SHELBY: 3,221 PHANTOM VOT...
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Consultants examining the Aug. 5 Shelby County election found 3,221 more votes than voters on documents provided by Shelby County elections officials pursuant to a court order.
Most voter-less votes were found in large Republican precincts, a non-random distribution.
The inspection team sought and obtained documents in connection with a lawsuit filed by ten defeated candidates over irregularities in the election.
FOUR KINDS OF INFORMATION ARE NEEDED TO AUTHENTICATE AN ELECTION:
1. Who can vote (the voter list)
2. Who did vote (the list of participating voters)
3. Were votes cast the real ones (chain of custody)
4. Was the counting accurate (public verification of the count)
Shelby County admitted that they installed an invalid voter list in Election Day electronic poll books, altering #1 (WHO CAN VOTE). The list said thousands of people could not vote because they had already voted, even though they had not voted.
Shelby County withheld the list of WHO DID VOTE (#2 ) until ordered by the court to produce it. When consultants analyzed the list of who did vote, they found names missing for 3,221 votes counted in the final certified results.
Shelby County computer logs show uploaded invisible data from 16 polling places the day before the polls opened. The premature uploads were done out of public view, and no testing procedure or work order record matches documents the uploads of invisible votes into the central tally machine, raising questions on WHETHER VOTES COUNTED WERE THE REAL ONES(#3).
#4, COUNTING OF THE VOTE: Shelby County declined to provide precinct results after the election and even after they certified the results; Elections Administrator Richard Holden stated in front of a court reporter on Aug. 16 that it was not possible to produce them, a misrepresentation to the court, but the inspection team discovered copies of precinct results reports sitting on Shelby County computers. The results had been there since Aug. 6. Shelby County precinct results ("Statement of Votes Cast" or "SOVC") do not match the list of participating voters.
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A meeting is being held tonight, Thursday Sept. 16, for all citizens and the media to hear details on the evidence. Shelby County Voter Protection meeting: 6:00 pm at Morning Star Holiness Church - 3161 Park Ave Memphis TN 38111-3043
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Shelby County's certified "SOVC" results show 85,290 votes cast at polls (not early votes, or absentee votes, but Election Day polling place votes. But Shelby County's Participating Voter List shows only 82,069 voters who cast votes at polls.
Also, in at least five locations containing phantom votes -- votes without voters -- Shelby County had performed secret uploads from voting machines the day before the election.
PRECINCT: COR09
The heavily Republican COR09 precinct, location HOPE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH shows just 20 people who voted at the polling place, but the certified "SOVC" results counted 619 votes. This is a discrepancy of 599 votes.
The pictures above show the Shelby County Participating Voter list, with 10 absentee votes and 20 At Polls votes. Superimposed over this is a photo of Shelby County's certified results, which show 619 At Polls votes.
Poster logs from Shelby County -- obtained only after a representative of the court appeared at Shelby County elections to order compliance, which was refused (causing the court to seal and sequester the logs "in the bosom of the court") -- when eventually released, show two voting machine uploads on August 4 from the COR09 precinct. Here is one of the uploads:
THE DETECTIVE WORK: How do we know this was August 4?
The number 1280915949 is a Unix time stamp. You can convert Unix time stamps by entering a formula, or by going to the Internet and using any online converter, like this:
http://www.onlineconversion.com/unix_time.htm
But can we be sure they were uploading something from a voting machine? AccuVote-TS is the touchscreen voting machine brand used in Shelby County polling places.
Vote uploads are logged in two places. In addition to the poster log entry above, the following entry appears in the audit log inside a hidden, off-the-books database Shelby County was required to provide to us:
How do we know "VCenter 389" is precinct COR09? A table in the Shelby County elections database cracks the code for GEMS vote center numbers. From VCenter table:
COR09 Hope Presbyterian Church, Sequence # 389, is the ID number used by the Diebold GEMS software to identify the COR09 location. The database audit log converts the Unix date. As you can see, the date/time stamps in the two logs match exactly.
The final certified results for COR09 showed 599 more votes than voters. This is a serious anomaly which merits meticulous examination, which must include the audit log from machine serial number 246297 (from whence uploads reported as two different voting machines took place). An examination of the memory card data is also needed. Shelby County has refused to provide the audit log data from any of the machines and has yet to provide the memory card data.
PRECINCT: COL09
In heavily Republican COL09 precinct, location NEW SHELBY MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH, Shelby's participating voter list shows 409 polling place voters, but the certified "SOVC" results show 442 polling place votes, a 33-vote discrepancy consisting almost entirely of Republican votes.
On Aug. 4, logs revealed two voting machine uploads from Precinct COL09; identified as machine #1 and #2, serial numbers again were reported as identical. The next day, 33 phantom votes appeared in COL09.
PRECINCT: GER11
At the heavily Republican GER11 precinct, voted at GERMANTOWN FIRE STATION NO. 2, the Participating Voter List shows 714 "At Poll" voters but their results SOVC shows they counted 873. That's 159 phantom votes.
On Aug. 4, two voting machine uploads were performed from GER11, again representing machine #1 and machine #2, again representing that both machines had the same serial number.
PRECINCT: LOC00
The LOC00 precinct, location SHELBY FOREST BAPTIST ACTIVITY BLDG, showed only 273 voters on the PVL voter list, but 370 votes were counted, a discrepancy of 97.
The day before the election, LOC00 showed two voting machine uploads, this time showing different serial numbers for voting machine #1 and voting machine #2.
The next day, LOC00 reported 97 phantom votes.
PRECINCT FOR02:
At the FOR02 precinct, location SOUTHWIND ELEM SCHOOL (GYM), the voter list PVL shows 275 AP voters.
The voter list PVL for FOR02, 275 + 304 voters, sums up to 579 voters but the SOVC results report that 597 votes were counted in FOR02.
The discrepancy shows 18 votes without voters, even after two sets of polling place voters are entered into the PVL. This is a particularly interesting discrepancy because it is consistent with a manual override typo. Someone wrote 579 as 597 in the vote database, a common transposition when you manually enter a number but not the kind of thing a computer will do when it adds up numbers.
The day before the election, the poster log shows uploads from FOR02, but these uploads are OMITTED on the GEMS audit log, indicating either that the audit log was tampered with or that there is yet another off-the-books database somewhere.
A memory card with a piece of tape stuck on it that said "FOR02" was observed out on a table in the Shelby County Elections Warehouse on Aug. 12, unsealed and unattended.
Many precincts showed phantom votes for a total of 3,221 more votes than voters. About 16 locations have been identified which had Aug. 4 uploads, spread out in at least two poster logs housed on two different computers, some showing vote uploads and others reporting "no ballots". There is a correlation but not a one-to-one match between premature uploads and the phantom votes.
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Bev Harris has eight years of field experience examining election records and procedures. She is the author of Black Box Voting, and founder of the nonpartisan, nonprofit public education organization Black Box Voting Inc.; Harris's forensic work was featured in the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy" and has been covered by the New York Times, Time Magazine, the Associated Press, and all major television networks. Susan Pynchon assisted with research for this report. She founded Florida Fair Elections Coalition (FFEC), a voting rights organization, and its educational arm Florida Fair Elections Center, in 2004. Among other accomplishments, Pynchon initiated a forensic investigation of the failed 2006 Sarasota election and contributed to reports on the exceptionally high undervotes on ES&S iVotronic touchscreens. Pynchon's New Hampshire field work for the 2008 presidential primary helped produce important statewide election reforms. In 2008, Pynchon was a recipient of the prestigious Nelson Poynter Award for protecting Florida voting rights.
You can see the full article with photos at: www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/81178.html