EXCELLENT Synopsis of the Ballot Definition Programming Problem!

[Bill Bored]

If you're ready to get SERIOUS about e-voting, read this excellent editorial from Iowa:


<http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060702/OPINION02/607020301/1018>

The faulty programming affected every race on the ballot, and the county ordered a full hand recount of all races.

-snip-

Was the Pottawattamie error an isolated incident? Hardly...Election Systems and Software, has a track record of ballot programming errors across the United States. In 2006 alone, ES&S has made major programming mistakes in Texas, Indiana, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Arkansas.

The last several years also offer a rich history of ES&S mistakes, races in which straight-party votes failed to record at all, or recorded for the wrong party's candidates. Races in which all the votes went to one candidate, or were exactly reversed.

-snip-

So, at least these errors create results so skewed that reasonably attentive election officials catch the problem quickly, right? Sorry, but no.

-snip-

Ballot programming by out-of-state voting machine companies should be banned, and citizens and political party representatives should be allowed to audit the programming before and after the election.

Full article also available at:

<http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1460&Itemid=113>

This guy has it exactly right! Do you think you can handle this DUers?

These are REAL e-voting problems -- not just theories. They happen all the time. And anyone who's anyone in computers or who has ever studied Freud knows that anything that can happen accidentally can be MADE to happen deliberately. (In fact Freud believed there ARE NO accidents, but I digress.)

Now K&R this and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT before we have another Pottawattamie in a county near you in November!