Free Republic

(Hartford-WTNH, Dec. 8, 2005 6:21 PM) _ Is the state about to make a voting machine blunder? Several college professors say the choice for new voting machines is a mistake. Under orders from the federal government, the state must replace all 3,300 of those mechanical lever voting machines by the next election. The decision on the new high-tech machines must be made this month, but there was a call Thursday to put on the brakes. Hundreds of citizens got a chance to try out the finalists. All three of the test models are touch screen or direct recording electronics. "There's...

WHISTLEBLOWER interviewed by voting rights advocate Brad Friedman [www.BradBlog.com] has claimed that the electronic voting machine maker Diebold is involved in all sorts of skullduggery. The Diebold insider said he was once a staunch supporter of electronic voting but was stunned by seeing repeated efforts by Diebold to evade meeting legal requirements or implementing appropriate security measures.

(Someone sent this to me via Email. Looked interesting). Protest of California Secretary of State: Decision To Hold A "No Hearing Hearing" On November 21, 2005, citizens may voice their concerns about what voting system will record their votes, but thanks to a decision by Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, there's absolutely no guarantee that anyone with the authority to certify voting systems in California will hear those voices. California law requires the Secretary of State to conduct a public hearing as a condition of certifying any voting systems in the state. The Secretary of State has scheduled a hearing...

U.S. House of Representatives N E W S R E L E A S E For Immediate Release: October 21, 2005 Davis, Waxman, Sensenbrenner, Conyers, Boehlert, and Gordon React To GAO Report on Security Problems With Electronic Voting Systems Washington, D.C. - Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) and Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), Judiciary Committee Chair F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI), and Science Committee Chair Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) and Ranking Member Bart Gordon (D-TN), issued the following statements upon today's release of the Government Accountability Office's report, "Federal Efforts to Improve Security...

Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them). Mark Crispin Miller. Basic Books. $24.95. 284 pp. What would it do to Americans' image of themselves, their country and their democracy if it turned out that a presidential election had been stolen? That's the question Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon, challenges Americans to ask themselves in his latest book, Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them). Miller has done his homework,...

In a report released Friday, the investigative arm of Congress found that fully electronic voting machines hold promise for U.S. elections but still have security and reliability problems. E-voting failures in elections have been a problem in California, and the state's experiences are mentioned several times in the latest report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Analysts for the GAO found that crucial vote-recording and tallying files could be altered, that voting software often had weak or nonexistent password protections and that manufacturers had installed unapproved software in several places, including California. Yet fixing those problems could be years away....

On Election Day, will your vote be counted accurately? According to a CBS/New York Times poll, only 35 percent of people surveyed had “a lot” of confidence that their votes would be properly counted. Nationwide, a movement to reform election procedures and protect against electronic-vote tampering and other forms of voting fraud is gaining force. CityBeat interviewed San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre regarding complaints raised by local and national election-reform activists over alleged violations of election law in San Diego’s recent mayoral race. “I share some concerns about the integrity of the electoral system,” Aguirre said. In the course...

As the federal deadline for election upgrades nears, New York officials are deadlocked Robert Witco, sporting a business suit, conservative tie and wing tips, fires into his sales pitch for replacing New York's old lever voting machines with elections equipment never before seen in America. Advertisement "We're so far ahead of our competition," says Witco, unveiling the LibertyVote machine he thinks every election district in New York could use. In a spiel he has given countless times this year for elections officials across the state, Witco, 40, talks about the ease of using and storing his compact, computerized machine, the...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Secretary of State Bruce McPherson announced new requirements for electronic voting machines Wednesday and said he would create a unit in his office to test and certify the machines. "We must take these fundamental steps to guarantee public confidence in our voting process," McPherson said in a speech to the California Black Chamber of Commerce. He laid out 10 requirements that the machines must meet for use in California elections, starting in 2006, including approval by an independent testing unit certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Other requirements include providing state election officials with full information...

Tallies nearly identical, says a county official A partial recount yesterday to test the accuracy of scanners that read ballots and tallied votes in the San Diego mayor's race July 26 revealed results that were nearly identical to those of the machines. For example, a discrepancy of perhaps one vote occurred in a few precincts.

Out of all the evil corporations in the world, Diebold, the maker of electronic voting machines, is just the worst to the moonbats on DU. So what could be worse than a top Dem going to work as the public face of Diebold? Enjoy: yellowjacket7 (13 posts) Sat Aug-20-05 05:33 PM Original messageDiebold hires top Dem for PR blitz (former DNC chair) With a phone call and a retainer, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell has launched former Democratic National Committee chairman Joe Andrew on a 50-state ambassadorship for electronic voting. O'Dell said he ``wanted to reframe some of the issues,'' Andrew...

Diebold hires top Dem for PR blitz Former party chairman make the case for voting to California By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER With a phone call and a retainer, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell has launched former Democratic National Committee chairman Joe Andrew on a 50-state ambassadorship for electronic voting. O'Dell said he ``wanted to reframe some of the issues,'' Andrew said. His first stop: California, the nation's largest market for voting machines and the place where Diebold's fortunes as the largest supplier of electronic-voting machines in the nation could be made or broken. ``Even if you have tremendous success every...

After analyzing the minutes of a meeting held in Chicago between Cook County and Chicago's city officials with the board of Sequoia, that remained in charge after the take over, and that of Smartmatic [6], Ochoa noted that unknown Venezuelan investors, operating via proxy European ventures, could indeed be the controlling power behind Smartmatic. Ochoa indicated that an entry in the minutes of the meeting aforementioned describes Cook County's Commissioner Peter Silvestri [14] asking to representatives of Sequoia/Smartmatic "who owns Sequoia?" (sic). The answer came from Honorable David Orr [15]: "Smartmatic International, which is owned by a Dutch company, owns...

Two California secretaries of state have refused to certify a touch-screen voting machine, and for good reason. BRUCE MCPHERSON, California's secretary of state, has just performed an invaluable service for the voters. Only a few months into the job, he had been under intense pressure to certify the latest electronic touch-screen voting machine manufactured by Diebold Election Systems, which is supposed to help California counties meet a federally mandated January deadline for the overhaul of their election equipment. But instead of rolling over, his office conducted exhaustive tests on the Diebold TSx, discovered that it had a 10% error rate...

There are many problems with American elections, but none more serious than the rise of paperless electronic voting, whose results cannot be trusted. Grass-roots reformers are in the middle of a two-day lobbying blitz on Capitol Hill in support of a House bill that would require that electronic voting machines in federal elections produce voter-verifiable paper records. It is an important measure that should be passed without delay. Electronic voting has been rolled out nationwide without necessary safeguards. The machines' computers can be programmed to steal votes from one candidate and give them to another. There are also many ways...

MIAMI - Miami-Dade County's elections chief has recommended ditching its ATM-style voting machines, just three years after buying them for $24.5 million to avoid a repeat of the hanging and dimpled chads from the 2000 election. Elections supervisor Lester Sola said in a memo Friday that the county should switch to optical scanners that use paper ballots, based on declining voter confidence in the paperless touch-screen machines and quadrupled election day labor costs. Fifteen of Florida's 67 counties chose touch-screen machines after the 2000 election fiasco. The machines have caused problems during at least six elections, including the September 2002...

To: U.S. Congress Knowing that the most sacred right in a democracy is the right to vote, and that, All new technology involve some risks, and that our right to vote should never be subjected to risk, and that, This particular method has the potential for ERROR or TAMPERING that can remain UNDETECTED since each vote LEAVES NO PHYSICAL RECORD such as a ballot paper, thus hand recounts are impossible, We, the undersigned, declare that touch-screen voting machines should immediately be declared unconstitutional. Sincerely, The Undersigned The A Bipartisan Call to Ban Touch-Screen Voting Machines Petition to U.S. Congress was...

The Pennsylvania Department of State said Thursday that Beaver County's $1.2 million electronic touch-screen voting system is unreliable and can no longer be used, even in the primary election that is only five weeks away. "Needless to say, we're all shocked by this finding, and we need to work our way through," Commissioners Chairman Dan Donatella said. County elections chief Dorene Mandity declined to comment, saying she had not yet read the state's report. In decertifying the UniLect Patriot system, Secretary of State Pedro Cortes cited concerns he had after a re-examination of it on Feb. 15 by Carnegie Mellon...

State to join ballot probe Software change not pre-approved By Troy Anderson and Beth Barrett Staff Writers Thursday, March 17, 2005 - The California Secretary of State's Office announced Wednesday that it will investigate why City Clerk Frank Martinez changed the software on the voting system used in Los Angeles' mayoral primary without state approval -- one of several steps he took that slowed the count and raised questions about the integrity of the process. Martinez said he ordered a change in computer code in the scanner that "reads" InkaVote ballots in order to reduce uncertainty in what was anticipated...

The Governor of Ohio, Bob Taft, and other prominent state officials, commute to their downtown Columbus offices on Broad Street. This is the so-called “Golden Finger,” the safe route through the majority black inner-city near east side. The Broad Street BP station, just east of downtown, is the place where affluent suburbanites from Bexley can stop, gas up, get their coffee and New York Times. Those in need of cash visit BP’s Diebold manufactured CashSource+ ATM machine which provides a paper receipt of the transaction to all customers upon request.