John Gideon: NO Sequoia voting system meets voting systems standards

[FogerRox]

From Brad Blog:


NM: Agreement Reached On Voting Machine Purchase Freeze
SoS Decides It Will Be Better To Wait For The Court To Make A Decision
Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org According to a January 3 article on VoteTrustUSA , Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron delayed the purchase of 800 Sequoia Edge...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon
According to a January 3 article on VoteTrustUSA, Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron delayed the purchase of 800 Sequoia Edge touch screen voting machines that some New Mexico counties had chosen to meet federal accessibility requirements.

On January 5 Voter Action amplified and corrected the statements of the Secretary. In their press release, Voter Action said:

"The Secretary of State has said the reason to buy the Sequoia AVC Edge touchscreen voting machines is to make voting easier for disabled voters, as required by the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA). In fact, the Edge machines fail to accommodate the disabled or meet HAVA requirements, as shown in a powerful and detailed expert affidavit filed by the plaintiffs. In addition, the machines lack printers to produce voter verifiable and auditable paper ballots, as required by the New Mexico Election Code, and do not accurately record and count votes, as required by the New Mexico Constitution. To the contrary, the Sequoia Edge voting system has a record of losing thousands of votes, switching votes, and failing to record votes cast in Spanish."

John Gideon continues:
NOTE: There is presently NO Sequoia voting system that meets the presently in force voting systems standards. The best that Sequoia can do is to meet standards that are 15 years old. Today this reporter called the Election Assistance Commission and I was told that Sequoia has nothing close to federal qualification at this time. This means that counties who have purchased their voting machines on the promise of being compliant by January 1, 2006 cannot meet the Help America Vote Act of 2002 accessibility mandates.





http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002244.htm

[FogerRox]

1. John is right-- I have seen both the Advantage & Edge DREs

they are both too high for Wheelchair voters, clearly a violation of HAVA, Title III, section 301. Which mandates handicapped access. That would mean wheelchairs? Right?

And dont forget-- "Election Reform, Fraud and related news" thread for saturday 1-7-06 in the Election reform forum:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x408144

[autorank]

7. Kick

[ellenfl]

2. does this mean that they will not be compliant on florida either?

we have them here in palm beach county. so far i have been voting absentee because i don't trust the machines. of course, i expect that my paper ballot could get deep-sixed anyway.

ellen fl

[FogerRox]

3. We are both refering to FEDERAL law. These Sequoia Machines cannot be used

in a Federal election in 2006, according to HAVA. Heres a bit more-

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2353378&mesg_id=2353402

[EFerrari]

4. kick

[Wilms]

5. .

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. Surely, there must never EVER again be an unspoken but

automatic moratorium on the rule of law on the occasions when elections are held.

The laws on elections were surely intended to have as much force as the other laws of the land, at all times. Instead, during the last two elections, a partisan, Republican, blanket moratorium on the most outrageous and widespread criminality has prevailed, with agents of the law, from judges to the most junior deputy-sheriffs hearing no evil and seeing no evil.

In the past, the history and culture underlying this phenomenon involved both parties, and it may be only the manifest landslide victory that Kerry was going to and did obtain, and Clinton's popularity, which eliminated or at least reduced the involvement of the Democrats in such unabashed wholesale criminality; and the muted response of the Democrats to the two recent, successive Republican coups d'etat.

It seems that part of the show-time ballyhoo, the spectacle and excitement and the flow of adrenaline on the campaign trail, and notably at the conventions, must play a part in it. It is as if elections were sporting events, with local home-town umpires - well, more like pro boxing referees really - replacing federal and local law enforcement of what are most serious crimes against the American people. If it is a culpable offence in industrial relations, surely, "constructive dismissal" from participation in elections, i.e. voter suppression in all its sinister criminal panoply of forms amounts to the same thing, indeed, is thoroughly felonious under the general penal code, the law of the land.


The penal code should ensure that the minimum sanctions against perverting and corrupting elections are swingeing, and a fierce culture of enforcement built up, covering the whole field, from voter suppression to extra-terrestrial voting machines, whose technology must remain the most profund mystery; ideally maybe a kind of dedicated federal agency of "untouchables" should be created. Elections should be very sedate and civilized affairs, and not passionate free-for-alls.

Of course, the presidential pardon system needs to be eliminated completely. It is an implicit admission of the weakness and failure of your national system of government, if the President and commander-in-Chief, himself, always has seriously criminal friends he wants to escape justice and enables them to do so. I imagine it is the most highly-prized perk of the Oval Office, since they are usually crooked businessmen providing the Nation's C-in-C with funds with which to campaign for his election.

[EFerrari]

8. kick

[katinmn]

9. Gaining traction!

Check out www.votetrustusa.org for an encouraging compilation of news on outright rejection and lawsuits concerning e-voting machines, all of which are the result of citizen activists.

And sign the letter to the Election Assistance Commission urging them to decertify and retest machines in violation of the law. Six thousand such letters were sent on Wednesday alone. http://www.congressweb.com/cweb4/index.cfm?orgcode=VTUSA&hotissue=4

[Bill Bored]

10. kick nt

[texpatriot2004]

11. No transparent elections = NO DEMOCRACY. Thanks Brad nm

[greiner3]

12. Imagine the voter fraud the repugs could do with;

Say, internet voting. The outcome would be known before the voting, saving all those 'useless' polls.

[gulliver]

13. I put my faith in IEEE.

http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/scc38/1583/
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/scc38/index.htm

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a reality-based organization with world class technical firepower and standards-making authority. If/when they publish their standard, it will be difficult for anyone to sell a system that doesn't meet it. Lots of IEEE standards end up as American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards as well.

I personally doubt that (even absent the standards) there are any actual Diebold voting shenanigans going on, by the way. They would be crazy to do that. As in the O.J. trial, Diebold and its "co-conspirators" would need to be both God-like in their ability to maintain a conspiracy and Devil-like in their willingness to do so. They almost certainly aren't either.

I do agree that the whole issue is not getting the heat it deserves. I guess these HAVA standards allow the manufacturers to claim standards-compliance. It's really appalling how screwed up this important area is. It's a true scandal. If I had to guess, I would say Diebold loves the controversy.

[Wilms]

14. I'd like to have faith in the IEEE.

But reading through a bit of the email for that working group, it seems as though that board may have been "freeped" by voting machine vendors.