Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org
A judge in New Jersey has threatened to pull the plug on the state’s Sequoia Advantage voting machines. State law requires voting systems be tested and certified by the state yet the only documents the state could find to show they certified the machines was a document from 1987. The judge has given the state 20 days to provide all documents that show there had been further testing and certification of changes to the original system. The judge also seems to have doubts as to whether Sequoia can successfully provide a state mandated vvpat printer for the Advantage machines by Jan. 2008. She has given the state three months to prove to her satisfaction that they have a good back-up plan.
Studies show that most voters do not verify the “paper trail” of their ballot, printed by a DRE; a fact denied by Common Cause and other groups who fervently defend the Holt Bill (HR-811). A voter verified paper audit trail printer on the machines in Sarasota County would have made little to no difference in the undervote rate in the CD-13 race. By contrast, voter-marked paper ballots are inherently verified by the voters, and thus provide a true record of voter intent and they would have made all the difference in the world in Sarasota County. …
**”Daily Voting News” is meant as a comprehensive listing of reports each day concerning issues related to election and voting news around the country regardless of quality or political slant. Therefore, items listed in “Daily Voting News” may not reflect the opinions of VotersUnite.Org or BradBlog.Com**
John
Thanks for beng there.
My latest poem
in your honor!
TO MARTIN JR
Like death’s really the end to this energy
And our votes have been counted
Fear-mongers think
American spirit can be drained
Without ever knowing
CREATOR
HEAL THIS COUNTRY
Hey Phil
long distance good energyto yOu.
“Advocates for voters with disabilities prefer DREs to paper ballots because DREs allow blind and otherwise physically challenged individuals to vote privately and independently. This may be why neither the Nelson nor Holt bill ban them.” –Michael Hickins internetnews
But advocates for voters with disabilities don’t prefer DREs. They want all voters to vote a secret ballot independently and in private. DREs are just the only thing that come close and are certified. They still fail in some areas like secrecy. If only one person uses a machine, observers can tell how they voted in the recount. And if the paper trail is in fact the ballot in a recount, that ballot hasn’t been verified. I think that is a basis for a court case right now that might be the end of the DRE. Holt’s bill gives the NIST until 2010 to think about it but we may get a court decision before then. Possibly before November 2008.
“…There’s all kind of innovation possible in making the verification of paper ballots accessible. It’s perfectly reasonable that it should be, but it doesn’t require a DRE to do that…” – Warren Stewart, policy director for VoteTrustUSA.org
So, it’s possible. To meet HAVA and allow equal protection to all voters. Not just marking the ballot but verification. Paper ballots alone don’t do that. There’s issues with the secrecy of all marking devices. This is the reason a lot of counties moved to all DRE voting because they had to comply with law and the cheapest way to do it was sign on to DREs certified by the Feds and certified by the States. Prior to 2000, elections were all done as cheap as possible. Now seems to be the time to blame the disabled community for NJ not testing machines or FL for not duct taping printers to their DREs. It’s ‘those people’. It’s ‘their’ fault DREs were forced on voters.
It’s entirely possible to have someone make a system. It’s perfectly reasonable to want one. Caltech/MIT can come up with…nothing yet. Except a study (singular, just one and it’s not easy to find that report) that voters don’t verify their votes. Paper voting is not “inherently verified”. HAVA requires second chance voting to cut down on overvotes and people who can’t figure out the intricate instruction of connect the head and tail of the arrow with a single line of blue or black ink. In a recent city council manual recount of 3788 ballots (Vote for three) there were 3030 undervotes and a winning margin of 2 votes. There were also 6 overvotes. It took 3 days for the four people to recount only one contest. That provision of HAVA was put in there because voting is not ‘inherent’.
Try the game yourself. How do you comply with a 2002 federal law? How do you get a secret vote out of someone who can’t use their hands, can’t see, can’t speak? Then how do you verify it? I don’t really see how it can be done. I think adding more bad laws onto bad laws is going to create bad elections. But trolls and shills are unreasonable.
Here’s a “backup” plan. HCPB ATP (at the precincts).
No, I’ve got a beter idea, let’s make THAT the plan, then there is little need for a backup plan. It is simple and inexpensive. So why return to such gtolden days of yore? When we can spend so much MORE now and get so much less transparency and ability to verify.
It all mkae sense, War is Peace and, well, you get the picture.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU Senator Specter!
I couldn’t be more proud of you!!
God Bless YOU!!!
Now if we could just get you Senator, and all other Senators and Representatives to under stand that PAPER BALLOTS are the best way to get us moving back toward the democracy our forefathers had in mind, we just might make it!
You seen this,.. ?
For a mere $82 a computer scientist and electronic voting critic managed to purchase five $5,000 Sequoia electronic voting machines over the internet last month from a government auction site. And now he’s taking them apart.
Princeton computer science professor Andrew Appel and his students have begun reverse-engineering the software embedded in the machines’ ROM chips to determine if it has any security holes. But Appel says the ease with which he and his students opened the machines and removed the chips already demonstrates that the voting machines are vulnerable to unauthorized modification.
http://www.wired.com/news/techn...l?tw=rss.index