NY State Election Board: New Machines 'Impossible' by Primary

[Wilms]

Election Board: New Machines 'Impossible' by Primary

by Dan Janison

March 30, 2009

~snip~

In a letter dated last Wednesday to U.S. District Judge Gary Sharpe, the board’s lawyers said a new testing time line from the company SysTest “indicates it will be impossible to meet the 2009 September primary...roll out date.”

Said Special Counsel Kim Galvin and Deputy Special Counsel Paul Collins: "Several scenarios have negatively impacted our ability to complete certification testing in late summer. As our weekly status reports reflect, SysTest underestimated the complexity of fully and accurately testing to the federal standards. The recent suspension of its accreditation imposed by the Election Assistance Commission was related to a deficiency in testing documentation and included a requirement that training of SysTest staff be conducted, confirmed, and better documented has contributed to the expansion of the timeline. Those deficiencies have been corrected and SysTest's accreditation was recently restored..."

~snip~

http://weblogs.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/politics/blog/2009/03/election_board_new_machines_im.html

[sakabatou]

1. How many times must we say it?

Electronic voting is still vulnerable and still highly doubtful.

[babylonsister]

2. And there's a special election this Tuesday in NY? How timely! nt

[Raineyb]

3. Does this mean we'll be using our lever machines?

Because I have no interest in voting on those piece of shit electronic machines.

Regards

[Bill Bored]

7. Absolutely! nt

[Historic NY]

4. I want my lever machine...I don't want to vote electronically...

I've voted on them in evey local,state,federal,school board election since I got the "Right to Vote" at age 18. That a full 35 yrs of never ever missing a vote.

[Atman]

5. As a former poll worker and Assistant Registrar of Voters, nothing infuriates me more.

This ain't ancient history. I worked these machines for the 2002 and 2006 elections, plus a couple of more local votes. Lever machines are AWESOME. They work. Each mechanical machine has three redundant counters. Plus, ALL VOTING was recorded on a paper roll (like an old player piano), punch-card style. In CT, the registrar was required to log the vote totals -- manually -- every half hour. If any machine's counters varied by even one vote that machine was taken offline and literally locked down. It was taken out of service and sealed until the election officials could check it out.

What is the equivalent today? NOTHING. And it by design. The design of BushCo and the Republican crooks who, not coincidentally at all, OWN the fucking voting machine companies.

.

[Bill Bored]

8. Please explain the redundant counters to the class! (Seriously!)

There's public, protective, and what's the third one?

Naysayers will claim that these are not the counters for the individual ballot positions. But they would probably be the first to fail, all things being equal, because they are used every time someone casts a ballot.

In NY they check the ballot face after every voter too, which means no ballot "programming" hacks!

So what's the third counter you are referring to and what else can you tell us?

[Atman]

9. There are three mechanical counters on each machine

Totally old school, like a car odometer. One on the front, one on the side, and one inside the machine. Every time you crank that big lever, it turns over a new digit. If all three counters don't jibe, they shut the machine down. In addition, there is a paper roll inside. Every vote is recorded like an ancient key-punch, so the paper roll can be read after the fact to verify the votes. It was a virtually fool-proof system. Any "fraud" had to come from the front-end, the voter, with a fake ID or something. There is really no way to mess with the machine totals.

.

[ConcernedCanuk]

6. I know President Obama doesn't go for our health-care system, but maybe try our voting system?

.
.
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Our IT wizards came up with a system that never crashes!



try it - you'll like it!

[Wilms]

10. An excellent comment follows the article:

~snip~

In 2006, no less than the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) stated that ""xperience in testing software and systems has shown that testing to high degrees of security and reliability is from a practical perspective not possible."

~snip~

New York is HAVA-compliant because we have one accessible voting device for voters with special needs at every polling place in the state. Those machines mark Accessible Hand Counted Paper Ballots (A-HCPBs) so voters with disabilities, and others who wish to use them, can vote privately and independently. We should keep it that way, or expand that number where necessary. But replacing the lever machines for all voters should be non-starter.

~snip~

http://weblogs.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/politics/blog/2009/03/election_board_new_machines_im.html#comment-3789050

[Stevepol]

11. K&R!!

[kster]

13. It's a fight over paperless levers and paper optical scanners

we at the DU Eletion Reform know that the ballots in the optical scanners, have to be pulled out of those scanners AT THE POLLING PLACE and then hand counted, by the people, before the ballots leave the polling place.

Paperless levers, no one can make sure this machine is working properly also that it isn't rigged. Which is why I would never go along with a thread that promotes a paperless voting anything.

Paperless Levers or DRE's wont make voters feel safe enough to believe an election took place. So the election "crooks" want us to have a paper ballot that we scan into an "unreliable" scanning machine and the crooks are thinking this will make us feel safe.

Then all the crooks have to do is make us feel that because we used paper, eventually all those paper ballots will be hand counted/audited. In order to convince us that the machine counted our votes correctly, the only catch is they must be able to take our ballots, in the scanners, OUTSIDE of our polling place in order to hand count/audit them. When the crooks take the ballots out of the polling place THEY HAVE FREEDOM, freedom for the crooks means they can change the number and mess around with the ballots.

I call this BULLSHIT!!!


:)

[kster]

14. KICK.nt

[Bill Bored]

12. .