What public official is charge of the provisional ballots? Is it a Republican? A Wynnite? How could the ballots be tampered with between now and Monday and how could it be pre-empted?

I'm tired of always learning about questionable and corrupted elections after the fact.

Do you have a link to show that your version of events happened? That Wynn and his followeres tampered with the ballots? Your Post article doesn't show it.

Honestly, this gets old. Every election, whenver a favored candidate here loses, the same old people scream "Diebold" and "BBV". And frankly it weakens the cause of election reform. I hate to break it to you, but not every candidate favored here is favored by regular voters. Sometimes, as hard as it is for you to accept, the voters do pick someone else in close elections. I think that you just can't accept the fact that more people voted for Wynn than Edwards.

When Francise Busby lost the same people came out here and other blogs to scream "Diebold" and "BBV". This, in spite of the fact that the 50th district is still very heavily Republican and that Bilbray was probably going to win anyway.

That being said I agree that the conduct of the election should be investigated. If ballots were mishandled those individuals should be disciplined, up to and including termination from their jobs at the board of elections. But screaming "fraud" before you can even prove it weakens your case strongly.

I honestly don't think that what happened in Maryland was some "massive conpsiracy" pushed by Ehrich and the GOP. For frankly, if they did want to rig the elections, why didn't they make it so that William Donald Schaffer would win his primary? Why did they let Peter Franchot win the Controller's primary? Why did they let Doug Gansler win the AG primery? Why was MFume not allowed to win, as pols have shown him behind Steele?

To me it seems like more of a matter of "massive incompetetence" instead of a "massive conspiracy". If there is proof of intentional fraud then Wynn et al should be investigated and suffer whatever legal remedies are available.

But claiming that Edwards was robbed is still very premature at this point. And frankly I think it is more of the fact that you can't accept that she probably, in all honesty, did lose.

And this is from someone who was supportive of her  too. I didn't like Wynn's votes on the Bankruptcy Bill. I agree that he needed to be replaced.

I like Edwards and hope that she runs in 2008. Or that maybe she runs for something else in future cycles. For her I think it would be better for her to focus on the future than trying to fight an outcome that she (most likely) isn't going to be able to reverse.

I have one story to share. In 1994 Ellen Sauerbrey (R) lost a very close race for Governor in MD. She  lost by 5,000 votes to Parris Glendening (D). For weeks afterward she screamed "fraud". She filed lawsuit after lawsuit, claiming that dead people voted. Long story short she finally relented right before Glendening was to be inaugurated.

However, as a result of that whole post-election challenge, she became known as "Ellen Sourgrapes". Four years later she ran against Glendening again. Glendening was extremely unpopular--a poll or two pegged him to be the most unpopular governor in the country. He was in the same position as Grey Davis was before the recall.

But MD hated Sauerbrey more. What was supposed to be a close election ended up being a 56-44% victory for Glendening. People hated Sauerbey and thought of her as a sore loser.

That is something Edwards should remember and learn from.

Are you saying that at the precincts in question there were NO vote totals printed out and turned in as the official results? That's how the DREs work, they capture the totals on a magnetic cartridge or disk or card but they also print out a report of the vote totals. I don't know the MD law, but in Pennsylvania those totals must be posted on the door of the polling place when the poll is closed for public inspection the next day.

Just because the memory cards were still in the machines doesn't mean a printout wasn't made and turned in. Again I don't know how MD works, but in Philadelphia a policeman shows up and collects both the official results printout and the cartridge. The voting machines are just closed up and left at the poll, they don't get picked up until the next day.

IMO instead of jumping to conclusions a much better service would be to explain how a poll actually operates in MD and what the requirements are for turning in and publically posting results.

Understand working a poll is a very long day from 6:30AM to closing time then getting the results,
getting all the materials together that go to the election board in the right packages and then cleaning up the poll. I could see it being entirely possible on a day when some polls had problems and had to stay open longer that the pollworkers just got tired, did the minimum and went home.

This is not a stolen election, it is ridiculous to even imply that it wss.

It looks like Wynn's operatives know how to use the internet!

If the DCCC and thier rethuglican lite director had the best interest of the Democratic party in mind he would throw the full support of the DCCC behind Edwards and finance her legal challenge, supply legal and logistical support, and do anything possible to show that the Democratic party supports open and honest elections.

This would lay a groundwork for the challengeing the irregularities we all know are coming and put the party on the side of the angels in this debate. Being able to cite this to show it is not just partisan races where the D's care about honest elections would be a valuable example to cite in Nov. and Dec.

But alas I fear that Emmanuel probably prefers wynn to Edwards after all wynn is more his kind of deal cutting nest feathering politician that doesn't let principles get in his way just like emmanuel and all to many of his recruits.

If hiring and shilling for a carpetbagger in Ill. 06 while financeing his sock puppets torpedoing of a local democrat with DCCC money is the way emmanuel thinks that the D's should run elections then obviously Wynn is his man.

Now he can call duckworth and give her Wynn as a role model. And being the good obendient marionette she will probably move just as her string puller commands.

This would be a good time for Dean to come out and show what his vision of the Democratic party is by throwing the support of the DNC behind Edwards. I believe for legal challenges etc. the national party can, and in this case, should get involved.

Throw out ALL ballots that fell out of the chain of custody -- there are many precedents, including an election in Miami.

I've experienced it first hand -- the first time I voted was for George McGovern, in Tucson. ALL of the Presidential votes were thrown out, because there was a problem with how the electoral college electors were identified on the ballot.

But the Miami case is the best precedent I know of -- a judge overturned election results because of massive fraud, and these few precincts are small potatoes in comparison.

>>"it get's old<<

The post says there were procedures that weren't followed.  Were those precincts that brought their voting machine in the next day given permission/expected to be showing up late?  Why were the memory sticks not taken out at the end of the voting day (as the post indicates was SOP?).

When people trusted to ensure accurate results (precinct workers) fail to follow the procedures that are in place to ensure accurate results (timely removal of vote recording device; timely delivery of votes to HQ), SOMEBODY had better be shining the light on this fact and finding more competent and trustworthy people to do the job.

This is getting old.  I agree but for different reasons.  

Bette,

If you can be taught how to rig a Diebold voting machine in 10 minutes or less, how can you be so certain that someone else hasn't taken the same online class?

I've never seen these type of accusations on MyDD. And that's something I've always appreciated about the website. On other left leaning blogs any close loss it treated as certain theft. I can just imagine the claims if Lamont had lost by narrow margin to Lieberman. We'd still be reading about it, fraud in this district and theft in that one, even if it was lever machines. And it does get a bit old when Hackett's race then Busby and now Edwards are all treated as manipulation instead of accepted. Again, that's not true of MyDD but jiacinto posts on other sites as well, and has for years, and in this case I think he blanketed the situation too much instead of emphasizing the overall frustration, which I shared as soon as I heard there was a dispute in this race.

In November my greatest fear is we fail by narrow margin in the senate and house, then the liberal blogs identify the close defeats and cry fraud for two years. Anyone who thinks there isn't massive potential for exactly that hasn't handicapped the situation. You're going to have a tons of close races and obviously we'll lose many of them.

This confuses me about Diebold and this race. Did the Wynn people buy or rent the rights to tamper from the Republicans, in the primary only? I thought we had no control over the machines. No wonder we lose if we're stupid enough to fix the primary, then turn the memory cards and everything else back to the GOP in November.

Under the circumstances described in your piece, I, for one, would like to know who hired it.  And when.   And how it was paid for.  Then maybe one could interview the driver and crew to see what they have to say.  Who knows what might be learned?

"Rational" seems to provide the perspective/rationale of anti-Rahm Republicans from Illinois. So, tell it to Sharon Angle-R in NV-02.
Your analogy and the Duckworth bashing doesn't work here.

Explaining corruption by relegating it to a series of unrelated and unexplainable coincidences is the harbor of theives.

Here's the latest.  The absentee ballots from Montgomery County were counted yesterday, and Wynn's lead was narrowed to 2800 votes.  Most of these ballots were not in the 4th.  I'm not sure if that's true about the provisionals, which are the key.

OK, so about +110 based on the absentees. No surprise that most of these ballots were not in the 4th -- electronic turnout in the 4th is consistent w/ 2004/2002 primaries, as I mentioned here.

Hooray for her if she enjoyed particularly robust turnout in Montgomery. I see that the estimate on provisionals has now been increased from 12K in the Post two days ago to 16K-18K. Interesting that turnout for Montgomery keeps getting ramped up. This is the only path by which she could take the advantage. If it's only 12K, she definitely can't win.

The polls closed on Tuesday evening, but voting machines in anywhere between two to eight precincts (probably controlled by Wynn's allies) were not brought in to the Maryland Board of Elections until the next day.

Well, you are not listing the precincts, but a few comments. I was a precinct rover for multiple MD legislative districts -- one in Montgomery and three in Prince George's. Primarily MD-04 and MD-05 territory.

I was at a precinct close in MD-05/PG. The results could not be electronically uploaded to Upper Marlboro. This is the key information you didn't mention. So, poll workers were instructed to deliver to Upper Marlboro directly.

Problem -- and I am dead certain this happened at least at one precinct -- the location info given for results delivery was incorrect. The results were undeliverable.

On Wednesday at 5pm, observers saw a white moving truck pull up and deliver voting machines from several precincts in Wynn-favoring Prince George's county, one of which the Edwards campaign heavily canvassed.

OK, the campaign I worked for didn't win every precinct we canvassed heavily. We even did poorly in some. Habits are sometimes hard to break.

Though no one can yet prove that Wynn's people tampered with the machines, the margin on those machines went for Wynn by around 65-35, which is out of line with the rest of the county.  The rest of the county had it at 57 or so for Wynn.

This is just sad. The 57 represents an average. By your logic, PG precincts in which Edwards outperformed are also suspect.

In other words, what it looks like is that Wynn or Wynn's allies held the ballot boxes they controlled back until they knew the margin Wynn needed to win on Monday, and that's when they probably did their tampering.

Matt, I couldn't defend you in a lawsuit. And I don't even like Wynn.

The Washington Times provides more info:

Edwards campaign officials said they will be filing an injunction that asks a court to take possession of voting machines from the Chillum area that were delivered to the election board Wednesday at about 5 p.m.

Jonathan Shurberg, a lawyer for Mrs. Edwards, said the machines still had memory cards inside of them and that nobody could account for their whereabouts between Tuesday and Wednesday. The votes from those machines increased Mr. Wynn's margin of victory substantially, Mr. Shurberg said.

and I am confused by all of this.  I do think it is possible that Wynn -- not the GOP -- would try to change the vote.  He is an old time, Daley style pol (and remember Daley did this for years).  

But, what I haven't heard is how this would happen with the memory cards.  How would it work? Would Wynn's people boot up the votes and change them?  Would they replace them?

I voted in Montgomery and I'd imagine this wouldn't be easy to pull off.  I know that Diebold just uses Access but you're talking about altering thousands of individual memory cards in a way that wouldn't show up.  

So, before we assume that because there was a white truck, there must be fraud, can someone outline how the fraud could happen given this system?  I think it could have happened but I think it is equally likely that the election workers opted for PIzza and donuts the next morning (instead of bringing the votes over).

"What's going on there is really bad, and it's a preview of what's coming in November considering that the Republicans have basically hired a criminal named Terry Nelson to head up the NRCC opposition 'research' department.  So if you don't really know how to approach a situation like this, you should try to learn by watching it during the Edwards-Wynn dry run."

(Okay, so here Terry Nelson, who is a criminal, is linked in to the outcome of the Edwards-Wynn race.  So in this way the stage is set for what is to follow.  At this point any sentient reader is obviously thinking that what follows will be some type of conspiracy with GOP involvement.)

"Here's the latest.  The absentee ballots from Montgomery County were counted yesterday, and Wynn's lead was narrowed to 2800 votes.  Most of these ballots were not in the 4th.  I'm not sure if that's true about the provisionals, which are the key."

(Yes, the provisionals are the key.  Typically those are the last to be counted, and the counting of them is done at election headquarters.  If by saying that the absentee ballots were not in the fourth district and thus should not be counted, there will be no way to slip this past election central.  They make the final determination on absentee ballots.  Poll workers may add absentees in the initial counts, but these counts are frequently adjusted by legal reviewers at election central.)

"The polls closed on Tuesday evening, but voting machines in anywhere between two to eight precincts (probably controlled by Wynn's allies) were not brought in to the Maryland Board of Elections until the next day."

(Here it is said, "Probably controlled by Wynn's allies."  That's not "reporting," as was  claimed.  Its opinion, but more so its speculation that sheds less light on the facts and more on what the writer is thinking in terms of what happened here.)

"On Wednesday at 5pm, observers saw a white moving truck pull up and deliver voting machines from several precincts in Wynn-favoring Prince George's county, one of which the Edwards campaign heavily canvassed."

(This "white truck" could have been the vehicle that was agreed upon by the judges at the polling places used to return the ballots to election central, and nothing more.   Here in Illinois, the key judge is responsible for making sure the ballots get back to the collection points.  For the last two elections, that has been me.   I have a choice - I can transport the ballots and equipment in my own vehicle, or, I can contact election central and have them picked up.  IN some cases election judges may not have a vehicle, and it is not unusual for election central to authorize a vehicle to pick up equipment and ballots for several precincts.)

"Though memory cards were supposed to be taken out immediately after voting closed, these machines had their memory cards still in them.  Though no one can yet prove that Wynn's people tampered with the machines, the margin on those machines went for Wynn by around 65-35, which is out of line with the rest of the county.  The rest of the county had it at 57 or so for Wynn."

(Again here, even though he says, "Though no one can yet prove that Wynn's people tampered with the machines, [emphasis is mine] he uses the word yet as if he knows that it will be proven most likely that there was tampering.  Now to the memory cards.

If these are the same machines I worked with, before the memory cards are removed, results are transmitted electronically to election central from the machine itself.  It has a modem and transfers the counts.  This can only be done once.  The memory card is removed after that and is sent to election central with the ballots.  It's used, not to count, but to verify what has already been sent.  The only way the count can be manipulated with these types of machines is by changing the count through the machine itself.  The cheater would have to somehow take out unused ballots and run them through the machine.  With 3 - 4 poll workers at each polling station, and poll watchers and DA investigators coming by every now and then, it would be awfully hard to do this.  Even if they did, they'd have to account for the used ballots.  So even if the memory cards were left in the machines, election central already had the counts!  Again, the memory card is only used to verify the counts election central has already tallied.

This much I can tell you: the process by which the polls are closed, e.g. the machines are shut down and the tapes of the counts are made and sent to election central, can be confusing.  Based on what happened in this election, in terms of the planning of it, it sounds like a lot of the volunteers were in it for the money.  These are not necessarily people who are used to following written instructions and are less experienced with use of computers and automation.  I have heard stories where polls were closed, and the poll workers just up and left; left all the equipment, ballots, tapes; the whole lock, stock and barrel there.  Memory cards were left in the machines.  Election central had to send out a truck to get them.  When this has occurred, they send out a truck(!) and this truck goes to several precincts/districts and picks this stuff.   Election boards typically do not own any vehicles, since they don't use them every day and there is no justification for them owning any.  Trucks like this are either rented or borrowed from other departments.  So by emphasizing this "white truck" to highlight the mystery of it, they are not taking into account this fact I have just described.   You are not likely to see trucks that say "Board of Elections" on them.  The point here is that machines arriving at election central with memory cards in them, is hardly evidence of tampering.  That they arrived the next day is no evidence of fraud either, since the workers at election central are very busy and may not be able to go out and get equipment and ballots that are left by errant workers until the next day.  But it doesn't matter because again, the counts have already been received!)

"The impact of the numbers appears to be about 1000 votes.  Prior to these votes coming in, Wynn had a lead of less than 2000 votes, with 13,000 Montgomery County provisional ballots to be counted on Monday.  Donna won that county by a substantial margin, which means she'll probably pick up anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand votes on Monday when those votes are counted."

(So why not wait until then to find out?  Why inject all this unnecessary speculation in the story?)

"In other words, what it looks like is that Wynn or Wynn's allies held the ballot boxes they controlled back until they knew the margin Wynn needed to win on Monday, and that's when they probably did their tampering.  We'll see what happens on Monday, when the provisionals are counted."

(Well here fraud is being claimed.  The writer is outright accusing "Wynn or Wynn's allies" of holding back the ballot boxes and that's when they did their fraud.  He is doing exactly what he said he didn't do.)  

"Donna Edwards should probably be the next Congressperson from the fourth.  She may yet be seated in Congress next session, though I wouldn't bet my life on it."

(At this point who the next Congressperson from the fourth district will be determined by the vote count.   It's almost like the writer is saying she "should" be, because that's who he wants.   I want her to win too, but if she lost fair and square, there's no point in manufacturing conspiracies out of thin air.  It makes us look and look like sore losers.)

I've worked every election here in Illinois since the 2002 mid term elections, and every local citywide race.  The writer claims he is doing "reporting," but if that is the case there are a lot of claims in his report that leave the reader open to assume that there is the implication of some kind of conspiracy.

I've worked every election in Cook County, IL since 2002, and I can tell you that the memory cards being in those machines were not evidence of anything underhanded, except maybe laziness or an inability to follow instructions, or the inability of the elections board to get to te equipment until then.  But it doesn't matter anyway, becuase the results are transmitted electronically from these machines to election central.  The memory cards are just used to verofy what was already transmitted.  Then you have the tapes with the results on them.

The "white truck" means nothing either.  That could have been the truck used by election central to pick up the equipment.  If there is evidence that Wynn or his people manipulated the election, he should be held to account.  Edwards not winning is not the basis for making such assumptions, however.  As popular as Edwards was, she was running an insurgent campaign against an entrenched incumbent who had more cash on hand than she did.  Its not therefore unlikely and somehow indicative of extroadinary circumstances that can only be explained away by fraud on the part of Wynn or his people, as was claimed.  

Donna Edwards should not sue. As of now she has lost. If a recount finds that she has won then she won't need to sue. If she sues she will never be elected in that district as candidates who sue are routinely viewed as sore losers and people who can't accept that they didn't get what they wanted. I am not an Al Wynn supporter nor do I even know him and I know Donna Edwards.

She should let the system work out the end result and if she wins then more power to her. If she loses then she should assess where she can improve and get back out there and try again!

You are giving her terrible advice.