Democracy's on the march

Snohomish County switching to mail-in elections

By Christopher Schwarzen - Times Snohomish County Bureau

The new Democratic majority on the Snohomish County Council wasted little time in approving a switch to all-mail elections.

The council approved the measure Wednesday with a 3-2 vote along party lines. Last year's Republican-led council repeatedly voted against making the change. ...

... Republicans have said they fear there is potential for mail fraud and believe a voter should have the right to choose whether to vote by mail or at the polls. ... (more)

Well golly gee, the Republicans are [once again] "worried" about voter fraud. Even though they never can point out any actual cases of fraud. Remember the outlandish claims WA GOP chairman Vance made during the 2004 Governors election recount? And then it turned out there were only a couple of fraudulent votes... and they were for Rossi!

What's really happening is that the Democrats are moving to insure honest verifiable elections... and the Republicans don't like that.

Remember Snohomish county's strange (electronic) election results in 2004?

"the chances that above 2/3 of the vote that is paper balloting would show a Democratic lead , while the remaining 1/3 of the vote on touch screens would show a Republican lead resulting in an overall Republican win in Snohomish county as a result of voters randomly choosing whether to vote by paper ballot or by touch screen is one in 1,000 trillion!"

EVIDENCE OF ELECTION IRREGULARITIES IN
SNOHOMISH COUNTY, WASHINGTON
GENERAL ELECTION, 2004

By Paul R. Lehto, Attorney at Law
And
Jeffrey Hoffman, Ph.D., Northern Michigan University

January 6 20054

"Investigative" Tribnet reporter David SeagoÂ’s 8/18/04 email suggesting language to the Snohomish County auditor for an editorial about security issues on touch screen voting systems, reflecting a nonchalant attitude about election security: "How about: "Screw the loonies who think hackers will steal your votes. Our system works good."

INTRODUCTION
Nationally, the subject of electronic and touch screen voting has been the subject of vigorous discussion about the election security risks they present.5 Because the operating systems of these electronic voting systems are claimed to be proprietary trade secrets, in effect the counting of electronic ballots takes place in electronic "rooms" where the public is never allowed to observe, even though most state statutes grant observers the right to observe all aspects of the vote counting process. Because this lack of security was widely publicized along with the status of the various battleground states, no one supporting Kerry or Bush needed an order from on high or a sign held up by Tim Russert of Meet the Press to know what the candidate needed (votes), in what states he needed them, and in what amounts they were needed. A seeming replay of the 2000 election debacle, including exit polling discrepancies and widespread voting problems has, without any substantial media coverage, led to fully 20% of the American public being convinced the election lacked legitimacy, according to one poll. See Keith OlbermannÂ’s MSNBC blog. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240

The Problem Presented
Washington state recently had a historically close gubernatorial election, in which Democrat Christine Gregoire trailed Republican Dino Rossi by only 42 votes statewide after a machine recount, and a hand recount was then requested by Gregoire and the Democrats. In normally Democratic Snohomish County, Kerry had easily won the county (though the race against Bush was much narrower in election day touch screen voting), but in the governorÂ’s race, Republican Rossi defeated Gregoire in Snohomish County by over 6000 votes thanks to an election day touch screen landslide of over 8000 votes.

Thanks to mathematician Arlene Ash, we calculate that the chances that above 2/3 of the vote that is paper balloting would show a Democratic lead of 97044 to 95228 votes, while the remaining 1/3 of the vote on touch screens would show a Republican lead of almost 5% (50,400 Republican to 42,145 Democratic) resulting in an overall Republican win of over 6000 votes in Snohomish county as a result of voters randomly choosing whether to vote by paper ballot or by touch screen is one in 1,000 trillion! A true impossibility. ...