Posted on 11/10/2013 3:56:09 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
MADISON – The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) reaffirmed their approval of voting technology from their August meeting. During Tuesday’s meeting, the GAB upheld their requirement that all election systems be hardened, or solely designated for voting and tabulation.
Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno requested to allow counties to use existing equipment. She cited budget concerns over purchasing equipment solely for the purpose of election day practices saying such equipment purchases would cost her county a minimum of $15,000. Because Brown County’s voting equipment creates a paper trail, Juno believes that there is enough ability to verify the accuracy of her county’s results minimizing the need for solely designated equipment.
Juno said “I have utmost belief in its high security, or else I wouldn’t be here.”
In her testimony, Juno said that her office sees the hardening requirement as an “unfunded mandate.” Arguing against the necessity of hardening voting equipment, Juno said “we’ve never had a security breach.”
More: GAB Approves New Poll Place Technology
Reiterating her faith in her existing voting equipment , Juno mentioned Governor Scott Walker’s Executive Order 66, a mandate in support of lean government encouraging that all governing in the state to be as simple, lean and cost effective as possible. As Juno believes that her system’s firewall, user vetting and paper trail are security enough, she argues that complying with the hardening mandate would be against the spirit of the executive order.
GAB Voting Equipment Specialist Sherri Ann Charleston discussed the reasoning behind the hardening mandate. She advised the board that hardening stands against outside, undetectable access.
Charleston also advised that the voting system that Brown County is considering purchasing and many other counties either own or are considering purchasing has certification from the US Elections Assistance Commission with hardening. For the GAB to allow an unhardened system would put a burden on the GAB to go out in the field and test each county’s security. Charleston discussed that the GAB likely doesn’t have the expertise to verify that security. She further advised that such a testing process would be an extra expense for the state.
Although Juno feels blindsided by the hardening requirement, Charleston said “they [Brown County] were aware or could have or should have been aware.” Charleston advised the GAB that both the 2002 and 2005 election equipment recommendations included hardening of the system.
After hearing testimony, the GAB reaffirmed all equipment recommendations including hardening by a unanimous vote.
Other than upholding the hardening requirement, the GAB also unanimously permitted the vendor Dominion Voting Systems to make some software tweaks which ensure proper encryption of election data.
The GAB discussed a process of GAB Director Kevin Kennedy approving “diminuitive” software and hardware updates (engineering change orders). During their January 2013 meeting, the GAB voted to give Kennedy the latitude to approve any necessary equipment tweaks that don’t substantially impact the voting experience or tabulation processes.
GAB Lead Election Specialist Diane Lowe discussed a need to clarify rules for election inspector nominations. Municipalities select observers from lists submitted by the political parties. It is mandated currently that nomination lists are delivered to the mayor, village president, town chairman or in the case of the City of Milwaukee, to the Election Commission. In many cases, the parties are more use to interacting with their municipal clerks and often times deliver their nominations to these clerks instead. In many cases, the clerks will deliver the nominations to the appropriate person, but in some cases the nominations are just discarded on the grounds of not being delivered to the proper office.
The GAB unanimously upheld the current nomination submission requirements while also suggesting a second copy be delivered to the city clerk. Also, the GAB in the case of the City of Milwaukee, agreed to allow current practice of party chairs delivering nominations to continue. Technically, aldermanic district party representatives are supposed to deliver nominations to the Election Commission, but the parties often don’t have leadership in each aldermanic district.
Wisconsin GAB moves to “harden” voting equipment. Why wasn’t this done before?
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
Voting machine security is only part of the problem.. Voter ID should be required. And dead voters should not vote, and busses full of union members showing up at a poll should require investigation.
Sone districts had more Obama voters than registered voters in the last election.
Election security has to be improved, or the disenfranchised voter could be cause of civil war.
WI had bus loads from IL and mainly Chicago coming in to vote, then there was the dead voting, illegals voting and non Americans.
If there was no fraud the Democrat party would lose a quarter of their seats in the senate and house.
That is why the left and the Democrats fight tooth and nail t not have voter ID and no matter h9ow many times a rat will state there is no fraud they know deep down there is.
“Harden” means they want to make sure NO Republican votes can possibly sneak through.
, or the disenfranchised voter could be cause of civil war.
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There is plenty of historical evidence and precedent from countries around the world that lack of trust in the voting process results in “disappearances”, revolutions, and civil war.
Clarify for me:
Whee is Brown County?
What cities are involved??
Thx.
“Where is Brown County? What cities are involved??”....
Brown County is in NE Wisconsin. Green Bay being the largest and then the cities of surrounding towns.
Incorporated Places have an asterisk (*).
Allouez*
Ashwaubenon*
Bellevue*
Cormier
De Pere*
Denmark*
Duck Creek
Dyckesville
Elm Tree Corners
Green Bay*
Greenleaf
Hobart*
Howard*
Oneida
Preble
Pulaski*
Suamico*
West De Pere
Wrightstown*
hope that helps
The GAB should not only be disbanded but charged with election fraud. They may be an even bigger problem than the unions.
Green Bay
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