Organic Consumers Association Statement On California Prop 37 Uncounted Votes

Organic Consumers Association
Katherine Paul
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Organic Consumers Association Katherine Paul, 207.653.3090,

FINLAND, Minn. - Nov. 12, 2012 - The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is monitoring the ongoing vote count and election results for Prop 37, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act. The OCA will contest the vote if results differ substantially from pre-election poll results or if there are reports of any voting irregularities, particularly in Orange and San Mateo Counties where paperless ballot systems make voting more vulnerable to fraud.

Prop 37 was defeated by 6 percentage points, 53% to 47%, according to the California Secretary of State on election night. However, as with every election, not every ballot had been counted as of midnight Nov. 6. On election night, there were still 3.3 million uncounted votes. As of November 11, the vote totals were 5,205,044 NO to 4,619,580 YES

"The OCA, along with the California Right to Know Campaign and its attorneys, are closely monitoring the ongoing vote count process," said Ronnie Cummins, Director of the OCA and OCF, which contributed more than $1 million to the Prop 37 campaign. "We will challenge the outcome if the final count indicates more YES than NO votes, or if the results are substantially different from our pre-election polls."

State law requires county elections officials to report their final results to the Secretary of State by December 7. The Secretary of State has until December 14 to certify the results of the election.

The OCA hired Lake Research Partners to conduct pre-election polling for Prop 37. The final results of the polling are not yet available.

"Win or lose, Prop 37 is just the beginning," said Cummins. "We've put GMO labeling on the national map, and we've put Big Ag and Big Food on notice: This movement is stronger than ever, and it's not going away."

Activists in Washington State have already collected more than half of the signatures they need to put a similar GMO labeling initiative on the ballot there in 2013. Plans are also in the works to reignite legislative attempts in Vermont and Connecticut, where laws don't provide for citizens ballot initiatives.

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is an online and grassroots non-profit 501(c)3 public interest organization campaigning for health, justice, and sustainability.

The Organic Consumers Fund is a 501(c)4 allied organization of the Organic Consumers Association, focused on grassroots lobbying and legislative action.

Rep. Allen West Refuses to Concede, Seeks Hand-Count, Impounding of Ballots and Voting Systems in FL-18 U.S. House Race

BradBlog

Tea Party-backed Repub reportedly trails challenger Murphy by less than 2,500 votes as tallied by FL's flawed, failed voting systems...

By BRAD FRIEDMAN on 11/9/2012, 6:05am PT 

On Election Night, Democrats and progressives celebrated the reported defeat of far Rightwing Tea Party-backed Rep. Allen West (R-FL22) by his Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy in Florida's newly redistricted 18th Congressional district in Eastern Florida.

With precinct votes unofficially tabulated in the three counties which comprise the new Democratic-leaning district --- Martin, St. Lucie and part of Palm Beach --- Murphy reportedly leads West by 2,456 votes out of 318,200 electronically tallied to date. That number does not include what West's campaign manager describes as "tens of thousands of absentee ballots to be counted in Palm Beach County and potential provisional ballots across the district."
Nonetheless, Murphy has declared victory, which carries no particular legal weight, while West has filed legal documents in St. Lucie and Palm Beach calling for the impounding of voting systems, paper ballots and a hand-count of those ballots.

West may be a far Right extremist. A fair amount of evidence even suggests that West may be certifiably insane. But, even far right, possibly insane candidates, and especially their supporters, deserve to have their votes counted in a way that they can know, for certain, that they either won or lost an election.

Given the oft-failed, easily-manipulated, unoverseeable electronic voting and tabulation systems --- each with a long and well-documented record of failure and miscounts --- used in the three counties that make up Florida's new 18th district (as well as the rest of the state of Florida, and the rest of the 50 states for that matter), West and his supporters have every reason to demand a public, 100% hand-count of paper ballots before conceding defeat. Particularly in an election with such a slim margin, as reported by the flawed electronic systems, said to stand between the two candidates...


Machine tallied results to date

Here are the results of FL-18 as currently known at this hour, according to the Florida Division of Elections website...





That .78% difference between West and Murphy, if it holds after absentees and provisionals are added in, puts the race just outside of the .5% margin that would otherwise trigger a state-sponsored "recount" (albeit on the same faulty machines that tallied the ballots, either accurately or inaccurately, in the first place, as per FL law.)

The county-by-county results for FL-18 show where the race is even tighter, particularly in Palm Beach County, where just 11 votes(!) out of 123,903 tallied there currently separate the two candidates...

On Election Night, as reported by the Sen-Sentinel, Democrats were giddy about the prospect of the controversial West being tossed out of the House.

Florida's U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who also serves as chair of the DNC, optimistically trumpeted that "moderate voters totally rejected Allen West's brand of extremism [and] his outrageous commentary. I think they didn't want a member of Congress who was in the news every day for all the wrong reasons."

Indeed, West has made a name for himself by declaring, for example, that he has "heard" some 76 of the 81 members of the Progressive Caucus in the U.S. House are "communists", and, as the Sun-Sentinel also reports, suggesting that "Nazi propaganda chief Joeseph Goebbels would be envious of the Democrats' 'incredible propaganda machine.'"

Wasserman Schultz, the paper notes, "was the subject of one of West's most talked-about tirades, when he called her 'the most vile, unprofessional and despicable' member of the House, labeled her a 'coward,' told her to 'shut the heck up,' and said she had 'proven repeatedly that you are not a lady.'"

Evidence of Fraud in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election: A Reader

Global Research
Larry Chin

As previously written, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and the Republicans have ample opportunities to steal the 2012 presidential election.

The groundwork for such a scenario is in place. A privatized, hackable, corrupted electronic American election system controlled by Republicans. Rampant voter suppression and intimidation campaigns by Republican operatives. A corporate media that continues to be biased towards Romney/Ryan. A political climate tilted towards corporate power and the escalation of war (Republicans offer the faster, more brutal agenda).

There are widespread reports of early voting chaos, interminably long lines, disputed polling, mysterious electronic vote flipping, voter list caging, polling place intimidation, and disruptions of the entire process in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Just as no single factor contributed to the installation of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to power in 2000, Romney/Ryan and the neocons have the means, motive, opportunity, and an apparatus in place to install themselves in the White House today.

Yet there are those who insist that the neocons cannot possibly steal this election. That already rampant malfeasance is not happening.

It is not surprising to find those who wish to silence election integrity advocates and whistleblowers out in full force, nitpicking on minutiae, distracting focus from the central questions. Clearly, the whistleblowers, among them Brad Friedman, have hit a nerve. Among Friedman’s warnings:

•    Based on exhaustive evidence, including Ohio’s EVEREST study and California’s Top to Bottom Review, systems that are used throughout the country can be easily hacked via hardware and/or firmware.

•    Paper ballots are no guarantee. Recounts can be gamed.

•    There is no evidence that the Romney camp’s investment in voting machine company Hart Intercivic is “hands-off”, as Romney’s defenders insist.

[1. Denials about the importance of the Romney/Hart connection are primarily based on official denials and statements from the companies themselves. These denials also assume that laws are being followed. The Romney camp will not address this connection (which is at the very least a clear and unethical conflict of interest) any more directly, because it would lead to further disclosure of far more skeletons lurking in the much larger Romney financial closet, including a myriad of offshore entities. The Bush family’s Carlyle Group---also allegedly “hands off”--- has never gotten fully exposed either. 2. Factual evidence of national vote-rigging is overwhelming, dwarfing Hart/Romney, a single controversy. The professional “debunkers” are attempting to distract focus from the larger case. -LC]

There are no more election safeguards in place today than in 2000 or 2004. There are, furthermore, no appropriate judicial safeguards or processes. Legal processes in the wake of any election challenges (from the local to the national level) are at the mercy of partisan politicians—primarily Republicans—and ultimately, a right-wing Supreme Court.

The bottom line: the system that ultimately counts the votes is in Republican control. The Supreme Court, which will decide any final election challenge, is dominated by the right-wing.

Nightmare scenario

Is it possible for Romney/Ryan and the Republicans to steal the 2012 election?  The answer remains yes—emphatically, as previously written.

Ominous Signs of Romney/Ryan Election Coup

Global Research
Larry Chin

As previously written, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and the Republicans have ample opportunities to steal the 2012 presidential election.

The groundwork for such a scenario is in place. A privatized, hackable, corrupted electronic American election system controlled by Republicans. Rampant voter suppression and intimidation campaigns by Republican operatives. A corporate media that continues to be biased towards Romney/Ryan. A political climate tilted towards corporate power and the escalation of war (Republicans offer the faster, more brutal agenda).

There are widespread reports of early voting chaos, interminably long lines, disputed polling, mysterious electronic vote flipping, voter list caging, polling place intimidation, and disruptions of the entire process in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Just as no single factor contributed to the installation of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to power in 2000, Romney/Ryan and the neocons have the means, motive, opportunity, and an apparatus in place to install themselves in the White House today.

Yet there are those who insist that the neocons cannot possibly steal this election. That already rampant malfeasance is not happening.

It is not surprising to find those who wish to silence election integrity advocates and whistleblowers out in full force, nitpicking on minutiae, distracting focus from the central questions. Clearly, the whistleblowers, among them Brad Friedman, have hit a nerve. Among Friedman’s warnings:

•    Based on exhaustive evidence, including Ohio’s EVEREST study and California’s Top to Bottom Review, systems that are used throughout the country can be easily hacked via hardware and/or firmware.

•    Paper ballots are no guarantee. Recounts can be gamed.

•    There is no evidence that the Romney camp’s investment in voting machine company Hart Intercivic is “hands-off”, as Romney’s defenders insist.

[1. Denials about the importance of the Romney/Hart connection are primarily based on official denials and statements from the companies themselves. These denials also assume that laws are being followed. The Romney camp will not address this connection (which is at the very least a clear and unethical conflict of interest) any more directly, because it would lead to further disclosure of far more skeletons lurking in the much larger Romney financial closet, including a myriad of offshore entities. The Bush family’s Carlyle Group---also allegedly “hands off”--- has never gotten fully exposed either. 2. Factual evidence of national vote-rigging is overwhelming, dwarfing Hart/Romney, a single controversy. The professional “debunkers” are attempting to distract focus from the larger case. -LC]

There are no more election safeguards in place today than in 2000 or 2004. There are, furthermore, no appropriate judicial safeguards or processes. Legal processes in the wake of any election challenges (from the local to the national level) are at the mercy of partisan politicians—primarily Republicans—and ultimately, a right-wing Supreme Court.

The bottom line: the system that ultimately counts the votes is in Republican control. The Supreme Court, which will decide any final election challenge, is dominated by the right-wing.

Nightmare scenario

Is it possible for Romney/Ryan and the Republicans to steal the 2012 election?  The answer remains yes—emphatically, as previously written.

Is it possible for Republican operatives and Romney/Ryan functionaries to manipulate the vote, obscure their activities, and plausibly deny all of it? Yes. It is underway. They have planned for this moment for a long time.

Is there a deep political infrastructure in place to enable a Romney/Ryan criminal ascendency, and provide full support and reliable political cover in both the short and long term? Is there overriding elite support for Romney/Ryan? Emphatically, yes.

The stolen elections of 2000 and 2004 were not the product of conspiracy “theory”, but conspiracy fact. And there can be no denying the conspiracy fact that the 2012 vote is already compromised, given the widespread irregularities that are already taking place throughout the country.

Will history repeat itself?

In 2000, seasoned observers watched with horror as George W. Bush ominously rose to power. The Bush family’s long criminal history was sanitized and ignored. Bush could do no wrong, while Al Gore and the Democrats, playing by old-fashioned rules, seemed unable to do anything right—despite winning debates, and despite what appeared to be clear advantages on the ground, and regardless of campaign missteps by Bush and Cheney that should have sunk them. A close, stealable “contest” was manufactured. Dirty election tricks of every sort made sure of it.

Those who knew the threat posed by the Bush family sounded the alarms, which went unheeded.

Today, with world power at stake, an identical scenario has been set up for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. The atmosphere today is, as it was then, ominous and palpable.

As the state of Florida mysteriously flipped from Gore to Bush on election night 2000, the Bush family chuckled and gloated. They knew. The smug looks on the faces of George H.W., George W., and Jeb cannot be forgotten.

Have Romney and Ryan begun gloating?

Retired NSA Analyst Mickey Duniho Testifies in Arizona Election Integrity Trial

Mickey Duniho testified in yesterday's election integrity hearing held in Tucson, Arizona.  Duniho is one of thirteen plaintiffs suing Pima County to get them to comply with existing election laws.   He provides an excellent summary of the problems verifying elections counted on electronic voting machines.

Pima County is notorious for fighting measures for election integrity and  have spent millions of taxpayer's dollars to prevent disclosure of public election records. 

The aim of the lawsuit against Pima County is to get the court to:

1. Issue an injunction requiring the Defendants to instruct poll workers to include, in every Official Return Envelope, a copy of the signed “tally lists” or results tape as required by A.R.S. §16-615.

2. Issue an injunction mandating that the Defendants separate the vote by mail ballots by precinct.

3.  Issue and injunction ordering Pima County to conduct sufficient randomly selected hand count audits of the vote by mail ballots, according to the procedure outlined in A.R.S. 16-602.  County races must be included in the audit.

This suit also requests the recovery of legal fees incurred.

A ruling on this case is expected today.

Has the Election already been Stolen for Romney/Ryan?

Global Research
Larry Chin

For at least the past four decades, the American election process has been controlled by corpora

tions and agents connected to the Republican Party. This year’s “contest” is no different.

Voter suppression campaigns have been underway across America, by Republican operatives. (See Black Box Voting andBrad Blog). Nothing is being done to stop it.

Mitt Romney has direct ties to voting machines (also see the report by Brad Friedman). His son, Tagg Romney (who wanted to punch Barack Obama in the face) and a cadre of former Bain Capital business partners are owners of Hart Intercivic, whose voting machines are used in all fifty states. And this is just one of the many companies with ties to the right-wing, which include Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia. In 2004, Diebold’s Walden O’Dell promised to “deliver votes” to George W. Bush. His machines did, stealing what should have been a John Kerry win.

To this day, American democracy remains privatized and hackable. Nothing has been done about it. Theft continues unabated.

Backlash and cover-up

The few investigators who keep bringing exhaustive factual evidence of vote fraud to light have been attacked as “conspiracy theorists” by corporate media gatekeepers, and ignored by officials. These same accusers have refused to lift a finger to verify any of the facts. The “progressive” establishment Left has joined in this cover-up. The Democratic Party-affiliated Center for American Progress, and its site ThinkProgress, recently attacked reporter Brad Friedman.

for raising questions about Romney’s ties to voting machines.

Why is the establishment Left dissuading their own constituents from waking up?  Going back to the days of COINTELPRO and Operation Mockingbird, the Left gate keeping apparatus has long operated as a system of controlled dissent, offering channels to express certain ideas, but smashing down factual truths that are deemed truly threatening to their agenda.  The notion that American democracy—the vote—is thoroughly corrupted is such a threat. Unfortunately, it is the fact.

Nevertheless, we find the liberal consensus still pushing illusions and naïve ideas. Obama is still portrayed as a populist hero, despite his Bush/Cheney-esque record. The Democrats continue to urge their followers to believe that turnout and early voting solve everything.

But what if those votes are not counted? If the machines counting the votes are controlled by Republicans and Romney/Ryan, the game may already be over.

With a few clicks of a keyboard of a Hart Intercivic machine (Tagg Romney could even do it himself), the White House is seized, just as it was in 2000 and 2004.

Romney/Ryan: As Teflon as Bush/Cheney

Simultaneous with a vote-rigging apparatus in place for the Republicans, the corporate media—dominated by the corporate right-wing— has gone out of its way to give Romney and Ryan a free pass in news coverage.

Corporate media is ignoring their unsavory backgrounds, and ignoring the clear dangers of their policy agenda, and also ignoring the neocon fanatics advising the campaign. Tax returns that contain the history of his dirty schemes at Bain Capital are not the focus of critical investigation.

Countless Romney/Ryan campaign blunders, embarrassing debate losses and pathological lying have not slowed down their momentum.

Many polls continue to put Romney in the lead. Some polls even put Romney ahead of Obama among women, despite his outrageous misogyny. It is impossible to believe that these numbers correlate with realities on the ground.

Clearly the illusion of a close election is being created, in order to provide political cover for vote theft on November 6th. As demonstrated in 2000, close elections are easier to steal.

Bush/Cheney on steroids

The parallels with the stolen election of 2000 that installed Bush/Cheney in the White House are clear, and palpable. The larger political situation is also eerily similar.

Coming off of a period of neoliberal place-holding under Clinton, it was time to hand the controls over to Washington’s most hawkish right-wing enforcers, in order to start the war for oil (9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq) in earnest.

A Romney/Ryan administration will deliver a return to neoconservative rule—this time for the wars in Iran and Syria, and to impose austerity programs domestically—with militant messianic fervor.

The arrogant and malleable Mitt Romney, a suit as empty as George W. Bush, is the perfect man for the job. Ryan, a peevish and sadistic ideologue is also an ideal “enforcer”.

Attendance Encouraged at Tomorrow's Hearing to Get Pima County to Comply with Existing Election Laws

Update:  From John Brakey-

PLEASE, be in court with us, and bring lots of friends, we need a big presence to show that this is a critical case and “we the people” are paying attention and we expect the judge to do the same.

 

Thursday, November 01, 2012 @  2 pm
Judge James E Marner’s  Courtroom 668

Pima Superior Court: 110 W. Congress, Tucson, AZ

All we want is “Verifiable Elections”, not more “Election Theater”  Our suit, “It demands that county races be included in the hand-count audit, which is not required by Arizona law. County staff workers and advocates dispute whether it is allowed.” From AZ Star 

Here are the links to what been filed in Pima County Superior Court:
Case No. C2012-6655 Assigned to Hon. Judge E. Marner.

We the People Vs Pima County: 

***Pima County Election Special Action OSC filed 10.25.12 -1 of 2.pdf:  http://tinyurl.com/8ploaky

***Election Special Action OSC filed 10.25.12 -2 of 2.pdf:  http://tinyurl.com/9olo5su

***Plaintiffs Memorandum in Support of Special Action 10.26.12.pdf: http://tinyurl.com/94ffguk

More info go to Face book “Pima County Elections - Trust but Verify” https://www.facebook.com/PimaCountyElections

Post from Last Friday:

Arizona Citizens Sue Pima County to Enforce Existing Election Laws

J.T. Waldron

Attorney Brad Roach represents the plaintiffs in a bid
to enforce existing election laws.

Citizens in Arizona concerned about Pima County voting procedures are part of a lawsuit compelling the county to follow state voting laws before the upcoming general election. A diverse group of plaintiffs registered as Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens and Independents are suing Pima County's Board of Supervisors to incorporate tasks specified by Arizona State Law 16-615.  The plaintiffs' stated mission is to restore public oversight to the elections process.  Like the rest of the nation, Arizonans share a growing concern that election computers make elections easy to cheat and impossible to challenge.

Laws in place but not currently followed by Pima County involve having poll workers include in every Official Return Envelope a copy of the signed “tally lists” or results tape.  Although this practice has been ignored or abandoned over time, the procedure is a valuable step in providing a useful auditing tool in the event of a recount or contested election.

In other words, the citizens are asking that the official returns be signed on the back by the poll workers and placed in the clear plastic envelope labelled "Official Returns Envelope" at the end of the night's count.

The recurring theme for any audit is the comparison of one set of numbers to another set of numbers and there are many circumstances that would require the comparison of ballots to the official returns or "poll tapes". To facilitate this process, citizens are also requesting the court issue an injunction mandating that Pima County separate the vote-by-mail ballots by precinct.

Handling of vote-by-mail ballots is another task that the citizens would like to see Pima County perform in compliance with ARS 16-602. To prevent Pima County's continued defiance of the law, plaintiffs are requesting that Pima County conduct sufficient randomly selected hand count audits of the vote-by-mail ballots as outlined in state law.

Attorney Brad Roach is representing the plaintiffs and states in his action: "Pima County has a long and sad history of blocking any attempt to monitor the elections process, verify the integrity of the computer systems, or audit the results."

Roach refers to the two billion dollar Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) Election and Pima County's resistance to public oversight and records requests (Pima County Superior Court cases C2007-2073 and C2008-5016).  "This persistent hindering, at every turn, of electors’ and political parties’ attempts to verify election integrity has cost the County hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees and resulted in multiple court ordered releases of election information Pima County sought to hide."

This suit also requests the recovery of legal fees incurred.

Partisan politics are fierce on Arizona's Senate floor, but verifiable elections seem to transcend any political differences among the plaintiffs.  Green Party Candidate Dave Croteau, Republican Candidate Bill Beard, Libertarian Elections Specialist Jim March and Paul Hilts, the chair of the Pima County Democratic Party Elections Committee are among the plaintiffs with an interest in the November 5th, 2012 General Election.

Election integrity advocate John Brakey of AUDITAZ adds his take on a familiar theme,  "It's not about right or left, It's about right or wrong - and then when you look further, it's also about greed and corruption." Brakey is also part of the team that patiently waits for Pima County to step aside and allow for an actual audit and forensic exam of those 2006 RTA Election Ballots stored for a court case aimed at further restoring the integrity of elections in Pima County.

To monitor progress and get information for this 2012 elections lawsuit, visit their new facebook page:

Pima County Elections - Trust but Verify at http://facebook.com/pimacountyelections

Democracy at risk: Voting machines might be hacked

Iowa warns international observers of arrest

Politico
Bobby Cervantes

We don't need your oversight.  That's what the machines are for.

Iowa has joined Texas in warning international election observers of possible criminal prosecution if they violate state laws and get near polling places on Election Day.

Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz — like Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott last week — on Tuesday threatened Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe election observers with arrest if they came within 300 feet of a polling place’s entrance, in violation of state law. (In Texas, it’s 100 feet.)

“My office met with two delegation representatives last week to discuss Iowa’s election process, and it was explained to them that they are not permitted at the polls,” Schultz said in a statement. “Iowa law is very specific about who is permitted at polling places, and there is no exception for members of this group.”

The OSCE — comprised of 56 countries, including the United States — is chiefly a crisis mediation and conflict resolution group in Europe, Asia and North America. Since 2002, the organization’s poll watchers have observed six U.S. elections, without incident, said Janez Lenari, the OSCE’s director for the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.

In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Lenari wrote, “The threat of criminal sanctions against OSCE/ODIHR observers is unacceptable. The United States, like all countries in the OSCE, has an obligation to invite ODIHR observers to observe its elections.”

Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokesman, said last week the group assured Texas authorities and the State Department that observers will respect Texas laws.

“To my knowledge, [Texas] is the only state that came forward and said ‘please reassure us that you’re going to follow our state electoral law.’ And they have now been reassured,” Nuland said.

Part II: Rigged Elections for Romney?

The Money Party
Michael Collins

Part I of this series suggested that there may well have been massive vote flipping for candidate Mitt Romney in the Republican primaries (Rigged Elections for Romney (10/22/12)  The article and the initial research analysis were received broadly.  In addition, highly motivated citizens across the country and a team of high school students contacted the authors for help replicating the research in their states.  The researchers, Francois et al., point out that this can be done with their open source techniques.

The basic argument is straightforward.  If you look at precinct level voting data arranged from the smallest to the largest precincts, you will see Romney’s gains increasing substantially as the cumulative vote increases.  For example, Ohio and Wisconsin show this clearly as do eleven other states presented here.  This extraordinary vote gain from smallest to largest precincts is so out of line, that the probability that this would happen by chance alone is often less than 1 out of a number represented by 1 preceded by 100 zeros and a decimal point, a value beneath the statistical package’s lower limits.  As a result, the researchers termed the suspected vote flipping for Romney the “amazing anomaly.” (The Amazing Statistical Anomaly)

The research team’s observation of Romney gains based on precinct size is not unique.   The anomaly was raised  previously concerning the Republican presidential primaries by a commenter on a political discussion forum.

Richard Charnin, posting as TruthIsAll, first noted the pattern with an analysis of the 2005 special election for a vacated seat for Ohio’s 2nd district, in the House of Representatives.  The candidates were the liberal-populist Democrat Paul Hackett versus a right-wing Republican, Jean Schmidt.  Charnin noticed that Schmidt’s votes and percentages increased substantially from the smallest to largest precincts in that district.  This was a patently absurd pattern of vote accumulation since the liberal Hackett wins were in highly conservative counties that rarely voted for any Democrat. (See Precincts with the most votes favored Schmidt at nearly 100%)

Vote flipping is a form of election fraud that occurs “when votes are changed [without the voter’s knowledge or consent] from one candidate to another or several others during electronic voting and vote tabulation.”  County election officials conduct computerized vote tabulation as precincts submit their voting results, but cannot detect the fraud because only the total number of votes is checked and vote flipping does not affect the total votes.  The activity is suspected in many of the critical Republican primaries in 2012.

In each case, Mitt Romney was the beneficiary.  For example, without vote flipping, Romney would have lost the Wisconsin, and Ohio, and Illinois primaries as well as primaries in other states.  A comprehensive review will appear in Part III of this series.

Critics of the analysis presented in the first article claim that there is a perfectly logical expectation: that Romney would be more popular in suburbs.  Hence the votes increase as precinct size increases, indicating a move to supposedly Romney favorable urban areas.  Part I of this series mentioned that the research group anticipated that criticism and had factored out urban density from the analysis.  The article linked to a fairly complex research analysis from the team.  Here is a much simpler explanation, via example.

Mitt Romney was a candidate in the 2008 Maryland Republican primary.  The race shows no statistical anomalies in vote accumulation from smallest to largest precincts for Romney.

 

In particular, you can see that Romney’s flat lined in the 2008 Maryland primary.  There is no indication that precinct size played any role in his accumulation of votes.  The demographic criticism fails on the basis of extensive statistical analysis presented by the research team and linked in the first article illustrated by the graphic representation above.

What is the Likely Explanation for the Amazing Anomaly?

Which step in the vote counting process best explains suspected vote flipping?

The researchers, Francois et al., maintain that the likely culprits are central tabulators used by county election departments.  Typically, election precincts submit their individual results to a county-run central tabulator.  The central tabulator combines the precinct totals for a county total for every candidate on the ballot.  That information is then transmitted to state election officials.  The candidate vote count produced by the central tabulators is the critical element in the election process.

The central tabulators are computing devices owned or serviced by private companies such as Dominion, ES&S, and Hart Intercivic.  The operational details and software engineering are almost always the exclusive knowledge and intellectual property of the private companies.  As a result, public officials and citizens lack the type of access necessary to monitor the vote process.

In addition the intermediate data between the precinct machines and the central tabulators is stored in a proprietary obfuscated binary format unavailable to even the county registrar of voters.  That represents a loss of the “electronic chain of custody” of the votes.

Their evidence from Francois et al. is straightforward and powerful.

The researchers asked two questions:  Did a county vote distribution violate the laws of probability in terms of increased vote totals for one or more candidates based on precinct size (an amazing anomaly)?  And was the county using a central tabulator or not?  The answer the second question moves us in the direction of isolating a locus for the process.

Fortunately, Wisconsin has a number of counties that do not use central tabulators.  One of those counties, Outagamie, is the sixth largest county in the state.

Tabulator versus No-Tabulator Counties in Wisconsin – Milwaukee Compared to Outagamie

The entire state of Wisconsin displayed the amazing anomaly of Romney gains as precinct size increased.  Central tabulator counties make up the vast majority of votes and voting precincts in the state.  This graph below, from Part I, displays that phenomenon. It is worth reviewing briefly.  The slope of Romney’s line is an amazing anomaly. As you can see with the red oval, the anomaly produces a trend that leads to victory for Romney.  Without the amazing anomaly, Romney would have lost Wisconsin by 53,991 votes: Romney 34.29%, Santorum 41.14%.

 

The graphs below show candidate vote accumulations from the smallest to largest precincts in the county. The graphic representation of the vote accumulation in Outagamie (left) is well within the realm of statistical probability. The graph of Milwaukee County, below right, shows the amazing anomaly for Romney, as seen above, for the entire state. These two graphs represent the same election, same day, same state.

(Note:  An outside volunteer independently downloaded the data from Wisconsin’s counties and came up with the exact same results.  (Click for larger images)
(Click here for Excel of Wisconsin by precinct with amazing anomaly calculations)

In Outagamie County, WI Santorum won with 10,673 votes to Romney’s 9,750.  Romney won Milwaukee County48,424 to Santorum’s 28,491. Several other no-tabulator counties in Wisconsin fail to show an amazing anomaly increase for any candidate from smallest to largest precincts.

Milwaukee County, on the other hand, used ES&S electronic voting machines and an ES&S Unity Server central tabulator as part of the county elections division.  In Milwaukee County Romney’s vote totals and percentage for precincts increased at a highly improbable rate from the largest to the smallest precincts.