Posted on 03/02/2007 3:13:06 AM PST by lifelong_republican
"The bill says that there shall be no parts of a machine that have unknown functions, both in terms of hardware and software. They would need to be disclosed. However, some parts, such as chips, could be manufactured in places where the U.S. has no jurisdiction, and so the design would need to be redone."
(Excerpt) Read more at hub.gmnews.com ...
Until we have some way to trace EVERY vote back to a social security number or some other believable national ID and a phone number, our democracy is basically munged.
You make an interesting point. Thank you.
I agree that we must confirm the voters, who must create and confirm their own ballots.
I don't want someone to know who I voted for. You can verify that I'm a citizen and eligible to vote at the door, but I don't want to be traced to a particular ballot.
I already have had enough problems with governments misusing my confidential information.
I live in a county where we have had three successive recounts over a period when we moved from Opscan paper ballots to a Hart electronic w/paper ballot option at voters' request. Folks, there is no way to recount a used electron, been there done that, (I was part of each recount) didn't even get a t-shirt.
After our latest debacle, we fired our elections administrator, whose answer to voting machine problems was to go 100% e-vote, remove the paper option. In a county where 50%+ voters requested paper, we removed him instead.
Check out "Hack the Vote" Jon Stokes www.arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ars As he puts it, by the nature of the beast, when an election is successfully stolen, or turned by error, there will be no way to prove it.
Holt has the qualifications to design and manufacture a legitimate electronic voting machine himself.
I applaud his efforts to push back against dubious electronic voting machine manufacturers and their lobbying power.
Excellent, Sir. Thank you. I admire your patriotism and your awareness of this issue.
You make truly excellent points.
Why, at least, can't these things be made in America and fully disclosed in their designs and implementations to the American taxpayers who pay for them and the voters who use them?
Most of the e-vote machines are assembled in US. Problem is, with global economy, nobody makes the actual chips in America anymore, just as nobody makes TVs here. Seen a Curtis Mathis set lately?
We could subsidize American chip manufacture and double the price of e-vote machines, or: we could go back to Opscan ballots which with appropriate security, are their own paper trail. We have wasted a huge amount of money on re-inventing the wheel, and now after the Fla. 13th Fubar, Florida has gone full circle and will adopt Opscan for the '08 election. Time's a'wasting, get your Congressman behind the Holt bill.
Well said.
The Holt bill doesn't require enough in the way of audits, though.
The only experience I've had with the election process is voting, but..
How do they come up with statistics such as, "21% of Federal workers voted for McCain', or 'teachers voted 31-69 for the amendment'.
How could they come up with those figures if they didn't know you, where you worked and how you voted?
Where I vote the poll worker finds me on a list, writes a unique number on the ballot and hands it to me.
I'll bet that that ballot can be traced right back to me.
Lifelong, Holt's bill is not perfect, it's just better than anything out there with a prayer of being enacted before '08 elections.
Vinnie, you don't say where you vote. The only traceable voter in Texas would be possibly vote-by-mail, our highest target on voting fraud, or the "conditional" voter, in the latter case only the elections review board or district court judge will ever see the connect between ballot and voter.
As to the stats, they are arrived at by (mostly) privately commissioned polling, exit polls, polls of interest groups etc. at least here in Texas. No one in elections would have any way of discovering that info from any official source I am aware of. We can tell who voted in any given election, but assuredly not for whom they voted.
When I process a voter, I match voter ID with my combination form of eligible voters in my precinct, but once approved and signed in, I am required to have at least three ballots on the table, the voter chooses one. The ballot will have a pre-printed number on it, but that is only useful in the recount process. In the evote, I give the voter a printout with a 4 digit randomly generated PIN on it, but I don't even see that number. I promise you, unless a handicapped voter requests assistance, in which case two of us are required to assist, I have no way of knowing for whom any voter votes.
I vote in North Carolina.
I'm totally against E voting w/o a paper trail. Even then I have reservations.
A count program could be written that threw the election any way wanted.
Fraud is bad now, E voting would make it easier and more massive.
I wish you worked where I vote.
Its not PC to call the US a democracy. We are a Republic.
You are off to a good start. Aside from the Ars Technica site I mentioned, check out VotersUnite and BlackBoxVoting sites. If they don't scare you silly nothing will. These guys are not the tinfoil hat and grassy knoll crowd, excellent documentation, BlackBox has a long index of items they have provided in evidence in state and federal court cases.
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