Kansas Secretary of State Blocks Release of Voting Machine Tapes 288
PvtVoid writes: Wichita State University statistician Beth Clarkson has filed a lawsuit under Kansas' open records law to force the state to release paper tape records from voting machines, to be used as data in her research on statistical anomalies in voting patterns in the state. Clarkson, a certified quality engineer with a Ph.D. in statistics, has analyzed election returns in Kansas and elsewhere over several elections that indicate 'a statistically significant' pattern where the percentage of Republican votes increase the larger the size of the precinct. The pattern could be voter fraud or a demographic trend that has not been picked up by extensive polling. Secretary of State Kris Kobach argued that the records sought by Clarkson are not subject to the Kansas open records act, and that their disclosure is prohibited by Kansas statute.
In other words. (Score:4, Insightful)
The secretary is covering up a fraud.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Well, yeah!
Too bad it won't motivate us all to trash these contraptions. They are designed to commit fraud. So, in that case, they are working perfectly and we should keep them!
Re: (Score:2)
Too bad it won't motivate us all to trash these contraptions.
While at it, what about trashing the perps and the beneficiaries?
Re:In other words. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:In other words. (Score:5, Insightful)
I did read that the secretary of state considered that the records aren't subject to the Kansas open records act. In my eyes any such avoidance of disclosure means that there's something to hide.
Re:In other words. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, when it's _us_ they're talking about it's all, "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about".
When it's _them_? That's a different story....
Re: (Score:2)
I did read that the secretary of state considered that the records aren't subject to the Kansas open records act. In my eyes any such avoidance of disclosure means that there's something to hide.
Of course it could just as easily be that they are understaffed and will not take time to comply with requests they don't have to. Or, they have plenty of staff but can't be arsed to stop updating Facebook to comply with requests they don't have to. Any road, the records are in a rotten format that would take a lot of effort to work through to comply with a request they are not required to comply with. So, quite possible they're saying piss off because they can, not because they have nothing to hide.
Re:In other words. (Score:4, Informative)
Did you read the part of the linked to article that says that a similar request was refused and the court agreed that these records are not releasable though a FOIA request back in 2013? Yea, didn't think so...
And that proves there's nothing to hide because...?
Re:In other words. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:In other words. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a HUUUUUUUGE difference between the state asking for location data on a private citizen, and citizens asking to audit the state. The state exists to do the citizens' will and for the citizens benefit. A state's rights are granted to it BY the citizens, not the other way around.
That said, data should be anonymized if it isn't already. When I vote, my ballot doesn't have any identifying information on it, so releasing records exactly as they were captured wouldn't tell you anything about me at all.
Re:In other words. (Score:5, Interesting)
In which case it also wouldn't prove anything at all, like whether your vote was fraudulent or not.
The point of this investigation is not to determine who voted for whom, which is, in fact, illegal. The point of this investigation is to determine whether, in aggregate, there are discrepancies between voting results and other recognized demographic trends.
If it turns out that a neighborhood of poor black people voted 80% Republican, it doesn't necessarily mean fraud. Maybe the neighborhood got very gentrified between when the demographics were reported and the election. Maybe the particular candidate had a specific message that appealed well to that exact neighborhood. Maybe his opponent's ex-wife lived in the area. Discrepancies between expected population trends and observed population trends are interesting.
Re: (Score:3)
And that information is already available to the researcher. Even the summary said that.
Re:In other words. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:In other words. (Score:5, Informative)
The summarized electronic information is available, not the backup paper tape that records the actual vote and IS the backup for checking the electronic records. The whole purpose of the paper tapes is so fraud can be checked and elections verified. Electronic aggregate records can be tampered with, the only way to alter the paper tapes is to screw with the voting machines before the vote so vote A = B. I check my tapes when I vote to ensure it's recorded correctly and my state encourages voters to do the same. The tape is the official vote record in my state and I'm sure it's the same in Kansas.
What that means is they gave her the unofficial count, not the official records.
Re: (Score:3)
The republican party is so worried about voter fraud that doesn't benefit them. There, fixed it for you. In virtually every case where they claim widespread fraud and the need for voter ID laws and other restrictions there has been no evidence to support that. In most cases it's voter fraud perpetrated by Republicans trying to limit access to voting to people who won't vote for them, i.e. the poor and elderly who may be less likely to vote for them and they often restrict the number of voting machines and
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You are getting confused over who is claiming certainty in this discussion. No-one is claiming that it is proven that something is being hidden, but someone (bobbied, initially) is claiming (or at least apparently trying to imply; he hasn't yet chosen to clarify his comment) that it is out of the question that something is being hidden.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not a logical error. It's pointing out that the discussion further up amounts to something even less than a presumed crime.
Not releasing proof is not proof of something being hidden.
Not releasing proof is not proof of nothing being hidden.
Both statements are true and independent.
Re:In other words. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Each person’s vote in the 2013 election takes up about 27½ inches of the electronic machine’s paper trail. Each roll from the 2014 election is 385 feet long, and stored in 42 boxes that are not segregated by precinct or voting district."
Definitely not as easy as making a photo copy. Maybe they could let her pay to hire someone to sort through, find the right roll (without damaging anything), then carefully unroll and photograph it for later study before re-rolling it?
One issue of course would be that the voting registry (which is public already and contains who voted and is time stamped, so also in what order) could very easily be used to guesstimate matching up specific people with specific votes, as the roll is going to be in chronological order as well. I'm not totally familiar with Kansas law, but there's a good chance they're legally supposed to have a secret ballot.
Poor excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if the government stores information in an inconvenient format, that makes it exempt from freedom of information requests?
Pathetic.
Re:In other words. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not the first time I've heard the argument that access to voting records can reveal supposedly secret votes. Of course, what this argument reveals, if accurate, is that voting officials are routinely able to determine supposedly secret votes, as they have access to the voting records they refuse to reveal to the public.
The long-term solution is to ensure that all voting records are routinely made available to the public, meaning that any systems which acts to violate the secrecy of the vote will do so equally for all, leading to the withdrawal of such systems on the grounds that they do not meet the baseline requirements for a voting system meant to maintain the supposedly sacrosanct secrecy of the vote.
I would have thought this common sense when I was younger.
Re: (Score:2)
If this were a serious concern for you, you would realize that election officials must be lying when they talk about your ballot's votes being anonymous. I've never heard anyone suggest such a concern, so I assume those who raise "formal logic" issues, with special coded sequences of votes and such, are being, well, politeness prevents me from finishing the thought yet again.
Would you like a verifiable election that doesn't rely on ballots? Fine, here you go: five contests with five candidates requires fi
Re: (Score:2)
I neglected to add that this example converts naturally to paper ballots as soon as someone discovers that each contest can get its own slip of paper.
Re: (Score:3)
One issue of course would be that the voting registry (which is public already and contains who voted and is time stamped, so also in what order) could very easily be used to guesstimate matching up specific people with specific votes, as the roll is going to be in chronological order as well. I'm not totally familiar with Kansas law, but there's a good chance they're legally supposed to have a secret ballot.
Secret ballots are primarily supposed to be secret from the government.
Re:In other words. (Score:4, Interesting)
Is that actually the case? I thought a big purpose was to avoid voter intimidation by non-governmental vigilantes who oppose a particular candidate.
Re: (Score:2)
Is that actually the case? I thought a big purpose was to avoid voter intimidation by non-governmental vigilantes who oppose a particular candidate.
It is also make it difficult to buy a vote. The buyer can't verify that the seller actually voted for their candidate.
Re:In other words. (Score:4, Interesting)
Absolutely! Your reason also holds true, but it comes in a distant second.
We tend to minimize the "Uncle Sam knows who you voted for" angle precisely because we don't live in a country where we routinely round up people who voted for the "wrong" candidate to torture or execute or "reeducate" them.
By contrast, consider (whatever your stance on the post-9/11 Iraq war) that Saddam Hussein routinely won reelection by an almost unanimous vote for precisely that reason.
Re: (Score:2)
Secret ballots are primarily supposed to be secret from the government.
You realize that the researcher works for the government, right? I get it. "Wichita State" is a confusing name because there isn't a state called Wichita. It's really run by the state of Kansas.
Re:In other words. (Score:5, Insightful)
The secretary is covering up a fraud.
Or, attempting to follow the law as the secretary claims is the case.
Re:In other words. (Score:4, Insightful)
The law should NEVER, EVER, EVER, provide protection over any data available behind public sector activity.
The public sector frequently claims the release of information will be burdensome; however, the public sector actors are not always forced, by statute (as they are in Minnesota) to ensure records should be held in a way which the sector cannot claim burden in failure to comply.
This needs to change.
Re:In other words. (Score:5, Insightful)
This needs to change.
Perhaps it does, however until the law IS changed the Secretary of State is correct, it is illegal for these records to be released because of a FOIA request. The person filing this lawsuit has already lost a nearly identical lawsuit in 2013 (the only difference I know of was the date of the election for which records where requested). They are just hoping to "get lucky" and find a sympathetic judge this time around.
Re:In other words. (Score:4, Informative)
You can stop trolling now.
Re:In other words. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.hdnews.net/opinion/... [hdnews.net]
There’s an important reason why neither I, nor Sedgwick County officials, can hand over any ballots to the WSU employee — because it’s a crime to do so. Under K.S.A. 25-2422, it’s a felony to “disclos(e) or expos(e) the contents of any ballot” after the election contest period has ended, even if the names of voters are redacted. Another Kansas law, K.S.A. 25-3107(a), specifically prohibits county election officials from unsealing the containers in which ballots are kept after an election. Only under a judicial order, when the outcome of a specific race has been contested, can those containers be unsealed.
That is in the Secretary of State's own words. He'd be committing a crime... It's illegal....
Re: (Score:3)
The question is why the government passed a law that makes it illegal to verify that no fraud took place. It seems to be standard procedure to pass laws to make it hard to uncover fraud. My government did it with the Orwellian "Fair Elections Act" that amongst other things declawed the agency in charge of verifying the election was fraud free.
Re: (Score:2)
The law should NEVER, EVER, EVER, provide protection over any data available behind public sector activity.
Even if that data might reveal information about private citizens? Have you considered the fact that the people this data is about might not want it made public?
What if someone voted for the candidate that their spouse is violently opposed to? Should we endanger that person because you want to know how everybody is voting? That's obviously an extreme case, but the scenario is a valid one. How many people would vote differently if they knew that information would be made public?
I'd agree with you if this
Re: (Score:2)
A FOIA should probably come with some serious strings attached, because it's just as important to protect the secret ballot and that's at odds with complete freedom of information.
Re:In other words. (Score:4, Interesting)
If the machines are faulty you will need to prove that. Go... do so. However the records are probably off limits. Which is going to make your job extremely hard to do. But if someone can write an emulator I think someone can reverse engineer one of these boxes easily enough.
Which is real convenient here. I don't buy it at all. It's three years after the elections in question and it'll be even later than that by the time any access is obtained, if ever. That's a ridiculous delay for any sort of vote coercion to occur.
I think there's a reasonable case here for illegal vote manipulation and that this illegal activity is just as bad as vote coercion.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a ridiculous delay for any sort of vote coercion to occur.
How is that in any way ridiculous? The whole point of coercion is they come back and punish you if they find out later. If they can find out in 3 years and use it against you, you can still be intimidated. If you vote that way anyway, they'll come and break your kid's legs, and next year you'll know to vote with the thugs (the police aren't exactly going to be guarding you 24/7 for 3 years just in case this happens). Therefore the law must protect anonymity in these records a lot longer than 3 years.
I t
Re: (Score:2)
Re:In other words. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:In other words. (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't call it "nearly identical". Clarkson's new request better maintains the anonymity of the votes, by eliminating a geographic factor (which should also reduce the burden on the state, since one of their gripes was that they don't keep the tapes grouped by district) and it looks like the anonymity issue is what got her refused last time (by the judge).
Re: (Score:2)
by eliminating a geographic factor...
But from the summary:
'a statistically significant' pattern where the percentage of Republican votes increase the larger the size of the precinct.
TFA didn't clarify whether she meant "size" as in "number of people" or as in "area" but the term "precinct" refers to a specific location (area).
Re: (Score:3)
No, not illegal just undo burden.
Re: (Score:3)
1) "undue burden [wikipedia.org]" - FFS... I'm not normally a grammar nazi, but that's just plain irritating.
2) If a court said it was "unlawful", they meant "unlawful", exactly as stated. Courts use specific words and do so in a specific language for a reason.
Re: (Score:3)
More likely he knows that those machines are crap, that it was proven they're crap, that he knew they're crap and yet greenlit them, and that he fears for his comfy seat when the uncomfortable questions start rolling in.
Somebody just re-defined... (Score:3)
Complete bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Authority without Accountability = Authoritative Abuse(s)
When are people going to demand an open and transparent government?
More important, who stands to gain (or be hurt) if this information was released?
Re:Complete bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
The People really don't want one either. People don't really want to know what is being done in their name by politicians, or else they would be pissed off. Plausible deniability. It is how many Germans ignored the Nazis.
To know, would require a person of any amount of conscience to act.
Special Interests, a question (Score:5, Interesting)
Who's funding Clarkson's lawsuits?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
I have no dog in this hunt as I don't live or vote in Kansas...
The courts already decided that the Secretary of State is correctly refusing the FOIA request and they did so in 2013. The researcher is just fishing for a different answer and hoping for a different judge. Why else would she file this latest lawsuit? For grins?
Re: (Score:3)
Well Beth needs to get off KU campus and go take a drive through the rest of Kansas listen to some local radio maybe she won't need records when she finds she can't throw a rock without hitting Republican.
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
> 'a statistically significant' pattern where the percentage of Republican votes increase the larger the size of the precinct.
The larger the precinct in geographical terms, the more spread out the population. The more spread out, the more rural, the more rural, the more Republicans per capita. Where's the problem here?
Re: (Score:3)
Same pattern happens in reverse -- take Illinois voting returns, for example. Rural precincts with fewer voters compile and report their results quickly, so Illinois goes deep red. Then Cook County (Chicago), which represents 1,635 of Illinois' 57,915 square miles, or about 2.8%) reports and the state goes blue.
Using 2012 as an example, Cook County contributed 1.94 million votes to a 5.1 million total. So 2.8% of the land area represented 40% of the results that decided 100% of the electoral votes of the st
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I'm sure those 97.2% of Illinois's acres of land feels really bad about supporting the other 2.8% of acres of land. On the other hand, the *minority* of rural voting humans do
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously you've studied this in depth. No wild-assed speculator, you.
Re: (Score:2)
Have you ever been to Kansas?
There is no speculation here. Kansas still runs a 'prohibition party' candidate for most political offices, and they get votes. Note: That's a party that wants to bring back prohibition of alcohol.
That said. The butthole of Kansas, Johnson County, is also very conservative. (Wyandotte county is an anal fistula attached to Johnson.)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure she understands, but is grandstanding.
Re: (Score:2)
The votes are still secret. A voter's name or identification is not on the vote itself and should not be on any receipts (unless they chose some horrifically designed voting machine).
It is amazing... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a amazing how many folks have a "Government is hiding something" default setting here. Who, without reading the background material, conclude that the Kansas Secretary of State is stonewalling with the "it's not legal to release this information" argument.
I urge you to read both the above article AND the one it links to. You will discover that this researcher filed almost the EXACT same lawsuit years ago and LOST in court back in 2013. The courts agreed with the Secretary of State that the release of this information was illegal according to Kansas law.
All that's happening now is the researcher is trying to find a judge who might rule differently by filing another lawsuit. She is answer shopping and hoping to "get lucky" this time around. IMHO this is a waste of time and is clogging up the courts with worthless lawsuits.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Read the articles.... This isn't an audit, it's a FOIA request for records the Secretary of State is not allowed to release, by law. Further, the courts have already decided, back in 2013 for the same records for a different election, in favor of the Secretary of State's position.
Re: (Score:3)
An appeal is to take the original case to a higher court and ask them to overrule a lower court. What she did was re-file the same case years later with the same court. That is not an appeal.
JESUS!!!! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Since when did "not bulk copyable for free by anyone who makes a FOI request" equate to "secret"? Do you have any idea how much it would cost to copy all the tape she requested?
Re: (Score:2)
if the public ever figured out what is really going on there would be massive riots across the entire nation.
If only that were true. If widespread voter fraud was clearly identified, I expect the reaction of most Americans would be "Ho-hum, I wonder if anyone liked my Kardashian post on Facebook". Just like the debacle with the NSA spying, they got caught red-handed clearly circumventing the law and spying on US citizens and the collective response from the public was "Nobody cares!".
So then... why bother with the bloody paper tapes? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's legally impossible to request a review of them, why bother with creating and storing the paper tapes in the first place?
Which leads, I guess, to the next question. If it's legally impossible to review an election, why bother holding them in the first place?
Re: (Score:2)
She is asking for a copy of the tapes. That is very different than the tapes being reviewed.
Exemptions to the Kansas Open Records Act (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What possible reason could there be to not let anyone who wants to look at the audit trail of election votes?
Perhaps it is unlawful to release these records Kansas? Oh wait, that's what the secretary of state is claiming....
Re:gee I wonder why all the need for secrecy here? (Score:4, Informative)
and the researcher says that the statute requires them to remain anonymous, not unseen. If her plan keeps the records anonymous, then is it still illegal? (I haven't looked up the statute itself, but I assume if it clearly refuted the "anonymous, not unseen" part someone would have mentioned it in the news stories.)
Re: (Score:2)
If the state law says the voter must remain anonymous and the court has previously said that releasing the records violates that law, this is NOT different.
It doesn't matter what the researcher says she will do with the information, it matters what the state releases. So even if the researcher says they won't release any voter identification information, it doesn't matter, she cannot, by law, have it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Secretary of State Kobach filed a legal challenge to the suit. It states the records are sealed by state statute and that he is not the custodian of the records. It also points out Carlson filed a similar lawsuit for the paper records in 2013 and was denied access to the paper trail. The judge ruled that the records, even though they did not contain personally identifiable information, were still ballots.
http://sunlightfoundation.com/... [sunlightfoundation.com]
What say you now Dopey?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't want my employer to know that I usually vote for Democrats.
Don't the audit tapes just have anonymous ballot numbers? if you don't share your ballot receipt with your employer, you should be safe, especially if your employer is not the researching seeking the tapes since he, presumably, is doing statistical analysis and is not posting them online.
Though if your employer cares enough about how you vote that it actually worries you if they found out, perhaps you ought to get a new job
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Both parties run out of money. One of them does it by not taxing enough, the other does it by spending too much.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, it better be "significant enough" to be the difference in a statewide election. If it's not, or if it's real, then all the research will have done is shown those republicans where they have over saturated some areas and it's time to redraw some lines. My guess, is that's the worst case scenario for the "researcher" and that if it is legit we'll never hear from the again.
Wait. Are you saying it's appropriate to "redraw some lines" based on what party won a district?
Corrupt much?
Re: (Score:2)
So, you're saying it's less corrupt because everyone else is also corrupt?
Re: (Score:3)
I'm sure that's what you see.
Re:There is no voter fraud! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they tell you that In-Person Voter Fraud is close to nonexistent, the most uncommon variety, the hardest to perform, and the least rewarding.
They also tell you that In-Person Voter Fraud is the only form prevented by Voter ID laws.
And that in an effort to stop those tens of invalid in-person votes per year on a national scale, the trade off is disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters nationwide. Voters who are overwhelming tend to be poor/minority/democratic voters. There are still several other forms of fraud that are easier to perform, and much more affecting of the outcome of an election, which Voter ID does nothing about.
Do try to learn about the topic before speaking.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
There was 235 MILLION registered voters in the 2012 election. Hundreds of thousands is a statistical fluke. A difference of a few degrees outside is also likely to affect turnout by 0.05%. New Hampshire typically schedules their elections on a Tuesday in March, sun or snow. Heck, a few years ago turnout was so low our vote on a town policy didn't reach quorum. A strong effort to boycott the election may also have helped. Yes, you read that right. (The difference between a "No" vote and a failed vote had som
Re: (Score:2)
235 million registered voters, barely over half of which voted.
Still an anomoly? At the presidential level, possibly. Though 74,000 votes separated Obama from Romney over 29 electors in Florida, for example.
But you don't even have to drop to the state legislature to see small numbers matter. In 2014, Martha McSally beat Ron Barber in Arizona for the US House of Representatives by 219 votes. That's a pretty slim margin for a district with 640,000 residents.
So, yes...it actually does matter.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Because DMV offices are only open during business hours and not on weekends in poorer areas.
That's a stretch... its also not true in my state where voter ID laws have been derided with the same fact-less "poor, minority, democrat" nonsense. There are weekend hours and extend evening hours during the week. These same "poor" seem to have no trouble using the SS office hours to get their "paycheck".
Re: (Score:2)
No lawsuit needed!
Re: (Score:2)
In American politics: Progressive: A reactionary wanting to return to the politics of the 1930s.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I thought that problem was fixed already? We're dealing with modern fraud today not decades old fraud. Or is your justification that because one side cheated that the other side is allowed to cheat to make up for it?
Re: (Score:2)
It's politics. You have to cheat at least as much as your opponent just to keep the game fair.
Re: (Score:2)
Very well spun, you should be working for Faux News.
Re: (Score:2)
How are the Democrats gerrymandering Kansas when it's controlled by the Republicans?
Re: (Score:2)
Look at and copy are very different things. She wants a copy.
Re: (Score:2)
That's because most poor vote democrat because of social programs that only really work well in urban areas. The rural poor don't get much benefit but still pay the taxes for it. It's nothing to say about how progressive or backward people are. It's all purely selfish motivation and not the best interests of the country/state as a whole.