Paperless voting machines are safe, say officials (WOW! WHAT A RELIEF!)

[elehhhhna]

DU'ers, you've never read such a load of baloney as this:

Paperless voting machines are safe, say officials

By Cheryl Skinner
A few Fort Bend County residents have expressed concerns pertaining to the proposed changes in the voting machines now under consideration by Fort Bend County Commissioners. A Voting Machine Fair will be held this week, April 7, in Stafford with public officials reviewing the options offered by five vendors who offer state certified voting machines.

Officials admit that going to the new machines would change the face of voting in Fort Bend County. The county received a $1.9 million grant from the state of Texas two weeks ago to assist in this change. Steve Raborn, Fort Bend County Elections Administrator, says he has received two e-mails expressing concerns over the apparent lack of a "paper trail" that will come from moving from paper ballot voting to electronic voting machines. While mandated paper trails may come in the future due to pending legislation at both the state and federal level, currently only one of the five state certified vendors who will show their wares this week offer a receipt to voters casting their ballots. Raborn said the vendor that does offer the option is basically a new vendor with few clients and, it is his understanding, that vendor does not offer options that others do for such things as a re-count and certified balloting by mail.

"I believe the increased accuracy of the electronic voting machines will far outweigh the drawbacks for not having a paper trail. The machines don’t let a voter over-vote nor do they allow under-voting and the problems of having a staff member try to determine the intent of the voter is removed. The chance of any type of problem related to a voter’s vote not counting as intended is infinitesimal," Raborn stressed.

Another issue brought forth by a voter is the fear that Fort Bend County would experience problems similar to those reported during the last election in Harris County where election judges failed to have the machines set up early at certain polling places. Raborn said Fort Bend County will have a "backup" option with regular paper ballots available should a machine shut down for any reason. He stressed that the problems experienced in Harris County were not due to a machine malfunction but a human error type situation.

http://www.fortbendstar.com/040605/n_Paperless%20voting%20machines%20are%20safe,%20say%20officials.htm

[seabeyond]

1. like 1 in 3, 1 in 4 votes that went to bush, when voting for kerry

in southern and southwestern texas...........

[BlueEyedSon]

2. Then where the heck did I get this rash?

[Snotcicles]

3. safe and rigged

[GOPisEvil]

4. Ms. Skinner, I have a question.

In those cases where a MANUAL recount is required by Texas state law, and where voting was done on paperless machines, just HOW are those manual recounts to be done?

[gollygee]

5. The officials who were elected thanks to them

or appointed by someone elected thanks to them, probably do think they're safe.

Maybe they should ask Senator Kerry.

[Hugin]

6. When you serve up stuff like this...

It'd be nice if you'd bring some bread and mustard...

I mean really, Condiments, people! Condiments!

Are we animals?

Thanks elehhhhna

:silly:

[Junkdrawer]

7. It has ALWAYS been the intensity of the fight to prevent audits...

that has convinced me that election theft has and will continue to be done.

Look at who fights the audits and you know who is in on the fix.

[tech3149]

8. I had to contact them on that article

here's my response

I almost could not finish reading Cheryl Skinner's article about the paperless voting machines, I just couldn't stop laughing. As an electronics technician, I have some experience wiith the reliability and accuracy of complicated systems. They always fail, that's why I have a job. The more complex the system is only increases the possibility of failure. KISS---keep it simple stupid!

[PeaceProgProsp]

9. Yeah, "safe." If paper cuts are your only concern.

[FreedomAngel82]

10. Texas is the key

That's the key here.

[redqueen]

11. An AUDIT TRAIL is what we need, not just receipts.

Of course, the world 'audit' is never mentioned in what this 'journalist' is attempting to pass off as an 'article'

[reality based]

12. Travis County (Austin) has a paperless emachine too

When people complained that their Kerry votes were showing up as Bush votes on review, county and party(!) officials appeared to blame the voter. When my wife and I voted, we independently found the system multi-step procedures to be unintuitive and easily susceptible to an inadvertent error that defaulted the vote to Bush even after the ballot had been marked for Kerry. I have an advanced degree and we both are computer literate. The rationalization of "user error" sounded like the "Democratic" election supervisor in Florida who justified the confusing butterfly ballot that disenfranchised enough Democrats to enthrone the current squatter. A system that is so easily susceptible to "inadvertent error" is a lousy system. The elitist response that people don't check their ballots properly is Republican talk. What we need is a voting system that is most likely to result in a fair democratic (small "d") outcome.

Some suggest that red state Bush totals could have been inflated to obtain a popular vote majority in order to discourage a challenge to fraud in swing states. I am sure that some of the votes counted for Bush in Travis County were actually Kerry votes from voters who made a subsequent mistake in closing out their ballots. The unintuitive procedural steps set up could have reasonably been foreseen to have that result. Just like a computerized interest formula that creates a seemingly insignificant bank error in each individual account, such a system can have predictable fraudulent consequences. Emachine voting without verifiable, audited paper records is like playing with fire.