States throw out costly electronic voting machines

[LynneSin]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080819/ap_on_re_us/election_junk_1

States throw out costly electronic voting machines

The demise of touch-screen voting has produced a graveyard of expensive corpses: Warehouses stacked with thousands of carefully wrapped voting machines that have been shelved because of doubts about vanishing votes and vulnerability to hackers.

What to do with this high-tech junkyard is a multimillion-dollar question. One manufacturer offered $1 a piece to take back its ATM-like machines. Some states are offering the devices for sale on eBay and craigslist. Others hope to sell their inventories to Third-World countries or salvage them for scrap.

A few more are holding out hope that the machines, some of which were purchased for as much as $5,000, could one day be resurrected.

"We store them very, very carefully in the hopes that someone, someday may decide that we can use them again," said San Diego County Registrar Deborah Seiler, whose jurisdiction spent $25 million on the devices.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. After the disputed 2000 presidential recount, Congress provided more than $3 billion to replace punch card and lever-operated machines. State officials across the country said the new systems would eliminate human error and political tampering.

But problems with the machines soon followed: vanishing votes, breakdowns, malfunctions and increasing evidence that the devices were vulnerable to hackers.

Beginning last year, states including California, Ohio and Florida abruptly ordered election officials to mothball their electronic machines. Over the last two years, the percentage of registered voters relying on touch-screen technology dropped from 44 percent to 36 percent.

In November, when the presidential race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain ends, an estimated 57 percent of voters will rely on paper ballots.

[flamingdem]

1. good riddance! nt

[Indenturedebtor]

2. Rip out the guts and make them into fish tanks n/t

[NYC_SKP]

3. Far more costly to keep them...

...If you know what I mean!

:patriot:

[Bucky]

4. Is this because of fraud or because of global warming?

I switched from an electric to a safety razor over 20 years ago, but I was trying to fight global cooling. And rashes.

[Alexander]

5. Good. Maybe the vote-stealing will decrease this year.

[LynneSin]

7. Only by 8% but they'll find other ways to steal them

This is why every DUer who can feasible travel on election day should get to the Urban centers were there is a greater chance of vote theft. I usually go to Philly but I honestly think PA is a safe state this year and may consider traveling to a swing state where my help could be needed like Ohio.

BTW true story. In 2004 I worked the voting polls in Philly in a district that had a very high number of Russian immigrants that lived in the area. We even had voting information to hand out to the voters that was written in Russian to cater to this group.

Well about every hour or so a girl would show up that said she was a translator and she was sent to (get this) go into the voting booths and help those who only speak Russian to vote. I shit you not. Thing is - there was a handout given to these people ahead of time that helped to translate the voting booths which was pre-approved by both parties. Fortunately there was a lawyer on had working with us that would put a stop to this each time a new person was sent.

[ContinentalOp]

6. This is ridiculous. Why can't we sue? Those machines were FAULTY.

Those companies should be sued out of existence. They were supposed to deliver secure machines and they didn't.

[LynneSin]

8. Seriously - San Diego county bought $25 million in defective voting equipment

I know I'd want to sue!

[demodonkey]

9. Well Pennsylvania will still have 7 million voters in 50 counties on paperless machines!

Come to http://www.votePA.us if you want to learn more and help us fight this.

[DFW]

10. Florida and Ohio ditching them is BIG news.

Can you sing, Bye Bye Blackwell?

[truthisfreedom]

11. Answer: Class-Action Lawsuit. Make the f***ers pay for their fraud.

Hit 'em where it hurts... the wallet.

[Qutzupalotl]

14. YES

Forced recall!

[valerief]

12. Who cares now. The country has already been stolen. nt

[suziedemocrat]

13. YIPPIE!!!!!! DU deserves A LOT ofcredit for this.

I came to DU because of the botched 2004 election. I was enraged. Not just because Kerry lost, which was bad enough, but because I felt our Democracy was at stake. If you remember, kos wrote an angry note saying discussions about the integrity of the election were not allowed on his site. So, I came to DU and stayed.

This gives me, hope again. Way to go DU'ers!!!!

[Peace Patriot]

15. Hey, Suziedemocrat! I remember! That's what brought me here, too!

And I have never been back to D-kos, cuz anybody who engages in political analysis who doesn't consider who owns the 'TRADE SECRET' code in the voting machines, and what they can easily--EASILY!--do with it, is a putz.

[Peace Patriot]

16. Deborah Seiler is one of the most corrupt Reg of Voters in Calif, totally in bed

with the fuckwad wingers at Diebold and ES&S, and her statement is a threat:

"'We store them very, very carefully in the hopes that someone, someday may decide that we can use them again,' said San Diego County Registrar Deborah Seiler, whose jurisdiction spent $25 million on the devices."

Who the fuck is she talking about? "...someone, someday...". She and her Puke pals ran one good Calif Sec of State out of office--on entirely bogus corruption charges--one of the most honest office holders in the U.S. of A., and probably THE best Sec of State at the time--Kevin Shelley--after he sued Diebold's ass, six months prior to the 2004 (s)election, for the lies they told him about the security of their machines. Seiler & co. then got Diebold shill Bruce McPherson installed as Sec of State (Schwarzenegger appointment of a Republican Sec of State to replace elected Democrat Shelley), who immediately started undoing all of Shelley's reforms. At that point, fired up election reformers and the Progressive Democrats of California got on the case, and put up a spectacular and successful fight at the state Democratic convention to endorse open-government advocate and long time state legislator Debra Bowen, who is an expert in electronics in government and smart as a whip, and managed to get her elected in 2006. Bowen started off by decertifying every voting machine in the state, and putting them back through a more stringent certification process, and by banning touchscreens and requiring a ballot for every vote. She then promulgated some new rules, including a rule that TEN PERCENT of the ballots WILL BE COUNTED, in very close races...

....whereupon Ms. Diebold, Deborah Seiler, and several other of the most corrupt Registrars in California, sued Secretary Bowen to stop the new rules. They lost. The new rules stand. And San Diegans might like to ask about that colossal waste of their tax money.

So-o-o...who is that "someone" who may "someday" permit these outright election theft machines--the touchscreens--back into our election system?

Gee, I wonder who's got Diebold, ES&S and other rightwing nutball money lined up to run against Bowen for Sec of State, maybe intending to cause deliberate confusion about the "Debra" and "Deborah"--or worse, colluding on a Rove black ops and corporate media project like the one they got Shelley with?

I will celebrate the day that Deborah Seiler finally goes to jail for her dirty connections to Diebold and ES&S, and her godawful betrayal of the voters of San Diego, California and the U.S.

Deborah Seiler is the former chief salesperson for Diebold in California.

[Peace Patriot]

17. While we should celebrate the moth-balling of the most obvious election theft machines--

--the touchscreens--we should be aware that, with the optiscan machines--the corporate ruler and Democratic Party fallback position, in my opinion (they expected opposition to the outrageously fascist touchscreens)--though the optiscans have a paper ballot, some states do a ZERO audit (never count a single ballot) and even the best of states count only 1%--miserably inadequate in a 'TRADE SECRET' code system. And that is the situation in about 60% of the voting systems. The other 40% are worse--still have NO VERIFICATION CAPABILITY WHATSOEVER.

ALL the votes are tabulated by 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations--whether with touchscreens or optiscans (and including mail-in ballots). The public has NO RIGHT TO REVIEW THIS SECRET CODE! Our voting system has been privatized--a fascist coup that occurred during the 2002-2004 period, as a result of a bill passed by the Anthrax Congress, which provided a $3.9 billion electronic voting boondoggle to fast-track these private, corporate voting systems all over the country.

By comparison, in Venezuela they use electronic voting, but it is an OPEN SOURCE CODE system--anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated--and they hand-count a whopping 55% of the votes, as a check on machine fraud.

Some experts say that we need a MINIMUM of 10% hand-counting to detect electronic fraud. We are not even close to the MINIMUM audit needed, anywhere in the U.S.

In summary: Rightwing corporations can easily--EASILY!--steal the 2008 election. Whether they will do so--or do something smarter with totally wrongful power, such as letting Obama win but seriously shaving his mandate, and inflicting him with a difficult, 'Blue Dog' Congress (like the current one)--is really the only question remaining. Will they let him win, or not?

We could conceivably outvote the machines, with a huge turnout--against the will of the Corporate Rulers. I think this is possible (given the nature of the system, which, for one thing, needs to be pre-programmed, in multiple jurisdictions, with correctly calibrated malicious code--what if they're off in their guess as to how much to flip the vote?). But it's like we're hanging over a cliff by one finger, and hoping Spider Man will swing by, to rescue us. Given the other humongous problems in our election system (money, media), there is but a slim chance that the people could defy the Corporate Ruler's decision. Citizen vigilance--monitoring of election officials and polls--is also helpful. Even if they won't let us see what's going on, vigilance is a deterrent. And monitoring the polls also helps educate citizens as just how non-transparent the vote counting is.

We need to be prepare for another stolen election, psychologically--and, whatever the outcome, pledge relentless citizen activism to get rid of ALL 'TRADE SECRET' CODE from our system, and restore vote counting that everyone can see and understand--no matter how difficult that struggle is, no matter how long it takes, and no matter who is (s)elected by the Corporate Rulers to rule over us.

None of them--neither the President nor Vice President, nor members of Congress, nor other public officials, and neither Democrats nor Republicans in power, can prove that he or she was actually elected. That is our situation. There is no proof. The proof has been hidden away in a 'black box' behind a curtain of goddamned lies about the 'security' of our voting system. It is 99% to 100% non-transparent and extremely vulnerable to insider hacking.