Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org
In this segment of ‘Democracy At Risk’ Lou and Kitty cover the latest cautionary report on voting and elections, in this report from Electionline.Org, a national non-partisan, non-profit group. Lou also reports on yesterday’s breaking story from The BRAD BLOG regarding the elections security breach discovered in the Chicago, Illinois voter registration data base.
The text-transcript of Tuesday’s segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full…
Kitty Pilgrim has the report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ten states are on election watch for potential trouble with voting for various reasons.
DOUG CHAPIN, DIRECTOR, ELECTIONLINE.ORG: Where will the next election controversy be? And you can’t predict that. But what you can do is identify places where there’s the potential for the two major ingredients to come together. One, a close election, and, two, some kind of problem that puts the result in doubt.
PILGRIM: Electronic voting has turned into a giant problem across the country.
JOAN KRAWITZ, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, VOTETRUSTUSA: In this election there are tight races all over the country. One of the biggest problems that we’ll face is that so many counties, so many states have new and virtually untested equipment that has been rushed into place this year.
PILGRIM: One third of all voters will cast ballots on systems that have never been used in general elections. Poll workers find the new technology baffling and sometimes inoperative.
In Colorado, for example, the August primary generated problems. A lawsuit challenged the use of electronic machines, but the court ruled the same models would be used anyway. The report questions, “Will voters be confident in machines that need to be re-certified after the election?”
Connecticut, with the high-profile race of Senator Joe Lieberman running as an Independent against Ned Lamont, the report finds, “Will high turnout for the Senate election, coupled with new voting technology, lead to problems at the polls?” The Florida September primary had massive problems with the touch-screen system.
In Indiana, voting machine company ES&S had to pay the state $750,000 to compensate for mistakes, including late delivery of equipment and problems with tabulating votes.
Ohio is under scrutiny because an independent report questioned if the Diebold voting machines could be ready for on onslaught of general election voters, also putting it on election watch.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: With so little time before the election, some states are suggesting voters use absentee ballots. And another suggestion is to check in advance that your registration is still listed. There have been massive problems with the new electronic poll books, and people have found when they go to vote, their voter registration is not there — Lou.
DOBBS: Kitty, thank you.
Kitty Pilgrim.
An election watchdog group claims it’s discovered a serious flaw in Chicago’s online voter registration database. According to the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project, the personal information of Chicago’s 1.5 million voters was readily accessible. The group said hackers could easily meddle with the registration status of voters. That didn’t happen, however, and the site was fixed immediately.
The Chicago Election Board has hired an outside consultant to double-check its efforts.
Nice video graphic at the very end of Lou Dobbs segment,.. BradBlog coast to coast,.. more traffic to the site will bring more exposure to the issues.
Nice going BradBlog.
Well the cat is out of the bag, the public finally understands that electronic voting machines are unsafe.
1.We all need to ask our state voting officials, attorney general of your State and Secretaries of State to sue the vendors who sold equipment to states that is unreliable, unsafe,insecure and easily corrupted. Why aren’t lawsuits being filed by election officials??
2. DEMAND HAND-COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS now to be made available election day-there is still time!
3. Why are voting officials allowing citizens to vote November 7th on proven hackable machines?
4. BEWARE the RUSH HOLT HR 550- it mandates a printer be added to proven faulty machines. Fraud would be perpetuated! This is a false solution.The machine can record your vote differntly then the “ballot/receipt” you receive where you are supposedly “verifying” your vote. NOT SO! Candidates have to pay for re-counts they can not afford that cost millions of dollars. This is not a solution.
WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?!
Abbe Waldman DeLozier
http://www.hackedelections.com
Kennedy/Papantonio will bring suit against these fraudulent computer vote counting machine vendors,.. they will be made to pay dearly for breach of contract. But that will not be happening until after the midterm elections.
The only hope we have to wrestle control of our government back from these fascists is to deluge the ballot box with an overwhelming percentage of Democratic Party voters. A landslide victory will make it impossible to covertly steal the election as has been done in 2000,.. 2002,… 2004,.. and 2005. A razor thin margin between win or loose,.. gives them the opportunity to jiggle the numbers and give themselves another magic but incomprehensible victory once again. We must pound the voting booth with unquestionable overwhelming numbers and confront them with a landslide victory to deny them the opportunity to rob us of this election,.. right from under our noses,.. as they blatantly did in the past.
My biggest fear in this election is voting fraud with the Diebold, etc. machines. I’m not sure that an overwhelming show of Dem voters will work. For instance, in the Rolling Stone Robert Kennedy Jr. article on this subject it demonstrated how a software hack could ensure a 4% victory for a given candidate. No matter how Dems vote, they would conveniently lose by 4%. And with no paper trail (which in and of itself is not a solution) there would be no defense. Even pre- or post election polling wouldn’t help. In other words, who polices the police. If Dems don’t take control, this problem could repeat for a long, long time.