Thank you for posting this event. This is one issue we should all be deeply concerned about: The integrity of our elections. If our votes can so easily be altered then we have lost our democracy. The sanctity and integrity of our vote is a non-partisan issue and frankly I do not know how we can resolve this without returning to paper ballots that are then hand counted by civil servants. If we tolerate a 18 month campaign, as we have for this presidential cycle, we can easily wait two weeks for our ballots to be hand counted. That is the only fail safe method to ensure the sanctity of our vote and to ensure that our votes are not only counted, but counted as cast. If you attend the screening tomorrow, you will see why I am so concerned. Even if we demand open source and paper ballots within the machines, a power outage on Election Day can disenfranchise millions.

Thank you for posting this event. This is one issue we should all be deeply concerned about: The integrity of our elections. If our votes can so easily be altered then we have lost our democracy. The sanctity and integrity of our vote is a non-partisan issue and frankly I do not know how we can resolve this without returning to paper ballots that are then hand counted by civil servants. If we tolerate a 18 month campaign, as we have for this presidential cycle, we can easily wait two weeks for our ballots to be hand counted. That is the only fail safe method to ensure the sanctity of our vote and to ensure that our votes are not only counted, but counted as cast. If you attend the screening tomorrow, you will see why I am so concerned. Even if we demand open source and paper ballots within the machines, a power outage in a major metropolitan area on Election Day can disenfranchise millions.

I don't know why this double posted. My first two tries did not register, I then added a couple of words and submitted, then both popped up. Reflection on the problems with computerized voting!

Mary,

Thanks for reading and commenting on my blog. I saw in the news release that this screening was being done with the help of the CLU political science department. How did you get that to happen?

Is there a website for us to read other upcoming speaker series events?

Spoken like a true liberal. If the democrat wins then it was a fair election. If the republican wins then recount until you get the correct result. Mary is upset that those darn electronic ballots don't allow for creative vote counting. Which is why we need to bring back the hand recount, along with dimpled, hanging and pregnant chads, since divining voter intent is somehow more accurate than the real thing. Of course you can always fall back on using the courts to throw out ballots from overseas military, as your party successfully did back in 2000. I don't suppose you included that little episode in your film on election integrity.

Bubba Kidd,

Do you think electronic voting machines should have a fail safe like a paper tally or do you think they are tamper proof enough?

Actually, I have no problem with a paper record or any other type of failsafe system. I do, however, take exception to these absurd allegations of "stolen" elections that repeatedly come up every time a democrat loses. Don't forget that it was the dems who, after the 2000 election fiasco, demanded that we implement a nationwide upgrade of voting equipment, including the use of electronic voting machines. Yet we have now come full-circle, with dems whining that the new electronic equipment is somehow less unreliable that the old paper ballots. The dems are no strangers themselves to doing everything in their power to manipulate election results (e.g. pregnant and dimpled chads, tossing out military votes, selective recounts), yet it is part of their strategy to repeatedly play the victim in some imagined vast right-wing conspiracy.

Brian, for the record, do you believe that the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen?

Here's an old report on the 2000 election, so everyone can make up their own mind on what did or did not happen.

Even Pat Buchanan feels there was something terribly wrong with the Florida vote count.

You simply have to admire Mary Pallant's determined efforts to inform, educate, and inspire political zombies, or what we lovingly refer to as Ventura County Democrats. After the disappointment in the June Primary, in which more than half the voters made up their minds in the voting booth by analyzing the candidate's surname and job title, she continues to bring light to a dark and disconnected land.

Where is Marta Jorgenson indeed! She is the Democratic Party nominee in CD24 by virtue of the perception that she is a white teacher. I wonder if she has scraped up enough gas money to begin her campaign. I shouldn't be too sore at Ms. Jorgenson. After all, she didn't mean to win the primary. My pique is really reserved for all the know nothing, shallow, and uninformed Dumbacrats who offered Marta up as another sacrifice on the alter of political apathy and business as usual in Washington.

Gallegly has to be laughing his bloated ass off as he takes another cakewalk back to Washington. His latest essay on energy and off-shore drilling is full of lies and distortions that will likely go unchallenged by the press and the opposition. To read the article is to believe that Mr. Gallegly has been a cheerleader for alternative energy and conservation for decades. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Keep the faith Mary Pallant. I will see you at CLU tonight.

Bubba Kidd,

I do not think there was a plan to break the law and conspire to steal the election in 2000 or 2004.

But have you seen this graphic?

http://www.andrys.com/buch_co1.gif

I think it is clear that there was all sorts of major mistakes and problems with the 2000 election to call into question the legitimacy of it.

But when any election is that close there is going to be much information about the flaws in our voting system. If Al Gore had taken over the White House then your points would have been valid.

I guess a basketball metaphor makes sense. When the game was decided by 2 points then the officiating really mattered and the questionable calls are reviewed by sports fans. But when it is a blow out it doesn't really matter.

Bubba, have you read about the voter purge lists in Florida or problems in 2004 in Ohio?

Do you think election officials should follow the letter of the law above common sense?

RJ,

I haven't seen anything recent from Marta Jorgenson or I would post it. If she asked you would you volunteer to help her campaign?

Thanks for reading and commenting on my blog.

Brian, voting is and always will be an imperfect process. Your basketball analogy is accurate. Most of the time the flaws in the system are hidden since they are minor enough to not have any real impact on the outcome. Given the margin of victory, I can't say with any certainty who really won the Florida election, nor can anyone else. There were so many factors at play with an election, which was well within the statistical margins of error. Worse yet, running the same ballots through the same voting machines resulted in slightly different numbers every time. You can count, and recount, and analyze this thing to death and still end right back where you started.

Where I take exception is changing the rules of the game after the game has been played. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't use common sense, but it still has to be within the rules of the contest. A good example of that was the recent efforts by Hillary Clinton to re-write the primary rules after the fact.

I also think that the democratic party does a disservice to our nation by continually implying that the republican party is regularly involved in conspiracies to overturn elections. This is a claim this is often repeated on television, in newspapers, and even on this blog. It is wrong to undermine the confidence in our electoral process for political gain through insinuation, innuendo, and half-truths. If the results of an election have been rigged then it should be investigated and the facts should stand for itself. Without question there are often problems with confusing ballots, poorly trained poll workers, malfunctioning equipment, etc. But allegations of a conspiracy is another matter entirely.

The primary took a lot of the wind out of my sails. I would help Marta if there was any indication that she wanted to run even a second-rate campaign. She should have taken the time to garner support from her primary rivals but her efforts were less than professional or gracious. It's the Martinez folks that have really got to be spinning having had Marta's endorsement before she re-entered the race. Has Jill Martinez returned the favor? I have heard nothing.

I would stand on my head and eat a bug if it would help defeat Congressman Gallegly but I have no intention to cast my pearls before swine.

Here we have one of the most important elections in decades and two invisible and uninspiring candidates. Yawn.

Bubba Kidd,

I agree with much of what you said about close elections. Have you read about the voter purge efforts in Florida? What about the Pat Buchanan graphic I put up a link to that showed the messed up ballot did alter the outcome in that area?

Your question on Buchanan is really tied directly to the statiscal anomolies associated with the infamous Palm Beach County butterfly ballot. It certainly appears odd that Pat Buchanan would win a disproportionate amount of votes from a single county. There is no question that it suggests that flaws in the design of the butterfly ballot led to voter confusion, which, in turn, may have caused some voters to mistakenly cast votes for Pat Buchanan when they thought they were voting for Al Gore.

What we can draw from that is that ballot design is very important. The butterfly ballot was designed with presidential candidates listed on two pages. The intent was to make it easier for the large population of senior citizens to easily read the ballots by using a larger print size. It should be noted that the butterfly ballot in question was designed by a democrat elections supervisor, and was signed off by both parties prior to the election, which means that there was never any intent to disenfranchise or confuse voters.

What does all of this prove? Well, it is one of many different variables that were in play during that election. It was not the single event that dictated the outcome, as we can point to any number of other things that could have swayed votes one way or the other. Based on statistical probability, it certainly seems likely that some portion of those votes may have been intended for Al Gore, perhaps more than enough to have altered the outcome. But it doesn’t change the fact that those ballots were cast for Pat Buchanan, and in the end it is the responsibility of the voter to verify that they have cast their vote completely and accurately. There is no way to divine the intent of these voters after the fact, so a debate over the Buchanan votes is moot.

In all likelihood, there is probably some percentage of votes in any election that are cast incorrectly as there is no perfect election system. If we are going to re-hash the butterfly ballot then you can open up endless debates on the ballot formats in hundreds of counties that could have swung votes in both directions. You can endlessly debate our process for collecting votes from overseas military, poll worker training, polling hours, methods for handling and counting votes, voting age laws, ineligible voters, bilingual ballots, lax voter registration processes, or whether Ralph Nader should have been on the ballot. But with all these arguments you end up right back where you started. In the end you can only count the votes the way they were cast.