L.A. Times: CA State decides to secure electronic voting machines

[Peace Patriot]

Source: Los Angeles Times

State decides to secure electronic voting machines
Secretary of State orders more precautions be taken against tampering, and withdraws support of the InkaVote Plus machines used in Southern California.
By Jordan Rau and Hector Becerra, Times Staff Writers
August 4, 2007


SACRAMENTO -- Expressing concern that several brands of electronic voting machines used in California were vulnerable to tampering, Secretary of State Debra Bowen late Friday ordered new security protections be added and limited the use of two types of machines that were to be used in next year's elections in several Southern California counties.

Bowen also withdrew state approval of the InkaVote Plus machines used in Los Angeles County, saying that the machines' maker, Election Systems and Software, had failed to submit its equipment to her office in time to analyze its vulnerability to hacking.

She said her office would examine the InkaVote machines and expressed optimism that they would win approval in time to be used in next year's elections, but did not say what would happen if the machines failed her tests.

"When NASA discovers a flow or a potential safety concern in the space shuttle, it doesn't continue launching the missions...," Bowen said. "It scrubs the missions until the problem is fixed."

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-voting4aug04a,0,894515.story?coll=la-home-local

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Boy, all the Diebold/ES&S ghouls and vampires are flying in this article.

"'This is the most frustrating thing. Why would she do something like this, make people wait this long for something that should have been taken care of ages ago?' said Assemblyman Anthony Adams (R-Hesperia) in a telephone interview from San Bernardino County."

San Bernardino has some of the most corrupt, bought and paid for county election officials in California. And their Republican Assemblyman no doubt equals them in corruption and in the traitorous destruction of our democracy.

But nothing quite equals the ugliness, corruption and treason of Stephen Weir, the president of all the corrupt election officials who bought these expensive, crapass, insecure, insider hackable, "trade secret" corporate voting machines!

"'I think the secretary has redefined the definition of midnight madness,' Weir said. He said that while he was not sure what the impact of the new rules would be, they had enough potential for causing chaos and delays at the polls that he encouraged people to vote by mail. Her restrictions on the use of two types of machines to one per polling place would require the printing of far more paper ballots that planned, and that could prove difficult to achieve.

"'Tens of millions of additional ballots, you don't just go to Kinkos,' Weir said. 'The timing is way too tight.'

**"He also predicted that the changes could delay the counting of votes. 'If people don't see results, they start going 'something's wrong,' he said."**

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Weir inadvertently spoke the truth, didn't he? "If people don't SEE the results, they start going 'SOMETHING'S WRONG."

Yup, folks. If you can't SEE the ballots, and WATCH the vote counting, and UNDERSTAND how the votes are counted, SOMETHING'S VERY WRONG, FOR SURE!

[loudsue]

1. Weir needs to be taken to the shed and straightened out.

What I wanna know is...who is paying this dude?

When I lived in a small town north of here, the county elections supervisor started driving around in a nice new lincoln towncar, which, up until the electronic voting machines came in, he could scarcely afford.

Nobody has to tell me that these voting machine companies haven't put a whole lot of people in their pockets in order to subvert our democracy.

:kick:

[Trajan]

2. Awwww ...... Cant print enough ballots in Time ?

When is the next election there ? ..... November ?

HAH ! ..... what a fucking liar ......

This brings up a point I have been making for years:

> DRE's needn't be tossed out, because they CAN be used .... To PRINT ballots .....

Then ? ..... place the DRE printed, voter-verified ballots into a ballot box ....

Then ? ..... COUNT the damned ballots by hand .....

Wow .... hard isn't it ? ..... takes a fucking rocket scientist to figure that all out ... eh ? ...

:sarcasm:

Sheeeeesh ...

[Bozita]

3. Those machines are the topic in a LIVE broadcast -- streaming now -- link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1510947

[Malidictus Maximus]

4. Agree, but...

I really doubt that ANY form of voting is secure if physical security of the apparatus (ALL of it) isn't maintained. Paper, electronic, glass beads, all it would take is a malicious person(s) with un noticed physical access at the right time to screw up the outcome. Oh, well, if Kevin Mitnick wins the presidency in a landslide we'll know for sure:-)

[Stevepol]

6. Elections since they are run by humans will always be rigged and subverted BUT

it depends on whether you want your rigged elections wholesale or retail. With the machines, you can steal a whole country by changing the code or the programs in the machines of two companies and involve maybe 5 people in toto. With paper, it would take a million people to stuff that many ballot boxes. It doesn't take much to figure out which is the biggest danger.

[John Q. Citizen]

7. My thoughts exactly.

[aquart]

8. Not even funny with a smiley.

[tblue37]

5. Instant gratification is often our downfall. We don't need to see

results five seconds after the polls close. Maybe the networks need that instant excitement, but the country certainly does not. People are so spoiled by instant gratifiation that they sceam at the microwave for not heating their water fast enough. But since so many people are too lazy to even bother voting in the US, they can damned well wait a day or so to hear who won--who really won, not just who the machines are programmed to say won.