A House united. That seems to be the effect that Diebold has had on the state of Maryland where they had initially deployed their paperless touch-screen voting machines in 2002 as one of two “showcase” states along with Georgia.
That “showcase” has turned into yet another public relations fiasco for Diebold of late.
The Republican Governor there recently slammed Diebold’s paperless system, called for paper ballots and announced he had lost confidence in the State Board of Election and its Diebold-supporting Director, Linda Lamone, to carry out a fair election. Then information surfaced that Lamone had allowed MD to use uncertified Diebold software in the 2002 and 2004 elections. Then revelations were made public of massive machine failures in 2004. And now this from MD’s Democratic House…
The state House of Delegates this week voted 137-0 to approve a bill prohibiting election officials from using AccuVote-TSx touch-screen systems in 2006 primary and general elections.
…
The bill was sent onto the State Senate for a vote after the House action, she said.
Healey said the effort was inspired in part by concerns raised by officials in California and Florida that the Diebold systems have inherent security problems caused by technological and procedural flaws.
Note the reference to the AccuVote-TSx system in the above is an error in ComputerWorld’s reporting. Maryland uses the AccuVote-TS system which does not include a “voter-verified paper trail” — unlike the newer TSx model which does.
Also note, the movement in the MD statehouse is calling for “paper receipts” or “paper trails” which is a far cry from paper ballots — you know, those things which are actually counted, unlike paper “receipts” or “trails” which are not. Though their interim plan to lease optical-scan machines for 2006 would mean there would actually be ballots used — at least until 2008.
Washington Post who ran a story on this on the front page of this morning’s print edition (though it’s labelled as page B04 on their website), led this way:
The 137 to 0 vote in the House and the endorsement of the plan this week by Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. represents a stunning turnaround for a state that was on the leading edge of touch-screen voting in 2001, and it reflects a national shift toward machines that provide a paper record.
The MD Senate still has to approve the bill, and there is said to still be some opposition there. WaPo reports that the Senate is hoping to arrange for Diebold to bring in their newer TSx machines (which include an uncountable “paper trail”) to avoid a massive state-wide switch to optical-scan machines this late in the year.
As well, the WaPo story allowed for an unchallenged quote from MD’s former Sec. of State, and Diebold supporter, John T. Willis, who is quoted as saying, “There is no evidence of anything wrong with Maryland elections.”
Wrong, John. We guess neither you nor WaPo read our previous article in which we wrote about an internal review by the MD State Board of Elections compiled after the 2004 election titled “Lessons Learned” [PDF]. The report reveals — amongst many other problems — that “189 voting units (7%) of units deployed failed on Election Day. An additional 122 voting units (or 5%) were suspect based on number of votes captured.”
TrueVoteMD, as well, issued a massive document dump yesterday with loads of “evidence of anything wrong with Maryland elections” including information on a five-month “Diebold-imposed lockdown” on machines after Maryland’s “November 2004 meltdown.”
Still and all, of course, all of this is certainly a move in the right direction, and yet another stain on Diebold’s atrocious record in the Voting Machine Industry and as once-great American company.
"One Small Step For Man…"…
"Dump" Diebold, "erase" E&S, "shaft" Sequoia….
Get ’em all. They don’t work (or, on second thought, maybe they do – it depends on what you mean by "working" – guns work well in robberies, as long as you don’t get caught).
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**’Expose Tom Feeney’**
"SUPPORT CLINT CURTIS!"
__www.clintcurtis.com__
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Dredd Warning
Dredd is drinking a beer at this moment … reading the provacative Brad Blog … but wants to congratulate the MD folk.
Love ya MD.
BBV, Brad Blog, Velvet Revolution, and so many good other folks have been working our asses off for a long time.
For you.
And you got it.
God bless you.
Keep up the good work. We got lots more to do.
We gotta get back to a world where we work to minimize the dangers to life, dangers to dishonesty, dangers to all the work we all do to benefit all of us.
I am biased in the sense that I think America should lead the way to honest elections, good treatment of prisoners of war, prisoners of politics, or prisoners of anything … cause prisoners are just one indicatior of conflict … and when we got conflict … we got work to do.
Maryland, I salute you for going in the proper direction.
…Way to go Maryland!
…Now with New Mexico we have two states moving in the right direction.
…Keep speaking truth to power…and the message is sloooooowly being heard.
Bluebear2 is watching NASA Television as they insert the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter into orbit around Mars and reading this:
"Healey said the effort was inspired in part by concerns raised by officials in California and Florida that the Diebold systems have inherent security problems caused by technological and procedural flaws."
It’s interesting that Maryland based it’s decision on information revealed by California, yet our own California S.O.S. has certified the damn things!
Oh by the way – the control room just went crazy as it was confirmed that the insertion burn appears to be successful.
Congrats MD!! I hope FL can follow suit someday!
Woo Hoo Maryland!
Now, what can we do about AZ Sec’y of State, Jan Brewer, and her recent purchase of something like $11 million worth of Diebold equipment? Grrr…
I live in MD. Yeah MD! When I pushed the Kerry button I saw my vote shifted to Bush. I pressed Kerry again and nothing happened. Finally, I had to push Bush again (much against my will – one hand trying to keep the other from doing so 🙂 to clear the bogus vote off. Same thing happened with my Mikulski (D) vote (and I wrote to her about it).
Cheers Dredd…I thought you were sounding rather philosophical this evening. Clink.
People should have seen this coming. unfortunatly we have a tendency to think new is better with out any proof to back that up. :crazy:
Oh, and let’s not forget, can you even do a legal "recount" if there isn’t anything to count — that is, repeating a total verbatim doesn’t quite qualify. Then it is he-said she-said (aka Supreme Court). I mean, what if our banks, businesses, stockbrokers, attorneys, etc. had no actual paper trails? Really!
Where’s Wally!!!!???? He’s got to come and set those 137 elected representitives right! They are mistaken! those machines are FINE!!!
Now, to get rid of ALL ELECTRONICS in voting..
Finally someithing to be encouraged with. No more BS about touchscreen voting being "fun" and the people "like" them. Any representative that voiced that empty platitude concerning Diebold or ANY auditless voting system should now be run out of office. If we get better government it won’t be because people thought it was "fun" or "liked" dealing with corrupt officials.
A LOT of regular folk worked HARD, RISKED much and dedicated themselves to get to this point. This is the only reason we are seeing this turn of events!
In Germany they use actual paper ballots. They are then counted in the presence of party representatives (ie, over here, a Dem, a GOPer, a Green–whoever has a horse in the race can have a rep present). Exit polling has usually nailed the winner anyway, but my friend Reinhardt says they always have the votes counted within 24 hours, and there is never any mystery about it. Cheap, people-oriented democracy. Who says computers save money and time? They’re bullshit. Why make life needleesly complicated and still allow for potential fraud–use a goodam pen and piece of paper.
In the current state of affairs, incompetent election officials … in terms of technical saavy, I can’t make a good defense of the machines.
So I agree with Andree #12 and Savantster #10 until election officials are brought up to speed and machines are strictly tested as in avionics.
#1 Bob,
I think you may have hit upon a nice catchy slogan for them:
"Diebold Voting Machines…
They work! Like a shotgun at a robbery!"
KUDOS TO MARYLAND!!!
MY state is gonna sue Leon County….
Yeah, Andree – The Germans use that system because the US imposed it on them after WWII – seems the US didn’t want any possibility of anyone monkeying around with the vote tallies. Same with Japan, I believe. Kind of ironic, ain’t it?
#10
I absolutely agree with you, Savanster. WHY do we need these machines? We don’t. Pen, paper, period.
#12 Andree
THANK YOU. If Germany can do it, why not us? What are the reasons we’re told that we need electronic machines? That they’re faster? More cost-effective? And are they?
As far as how long it takes to count & recount…whatever the limits are, they can & should be extended if need be.
If they can change the damn law on warrantless spying to accommodate george bush having broken it, they can change a counting deadline.
#15 Czaragorn,
I didn’t know that! KIND OF ironic??!! That is incredible. Jesus. I’d like to research that a little…can you point me in the right direction?
Musings…. If an ATM machine provides one with a receipt then why should a voting machine manufactured by the same corporation not do that? If one is so sure the election was won in their favor then why would the vote counting be stopped? The intent is loud and clear.
Why has there not been legislation in the House and the Senate outlawing these machines?
If the price of admission for the 2008 presidential election is one-hundred million dollars for the "candidates" then what is being represented is the corporatocracy and not the people.
The democratic process stands directly in the way of the corporate interest. The 2000 corporate take over of the US: what we are witnessing is the dismantling of a system of checks and balances which was devised to act as a restraint against unbridled corporate interests.
Halliburton: the corporate equivalent of the British East India Company first chartered by Elizabeth the first in 1600. The Constitutional Convention some two centuries later: an initially successful attempt to prevent corporate abuse of "we the people".
The American short term memory and ignorance of history: one of the necessary foundations for the bloodless corporate coup of the US over the last six years.
The Alabama church fires are being covered up
WITH REPUGS AND THUGS IN CONTROL PAPER TRAIL OR RAISE HELL.DEMAND A WAY FOR RECOUNT OF ALL VOTES. :crazy: :angry:
Great! Now if Diebold (ES&S, Sequoia, et. al.) would kindly submit its proprietary code and firmware for a public analysis of its security and integrity, I know I’d feel better.
The titular intent of HAVA (ya right – see "No Child Left Behind") is primarily to ensure that disabled Americans do not encounter obstacles in the exercise of their vote (I did say ‘titular’). But the issue that the legislation should address is both the prevention of voter disenfranchisement and the rendering of an accurate representation of the People’s Will.
For the latter purpose, I suggest an amalgamation of the "old" punch card tallying systems and the "new" touch-screen voting systems.
Hear me out for a second, I think this idea has at least a miniscule amount of merit.
The touch-screen units are likely the best, simplest and most direct way for a citizen to be sure that what they say is what they mean to say, so this element is probably best left preserved. Once the voter has "spoken," the touch-screen system can print a "receipt" and punch a ballot card at the same time. Examine both productions, pocket the receipt and shove your ballot card in the box, with the usual Registrar suspects helping to ensure that the "hanging chad" syndrome and other physical punch card issues will not interfere with the tallying machines’ counting of it.
This way election officials never have to rely on the physical integrity of an integrated circuit (what’s the warranty on a stick of RAM these days?) or an un-tapped or uncorrupted transmission to come to the conclusion that the numbers they have (and submit – here’s the most glaring weakness of the proposal, but this question is not new) are the correct ones.
Now, as to the disenfranchisement part . . .
You got me. I can think of no technical solutions to this human problem, only regulative ones.
Comment #18 very interesting analogy with the East India Trading company. Look who held the purse strings for that nefarious corporation and you will see the same familial ties. As for the Queen, when she enters their domain aka the City of London she defers to them, so its always leads back to the Rothschild’s. BTW-their name was on the original incorporation documents for the evoting system. And yeah their tenacles have been all over the US since before its inception. Hence the checks and balances in the US constitution to control this monster.
Thank you brave people of MD.
Let’s get rid of ALL of the LIEBOLD machines!!!
gt
As Marylan goes, so goes the nation. Making progress people! Step it up and we WILL win. They can’t stop the truth from marching on!
With regard to comments # 23 and 24 there is a problem. The democratic process has been supp-lanted. GWB does not have the "we the people" as any sort of concern. Look at the Katrina tape of curious and engaged simian George. What worries this man did not have. Remember, it was reported some of his White House staff made a CD for him and tried to be sure he at least watched it before he flew over another result of global warming. Remember "bring em on"? Well it’s okay if I hear this in some old John Ford western, but it’s not okay in the reality and the truth of the circumstance in which we find ourselves at present. Would he be so cavalier with these words if both his daughters were doing something more than working in Africa with AIDS victims whose US aid has been restricted because it’s not okay with the dear old boy that these unfortunates and the rest of the population receive educational material about how this illness is acquired and how and with what "tools" it can be prevented?
This administration is composed of the absolute antithesis of what this country needs. They should be tried for crimes against the nation (if a bunch of doctors, nurses, and healthcare administrators had created the Medicare Part D plan would any of them still have licenses or jobs? — well, in the GWB administration this kind of result is rewarded), crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
But thinking that our House or Senate representation actually has anything to do with us when the price of admission necessitates the kind of money only the corporatocracy can provide is naive.
The example of Maryland is encouraging at the very least.
I also oneself something would want to find out on this theme. Very attentively I will read every post.