The first thing that goes out the window when a precinct or state adopts electronic voting, as it is currently structured, is control. No matter the oversight exercised, by definition manufacturers are in control of the software that runs the machines. The software is proprietary – manufacturers are free to insert subroutines to alter vote outcomes willy nilly. There’s nothing election supervisors can do about it except count paper ballots, and as we have seen coast to coast, they are wont to do that.

Here’s a letter from today’s Bozeman Chronicle that examines the problem here in Gallatin County:

Charlotte Mills, Gallatin County Recorder, assures us [in a previous Chronicle article] that election judges monitor the new electronic voting machines to make sure nobody tampers with them.

That is not reassuring when the company that makes the machines won’t allow state officials to know anything about their programming. How do we know they can’t be programmed remotely? What is the method for making an accurate recount when the election results don’t reflect the polls? (Witness yesterday’s primary results in New Hampshire.)

All across the country, states are abandoning these machines becuase they have been easily hacked.

Gallatin County’s refusal to dump these bogus, unverifiable, tamper-prone electronic voting machines tramples on Montanan’s constitutional right to vote. Why should we as citizens be subject to Montana laws and taxation when our government can’t guarantee that our elections are free of fraud? Or are we just being allowed to play with the dials?

Etc. The writer’s name is Janine Baker of Bozeman.

Of course, I’ve addressed this subject again and again, but I am at a loss to find the words that adequately express the absurdity of our situation or my contempt for the officials that allow fraud to go on right under their noses, never expressing doubt or curiosity! With the advent of machines, we have seen the art of polling go south – outcomes seldom agree with polls, and people, especially election officials and partisans, stumble over themselves to explain why the polls are wrong, the count correct. It’s weird – it may be turf protection, intimidation, or plain stupidity. Pick ’em.

It was never like this prior to 2002, the first national election after HAVA – the Help America Vote Act. That was the federal law that opened the door for the Trojan horses that today tamper with virtually every election outcome.

As I say, I don’t know the words. “Absurd” is too weak. “Confounding” is an attitude about behaviors that make no sense except that people bow to official power as the ultimate source of truth. I’m reduced to the one word I can think of that conveys the sense of disgust that these machines and the people who bring them to us: Stinks.

I’m not a big fan of voting. I think it’s overrated. I say this as a former candidate for office – not because I think I should have won. Far from it. More because it gave me insight into the mind of the voter. It was quite a disillusionment.

Let’s be frank. Most people are busy leading their lives independent of politics. They work their jobs and mind their kids and watch their TV shows and football games, and pay very little attention to politicians. The political world is one circle, the world of the voter is another. Once every two years they overlap. Just barely overlap. And that overlap is generally in the form of the 15-30 second TV ad.

I came to realize this when I ran – I had worked every door in my district, and came to know the mind of the voter very well. I like to think that I introduced myself to every voter in the district, and that’s why I lost. But bigger campaigns were going on, and I came to realize that voters knew little, if anything, of issues. Their ideas, slogans and catch phrases came to them via the blue light that glowed in every family room every night – the TV. Politicians invest immense sums in crafting these little propaganda spots. Every second is thought out – there’s a sublime message in every one. It’s not the candidate that is doing it – it’s the advertising professional. These people are steeped in the psychology of manipulation.

Every now and then something happens on the campaign trail that gives voters a true view of a candidate. Reality can kill a candidate. Conrad Burns’ handlers walked in fear that his true self would emerge, as it did when he drunkenly attacked fire fighters one night. “Macaca” was another glimpse. But mostly, candidates are kept under wraps, careful not to expose themselves. It was both sad and humorous to witness Hillary Clinton’s “human moment” in New Hampshire, when she came close to tears. Could anything have been more staged? That was a perversion of the gaffe – a free commercial dreamed up by an ad man. Shame on us that it worked.

Anyway, back to voting. I mentioned to Shane in an exchange over at Netroots that voting ain’t the be-all-end-all, that most people when they enter the booth are operating on “emotions, prejudices and fleeting impressions”. The job of the candidate is to enter the psyche of the voter and create either a favorable impression of himself, or a negative one of his opponent. That is where the circle just barely overlaps, where politician and voter interact. It’s a sad commentary on life in America. Our elections are quite a joke.

What to do? As I suggested to Shane, a start would be to eliminate the primary as we know it, and rely instead on caucuses. Fewer people would turn out, for sure, but no great loss. Those who did participate would be forced to negotiate head on with opponents, and hear what the candidates are all about. It would be more a deliberative process. Further, it should be done on a rotating regional basis, giving each section of the country a chance to go first. Iowa is nice, I’m told – a slice of heaven. But it has too much influence in our deliberative process.

I’ve been witness to many presidential elections. It’s torturous – so much energy, so little said. It’s all about advertising. People spend more time researching Ipods than they do candidates. And the advertisers have a free hand to mold the candidates in a false image. Democrats to this day hardly know Bill Clinton, and will know even less of Hillary Clinton when she is nominated. All they will have is an image constructed by experts in the art of psychological manipulation. It’s quite a joke.

Every now and then a good candidate comes along and delivers a real message. We don’t have much time for them. They wither away in the early primaries, short of money. Most people never get to know them at all. That’s the saddest part of American elections.

The New Hampshire numbers are quite interesting – as pointed out by Daily Kos, about half of the towns in that state hand-count their ballots. The towns are smaller, so this represents only about 20.7% of the total votes cast. The rest are counted by Diebold optical scanners, which are easily hackable, according to HBO’s documentary, Hacking Democracy.

Here’s an interesting summary of the results of the hand vs machine-counted votes:

Republicans:

Total votes cast: 238,909
Counted by hand 49,905
By machine 189,004

Romney’s percentage of hand-counted votes: 25.54%
Romney’s percentage of Diebold-counted votes: 31.48%

Romney’s gain on the machine side apparently came at the expense of Huckabee, McCain and Ron Paul, all of whom lost votes in roughly equal proportions. But McCain won nonetheless. It appears as though Romney’s Diebold bump was not enough to save him.

On the Democrat side, it’s the same story, but with a more significant altering of the outcome.

Total votes cast: 287,849
Counted by hand: 59,542
By machine 238,307

Clinton’s percentage of hand-counted votes: 34.66%
Clinton’s percentage of Diebold-counted votes: 40.12%

Clinton’s gain (15,717 votes, or a 5.46% bump) came mostly at Obama’s expense, though Richardson took quite a hit as well. If the hand-counted votes are representative of the state as a whole, Obama won handily.

Given the fact that exit polls are mostly withheld from us (I’ve heard nothing of exits on the Republican side, though two people have made revealing comments on the D side), and that there will not be a physical recounting of the votes, this is pretty much all we’ve got. To those of you who say that there was a last minute Clinton surge (unsupported by exit polls), why did it affect machine-counted votes only? Isn’t that odd?

Chris Mathews:

“So what accounts for Hillary Clinton’s victory in New Hampshire? What we don’t know is why the victory is so much different in fact, then the polling ahead of time, including what we call the Exit Polls were telling us. Obama was ahead in those polls by an average of 8 points, and even our own Exit Polls, taken as people came out of voting, showed him ahead. So what’s going on here?”

Passing unnoticed at midnight, December 31, was another tax hike on the middle class. Given the silence from the Administration and Democrat-controlled congress, it is safe to say this is a bipartisan screwing.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The maximum amount of earnings subject the the Social Security tax rose to $102,000 from $97,500 last year. Of the estimated 164 million workers who will pay Social Security taxes in 2008, nearly 12 million will pay more because of this increase, the Social Security Administration says.

Bear in mind that this tax hike affects workers only – the employed and self-employed. Those who depend on interest, capital gains, dividends, rents and royalties are unaffected. Hence, the silence.

To be fair, the level of understanding in the media of our tax code, outside business publications like the Journal, is low. They don’t see it becuase they don’t get it.

DETROIT, MI – Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, the most outspoken advocate in the Presidential field and in Congress for election integrity, paper-ballot elections, and campaign finance reform, has sent a letter to the New Hampshire Secretary of State asking for a recount of Tuesday’s election because of “unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots.”
…
He added, “Ever since the 2000 election – and even before – the American people have been losing faith in the belief that their votes were actually counted. This recount isn’t about who won 39% of 36% or even 1%. It’s about establishing whether 100% of the voters had 100% of their votes counted exactly the way they cast them.”

Kucinich, who drew about 1.4% of the New Hampshire Democratic primary vote, wrote, “This is not about my candidacy or any other individual candidacy. It is about the integrity of the election process.” No other Democratic candidate, he noted, has stepped forward to question or pursue the claims being made.

“New Hampshire is in the unique position to address – and, if so determined, rectify – these issues before they escalate into a massive, nationwide suspicion of the process by which Americans elect their President. Based on the controversies surrounding the Presidential elections in 2004 and 2000, New Hampshire is in a prime position to investigate possible irregularities and to issue findings for the benefit of the entire nation,” Kucinich wrote in his letter.

“Without an official recount, the voters of New Hampshire and the rest of the nation will never know whether there are flaws in our electoral system that need to be identified and addressed at this relatively early point in the Presidential nominating process,” said Kucinich

Well, it appears to be happening again – an inexplicable swing to Clinton, the upstart stopped in his tracks. I learned in 2004 that we no longer knew how to do exit polls, which gave Kerry 57% of the New Hampshire vote (he officially ended up with 50.2%, barely squeaking it out). Now it appears as though the polling organizations have lost their craft – all eight of them above gave the New Hampshire primary to Obama by mostly huge margins. All eight uniformly got it wrong. (Oddly, they got it right for all the other candidates except Obama and Clinton.

Keep in mind that the above polls are pre-election samples, and not exit polls, which tend to be far more accurate. However, it appears as though there was a last minute inexplicable swing to Clinton, saving her ass. She will probably win the nomination. It appears she’s annointed.

Then there’s this small problem – New Hampshire uses Diebold optical scanning machines to count the paper ballots. This is the same machine that was so easily hacked in HBO’s movie, Hacking Democracy. The machines are under control of a private company, LHS Associates, which has exclusive control of the memory cards, start to finish. There is no interference in its control, no government oversight. And New Hampshire has done nothing, nothing, since the weaknesses of the Deibold machines were exposed, to remedy the problem. Nothing.

I doubt the Clinton campaign had anything to do with this travesty, if indeed we’ve been hacked again. She’s simply the establishment candidate, the easiest one to beat, the one who threatens conservatives least.

There’ll be more, I’m sure. Obama did what Democrats do best, gave up and went to bed. Everyone is scurrying around trying to explain the shift (*early results from exit polls show no swing to Clinton), no one is questioning the count.

I’m used to it. But can’t y’all be just a little bit suspicious? Just a little bit?

PS: For more, including updates throughout the night, check out The Brad Blog.

PPS: 25% of New Hampshire’s votes are hand counted, no machines used. It will be interesting to see the results in those precincts.

*PPPS: This official explanation, as I now hear it, is a swing of women voters to Clinton fueled by her crying spate. This would be plausible if supported by data. It’s not. It’s pulled out of the ether.

It’s been both fun and encouraging to watch the demise of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Never say never, but there does seem to be a trend.

What’s more encouraging is this: Democrats are turning out in far larger numbers than Republicans, and two-thirds of them are supporting the perceived “liberal” candidates, Edwards and Obama. Clintonist triangulation, whereby her husband once ambushed liberals into supporting Republican policies, no longer plays. It’s all good.

What remains to be seen: Is Obama indeed a liberal? The Democratic Leadership Council spotted him before he hit the national stage, and included him in its New Democrats Directory. (Citing differences on NAFTA, Iraq, and health care, he repudiated his listing.) The DLC are a cagey bunch, working constantly to prevent liberals from taking control of the party. Their name is an albatross at this point, so sympathizers are wise to disavow allegiance. Still, Obama’s past affiliation is suspicious.

John Edwards is a late-to-the-fold liberal, but I take him at face. David Brooks calling for him to step aside is a good sign. And he’s not backed down from liberal stances. (That usually happens after the nomination anyway.) But he must have learned something from running a weak-kneed centrist race with John Kerry. I much prefer him over Obama.

But the only true liberal left is Dennis Kucinich, struck from the list of candidates in New Hampshire by ABC News even as he qualifies for matching funds and is actively campaigning. (The same fate befell Ron Paul. The media does indeed meddle in our elections.) It’s a simple thing to understand – the media does not like true liberals. We live in a right wing country where even our left wingers are right wingers. Kucinich is an anomaly. No wonder ABC did what it did.

I certainly have mixed emotions seeing a nine year old girl sitting at her computer for hours – it’s not homework. It’s not to feed her natural curiosity. It’s Webkinz.

I suppose it’s always been this way, but the objective in children’s toys is to create a revenue stream that outlasts the original product. So it’s not enough to sell these kids little animals – they have a whole line of overpriced accessories too. And, the worst part, they come with codes that activate an online version. The object is to get the kid to the computer. That’s what that nine-year old was doing that day.

I just read about the business model for Webkinz in Business Week. Ganz Corporation, the maker of the product, is happy with sales, but there’s a discordant note too.

Ganz … must now strike a delicate balance: maximizing profit from the fad without alienating parents and kids. Visitors to Webkinz.com spent more than a million hours there in November, but the site is free.

Horrors! Neither Ganz nor its competitors have yet figured out a way to turn the kids’ time on the web into a revenue stream. Frankly, there’s only two ways: advertising, and getting hold of parents’ credit card numbers. They’re working on it.

The Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhood has noticed that Webkinz is using its web site for cross-marketing purposes, advertising other products for kids (in this case the movie Alvin and the Chipmunks). They have organized a protest campaign. Ganz is ambivalent, saying the have standards after all, but affirming their intention to advertise to kids on their web site.

In other countries, there are standards for marketing to kids. In this country, we let the advertisers into our schools. Kids are bombarded with ads on the first Saturday morning of their cognizant childhood. Parents are overmatched. Perhaps now is a good time to remind parents (and the corporations that market to our kids) that advertising is neither wholesome nor healthy, and that childhood should be a time when kids are exempted from our society’s shortcomings.

There’s three good food fights going on regarding Conrad Burns’ ‘exoneration’ – check them out here and here and here. Oh yeah – and here. There’s probably more.

The theme is common among Burns supporters – he’s been “exonerated” or “cleared of all charges”. Eric Coobs reminds us that he was right all along, just like he always is.

It’s kind of annoying. Burns may be many things, but innocent is not one of them. The man played politics like a pro – was there ever any question that he was handing out favors right and left to supporters and holding on to office by bribing us with our own money. Simply put, he was a disgrace.

Was he a crook? Well, that’s just it. There’s no smoking gun. He reminds me of Barry Bonds – we all know (except sports writers) that Bonds was juicing – is there any question? His stats took off in his late 30’s, when most ball players are in decline. His head expanded, he got angry and arrogant, he lost his hair. All circumstantial, but in the end, circumstantial evidence will convict. Some times that’s all you’ve got.

And we have that aplenty on Burns. We have Abramoff’s own words that he was using Burns and his staff to get things done. We have people treading back and forth between staffs, Burns changing his vote on legislation and supporting just about everything Abramoff wanted. It’s not as obvious as his hair falling out, but it’s enough for me.

Corruption is endemic in our culture. Our political system is designed to be corrupt, to favor people with money. The return on investment for ‘contributors’ is immense – billions of dollars in federal funds change hands for the passing of a few thousand dollars to a candidate’s coffers. Politicians have no choice but to sell out – if they don’t, they lose money at the rate of $2 for $1 – every dollar that they do not collect goes to their opponent. That scares them.

Burns was never shy about doing favors – I’ll never forget how he introduced a bill as his own that had been faxed to him by the Montana Wood Products Association – it still had the fax monikers on it. That kind of favor was routine for Burns, if you played ball with him. He was a corrupt politician, a crude jokester with racist tendencies, and a private joke to the 99 other senators who were not him.

The investigation of Burns is over – he’s not vindicated nor is he innocent. He’s just gone. No matter how good or bad Jon Tester turns out to be, I’m happy about that.