Fate of $25M (DR)e-voting System in Miami-Dade Dangling

[Wilms]

Fate of $25M e-voting system in Miami-Dade dangling

Ongoing technical glitches have prompted elections officials in Florida's Miami-Dade County, famous for the hanging-chad controversy in the disputed 2000 presidential election, to consider scrapping a US$25 million investment in the county's electronic voting system in favor of optical scanning gear.

Ongoing technical glitches have prompted elections officials in Florida's Miami-Dade County, famous for the hanging-chad controversy in the disputed 2000 presidential election, to consider scrapping a US$25 million investment in the county's electronic voting system in favor of optical scanning gear.

Miami-Dade now uses touch-screen iVotronic machines from Omaha-based Election Systems & Software Inc. (ES&S) that was installed in 2002 to remedy flaws in the paper-based system. After a special election last month -- during which a glitch left hundreds of votes uncounted -- and the subsequent resignation of the county elections supervisor, officials in Miami-Dade County are considering their electoral options.

"Quite frankly, if you talk to a number of people, they have lost confidence and are cynical about whether their votes count," said Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez. "That has to be changed. We need to do something where we can restore the confidence of the people in the electoral process -- and that boils down to the equipment. The equipment is problematic."

http://www.pcwelt.de/news/englishnews/109811

[Peace Patriot]

1. Bust the Machines--Vote Absentee! Citizen rebellion against the

rigged electronic voting machines. Don't cooperate! Don't vote on them! Flood election officials with MOUNTAINS of paper Absentee Ballots and force them to deal with it. AB voting is not safe either, but it IS non-cooperation! Make their expensive, shiny, new, election theft machines gather dust! Make the people who bought them look like the corrupt fools they are! Resist! If enough people do it, we will have the clout to force them to count AB votes by hand and announce the results BEFORE the AB votes are scanned into the rigged electronics. And, if we can do that, we will have reformed the system, right there! PAPER BALLOTS, HAND COUNTED. A count of votes with no Diebold/ES&S "trade secret" code intervening.

AB voting is growing by leaps and bounds (up to 50% in Los Angeles already). If all the people who despise the Bush junta (65%-70%!) vote by Absentee Ballot, we've got 'em! We've thrown enough of a monkey wrench into this rigged system to shut it down.

Throw Diebold, ES&S and ALL these election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW! Paper ballots, hand counted NOW!

[Awsi Dooger]

2. I think that was last year

The article doesn't have a date but I'm fairly certain that was 2005. I was in Miami last summer and read an article indicating the new elections supervisor did recommend the switch in his report to the county manager, the report mentioned as forthcoming at the end of that link, but I'm not sure if anything happened as a result.

I just checked the county elections website and it's still raving about iVotronic.: http://elections.miamidade.gov/voting_how_to.asp

[Wilms]

3. Interesting screw up by electionline

http://electionline.org/ElectionlineToday/tabid/84/Default.aspx

Seemed odd, too, that it's foreign published.

Thanks for the catch.

[eomer]

4. Yes, this article was sometime shortly before 5/27/05.

Last line of the article says "A report will be delivered to the county manager on May 27". SOE Sola did deliver the report on 5/27/05.

During the same time that Sola was preparing the report, he was also in the process of hiring an ES&S contractor, Michael Johnson, to become Deputy Supervisor in charge of "Electronic Voting Services".

The Miami Herald reported on the report and then, after that, the issue just seemed to disappear from the radar screen. The Herald, the SOE, the County Manager have all just let the issue die and we are stuck with the ES&S paperless DREs. Let's see what happens in the primary on Sept 5.