Informed Consent

Revised Sarasota Spreadsheet

In response to feedback about the spreadsheet I posted previously, I've changed a few things and have posted a revised sheet here.
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Changes include getting rid of the dark red (which one person said was hard to read; that category is now green); moving the color key to the top of the spreadsheet so you don't have to scroll to the bottom to see what the colors mean; adding column headers to each page so you don't have to scroll back to the top to see what each column means; re-assigning colors to the categories (so please disregard what each color meant previously); and adding a new category for voters who failed to cast their ballot (there seemed to be an unusual number of these listed -- perhaps indicating a problem with the "cast ballot" button on the machines -- so I thought it was important to create a separate category for these).

See my previous post below for further explanation of the spreadsheet.

UPDATED: Spreadsheet of Sarasota Election Problems Now Available

NOTE: Since posting this spreadsheet I've revised the document per suggestions from readers. You can see the improved spreadsheet here:

I've been working on this for quite a while and am now happy to finally be posting it online. Several weeks ago I requested incident and tech reports from Sarasota County regarding problems reported during the November 2006 election. I wrote a story for Wired News summarizing the problems revealed in the reports. Now, after several weeks of work, I've created a spreadsheet of all the problems I found in the reports that were related in some way to the voting machines (the majority of the reports were about voter registration issues -- voter names not appearing on the polls due to voters having moved, etc.).

I'm asking you to be courteous and please DO NOT REMOVE the file from this site to post to your own web page but instead refer readers to its original source here. Thanks for understanding.

You'll find the spreadsheet here. A key explaining the colors on the spreadsheet is on p. 18 of the PDF.

Note: In the column marked "Machine Serial No", you'll find that wherever a serial number of a voting machine is indicated, it's followed by a number in parentheses. That number refers to the number of CD-13 undervotes that were on that specific machine. In some cases (usually highlighted in yellow) I've indicated what percentage those undervotes constitute in terms of the total number of votes cast on that machine.

I'm a bit bleary-eyed after putting this together so if you notice any errors or inconsistencies, or anything that's not self-explanatory, send me a note and I'll fix or clarify.

UPDATE: As you can see from the spreadsheet, it's often difficult to surmise from the incident and zone tech reports what exactly occurred with machines. The reports are filled out inconsistently and often cryptically, making it hard to determine what went wrong with machines and how, or if, the problems were resolved. To give you an example of what I'm referring to, I've uploaded scans of some of the incident and zone tech reports (which were made by Susan Pynchon at the Florida Coalition for Fair Elections). Again, please do not remove the files from this site.

Incident reports by precinct: 18, 19, 25, 25 again, 60, 98, 124

Zone tech reports by precinct: 1, 3, 5, 18, 19, 32, 46

New EAC Vice-Chair Elected

Per a press release from the EAC, Rosemary Rodriguez was announced as the new vice chair of the Election Assistance Commission. The text of the release, describing her background, follows:

Kansas City, MO - Former Denver City Council President Rosemary E. Rodriguez today was elected vice chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) during a public meeting.

As vice chair, she will work with EAC Chair Donetta Davidson as part of the bipartisan leadership team at the commission to set priorities and communicate EAC initiatives.

"My foremost conviction is that all eligible voters should be empowered with simple, unfettered and uncomplicated access to registration and to the voting booth" said Rodriguez. "I look forward to working with my colleagues as we seek practical means to improve elections in this country in ways that most benefit the voters."

Vice Chair Rodriguez joined the EAC in March. She was nominated to EAC by President Bush in 2006 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in February. She will serve until December 12, 2007, filling the remaining term of Ray Martinez, who resigned in August 2006.

She served on the Denver, Colorado City Council for three years, and was its president from 2005 to 2006. She was director of Boards and Commissions for the mayor's office from 2002 to 2003 and a clerk and recorder for the City and County of Denver from 1997 to 2002. In 1997 she was acting director of the Denver Election Commission where she supervised city elections. She has been active in numerous grass roots civic and voter advocacy organizations, including the Colorado Voter Initiative where she co-chaired a statewide initiative to allow Election Day voter registration. She was also a co-founder and chair of Latinos Vote, a voter registration project to register Latino voters and provide non-partisan election information to the Latino community.

Gov't Worker Accused of Giving Social Security #s to Thieves

A former employee of the Social Security Administration is being accused of providing a fellow thief with Social Security numbers and other information gleaned from government computers. At $20 a search, she'd look up personal information of victims and supply it to card thieves who then racked up $2.5 million in fraudulent credit card charges in the victims' names. See the story here

French Warned of Airline Plot Before 9/11

French intelligence agents learned in January 2001 that Al-Qaeda was planning to hijack US airlines and told the CIA chief in Paris, according to classified documents obtained by French newspaper Le Monde. Among the 328 documents was a note from January 2001 saying Al Qaeda had been plotting the hijack for months, though agents didn't appear to know that terrorists intended to crash the planes into buildings.

A former head of the French intelligence agency told the paper that the information didn't carry the same weight it would carry today, since hi-jackings at the time still consisted of someone taking over a plane with hostages and forcing it to land somewhere.

To Catch an E-Mail Liar

It's easier to lie if someone isn't looking you in the eye. But researchers at Cornell University are hoping to catch fibbers through their writing (e-mail and text messaging) with lie-detection software that would flag suspicous correspondence. The software is only in the idea stage but the concept appealed to the National Science Foundation so much it awarded the researchers $680,000 to see if it could actually work.

The researchers point to certain "tells" that give liars away.

Passive voice, verb tense changes, and even noun or verb selection can suggest a person is lying, (said Cornell communications professor Jeff Hancock). Hancock said another indicator of written deception is the decreased use of the word "I," which is most likely an attempt to create distance.

"One of the reasons we think that works as an indicator is that pronoun use is subconscious," he said.

In interactive speech, like instant messaging and some dialogues, liars go into a "persuasive mode" and increase the length of their message by 30% to describe and explain situations, he said. Other factors -- such as individual beliefs about behavior, whether someone is accused of something or interacting with an accuser -- can complicate the process.

"In person, normally people say less because they don't want to be caught," Hancock said during an interview Thursday. "In a monologue, you may say less because you don't want to talk yourself into a trap. It's certainly not a simple thing," Hancock said. "It's a very complex problem. From a theoretical point of view, it's really fascinating."

Researchers in Canada studied thousands of e-mails from Enron for cues, like the use of the first person singular ("I") and negative emotion, and they became interested in about 10 e-mails that appeared to be unique.

"Sure enough, they stood out as problematic and of interest to the legal team," Hancock said.

75,000 Voter Registration Cards w/ SS# Found in Trash

Thirty boxes containing 75,000 voter registration cards for residents of Fulton County, Georgia, were found in a dumpster at an Atlanta technical college. A sampling of the cards, filled with voter Social Security numbers and other personal information, indicate that many of them are for still-active voters, writes the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The secretary of state's office is investigating.

Last Cuyahoga Election Board Member Resigns

Despite assertions last week that he was ready for a protracted fight, Robert Bennett, Cuyahoga's election board chair and chair of Ohio's Republican party, announced Wednesday afternoon that he was giving in to the secretary of state's wish for him to resign. Bennett is the last of the four-member bi-partisan board to relent to calls for their resignation.

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Bennett agreed to resign after Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner agreed to drop her complaint against him "without a finding of fault."

A new board, two Democrats and two Republicans, is expected to be seated after May 1st when Bennett's resignation takes effect.

There's still time for the new board to make effective changes to fix the litany of problems encountered in last year's elections.

EAC Accused of Altering Voter Fraud Report to Appease White House

The federal Election Assistance Commission is being accused of altering a report it commissioned on voter fraud to make the findings agree with the White House stand that such fraud is likely prevalent throughout the country and a risk to the integrity of elections.

But in an earlier draft of the EAC report, which was leaked to the media, the findings stated the opposite, that "there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud, or at least much less than claimed, including voter impersonation, 'dead' voters, noncitizen voting and felon voters."

The final report eliminates the conclusion that voter fraud occurs much less often than claimed and instead says there is no consensus on the pervasiveness of voter fraud.

People for the American Way and other groups contend that the independent researchers behind the report have been muzzled by the EAC, and that the report was altered to please the White House -- which is currently under scrutiny for firing eight U.S. attorney (some of them for failing to prosecute voter fraud as vigorously as the White House wanted them to).

An email exchange published in a New York Times story today would seem to back the idea that there was partisan pressure to tailor the report findings. The email is from one of the report authors, Job Serebrov, a Republican election lawyer, to an EAC staffer:

"Tova and I worked hard to produce a correct, accurate and truthful report," Serebrov wrote. "I could care less that the results are not what the more conservative members of my party wanted. . . . Neither one of us was willing to conform results for political expediency."

Why would the EAC, or the White House, want to perpetuate the idea that voter fraud is rampant if it isn't?

Voter fraud has been touted by the White House and others as the reason to pass new laws requiring voters to produce an ID when registering and voting at the polls. Civil liberties groups and others argue that voter ID laws deter certain groups of voters from coming to the polls -- such as minority and low-income voters who are less likely to possess a driver's license or passport and who, more often than not, are registered Democrats.

In fact, a second EAC report about voter ID laws supports the conclusion that ID laws deter minority voters from going to the polls. The EAC was reluctant to release that report, however -- some say the commission suppressed it -- until pressured to do so.

On another note, one interesting section of the draft report on voter fraud appears on page 7:

Several people indicate -- including representatives from DoJ -- that for various reasons, the Department of Justice is bringing fewer voter intimidation and supression cases now and is focusing on matters such as noncitizen voting, double voting and felon voting.

Why is this significant? Democrats often accuse Republicans of voter intimidation and suppression to keep Democratic voters from turning out at the polls to vote. If the DoJ is ignoring voter intimidation and suppression cases does that mean the DoJ is cherry picking types of voter fraud cases -- ignoring certain categories of cases while focusing on others -- to further a partisan agenda?

Sources in a piece published last month by the McClatchy news service say yes:

Other former voting-rights section lawyers (at DoJ) said that during the tenure of Alex Acosta, who served as the division chief from the fall of 2003 until he was named interim U.S. attorney in Miami in the summer of 2005, the department didn't file a single suit alleging that local or state laws or election rules diluted the votes of African-Americans. In a similar time period, the Clinton administration filed six such cases.

Those kinds of cases, Rich said, are "the guts of the Voting Rights Act."

During this week's House judiciary subcommittee hearing, critics recounted lapses in the division's enforcement. A Citizens Commission on Civil Rights study found that "the enforcement record of the voting section during the Bush administration indicates this traditional priority has been downgraded significantly, if not effectively ignored."

By the way, the EAC sent out a press release this morning, presumably in response to the NY Times story about the controversy around its two reports:

Prior to the EAC's adopting a report submitted by a contractor, the EAC has the responsibility to ensure its accuracy and to verify that conclusions are supported by the underlying research.

The Commission takes input and constructive criticism from Congress and the public very seriously. We will take a hard look at the way we do business. Specifically, we will examine both the manner in which we have awarded contracts and our decision-making process regarding the release of research and reports.

Right-wing Blogger Targets Son of Ohio SoS

Did I mention that the battle in Cuyahoga is going to get ugly?

Ohio's new Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has drawn the ire of Republicans for, among other things, trying to oust the head of the Ohio Republican party from his position on Cuyahoga County's election board.

So a member of the conservative political site Rightangleblog decided to go after her son for dirt. After getting access to the Facebook page of Brunner's son John (Facebook accounts are semi-restricted), the blogger grabbed some embarrassing photos of Brunner's son (shown above with his mom and Georgia Congressman John Lewis). The photos show the son kissing a woman's clothed breast and smoking something that looks like it could be a joint. A screenshot of what the poster claims is Brunner's profile page lists under Favorite Quote the following: "I got my lighter. Got a blunt. I'm getting higher!"

Not all of Rightangle's readers agree with its tactics, however. As one commenter writes:

I strongly recommend deleting this entry from RAB. This is a political site, after all, not some paparazzi site where we rate Facebook entries of celebs' children. We have plenty of ammo for taking aim at Jennifer Brunner without weakening our message by taking the target off of her and putting it on her son, who, by the way is NOT a political figure. Do the right thing. Scrub this entry from the blog. We have plenty of bones to pick with Jennifer Brunner as it is.