REPUB GOVERNOR demands Maryland DUMP DIEBOLD in favor of paper !!!!!

[Tin Man]

What a topsy-turvey world we occupy... here we have a REPUBLICAN governor calling for ditching DIEBOLD DREs in favor of paper ballots, while the DEMOCRATS in the state assembly insist the opposite! :shrug:

Ehrlich: Use Paper Ballots for Nov. Election
Primary Glitches Linked to Electronic Voting Machines

A week after the primary elections were plagued by human error and technical glitches, Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. today called for the state to scrap its $106 million dollar electronic voting apparatus and revert to the paper ballot system for the November election.

"When in doubt go paper, go low-tech," he said. The state's top election's official quickly denounced the plan to swap voting systems just seven weeks before the Nov. 7 general election as "crazy." And Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller (D-Calvert) said it "cannot happen, it will not happen."

Ehrlich said that if necessary he would call a special session of the Maryland General Assembly to allow the state to change voting systems.

But Miller and House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) dismissed the idea of a special session, saying elections officials should focus on fixing the current voting system. "We paid millions," Miller said. "These are state-of-the-art machines."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

[Ohio Joe]

1. ummm, wow

I have to say that it is probably a good idea to go paper. I wish we were doing that here in Ohio.

[izzie]

2. I read Can. does it with paper and are happy with it

It is this wanting to know 3 min. after the polls shut that gets to us Am. I think. Hard to wait to the next morning. I think every place should have paper.

[Ohio Joe]

3. Agreed

And the counting of the ballots should be public.

[tocqueville]

6. they MUST be public

officials or sworn people from the represented parties must be present and sign a paper in the end when it's done where they agree about the results. That's how it's done in many countries. Sweden had general elections last Sunday, there are 3 votes : parliament, region, municipal. The results "to the last vote" for about 6 millions voters are known 3 hours after the closing of the voting booths. Very few glitches. Don't tell me it cannot be done in the US.

[July]

7. I'm familiar with the system in Spain.

Citizens are called to election duty the way we are called to jury duty. Tables manned by them for, IIRC, 300 citizens per table, who do not have to register to vote because they have a national ID and simply must present it. Ballots are paper (I've seen them -- so many parties, some with hilarious logos). When voting ends, all those manning the tables (I think there may be public officals with them, but don't remember for sure)must count the paper ballots and agree to the same numbers. When the count is agreed upon as accurate, the paper ballots are sealed in an envelope w/the numbers recorded on the outside. Envelopes sent to central location, but I think the numbers are transmitted electronically. Any questions of any discrepancies, the envelopes are opened and counted anew. Count completed in a few hours (when Zapatero won, I think they knew by about midnight what the results were). If you're called to election duty, you can get in real trouble if you don't show up (happened to film director Pedro Almodovar).

[izzie]

9. I would think we would try some of this stuff from other countries

We are old now and we may be able to learn some thing new. It is hard for Am. to even face that. Yo bad as so much of our country came from others in the first place.

[vickitulsa]

4. Hmmm ... makes ya wonder.

Could it be that Repugs have received word that hackers favoring the Dems have finally managed to find a way to override the work of their own hackers in order to make sure the DEMS WIN this time instead of the R's?

Or might it also be that the R's simply suspect the above may be the case and believe they stand a better chance of "winning" by their more traditional methods, ones they used also in 2000 and 2004 but which were known and used by them well before then also? I'm talking here about the way they bumped long lists of persons off registered voters' rolls by devious and often illegal means, intimidated the "wrong" kind of voters standing in line at polling places utilizing their thugs on the street, moved the location of polling places without proper notice, and made sure many polling spots were not open on time or for enough time for everyone waiting to vote to get in, to name but a few.

The criminal Repugs have used these and other tactics for quite a few years now, probably dating back to the election of Nixon or at least Reagan, and they have a lot of confidence in them. If they have, for some reason not known to us, decided that their electronic hacking method for stealing elections is not reliable or could be watched too closely in the end for them to get away with using it, then why wouldn't they want to return to their tried and true ways of ensuring a high vote tally for their side?

If we look at it like that, it's not a "topsy-turvy world" at all -- just another swift move by the criminals in charge to consolidate and keep their power.

Of course, I could be missing something here, but that's what occurred to me when I read the OP.

And I think the R's might be covering all bases (and all their asses) by making the demands to revert to paper ballots. If Dems end up being the ones to insist we stick with the damned machines, then Dems would have little recourse to claiming they were hacked if the results don't favor THEIR side.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Good, now let's do this

in the other 49 states BEFORE November.

[BeFree]

8. Not all Republicans are the same kinda crooks

It is obvious that this republican has more interest in good government than interest in lobbyists. Too bad there are not more like him.

Maryland has had some serious problems with Diebold. No surprise.

What is curious is that Dems there are so keen on keeping the damn machines in place. It may be that the dems mentioned are dinos. It may be false pride, false in that they decided to sleep with the machines and are now so in love that they can't see that the machines will ultimately kill them, kinda like the battered wife syndrome.

Then we look a the higher dems in place of the national party structure, and except for Howard Dean, most all are in bed with the machines. Its crazy.

But like my BoE told me, they trust the op-scan machines.... but only because they can audit the machine counts. Diebold DREs can not be audited.

Somebody with a good deal of knowledge of Diebold and Maryland needs to weigh in here. Anyone know who that might be?