Why does no politician demand the voting machines be verified?

[Stevepol]

Any computer expert worth his salt will tell you the voting machines are easy to hack or maliciously program, particularly for those working for the companies who produce the things.

Yet no politician I know of has even asked that votes counted inside a black box be verified. Why?

A brief example: Everybody knows that Hillary won the MA primary, right? But about 3% of the precincts in MA do not use electronic vote counting. Instead, they count the paper by hand. In a recent interview with Deborah Lusignan, the "Sane Progressive," John Blakey, who has a law suit still being considered in Maricopa County AZ, mentioned as an aside that in MA, in the precincts where the vote was counted by hand, Bernie won by 17% pts. Here's the interview (it's pretty long and the comment is an aside pretty well into the interview):

Does it not at least call for a comment by some politician that this is an extraordinary fact if, as I assume, it's true?

Jon Simon in his book CODE RED analyzes another election in MA (Coakley and Brown in 2010) where there was a wide discrepancy between the result for the Handcounters and the result for the Optiscanners (8% pts). He remarks that "the odds of an 8% marginal disparity would be beyond astronomical," especially since the Handcounters in MA are somewhat MORE conservative than the rest of the state. He goes on: "Statisticians never say 'impossible' but that is, for all intents and purposes, what it is."

Now keep in mind that Blakey says that Bernie won among the "Handcounters" by 17%. If an 8% disparity is impossible given the demographics, then what does this say for the results in the MA primary?

One other question: Since MA decided to go with optiscans throughout the state rather than the touch screens, they must have considered the fact that they would have the paper ballots still there to audit or recount. Why, when there was such a wide disparity between the hand count and the machine count, was there not at least an audit of a few precincts that used the machines?

This by the way (the voting machines) is the main reason I felt sure Bernie would fail to win during the nomination process.

[hobbit709]

1. they're in on it.

[Ferd Berfel]

12. yep

The neo-Dems get to use the hack too in the primaries to assure they get their candidate. This is why the super delegates won't be around for the next abortion of democracy fiasco. Technology has made them obsolete.

WHen you get round to the GE it's dueling hackers. WHo can flip the most votes.

THe other reason (as spoken of on Hartmann's show and a couple others) is that the Dems 'say' they're afraid that if people find out that the machines haven't been fixed yet, or if the Dem Party makes too big of a deal out of it, that many people won't even bother to vote.

your choice

[Jackie Wilson Said]

2. Hell yes!

[doc03]

3. Aren't they certified by the Board of Elections made up of

people from both parties?

[haikugal]

4. And what does that tell you...hmmm??

[doc03]

6. The machines would be checked by a person from each party I guess n/t

[haikugal]

8. Why would you think that would vouch safe the vote?

[Hoyt]

5. Exactly. But everyone is convinced the machines have been programmed to switch votes

to the other guy. I'm sure it has happened, but not anywhere near what the conspiracy folks think. There are checks, safeguards, etc., and pretty serious laws against vote tampering.

[Stevepol]

13. The machines are checked, yes, but there are no checks on the "vote."

What anybody, Repub or Dem, is concerned about is the vote, not whether the damned machine works or not.

If I count the vote in a room where nobody is watching and I emerge an hour later and pronounce the winner, would there not be a few people wondering if I had counted the vote correctly? This is common sense.

Yet nobody questions the results when the machines do the counting. Why is that? The vote can be altered by using codes within the machine that can be activated at any point during the election process, or they can just be altered at the end when the vote tallies are downloaded into the memory cards before being transferred to the central tabulators. Despite what the voting machine companies say, the memory card CAN carry an executable command or program that alters the results. Hari Hursti did it in about 5 minutes in the documentary HACKING AMERICA. Or they can be changed, maybe most easily, on the central tabulators.

The only way to actually verify that the vote is properly counted is to COUNT THE PAPER BY HAND.

[RobertEarl]

16. Bull ... Hoyt

You state: " ...There are checks, safeguards, etc....."

You do not know what you are talking about. You have just made this up. You can't provide one link to an article proving your point. No one should for one second entertain the idea that you know anything about the vote counting.

[vintx]

7. We can get a receipt for ATM's, but not votes.

Only one of those things requires accountability according to those in power.

[Stevepol]

17. The point is that the same machines are used for ATMs for example BUT

you can check to make sure what happens to your account. You get a bank statement regularly and/or you can check online to make sure everything adds up in your account.

YOU CAN'T DO THAT WITH A VOTING MACHINE, at least the companies claim you can't. It's proprietorial information they claim. You can't check out the programming or anything to do with the machines except just to make sure it's working.

All this is a part of the reason that the German Constitutional Court outlawed voting machines to count votes in Germany in 2009. There are many articles about this in foreign media, not very many in US media. Here's a link:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Germany-bans-computerized-by-Paul-Lehto-090303-583.html

[JeffHead]

9. Why do we have voting machines in the first place?

My guess is hand counted paper ballots are too hard to rig.

[NurseJackie]

11. Old school ballot box stuffing.

[snot]

10. I don't believe in faith-based elections.

[stillwaiting]

14. I completely agree with your last sentence. I believed they would never let him win even if he did.

So, I have never truly believed he would win the nomination.

I still supported him very strongly and with lots of energy and time.

But, I will continue to believe we won't get a progressive President (or many progressive Democrats through primaries) until we change our voting and election system.

I hope we make a stand for this one day soon.

[sadoldgirl]

15. Both sides by now are happy to cheat,and

the scanners can be hacked equally.

Thus, if you have voting by mail, it can as
easily manipulated as on the machine.