Nevada: You Voted... or did you?
Here we go again...
The caucuses in Nevada were Saturday and there are questions about how the vote totals were counted. It is 2 days later, and the votes are still not counted, yet, somehow, the state GOP has declared a winner. As of 2AM election night, when this blogger went to bed, less than 50% were counted.
The caucuses where the votes were counted live on television went like this:
58% Paul
19% Romney
16% Gingrich
4% Santorum
3% OTHER
It took all night to get to 48% of the vote totals from the other precincts' caucuses... You know, the ones that weren't counted live on national TV. The results of those? Not anywhere near the same:
50% Romney
20% Gingrich
19% Paul
11% Santorum
I really hate to speculate on items like this, but watching movies like 'Hacking Democracy' really makes me distrustful of those who count the votes. These people tend to be party hacks who have motivations to make 'errors' that swing elections. Simply writing a number in front of the actual single digit number of votes he received gave Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum potentially thousands of votes they DID NOT receive in Iowa precincts, as I blogged, and has been widely reported.
South Carolina and Florida have Diebold machines, so I don't trust those results, either. I simply can't. I've seen too many examples of them returning erroneous results.
We need to have randomly numbered paper ballots that are hand counted in public. Print the number on the ballot twice, and make one detachable so you can take it home. Then, even if the votes were machine counted, a number would be assigned to the ballot that only you would know. You could then look up your ballot number to see how that ballot was recorded. To prevent ballot stuffing, you compare the number of people who signed in to vote at each precinct vs the number of ballots returned from that precinct.
Voting is the ONLY say we have in how our country is run. If it isn't trustworthy, then we really have NO say in how our country is run. Lost votes, and unconfirmed vote totals are unacceptable. We pride ourselves on allowing the people to control their own government, but if the vote totals aren't real, what do we really have?
The caucuses in Nevada were Saturday and there are questions about how the vote totals were counted. It is 2 days later, and the votes are still not counted, yet, somehow, the state GOP has declared a winner. As of 2AM election night, when this blogger went to bed, less than 50% were counted.
The caucuses where the votes were counted live on television went like this:
58% Paul
19% Romney
16% Gingrich
4% Santorum
3% OTHER
It took all night to get to 48% of the vote totals from the other precincts' caucuses... You know, the ones that weren't counted live on national TV. The results of those? Not anywhere near the same:
50% Romney
20% Gingrich
19% Paul
11% Santorum
I really hate to speculate on items like this, but watching movies like 'Hacking Democracy' really makes me distrustful of those who count the votes. These people tend to be party hacks who have motivations to make 'errors' that swing elections. Simply writing a number in front of the actual single digit number of votes he received gave Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum potentially thousands of votes they DID NOT receive in Iowa precincts, as I blogged, and has been widely reported.
South Carolina and Florida have Diebold machines, so I don't trust those results, either. I simply can't. I've seen too many examples of them returning erroneous results.
We need to have randomly numbered paper ballots that are hand counted in public. Print the number on the ballot twice, and make one detachable so you can take it home. Then, even if the votes were machine counted, a number would be assigned to the ballot that only you would know. You could then look up your ballot number to see how that ballot was recorded. To prevent ballot stuffing, you compare the number of people who signed in to vote at each precinct vs the number of ballots returned from that precinct.
Voting is the ONLY say we have in how our country is run. If it isn't trustworthy, then we really have NO say in how our country is run. Lost votes, and unconfirmed vote totals are unacceptable. We pride ourselves on allowing the people to control their own government, but if the vote totals aren't real, what do we really have?
posted by Tonewah at 7:13 AM
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