Reply #19: Levers

[Bill Bored]

OK, this view isn't too popular with some verified voting activists but fortunately, this is DU, and we can usually say what the f#@k we want here (exit poll fanaticism notwithstanding). And desperate times call for desperate measures.

The reason why levers are legal under HAVA is simply that HAVA Sect. 301 is so poorly written that levers comply with EVERY aspect of it except the Accessibility requirement, and THAT only applies to ONE MACHINE PER POLLING PLACE -- NOT PER PRECINCT.

The error rate spec referred to in Sect. 301 does not apply to lever machines. (Look it up in the Voting System Guidelines.) It's like saying SUVs have to get the same gas mileage as cars. Well they don't, do they?

The HAVA paper audit trail does NOT have to be voter-verified.

The paper must be produced by the voting SYSTEM, which Section 301 defines as going WAY beyond just the voting MACHINE. So a poll worker writing down lever machine results on a piece of paper is complying with the manual audit requirement.

Nowhere is there a mention of a PRINTER in HAVA Section 301.

Overvotes are not allowed on lever machines.

The voter can verify the ballot before casting it, and change it as many times as he or she wants to on a lever machine.

DREs, on average, have higher residual vote rates than lever machines.

HAVA specifically mentions lever machines in Sect. 301 where the requirements are listed.

Accessibility can be provided by an additional machine such as a ballot marker, but this does NOT mean the lever machines have to be REPLACED.

States have to return HAVA money for precincts that don't replace their lever machines, but this does NOT mean the lever machines have to be REPLACED.

The EAC has no authority to make law or regulations. So if they say there are no lever machines allowed, it is simply their OPINION.

They also say there don't have to be VVPATs, that it's OK to have DREs fail in high numbers on Election Day (based on their pathetically low reliability standard in their voting systems guidelines), and that it's OK to give out no-bid contracts to the guys who write the voting system standards so they can get paid with MY f#%king taxpayer money to edit their own f%^king work! See: http://www.epic.org/foia_notes/note11.html

So the EAC can stick their opinions where the sun don't shine, or for that matter, FLORIDA too!

If the DoJ says we have to replace lever machines, they are simply making a legal argument. A court will decide if they are right or wrong, but anyone reading HAVA, failing the passage of a bill such as HR 550, cannot say with a straight face that it rules out lever machines.

Clearly Junkdrawer, the state of PA is in deep shit though.

You have Democrats like the this Cortes SoS who are certifying machines that can't be audited.

You have machines being certified that don't count votes correctly during their state certification test.

They use the excuse that VVPATs violate voter privacy even though there are ways to randomize the VVPATs which do not allow them to be associated with individual voters.

The VVPAT can be cut and dropped into a ballot box.

The voters can randomly use more than one DRE at a polling place so their VVPATs can't be associated with them. This would even allow Diebold's toilet paper VVPATs. But even that is better than NO VVPAT at all, as long as there's a LAW to force the paper to be loaded into the thermal printer with the right side facing the print head! And of course there needs to be random audits and recounts when necessary.

People more clever than I can think of more clever ways to make VVPATs anonymous, but to use this red herring argument that VVPATs violate voter privacy, as PA has done, to justify machines with no independent audit capability is clearly a case of the Democrats caving in to pressure or other inducements from some vendors who don't want independently auditable machines.

I don't know where PA's Republicans stand, but it's not pretty when the Democratic party, that has historically protected voting rights, abrogates this responsibility in favor of election privatization with machines whose results can not be independently confirmed.

Where are those VVPAT bills in your legislature? Why haven't they been passed?

I am disgusted by the news from the Keystone state at the moment. Can't they read the fucking law, or the handwriting on the wall for that matter?

Rant over. Back to work everybody, nothing to see here.