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Submitted on: September 29, 2004
Submitted by: Arlene Montemarano   mikarl@starpower.net

Comments:

Good article. Full of information. I would like to see all states using these machines do what California is doing and at the very least provide the paper ballot alternative.

As things stand, this election could be stolen by the internal programming inserted by the openly partisan manufacturers, and no one would or could ever know.

This is a cure defininely much worse than the disease.

Paper ballots would be a doable move even at this late date.

Submitted on: September 30, 2004
Submitted by: Alan Cassidy   infotechadviser@yahoo.com

Comments: I have been ranting about e-voting on every chance I get ever since right after the 2000 election when it seemed elections officials rushed into these electronic solutions so fast. My town of Miami Springs was the first place where touch-screen voting was used in Miami-Dade County, and the Elections Chief came to watch the voting, and I gave him an earful about it.

He tried to give me the standard answers, more secure because blah blah, there are problems with paper too blah blah, but I gave him my tech experiences. Methinks this is an easy out for them, because there are no chads. A recount? Easy. Print the same totals. Argggh!

For me, it's like Bev Harris said (BlackBoxVoting.org), the PAPER MUST *BE* THE BALLOT. Not not not the electronic bits and bytes!

The highest level of computerization I would ever accept is one where a machine reads a paper ballot to make the count. If it is below machine threshold, have a machine capable of separating them (why not right at the poll station?) and let *two* officials agree on it, or disagree. It goes to the disagree corner.

The criteria MUST be that a re-count is done without ANY computerized help.

The companies and people that sold these machines should go to jail, in my book, because it is outright fraud.

Canadians go to the polls, vote on paper, the precinct counts the *PAPER BALLOTS* right there, phone in the results, and in about three or four hours the whole nation knows the results.

— Alan

P.S. Go check the site BlackBoxVoting.org. They have a picture of the chimpanzee that "hacked the vote"!