On 10/27/10, Jon Roland <jon.roland@constitution.org> wrote:

Without reading [Lori Minnite's] book, it seems to be focused almost entirely on
fraud in
the casting of ballots, which my investigations indicate is indeed rare, and
neglects fraud in the counting of ballots, which my investigations indicate
is not at all rare.

Yes it's obvious that insiders can deliver the desired result - an
election win - an individual voters even in substantial numbers very
rarely can no matter if they each vote 3 times.  Election fraud is
usually the term that focuses on manipulation of counts and/or insider
fraud, which, quite like investigations of theft related to
corporations, the #1 threat is of course insiders.

Some consider me a Democrat but when it comes to elections, I believe
in fairness both before (as nearly everyone does) and after (when most
root for their own partisans and interpret evidence likewise).
Consistent with that:

TV stations in NV are covering problems in Boulder City NV where one
woman, her husband, and several others at the same 5 minute time
period found screens PRE-selected for Harry Reid before they voted.
The usual explanation was given by officials and it is sometimes true:
voters inadvertant touches can trigger the selections.  But this fails
to explain the straight ticket selections in Texas forwarded within
the last 24 hours, and also fails to explain pre-selected candidates
before the voter even touches that screen.  In the final analysis,
under standard principles of human factors, machines that are supposed
to deal with essentially the entire public should not be "sensitive"
in the way these machines are, that in fact is a design failure not a
voter failure if more than a minuscule number have this problem.
Approximately five in one five minute period in Boulder City is not
minuscule.

The Washington Examiner, also linked below, alleges that voting
machine techs are SEIU union members, and alleges partisanship on
account of that affiliation.

Voters will NOT catch all of the errors or frauds, which may make this
as bullet-proof an error or fraud as one can reasonbly get. Here's
why:

It is an established fact in branches of psychology that the mind, to
be efficient, sees what it thinks it ought to see, and skims or skips
over much to be efficient.  This is why the brainteasers that, for
example, defy the testtaker to spot all the capital F's so often
result in failure.  Even a CLOSE read the brain still skips the Fs in
the word "OF" - probably because it sounds like a V sound or just
skips the relatively meaningless connector.  However, just as the
reporter says at the end of the second of the two video clips at the
fox5news link below, voters arguably have "plenty of chances" to fix
any "mistakes" or what have you.  (These principles apply even more
strongly to "paper trails" secondary to screens because of the abve
brain phenomena plus we are all used to WYSIWYG (what you see is what
you get) printing at home, where a "yes" never changes to "no" so we
don't proof for those kinds of errors routinely if we are confident
with how the screen looked..)

The "elegance" of this kind of vote-flipping fraud, or the devastating
consequence of this kind of "ballot programming error," is that
there's no good way to attack it even with a smoking gun confession
(the rarest kind).  A voter can not correct their vote once they hit
"cast vote" due to the secrecy of the ballot making it effectively
untraceable, so if a flip slips by, it is as perfect a fraud or error
as one can get.  With paper ballots hand voted, the only person to
blame is the voter barring deceptive design, but with computers in
between the voter and the count of votes, all kinds of other people
can also be at fault.  But does the voter final approval have the
effect of approving an error or fraud that voter failed to catch
because we humans are poor proofreaders of our own stuff and only
catch some of those problems?

Here's an election law question:  If we assume a scenario above
involving a deliberate scheme or ballot programming error in the state
of Nevada, isn't it likely indeed that the various opportunities to
check one's vote will require a court to treat the ballots as valid,
even if there were video of undetected pre-selections and the
officials didn't, as they did in Texas, refer the voter for
prosecution?  NOTE: Last I checked three years ago, a statute in
Nevada is quite clear in stating that nothing outside the official
ballot may every be used to impeach the ballot.

Wouldn't even a confession of a fraud or programming error run a
serious risk of being unable to change the result of an election or
obtain a new election given the various opportunities voters have to
check for errors and their "failure" to catch them?  One has the
"right" to screw up one's own ballot, do they not?

http://www.fox5vegas.com/news/25511115/detail.html  (2 videos of
reporters, plus text)

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Voting-machines-in-Clark-County-Nevada-automatically-checking-Harry-Reids-name-Voting-machine-technicians-are-members-of-SEIU-105815608.html
 (reviews above allegations and notes that voting machine technicians
are union members of SEIU)

Paul Lehto, J.D.
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