The latest e-vote mess with Texas…
The judge ruled on a lawsuit filed by Robin Vaughan, who lost by two votes in the city’s May 2006 council election.
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Two voters testified that poll workers confused them with people who have similar names and gave them incorrect electronic ballots that did not include the West Lake Hills races.
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Minutes later [after the judge’s verdict], West Lake Hills Mayor Mark Urdahl, who had supported Vaughan’s unsuccessful campaign, said electronic voting machines were responsible for the dispute and should no longer be used. He said a major flaw with electronic voting is that, instead of poll workers handing out a ballot with personal information a voter can confirm, the workers hand out a ticket with a string of seemingly meaningless numbers that is inserted into a machine.
“If we had a paper ballot,” Urdahl said after the trial, “we wouldn’t be here.”
So how many more such cases are we going to see in next week’s elections, and more notably, in next year’s elections? Hope you’re ready for the meltdown to come.
In the above matter, it looks like the Travis County Clerk was more than happy to lie to the reporter so she could continue using her democracy-busting e-voting systems:
That is, of course, complete and total bullshit.
Only one disabled accessible voting device (and it needn’t be a DRE) is required per polling place, as per the federal Help America Vote Act. If Texas has some state law requiring that every voter use such systems, we are unaware of it. In other words, if the reporters quote was accurate, County Clerk DeBeauvoir was lying.
It’s a shame the reporter on the piece, like so many at local papers who cover this beat on rare occassions, didn’t know enough to call her on it.
Hi Brad,
dropped by to find out if it’s too late for getting paper ballots or at least some form of verifiable voting across the board for the 2008 general election.
What I was wondering is if you’re able to make periodic posts at Daily Kos on the subject and help gel some activism around the blogosphere for speedy action on this important front before it’s too late. I’d love to help out in any way that I can on this, if you drop me a note at the email I am giving with this comment. Thanks for your excellent work on verifiable voting.
-NL
I’ll try to drop you a note at that address. But the best way to get action out there is to keep a regular eye over here where we cover stuff that NEEDS to get out there every day.
I don’t post at Kos (largely given his purging of diarists discussing election fraud after 2004, for which he’s never apologized or admitted he was wrong to do so to my knowledge) but I welcome you to amplify what’s here to the folks over there any time!
And thanks for giving a damn, btw! Please go make noise. We could use the help!
Sounds like the voting in the San Diego city mayors race a couple of years back. Together with Florida , our votes don’t mean much anymore in this newly-added Banana Republic we call America. A vote missed (or corruptly manipulated) is an offense against “all” of us , regardless of party affiliation. Remember , this can work the other way around too.
Expect him to be a member of the Department of
JusticeJust Us in the near future.The state of down under leads the nation these daze:
(SCOTUS). Don’t be too hard on #1 guys. Statistics show that this also means they are #1 in putting innocent people to death.
Give credit where credit is due … oh … that brings up foreclosures … hey texas is … nevermind.