Voting System Results Still Out (Questions about the reliability of BBV)

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-voting3jan03,0,457648.story?track=tottext

From the Los Angeles Times
THE STATE
Voting System Results Still Out
Questions about the reliability of electronic ballots combine with changing regulations to fuel confusion and debate over technology.
By Noam N. Levey
Times Staff Writer

January 3, 2006

Five years after the vote-counting debacle in Florida suspended the election of a new U.S. president, California and other states are embroiled in a contentious debate over how voters should cast their ballots.

The maligned punch cards that snarled the 2000 count are all but gone. But with electronic machines under attack as unreliable and vulnerable to hackers, there is little consensus about what the new technology should look like.<snip>

In California, counties have lurched from one voting system to another as the state has written and rewritten standards. Several counties are scrambling to redo their June election plans after the state's top elections official raised new questions last month about an electronic voting machine in use for years.

Miami officials talk of scrapping their 3-year-old electronic machines, while Mercer County, Pa., officials want to keep theirs but were ordered by state authorities to take them out of service after glitches during the 2004 presidential election.<snip>

[Atman]

1. I'm an Assistant Supervisor of Elections in CT...

Well, in my one small town in CT. Our town's population is largely senior citizens. We're dreading what happens when we have to go all electronic, and all these old folks come in wanting instructions. We still have the old crank mechanical machines, and they are iron clad, and have lasted 40 some-odd years. How many of these DRE's and opti-scans will still be in service 40 years from now? This is kinda like the HDTV bill, in that it forces adoption of a technology which primarily benefits the makers of the technology, not the public. A few years from now, all these small towns like our will be forced to cough up a few more million dollars to replace these "antique" touch-screen pieces of shit.

[Wilms]

19. Link dead, but VotersUnite has an archived version of the article.

http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=6518

[Junkdrawer]

2. Once again, only the vulnerability to outside hackers is addressed..

WHAT ABOUT INSIDERS?

I mean a Fundy Republican billionaire buys a voting machine company, infuses it with massive capital, splits it into two companies that now counts 80% of the vote with secret, proprietary software written by a convicted embezzler.

How about reporting THAT.

[PATRICK]

10. The rote conventional

approach to the whole issue and its history is set in concrete and so off the beam that IT is the source of "confusion" itself. No one can tackle fraud, real time failures and abuses, inherent flaws in the whole idea and implementation, the whole GOP plan to streamline fraud through 'reform" simply because no paper will report the past abuses as anything other than confusion.

If there was no conspiracy, no overall plan to make e-machines your personal Chicago graveyard and Joe Stalin tabulator, it would not matter at this point, so visible is the reality of the overall, intricate pervasive and ongoing horror.

Instead they have people dancing around like fools, dickering over paper trails, titillating and confusing
the voters and election boards. the whole clear issue is hidden in a shell game, but more unforgivable than the constantly, constantly repeated meme of the media treatment of the whole story despite ALL individual columnists who come out and show it for what it is, is the insane incapacity of the democratic Party to deal solidly with the issue and get the word down to the election board level before the Mephisto salesmen move in under HAVA guns and butter and deadlines to sell the same old snake oil again and again and again with none of the conned ever learning anything. Sure this is not true in all sectors and regions, but there is no overall Party excuse for the shoddy defenselessness and downplaying of crap machines by partisan crooks who have already shown their hand from sheer bravado and sloppiness.

[Spazito]

3. Gosh, one would think paper ballots and hand counts hadn't been

invented or used, never mind having been proven to be the most accurate and fair way to conduct an election. I love how they keep looking for better 'technology' when the original method works much better than anything they have come up with since, imo.

[papau]

4. I agree - time to go paper only

:-)

[mom cat]

5. Absolutely!

Paper is the only way to go.

[Selteri]

8. I believe electronic can work... BUT

It has to be something with a verifiable paper reciept kept in a seperate container from the voting machine that is completely tech null on the inside.

[papau]

9. That is the Venezuela model - and Bush doesn't like Venezuela elections

:-)

[mom cat]

15. He prefers those that he can rig.

[reprobate]

13. Not PAPER only! Paper and PENCIL. The best election technology.

[skids]

14. Pen. Not pencil. n/t

[fshrink]

22. That's how votes are casted in France at least.

Then, imagine that, ballots are counted *by hands*. With a representative of each party standing behind the counter. Somehow, you still get the results a couple of hours after the last polling station has closed. If it's about getting rid of paper as a thing of the past, I can think of a few other antequated paper artifacts that could accompany the ballot toward the bin... But very strangely, the same people who cling to these decomposed relics are all out on "technology" about this one.

[InsultComicDog]

6. Well, I would never endorse illegal behavior...

but one sure way to put a stop to BBV would be for someone to successfully phreak the system.

That would of course be a felony, and I'm sure a lot of the emphasis in the MSM would be capturing the phreaker, but the fact that someone could actually do it would have far more impact than us complaining about the mere <i>possibility</i> of the results being fixed.

All I know is I won't have anything to do with it... I'm too much of a wuss. :evilgrin:

[bpilgrim]

7. it already was - > Diebold voting machines hacked in Florida

The bad news just keeps on pouring in for advocates of electronic voting. In the latest turn of events, election officials in Leon County, Florida, hired computer experts to successfully hack an optical-scan voting machine manufactured by Diebold, Inc. Hugh Thompson and Harri Hursti were able to affect the outcome of the "election" by altering the software on a removable memory card central to the machine’s operation.

Users were asked to use the Diebold machine to vote on the question of whether or not it could be hacked. Thompson and Hursti voted "yes," while six other users voted "no." The final result tallied seven "yes" and one "no" votes.

source...
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051222-5821.html

see also...
Voting Machines Can Be Hacked
Diebold CEO Resigns
http://www.wanttoknow.info/051221votingmachineshacked

peace

[rumpel]

11. This issue finally made front page!

[BeFree]

16. Is that right? Front Page of the LA Times?

Well, all the more reason the K&R....

&&&&

Hey, wanna take down *.co?

Question how they were elected. Just ask questions about how many votes were vapor, not paper. Ask why anyone would want vapor, not paper. If we all start asking: How? It won't be long before all the major dailies will be running front pages about vapor voting.

YeeeeHa!

[Wilms]

12. .

[bpilgrim]

17. k&r

peace

[Thor_MN]

18. Reliability of the BBD? Reliability of the BBD? George, Jeb, Neil!!!

Of course she's not reliable!!! Look what results she has produced!!!

What's that? BBV? Why that's very different.... Nevermind.

[babylonsister]

20. Rec'd and kick! nt

[Benhurst]

21. Recommended NT

[Wilms]

23. .