my experience voting today in CA on touchscreen, and discussion with

[gristy]

the guy supervising:

I said there was a distinct lack of observable custody of the ballots.
He said you could challenge the count. I asked who pays for the challenge?
He said we are in a transition period. I asked what kind of transition period?
He said to electronic voting. I said I wanted paper ballots.
I asked who provided these "I voted touchscreen" stickers? He said the registrar did.
My guess is the vendor did. Free of charge.

There were 5 machines. The people in line were able to observe who people voted for. There was a line about 5 voters long. This was primary. It was 10:00 in the morning.

All in all, not a good experience or harbinger of things to come.

[snowbear]

1. Wow.. they didn't keep the machines out of view from other voters?

That's insane..

Good for you for speaking your mind to them though!

[Old Gardener]

18. SB330 Voting Integrity and Verification Act

Contact your senators and tell them you want this bill out of
committee and enacted. This is - or should be - a nonpartisan
priority.   

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

2. I Voted Touchscreen Stickers?

The world is truly coming to an end.

Where can I get my "I Voted Paper Ballot" sticker?

[silvershadow]

11. Yeah, you know..."Marketing" came up with that one...

[still_one]

3. that is why I voted by absentee ballot

[ChiciB1]

6. Did The Same Thing In 2004... But I'm Not Sure They Even Counted

that vote! Here in Florida, after "the chads" we have touch screen... no paper trail and I want to GO BACK to paper myself!

Either way, I'm highly suspicious of all of it! But I still vote, wonder sometimes who I'm fooling!

[still_one]

8. The only way we have a chance is if we have a large turn-out

and even then it is an uphill battle

[bobbieinok]

9. serious questions re absentee voting

--how are votes counted? I read somewhere that some places only count absentee votes if result is close

--weren't many absentee ballots 'lost' in FL2004??

--there were problems with absentee ballots in IA 2004.....certain very picky rules had to be followed or the vote was not counted; the rules were discussed only after most voters had already mailed their votes in

[still_one]

10. I don't know

If that is the case then my vote really doesn't count

[bobbieinok]

12. I think I would really investigate how the absentee ballots will be

handled, exactly what the rules are, etc, before I decided to vote absentee.

[ChiciB1]

13. That's Why I Wondered About Going Absentee...

Jebby had pushed the idea a lot because he stated there wouldn't be doubt about who you voted for.

But then I did hear that once again there was some suspicion about absentees, so screwed either way I figured.

[still_one]

17. I just found out

In California, absentee ballots are always counted first

[Peace Patriot]

4. I can hardly believe what I've just read. "Branding" in our elections!

Next it'll be "I voted Diebold" or "I voted ES&S." This is INCREDIBLE, if paid for by taxpayers, and even worse if paid for by the Corporation and passed out to voters! I heard Connie McCormack (L.A. elections chief) and I think Cathy Cox (Georgia) both did sales brochures for Diebold. These are the sorts of things that the so-called "Help America Vote Act"--designed by the two biggest crooks in Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney--has done to our election system, in addition to failing to require a paper trail, failing to ban partisan vendors, permitting "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code, permitting secret industry "testing" of the machines, and bullying states and counties with draconian deadlines into purchasing these crapass, insecure, unreliable, hackable election theft systems.

Corporate privatization of our elections, with private "trade secret" vote tabulation. That's what we're looking at. You wonder why we have war and torture and pervasive domestic spying and grand theft by the super-rich?

It's not hard to figure out.

[Senator]

5. Wear the sticker upside down

Tell people "if you can read this, your vote was counted."

--

[durrrty libby]

7. How was the turnout?

Do you think people in your district were turning out in high numbers,average,
or are they apathetic?


I believe higher than average numbers will bode well for our side.

[ebayfool]

14. I asked for paper & was told no, then was told to go to the county clerks'

office downtown (what happened to making voting easy & accessible - on a good day no one wants to fight the traffic/parking to get to downtown Bakersfield!) & see if I could get it there. They didn't want to hear it. There has been trouble reported on the news ALL DAY @ the machines not functioning properly. They shut down 3 (that I've heard of so far) polling places. I have to check more, but the ones that I've heard @ were in the poorer side of town ... the 'minority' parts of town. With the same new Diebold machines as the others. Imagine that! The news was telling people to go to other polling sites, but not alot of info on just where - people that have no easy access to transportation or jobs to go to were expected to get around & find out themselves, I guess. We also were exposed to anyone that looked - zero privacy. I was given a card to call w/complaints ... no one home - leave a message!

The damned machine wouldn't hold all the votes cast properly - I had to back the screen 3 times before the summary held. The funky little print sheet you're supposed to 'view' before pushing the final button is printed so friggin' small you can't see it well enough to check it. When I pitched a bitch they waved a plastic dollar store magnifier & said you coulda used this ... too late! Observable custody of the ballots? They were not being deposited in a central, secure location - they were passed to whatever little old lady at whatever table you happened to be signing in at - they used to go into a single receptacle watched by several people, by the voters themselves. No one else was allowed to touch the ballot. Now? For all I could see there was no designated 'taker' & multiple hands 'touched' the damn cards. Yeah, I feel so confident in our system now!

And we were told basically - get used to it, it's not going away!

I flat don't want to absentee vote - I don't trust that to be handled any better (in fact, worse!) than in person voting. I think it's important to be there ... in person, in-your-face, bitching long & loud where it can not as easily be ignored - like a mailed in piece of paper can be!

And I'm not done bitchin' at them yet!:evilgrin:

[truedelphi]

15. Read this month's Coastal Post (www.coastalpost.com)

My article details that in many locales, the absentee ballot is
simply put through the same machine it would get counted by if you went in
on polling day.

on the other hand, at least you voted.

They jsut anonounced on a Sacramento TV station that in San Joaquin County
150 of the polling workers didn't bother showing up.

no follow up on that one - TV Station did not bother to find out what happened.
But the report set off suspicions on my part thta the Repukes
had a bunch of people sign up for work on election day and that had them agree to
not show up

[ebayfool]

16. They were counted the same last election, on Diebold machine.

But now we have the touchscreens (memory cards). I would assume they are counting the absentee paper w/the old machines (couldn't get a straight answer on that today, either).

Any questions were pretty much countered w/a stock 'But's it's soooo easy!' - w/the insinuation that anyone that questioned the process was:

a: ignorant or stupid

b: out of touch w/ modern times ( I BUILD our comps from the case in!)

c: being a pain in the arse (well ... I give 'em that one! with cause!)

One of the venerables was highly offended at her new toys being referred to as overpriced, poorly designed, underperforming, glorified printers.

[truedelphi]

19. Glad you made the important points

And it's also fine with me if you annoyed them.

Did you get a sticker that said "I voted "Touchscreen"? Heard that they were
being passed out with enthusiasm. It's the perfect machinery for the perfect results, right?