Electronic voting systems aren't likely to be sufficiently secure by 2006

[IChing]

Electronic voting systems aren't likely to be sufficiently secure even by the 2006 elections, government auditors warned Friday.

Existing systems are rife with problems, the Government Accountability Office said in a 107-page document (click for PDF). The list of vulnerabilities included everything from easily-guessed administrator passwords and voter-verified paper-trail design flaws, to incorrect software installation and system failures on Election Day.

The Election Assistance Commission, created in 2002 to help states and localities implement e-voting systems, has neglected to lay out a clear timeline for addressing those problems, the report said. It also says that it's unrealistic to expect anything to change by next fall.>>>>
snip
The agencies are slated for early 2007 to determine if the laboratories designed to examine voting equipment are fit to do so, but the agencies haven’t started yet. They also haven't set up a proper "clearinghouse" where election officials can share problems they've had with the voting systems.

The agencies also haven't updated the national reference library for voting system software--intended to help state and local election officials ensure they're running the proper software on their machines--since the 2004 elections.>>>>snip
http://news.com.com/E-voting+wont+be+verified+until+2006/2100-1028_3-5907036.html?part=rss&tag=5907036&subj=news

[msongs]

1. we need a true oppostion party that will DO SOMETHING about it nt

[VegasWolf]

3. Exactly! Our "leaders" wouldn't even say things were fishy last time. nt

[fshrink]

9. Last timeS. nt

[ray of light]

56. Ohio has a special election coming up and election reform on the ballot

BUT...
They're BEGGING for donations and time donations because the big-wig corps are spending big bucks to defeat this.

PLEASE everyone...put your money where your mouth is:

http://www.reformohionow.org/

DONATE PLEASE!

https://secure.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/ron/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=713&t=donate

[twaddler01]

2. take your time

:argh:

[IChing]

4. Conyers said this.

Representatives from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform said they were disappointed by what the report findings and suggested that politicians may need to step in

"It is totally unacceptable that in 21st century America, we would allow faulty machines and systems to rob citizens of their voting rights," said Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat. "While GAO offers some modest recommendations for improvement, it is incumbent upon Congress to respond to this problem and to enact much-needed reforms such as a voter-verified paper audit trail that protects all Americans' right to vote."

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. I take politics reasonably seriously, but the way things

are - especially if I were an African American - I would have serious doubts whether there was any sense in making the effort to vote - even without the criminal neocon culture of voter suppression.

After all, it stands in relation to voting in an election, precisely as the game of Monopoly (with a few slum landlords and their enforcers thrown in) stands in relation to real-estate development. It's no doubt what the neocons are banking on.

[Peace Patriot]

27. This mentality MUST BE FOUGHT! We must never, never, NEVER give up...

...our right to vote! NEVER! And black citizens must know this better than any of us. It took them TWO HUNDRED YEARS to secure the right to vote. And we're just going to throw up our hands now? No way!

But we also must not lie to people--as the Dem Party is doing. Americans have a RIGHT TO KNOW how their votes are being tabulated, and by whom, and let the chips fall where they may as to the bipartisan corruption in the $4 billion electronic voting boondoggle.

Also, there are some indications that the rigging of the election theft machines has to be pre-programmed to a certain level of vote switching, vote manufacture and vote disappearance. It is therefore possible to OVERWHELM that programming with sheer NUMBERS--with increases in voter registration and voter turnout. (That's my theory of 2004, that the massive and highly visible vote suppression in Ohio was a backup plan, in case of a Kerry landslide which could not be turned around by the pre-programmed code in the "trade secret," proprietary software.) (The 3% margin by which Kerry won the real exit polls--not the doctored ones the networks put up late on election day--is just the tip of the iceberg. That's just the people who made it to the voting booth, past the Bushite vote suppression. He won bigger than that--probably by 5% or more, if all legitimate votes had been counted, and there had been no vote suppression.) (Greg Palast estimates that a million black voters were purged from the voting rolls, nationwide, before the election.)

It is also possible--with all we know now--to better monitor the '06 and '08 elections. See http://www.UScountvotes.org for such a project. "Parallel elections" and independent exit polling are other options.

The pollsters (Edison-Mitofsky) who are hired by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies to do election exit polls have promised to hide their real results next time around, so that we do not have any independent verification numbers. These are the same !@#$%'s who DOCTORED their own exit polls late on election day 2004, so that their numbers would FIT the results of Diebold's and ES&S's secret formulae.

That was the ONLY independent verification tool we had. Luckily, some fast-thinking bloggers got screen shots of the exit polls numbers before the change, and E/M has now admitted that Kerry won those polls. But that's not going to happen next time--is what they're saying. They are going to hide the whole exit poll process.

So, we MUST develop our own verification tools--until we can get rid of these election theft machines (or get rock solid audit/recount provisions and open source code). We cannot believe ANYTHING that the corporate news monopolies tell us about election results. They failed to inform people about the secret, proprietary programming code--and who owns and controls it--and then FIDDLED their numbers to conform to an UNVERIFIABLE Bush win. We must challenge these "results" wherever possible--at the state/local level, in the courts, and in "news" disinformation reporting.

Never give it up! Never concede your right to vote! NEVER!

--------

See "MythBreakers," an easy to read pamphlet on the perils of electronic voting: http://www.votersunite.org

[Joe Chi Minh]

28. Of course, you are right.

And I know the people of African stock in both our countries tend to be stronger than the rest of us, not least spiritually, but when I think of the suffering they endured in that last election, only to have that criminal scum virtually burn their vote in front of in their face, and laugh while they were doing it, I just think of the tendency to despair I would feel - UNLESS THE ELECTIONS ARE MADE HONEST.

But you're right, the more Democrats vote, the more flagrantly they will have to cheat to usurp again.

It's funny, looking back to when I was a quite a young child, I seemed to read an awful lot of tales about foreign countries where the people seemed to be what they called "peasants", and a wicked king "usurped" the throne; and I often wondered at what a funny word it was, as it never seemed to appear in the papers or the radio or conversation. It seems to be a very "special" word; I imagine you have to be quite old to come across again, as an adult. What happened, I wonder, between the epoch of the medieval fairy stories and the present day, that we should have been deprived of such a gem?
It seems George has broken the spell. A kind of anti-matter Prince, who, instead of being turned into a frog by a princess's kiss, blew them up with a straw for fun, and was then turned into an (antimatter) prince - by usurpation!

[Jose Diablo]

5. After all, its only been about 6 years

It takes time, maybe by 2052 something will have been done.

[Megahurtz]

7. Psssst.......

I heard they rigged the Powerball lottery machine too......:silly:

[ThumperDumper]

8. Ya know...

They can only cheat if it's close.

.

[Cookie wookie]

13. I disagree.

Without being able to use polls to audit the vote count, with no paper trail or these small worse than useless random recount provisions, and with almost the whole nation adopting electronic voting this year, how can anyone prove vote theft, no matter whether it's a large or small percentage?

There is no way without the will of the people and frankly, I've been working on this issue for almost 3 years and getting citizens to actually DO anything about this has been a major heartbreak.

We can blame politicians til we're blue in the face, and they are worthy candidates for blame especially passing that Trojan Horse, the Help America Vote Act (better titled Help Republicans Steal Elections Act), but it's the citizens who have failed big time here.

Lazy, apathetic, ignorant. Let somebody else do it. Well, where are the citizens to go down to their legislators and DEMAND hand-counted voter verified paper ballots?

People need to realize that this thing has been pushed through because of a few corrupt people and a majority of apathetic Americans. Jim Dickson of NFB for one, going around lying for diebold and getting away with it. The vendors with their lies R. Doug Lewis and the Election Center.

And last but not least, gullible, stupid and/or corrupt election officials.

I'm sick of them all. I'm tired to trying to get citizens to do something. Oh, it's a complicated issue. Boo hoo. There are election reform groups all across the country -- we have 3 in our state -- but they are run by a few individuals who are getting totally burnt out because they are carrying the water for everyone else.

Even here at DU the election thread was buried.

So, back to the "Ya know". No, I don't know any such thing. Saying that is like saying if you put a million dollars in the bank and don't get a receipt it can't be stolen because it's too large a sum.

Right.

[petgoat]

23. "They can only cheat if it's close."

But they can make it close. There's 60 brazillion battallions of
those home-skooled christian rightists out there--don'tyaknow?

[AndyTiedye]

10. So Much for Our Chances in 2006

It also says that it's unrealistic to expect anything to change by next fall.

including the fact that we lose more seats every election, regardless of what the polls say.

Fauxnews, Nov. 5, 2006. Defying conventional wisdom and most polls, Republicans swept to a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and picked up a 20 seats in the House yesterday, in what pundits are already calling the biggest comeback in the history of Congressional elections...
...Most major polling organizations had the Democrats ahead 25-30 points going into the election, with only Gallup breaking from the pack and calling it for the Republicans....
...in other news, "the merger of Gallup Polling and Diebold Election Systems will provide enhanced synergy between the companies", CEO Walden O'Dell said...

[Tiggeroshii]

11. EVERYbody needs to be asking for a paper ballot when they vote.

I did last time and am likely to do it again.

[Cookie wookie]

15. States have different laws governing

paper ballots. In Georgia they are not the ballot of record with the exception of absentee ballots.

Unless you are in one of the very, very few areas left that hand-counts ballots, your paper ballot is likely being counted using some kind of OptiScan equipment, which operates on the same vote counting code used to tally the electronic vote; by a corporation using proprietary code that is not secure, not auditible, the process not transparent; and most likely the corporation is run by people who have strong Republican Party ties.

[Peace Patriot]

33. I'm not sure what other kinds of paper ballots you're talking about, but

I know that absentee ballot voting helped statisticians develop evidence of electronic fraud in 2004. Any paper record that we can get is better than no paper record, in these circumstances, and should be used, even if the vote can be discounted, and even we can't yet turn elections around with challenges. We may be able to do so in the future, as the evidence against these election theft machines grows, and political circumstances change.

Please do not discourage people from voting, or from seeking whatever paper record they can get. WE. MUST. NEVER. GIVE. UP. OUR. RIGHT. TO. VOTE.

I understand your discouragement, Cookie Wookie. The mountain we have to climb is huge, and gets higher as we climb it. Individuals must take a rest, when the struggle gets to them and wears them out. But who are WE, collectively, as a people, to give up this fight? We, who are the beneficiaries of the sacrifices of thousands upon thousands of people who came before us, some of whom gave their very lives, to free the human mind from all shackles, and to create a culture of freedom and equality for all human beings?

The masses of people are sometimes slow to understand, and slow to change--often because of day to day difficulties, or serious hardship, or brainwashing. But more human beings--including more Americans--love peace, justice and freedom than ever before in human history. That education, that progress, those gains in human understanding, tolerance and peacefulness were dearly bought, and must not be sloughed off in despair.

Our right to vote--especially in America--is a hugely powerful and valuable right, with the potential to curtail the global corporate predators who are menacing not just us, but the entire planet. That is WHY they took our right to vote away.

And if they're making it hard to restore our right to vote, you can be sure that they are not doing that for petty reasons. We are now the targets of the global corporate predators who were born of us, on our soil, with our resources and labor--targets not just because of our wealth (which they are quickly robbing us of), but ALSO, and mainly, because of our potential power as a sovereign people to REGULATE them, to bust them when they commit crimes, and to de-charter them (dissolve them) if necessary.

In no other democracy in the world have they used SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code. No other democracy in the world would put up with it. And, yes, that IS our fault, to some extent--although the tremendous corruption of our political leadership was not really willed by the people, and if we had a transparent election system, that leadership would be out on its ear.

Take a look at the issue polls over the last several years--at what Americans are really thinking--and you will be amazed. The American people are not stupid, and are not uninformed (except about Diebold and ES&S, the best kept secret of the Repub and Dem Party leadership). In fact, there is a great progressive American MAJORITY that has been disempowered and, above all, DISENFRANCHISED.

And if they are feeling confused, weak, without power to change things, seemingly indifferent, apathetic, dense, or what-all election reformists may run into, it is not surprising. I imagine that Martin Luther King ran into attitudes like that--and Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. An attitude of SEEMING indifference, directly attributable to powerlessness. Well-off Americans who have that attitude are harder to forgive, but they are no less powerless than poor Americans, and perhaps even more prey to illusions of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies.

So, to those of us who more or less know what's going on, I urge patience, and tireless efforts at informing people, and helping them become RE-empowered and RE-enfranchised. Americans have been the targets of the most insidious brainwashing ever perpetrated on any people, and yet most have come out of it with their progressive views and desires in tact, but in a state of utter bewilderment as to where their power as citizens has gone.

And, once they know what has been done to them, and are really able to grok it--once we are sure they know--then it will be up to them, collectively, to assert their sovereignty and restore democracy in the U.S. Activists cannot do it for them. It must be a collective effort, a groundswell--American Revolution II--which can only occur after long, hard, relentless efforts at informing people.

[Cookie wookie]

43. "I'm not sure what other kinds of paper ballots you're talking about, but"

Some counties in some states still actually conduct elections using paper ballots (several counties in Texas, for instance). Provisional ballots and absentee ballots are not always paper, but sometimes are. For instance, in Georgia everyone who wants to vote absentee is encouraged to vote early on electronic voting machines either in county offices or in the mass "early voting" barns.

"I know that absentee ballot voting helped statisticians develop evidence of electronic fraud in 2004."

I don't doubt you, but I'm not aware of any instances where actual "evidence of fraud" has been found, with or without using paper absentee ballot counts. I'd like to know more about that of which you speak.

My own experience in Georgia (and confirmed by others from outside the state who spent time trying to audit Georgia's vote in the 2004 election) has been unsuccessful, as we were unable to audit the absentee count because of the way the SOS "kept the books" so to speak. Just putting together the documentation for one county, Dekalb, took several open records requests and over $5,000 was spent (by other Georgia researchers) on getting the records including copies of poll tapes, daily recap sheets and the spreadsheet for the county showing paper absentee vote count totals. With all that effort, we haven't found a credible way to audit the paper absentee numbers, since DRE absentee and early voting counts were combined with the paper absentee counts, all in one big pool.

"Any paper record that we can get is better than no paper record, in these circumstances"

I agree. I apologize if it seemed I was discouraging people from voting or that I am opposed to any paper ballot of any kind, whether a voter verified paper audit trail, paper absentee, paper provisional, or regular paper ballot. My concern is that people understand that they must do more and do it now -- they cannot rely on using paper absentee ballots to save us from fraudulent elections in Nov 2006, if those are counted by Optiscan without some mechanism in place to audit the Optiscan count.

[slay]

12. What the hell is it going to take for something to be done about this?

How many more stolen elections will it take until this becomes a priority? I am VERY disappointed that the Democrats haven't made this their top priority - and to have it done BEFORE 2006. :(

[Orsino]

14. It will take losses despite obvious polling majorities.

As long as the official results are very close, the money machine can hide behind our ignorance and the general lack of transparency in elections. If polls swing hard to the left, though, that will no longer possible.

[corkhead]

24. they seem to be content being the "Washington Generals" of Government

Also, a lot of supposed Democrats are bought and paid for by corporatists, making them not much better than repukes. Another thing that needs to happen before we have a democracy again is campaign finance reform, which is even less likely to happen as long as the foxes are guarding the hen house.

[slay]

30. Yeah, I just hate to think that

the Democrats are little more than the lesser of two evils. Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt that they are indeed the lesser of the two evils. It's just, call me crazy, but for some reason I'd like to be able to vote for someone because I like what he or she stands for, not just because the other guy sucks. :(

[Land Shark]

36. I haven't done exhaustive research, but one Dem Congress candidate

has made election integrity a top issue

www.randygordonforcongress.com

He's my attorney but would be nice anyway if his stands got some recognition

[JesterCS]

16. I just..

Emailed a copy of that to my County Board of Elections. They decided this year to start using Diebold electronic voting machines. ugh.

[Mountainman]

17. I'm pissed at the Dems for not understanding that repukes can control the

outcome of elections with these machines. They should outlaw them until they are fool proof. We will again go into an election doing nothing about the problems that occurred in 2000 and 2002 and 2004 while the repukes go merrily on they way setting up their fraud schemes. Right now repukes have in place their plans to steal the election while we do nothing but write letters to Bush complaining about the past elections. We must infiltrate the repuke machine and stop them.

When Kerry said every vote will be counted I thought he meant they would be counted before the election ended not after. What good is it to find out we've been cheated after an election and then do nothing to prevent it in the future. This is taken so lightly by our side that at times I think they really don't care or are so in the dark that they don't know what's going on.

[sofa king]

18. So why not steal the elections back?

If these machines are so vulnerable, why not hack the system and write a subprogram which monitors the data backups for some of the more common tricks, like column switching, and changes them back in the instant before the results are sent off for certification?

Sure it's illegal, but what's Diebold going to do about it? Say, "our election theft was foiled, and that's illegal?"

[spooked911]

19. True. I think we HAVE to start playing dirty.

[sofa king]

20. Now that I think of it, bad idea.

We shouldn't start playing dirty. If we play dirty pool to counteract their dirty pool, then the whole damned thing goes down the tubes, because we will have learned the same amoral practices of the kleptocrats who stole America in the first place.

But that doesn't mean something can't be done. Like creating a "canary" fund which offers guidance and legal assistance to those who are willing to call out their fellow election workers who are willing to tamper with results. Or demanding the presence of non-local, impartial election observers to verify every single step of the process (no more closed-room dealings such as those which purportedly went down in Ohio).

There's one last option which plays well with the above: have someone introduce a bill in Congress which would revoke the citizenship of anyone found to be complicit in election tampering. Give it a retroactive component to include the 2002 and 2004 elections, too, just in case someone squeals on that down the line.

The Republicans won't allow such a bill to come to a vote, which will be paydirt for the campaign trail. And it might just put the fear of God back into some of those Republican election workers--if they don't trust their pals with their citizenship, they may be more inclined to safeguard the process themselves.

[spooked911]

31. Yes, you're right. Perhaps we could also set up a sting operation?

Or hack the vote to show it can be done but then call the media on it?

I don't know-- something needs to be done to get widespread attention of the problem.

[Land Shark]

38. Maybe some Dems ALREADY have started playing dirty and that's

why they aren't pushing very hard for an investigation today

[Cookie wookie]

40. For one thing, hacking an election is a serious crime.

In Georgia it's described by our Election's Division as a terrorist act.

The idea that there are those who have the ability to steal our elections without being caught, year after year, and that the opportunity to do this has been institutionalized using HAVA as the Trojan Horse IS maddening. The creators of HAVA must be having a great laugh -- using electronic voting as a Trojan Horse to steal elections, get it, ha ha ha.

But this isn't a dictatorship yet. Our judges are not all corrupt yet. We still have something left of the Rule of Law. And as citizens we still have power to change things if we use it, and I don't mean becoming criminals like them.

Certainly expressing frustration is justified, and I feel your pain big time. But any hint of hacking as a solution needs to be quickly and thoroughly disavowed.

Sure, we feel powerless but this passive attitude has to be overcome. There are citizen election justice groups all across the country, who need help, people to get on board and do some of the lifting. A list to get started looking, for those who aren't already connected to a group, is posted at:
http://www.gaforverifiedvoting.org/docs/election_reform.htm

Right now, at this very minute (well maybe not 7 a.m. Sunday), there are state election divisions across the entire country making decisions about which of the electronic voting technologies they will buy (over the past few months most decided they would go electronic). They are putting together RFPs.

Everyone willing to do something, everyone who wants to stop this tyranny, needs to locate and contact one of the groups in their state and get to work. If there isn't a group, start one or join one of the national groups, like:
http://www.verifiedvoting.org or http://votetrustusa.org

For those who need to get up to speed on the issue, read VotersUnite's "Mythbreakers", which is free for download at their website:
http://www.votersunite.org/

[RagingInMiami]

21. So I guess we're due for another rude awakening

The morning after the Nov. 2006 elections.

[petgoat]

25. " another rude awakening"

We need to start thinking about what we're going to do after the 11/06
elections if the polls and the vote counts don't agree.

[drfresh]

37. What if we made a more accurate poll than Gallup, Zogby etc?

Zogby and the other pollsters use a sample size of something around 1,000 people, giving their polls a margin of error of 3-5% ... note that the last election Bush supposedly got 51% and Kerry 48% , a 3% difference.

As long as the polls have big enough margins of error, the discrepancies between the election results and poll results can be blown off, making it easier to steal elections.

But if we could commission our own legit poll with a larger sample size, like 10,000 people, then the MOE would be more like 1% ... making it harder to explain the differences between poll & vote counts.

I'm not a statistician, this is from my knowledge of an Intro to State course. Any thoughts on this?

/edited typo

[petgoat]

46. our own legit poll with a larger sample size

An interesting idea. You might want to talk to some of the
statisticians on the Election Reform board about the idea.

Of course the Mitofsky polls had the advantage of being commissioned by
the supposedly non-partisan news media. Any poll commissioned by a
left-leaning activist group would probably be considered suspect by the
Bushcists.

[drfresh]

50. Right-o

Right, if it was directly done by a left group I can see the problem there. I was more thinking, just pay Zogby or whoever to do the larger sample size, they keep it to around 1000 usually because of cost considerations.

[PATRICK]

22. Another fix scam

that has people stupidly expending more money to beat the monster crap they have installed. This con game fits such consistent pattern that the obvious solution is to first cut loose all the manufacturers and their patchwork consolation crews.

To keep playing by their first premise: we can fix it it's just a glitch,

is to keep getting conned whether it is trying to pin a paper trail on the donkey while blindfolded, or letting the same felons reconfigure secret software.

To pretend we are not being held hostage by this electoral predator is unbelievably disingenuous and fundamentally stupid. Also there are legal questions of criminal liability never raised because they silently concede the evidence and control of the evidence is lost and controlled by the predator!!!!

Venezuela has one model of a currently sufficient system bu GAO standards at least- and it is impossible for us to do anything remotely similar? That's a big foot shoved down our throat in place of minimal common sense.

[elehhhhna]

26. If the machines were disabled by magnets on election morn,

would we have to use paper?

I heard that small but powerful magnets can zap those babies FAST.

[kster]

29. We need Paper Ballots Hand Counted till they get this sh*t right !! nt

[Cookie wookie]

41. I agree. I've just started reading the GAO report

that came out last week. Am hoping there is enough in it, with the kind of teeth, that citizens can use to demand that our elections be conducted with hand-counted paper ballots in Nov 2006.

I've been thinking about starting a petition drive for signatures demanding paper ballots that could be used when we go into the next legislative session in GA in January. If I can get the support of one or two of the Georgia voting activist groups, we can launch this.

We are stuck in concrete at present with the Diebold Election system and even though the Republican Senate Majority leader (who's running for SOS in 06) and the current Dem SOS (who opposed paper trail legislation) now say they want it -- not because there are problems (liars liars pants on fire) but because a "small but vocal group of activists" won't quit bothering them. However, it's my opinion that neither actually intends to do anything real to give us verified voting for 06.

This is something that activists all across the country could be demanding for the 2006 election, because none of the electronic voting technology being used or that will be put in place this year is secure, none of the processes being set up are transparent, and even with vvpb, most laws being put on the books that include some kind of random audit don't provide sufficient safeguards to stop elections from being stolen by insider malicious code or detect if they have been compromised.

[kster]

47. have them read this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x397699

[Cookie wookie]

48. Yep, New York is perched on the edge of the abyss

just like all the other states following Georgia's all electronic path. We've been there and done that for over 2 years worth of elections now. NewYork for Verified Voting is still hammering away, though, never giving up. Go NYVV!

There are a number of reasons why everyone is trashing their current voting machines and going electronic in such a big rush but the whole process is characterized by chaos and misinformation:

HAVA mandates voting equipment with a paper trail and lever machines, for instance, don't have one. But the HAVA paper trail isn't worth anything on its own, it's just a printout of what the code says is the vote count. States need their own legislation to make the paper the ballot of record and voter-verified, and state election officials for the most part hate the though of that. Plus what printing technology the vendors offer seems to be intentionally designed in ways that make it problematic to use.

According to HAVA Title III, states should have new voting systems ready for use by January 1, 2006, although the accessibility language is for January 1, 2007.

HAVA declared that the EAC was to have new guidelines ready by January 2004, guidelines the states could use to make decisions about voting equipment, guidelines the vendors could have used to design equipment, but those haven't been completed because the president and Congress ran the clock out on getting the EAC funded and going.

The press, vendors, and other corrupt liars in the process keep telling everyone that states must go electronic, which is untrue but people believe it because it's been repeated so often.

Section 301:
 
(2) Protection of paper ballot voting systems.--For purposes
        of subsection (a)(1)(A)(i), the term ``verify'' may not be
        defined in a manner that makes it impossible for a paper ballot
        voting system to meet the requirements of such subsection or to
        be modified to meet such requirements.

ACCESSIBILITY FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES- The voting system shall--

(A) be accessible for individuals with disabilities, including nonvisual accessibility for the blind and visually impaired, in a manner that provides the same opportunity for access and participation (including privacy and independence) as for other voters;

(B) satisfy the requirement of subparagraph (A) through the use of at least one direct recording electronic voting system or other voting system equipped for individuals with disabilities at each polling place; and

(C) if purchased with funds made available under title II on or after January 1, 2007, meet the voting system standards for disability access (as outlined in this paragraph).


HAVA sets forth an enforcement scheme which says that the AG may enforce sections 201, 302, and 303 through various judicial means, such as injunctions.

[drfresh]

32. Recommended, people call your representatives

Electronic voting machines in the hands of corporations are the single biggest threat to our working democracy. This shit has to be taken care of somehow. I will call my Senator today.

[Cookie wookie]

42. Call your representatives in the House

as well to ask them to support Russ Holt's bill, HR550: The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.00550:

This legislation has been stuck in the House Committee on House Administration since Feb 2, 2005. It has 156 cosponsors, a few who are republicans. It's really the gold standard, even though Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Dodd and several others including republicans have bills that are supposed to address the problems.

A good review of the proposed federal legislation is at:
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?list=type&type=13

They also have a review of proposed state legislation for those who want to find info on where their state stands on voter verified paper ballot legislation.

[Peace Patriot]

34. Some problems with the language of this report...

Emphasis added, in caps...

"The Election Assistance Commission, created in 2002 TO HELP states and localities implement e-voting systems..."

"...laboratories DESIGNED TO examine voting equipment..."

"...national reference library for voting system software--INTENDED TO help state and local election officials ensure they're running the proper software..."

Intended to help? Designed to examine?

HAVA was not "intended to help" or "designed to examine" anything. It was intended to, and designed to, completely corrupt our election system, with new and completely unaccountable electronic voting systems, run on SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations; with $4 billion dollars poured right into the pockets of major Bush donors and campaign chairs; and with millions spent on unregulated lavish lobbying of both Repub and Dem election officials.

Any appearance of honesty--or of an INTENTION to provide TRANSPARENT elections in 2004--is crap. Window-dressing. Cover of political asses.

If they had WANTED an honest, transparent election in 2004, we would have had one. It's not that difficult.

And to imply that this election system can be MADE honest NOW, by somehow making the EAC work right, or--gee--INSISTING of some sort of verification NOW, with a Diebold President and a Diebold Congress making the rules, is a bit quixotic.

What do we need to do NOW? We need to throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor," that's what.

--------

Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. I applaud the GAO for pointing out all these flaws in our "selection" system. It's great that SOMEBODY in government is doing so--given the Dem Party's black hole of silence on the matter, lack of action, corruption and collusion.

But I would just as soon Bush's "pod people" in Congress, and their friends across the aisle, keep their dirty fingers out of it. ANY action they take will only make it worse. I guarantee you. They destroyed our right to vote, and they are not going to give it back.

They will instead purge more black and poor voters with "Voter IDs," centralize voter information so that it's impossible to get un-purged, and take more power away from (and provide more bribe money to) local election officials, to immunize them to local election reform movements. I oppose ANY further Congressional action on this matter, no matter how benign it SEEMS to be when first it shows its Trojan Horse head.

This FIRST PRIORITY problem has to be solved by the people, at the state/local level, where the power over election systems still resides, and where ordinary people still have some influence.

Yes, it is possible to have a transparent electronic voting system. They have one in Venezuela. OPEN SOURCE CODE. And a VOTER VERIFIED PAPER *BALLOT* (not "paper trail") will do it. But, additionally, in our case, we must ban partisanship by any company or group that provides the election machinery; and utterly forbid any and all "privatization" of the process ("trade secrets" in vote tabulation--un-frigging-believable!)

[Land Shark]

35. Gee whiz, if they're ever made secure, then voting will be better in rich

areas, like school districts are better with higher property values, and the rest of the plebes can stand in line! Oh, isn't secure electronic voting great!! Yes, let's put enough "SAFE"GUARDS on these expensive electronic bottlenecks and we don't even need to play Blackwell distribution games with voting machines.

[nashville_brook]

39. holy fuck -- PAPER NOW, DAMMIT!

i'd vote this up if it weren't expired. shit.

[cassiepriam]

44. In other words, 2006 will be rigged just like the others.....

[petgoat]

49. Don't Forget--Cynthia McKinney won on Diebold Machines last

fall in Georgia. It can be done.

[cassiepriam]

51. They only fixed critical swing states? Would be foolish to rig all of them

I think they were very clever and strategic about which states they stole. Makes more sense to do it that way. Would be too suspicious if only repugs won everywhere. And the more rigging the more people doing dirty work, who might eventually sing. This needed to be a small covert op. Just my .02.

[Cookie wookie]

53. One person, Shawn Southwell

federally certified all software for the Independent Testing Authority, Ciber, including all the GEMS software for Diebold Elections Systems that were tested by Ciber (which is all Georgia election software).

Who is Shawn Southwell? If anyone knows, I'd be interested to hear it.

[Cookie wookie]

52. She got 64.33% of the vote.

If as some of us believe, the code was rigged to boost Republican totals by 3-5%, then with the kind of support McKinney pulls in her district, code would have to be written just for her to change the outcome. That would have been much harder to do than just write the code for all the Diebold voting machines across the country to give Republicans 3-5% of the Democratic candidates votes.

How realistic is it to imagine that most House, Senate or Presidential races will have Dem candidates who can pull in the kind of overall numbers McKinney got in order to overcome code rigging? Say we could get a majority of Democratic candidates pulling in an average of 52% to 48% of the votes. Rigged at 3-5% -- Oophs, lost again. Say we can get 55% to 45%. Oophs, tied. Okay, 60%, 40%. We win, except they could always fix that by cyphoning off votes to 3rd party candidates if they saw in the polls far enough in advance that things were going to be this dramatic.

[petgoat]

54. Rigged at 3-5%

Right. So as long as they can keep us (us Americans) split down the
middle, they can plausibly cover over their narrow victory with a story
like "Gee, it must have been that attack add that pictured the Dem next
to Osama" or "It must have been the gay marriage issue" or "It must have
been the Security Moms in Kansas who don't want their soccer games
bombed" or "It must have been those fundie hordes."

The news media seem to feel obliged to concoct a rationale for whatever
happened in their "what does this mean?" analyses. Imagine the
headlines if Kerry had won. "What is this liberal wave sweeping
America? Backlash to war. Suspicions about 9/11. PNAC's global agenda
repudiated. Contract corruption."

[Cookie wookie]

55. And electronic voting as it now stands

is the perfect vehicle for election fraud. Now that the whole country is, as we speak, all going electronic, the opportunity for election fraud is being institutionalized nationwide. Unless the people of this country rise up and demand voter verified paper ballots that are the ballot of record and are hand counted at the precinct on election night this perfect crime will continue unabated. We must also demand that no proprietary code is used to count votes -- get the corporations out of the business of counting our votes in secret.

[helderheid]

45. kick