Voting Machine Monopoly Threatens Elections

[kpete]

Voting Machine Monopoly Threatens Elections
The Sale Of Diebold's Election Business Has Alarmed Civic Watchdogs

by Eliza Newlin Carney

Monday, Sept. 21, 2009

To some election law experts, dire warnings by vocal activists that faulty voting machines are threatening democracy tend to ring false.

After all, questionable machines are only one of the many problems plaguing an election system that's outmoded, decentralized and chronically underfunded. The best machines in the world won't help if local election officials can't hire and train enough poll workers and clean up their error-riddled voter registration lists.

But an industry shakeup that's placed one controversial vendor in charge of more than half the nation's voting technology has thrust the debate over machines squarely back into focus.

The sale earlier this month of Diebold Inc.'s election business to Election Systems and Software has alarmed election officials and civic watchdogs, and prompted calls on Capitol Hill for the Justice Department to intervene. A smaller, competing voting machines manufacturer has also filed suit.

more:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/rulesofthegame.php

[MarjorieG]

1. If we were to outlaw election observers, there would be uproar, yet that's what happened with secret

vote counting machines and total impossibility for electronics to be secure and reliable. Testing one minute will not predict or assure what the machine will do during an election, either by error or fraud. We bought crappy machines in 2002 and since, which still does not take away that we haven't the time, interest and money to process every single vote. Give us back our mechanical and easy to observe machines that election boards can manage.

[bdamomma]

2. we never managed to clean up this electronic voting mess up either.

[bertman]

3. The Democratic leadership thinks the concern over electronic voting machines with NO

paper trail is a distraction.

They will do nothing about this threat to our democracy.

Rec.