BBV: My Opinion On Where We Are Now And Where We Go

[JohnGideon]

Yesterday was a disaster. No doubt about it. It was also a bad day for all of us who have been working hard, for months and months on the BBV issue.

The good and bad news is that there were no major melt-downs that caused the press to stand-up and take notice. Oh, there were problems and probably thousands of votes that were affected by machine problems.

The problem is that every one of those problems is being blamed on "human error" or a "minor glitch". The vendors, their lobbiests (ITAA; ElectionCenter; some disability groups) and Lamone, Cox, Hood, et al.have been preparing the media and the populace for these problems for over 6 months. Every time they got a chance they talked about "human error", poll worker mistakes, and uneducated voters. That ploy worked really well because when there were problems yesterday, they were blamed on everybody but the machines. They also minimized problems in the media by calling them "minor glitches".

So, they got a bloody nose and no KO and now we have to figure out how to continue on. There is less hope now than ever before that we will get any federal legislation out of congress. It's not going to happen so we have to turn to state legislation and try to get as many states as possible to go with a voter verified paper ballot and an audit requirement. It's essential for the future because there will be more and more states buying DREs now that those machines have had a perceived successful election.

Don't expect help from the media. They write stories that are of interest to the people. The people don't care, for the main part; about elections, the election process, or voting machines. They only want to go and cast their vote, no matter how blindly, on election day. If the people don't care; the media is not going to write about it.

We must get out of this idea that we can use security issues and hacking as a platform for getting better legislation. It's not going to work and it probably works against us. Forget it. There is NO credible evidence that there has ever been a hack into a voting system to change votes in a live election. It has never happened and the vendors use that arguement every time they defend their systems. They don't talk about the failures; only the lack of security breaches. Those who continue to push this idea are doing no one any good at all and they hurt those of us who are trying to use common sense and the very real, provable failures as evidence for a vvpb and random, robust audit.

So, I will be lobbying the Washington state legislature beginning in a couple weeks. I'll talk about the recent failures on the Sequoia machines in Snohomish County. I'll talk about software certification that was not done. I'll talk about the need for robust, random audits. I'll talk about the fact that incidents of optical scan failures were very minimal yesterday when compared to DRE failures. I'll talk about changing the laws in our state that allow a department head to change rules for emergency reason when they are blatantly only for political reasons. I will either become very friendly with state legislators or I will become their worst enemy but I'll do what I can.

[goclark]

1. Now that's the spirit , Do something!

We all should DO something and stop whining!

[JohnGideon]

2. kick n/t

[JohnGideon]

3. kick one more time n/t