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The Massa campaign has slightly altered the message on their web page to note:

There are still a large number of absentee ballots outstanding--far more than the current margin separating Eric & Rep Kuhl--that need to be counted before this election can be decided. We will be actively involved in the recanvassing of the voting machines that will take place in the next few days as well as the eventual counting of the absentee ballots.

Massa is apparently following the same strategy as the Maffei campaign in neighboring NY-25.  This means no concession until at least November 15, since absentee ballots postmarked by the election can be counted if they arrive as late as November 14. 

The inability to concede the obvious is not a specifically Democratic affliction:  Sue Kelly, the Republican incumbent in NY-19, has yet to admit she was beaten by the "Hall" in  "Hall and Oates" John Hall of "Dance With Me" fame. (update:  Wrong cheesy singer/songwriter.  Thanks, Countryboy).

Comments

That's John Hall of "Orleans" fame, not "Hall and Oates". He wrote some of their biggest hits including 'Dance With Me' and 'Your Still the One'.

Rottenchester-
Thanks for the excellent coverage of this race.
CB

I know that there is pressure for Sen. Allen to 'concede', but I feel it is important for every vote to be counted, and to count. My college age son's vote is in the Massa-Kuhl absentee pile. It is important to show him that he took the time to sign up, fill the form out, and spend $.69 to mail.

I wonder the method to recount the votes on the new electronic machines. I'm sure I am not the first to think of that, but those machines will have to be explained numerous times before I fully understand, and accept them before we use them next time.

From what I've read, the VA "recount" will consist of re-reading the totals from every voting machine, similar to what happens with the mechanical machines in NY.

Rich,
It depends on the type of electronic machine. Some have paper trail and some do not. Virgina's do not. They are going to get same # they already have. From what I understand, NYS is requiring their new machines to have a paper trail, which is better in my opinion.

Sorry, Rotten, but it's pretty hard for me to take you seriously now that you've confused John Hall and Darryl Hall. All those charts you did, all those thougtful analyses...all down the drain. You're a fraud, clearly.

Maybe lacking in research, certainly not a fraud. And I had no idea who John Hall was until just now.
Thank you both of you.

My now-exposed ignorance of 70's pop notwithstanding, LV is right about VA voting machines lacking a paper trail.

I think the paper trail is one component of the "right" solution. The other is a source-code audit of the machines. NYS should not buy voting machines without both.

My now-exposed ignorance of 70's pop notwithstanding

Hall and Oates was more of an 80s phenomenon, so you're doubly damned.

Do you think I could stand to be wrong twice? I actually checked the decade out. From Wikipedia:

"Sara Smile" became their first top-ten hit, reaching number four on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in June 1976. "She's Gone", re-released by Atlantic Records after "Sara Smile" went to the top ten, reached number seven in October 1976. Hall and Oates followed those hits with the more pop-oriented Bigger Than Both of Us LP later that year. Though the first single from the album - the Philly soul-oriented ballad "Do What You Want, Be What You Are" - barely made the top forty, the second single was a smash. The song ("Rich Girl"), was Hall and Oates' first number-one hit, reaching the pinnacle on March 26, 1977.

They crossed decades, but they started in the 70's.

Rotten:

Can you explain why we'd need a source-code audit and a paper trail? It seems like one or the other would be enough.

Watch the HBO documentary "Stealing Democracy" - you can stream it on the net.

Briefly, one of the hacks they demonstrated involved a Diebold system that scans paper ballots. They were able to modify the supposedly "unbreakably encrypted" memory cards that stored the results to shave a few votes off of one side and add them to the other. That type of fraud might not be discovered, because it might be in a race where no recount was required.

Diebold has repeatedly misrepresented the security of the inner workings of their machines, so open availability of source code would allow disinterested 3rd parties to audit the code to determine places where fraud would be possible, and fix it. This type of code auditing is well-established in the open source world - Linux is a prime example of a system that's quite secure simply because many people can look at the code.

As a professional software developer, I'll tell you that a code audit and a paper trail are both necessary. Freak events such as power outages, bumping and dropping, and water damage can definitely destroy the contents of a machine and the memory cards. Not to mention a paper trail will show people that their vote was properly recorded. You'd be surprised that a lot of user interfaces do not connect the data to what they display on the screen. You may think you voted one way but a bug may cause a different vote to be cast. If the machine gives you a printout, then you know exactly what you did was recorded.

As for looking at the source code, these machines need to have code that is out in the open for two reasons - more eyes looking for security flaws that a former employee who knows the code can take advantage of and also so there is a way to guarantee the process. As I said above, you may see one thing on the screen but the computer could be storing something completely different. This is very typical. Open code is the best way for these to work. Open hardware is even better.

See www.blackboxvoting.org for more arguments against the Diebold machines and reasons for openness. Bev Harris, who runs the site, was recently in the news for showing how easy it is to hack into a Diebold machine and steal the votes.

Thanks, James, that's a better explanation. I agree that open software and hardware would be the #1 solution to the problem.

Forgive my ignorance, but this doesn't entirely explain things to me.

I understand why it's desirable to have open source code for voting machines; I'm a big (if largely ignorant) fan of Linux and the open software movement in general. But even if Diebold uses poorly written, proprietary code, if you have a paper backup that the voter can verify right in the voting booth, doesn't that mean a hand recount would catch those problems anyway.

Or conversely, if you had a completely open source system, run by competent people, wouldn't it be tough to hack it without a record of that hack showing up when the code is looked at?

Yes, a 100% hand recount would catch it, and a paper trail is better than having no paper trail. But the issue is that paper ballots are rarely recounted at 100%. Some jurisdictions start with a "random" sample of 3%. If those are basically consistent with the outcome, no more counting occurs. There are a lot of hacks which could affect elections on the margins that might escape the random sample, perhaps by design.

Your second para is precisely the point. The addition of open hardware to the mix makes sure there isn't some way for a hacker to get to the guts of the machine and perpetrates a hack of some kind.

BTW, open software and open hardware aren't inconsistent with private enterprise. If government agreed on a "reference platform" of open hardware and software, there could still be lots of competition between businesses in how they implement that platform.

You know, I fear that if Mr. Massa doesn't put this thing behind him, and concede in a classy way befitting his now-strong reputation, he's going to erode greatly any goodwill which I'm sure is out there for a return race in '08. If Eric, despite good intentions, keeps fighting this and winning headlines like the Corning newspaper's of yesterday ("I Will Not Go Lightly") he is going to become a cartoon. He needs to show what his supporters understand and know: He is the equal to, if not superior of, "Fifty-One Percent Randy".

I fully support Massa's desire to have a full count of the votes. If the Dems hadn't given up so easily in 2000, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today.

Rotten, you do know that the Hall and Oates entry is one of the most disputed parts of Wikipedia, do you not?