BlackBox Voting answers STC plea for a spotlight on the Webb County Sheriff's election

Bev Harris has sent a public records request for auditable materials from the Webb County Democratic primary runoff election. Apparently, the BlackBox forum has been following the story since STC posted about the discrepancy between the memory file for the voting place (ES&S's PEB) and the flash card files for the individual machines.

There were other irregularities noted in this runoff, but two stand out. The discrepancy noted above found during the second recount and the first recount, itself, where 170 votes flipped.

Looking at the reported information, the first recount stinks. How do you explain a 170 vote flip? The Cuellar team's contention makes the most sense given the facts as reported: One individual called out vote totals that he made up to give Cuellar's opponent, Rick Flores, the win. This theory is supported by poll watcher claims that they were not allowed to see the actual totals and the different outcome from the second recount which closely matched the election night result.

The memory file discrepancy didn't favor one candidate over the other. One candidate, Flores, gained a vote from the flash cards. The election officials can tell from the sign-in sheets whether the flash cards or the PEB has the correct voter total. So, how did the PEB get corrupted? The recent California audit of voting machines, showed that the PEB can easily be corrupted with a magnet and a Palm Pilot.

If the vote was hacked, why do such a poor job of it? I would look to flaws in the ES&S system with possible flaws in the election procedures. Maybe an election worker screwed up and the ES&S system responded poorly. Or, maybe the PEB was flawed to begin with and not caught by the setup team. Or, maybe the PEB went bad during the election. Either way, ES&S looks bad.

I can hardly wait to find out what actually happened.