PING...
Posted on 10/26/2004 12:12:47 PM PDT by OXENinFLA
BTW, I think there should be a paper record. And I don't like touch screen voting, I'm one of those old fashion fans of pen to paper voting
PING...
Here's the story.
I was surprised to see Wexler pushing for the paper trail. I remember the screaming fits he used to throw during the Monicagate business, reminding me of an irate junior high gym teacher.
If those in charge of elections are smart, computerized voting will only ruin one or two elections before we go back to paper ballots. Voter fraud now requires a ton of paper and a few graveyards. Computer voter fraud, however, requires one hacker kid in Germany who just wants to have a little fun. Or one hacker kid in Germany who just got a fat payoff from an interested organization. Computerized voting is probably one of the biggest mistakes ever to be made when it comes to our voting process.
a paper trail would have been stupid and created more cries of voter fraud
Roger that.
I wonder if the RNC knows who programmed these machines, and what their political bent is?
I can see it now:
Touch Kerry yields vote for Kerry.
Touch Nader yields vote for Kerry.
Touch Bush yields vote for Kerry.
Well golly gee! Kerry wins!
The thing about computer voting is that you will get the same number every single time you count, because there is only one correct set of numbers. RATS don't like it because they can't cheat.
Printing the ballots and trying to count them would only open up to RAT fraud.
I trust a mechanical device (gears, leavers, things you can touch) more than a bunch of electrons on a screen.
I believe Tip O'Neil won his first election with old-fashioned pencil-and-paper voting! The counters were for him and kept bits of pencil lead under their fingernails while they counted, "adjusting" as they went!
Without a paper trail, we have no idea what the truth is.
Touch screen is a prescription for election disaster.
It's actually just a bit more complicated than that: for a hacker to have access, the voting machines would have to have an actual physical connection to the internet.
In short, vote fraud with touch screen machines requires physical access to the machines as well as the know-how to hack them.
This can be prevented by having an audit performed before the machine is put into use.
Vote 1,000 times for Bush and see the machine counts them correctly.
Then vote 1,000 times for Kerry and see that it gets those votes counted right.
Maintain physical control of the machines until the votes are counted. And never never never connect them to the internet!
For the record.....Wexler is a certifiable clymer.
An election official and a witness opens up the machine at the end of the day and looks at a little odometer-type counter beside each name and records it in the official ledger book.
I think Wexler is just a mouthpiece. He wants to appear to be fighting fraud while all the time promoting it behind the scenes.
Are all the voting booths at early voting sites guarded by the police 24/7?
Totally false. It's impossible for "one hacker kid in Germany" to connect to computerized voting machines that are not in any way attached to the Internet.
Please stop trying to scare people with such nonsensical arguments.
I don't have the faintest idea who to root for in that battle.
The ward bosses aren't going to be happy. You knock and drag voters to the polls, pay them cigarettes and walking around money, and you STILL can't check if they voted "correctly".
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