Can the Voting Machines Used in American Elections Be Trusted?

[pinochet]

I recently heard someone mention that it is possible for computer hackers to get access to the electronic voting machines, and tamper with the results.

The only voting process that I trust, is one that involves a paper ballot, with the voter making a "X" mark on his paper ballot with a pen/pencil. That is how American democracy worked for 200 years.

With paper ballots, you can count actual paper votes, during recounts. But under the electronic voting system, you cannot have credible recounts, because it is so easy to hack into the computer system.

[SMARTY]

Absolutely not ... why do you think they wanted machines in the first place?

Lots of ways to do monkeyshines!!!

[blackdog]

I know that for the answer to this question, you need to ask The SEIU union employees who maintain the voting machines and provide technical and software updates.

Does that answer your question yet?

[JimRed]

...what if the programmer is smart and tells the machine the total number of votes and just assigns a portion to Candidate A and a portion to Candidate B...

Could be done, but to do the hundreds of individual machines just in our county would take a lot of programmer/hackers, so is impractical.

Busloads of fraudsters would be easier, but even they would have to be on the registration books, under the various IDs assigned to them.

[Carley]

A big thank you for being involved. It’s a very long day but it’s one of the most important of our civic duties.

I was a challenger a couple of times and made some enemies. I knew everyone in our district and I knew whose kids had moved away and didn’t let them come back to vote when they were no longer eligible.

[USS Alaska]

With paper ballots, you can count actual paper votes, during recounts. But under the electronic voting system, you cannot have credible recounts, because it is so easy to hack into the computer system.

There has been voter fraud in the USA before the shanty irish were running tammany hall in ny, and the boston cops were buying and beating votes out of the local bars.

[FreeAtlanta]

It needs to be a dual system that produces a paper trail, but the paper receipt needs to be dropped into a locked box before the voter leaves the poll to protect the voter against UNION thuggery if they had to show the receipt for who they voted for.

The receipt card could be made so that it could be quickly electronically scanned for recounting to make sure the electronic and hard trail match up.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The way the media “calls” the elections before all the polls are closed I think skews the results as well.

Hear, hear!!

in 2000 there was exactly ONE state whose result in favor of Bush was reported more quickly than you would have expected, based on the closeness of the vote. In all other cases states were called for Gore far more rapidly than you would predict from the data for the delays of states called for Bush, the margin of victory being similar.

And, of course, the extreme case was Florida - called quickly for Gore when in fact it ultimately went for Bush.

It should be illegal to broadcast reports of the results of state elections before the official results are announced.

[SoldierDad]

Because - that would be racist!! Mantra from the libs.

[dfwgator]

It should be illegal to broadcast reports of the results of state elections before the official results are announced.

Pros and cons to that. If you waited to announce results until afterwards, it would actually make it easier to "cook the books" and just simply announce the results at the end. At least if you announce the results before hand, and if somehow the official tally is different, then that raises a red flag.

[leprechaun9]

Actually some elections are rigged by SUBTRACTING VOTES, NOT ADDING THEM!

Having worked in a NJ statewide election as a challenger, the campaign got a court order to check the voting machines BEFORE they left the County Warehouse for the voting district locations.

Approximately 5% of the machines in those districts, where it was expected that the vote would be close, the counters were not set to 000. Instead they were set for 950. This meant that the first 50 voters for that candidate would bring the counter to 000, hence 50 votes lost.

It is very difficult to add votes for a candidate because the master counter of all voters cannot be exceeded by any candidate. This is one of the ways of election tampering and it NOT rare.

[ThomasThomas]

A 2nd grader could tell you how to cheat with paper ballots.

[Carley]

The cheaters will always try to get their candidate elected.

[T. P. Pole]

They are stand alone machines like an ATM.

ATMs are indeed connected to a network, albeit a private one in most cases.