Did South Carolina Use Second-Hand E-Voting Machines That Louisiana Decertified?

from the conspiracy-theories dept

The election situation in South Carolina keeps getting stranger. Last week, we noted how the controversial election of Alvin Greene, a broke, out of work guy currently facing felony obscenity charges, who did no campaigning and no advertising of his campaign, had people looking at the e-voting machines in the election as one possible culprit. The ES&S iVotronic machines used in the election have no paper or audit trail, so there's really no way to go back and check, but the differences in voting patterns between the e-votes and absentee ballots certainly raised some eyebrows, as did a test of randomness in voting results using Benford's law (a useful tool for suggesting data was faked).

Now, reader Pickle Monger alerts us to the news that the previously expected winner of the campaign, Vic Rawls, is claiming that the ES&S e-voting machines used in the campaign were bought secondhand from Louisiana after Louisiana outlawed their usage:

Third is the well-documented unreliability and unverifiability of the voting machines used in South Carolina. It is worth noting that these machines were purchased surplus from Louisiana after that state outlawed them.

In response, the state is insisting there is no truth to this claim at all:

South Carolina's election commission begs to differ about the provenance of the voting machines. Spokesman Chris Whitmire says the state's 12,000 iVotronic voting machines were bought brand-spanking-new from Election Systems and Software, an Omaha-based behemoth that boasts of operations in 39 states.

Rawls' campaigns' response is hardly reassuring:

"That was what the word around the state was -- heard it from several people."

In other words, total hearsay. I'm all for pointing out the problems of e-voting systems, and ES&S certainly does have an exceptionally long history of having problematic machines that have been decertified in certain states, but claiming that such machines were used in South Carolina without any evidence other than "heard it from several people," seems pretty silly.

Of course, South Carolina's election commission has its own credibility problems. Apparently, its been telling local news media that the iVotronic systems do have an auditable paper trail. They don't. They have a paper tally, but that's not the same thing.

Either way, if you've been following the whole e-voting mess for many years, this sort of situation was bound to happen. Even if it turns out that e-voting machines were not the problem, the very lack of a voter verifiable paper trail, combined with massive security problems and ridiculous levels of secrecy from the e-voting companies has created a world in which no one actually trusts those machines. Even if the results were accurate, the voting machine companies' own actions have created so much doubt in people's minds, that they don't trust the results at all.

Filed Under: alvin greene, e-voting, south carolina
Companies: es&s

Red Flags Suggest Potential E-Voting Issues In Bizarre South Carolina Election

from the where's-the-paper-trail? dept

Earlier this week, Pickle Monger pointed us to the very, very bizarre story of Alvin Greene winning the South Carolina Democratic primary despite being broke, unemployed, holding no campaign appearances or rallies, and having raised no money. No one knew who the guy was, basically, until after the election happened... which is certainly quite strange. Also, once the news came out and the press scrambled to figure out who the hell this guy was, it came out that he's facing felony charges for obscenity. The question in the submission was "did they use e-voting machines in South Carolina." At the time there weren't enough details, so I didn't follow it up.

Of course, there are many different theories as to why Greene won -- from the popular charge that he was a "plant," to the idea that he was just first on the ballot. However, as Liberty McAteer sends over, it does seem like some are starting to notice (you guessed it) the e-voting machines.

It turns out that South Carolina uses ES&S e-voting machines. ES&S has a long history of problems with its e-voting machines. Here are just a few highlights (there are a lot more where these came from). ES&S machines have lost votes in Florida. The company gave California machines that were not certified. After stalling, it finally let security experts review its machines, which were found to be severely lacking, leading California to decertify machines (yes, remember this is the same state that was also given machines that weren't certified in the first place!). In one election ES&S gave the vote tallies to a totally different election. People using ES&S machines have found that they voted for the wrong candidate. It's also quite easy for anyone to recalibrate certain ES&S machines, so that it's easier for people to make mistakes while voting. In South Dakota, ES&S machines added thousands of phantom votes. And then there's Kentucky, where officials were recently arrested for using the confusing interface of ES&S e-voting machines to get people to leave the polling place before submitting their votes, so those officials could change their votes.

Oh, and the best part? Most of these ES&S machines have no audit trail. So there's no way to go back and check what happened. Fantastic. And that's what was used in South Carolina. But, if you do some statistical analysis, it's possible to discover if there are some red flags of problems. And boy are there red flags:

One potential red flag: A significant difference between the results of absentee and election day ballots.

According to [expected primary winner Vic Rawl campaign manager Walter] Ludwig, of the state's 46 counties, half have a disparity of greater than 10 percentage points between the absentee and election day ballots.

"The election day ballots all favor Mr. Greene. We don't know what it means," Ludwig said in an interview. "We did significantly better on absentees than Election Day, which is according to the mathematicians, quite significant. The other reason is, it didn't happen in any other races on the ballot."

In Lancaster County, Rawl won absentee ballots over Greene by a staggering 84 percent to 16 percent margin; but Greene easily led among Election Day voters by 17 percentage points.

In Spartanburg County, Ludwig said there are 25 precincts in which Greene received more votes than were actually cast and 50 other precincts where votes appeared to be missing from the final count.

"In only two of 88 precincts, do the number of votes Greene got plus the number we got equal the total cast," Ludwig said.

Greene also racked up a 75 percent or greater margin in one-seventh of all precincts statewide, a mark that Ludwig notes is even difficult for an incumbent to reach.

While not proof, those points certainly raise serious questions about the e-voting machines and how they were used.

Filed Under: alvin greene, e-voting, south carolina