Category: "New Hampshire"

Black Boxes, Folds & Daily Update 5/23/21

Posted by on May 23, 2021 in New Hampshire, My Rants, Ramblings & Daily Updates

I guess the big news yesterday was that it has been confirmed that the machines in NH will count a fold in the paper as a vote in some instances. This doesn't indicate fraud, and it likely makes no difference to the presidential race because it probably was above the fold, but it could make a difference in down ballot races. This will be difficult to sort out. These machines are used throughout NH and in parts of at least two other states. We know that most NH jurisdictions had issues. Black box voting has to go.

I'm a decent mechanic and that includes electrical work, but as a mechanic I hate black boxes. When I have problem and I have to trace it through a box, I now have to wonder about electronic issues that most of us aren't very good with, but also in many cases software or firmware that could be corrupted or badly written from the start. I have no ability or way to discern that. Black boxes don't belong in our vote.

The media is being forced to talk about issues such as audits that it had tried to ignore. They are doing it in a most mocking way, but the coverage is expanding. The people fighting in this issue - and there are thousands of us and growing - are forcing them to recognize what's going on. This is a good thing.

Ballot Scanning Issues & Daily Update 5/22/21

Posted by on May 22, 2021 in Arizona, New Hampshire, My Rants, Ramblings & Daily Updates, Voting Equipment and Proceedures, Texas

This will be a little about the NH audit, but more about the difficulty of scanning ballots in general. NH is using some of the oldest equipment out there. On the order of your pre windows PC's. Windham Township had 10K ish voters in the last general election. The Audit team has taken all of those ballots and put them through each of their four machines. They got a different total each time and none of those totals matched the general election. The difference was as high as 10% in some cases. No one knows why that's happening yet, and It doesn't seem to be anything nefarious causing it. One current theory is that some of the folds on the mail in ballots were over the ovals for selections and confused the machines. The machines however did not reject the ballot or indicate there was a problem. In my view it doesn't matter. We haven't proved fraud, but we have proved that these machines are unreliable and should not be used for elections. I know this, you aren't using them to count my money.

Accurate ballot scanning is an issue in AZ too but it's much more complicated. It's so complicated that I don't have a complete grasp of the issue and I don't think more than a few people do. Maricopa county has like 150 precincts. They also did something novel where they had several centers where anyone could go vote regardless of where they were registered. That's a lot of different ballots. In those cases the poll books told a high speed printer to print your specific ballot. The failure rate in scanning those was very high. Now you have ballots that have to have some type of special handling.

The Dominion equipment has a judication ability built in that you nor I should like, but Maricopa used a different method to adjudicate those ballots. This is but one of the things not well understood. Special handling means that the system is not going to work efficiently and there's now additional opportunities for the vote to be played with among other issues. In Maricopa it seems that the adjudication may have been done at the printing contractors facility and we are unaware of any observers that were there.

In addition to the high speed printed ballots, the regularly printed ballots had issues too. This gets real fuzzy now. It appears that the further down the ticket you go, the more errors there were. AZ has lots of little jurisdictions so there's lots of down ballot races. These errors were actually noted on the AZ website and are way above Federal standards. these machines are actually flagging errors - at least some of them. Imagine that you accidentally voted for two people in the same race. You would want that to be flagged. Now the scanner doesn't read your vote in another race. It won't likely flag that. It could be that you just didn't vote in that race. If that machine flagged every ballot that lacked a vote in a race, that would be a ton of ballots. On the other hand if it didn't read your vote in that race, your vote didn't count and there's no reporting of that issue. There's a ton of other issues here and I'm not sure I understand them all.

Runbeck, the company that was printing those ballots also printed the Tarrant county mail in ballots. In person we used a touch screen to vote and it printed the ballot, but the mailed ballots had to be of a conventional type. About 30% of our mail in ballots failed to scan due to printing errors. They were hand duplicated and I don't know much else about that process other than it shouldn't have been happening. Runbeck is based in Maricopa county FWIW.

Just a little light reading to start your day. Not that I think a lot of people got this far, but I hope y'all have a great weekend.

Where I Started My Fight to Inform People 05/03/21

Posted by on May 03, 2021 in Michigan, Arizona, New Hampshire, My Rants, Ramblings & Daily Updates, Coloradao, Virginia, Wisconsin

I've talked to some folks lately that seem to think that issues that stemmed from this past Nov 3rd were all over and done with. That's not even close to being true.

Right now an audit is being conducted in AZ. There are constant battles to try and stop it, but it is still ongoing for now and it is very comprehensive.

I think the limited audit of the ballot scans has been completed in GA. This wasn't nearly as comprehensive as people wanted, but it was something. It's looking like the might get a judge to order the actual paper should be looked as well. That would be a good thing. This situation is nip and tuk.

The Antrim County MI Lawsuit is continuing. Matt Deperno didn't get everything he asked for in his last bid for discovery, but he did pretty well. This is pot that will simmer for a while, but could come to a boil quickly.

NH has passed a law ordering that that elections from certain jurisdictions be looked at, Ironically the Presidential election was excluded, but that's OK. Many of us think there's monkey business & proving it in one election opens the door to look at others. People have been fighting to keep this from happening, and now that it is, they are fighting to make it ineffective.

In WI the state legislature is looking for answers from one of the largest cities that seems to have just turned their election over to private individuals Those individuals were funded by this communication platform. They legislature isn't happy, but I don't know how far that will go.

There are efforts being mounted in CO and I know there are a bunch of folks involved, but I don't know many details.

I just learned yesterday that there is a solid effort being waged in VA. It's being done quietly and behind the scenes, but the guy heading it up seems to understand the situation and is working carefully and diligently to put his case together.

I'm fairly certain there are efforts in other states as well, but a lot of folks are working in the shadows for obvious reasons.

There are also nationwide efforts being pursued and even some on an international basis.

This post really didn't scratch the surface of what's happening.

I think we will find that we have been far to trusting of those folks we've elected, and we need to give a whole new level of respect to the math nerds.