Reply #11: Brad BLog: E-VOTING 2006: The Approaching Train Wreck [View All]

[FogerRox]

I got the 1st vote in, Autorank, on the way to the greatest page buddy.




I think this is one of Johns best pieces.

By John Gideon.

excerpts:

In Texas there is at least one candidate who has stepped forward and has challenged the election because of anomalies in vote counts and known voting machine failures. One county's machines counted some votes up to 6 times which resulted in approximately 100,000 more votes being counted than were cast. Though the vendor, Hart Intercivic, initially blamed the problem on human error, they finally had to admit that it was a programming error and not poll workers or voters who had erred.

The vendor, ES&S, announced that their memory card contractor had made mistakes on some cards and they would be replaced. Memory cards for electronic voting machines store vote tabulations amongst other things.

Apparently ES&S does not consider 'Quality Control' to be a worthwhile corporate value because they never bothered to check those cards.

Why is this happening? It is very apparent that some of the voting machine vendors over-extended their ability to meet their contracts for machines and for ancillary services like paper ballot printing. These companies saw an opportunity to make a lot of money at the expense of the tax payers and they saw a deadline of 1 January 2006 that fit right in with their plans to get as much money as possible this year. The vendors are raking in the money through deceptive practices and shoddy workmanship.

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 should have been changed to extend the dead-line for another year. Many of us argued for this but our arguments fell on deaf ears. Now our local elections officials are being held-up by vendors who know they have them over a barrel and that the counties must do something right now or face penalties from the Department of Justice..

John is right, there is a train wreck coming. Hear the whistle blowing?