Alaska Democrats Discover Hanky-Panky with Datafile from the 2004 Election - aka Diebold Strikes Again!

After 9-months of the Division of Elections (completely run by Repubs) trying everything in their power to keep "prying eyes" away from the Diebold Files, they settled when it became obvious that the court was going to rule against them.

So, they ponied up a datafile. Notice I say "a" datafile and not "the" datafile. It was the "most recent" copy of the information, which turns out to be a significant qualifier:

Per the Alaska Democratic Party Website:

The Alaska Democratic Party today asked the Division of Elections to explain why changes were made in July of 2006 to the electronic database that contains the results of the 2004 General Election.

A review of the audit trail of the GEMS database for the 2004 elections shows that modifications were made to the database on July 12 and July 13, 2006.

So what did they change?

"We do not understand why 2004 election results would be manually modified in 2006 after the complaint was filed asking that you produce the database," Jake Metcalfe, chair of the Alaska Democratic Party, said in a letter to Division of Elections Director Whitney Brewster. "Data from the 2004 election may have been altered," Metcalfe said.

One of the modifications made in 2006 appears to alter data for House District 5. In that district's race for the State House, Democrat Tim June lost by 59 votes to Republican Bill Thomas.

The Democratic Party also questioned the 293 manual entries that were made to the electronic file between 11/2/04 and 12/2/04. According to the same audit log, the Primary Election for 2004 had 17 manual entries.

"Two hundred and ninety-three is an incredibly high number of manual entries," said Jim March, a consultant and member of the Board of Directors of Black Box Voting who examined the GEMS database.

And why would anyone legitimately make manual entries?

"Manual entries usually happen when a ballot is too crumpled to scan or is marked in blood, crayon or in an unusual manner. A small number of manual entries is normal. In an election about your size, approximately 20 or so manual entries would be common. Having 293 manual entries for the General Election is completely off the charts, while the 17 manual entries that were made for the Primary is within the normal range. The high number of manual entries is troubling since several elections were decided by less than 100 votes," March said.

Who made the changes?

One of the problems revealed by examining the GEMS database is that every individual who modified the file had the same "admin" User ID, March said.

Failing to assign each individual who has access to the database a unique User ID negates an important safeguard, he said.

"We now know the Alaska Division of Elections isn't tracking which human being performs which action on the central database of votes, including a startlingly high number of manual entries of vote data. If a person's actions in the election aren't tracked, personal accountability fails. This is a classic flaw in the Diebold product," March said.

So the Demos are now demanding an "unaltered" copy of the datafile. We'll see how long it takes to get it...if they get it at all.

Here's some background as to why there needed to be an inquiry:

According to the Division of Elections' vote reports that were produced by the state's Diebold computer system and are posted on the Division's official web site, a far larger number of votes were cast than the official totals reported in the statewide summary. In the case of President George Bush’s votes, the district-by-district totals add up to 292,267, but his official total was only 190,889, a difference of 101,378 votes. In the U.S. Senate race, Lisa Murkowski received 226,992 votes in the district-by-district totals, but her official total was only 149,446, a difference of 77,546 votes.

In 20 of the 40 State House Districts, more ballots were cast than there are registered voters in the district, according to information on the state's web site. In 16 election districts, the voter turnout percentage shown is over 200%.

I fear for November's election.