Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org
At least two California counties have announced that they may change from touch-screen voting to paper and optical scan. Of course this means buying more equipment from the vendors. Rather than just buying more they should be turning to the vendors of their failed touch-screen systems and demanding their money back. If nothing else, the California “Top-To-Bottom” review proved that the machines the vendors peddled were unreliable, inaccessible, and insecure. It’s time that the vendors were held responsible for their sales practices. Not to be outdone, election officials in some Pennsylvania counties are demanding that they be allowed to use their AVS WinVote system. The federally certified lab iBeta has stopped testing the latest AVS product because AVS decided not to pay their bill. Before they stopped testing, though, iBeta found 1,946 source code anomalies, 25 serious documentation problems, and an unauthorized change of motherboards. Election officials want to ignore those problems….
State must recertify systems LINK
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Coggins at i beta (formerly at systest) must have decided they’d better get credible fast or be done with.
The Counties that deal with Sequoia should order their new op-scannners from them and not pay until the other mess with the DREs is settled.
Question, is that Fed judge that dismissed in Tx one of them Bush appointed devils ?
HEY TWO CALIFORNIA COUNTIES….
What’s with the Op-Scan love?
Priority #1 should be figuring out how to engineer the PRINTING OF PAPER BALLOTS TO BE HAND COUNTED WITH PUBLIC OVERSIGHT!
Count by hand first, if you want copy of the count (redundant, pointless, un-validatable even), then op-scan it, video it, photo it.
Or avoid the op-scan crap altogether and just store the frigging paper.
Screw this FUD about not enough money, we spent TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS BECAUSE OF THESE FRIGGING UNVALIDATABLE CRAPPY ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE TABULATION DEVICES! STOP COUNTING ELECTRONICALLY. PRINT ELECTRONICALLY, COUNT BY HAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We got a war from the electronic voting machine, a president that wasn’t elected, a bunch of cronies in every imaginable office in government, a rigged judicial, war profiteering, lost civil liberties, actual dead people in IRAQ and elsewhere, a potentially a wrecked economy next, and NO END IN SIGHT TO THIS FRIGGING STUPID ASS NIGHTMARE!
These lame ass corporations need to work on a IEEE standard (like USB, 1394, serial port, parallel port, etc.) that interfaces to the myriad of disabled computing equipment (e.g. The plastic tube, the brail keyboard, etc.), and just sell a PRINTER that has the friggin ROM’s (burn once, and that’s IT!!) and CHIPS SOLDERED DOWN with an IEEE standard.
Disabled Voter could download their own damn software, if they WANT TO VOTE!!! Really all they need is a basic i8048(old ass keyboard chip) interface to a printer!!! wtf!?
It ain’t like they ain’t already communication somehow already, and if they can’t communicate ANY WAY, then what frigging good is an stupid assed OP-SCANNER GOING TO DO~!
Are we talking about FIXING THE SPIRIT OF HAVA or are THEY (we know who some of them are now) trying to RIG 2008, just like the years from 2006 to 2000!!
The code from the myriad of disabled communications devices (which no SoS need bother to BUY at this point ever again, since the disabled themselves either HAVE THEM or GET them GIVEN TO THEM from our TAX dollars, or their insurance already, saving MILLIONS!) can connect to the IEEE standard ROM-LOCKED-DOWN PRINTER. A safety factor of TWO printers at each POLLING PLACE could be the backup + Plus it needs it’s OWN POWER SUPPLY, not the god damn wall current! What if there’s a brownout?! hmm
You want to study something? Study the types of devices that the disabled use, and COUNT how many disabled voters there are. They COUNT US, COUNT THEM DAMNIT! Quit this non-sense crap.
And then PRINT a PAPER BALLOT, to be HAND COUNTED IN PUBLIC VIEW with the rest of the frigging paper.
I mean how many senses do we have FIVE right.
So, How many senses do you need to VOTE?!!!
taste – I don’t see how you can vote that way
smell – I don’t see that as a valid way to vote
sight – Valid Method
touch – Valid Method
hearing – Valid Method, but how to communicate feedback? Blink your missing eye, squeeze the ball (if you have hands)
Someone else can figure out this frigging logic!
I don’t get it what the hell is the problem here!?
Frigging idiots who make these machines are treating us like they want us to use the Sixth Sense – ESP to vote! Which while I might be sarcastic here, it just about exactly what we got now. Ghosts are doing the voting for us, and not even (GOD/IT/Satan/ or Whatever your definition of GOD is) can count or validate it.
If really pinching pennies, a mobile BUS could do this, with oversight from ALL PARTIES, counting HOW MANY ACTUAL DISABLED VOTERS THERE ARE WOULD HELP! Then the bus, just stops by their home! Or they can go to the MAIN OFFICE between Date X and Date Y.
Argh!! I gave you plenty of ideas here. Go make your millions of dollars and save our country from this nonsense.
Until this stuff is implemented, these machines are only going to destroy our constitution by security through fascism.
The printers could cost 100 dollars each.
that’s two hundred dollars per precinct vs. $3000 per precinct. Got to print the friggin paper anyway right!!!
And if you want to make the damn printers in China, go ahead, but they MUST MEET WRITTEN SPECIFICATIONS BEFORE HAND. Don’t use the cheap ass PLL chips, use the high humidity chips. Make the damn thing waterproof! Maybe you have to vote outdoors in the SUN!?
And as far as the BATTERY.
A CAR BATTERY +12 VDC er… +13.8 VDC. No need for expensive ass crap, JUMPER CABLES with vice-grip terminals could work!!!!!!!!
Paper ballots hand counted are the only option. When did the Dems actually manage to get an honest recount of paper ballots in a “critical” election. NOT ONE TIME. The smoke screen effect the neocons are creating may allow recounts in non critical elections but Dems will be prevented if it looks like they can do any real damage to the current dictatorship. Doesn’t matter if there are paper ballots that are scanned onto hackable cards if the courts prevent recounting which is what the track record clearly shows. In California Barbara Bowen “has the power” but it could come down to a standoff between her and the supremes. Or if the margins are too small due to a sizable hack she cannot legitimately order a recount. Barbara needs to ensure now against a possible standoff between her and the courts and mandate paper ballots counted by hand. Remeber who manufactures the memory cards. No amount of security can stop interference from the manufacturers and technichians which we have no way of proving one way or another especially if the courts move to prevent recounting.
correction
if the margins are too WIDE due to a sizable hack she cannot legitimately order a recount.
John,
Do you know if all the labs that “test” EVM’s, at this time, still have only the xMaytag repairman working for them?