THE TRUTH: In some states the public is not allowed to examine the paper trail. Some machines produce a paper trail that is on very flimsy paper and is very difficult to read. Furthermore, the computer can print out whatever you might want to see and still do something completely different inside the machine. It is extremely rare that the paper trails are looked at by anyone.
TALKING POINT: In some states, after each election, some random “audits” are done, where the electronic votes are compared to paper ballots or to the paper trail for one or more races, to verify that they match.
THE TRUTH: This is not an audit, it is a spot check, and it is often controlled by the same people who program the system and control Chain of Custody for absentee ballots. These “audits” are usually done a few days after the election and the Chain of Custody has been broken. How does the public know there has been no ballot switching?
TALKING POINT: Our state has very good recount laws to ensure the accuracy of a count in close elections.
THE TRUTH:
a) A recount is only performed after the ballots have been removed from public sight and the Chain of Custody has been broken. No "after the fact" recount can authenticate the original count.
b) In some states recounts are not allowed unless a candidate had “lost” by a very small percentage point.
c) In some states, a “recount” means just running the ballots through the same electronic equipment/computer again.
TALKING POINT: Our elections are run by county auditors using certified voting systems.
THE TRUTH: What this is saying is "Trust us. We will verify the election for you."
That is not the same as allowing the public to see the essential accounting itself. The right to authenticate our own elections is an inalienable right, derived from the right to self government.
According to the US Constitution, our representatives are to be chosen by the people. The People cannot transfer this right to the government. Any election run by the government must also ensure that the public can see and authenticate all essential steps.
The government cannot be in control of choosing itself.
TALKING POINT: The voting systems have been tested by independent test laboratories and when installed, cannot be changed.
THE TRUTH:
b) These labs test only what the vendor tells them to test. They have also been caught omitting key tests.
c) Saying "the installations cannot be changed" does not mean "the votes cannot be altered."
d) Votes and vote totals can be altered whether or not electronic vote counting software is an approved version.
TALKING POINT: The machines are certified at the national level, tested and certified by our state and tested by the county.
THE TRUTH:
Imagine this: You work as a teller at a bank. They decide to remove the video camera that shows you counting the cash. Instead, they give you a pretest to "detect whether you might tamper at some point in the future." Pretests can help detect incompetence in the election setup, but there is no pretest anywhere that can predict alteration of the count at a later date and time.
There IS a way to detect vote tampering, and it is transparency. The public must be allowed to check whether actual voted ballots match electronically reported counts.
TALKING POINT: After testing, the machines are then locked and sealed until put into use.
THE TRUTH: Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. We always hear this statement and we also regularly see that some machines weren't sealed; that they were accessed by technicians or elections insiders mid-election; or that crucial transactions are missing from or added to the vote-counting computer's audit logs.
Even if machines were sealed, since computers can only do what they are instructed to do by their administrator, locking and sealing has no bearing on inside access or actual manipulation of the count.
Historically, tampering by insiders is the most common form of election fraud.
TALKING POINT: Each election there are random audits to compare the vote counts to the actual paper ballots to make sure they match.
THE TRUTH:
b) A random spot check is not protective against alteration of the count by someone with inside access. At best, spot checks may detect accidental error, but they do not detect deliberate alteration. Those controlling the spot check also control ballot Chain of Custody.
c) By the time a spot check is done, Chain of Custody is broken. No after the fact audit or recount can substitute for public right to see the original count.
e) No partial count authenticates the whole pool. The public must be able to authenticate the count of the whole, not just a part of the count.
There are all kinds of games with after-the-fact "random" spot checks. The random is not truly random; the ballots were substituted, ditched, altered before the count; the race chosen for counting is hand-picked…
f) The public is not allowed to do the spot check. It is assigned to an entity chosen by the same people who run the election.
Basically, "We will do a random spot check" means "Go away, we will authenticate this for you. You cannot authenticate it yourself."
TALKING POINT: Most voters vote on paper ballots, so do not vote on the electronic machines
THE TRUTH: More than 98% of votes in the U.S. are counted electronically. Even if you mark your vote on a paper ballot, it is almost certain your ballot will be counted by an Optical Scan Machine that is a software-driven.
TALKING POINT: Many voters vote early or by absentee ballot and those counts are checked each day to verify the number of voters match the number of ballots received/submitted.
THE TRUTH: The public cannot "verify the number of voters matches the number of ballots" with absentee voting. With absentee or early voting, the public can never see who actually put the ballot into the system.
With absentee voting, the count can be altered by adding, subtracting, changing, or substituting ballots before the machine counts them; and also by alteration of the electronic counting process itself, because electronic counting is hidden from the public. So is the storing of the ballots that arrive prior to the election hidden from the public.
THE TRUTH: Since it has been proven over and over again that the machines that count our votes are easily manipulated and we know the counts can be corrupted, unless an election official hand-counts the votes on Election Night (in front of the public, before they have ever left the public view), s/he has no way of knowing that the results spit out by the machine are true and accurate and therefor has no basis on which to certify an election.
TALKING POINT: We are committed to running fair, accurate, transparent and auditable elections.
THE TRUTH: Even though most election officials and poll workers are honest and hard-working, no state is really committed to running transparent elections because almost all the vote counting is concealed and the entire premise is that only the government can validate the election of itself. Beyond even this, in the vast majority of cases even the government is in the dark as to how the votes are really being counted, with only the insiders (corporate vendors) who program and service the computers in the know.
