Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org
In written testimony presented to the US House Information Policy, Census, and National Archives Subcommittee, Government Accountability Office representative Randolph Hite said in part:
Election officials, computer security experts, citizen advocacy groups, and others have raised significant concerns about the security and reliability of electronic voting systems, citing vague or incomplete standards, weak security controls, system design flaws, incorrect system configuration, poor security management and inadequate security testing, among other issues. Many of these security and reliability concerns are legitimate and thus merit the combined and focused attention of federal, state, and local authorities responsible for election administration.
That story, and many other voting related stories from today, all linked below…
If decision stands, county would have to provide data regarding e-voting machines LINK
Florida Senate goes for deal on paper ballots LINK
Dem Party chairman may keep machines at home even though he’s seeking election, panel rules. LINK
**”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**
Why won’t any of the enlightened activists point out to me which text in HR 811 and S. 559 is the evil text?
What text specifically mandates, allows for, or advocates DRE’s?
Put up or shut up please.
Dredd, stop running around all over the place.
Answers have (once again) been posted in response to your other posts elsewhere.
As for the near-identical legislative mashups hr.811 and s.559… the bills that that I collectively refer to as “Holt II”… the core of the matter is laid open here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums...591/46591.html
Zapkitty, I didn’t know I needed a hall pass or that you are the new hall monitor.
Are you a republican? You keep avoiding the question and trying to take over the conversation.
A simple post of the offending text would be the appropriate response. Otherwise it looks like you are just parroting someone else.
I really would like to know what text in the S. 559 / HR 811 legislation upholds DRE technology. Very simple … anyone else want to be serious here and discuss it?
Zapkitty, I didn’t know I needed a hall pass or that you are the new hall monitor. 🙂
Are you a republican? You keep avoiding the question and trying to take over the conversation … so that makes we wonder.
A simple post of the offending text would be the appropriate response. Otherwise it looks like you are just parroting someone else.
I really would like to know what text in the S. 559 / HR 811 legislation some people think upholds DRE technology.
Very simple … anyone else want to be serious here and discuss it?
“Otherwise it looks like you are just parroting someone else.”
?… Does it matter where the facts came from if they are indeed independently verifiable facts? Anyway, the work I quoted is the work of many people, myself included.
Dredd, as noted elsewhere (in another of the monotonously similiar threads you’ve started on this subject), the text is the exact same text you keep trumpeting as “paper ballots over all”… and we, others here as well as myself, keep telling you that you’re refusing to see the booby trap laid within the very text you’re getting so excited about… so one last time…
For purposes of this clause, examples of such a ballot include a paper ballot marked by the voter for the purpose of being counted by hand or read by an optical scanner or other similar device, a paper ballot prepared by the voter to be mailed to an election official (whether from a domestic or overseas location), a paper ballot created through the use of a ballot marking device or system, or a paper ballot produced by a touch screen or other electronic voting machine, so long as in each case the voter is permitted to verify the ballot in a paper form in accordance with this subparagraph.So you have an orgasm over the words “paper ballot” without noticing that it’s literally an oxymoron…. “paper ballot produced by a touch screen or other electronic voting machine”… …
…oh…
…I see (said the blind kitty)…
… no that would be too… simplistic…
… Dredd. just because “Holt II” doesn’t mention Direct Record Electronic machines by name are you
thinking that they’re somehow not included under “electronic voting machines”?
That would be very silly. As they are the 900 pound gorilla in the e-voting arena to even think they’d not be included in the bill’s legalese is not optimistic… it’s delusional 🙂
(…come to think of it that concept’s just about as delusional as some of the other details of the bill… scary thought…)
So, beyond that strangeness… the bill says that a printout that is supposed to be a representation of the electromagnetic, ephemeral, and very unverifiable pseudo-ballot that a DRE actually produces, stores , and counts… this post-facto printout is to be called a “paper ballot”. But there is no language in the bill that requires any particular one of these supposed “paper ballots” to ever, ever be counted.
It’s just tossed in a box, stored for a while and eventually thrown away. The electronic count that a DRE produces is used to decide the election results.
The unverified and unverifiable electronic count of the DRE’s pseudo-ballots.
The bill refers to the electronic count, saying that if there is any problem with the electronic count then the DRE printouts will supercede the electronic count… assuming that anyone realizes there is a problem… except where hr.811 says the states don’t really have to recount the DRE printouts and except where both bills say that if the paper has been messed with then the paper is thrown out and the DRE’s electronic counts rule… yet again… but all this assumes that anyone even knows that there is a problem…
In reality the DRE pseudo-ballot… (electromagnetic, ephemeral, unverified by the voter and actually saying only Bast knows what)…. the DRE pseudo-ballot is received, stored, and counted by the system while the DRE printout, wrongly called a “paper ballot”, hits the printer tray, falsely reassures the voter that everything must be okay, and then is dumped into a storage bin never to be seen again.
Zapkitty
A touch screen is not ipso facto a direct recording electronic for heavens sake.
I can think of many meanings for “direct recording electronic” (DRE). There is no single meaning. An 8-track tape, a video camera, a phonograph, a satellite in orbit, etc. ad nauseum, would qualify.
But a paper ballot produced by a computer, touch screen, or other electronic machine, which must also meet the standard of “being counted by hand or read by an optical scanner or other similar device” has only one meaning.
Sorry, your imagination has gotten the best of you and has mislead you on this issue.
Imagine a printer printing a paper ballot from data on that electronic voting machine.
Then imagine an election official giving it to the voter for voter verification.
Then imagine all of those paper ballots in a ballot box permanently, being hand counted if need be (if the electronic voting machine tally is challenged).
Then imagine where your imagination ran away with your exegesis and hermeneutics.
Dredd…
DRE has a distinct technical definition.
That definition is not subject to debate.
That definition is not subject to your interpretation.
National Institute of Standards and Technology.
http://vote.nist.gov/threats/dre.htm
Threats to Voting SystemsDirect Recording Electronic (DRE) Devices
Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems directly record the voter's selections in each race or contest on the ballot in electronic form.
And then Dredd said:
“Then imagine all of those paper ballots in a ballot box permanently, being hand counted if need be (if the electronic voting machine tally is challenged).”
Ah, a step closer to the truth. It’s not like
questioning Gonzalesclubbing baby seals after all 🙂If… if the EVM tally is challenged? And when it isn’t?
Then the DRE pseudo-ballots, unverified by the voter, unverifiable by any voter, are the only thing counted from the DRE machines and the DRE paper printouts are just so much wasted paper. 97% are shelved without ever being counted. And the 3% audit rate is not sufficient to deter or catch fraud… especially as the
RNCfraudsters will know they only have to game a 3% audit.If there is a challenge then perhaps the DRE printouts may be be counted… or not … hr.811 allows states to decline paper recounts and only allow DRE “recounts”. (pseudo-recounts? 😉 )
The only thing in this discussion that can be called my imagination is my deductions as to why the Democrats are going along with something so mind-bogglingly stupid and as damaging to them as the installation of the EAC as a permament Executive Branch office.
Everything else I’ve told you is actually simple facts laid out in in the text of the bills themselves.
I have to go with Zapkitty.
All touchscreens should be banned to punish the companies that produced them if for nothing else. I filled in a paper ballot in the midterms and it was easy as pie. We live in the 21st century and printers should be able to print out a ballot in any language that can be counted by hand or a scanner with perfect auditing, (yes, we can do it) procedures, and public observation.
Forget ANY election results on ANY computer chip!
… Larry Bergan said…
“I have to go with Zapkitty.”
Yay!
… where are we going? 🙂
“All touchscreens should be banned to punish the companies that produced them if for nothing else.”
Yes, all touchscreens in fast food restaurants must go now! All library touchscreens out the door now! All dialysis touchscreens in hospitals must be scrapped immediately! All touchscreens must go!
For the message-impaired: saying that “touchscreens must go” is over-generalizing. A touchscreen is just a way of interfacing with a given device, it is not the device itself.
So if you are objecting to DRE’s then “Touchscreen DRE’s must go” properly qualifies what you mean.
Otherwise people who believe (often mistakenly) that disabled folks require touchscreens to vote will say that you are trying to disenfranchise the disabled… when instead what you meant is that the DREs must go, but the touchscreen ballot-marking devices are fine.
The Vote-PAD designed by Ellen Theisen could be used to save our environment and help handicapped people!
Since the touchscreens in all of those other areas you mentioned probably, actually work, I don’t have a problem with them unless a more environmentally safe devise can be devised by, oh, let’s say somebody like Ellen Theisen for example.
I love handicapped people, because they probably don’t vote for today’s Republicans.
That being said, you are one contrary dude, aren’t you! 😉
Dredd:
You are obviously much smarter then I am in the fields of law and politics, and you may be right about passing bill no matter what, but I have waited long enough for a fair election, and I’m going for broke.
Not that I have any influence anyway, but I have this forum, and I’m using it.
Thanks Brad! You will shortly be getting your next installment. I just paid off a $1,425 income tax bill and it left me dry. I wish to hell it wasn’t being used for Bush’s “surge!”