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Exeunt: Not With a Bang, but a Whimper

Doug Hoffman’s last chance to file a suit demanding a recount passes today. Updates on relevant law and facts as they come.

Update: according to one source, Hoffman will not file.

See the comments for a defense of why this matters. Airport security lines preclude further response… For now!

Spelling

I realize it may be too much to ask prominent politicians to rigorously check all their spelling and grammar — and I realize that I too have often hit the “publish” button too early. But you’d expect Sarah Palin’s team to fix this:

Click to enlarge.

“Whose” versus “who’s” is not a difficult issue to grasp. For an added bonus, the comments to this post are hilarious.

Will Hoffman Challenge?

With conspiracy theories being debunked by the dozen (see previous article), it’s increasingly unlikely that a formal challenge to Bill Owens’ election would unseat him, in Conservative insurgent Doug Hoffman’s favor. And, time is of the essence: today is the last day to file a challenge, and Hoffman has talked himself into a corner. He’s alleged that ACORN “stole” the election, whether by tricking Dede Scozzafava into endorsing Owens or by hacking voting machines somehow, and he’s suborned others’ statements that voting machines carried “viruses.” The latter has since become a popular rumor, pushed by hardline internet conservatives.

Hoffman should be asking himself three important questions. First, how can he not file a challenge? Second, how can he not lose it, at the threshold? And, finally, which is a better setup for 2010: a foolhardly, quixotic quest against the entire electoral apparatus of New York, premised on irresponsibly fomenting distrust in a reliable-but-new voting technology, or a simple concession, carrying with it an implied admission that his earlier rhetoric was just wrong? He can emerge from this as an ultimately honest liar, or a dangerous demagogue. Neither is desirable, but either will tell us a lot about his character.

Update on Voting Machine Conspiracies in NY-23

The “Gouverneur Times,” a publication looking more and more like the official mouthpiece of Doug Hoffman’s failed congressional campaign, continued today to post falsehoods about the course of voting in the 23rd congressional district. Among the misrepresentations:

Voting machines did not undergo re-certification pursuant to N.Y. Elec. Law § 7-202: the Times cites § 7-202 as requiring re-examination of any modified machine. Put down your WestLaw passwords; the citation they’re looking for is § 7-201(2), which does require such re-examination. However, the re-examination did occur, contrary assertions notwithstanding.

Voting machines were capable of internet connectivity, in violation of N.Y. Elec. Law § 7-202(1)(t): the Goveurneur Time argues that the presence of a USB port on the Sequoia machines permits machine hijacking, or the attachment of a portable internet device. This could be true, except that the Times’ own quotes demonstrate that the one USB port on the machines is externally sealed and disconnected from the computer hardware. You could break the seal, and plug in a USB key, but if it’s not wired to anything, it can’t do anything. Oh, and the Times got the cite wrong again — don’t go looking for § 7-201(t), because it doesn’t exist.

An external slot on the machine’s ballot cabinet permits ballot-stuffing: false. I’ve seen the damn things; it’s not possible. And the State Board, again, debunked this rumor, explaining that the slot was physically closed in every machine last year.

Machines in many counties rejected valid ballots: true. But that’s a feature, not a bug. Federal law (Help America Vote Act of 2002, § 301) requires that compliant voting machines notify voters when their ballot is improperly marked. New York’s optical scanner machines comply with that feature by refusing to accept a ballot that’s “over-voted” — where the presence of stray marks by the voter would risk confusing the machine. This is an important way of making sure every vote is counted, and results in more, not less valid votes, because voters always have an opportunity to re-vote. Machine notification of a failed vote is preferable to the old lever machines, which could not give notice of a failed vote.

“In Broome County, hand counts revealed the ImageCast ballot scanners in five voting districts had miscounted votes”: this is an inflammatory way to characterize a mundane problem (see previous post). Optical scanners are wired to read only a filled-in box as a vote. Often, some voters, especially older voters, will “check” a box, or circle a candidate’s name, rather than fill in the box. The machine is deliberately programmed not to read these marks as votes, because 99% of the time, they aren’t. Hand-audits will catch mismarked ballots, and credit the voter’s intent accordingly, but when this occurs, it’s a problem of voter education and (maybe) ballot design, not machine malfunction. NY officials are considering redesigning the ballots to make the instructions clearer.

“In Fulton County, ImageCast ballot scanners were impounded after it was found they were not working properly”: no. Machines were impounded by court order generated before Election Day, and it had nothing to do with machine error.

More updates as they come. I’ve not been able to substantiate the allegations of machine malfunctions in all the counties the Times lists, but note that many of the counties they document as having experienced problems aren’t in NY-23 (Broome, Cayuga, Seneca, Steuben).

Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory

If you’re interested enough in politics to read this blog, you’ve probably encountered this moral dilemma: talking about politics with a group of friends, one appears to be moving your way, and advocating for your position — but for the precisely wrong reasons (e.g., “My family’s always voted for the Democrats, since 1948!”). Do you correct them, adding nuance that may go unappreciated, and risk losing their vote?

Whatever your answer when among friends, the answer when addressing the public, in any serious respect, should be “yes.” That’s why, if I misrepresent an issue on this blog, you can trust that I’m wrong myself. Error maybe, but shared error, and therefore honest.

The same instinct does not seem to animate the honorable members opposite. The Republicans’ decision to push the “death panel” canard represented a gross betrayal of the public trust, and a sure sign that they view honesty as a value to be mortgaged, not honored. Now they’re set to do it again: last week, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, an independent agency dating to the Reagan era, updated its recommendations on breast cancer screening, pushing the recommended age to begin routine mammograms to 50, instead of 40. The immediate Republican response was to point to the study as the smoking gun for health care “rationing” — a sure sign that a government-run healthcare program would put fiscal solvency over patients’ health.

The merits of this argument aren’t worth debating. What’s interesting is the parallel structure animating both this new lie, and the old one. Both assume a perfect status quo (private insurance companies would never be motivated to discourage care, and would never push patients to an early grave), and both deploy distrust to build the mundane (palliative care, preventive care policy) into the terrifying (murder). This, of course, is the greatest weapon in the demagogue’s arsenal (cf. Homer Simpson: “Animals are crapping in our houses! Did we lose a war?!?”), and it hints at the stories we should be telling, as the long healthcare battle moves into its final days.

Simply put, we need a better crisis narrative. If government bureaucrats, the type who’ve managed Medicare for decades, are more scary to the public than the same insurance adjusters who regularly deny coverage to even the most necessary and menial of procedures, on a daily basis, we’re doing something wrong. Maybe most Americans are healthy, and thus blissfully removed from a world where irresponsible, profit-motivated decisionmaking can ruin lives, but if that’s the case, those stories need to be told, with an emphasis on the real villains. Maybe it’s time to bring Heather Graham back:

Thank You, New Yorkers for Verified Voting

The Waterdown Daily Times reports that Bo Lipari, the former executive director of New Yorkers for Verified Voting, has looked into Hoffman’s allegations about “viruses” on voting machines, and found them wanting. Mr. Lipari also delivers a stirring reminder of the value of electronic voting:

Because New York votes on paper, everybody’s vote was counted. When the scanner stopped working, the ballots were removed and counted, so no votes were lost. Paper ballots, a software independent record of the vote, proved their great value in their very first outing in the Empire State. Compare this to lever machines, where counters on the back would get stuck and wouldn’t turn when the vote is cast, something that occurred with far more frequency than most New Yorkers realize. When the counters on the back of a lever machines froze, a machine bug typically not discovered until the polls close, those votes were lost forever. More than a few lever machine elections had the incorrect candidate declared the victor as a result. When the scanner freezes, everyone knows about it, the machine is removed from service, and the paper ballots of those who have voted already and of those who will vote later in the day are sure to be counted. I’ll take paper any day.

The lever horror stories that Mr. Lipari refers to are quite real. In 2001 elections to the Common Council of the City of White Plains, a flaw in a single lever machine, where the machine simply stopped counting votes for one candidate, led to four years of litigation, and an eventual change in the seat’s occupant. Bad news.

Democracy only works when informed citizens push back against distortions and half-truths in the media. Thank you, Mr. Lipari, for doing your part.

I might also add that this blog came to the same conclusions as Mr. Lipari: tell your friends :).

Tales of Hoffman: Finale

Election officials upstate aren’t letting Hoffman define his own reality:

According to [Oswego Democratic elections commissioner Bill] Scriber, there were problems with the phone system on the night of the election that led to the delay in the results being posted online, but the idea of tampering is preposterous.

“I guess Mr. Hoffman is totally ignorant of the process in New York state and how local boards operate,” Scriber said. “No votes changed from election night, to election morning, to the day after, right up to today.”

The commissioner added that he believes that Hoffman owes the Oswego County Board of Elections and the staff an apology for his comments in the letter.

“This statement is so absolutely fictitious and false that I don’t know where to begin,” Scriber said. “It was such an irresponsible statement, I don’t know anybody other than Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh  that would believe it.”

Scriber added that Hoffman or one of his representatives had a legal right to be present during the vote and re-canvassing process.

“He was given notice from this board, and invited during our audit of the voting machines and our re-canvassing and counting of the absentees and affidavits,” Scriber said. “But right now, I don’t see anybody from the Hoffman campaign.”

The last bit is unforgivable, especially for a candidate making an allegation as serious as voter fraud. New York has long provided candidates the chance to witness the canvass or re-canvass of voting machines, and with the addition of paper ballots, the pilot program added the option for candidates to witness rigorous testing of the voting machines’ logic and accuracy, to ensure voter and campaign confidence in the process. That Hoffman participated in neither demonstrates, once and for all, that he prefers spouting conspiracy theories to actually living a fact-based, responsible political life. This is what happens when you choose Glenn Beck as a mentor.

Let’s hope Commissioner Scriber gets the apology he’s hoping for. In the meantime, Hoffman is done, and good riddance.

Hoffman Loses; Turns to Fanning Voting Machine Paranoia

Conspiracy theories: a good reason not to put Glenn Beck's candidates in the national spotlight.

With  3,072 ballots left uncounted, Owens still leads — by 3,105 votes. Odds for Hoffman’s victory have moved from 1% down to 0%.

However, Hoffman looks to be gearing up to challenge the election results, linking from his website to an article in the Gouverneur Times, which suggests that voting machines were either infected with a virus or, due to the presence of USB ports, capable of hijacking on-site. Although the Watertown Daily Times has already partially debunked these rumors, they deserve a second treatment, for clarity’s sake.

Counties in New York currently use one of four voting machines — either Shoup or AVM “Lever” machines (collectively, “levers”), or one of two optical scanners, the Sequoia ImageCast, and the ES&S DS200. The latter are required by federal law — when, in 2005, New York accepted money pursuant to the Help America Vote Act, it committed to abandoning its lever machines, but the state substantially failed to implement HAVA until recently (read more here). This year, as part of a “pilot program,” 46 New York counties deployed optical scanners for their primary and general elections, including all counties in the 23rd Congressional district except Clinton, Essex, and part of Oneida. All NY-23 counties participating in the pilot program use the Sequoia ImageCast.

It’s true that many of the counties experienced, at some point in time, problems with their Sequoia machines. But no problems persisted through election day. Here’s how we know. Because their deployment is at this time experimental, electronic voting machines are governed by strict proposed regulations, treated as effective for the purposes of the pilot program. These procedures require that commissioners confirm the accuracy of all of their machines’ logic with a “test deck” of ballots FOUR TIMES (before and after their deployment, and before and after canvassing) (§ 6209). Any “virus” would be caught instantly, and any that slipped through the cracks would be caught by another regulation that escalates the statutory 3% audit requirement (N.Y. Elec. Law § 9-211) to a much higher level, and provides for further escalation if problems are encountered (§ 6210). So much for viruses.

Concerns about electronic “hacking” or ballot tampering are similarly misplaced, because both would have to happen to defeat audit/test deck procedures, and neither can happen. Even if Sequoia machines do have a USB port (I’ve never seen one), the machines go from locked facilities at the County Board, where they’re under bipartisan lock & key, to a polling site where they’re in public view, and then back to the bipartisan County Board. Tampering would have to be sanctioned by both Republican and Democratic election commissioners, and then overlooked by campaign observers, who are permitted and encouraged to be present at canvassing. Chain of custody procedures for paper ballots, if separated from their machines, are even more rigorous (§ 6210.11).

Further, much like a Battlestar, voting machines are NEVER NETWORKED. EVER. Voting cards are programmed by an Election Management System subject to the same lock & key procedures, and bereft of any internet connectivity software or hardware.

All of this is to say Hoffman enters any prospective recount with the burden of proof stacked against him. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you see an election commissioner worry, then worry. But even the conspiratorial Gouverneur Times notes that the commissioners aren’t on their side — though they mask their lack of evidence with weasel words (“Republican Commissioner Judith Peck refused to speculate…”). For shame, Gouverneur Times — the press shouldn’t be in the business of spreading paranoia, or feeding the rumors of a madman.

Hoffman’s NY-23 Spin: Bad on Facts, Worse on Presentation

Though the election is over, and the news on the absentee ballot count is going from bad to worse for Hoffman, his spin machine is apparently just starting. From Hoffman’s campaign site:

As evidence surfaces, we find out that reported results from election night were far from accurate. ACORN and the unions did their best to try and sway the results to Obamacare supporter Bill Owens.

I was forced to concede after receiving two pieces of grim news – - down 5,335 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted on election night – and barely won my stronghold in Oswego County. On Election Night, the information we received was far different from what we received this week! [. . .]

Let’s force them keep this recanvassing active! Let’s give this election a chance to end differently!
Oswego County elections officials blame the mistakes on “chaos“ in their call-in center that included a phone system foul-up, and on inspectors who read numbers incorrectly when phoning in results. This sounds like a tactic right from the ACORN playbook.

The second paragraph conceals a very important distortion: as we have explained, Oswego’s election night report that Hoffman won the county narrowly, with 93% of the vote reporting, was quite accurate. What Hoffman should have known, but didn’t bother to investigate, was that the remaining 7% of the vote was likely to bolster his numbers substantially. The fault in Oswego is not with the elections commissioners, but with Hoffman’s failure to follow through on his own election. Jefferson County is another story: there the problem was real, the fault was with the commissioners, and the delayed returns may have prejudiced Hoffman’s decision to concede. But, “no harm, no foul”: Jefferson’s numbers were corrected the very next day, and though the corrections flipped the county to Hoffman, they didn’t change the district-wide outcome. The notion that this is somehow a new story as of last week is absurd.

So much for the factual allegations. What’s really concerning is Hoffman’s presentation: the page on which this impassioned plea resides is entitled, “Stop another stolen election!” Ahem: “another”? What, pray tell, was the first stolen election? Is Hoffman saying the “Obama Regime” somehow stole the 2008 race? [Update: yes.]

And then there’s the postscript:

P.S. I ran a different kind of campaign, one where Conservatives, Republicans, Libertarians, Tea Party and 9/12 activists rallied around. ACORN, the unions and Democratic Party were scared, and that’s why they tampered with the ballots of voters in NY-23.

First commenter to spot all the grammar errors gets a prize. Hoffman may have gained votes since November 3rd, but he’s steadily losing his already-tenuous grasp on reality.

If Not the Deficit, Then What?

Throughout the mad season of this past summer, the one thing that united the “tea party” movement — you know, apart from racism and conspiracy theories — was a concern for the deficit. Conservative commentators have gone as far as to peg it as the new conservative issue, despite the fact that Republicans have never helped the deficit, and the fact that Obama’s impact on it has thus far, comparatively, been rather small. With time, “the deficit” may have even become a rallying cry for a resurgent conservative movement, and a theme to unify Republican opposition to every move Obama made. Alas, it is not to be:

Reid made sure to emphasize a Congressional Budget Office estimate that the bill would reduce the deficit by $127 billion over the next 10 years, and perhaps as much as $650 billion over the 10 years after that. He also worked to reassure worried seniors that the bill will not weaken Medicare — in fact, he argued, it will strengthen it.

It’s hard to argue against a bill that expands health care coverage to 94% of Americans while shrinking the deficit. The Republicans now face a tough choice: find a new reason to oppose healthcare reform (“socialism,” perhaps?), or simply pretend the CBO estimate never happened? My money’s on the latter.