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ALL of the current voting machines are flawed, because they are run with proprietary code (i.e., secret). We need a new voting machine industry based on open source software and hardware that is regulated.

http://www.BradBlog.com is all over this issue.

Think on this: regardless of what the software says the chips manufactured abroad could be programmed to produce other results and what is recorded on the computer’s DRE storage isn’t necessarily the same as what would be printed on the tissue paper trail which isn’t even legally a ballot which has ANY meaning, even for a recount.

I can see what a pencil or printer marks on a ballot and it can be reviewed by everyone and recounted. You can’t do that with a computer and black box vote storage.

There were also a lot of precincts where more votes were recorded than there were registered voters. Clearly a computer can record as many votes as is needed to change the outcome.

Paper ballots all the way!

Of course, you could use a touchscreen computer to help people select their candidates, but you still need a printed paper ballot to see what the vote was. Thus, computer-aided vote casting and printing with hand counting is one way of going. Another is just old-fashioned fill-in-the-circle voting with a pencil on paper.

California’s SoS Bowen is our hero on this. She’s gonna turn the whole country against those machines.

The best proposed legislation on this is H.R. 811, proposed by Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ-12) [voters in the 12th have bumper stickers that say My Congressman Is a Rocket Scientist].

It’s a great bill, with a underlying principles about how technology can be a help, but there must be vote integrity at every step of the process of voting and counting those votes. See here for more information. Then call/write/fax/email your representative, and ask them to be a cosponsor of this legislation.

Sorry, HR 811 SUCKS. It puts the EAC, a commission appointed by the President in charge of your local elections recounts (and this president shouldn’t be allowed to appoint dog-catchers). They have ‘paper trails’ instead of paper ballots, and the trails aren’t the gold standard vote, and frankly people don’t check the paper trails, either. Check out forum threads about HR 811 on Black Box Voting.org or the Bradblog for in-depth information.

We depend on deterministic functionality in our tools. Our Enron Administration has gamed the system once again (Diebold is here for you Mr. Bush) and we are all the victims. Paperless office anyone?

The ability of the American people to speak loudly and with one voice overwhelmed the RNC’s vicious plan to co-opt the election. BusChen might have gotten away with the “new math” using a few nips and tucks where it counted if it weren’t for this blog and the outrage shared by Greater America.

Long Live Bloggers!

Hacking is just the opposite — It can be done remotely with no paper trail — just ask KKKarl!

I wouldn’t care about the schematics unless someone paid me. Then I’d find a bug in the memory write cycle timing and laugh at the client.

No wonder I’m out of a job.

About the paper ballots -
The Brennan Center For Justice
http://www.brennancenter.org/s…..it_key=105Brennan Center

released a report last fall called “Machinery of Democracy” highlighting the vulnerabilties of electronic voting systems – with or without paper trail.

One issue is that states need to have in place a protocol for verifying optical scan votes – a paper trail is of no use unless it is randomly audited – must be public, transparent,and truly random. None of these shenanigans like those in Ohio in 2004 – notifying precincts in advance that they were chosen for audit; and special “technicians” coming to “service” the harddrives of voting machines, before the votes were recounted.

Anyway, the systems are just PC’s in republican clothing. PC’s fail too, but the data paylooad is the real problem. That is the whole problem.

Would you trust a teleporter to verifiably recreate your personna even if the machine could regenerate the physical body?

OK that’s farfetched, but the malfeasance meme is a distinct possibility/certainty with the ReBushLickens running things.