Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org
An article in today’s Oakland Tribune relates, “In a blow-by-blow on his school Web page and in a separate filing for an electronic voting lawsuit in New Jersey superior court, computer science professor Andrew Appel [Princeton University] details how he was able to purchase five of the Oakland-based company’s AVC Advantage machines off a Web site auctioning government surplus items, pry open the backs and access the computer chips that control the vote count. He said security features touted by the Oakland-based company on its Web site were not in place on the machines.” Meanwhile Sequoia ‘spokes-deceiver’ Michelle Shafer ignores the facts and says, “This is not a real-world scenario. The equipment is not kept somewhere where people have unfettered access to it.” Shafer does not live in the real-world where counties allow “sleep-overs” or store the machines, in the open, without guard at the polls for days before and after an election. Shafer speaks from a different plane where down is up and up is down….
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Ms. Shafer’s comment that these machines are not “kept somewhere where people have unfettered access to” them is flat-out wrong.
I’m a pollworker in Sonoma County, and I kept the machine for my assigned precinct in my living room for a couple of weeks between my precinct inspector training and election day.
Every precinct inspector in my county had possession of these machines, for better or worse, during this time frame. There were no security guidelines given to us to follow, to ensure that they were not tampered with. It simply wasn’t discussed at all at our training. The security of these machines was completely at the pleasure of individual precinct inspectors.
BTW, I’m thrilled to read in your blog that Rep. Waters is pulling her support for HR811. I haven’t heard from my rep (Woolsey) yet, but I’ve written her twice about the problems with this bill.
GA: Equal Time Opinion – Paper trail useless for votes…
Which article does lead to:
http://www.papertrailmyth.com
… we should all drop in and let them know that we agree that “paper trails” are indeed worthless… 😉