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I can't believe that with the biggest news story of the year brewing down in Sarasota, about 18,000 missing votes, you would neglect even a mention of the story about The National Institute of Standards and Technology, recommending the scrapping of electronic voting machines nationwide.
The NIST is the federal governments premier research and testing laboratory. They are also charged by Congress to develop standards for voting in the United States.
The NIST says, according to The Washington Post,"in its report that the lack of a paper trail for each vote "is one of the main reasons behind continued questions about voting system security and diminished public confidence in elections." The report repeats the contention of the computer security community that "a single programmer could 'rig' a major election."
Fears about rigging have animated critics for years, but there has been no conclusive evidence that such fraud has occurred. Electronic voting systems have had technical problems -- including unpredictable screen freezes -- leaving voters wondering whether their ballots were properly recorded".
Perhaps, if you would print this on Page One, Kurt Browning might notice it, and figure out that these machines aren't the greatest thing since peanut butter after all. The Supervisors of Elections ask us to trust them. Perhaps we can. But, I'm not too sure about these manufacturers and programers.
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