Here's the NYT article on voting machines.

[alfredo]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/magazine/06Vote-t.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Can You Count On These Machines?


Alejandra Laviada for The New York Times
Lever voting machines like the one at left (in Brooklyn) have fallen out of widespread use.
Jane Platten gestured, bleary-eyed, into the secure room filled with voting machines. It was 3 a.m. on Nov. 7, and she had been working for 22 hours straight. “I guess we’ve seen how technology can affect an election,” she said. The electronic voting machines in Cleveland were causing trouble again.

For a while, it had looked as if things would go smoothly for the Board of Elections office in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. About 200,000 voters had trooped out on the first Tuesday in November for the lightly attended local elections, tapping their choices onto the county’s 5,729 touch-screen voting machines. The elections staff had collected electronic copies of the votes on memory cards and taken them to the main office, where dozens of workers inside a secure, glass-encased room fed them into the “GEMS server,” a gleaming silver Dell desktop computer that tallies the votes.

[rocktivity]

1. It will be in the SUNDAY edition, it will get the biggest audience?

Is THIS any way to run a liberal newspaper? You bet it is!

:headbang:
rocknation

[alfredo]

8. Copy the article, with the URL and spread it far and wide.

You are the media.

[stubtoe]

2. Oh, the irony!

Here's a snip from the article:

" What happens if the next presidential election is extremely close and decided by a handful of votes cast on machines that crashed? Will voters accept a presidency decided by ballots that weren’t backed up on paper and existed only on a computer drive? And what if they don’t?"

What if? I'll tell ya what if -- if it's a Republican we get them shoved down our throats and told to "Get over it".

If it's a Democrat, election gets contested.

:mad:

[EFerrari]

7. You got it! NYTs strikes again. n/t

[Moochy]

30. Dont you love Non-hypothetical hypotheticals? :)

Thanks NYTimes!

[annabanana]

3. "Will voters accept . . ?"

Why not? They have for the past two Presidential elections...

[Kip Humphrey]

4. No mention of the ONLY viable voting system: Paper ballots hand counted in each precinct..

That said, this article does a pretty good job of exposing the liabilities inherent in computer voting systems. No mention though of e-voting's greatest liability: secret vote counting on unsecured central electronic vote tabulators.

[Fly by night]

That would be great. Right now, I'd take precinct-based opscan and hefty random manual audits

But HCPB looks better to me all the time.

Hey, Kip. We're a long way from cold "51 Capitals" steps in 12/04, aren't we?

[alfredo]

6. I believe we are getting voter verified paper ballots here. We use

the eSlate. I am a precinct judge and the only place the chain of custody breaks down is in the machine. I have voiced concerns.

[Kip Humphrey]

9. The eSlate was de-certified in CO. testing for miscounting. As for "chain-of-custody",

When you can neither witness nor independently validate the secret counting occurring as bits (100110110111001) within the vote tabulators,

When you cannot examine the Hart Intercivic computer code becuase its "proprietary" and "trade secret",

When the paper, feel-good "voter verifiable" printouts are never physically counted,

your "chain-of-custody" is worthless!

[alfredo]

10. That's what I am saying. Our chain of custody breaks down in the machine.

[Kip Humphrey]

11. my bad... BAN The Machine!

[alfredo]

12. I've been at this from the beginning. I was the one that

informed Dennis Kucinich about the threats against BBV activist. Remember when some officials threatened to use the Patriot act against us? He went ballistic over that.

[alfredo]

5. that's where we come in. Copy the article with a link

http://tinyurl.com/2u8l24 and any comments you want to add.

Make this article viral.

[mod mom]

23. may I add with full public witness and strict chain of custody.

:hi:

[alfredo]

25. I'm a precinct judge and I watch the the process from beginning to end.

We have many eyes watching once the machines are delivered back at the County Clerk office. Now we need to be able to truly verify what the machine is doing. That is where the system fails. Without a clear chain of custody, I don't see how we can certify a vote.

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. I can understand that the author wouldn't want to be thrown from the 6th floor of a building,

or to be found with his wrists mysteriously slashed, as he lay in the bath, fully-clothed, but why does he sound a little incredulous that the silly old public seem to think the burden of proof of the accuracy of the vote must lie with the machine manufacturers, not the voting public.

And why from the enormous cornucopia/diabolical abyss of malfunctions, they almost all were in favour of the Republican candidates; thus constituting the most massive circumstantial evidence of election fraud by agents of the Republican party, circumstantial evidence being the very cornerstone of porof of fraud?

[alfredo]

14. We do need someone to write or do an investigative report on

why the machines always seemed to malfunction in the contested races, not in the secure states.

[Joe Chi Minh]

18. .... and a whole lot more.

[alfredo]

24. I've been keeping the pressure on our County Clerk office.

[Joe Chi Minh]

26. Good on you!

[alfredo]

27. I can't be too hard on him, we get paid $250 a day for working

the polls. When you are retired, that's real money.

[mod mom]

22. You picked out a main point,KCDMIII," almost all favor the Republican candidates".

[Joe Chi Minh]

28. What could be more telling!

[althecat]

15. Is good but (predictably) rather patchy....

For example quoting Shamos saying anything is problematic if you are looking for credibility - and quoting him saying that there is no evidence of hacking previous elections lacks all credibility.

Moreover the point that is made as a result.... that the problem is all cockup and there is no evidence of conspiracy is simply incorrect. Volusia county 2000 and Fl-13 in 2006 both contain prima-facie evidence of tampering not to mention all the work Hayes did in Ohio.

But that aside its a fairly comprehensive sum up of the train wreck theory.

al

[greytdemocrat]

29. Paper trail

Paper trail is the only way to go.

Having recently moved to MO from FL I can tell you I was glad
my old county used the bubble ballot method.

[JackRiddler]

SIX YEARS!!!

Can you believe it took six years for it to become common wisdom that no-paper-trail electronic machine voting facilitates perfect election fixing, and is therefore suspicious?

Can you believe there were once denialists on this very board?!

[fascisthunter]

19. No Shit... Anyone with Common Sense SHould Have Been Able to Figure

that one out.

[mod mom]

20. Unfortunately there still are folk who believe there was no malfeasance.

[JackRiddler]

16. SIX YEARS!!!

Can you believe it took six years for it to become common wisdom that no-paper-trail electronic machine voting facilitates perfect election fixing, and is therefore suspicious?

Can you believe there were once denialists on this very board?!

[alfredo]

17. It's hard to see what is going on around you if you got your nose

up bush's ass.

[Hoooweee]

21. didn't tell me anything i haven't learned from 5 years on DU.

But I'm definitely passing it on to my relatives.

[Roy]

31. All of these fixes are fine, but there is only one way to get rid of election fraud

Get rid of republicans.

1. The articles leaves out the most pertinent points, like these lost votes and "glitches" favor republicans.
2. Republicans fight hard to minimize reporting of problems with these machines and advocate keeping them just as they are.
3. Republicans are exposed committing voter fraud and election fraud with nearly every election cycle.

So long as we have Republicans we will have voter fraud, voter intimidation, vote caging, election fraud and attempts to win any election no matter how low or how high the office at any cost.

[KoKo]

32. Kick...!