READER COMMENTS ON
"'Daily Voting News' For May 02, 2006"
(4 Responses so far...)
COMMENT #1 [Permalink]
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Train Wreck
said on 5/3/2006 @ 7:37 am PT...
No mention anywhere that some of these
"Train Wreck" states recently passed VVPB laws and were trying to do the right thing.
No credit given to the voter verified paper ballot whatsoever.
What IT project of such a massive scale would be 100% successful?
What qualifies an election to be a train wreck?
I thought it was lost or irretrievable votes -
I thought it was paperless voting -
I thought it was votes changed, subtracting voting machines, stolen or lost voting machines.
Yes widespread failure of memory cards is outrageous.
What did that state do when they discovered the problem?
Was the problem addressed properly?
Is the system in place to prevent problems, deal with problems, hold accountable those contributing to the problems?
Were there contingency plans (i.e VVPB)?
This story is incomplete.
What constitutes a failure?
If there were no voter verified paper ballots, now that WOULD be a trainwreck.
It appears that we are becoming our own worst enemy.
We know that there are no perfect voting machines, that QC is poor or nill, but what do you recommend?
COMMENT #2 [Permalink]
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Dredd
said on 5/3/2006 @ 11:20 am PT...
IT IS THE FAULT
OF THE GREENS
AND INDEPENDENTS
FOR NOT STOPPING THIS
COMMENT #3 [Permalink]
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John Gideon
said on 5/3/2006 @ 12:03 pm PT...
Train Wreck - Nice nick.
The issue is not vvpb. The issue is that vendors are selling counties garbage and we the voter are being expected to vote on that garbage.
The voting systems standards say that a voting system must be able to operate without any problems at all for 163 hours. That's mean time between failure (MTBF). An incandescent light bulb is built to last 1,000 hours MTBF. None of the voting systems described in the articles as Train Wrecks met the mandated MTBF; not one of them.
You complain because no credit is given for the vvpat? Well, in every case except maybe one, there was no vvpat required. In every case except maybe one the answer was that "no votes were lost".
You want to know what constitutes a "train wreck". It's a failure of the voting system that causes a problem of any kind. We have no idea if there were lost or changed votes yet. Ohio won't do any audit and North Carolina's random audit is not random because the races and machines to be audited were selected previously and everyone knows which they are.
A failure is any disruption caused by a voting machine and that requires that the machine be out of service for over 30 seconds. That does not include normal operations like changing the paper spool on the vvpat printer when it is full.
You ask what I recommend. I recommend that the EAC do it's job and stop the proliferation of voting systems that do not work as they are advertised to work. The EAC has been sitting on their hands saying nothing about what is happening. They should be decertifying systems until the vendors can prove the damn things work.
COMMENT #4 [Permalink]
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Dredd
said on 5/3/2006 @ 4:21 pm PT...
John #3
You said "The issue is that vendors are selling counties garbage ..."
As I have said, I think the issue is that the counties are buying garbage. That should be illegal, unless a county is running a land fill. County election officials are not charged with the duty to buy garbage and call it "electronic voting machines for great American voters".
Let's face it, your "the counties" are actually election officials that should not be in power, in leadership, or anything else that requires the public trust.
They have corrupted their oath, they are liars, they are traitors, and they deserve to be labeled as such.
To be sure the companies that produce garbage and call it truthy candy suck too.
But we must put the blame where it belongs. Dorky feds, dorky state legislatures and dorky local politicians.
Get rid of them and the lame companies producing garbage will have to go back to selling defective used cars to the witless.