We are always asked “Since we can bank safely by Internet, why can’t we vote by Internet”. The answer is that banking is safe only because banks save more in operations than the billions they lose each year in online banking. And they are two different applications, there is no receipt for your vote – we are even talking about voting by email – most people otherwise know that email is not safe.
Many people, despite the evidence keep, insisting that mail or absentee voting is safe. But would you really send cash in the mail? If not why would you send your vote that way unless it was absolutely necessary?
Today an update on the Miami-Dade apparent absentee vote fraud from Brad Friedman: Partial Answers Emerge in FL’s Fraudulent Absentee Ballot Request Cyberhack Mysteries (Prosecutor: ‘Absentee voting is the source of all voter fraud’…) <read>
As we detailed at that time, some 2,500 absentee ballots were fraudulently requested online for three different 2012 primary elections in Miami-Dade, FL. One race involved requests for Democratic absentee ballots in a U.S. House primary, the other two involved requests for Republican ballots in two different Florida State House primary races. All of the fraudulent “phantom” ballot requests are said to have been flagged as such at the Supervisor of Election’s office and, therefore, never fulfilled.
Late last year, a grand jury and federal prosecutors [PDF] were unable to identify the person or persons behind the failed attempts, as well as why they were actually made, since the ballots, had the fraudulent requests not been flagged and prevented, were set to go to the actual addresses of real voters whose online identities had been fraudulently used to make the requests online.
One of the reasons that prosecutors were originally unable to identify those behind the attempted July 2012 cyberhack was because the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used for most of the requests were masked by proxy IP addresses from overseas. It was not until excellent investigative reporting from The Miami-Herald discovered that a number of the requests came from IP addresses located in the Miami-Dade area. For reasons currently chalked up to administrative confusion, the Elections Division never gave those Miami area IP addresses to the grand jury.
Armed with the new information offered by the Miami-Dade IP addresses, it now appears that prosecutors are closing in on suspects believed to be behind at least one of those sets of cyberhacks — the ones involving the Democratic U.S. House primary. Over the weekend the investigation led to the resignation of the Chief of Staff of the Democratic Congressman who eventually won the primary in question, as well as last November’s general election…
The Congressman says his Chief of Staff took responsibility for the plot after the homes of two other staffers — Communications Director Giancarlo Sopo and Campaign Manager John Estes — were raided by the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office in search of computers and other electronic devices thought to have been used in the phantom ballot requests. None of the three men, Chief of Staff Garcia, Sopo or Estes, have offered public comment yet.
Miami Herald reports that “466 of 472 phantom requests in Congressional District 26 targeted Democrats. In House District 103, 864 of 871 requests targeted Republicans, as did 1,184 of 1,191 requests in House District 112.”…
So, it is Democrats for sure, but also likely Republicans. And what about the possible insider collusion or coverup by the elections office?
The “winning” Candidate provides about as lame an excuse or questionable explanation as could possibly be imagined:
At a press conference on Saturday, an “angry” Rep. Garcia described the plot as “ill-conceived”, but added: “I think it was a well-intentioned attempt to maximize voter turnout.”
Of course, many will likely claim despite the evidence that “Miami-Dade is so far away noting like this would happen in New England and especially here in the Constitution State, maybe just in places like Florida and California.
