Yet another voting machine company — a small-ish one, MicroVote — may soon be out of business, or so it claims in response to a court decision in Indiana, where the judge has had the temerity to actually bother enforcing the rule of law and holding a voting machine company to an actual standard. Go figure. Of course, we’re broken hearted about it…
The Marion Circuit Court says MicroVote missed a filing deadline to challenge a fine for selling uncertified equipment. The Indianapolis company didn’t get its machines recertified until a week before the 2006 primary.
“We just can’t tolerate vendors that have this lackadaisical attitude toward proper certification and say, ‘Well, nothing bad really happened, so there’s no reason to go after us like this,'” says Deputy Secretary of State Matt Tusing. “We simply enforce the laws that are currently in place.”
MicroVote attorney John R. Price argues the decertification wasn’t MicroVote’s fault. In 2005, Congress required all voting-machine manufacturers to be recertified.
An administrative law judge recommended last week that MicroVote be banned from selling machines in Indiana for five years. The Indiana Election Commission must decide whether to follow that recommendation, which Price warns would put the company out of business.
MicroVote supplies voting machines to 49 of Indiana’s 92 counties.
Not sure which law they refer to when they say that “In 2005, Congress required all voting-machine manufacturers to be recertified.” Are they talking about the Indiana state legislature? Or did the reporter just get it wrong here? Color us clueless, but too busy to dig deeper for the moment. Your help comments are welcome if you know what the hell they’re referring to there.
Back in April of 2006, as John Gideon had been covering the impending Train Wreck for The BRAD BLOG, he noted that the state had “found that MicroVote had installed software uncertified by both the fed and the state in voting machines of 47 Indiana counties.”
He further reported that counties found themselves in the unenviable position of having to choose between using uncertified software or otherwise ignoring both federal and state laws requiring a voting device for those with disabilities. “Some counties are choosing to ignore state law and use the uncertified machines,” Gideon wrote at the time.
Meanwhile in Florida Spakovsky’s back again…
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoin...ses_ruling.php
I think it is great that some people have the money to hire lawyers to take this issue to court.
Are any of you old enough to remember the days of hand counting paper ballots ? Yes there was some crimes commited during these times but on a whole not anything like today.
Plus paper ballots with humans counting the votes made for jobs for people who needed anything they could get at that time . They were paid for the training process plus for however long it took to count each and every ballot. Now a days with the economy being in the shape its in this would help so many Americans to eat for a week ! Yes folks I know people who cant afford food right now as I am sure you all so also. I really hope that some groups of people can get a law suit going in every state. Not only does this bring back the paper ballot but will help out so many people if they could get hired to work on the count. I need to go back and find the article of who owns these machines they use to steal the votes but I do remember reading that the company was a Israeli company . Outsourcing anyone ? I want our jobs back hell I want my country back .
There may be some good in this if other voting machine companies will get it … will see that things are not always going to go their way when they allow and even promote corruption.
Sadly, the reason big companies may be out of reach (and other companies, like the one mentioned here, are the sacrificial lambs) is the price of lawyers.
Corrupt lawyers that can protect the corruption are expensive, and can cost a diebold safe full of buckeroos to “git r dun”.
Heads up newly registered or change of address voters in PA, here’s what’s happening to all the new registrations. It seems if you didn’t have a driver’s liscense to verify your registration, then your social secruity verification is so backlogged because guess what… the social security computers are down for maintenance every single night. Hmmm…makes me wonder, more stalling techniques? Any way, if you fit into either of these catagories and have photo id’s take it with you when you go to vote or you’ll be voting provisional, and we all know what that means! Listen for yourself:
http://www.witf.org/election200...trationjen.mp3