READER COMMENTS ON

"National Republican Party Creates Conspiracy Site, Claims 'Stolen Election' in MN's U.S. Senate Race"

(34 Responses so far...)





COMMENT #1 [Permalink]

... RALPH said on 11/12/2008 @ 3:24 pm PT...





[ed note: Copy and paste advertisement deleted. Please read our rules for commenting, Ralph. Thank you. --99]

COMMENT #2 [Permalink]

... creid said on 11/12/2008 @ 3:36 pm PT...





Some clarifications and additional thoughts... The machine that Harri Hursti hacked was not an AccuVote-OS as is being widely and repeatedly reported --- it was a TSx. The TSx is a central tabulator --- the OS is a precinct machine. I believe that the AccuVote-OS may have the same vulnerability, but it is not accurate to say that it's the same machine. Because it's a precinct machine, it would be much more work to "fix" than a central tabulator. So does Minnesota centrally count on a TSx? And is the model name a technicality, or are they quite different machines? {ED NOTE: You are incorrect here, on several points, Creid. Hursti hacked both the Diebold AccuVote-OS (optical scanner) in Leon County, FL, and the Diebold AccuVote-TSx (touch-screen) in Emery County, UT. Neither of them is a "central tabulator". The central tabulator system used by Diebold is called GEMS. That's been hacked by others, and by Diebold's own admission, drops votes regularly when they are uploaded from one of the OS or TS machines to it. MN uses the Diebold AccuVote-OS precinct-based optical scanner in several of their precincts (two of the three largest) and ES&S precinct-based op-scanners in the rest. Hope that clarifies --- BF} The ES&S M100 does have several known issues that have come up both in testing and in elections, and yet some voting machine techs also think it is a workhorse. In any case, there is no voting machine that would be likely to perform well if it went three years without maintenance, as the reports say the Michigan M100s did. By now, Ruth Johnson should know what the full diagnosis is on the M110's and it would be good to make that public, so that other states using that machine have additional information on what may cause them not to function. Beyond the technological aspects of the election in Minnesota, there are some very simple on the ground aspects that will affect election outcome. How well do their statutes cover absentee ballot security and handling? And how well are they carried out in real life on the ground election districts/precincts? One photo from Ramsey County showed stacks of bankers' boxes said to contain absentee ballots (opened? recently delivered and unprocessed? In a locked storage area and shown to the reporter? Or in the election official's office?) Likeewise, the insecure transport of all the ballots is another area to look at. If a single official was running around making election day deliveries of absentee ballots, that's not goiing to build voter confidence in the outcome. With two weeks between the election and the recount, ballot security again looms as a factor to understand better. I would not want Ramsey County storing their absentee ballots in those unsealed bankers' boxes. The chain of custody on the ballots could be compromised before the ballots are even presented for counting.

COMMENT #3 [Permalink]

... the zapkitty said on 11/12/2008 @ 3:57 pm PT...





... Ralph ... poor Ralph... Oookay... skip the prozac and let's try straight lithium via an epidural...

COMMENT #4 [Permalink]

... Bamboo Harvester said on 11/12/2008 @ 4:39 pm PT...





Wilburrr... ~ WE need Investigations, Trials and Punishment ... To realign Truth Fact and Reality. John "Mitch" Mitchell 1947 – 2008

COMMENT #5 [Permalink]

... GWN said on 11/12/2008 @ 5:00 pm PT...



COMMENT #6 [Permalink]

... Brad Friedman said on 11/12/2008 @ 5:22 pm PT...





Creid @ #1 - You gave several pieces of misinformation in your comment. I have added an ed note to it to clarify you inaccurate points, which I'll presume were well-meaning, but otherwise incorrect.

COMMENT #7 [Permalink]

... Ancient said on 11/12/2008 @ 5:32 pm PT...





The manipulation of information is egregious! Our elections are at the LEAST QUESTIONABLE. I'm a JOE, and let me tell you I have MANY CONCERNS. Brad has been right on target. This is a participatory government and LAND DAMN IT!

COMMENT #8 [Permalink]

... Lora said on 11/12/2008 @ 5:44 pm PT...





Let's challenge the Democrats to insist on fairness, accuracy, and transparency in the MN recount.

COMMENT #9 [Permalink]

... Kira said on 11/12/2008 @ 6:31 pm PT...





Good news ... Latest Tally [Alaska] Begich leads Stevens by 3 votes!

COMMENT #10 [Permalink]

... Ancient said on 11/12/2008 @ 7:39 pm PT...





Now, I believe if elections were run cleanly the convicted felon's race would have been lost awhile ago! But hey, that's just me after living there for 15 years.

COMMENT #11 [Permalink]

... creid said on 11/12/2008 @ 8:47 pm PT...





Thanks, Brad, for the correction. I thought I knew and remebered it wrong. I hate it when that happens. Should have double checked with a search. The TSx is a DRE machine, and the AVOS is op scan, that is the difference, not that they are central versus precinct. I was unaware that both TSx and AVOS had been tested by Hursti. I knew about TSx and also did know that in my state where we use AVOS, the state determined that our equipment could be vulnerable to the Hursti hack. I thought they extrapolated somehow to figure that out. Er....thanks for the long overdue update and sorry to cloud the issue instead of clarify.

COMMENT #12 [Permalink]

... TEDEGER said on 11/13/2008 @ 4:24 am PT...





I wonder - are the Republicans concerned that they didn't manage to steal the MN election, so they are making wild accusations before the recount so that they can cry "Fraud" in case Franken actually wins? Hmmmmmmmmm?

COMMENT #13 [Permalink]

... creid said on 11/13/2008 @ 5:05 am PT...





TEDEGER, I'm not a mind reader, but I find your argument persuasive. "Sore loser" apparently doesn't work as well at the moment or perhaps at all anymore, especially now that more people have informed themselves about the real need to hang in there and count every vote/make sure the election was run right. it's possible to aggressively make sure you have done all the right things for your candidate and not come off as a spinmeister. Always interesting to watch the official decisions and see which ones appear to be procedurally correct decisions that work to the advantage or disadvantage of one candidate or the other-- and which seem to be politically inspired. Hennepin County's refusal to reexamine 400-some absentee ballots is one such decision I'd like to understand further.

COMMENT #14 [Permalink]

... Julia Clark said on 11/13/2008 @ 5:13 am PT...





Yippie! I cannot wait till all you compassionate hypocrites wipe the retarded and any other feeble person off the planet. In the 40+ years the feminist liberals have run it, you have destroyed the black family, the hispanic family, the blue collar family and now the middle class....The Republicans sent all of the jobs overseas, but there is no more substance to the society...The intellectuals created the greatest dictatorships in history (think Hitler, Stalin, Mao) and are steering us right back towards that. Human sexuality has become selfish transactions between two self absorbed scumbags with no rhyme or reason. People are basically out for themselves and do not care about anyone but themselves. You are lucky if you have any kind of friend in the Northeast, even if it is a family member...I do not like either side (liberal or conservative)...I wish someone would throw an intervention for the lower classes and the handicapped. In memoriam - the handicapped.

COMMENT #15 [Permalink]

... Producer Russ Michaels said on 11/13/2008 @ 5:21 am PT...





Hi Brad and Creid, Just to clarify that the Hursti Hack in our documentary "Hacking Democracy" was indeed carried out on the Diebold AccuVote OS (Optical Scan) machine... However Harri Hursti ALSO hacked the GEMS Central Tabulator in Leon County that day. In our film you can see that the rigged memory card is finally uploaded to GEMS and Harri's hacked vote totals appear on the GEMS tabulator screen. So Harri hacked all three parts of the Diebold OS system - the memory card, the Scanner and the Central Tabulator. (And, as you correctly say Brad, later in Utah Harri hacked the Diebold AccuVote TS toucscreen machines.)

COMMENT #16 [Permalink]

... K. Nukem said on 11/13/2008 @ 5:21 am PT...





It would be good if you actually read what is going on in MN, and responded to the facts of the vote counting process. Of course, for those who have alternate goals, this may be too much to ask for.

COMMENT #17 [Permalink]

... hippy_hunting_neocon said on 11/13/2008 @ 5:48 am PT...





If the newly discovered Franken votes were legit, wouldn't that be reflected by an increase Obama votes as well as other Democratic candidates on the ticket? How is it that they are finding nothing but Franken votes, some that were allegedly in someones car this whole time, and they are only from three specific, traditionally liberal counties? I guess we are supposed to believe that many people were so far to the left in MN that they voted for Franken but would not vote for Obama, is marxism to conservative of an idea for the Franken faries?

COMMENT #18 [Permalink]

... KeninMo said on 11/13/2008 @ 7:25 am PT...





Ah yes, that undoubtedly explains the 8 years of "Commander in Thief", "We was robbed", "Supreme Court handed Bush the election", "Palm Beach County was rigged to hose Gore", "Florida Recounts weren't done right", "Disenfranchisement in Ohio in 04", "Stole it again in 04", etc. etc. You are full of self-righteous BS --- Dems have spent 8 years whining about "stolen" elections, and they took the last 4 starting on 5 Nov 04 to plan out exactly how they were going to steal it in 08 --- Black Panthers at the polls, Acorn registering the Dallas Cowboys starting lineup to vote, busing "voters" from Chicago to Iowa, Nebraska and Texas (Biden himself said "hello Chicago" to the Iowa 'voters' at the Iowa caucus). Obama pulled out the classic Chicago mob politics and replayed Lyndon Johnson and Mayor Daley in the 1960 election.

COMMENT #19 [Permalink]

... Opinionsarelikeassholes said on 11/13/2008 @ 7:56 am PT...





Why do you have to be so incendiary? Name calling and conjecture get us nowhere and destroy credibility. If Franken wins, dems will be forever enshrined as stealing 2008. Links to Chicago political machine methods will become "truth" We don't need it.

COMMENT #20 [Permalink]

... Opinionsarelikeassholes said on 11/13/2008 @ 8:01 am PT...





I'm agreeing with KevinMo. Al Gore himself went on Letterman and said he won the election. Dems have spent 8 years whining about "stolen" elections. Acorn did committ fraud. Fired employees are now giving interviews (not republicans) saying they were following orders.

COMMENT #21 [Permalink]

... Tate said on 11/13/2008 @ 9:53 am PT...





Let Obama, Reid and Pelosi have to deal the Al (The Man who has failed at everything He has ever done) Frankin. D.C. is a bad joke anyway with all of the Goverment bailouts. We are scrwed either way. Let them deal with this jerk-off.

COMMENT #22 [Permalink]

... Jimbo said on 11/13/2008 @ 10:09 am PT...





The Dem's don't need to win any other vote. With the Worm Republicans they have 60 votes. Snowe, Colins, Specter, Lugar and Voinovich. You can get 3 of these 5 any time. Just give them something they want. "IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!"

COMMENT #23 [Permalink]

... TEDEGER said on 11/13/2008 @ 11:15 am PT...





I note the trolls are out in force. They must be REALLY afraid that they are going to lose Coleman, which means that the crooked, vote-flipping machines will be exposed, AGAIN. As to one of the queries above (which really should not be necessary), they are COUNTING Franken - Coleman. There is no reason for the Obama - McCain totals to change, unless someone asks for a recount there.

COMMENT #24 [Permalink]

... W4B said on 11/13/2008 @ 11:36 am PT...





I'm glad to be a Minnesotan, this phony controversy is going to show the rest of the USA what it means to have PAPER BALLOTS. No chads hanging or otherwise, just plain old paper and clearly descernable marks. ALL ballots will be counted with Norm's representatives as well as Al's present to verify fairness. Our election laws put the voters rights and intentions front and center instead of putting technical rules intended to limit, and thus influence the vote.

COMMENT #25 [Permalink]

... Caijoe said on 11/13/2008 @ 12:58 pm PT...





HaHa Keninmo you are very entertaining. Well, on the bright side, you'll have the next eight years to whine about 'ACORN', the 'Black Panthers', the Cowboys, busing voters out of state, etc, etc.

But don't worry, you'll have Rush, Sean, BillO, Michael and all the other right wink talk radio fear/hate mongers to keep you company!

COMMENT #26 [Permalink]

... chabuka said on 11/13/2008 @ 1:34 pm PT...





God...I LOVE saying this to the righties....naner, naner, naner...GET OVER IT....!!

COMMENT #27 [Permalink]

... W4B said on 11/13/2008 @ 2:02 pm PT...





I just dropped by the Republicans conspiracy site and found a total of ten comments on the five or six articles. Nine of the ten comments were critical of the articles and the one that seemed to sympathise with the Republican point of view was obviously posted by an individual with 'challenges'. It's worth a laugh to take a look, don't wait, they'll probably take the site down tomorrow if it continues to draw flys.

COMMENT #28 [Permalink]

... Legender said on 11/13/2008 @ 2:30 pm PT...





As a neophyte election judge on Tuesday, I was very impressed with the team we had. Both the Head Judge and the Registrar were strong Republicans but I never heard them say or do anything other than encourage people to vote for whomever they wanted. Just ignore what Pawlenty and others are saying about the election judges being partisan - ignore the slander. We worked from 5:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. in my precinct and the whole process was SEAMLESS.

In the recount process, the Obama/ McCain votes would not be looked at so those totals will not change. The only votes being contested (and counted) are those for Franken/ Coleman. May the person with the most votes win!!

COMMENT #29 [Permalink]

... Lora said on 11/13/2008 @ 4:38 pm PT...





Dear NRSC commenters who have come to take a look at the Brad Blog, Take a whiff of that clean fresh air and feel free to read some actual facts about election integrity! It is wonderful that there are actual paper ballots in MN to be counted. Now, if they would only hand-count 'em in the first place, eliminate the middle man...

COMMENT #30 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 11/13/2008 @ 5:21 pm PT...





I think you shouldn't be able to hack into ANY vote machine!!! The fact that you can go on youtube and see many videos of many different people hacking into them tells me they should be taken out of existence. Aren't a lot of them made in outsourced countries, too? With slave wage workers who don't give a crap about quality? Not that that even matters, if they were made flawlessly, they'd be hackable because they're designed that way!

COMMENT #31 [Permalink]

... Walk Softly said on 11/14/2008 @ 5:22 am PT...





The Obama votes will indeed be looked at in the recount. Teams of reviewers are going to be looking at what 'might' have been the intent of the "voter." Keep in mind, officials have not yet answered whether all counties employed a "precinct" scanner. Nobody has yet answered whether all such precinct scanners were utilized according to HAVA regulations to notify the voter at the precinct of over-votes. No answers have been forthcoming regarding precinct optical scanner malfunctions. Nobody has answered whether functioning scanners were set to reject over-votes and accept undervotes. Nobody has yet answered precisely how many precisley ballots were undervoted in the Senate race but not the Presidential race. Without those details before, stress before, the recount, nobody from here on out could trust the results of the recount. We have nothing from which to start other than the difference between Coleman and Franken has already been narrowed, primarily by newfound votes due to whatever the reasons. Now that the difference is KNOWN and without the forementioned details also being known, there is every reason to suspect the election "could" be frauded. After all, it takes only a couple 100 votes to be discovered as the actual "intent" of the voter in undervoted blank Senate areas to provide a tie. Only one more than that to declare Franken the winner. That the tally has narrowed so far down is itself suspicious. It's a lot easier to find a couple 100 more votes than it is to find 800 or 1000 or more. Bradblog should be as aware of all of those issues and demand accountability to provide those details, and any others now, before the recount. Every paper ballot printed and unused - how many Every paper ballot issued and used - how many Every paper ballot issued and used, but voided for a replacement ballot - how many BTW every paper ballot printed should have had at least one imprinted number on its side. The number isn't a tracking number that imposes on voter privacy. It's supposed to be documented how many ballots the election bureau had printed for distribution in each district. The last point makes 'finding' of 32 or however many paper ballots in the trunk of a poll judge's car so **** suspicious, for starters. What are the numbers on those and were those separated to be determined if the numbers matched those distributed to that precinct for this election? That voted paper ballots at the precinct may have had undervotes in only the Senate race and no other race is not suspicious because voters have the right to leave any amount of races 'blank.' The optical scan at the precinct enables the voter to review a ballot before casting one, and it should be set to 'reject' over-votes because those void a paper ballot contest when they occur. Not so with under-voted paper ballot. The optical scanner notifies the voter of such with wording such as no selection. The sighted voter visually inspects the ballot a second time, and if the voter wants to make any changes, can do so before casting the ballot as is. That's supposed to be a benefit of the optical scanners at the precinct. It is a scam for any undervoted ballots which have already received the precinct optical scan review by the voter himself or herself to be determined as not the intent of the voter. Not having any hard numbers to start shows an absolute potential for fraud.

COMMENT #32 [Permalink]

... W4B said on 11/14/2008 @ 8:17 am PT...





So Big Stick, how's it feel to be holding the shit-end? I'd advise you to post this over at the NRSC site, this forum is 'reality-based'. The Minnesota recount will be orderly and so will the inevitable law suits. My guess, you loose, get over it.

COMMENT #33 [Permalink]

... Ty Allen said on 1/6/2009 @ 9:23 am PT...





"Unsubstantiated allegations?" That statement is unsubstantiated. Al Franken, with the help of Democrat Secretary of State and former ACORN worker Mark Ritchie, are stealing this election. Just like Al Gore and the Daly Chicago machine tried to steal the 2000 election, and like they succeeded in stealing the 1960 election. This is no conspiracy theory, it's a real conspiracy - and it's nothing new for the power-hungry Democ-RAT party. New Motto of the Dems: "Count every (Democrat) vote (twice)"

COMMENT #34 [Permalink]

... Ty Allen said on 1/6/2009 @ 9:36 am PT...

