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Folks, The report below deserves your attention. We’ve got to get our
Representatives to understand the perils of non-verifiable elections. Al CAMBER Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results 303-494-1540 www.users.qwest.net/~alkolwicz
http://coloradovoter.blogspot.com From: SusanMarieWeber
[mailto:susanmarieweber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] http://www.rense.com/general52/fedd.htm Federal Commission
NixesTalk Of Paper-Only Elections Stacks Panels With
Proponents Of Paperless Touchscreens The atmosphere was electric. News cameras
and documentary filmmakers jostled for position at last Wednesday's packed
hearing of the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) on the "Use,
Security, and Reliability of Electronic Voting Systems" in Washington,
D.C. The elegant oak-paneled room was jammed with reporters, elections
officials, business reps, and a sprinkling of activists. Tensions were running high as public
confidence in At the beginning of the hearing Chairman
Dr. DeForest B. Soaries, Jr. said, "Voting has evolved, since the founding
of our democracy. "Devolved" would have been a better description. At least one state, And guidance is all they're going to get.
The Bush Administration has pulled funding for the development and
implementation of any meaningful standards or certification for voting
technology, not that those things would make any voting machine secure, or give
back to the voter their right to vote. At least the EAC hearing was an
opportunity for a full and fair debate about the issue. Yes? Not a chance. Although Chairman Soaries went out of his
way to announce that the Commission is bi-partisan, two Republicans and two
Democrats. Bi-partisan doesn't mean balanced. If the Commission was balanced
the panels should have been balanced, and they most definitely, were not. Of
those who testified on the issue of voter verified paper trails (VVPT), 14 were
against it and 5 were for it. And no one spoke in favor of paper-only
elections. That was no accident. During a break in the testimony I hustled
up to the front of the room to ask Chairman Soaries if there was going to be
any testimony that would question the legal right or technical wisdom of
allowing machines to be involved in the voting process. Soaries seemed taken
aback by the question. He responded that it was not the roll of the Commission
to address that issue. The Commission, he said, was there to "assist"
election officials and voting machine manufacturers in setting guidelines for
voting technology. That seems at odds with the EAC's mission
statement which is quite broad, "The United States Election Assistance
Commission (EAC), an independent bipartisan agency, is authorized by the Help
America Vote Act (HAVA) to serve as "...a national clearinghouse and
resource for the compilation of information" on various matters involving
the administration of Federal elections." Apparently, all the EAC wants to compile
is a list of voting machine technologies from which election officials may
chose. It's like picking rotten apples out of the same barrel. Soaries added that election officials know
that they can use paper ballots instead of machines. But, that's not really
true. Many state elections officials believe that the Help America Vote Act
(HAVA) mandates the purchase of modern voting technology. It doesn't. Some
state officials also believe that the blind and English-illiterate are legally
entitled to these machines. They aren't. Someone at the EAC should call The Commission put on a good show of
giving voting machine vendors a hard time. However, Chairman Soaries reassured
the vendors that the Commission was there to "assist" them. It was
clear that the EAC has set the stage for another problematic
"public-private partnership". In his testimony Dr. Avi Rubin debunked
the myth that there's any security or integrity to paperless voting technology.
And The Commission's talking points for future
action were also the usual stuff: improve voter and poll worker education, gain
back voter confidence (emphasis on "con"), and improve the public's
perception of whatever the heck is going on. Apparently, all the bad news about
voting machines is scaring people. And that might mean that people will not
vote. Of course, voters aren't voting anyway, the machines are. But, the EAC
was not going to let that "reality trump the importance of
"perception", a word Chairman Soaries repeatedly used. Conny McCormack, One of the best articles written about
vote fraud and technical irregularities is the 1996 article, Pandora's Black
Box, by Philip M. O,Halloran. One of the worst vote fraud cases happened in The following is an excerpt from the
Cincinnati Post of O'Halloran reports, "Another
Cincinnati Bell employee, named Bob Draise, admitted to being involved in a
second phase of the illegal operation, which involved wiretapping several
prominent There are numerous examples of vote fraud
and irregularities down through the decades that myself and others have
enumerated and can be found on the following webpage: www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachineErrors.htm Judging from what's going on in My mantra remains: Vote Paper Ballots,
Ditch the Machines. Lynn Landes is one of the nation's leading
journalists on voting technology and democracy issues. Readers can find her
articles at http://www.ecotalk.org/ EcoTalk.org. |