Maine miscounts and strangeness

[Bev Harris]

Maine has many of the best things in elections -- 200,000 votes are counted by
hand, without the typical centralization of control that we're seeing nowadays;
election administration is disbursed throughout 500 locations, and statewide
hand counts are affordable.

Now for the bad news: I spoke with two different people in the Maine Secretary
of State's office this morning. I was incredulous at some of the answers I
received, which were both misleading and inappropriate. I wrote this quote down
as she was saying it:

"We have not and do not give out results to anyone, we have 23 days to do this."

I spoke with Julie Flynn, deputy sec. state, and Tracy Willett, who I had to
push very hard to get a last name out of.

Both confirmed that the ONLY results avaible to date come from the Bangor Daily
News, and that this newspaper does NOT get its results from the secretary of
state, but rather, from a volunteer network that calls in on Election Night. In
fact, this volunteer network is probably the AP or Voter News Service setup,
going by various names but basically, the reporting network for the news media
which consists of local poll workers or elections people getting paid by the
press to call in their numbers.

I pointed out to the Sec. State's office that the 2nd and 11th biggest
municipalities in Maine both appear to have miscounts...or something.

Augusta appears to have a 27% overvote in the marijuana issue and no, I do NOT
believe this is just some random difference in how they vote. That's because
the variation in that issue averages about 1 percent when looking at all 500
locations, and rarely varies much more than that except in Lewiston, another
apparently miscounted location. In Lewiston, it appears that there is an 8.5%
undervote in the marijuana issue.

Now, I realize that the most high profile issue is the gay marriage issue, but
the Augusta and Lewiston anomalies may reflect on the overall vote counting.
Both use ES&S Optech machines. The miscounts may be due to ballot stuffing, or
to a typo by the Bangor Daily News, or to a voting machine miscount, or to
voting machine tampering. The miscounts of the marijuana issue may affect only
that issue, or may be symptomatic of a problem affecting other issues like
Question 1 (repealing gay marriage) or even all the issues.

I have made a formal request for the Augusta and Lewiston results to the Maine
Secretary of State's office.

In the mean time, after looking more closely at the Maine situation, I see holes
big enough to drive a truck through. When you have preliminary results being
withheld by the sec. state for 23 days, someone can diddle away to their
heart's content.

Can the delay in producing results be used to authorize and extension in the
recount deadline (which has passed) or for some other challenge? No. After
about 50 follow up question, the Sec. State's office finally conceded that
someone could go in to their office and ask to see their results sheets,
beginning 3 days after the election, or someone could traipse around to
physically visit all 500 municipalities. And, they said, most candidates DO
come in to the office.

When I asked if ANYONE came in to ask to look at results for this election, both
persons I spoke with said "No."

Lots of Maine voter education is needed to educate Maine citizens about their
rights, and their duties as citizens.

Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

* * * * *

Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The
people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right
to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to
know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over the
instruments of government we have created.



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