The Voting Machine Company is Deciding Whether or Not the GAO Will be Allowed to Examine Their Shitty Voting Systems...
By Brad Friedman on 8/4/2007, 6:01pm PT  

Blogged by Brad from Texas...

Meanwhile...Back in Florida's 13th Congressional District, where Christine Jennings has already announced plans to run again in 2008 for the seat she almost certainly already won in 2006, but hasn't been allowed to sit in it due to ES&S's touch-screen voting machines standing in the way of democracy...

WASHINGTON --- Federal investigators have found several potential shortcomings in previous state and local reviews of the disputed election results in Sarasota County's November election, keeping them from ruling out the prospect that the touch-screen voting machines were compromised.

That, from Sarasota Herald-Tribune, despite Sarasota County's still-unresigned Supervisor of Elections and democracy-hater-in-chief, Kathy Dent hiding shamelessly behind the skirts of the flawed and misrepresented state-convened "audit" of the voting systems used in her disastrously run election. The federal investigators from the GAO seems to be countering the state's and Dent's assertions that their own review proved that 'there was nothing wrong with the voting systems.'

Our sources say that the GAO reports that "gaps" were found during their investigation. Though --- as with nearly everything involving E-voting --- the investigation into what happened last November is shrouded in secrecy for now. So it remains unclear to the lowly voters as to what those "gaps" are that the GAO has discovered and which may have aborted their preferred choice of representation in the U.S. House...

The GAO was tasked by Congress with investigating the race when Jennings filed a federal challenge after being announced the "loser" by 369 votes even as 18,000 votes completely disappeared on the crappy, hackable ES&S voting machines in Sarasota.

And with the '08 campaign already under way, and the Republican who almost certainly lost in '06 casting votes in the U.S. House, our E-Democracy in action brings us this ongoing perversion where...

Jennings' legal team has been unable to get the source code, which the voting machine manufacturer says is proprietary and should not be made public. But the GAO said it was granted permission to review ES&S' source code last week.

[Senior GAO technologist, Nabajyoti] Barkakati said the GAO investigators were not allowed to take the source code to their offices for more testing. The GAO is working on confidentiality agreements with ES&S for more source code testing. GAO officials are expected to meet with ES&S officials at their Nebraska headquarters later this month to go over the company's testing procedures.
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The GAO said it has no timetable for when it will finish the investigation.

Gosh, we sure hope the private ES&S corporation sees fit to allow federal investigators to investigate what happened in a federal election for a U.S. House seat being challenged under the Federal Contested Elections Act.

That, of course, will be up to the corporate heads of ES&S, in whom Florida has entrusted their democracy.

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