Questionable Voting Practices Caught On Tape; Voting Officials Seem More Concerned With Tape Origin
from the as-you-would-expect dept
A reader writes in to point out some questionable voting practices caught on videotape in Jacksonville, Florida. In the tape, a woman appears to vote twice, while an elections official is seen opening up a voting machine. It's not at all clear from the report what happened -- though, having the same woman deliver her optical scan ballot twice certainly raises some questions. Even though this was a paper ballot and an optical scan technique rather than a full e-voting system, the fact that the elections officer is able to open up a voting machine and do something to it without anyone saying anything disproves all the claims from people that "tampering" with an e-voting machine would be immediately obvious. All you need is an elections official saying that they need to "fix" something on the machine and no one's going to question what's going on. What's most interesting about this story, however, is that the elections officials seem a lot more concerned with how the security videotape got out, rather than what happened in the room. I'd like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and assume that whatever happened (even the same woman apparently voting twice) was legitimate -- but, even so, you would expect the voting officials to then come out and explain what happened, rather than get angry about the tape being leaked.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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What is the usual procedure if one of these machines break? They only had one at my precinct. Do they wait for someone to come fix it or do they tell you to go elsewhere?
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Say if they make a mistake on the first ballot and do not cast they may have a second ballot and so on... however this was clearly against the law to open the box. It is never to be opened like that.... written clearly in the law books ...
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hmm
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Re: hmm
Sheesh
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Re: Re: hmm
If I can't vote for someone else, who am I going to vote for?
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Re: Republicans cheating
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Never attribute solely to malice or stupidity what is so pervasively deranged that it must certainly be attributable to generous portions of both.
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However, this makes me think there should be cameras watching all the systems, just not able to see the screen.
Of course then Scythe would bitch the Republicans were cheating with it....
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just a deterrant?
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same woman
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4I7Q6MDiUo
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Probably what happened is...
If they hadn't, the voter in question (who is Black) may well have claimed that she was denied her right to vote. After all, if officials can't even check IDs to make sure the person voting is who she says she is without being accused of racism and/or intimidation, it's unlikely they could get away with "sorry, you voted wrong that's your problem." Anybody have any idea of what they should have done?
And if I were the officials at that office, regardless of the reason for my actions I would be concerned about how someone got the security film in question. It's obviously someone who shouldn't have it, otherwise they wouldn't have remained anonymous. So the person is claiming something illegal happened (which it may well have), and uses proof he or she obtained illegally. If you allow that, you have to allow cops to present evidence of a crime that they obtained through an unlawful search.
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Re: Probably what happened is...
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If that's the case you still have a problem. You broke into the house, so now it can be argued that YOU planted the child pornography there. In effect, you have now given the pedophile a chance to escape the charge.
With regard to the suggestion that the woman put the wrong piece of paper in, then there should have been procedures that should have (1) created an "incident report" that something unusual occurred, (2) given the woman a second, provisional ballot in order for her to cast the "correct" ballot, (3) somehow rectify the situation with the "incorrect" ballot, preferably after the polls close. At this point, the incident is logged, and when somebody comes back and asks questions, there is the "incident report" that can completely explain the situation (with proper safeguards to protect the privacy of the voter and his/her vote).
The fact that the official immediately got defensive and was more interested in how the video was obtained suggests that the official may have a good reason to be worried that he may have been caught doing something illegal.
Finally, playing devil's advocate here, there may be a good reason why the official was suspicious of the video: everybody assumes that a date/time stamp, if found on a video, is definitive. It's not. Just like the "12:00" forever blinking on people's VCRs, it's only as accurate as the information that was programmed into the security camera. It is easy to splice together a bunch of unrelated scenes from a security camera with a bogus date/time set on it and "prove" that something illegal happened at a particular date and time.
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This is minor, there are much major problems
Yes it's an infringement, but it's not the major one.
THEY CAN OPEN THE BALLOT BOX, IT'S NOT SEALED, SO THEY CAN FEED WHATEVER THEY WANT INTO THE COUNTER!
Thats the biggest fattest security hole in that system. The optical counter WAS set in democrat districts in 2000 to reject and swallow out of alignment marks, and the calibration was set badly in those districts. While in republican districts it was set to spit any misaligned ballots back so they could be recast.
This trick was discovered by Greg Palast.
If they can simply open up a machine and remove the ballots and stuff a bunch of new ballots through the machine then it's a completely unsecured vote.
SO WHY DOES THE GUY HAVE THE KEY TO BALLOT BOX?
As for this comment:"Or spy cameras watching people vote and gathering intelligence which could be used by sophisticated terror networks to cripple our electoral process?"
This was the buildings security camera, are you from Boston?
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3 world voting procedures
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Re: 3 world voting procedures
On topic: couldn't an anonymous release of these "illegally obtained" tapes be considered under the Whistleblower law?
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lol, you think it's just one party pulling the wool over people's eyes?
Get stabbed from the left by the democrats and stabbed from the right by republicans.
They don't care, long as they stay in power.
Here come the flames~~~~
But you notice something...
Out of the last 5 presidential elections it's been either a Bush of Clinton in Office?
Ol' George Bush
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
'Dubya' Bush
'Dubya' Bush
Now watch... Hillary for two terms and then Jeb Bush for two terms.
Just coincidence, huh?
Why you think Ol' Jeb's not running this year - otherwise, it's perfect timing to. The republicans will put up some loser with ZERO chance of winning - just like the Dems did in the last two elections. Gore was too fanatical to elect and Kerry was too stupid.
I bet the republicans will put in someone like Gulianni who is just not going to motivate the right at all. Then Hillary for 8.
After Hillary's 8, the dems will put up another loser vs. Jeb Bush. Then Bush for 8 more years.
Laugh now - but just watch.
In any event it doesn't matter, the whole of Washington's laughing at us and the rest of the world. It's not going to last forever either, tension's are getting awful strong everywhere, and only so much tension can build before something snaps...
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I think it should be the opposite - it should be REQUIRED and then the videos made available to the public on the web.
If they want the voters to trust them, they better start giving us some evidence or proof of it.
And I agree Ogman - people are so partisan anymore, they refuse to see the problems with both parties.
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Hillary who?
Obviously you don't follow the presidential elections, Overcast. Hillary is losing to Obama in the polls right now. Obama will probably be the next democratic candidate, which I'm all for. He's a very good public speaker and extremely knowledgeable in what he wants to do with the presidency.
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Everyone Cheats!
As has already been mentioned, the larger question is why the voting process is plagued with security flaws, including the absconding of surveillance video.
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I would like to know if the two incidents are really separate or if she tried to vote, it didn't work, official fixes the roller, then she gets to really vote.
I do not trust web spin these days.
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By the way, from some of the responses, I get the feeling that a few of you may not have actually watched the video. It's worth taking a look.
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For example, if I know that a certain segment of society (that is easily identifiable by some physical characteristic) will vote for a certain party 80% of the time I can use the video footage to target my intimidation to specific precincts or even persons
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Leaked tape in Florida
It's after the election in Jacksonville Florida and guess who won.. As no surprise it was Jerry Holland. What concerns me is that I work for the elections office and am very concerned about the tape that shows Mr. Holland opening the box....
mmmm... and he is going to get away with it..what a shame....
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