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Bev Harris and Co.
Avi Rubin spread this trash and while on the advisory board of VoteHere.com, a Diebold competitor, wrote a scathing report that was quickly debunked by SAIC and later, mostly by himself. He volunteered as a poll worker in Baltimore where is was coldly received, and got his lesson in life. He admitted most of the stuff he was afraid of could not happen due to the diligence of both republicans and democrats working the polls.
These people act as if no protocols exist to manage an election. With no protocols, ANY election can be "fixed" regardless of what technology is used. Paper elections just make it easier. Bev Harris and Co. are demanding the removal of evoting equipment and going back to paper. That is utterly absurd. If you can't trust someone not to hack a computer, how will you trust them to count votes properly? Paper receipts? another joke. If it's so easy to manipulate an election, how easy do you think it will be to print out a bunch of bogus receipts and blame it on the computers?
The flaws to the anti-evoting argument are astounding. But most astounding - and highly offensive to me - is the assumption that the good democrats part of this process are either too stupid or too inept to stop this "conspiracy". The evoting companies might be owned by the lowest of freeper lifeforms, but it preposterous to assume 100% of the employees working for all those companies are evil republicans.
Most cynics have given up the fraud aspect. Legitimate concerns? Plenty: Hardware reliability. Poll worker training. Clear procedures in dealing with problems. Complacency (not changing default passwords). There are a few where Bev Harris could help. But that's not her motive. Her money is in being part of the problem, not being part of the solution.
My dog in this hunt is getting all the votes counted. I don't want Bush in office for another 4 years. So, I don't want undervotes, overvotes, and all that other crap. I don't want the election decided on pregnant hanging dimpled chads. Undervoting and overvoting account for .07% of the votes with evoting. It's roughly 7% with paper. If you truly wanted every vote to count, you would be in FAVOR of evoting, not against it.
Evoting is not perfect. No voting system we have is perfect. Any election can be rigged no matter what the technology is if it's not controlled by a process. And almost all of Bev Harris' claims leave out that process. THAT is why nobody is paying that much attention to her when she tries to make her case. She is basically insinuating that poll workers are stupid and dishonest. She is insinuating that half the employees working at the evoting companies are stupid. She is insinuating (assuming half are democrats and half are republican) that half the employees working for all the evoting companies are criminals willing to go to jail to perpetuate felonies.
The evoting machines are not connected to the internet. They do not have input devices - other than the touchscreen (keyboard, mouse, etc) - attached to them. The source code for these machines do not reside on any of these systems. The votes are encrypted and stored randomly at MULTIPLE locations of the computer. The ballot is saved so that it CAN be reprinted later for recount. The list is endless.
Evoting may not perfect, but it's better than what we have so far. It's not better if you believe in everyone either being a criminal or stupid, and that's where we part ways.
Here's the bottom line: It's much easier to rig an election with unskilled people using paper technology rather than highly skilled programmers and technicians trying to rig evoting. The paper ballot is simply a stupid idea and not well thought out. Sure, you can verify your vote, but anyone can either erase the ballot, put the ballot in their pocket, simply count the ballot differently, etc etc etc. I can't vote in secret anymore. That is NOT an improvement. Printing out receipts is a joke. If you can rig an election, how easy do you think it will be to print out tons of bogus receipts? And besides, I don't want to stand in line for two hours waiting to vote because of printer problems. Maybe I will, but I don't know many who will. We have a hard enough time getting people to the polls with making them wait two hours to vote or having you people scare them away because they think their vote will be stolen.
I'm a nobody in this issue, but I pay attention. And I know many of you are being played for suckers by Bev Harris. You're smart and could do some real good in helping our voting process, but instead you are helping derail a better process in favor of a completely stupid one. Fortunately, you won't succeed. Most of us are not resistant to change as some of you and do not stand to gain in Qui Tam lawsuits.
I want Bush out so bad, I can't stand it. And I want you people to get out of the way of making that happen. You are not helping.
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