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Re: Who Tests Voting Machines?

Paul Tiger forwarded:

May 30, 2004
MAKING VOTES COUNT (NYT Editorial)
Who Tests Voting Machines?

> The League of Women Voters, in a paper dismissing calls for voter-verified paper trails, puts its faith in "the certification and standards process." <

Another major failure of a once useful group.

> If so-called independent testing were as effective as its supporters claim, the certified software should work flawlessly. <

Even honestly certified (and enforced) software will probably not "work flawlessly", but open software would have the possibility of being accountable and correctable.

The system requires a complete overhaul. The Election Assistance Commission,
a newly created federal body, has begun a review, but it has been slow to
start, and it is hamstrung by inadequate finances.

Where was the NYT editorial board (as opposed to a few honest journalists hidden on page 12) back when HAVA was rammed through - UNREAD by those who should have assailed it and those who voted for it? Will the "new mini-mea-culpa" NYT board be any better in 2004 at catching error, fraud, and corruption than they were in 2000?

None of these are substitutes for the best protection of all: a
voter-verified paper record, either a printed receipt that voters can see
(but not take with them) for touch-screen machines, or the ballot itself for
optical scan machines. These create a hard record of people's votes ...

A "paper record" here is interpreted by the NYT editorial as including a mere "receipt" (of NO consequence to such voters as those in Colorado). Neither a "printed receipt" nor a "paper record ... ballot itself" is anything near a "hard record of people's votes" if it is not THE paper ballot OF RECORD - only then hand-recountable, only then worthy of trust.

However, this editorial does mark another small step forward through the quagmires. As the national news source copied, mimicked, and blindly trusted throughout much of the US corporate media, we can only hope the "new" NYT will live up to its unearned role to help safeguard a weakened "democracy".

Lou