Even More voting app, um, “goodness”
I’ve heard from an elected official I know and trust. He and his wife attended this weekend’s debacle in Greensboro. Both were delegates from their county. His wife, not long before the vote for chairman, left the floor to use the restroom.
As it got close to time to vote, my official friend called his wife and warned her to hurry back. She tried, but convention officials locked the doors to the convention floor — keeping, according to my source’s reports, about two dozen delegates from returning to the floor.
Despite protests from the delegates attempting to return and vote, the convention reps would not
budge. According to my elected official source, the locked-out delegates were even told that people off the convention floor cannot vote.
We NOW know that was 100 percent FALSE.
The folks at We The People have also added some interesting observations about this weekend’s vote:
[…] The Establishment was hell-bent on using their Voting App, and proponents of the App told those who wanted to use/count paper ballots to “get over your fear of electronics”. It would take hours to hand count, they said, if we voted on paper ballots. However, one race with two candidates (the French ballot) takes about 1-2 seconds per ballot to count (tested in Missouri and in many other states now planning to hand count ballots in public elections), so Wake Co’s ballots cast for NCGOP Chair at the State Convention could have been counted by a team of two people with oversight on the floor in about 6 minutes, plus the time for each individual to mark their ballots, plus the time to tally the votes and walk those tallies to the front. All told, Wake County, the largest county, could have been finished hand counting paper ballots in 15 minutes, tops […]
The delegate who offered the amendment to the amendment to use paper ballots was Angela Hawkins, current member of the Wake County Board of Elections. Ms. Hawkins’ amendment was to take the paper ballots to be counted at a central location, rather than by the counties on the floor. She’s the person who said it took the Wake Co GOP 5 hours to hand count their paper ballots for the leadership positions at the Wake GOP.
That’s just so y’all have a little info on the Voting App and the amendment to the amendment to hand count. Moving on…
The number of delegates on the floor, counted by each county, has not yet been revealed. Had paper ballots been used, we would already know this information.
There could have been 8,951 delegates at the NCGOP State Convention. But only 1,863 delegates registered to attend, which is about 21%.
The number of delegates who registered and checked in at the State Convention in Greensboro has not yet been revealed.
Of the 1,863 delegates who registered, only 1,644 actually voted (according to the Voting App). So, either 219 delegates paid but didn’t show up to the State Convention at all, or they did show up and abstained from voting.[…]
Two counties had more votes than registered delegates. Also, only one delegate from Granville County voted for Kane, but the Voting App registered three votes for this county, split between Whatley and Kane. It’s unknown how many other counties had discrepancies such as this without canvassing every delegate who was on the convention floor on Saturday.[…]
Delegates left the convention floor without voting at all because the Voting App was not functioning. Now if their pen wasn’t working to mark a ballot, we guess that could have been resolved immediately. (This is what’s known as Voter Suppression.) The 219 undervotes, or lost votes, are one source of major concern.[…]
WTP also posted images of the state party’s spreadsheets for the chairman vote.
A Wake County blogger posted his observations on the whole fiasco:
Back in early spring when I was running for a leadership position in Wake County GOP, I discovered that the party was planning on using an electronic voting system designed by CardinalGPS, a shadowy political consulting firm founded by Johnny Shull and based in Wake County. I was concerned for several reasons:
- There is no audit trail with electronic voting.
- Unlike with paper ballots, it is very easy to commit election fraud; just tinker with the code. We have to take the word of whoever is running the software that everything is fine.
- The managing director of CardinalGPS is Amy Mulligan, and her mother Karyn Mulligan was running for the Vice-Chair position in the election (some have reported that Amy Mulligan now owns CardinalGPS). Talk about a conflict of interest!
- Given these points, I was worried that if the slate opposite Mulligan’s lost, many party members might believe the election was stolen.
As a candidate, I had access to county delegate emails, so I mounted a public campaign for paper ballots by emailing everyone and encouraging them to email the Chair and Vice-Chair of the county party. Wake GOP eventually backed down and used paper ballots at their convention last March. Everyone who lost (including yours truly) accepted the results, because we used paper ballots.
I thought about pushing the state GOP to use paper voting, but due to conflicts I could not attend the convention. Oh well, I thought, I’ll just sit back and enjoy the chaos from afar. But I must admit, I never dreamed it would be this bad! According to reports:
- The CardinalGPS voting app kept crashing, over and over again. It would kick people out in the midst of voting.
- From a colleague who is a tech expert: “My guess is TCP/IP software stack crashed with so many sessions at once. That could mean that some votes got counted twice some didn’t get counted. That is exactly what some counties reported.”
- You read that correctly: apparently there were multiple counties that had more electronic votes cast than delegates! That right there is enough to invalidate the election.
- Because of the CardinalGPS snafu they ran out of time and never elected a Vice-Chair![…]Why did NC GOP pay CardinalGPS to develop an electronic voting app when trusted third-party solutions, such as Election Buddy, already exist?
I’ve heard reports that the party paid $300k for the app. And this is not a one-time fee – the app and server software need to be constantly updated for security. This seems like a tremendous waste of money, even if the app had functioned properly.
Why did they choose CardinalGPS, a political consulting firm whose revenue stream depends on staying in the good graces of NC GOP, instead of a neutral tech firm?
CardinalGPS focuses on North Carolina elections; it’s how they make their money. If NC GOP told candidates “Don’t use Cardinal,” the business would disappear overnight. CardinalGPS doesn’t have the tech background to develop a secure and stable voting app, as evidenced by the chaos at the convention. So why choose them over countless more qualified tech firms?
It’s difficult not to conclude that NC GOP wanted an app that they could completely control. And they wanted a software vendor that would do ANYTHING they requested (and keep their mouth shut about it), such as designing the software to allow the state leadership to rig party elections.
In a way I’m glad this happened because it shows that electronic voting is a terrible, terrible idea. And I’m certain we’ll be able to use paper ballots in the next leadership election. If you’re an NC Patriot and reading this, please reach out to me. It’s never too soon to get organized for the next convention.
What surprises me is the silence of the Wake County GOP leadership. We have the largest number of Republicans in the state, and a majority of our county delegation voted for Kane. You would think they would be calling for an investigation into the CardinalGPS fiasco.
Oh, that’s right, I forgot. Karyn Mulligan holds the number two position in Wake GOP leadership, and her daughter runs CardinalGPS.[…]
I’m still waiting on the vote count.
I have asked all Chairs.
I have asked the public.
A valid election should have vote totals.
I have seen none offered from NCGOP.
It is Tuesday evening 4 days post Convention. I’ve seen nothing official.
Did I miss a smoke signal?
Legitimate elections have a vote total.
Seems we may have neither.
I think I can help with some of this:
“””But only 1,863 delegates registered to attend”””
“ The number of delegates who registered and checked in at the State Convention in Greensboro has not yet been revealed.”
The 1644 voting number is actually a high % of the 1863. It is not uncommon for some people 12-17% to attend part but not all of the convention
However I am not sure where the 1863 number comes from. I only attended Friday
But each session. (Friday, Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon normally has a different credentialed number. If there is voting in each particular session, then there has be a credentials report.
However once you have checked In, you are in. So Friday afternoons report is small in number, Saturday morning a little bigger and Saturday afternoon. The biggest because each session adds new people but does not drop people who are not there
I don’t understand the issues with the voting and or/app
But a little history here. We added electronic voting in 2017. However in 17 and 18 we still used paper for chairman’s election. We did go
Fully electronic for 19. However our system was not over an app, and was not dependent on personal cell phones or wireless. We had a paid out of state vendor that conducted interactive voting for trade shows. Each delegate had their own individual remote “clicker” to vote that matched their badge bar code. It is quite expensive, but all candidate could access and audit the system In real time. I am sure they wanted to cut that cost down but the system did get very strong delegate reviews. It does allow for conducting more actual business. The first year we had electronic voting in 17, we passed updated rules , platform, and plan of organization with significant debate. The electronic voting can really add to the delegate experience. It is unfortunate that is not a positive experience for many.
That number should be the same 1863, because that is the “credentialed delegate” number, and you can only be credentialed by being qualified, paying, and showing up and checking in. ( that is how is is suppose to work)
Thanks Dallas,
I appreciate the insight over the innuendo.
Maybe you could get a job with Dominion, Dallas. You have the electronic voting snake oil sales patter down pat. What eats up floor time is not voting but all the extraneous and endless reports and also taking time out of the schedule for unnecessary “breakout sessions”.
Chairman’s election was 17
Let’s consider a related problem. In the past, Credentials reports only included delegates who had checked in. This year, they reported everyone who had preregistered, whether they ever showed up or not. Everyone preregistering got credentialed and could use that app to vote, once they were credentialled. This is a recipe for confusion at best and fraud at the worst.
One problem on Friday was that those on the floor were less than half of the number preregistered, so the convention could have been shut down any time on a quorum call.
We have two problems that cause conventions to run out of time, and that is devoting what should be business sessions to 1) excessive number of speakers, and 2) breakout sessions. It is not the roll call votes that cause the time problem but too many speakers and diverting time for the breakout sessions.
This is the fourth convention I have attended where an electronic voting system was used and people afterward raised questions about the integrity of the result. That also happened once with a standing vote for National Committeewoman but NEVER happened with the tried and true roll call of the counties after caucusing in the counties to cast votes. I have been attending these conventions since 1973, and the transparency and honesty of the roll call method has never led to questioning of the results of those elections. The NCGOP seems to be trying to out-Dominion questionable electronic voting methods when they ought to be sticking with methods that have worked well over the years.
I also remember trying to find out about the company providing the electronic voting system two years ago. The name of the company was provided then and I looked them up online only to find that their website did not provide any names of officers or directors or anyone else associated with the company or even where they were located. They could have been in China or Russia for all their website revealed.
Steve that is very interesting Info, about credentials
Thanks for sharing
I would argue that electronic voting is not itself and alone problem
Execution is always and issue that has to be watched. Also transparency. In 19, and I was leaving anyway without a dog in the fight on who won, we spend considerable time walking the candidates through the process. They could monitor the results in real time and had access to the back end parts