in many cases).


• Tell other voters in line which machine it was and that they should NOT vote on that machine!


• Report it to county/town election office.


• Report it to the Secretary of State.


• Call local reporters and tell them the story.


• Call voter problem hotlines (eg. 866-MYVOTE1 and 866-OUR-VOTE) and report it.


• Contact bloggers and Election Integrity websites.


• Raise holy hell.

REMINDER: Please bring a video camera/cell phone camera when you go to vote so you can document these problems on video tape, and then upload them to VideoTheVote.org and YouTube!

(Thanks to VelvetRevolution.us and TrueVote.us for help in compiling these recommendations!)

Brad Friedman is an investigative journalist/blogger and the creator/publisher of The BRAD BLOG, which has been focusing for some years on the many issues involved in election integrity. He can currently be seen in a number of documentaries on the topic, now in release around the country, including David Earnhardt's Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, and the just-released Murder, Spies & Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story, by documentarian Patty Sharaf.

Comments

[peterg76]

There's almost nothing simpler than a machine to simply count something and provide final totals. It's pretty much impossible for any of these problems to be unintentional. Every incident should be treated as attempted electoral fraud. (Isn't that a crime anymore?)

[brianna4obama]

so brad,

even though oprah went back to check if her vote was cast
there was nothing else she could do?

there was no way they could've assessed and fixed the problem
where her vote was then counted?

[OkieIntellectual]

The point he's making is that despite the paper recipt, there is no way to verify that Oprah's vote was actually registered correctly or counted. Sure the confirmation screen may show a,, her selections correctly, and the recipt may verify what the screen displayed, but that's the great thing about computers. You can get them to tell you they're doing one thing while they are actually doing another.

Put it this way... I could get into your personal computer and set things up so that every time you click on the icon for your word processor, it actually opens up your email, and runs a process in the background that is recording your keystrokes without you ever knowing. These voting machines are computers too, and they can be programmed to do anything the designer wants, including showing that you voted for one candidate, while actually tallying your vote toward the other candidate, or not recording it at all.

Thus is the problem particularly with the Diebold machines. They will not allow ANYONE to look at the programming code to verify that these machines are actually doing what they say they're doing.

[Over50WhiteWoman]

I was a programmer. The reason the vote could appear to be correct on both the screen and the paper trail, and still not be counted for the correct candidate, is because the programmer uses three different "buckets" to store your vote. He stores the correct vote for the display "bucket", and the printout "bucket", but he adds to the other candidate's tally inside the computer memory and then that tally is either written electronically onto a disk or USB memory, or sent directly via T-1 cables to the county computer and added to the county tally. No one need ever see the actual electronic tally. It's all in the programming--or in this case in the hardwired AND/OR gates of the chip in the card.

There should be independent reviews of the computer code itself, and the firmware designs, long before those machines are sold, and it must be unalterable. The fact that it isn't tells you a lot. In Ohio, in 2004, the votes were 'delivered' to BUSH by the CEO of the Diebold company who just happened to also be the head of the Republican Party in Ohio. (This may have only been a rumor--not sure.)

However, that said, the county poll watchers could publicly tally votes as each voter votes on a separate paper, while the voter's face is hidden. But again, would they be honest even then?

[ness]

I voted early in Chicago on Sequoia just like Oprah did. I've been following bloggers news and reading the articles the nonprofit where I work has compiled on these issues, so after I voted, I meticulously scanned the paper printout to make sure they got my vote right. I thought that meant everything was ok too! Can someone *please please please please* help me understand this-- I have read the suggested posts and still do not get why the paper printout Sequoia gives you does not mean that your vote was actually recorded as the printout says. Is this because the both the screen and the printout can say you voted for candidate X, but in reality the software recorded that you voted for candidate Y instead, in some place you can't see? Maybe watching the video would help but I am at work and cannot. Thank you if anyone can break it down for me a little more.

[OkieIntellectual]

"Is this because the both the screen and the printout can say you voted for candidate X, but in reality the software recorded that you voted for candidate Y instead, in some place you can't see?"

Yes, that is exactly what we're saying here. See, you really did understand, you just didn't know it ;)

The software could also be made to throw out a percentage of votes for a particular candidate, all the while displaying and printing that those votes were recorded.

[BoulderVoter]

I received this from Colorado Dems. Cameras of any type are illegal in our polling places.

Boulder Voter

On Oct 30, 2008, at 9:55 AM, Bill Compton wrote:

Thanks for your email. The Colorado Democratic Party in conjunction with
the Colorado for Change campaign has a very robust and dynamic election
protection program of over 2,000 attorneys who will be poll watchers for the
party on November 4 in most of the polling places in the state.
Additionally, we have primary county counsel in all of the major and medium
counties and in many of the smaller counties in the state. Finally, we have
over 40 attorneys who will staff a boiler room for problems calls coming in
from all over the state on election day. We also have watchers and
attorneys observing early voting and mail voting. Observation of the
opening, operation, and closing of the machines is a primary responsibility
of our poll watchers. However, please be advised that no one, except
credentialed media, under state law may bring a camera into the polling
place in Colorado. In the past, voters have been intimidated by people with
cell phone cameras and other video devices when voting. So, our watchers
will not have cameras, and have specifically been instructed not to bring
cameras with them as they will be immediately escorted out of the polling
place if they do as provided under state law. Hope this helps!
Sincerely,

William C. (Billy) Compton
Political Director
Colorado Democratic Party

[BoulderVoter]

CAUTION: taking cameras to the polls is illegal in some locations.

Hi Brad,

I sent an email to the Colorado Democratic Party regarding the issues in this blog, including the need to document malfunctioning computers.

I received a prompt, courteous, and informative response, including the advice that bringing video recording equipment or even a cell phone camera into a polling place is illegal in Colorado, except for credentialed media. (Response is copied in the following post.) I agree that there are good reasons for this rule, in that photographing voters could be used as intimidation.

However, without a camera of some type, how can these irregularities be documented?

How would voters check the legality of using cameras in their own state? Is there a list of "no camera" states you could post? My guess is that the attorneys who are volunteering for the Obama campaign in each state might be the quickest way to get that information, and that you could create some bridges by communicating with them.

I suppose if this happened in Colorado, the voter could call their local TV station or newspaper ... or do any independent journalists/bloggers have "credentials" that count?

I am not worried about Boulder, because we pushed for paper ballots. The media made a little fun of how slow Boulder was to report results in 2006, but that's nothing to the delays that tomorrow may bring.

Thanks for all your efforts in bringing attention to this situation.

BoulderVoter

[CharleyCat]

In Canada, federal elections are obviously based on a different system, but certain principles work very well.

-A federal voting authority (Elections Canada) ensures all ballots and polling places are run in the same basic manner.
-A single federal voter list (which is updated by federal staff who enumerate door to door before every election).
-Lots of polling stations, lineups are rare.
-Simple paper ballot and pencil.

We had a federal election a few weeks ago. I went to the polling place in mid-afternoon, didn't wait in line, was finished and out the door in less than ten minutes. The results were counted and more or less settled by the time I went to bed (yes, some counting did continue into the wee hours, but since the polls didn't close until 9pm, that doesn't seem unreasonable). In the event a re-count is needed (in a really close call) the ballots are all waiting in sealed boxes. There is room for improvement in this system, but never any widespread concern for voter fraud.

Like many posters here, I honestly cannot understand the reluctance of many US jurisdictions to let go of the high-tech option. The more technical it gets, the less transparent it seems, and thus the more corruptible it can potentially be.

[NationalTreasure]

these touch screen machines are not reliable and easy to tamper

republcans had this one ace up their sleeves and it just may wn them the electon

it is past time to call in the international electon monitors

[sangela]

Voting isn't rocket science y'know. How come you haven't worked it out? Why is the system so complicated? It almost feels as if you want it to be a soap opera or a hazardous competition? Not enough voting papers? PLEASE! Voter supression? Machine that don't record? Long lines? Waiting to have you name called out? It sounds like a wonky way of making sure there are difficulties and votes can be discounted. Someone doesn't want voting to happen.

Send a commission to ANY British, European, Australian or New Zealand to see how it's done" and see how simple it is from registration to counting. Come on out or the shambles, make it clear, straightforward and simple.

[HappinessHacker]

HuffPost's Pick

GREAT Work!

Voting results do NOT always reflect the actual ballots cast by the American public - see the excellent documentary titled "Uncounted."

Electronic voting systems are easily hacked. Here's a link to well known exploitable security vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems from the University of Pennsylvania and Ohio State University:

http://www.crypto.com/blog/ohio_voting

or Google Ohio State Project Everest.

Let's hope we have fair and free elections on Tuesday!

HappinesHacker - Atlanta

[MuchMadness]

Purely electronic voting should be abolished. Every ballot cast should be a paper ballot that is either counted by hand or by optical scanner or other counting device. The voter should be able to hold the ballot in his hand and manually mark it as certified to be correct for submission. There also needs to be a system of hand counts of random samples to check the credibility of the electronic vote tallies.

[OkieIntellectual]

Optical scanners can be hacked too. The only truly secure way to do this is to cast votes on paper ballots, then have those ballots counted by hand under the supervision of multiple observers from all parties, as well as non-partisan observers appointed by either federal or state authourity. The tallies from each district then need to be physically transported to the state collection center in a secure manner (i.e. armored car), again accompanied by party and non-partisan observers the whole way.

Basically the whole process needs to have multiple "eyes on" each step of the way to ensure that no one cheats.

Yes it is less convenient than using machines, and yes it will take longer, but it will cost less and would restore the people's trust in the voting system.

As a final note, the electoral college really needs to go. The idea is an anachronism in the 21st century.

[DarthVector]

PAPER BALLOTS.

[seadickrun]

28 states offer "no excuse" absentee ballots. I voted two weeks ago sitting at my favorite restaurant eating my favorite dish and then hand carried my ballot to the county office to drop off. I don't even trust the US Mail with my ballot:)

[Choicelady]

CA tested these machines and found that they, NOT THE VOTERS, are the problem. Do you wonder why Republicans LOVE them and have a cozy relationship with the manufacturers? These are untraceable frauds, and hats off to Secretary of State Deborah Bowen for finding this out before this election. But it does NOT help other states. You MUST scream, yell, make yourselves heard or this will NEVER end. Fraud is embedded in our system robbing us of the most important aspect of direct democracy - our votes. NOTHING could be worse in close elections. And do I think it's partisan? You betcha.

[chrisberge72]

Are you trying to give me a freakin' heart attack?! What's the point in voting if it wont be counted properly. Explain it to me, please!

[Brad Friedman - Huffpost Blogger]

Because if you don't vote, nobody and nothing needs to take your vote from you, you've given it away.

Educate yourself and learn how to maximize the possibilities that your vote will actually be counted, counted accurately, and in a way that we, the people, can try to help assure that!

[OnePartyEqualsTyranny]

What equipment will Americans use to cast ballots in 2008?
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/