Oops, make that Republican-controlled corporations, which naturally lead to Republican-controlled elections.
Cheers.
Posted by James K. Sayre at January 29, 2008 03:10 PMThis software managed to erase my initial long comment when I added a little change...
Here is the original
Bush didn't say a word about having Republican-controlled private companies counting our votes in private.
Here are some other folks words:
From the Daytona Beach, Florida News Journal
www.newsjournalonline.com
1 27 08
Touch and hope no way to vote
By MARIE COCCO
Washington Post columnist 28 Jan 2008
Election Day began with voting machines refusing to
start up. It ended with them refusing to shut down.
"It was a very stressful day," says Sandy Martin,
director of registration and elections in Horry
County, S.C.
She still doesn't know the precise reasons her
county's computerized, touch-screen machines balked at
starting up Jan. 19 as the polls opened for the
state's Republican primary. Some voters who showed up
early complained they were turned away from polling
places, and about 6,000 votes wound up being cast on
paper -- some on printed ballots, others on any piece
of paper a poll worker could find. The leading theory
for the starting-up problem is that election workers
who prepared the equipment failed to run a final
procedure meant to set the computers' vote counters to
zero.
Horry County has earned itself a minor footnote to
presidential electoral history. It is another tale of
voting-machine failure that causes confusion and
anger, marring what should be a gratifying civic
exercise in which every eligible voter is allowed to
cast a ballot -- and is assured that every ballot is
properly counted. After the debacle of the 2000
presidential election in Florida, we were supposed to
end all this. We haven't.
As the presidential candidates careen around the
country in preparation for primaries in nearly
two-dozen states Feb. 5, there is no reason to believe
balloting will go smoothly and plenty of reason to
anticipate that it won't. According to an unpublished
analysis by Common Cause, 17 states that are still to
hold their presidential primaries are at "high risk"
of experiencing voting errors because of miscounted or
undercounted votes.
The New York Times has estimated that in November's
general election, a third of voters will cast ballots
for president using touch-screen machines that provide
no paper record of the vote that could later be used
in a recount.
This touch-and-hope method of voting persists despite
chronic difficulties and disputes over the
touch-screen machines' performance. Complaints have
mounted that the computers have flipped a choice from
one candidate to another, even as the voter watches.
The systems often crash or freeze, and require
rebooting that can leave a voter wondering whether his
or her choice was recorded or wiped out.
Florida is replacing touch-screen machines but roughly
half the state's voters won't have them in time for
Tuesday's primary, according to Common Cause. The
switch is expected to be completed before November.
This is what years of partisan bickering, followed
more recently by inexplicable congressional dithering,
have brought us. In the absence of federal action,
governors, state legislatures and elections officials
are converting these systems to those in which some
sort of paper record is produced. Congress could speed
the changeover dramatically by approving pending
legislation to help states finance the transition.
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Comment on this article
Displaying #1 to #4 of 4 comments from other readers:
#1 L C - New Smyrna Beach (beachside) - 1/28/2008
5:59:00 AM
Here we go again, time to get royally screwed again.
Why don't we just hand over the presidency to who ever
wants it.
DON'T LET SOFTWARE DO THE VOTING - CA - 1/28/2008
12:21:00 PM
I am a computer programmer. I consult for banks. I
would like to dispel the foolish notion that optical
scan machines and touch screen machines are as secure
as ATMs. This is apples and oranges. Hundreds of
corporate computer technicians guard banking software
and data at all times: that's 24/7 real time. Custom
layers of security software are installed to prevent
hacking and substitutions of data. Strict
authentication and authorization security protocols,
encryption, and a thorough auditing trail are all used
in banking software. Critical banking hardware is
protected from unauthorized intervention by a constant
signed chain of custody as well as background
investigations. None of this exists for e-voting
machines. It costs banks tens of millions of dollars
for that kind of round the clock security. Since a
state can't mimic banking security, it can't secure a
software voting system. It's as simple as that. IT IS
THE SOFTWARE, NOT THE PEOPLE, DOING THE VOTING when
using a software voting system, be it touch screen
voting machines or optical scan voting machines. It is
the programmer that decides which candidate gets your
vote. You can touch the screen for your candidate or
fill in a bubble for your candidate, but the software
running the voting machine can give the vote to
another candidate, and still print out your
candidate's name for the paper trail (if there is
one). The next President will be making the decisions
regarding Iraq and Iran which will profoundly affect
all American families, our soldiers, our economy, and
world opinion. Are you willing to trust the decision
of who is to be the next President to a few
programmers? Essentially that is what is happening
since THE SOFTWARE IS KEPT SECRET, MORE THAN 20 STATES
CURRENTLY DO NOT MANDATE ANY PAPER TRAIL, MOST STATES
PROHIBIT A HAND RECOUNT BY ELECTION OFFICIALS, and in
many states the software on the memory card (easy to
remove like a digital camera) that runs a optical scan
machine does not have to be preserved in the exact
condition used during election day for a contested
election, and is not examined in state certification
tests. The ease with which an election can be rigged
via a delibrately written computer program that
corrupts the vote counts, or by having memory cards
installed with preloaded votes (yet the programmer can
still fool the pre-election test and make sure the
vote count starts at zero for all candidates), or by
having hundreds of "missing" memory cards (search to
read, Papering Over OptiScam Problems, by Rady Ananda,
which was posted on the internet Jan 6, 2008), or by
means of a hack that can leave no trace, is shocking
and totally unacceptable. Regarding Florida and CA
studies of e-voting machines, search to read article,
Florida Report Spurs Growing Distrust of E-Voting
Machines, from TechNewsWorld, posted Aug 1, 2007, by
Erika Morphy. In this article, law experts recommend a
count of paper ballots to verify e-voting machines --
optical scan or otherwise. Since our soldiers lives
are at stake for this next election, please do them
the courtesy of researching how these machines can be
hacked by visiting www.blackboxvoting.org if you are
not convinced. Can we trust a hand recount to verify
the votes? In New Hampshire, secure protocols for the
chain of custody of paper ballots is sorely lacking.
Visit www.blackboxvoting.org to read eyewitness
accounts, view video clips, and view photos of the New
Hampshire recount. I'll let you be the judge. THE
SOLUTION? How about this inexpensive suggestion that
will not involve spending millions of dollars for an
insecure software voting system? Assuming the state
will have a secure chain of custody for the paper
ballots with public bipartisan oversight, this
suggestion is the best solution. Consider this comment
by a Canadian, called klikklak, addressing the article
"Mistrust of voting machines on the rise" in the
Houston Chronicle, by Alan Bernstein, published Jan 21
2008: "I find it absolutely unbelievable that people
would expect that a computer game will give real,
truthful results for an election. We use paper
ballots, marked with a pencil, and counted by hand by
volunteers. Results are known in a couple of hours. NO
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RESULTS. This is in Canada. The
argument about America being 10 times larger being a
problem. Well, India is 3 times larger than the US,
and uses the paper system with the same results. No
European countries use these voting machines. What are
Americans thinking????"
#3 ScottDeland - Deland - 1/28/2008 3:17:00 PM
I am not sure what is wrong with paper fill in the
bubble system Volusia county has been user for years?
I say stick with what we know.
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#4 Lani Massey Brown - Bradenton, FL - 1/29/2008
1:03:00 PM
Reply to #2 DON'T LET SOFTWARE DO THE VOTING: Well
said. Of course, don't we have to admit we have a
problem before we can fix it? Florida's Secretary of
State, Kurt Browning's already in spin-mode. He's
quoted as saying 99% of the problems with touch screen
voting machines** can be traced back to people (you
and me) or pollworkers. Nothing wrong there, right?
Nothing except pollworkers are Browning's team, his
watch. If Browning's systems are too complex, if his
procedures aren't clear, if his pollworkers aren't
trained, that's not a people problem. It's Browning's
system, Browning's problem. As for the voting
machines, for the moment forget Florida still doesn't
know who won in 2006 Congressional District-13, where
18,000+ votes were lost in Sarasota (12.92%). Were the
voting machines too complex to be used successfully?
Was voter training required? Or did the machines
malfunction? It's still Browning's system, his
problem. If the voting machines don't work for the
voters, they don't work. Period. Lani Massey Brown, "A
Margin of Error: Ballots of Straw," featured on
www.VotersUnite.org ** Florida Secretary of State Kurt
Browning's statement was quoted on NPR's Morning
Edition, Jan. 29, 2008.
Jim:
You are absolutely correct that HAVA was a law passed in order to remove the electorate from the leader selection process. What is worse, is that the Dems have had plenty of time to amend that bill to correct this problem but have remained silent.
Conclusion? Vote fraud has been institutionalized by both political parties. Isn't it plain enough for all to see?
Posted by brisa at January 29, 2008 06:51 PMI have to agree that there can be no doubt that collusion on the part of the Democrat establishment is pellucidly clear. The 9.4 Trillion dollar question is, WHY?
It has now been more than SIX YEARS since the obvious frauds, errors and lies of election officials across the nation have been obvious, for anyone who doesn't depend on wholly-owned corporate infotainment for their news. Conyers and many others, have promised investigations and corrections. Rush Holt has gamely produced voter sunshine bills annually and the result: bupkus!
Since the voting machine companies are demonstrably, HIGHLY Republican-owned and filled with, indicted for computer fraud, "programers", what possible reason could the Democrat leadership have to continue sweeping this under the rug. I think we should all be looking to Lukery's excellent series on Sibel Edmonds. If you follow along, you will discover that there are almost as many Democrats as Republicans involved in the decades long corruption.
Was Ralph Nader more right than we knew? Well, he's still an egotist, but I'm beginning to feel more sympathy than I used to. All of this is especially tragic because we ARE facing the most critical struggle of the Twenty-First century. If we screw up Climate Change, the venal corruption we see all around us will assume biblically tragic proportions.
Barack Obama is certainly right about the need for sweeping change. I just wish I felt more comfortable that he was either capable of it or completely sincere in his claims.
Posted by DeminNewJ at January 30, 2008 03:37 AM"Bush's incompetence allowed Osama bin Laden to get away, when he could have been caught or killed, at the battle of Tora Bora."
NO, our Crawford Caligua needed a free Osama to scare the American people so Bush could seize more and more power
Posted by Gay Veteran at January 30, 2008 09:58 AM