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Editorial: Bowen's decision opens way for electoral chaos
Sacramento Bee ^ | 8/7/7 | Editor

Posted on 08/07/2007 8:05:21 AM PDT by SmithL

Late Friday, in an atmosphere of total chaos -- with a midnight deadline looming, county election officials waiting anxiously by their phones, and videographers and reporters clamoring outside — Secretary of State Debra Bowen moved to decertify electronic voting machines used by 9 million voters.

The decision to decertify leaves county voting officials scrambling once again. They must either find replacement voting equipment that will satisfy the state elections chief before the Feb. 5 presidential primary or upgrade security in systems they do have. The new systems and/or new security measures required must be acquired, tested, installed and workers trained to use them, all in the next six months -- a very short time line.

The decision to decertify, like the decision to conduct a security review of voting equipment under dubious conditions over a limited time frame, was precipitate. Bowen went forward with the tests despite warnings from county elections officials that they were flawed.

Only electronic systems were tested. Paper-based systems were not. The tests were not conducted under real-world conditions. "Hackers" were given free access to the machines, including access to encrypted computer source codes. All normal election day security measures were removed, including poll workers.

Any voting system would be vulnerable under those circumstances.

Bowen, a longtime critic of touch-screen voting, had clearly signaled during her campaign for secretary of state that she planned to conduct tests of those systems. Given the amount of public controversy that has swirled about touch-screen voting, such a top-to-bottom review is a good thing, but it needs to be done comprehensively, cautiously and fairly. That has not happened in this instance.

Because the Legislature moved up the presidential primary to Feb. 5 -- a mistake, in our view -- Bowen felt compelled to move quickly as well.

(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections; US: California
KEYWORDS: bowen; democratfraud; electronicvoting

1 posted on 08/07/2007 8:05:24 AM PDT by SmithL
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To: SmithL
“Any voting system would be vulnerable under those circumstances.”

No system on earth could pass those tests. This is just part of the leftist strategy to delegitimize any Republican victories. If a Dummie wins, they will have won despite widespread Republican voter fraud.

You’ve got to hand it to leftist pukes, they never give up.

2 posted on 08/07/2007 8:22:05 AM PDT by vetsvette (Bring Him Back)
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To: SmithL

This paves the way for the vote fraud contractors to do what they have been doing for many years in California. They create millions of non-existent phantom voters and steal the sample ballots from the mailboxes using an army of winos and illegals. Then they vote them absentee. As a fraud investigator told me after Bob Dornan lost his seat in Congress, “The candidate willing to commit the most felonies takes the primary and the general election. All it takes is cash.” In order to bust this scam you follow the thieves on the day that sample ballots are delivered and videotape where they deliver them. Then launch a class action suit on behalf of the defrauded voters against the organizations that pay the thieves for the stolen ballots.


3 posted on 08/07/2007 8:36:05 AM PDT by darth
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To: SmithL
If you want real and irreversible vote fraud, just give software codes and electronic votes to Slave Party bureaucrats.

We ain't seen nothin' yet.

4 posted on 08/07/2007 8:51:40 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (There are people in power who are REALLY stupid.)
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To: Carry_Okie

I worked as a roving troubleshooter for the county during election day. We had people waiting to use the machines. (6 -8 machnines per poll site). Everyone was given the option of using a paper ballet instead and 95% declined. There was a papertrail of ALL votes. The voter voted, and then a paper tape of their votes was presented to them. If they agreed with the printout, then the vote was counted and the papertape was was added to the sealed drum. If the tape ran out, the selaled drum was removed from the machine, sealed and locked away by the poll workers. A new tape was loaded and voting continued. Two sets of keys were required to remove the vote card from the machine at the end of the day. The polling site ran a full printout of vote results and posted it at the door.
The pollworkers validate that the total number of voters that signed in matches the number of machine votes, plus paper votes.
The vote cards were then packaged and sealed by the poll manager and delivered to the sheriffs for carrying to the county registrar.
The paper tape drums were also packaged and delivered separately. The paper tapes can be used to validate the vote totals.
THE Only way to game the system is to have a completely fake vote card and a fake paper tape for each machine. And you would have to buy off all of the poll workers, and the roving inspectors, and the political party poll watchers.

So yes, the CA Sec of State is an IDIOT!


5 posted on 08/07/2007 4:58:16 PM PDT by exblockhead (HR Block, where customer service means rip off the customer)
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