Congrats to Bo Lipari and the NY Verified Voting crew, on a milestone in their long, and continuing fight for election integrity in the state of New York. Writes Lipari this morning:
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So for the first time since HAVA passed in 2002, New York State has no DREs of any type being purchased by any county, or undergoing NYS certification testing for 2009 purchases. For the vendors who for 6 years told us “New York is a DRE state”, we tell you now as we told you then, “Wrong. New York is a paper ballot state.”
Now, of course, the fight will continue to make sure the state actually bothers to count those paper ballots when they get them, as it will be error-prone, hackable, optical-scan devices that are purchased across the state.
The good folks of NY will also want to keep a close eye on the attempted hostile takeover of Sequoia Voting Systems by competitor Hart InterCivic (as reported to date only by The BRAD BLOG, unfortunately) and in light of the $100 million worth of pending contracts NY now has with Sequoia for all new voting machines.
That $100 million hangs in the balance, as the contract with Sequoia may soon result in NY finding themselves in business with an entirely different company than they bargained for, one with a federal fraud suit hanging over the head, and one that could give a completely new meaning to the phrase: “I Hart NY”!
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What do Indiana and North Carolina use for their voting? Are they open or closed primaries? I think I saw that Indiana allows paper ballots to vote early, at least that was a post I saw by someone who voted for voted in their first election.
We are in Michigan and my opinion about our votes just seems to change not that it does any good. My husband and I are able to get paper ballots because of our age and we voted uncommitted back in January. My mother is almost 92 and I had to tell her by way of email to be sure to vote uncommitted because if she tried to write in a vote it wouldn’t be counted at all. How many people didn’t know that I wonder and how many just didn’t vote at all because they couldn’t vote for their preference.
Our son lives in Oregon and as most know they vote paper ballot and have for a long time. I know all systems can be hacked, but at least you walk away from a paper ballot with something tangible knowing you did vote and it there is a record somewhere.
I hope NY does a better job with paper ballots than Stalin did. Or NH for that matter.
The Oregon system came about in the 1990s. The last time I went to a polling place, a local church, the church chose to hang a “God is watching you” banner above the voting stations. I got very angry at this.
So I registered “Permanent Absentee”. This was a status that allowed me to vote forever by mail.
By the mid-1990s, about 1/3 of Oregon voters were registered as “Permanent Absentee”. It would brought up to referendum, and passed, so in effect, every voter in Oregon votes an absentee ballot in every election.
It works just like absentee ballots in every other state. You get it in the mail about 3 weeks ahead. You can vote at your kitchen table, with the voter’s guide, the internet, friends, family and the dog for help. Oregon is famous for referenda, so a ballot title like “Stops disallowing non-aid recipients from unencumbered loss provisions” it helps to read through all the arguments as you vote. And then you fold it and pop it in the mail.
Counting is done via optical scan readers. This is the opposite of “electronic voting” because if there is ever a discrepancy, they just pop the whole batch into the reader to recount it. The batch can be your voting area, your county, or the whole darn state! In nearby Washington State, the Governors race in 2004 was decided by under 100 votes and it took three counts, three months and every count was different. The Oregon system insures we can recount in a matter of days, and if the counts ever differ, we can find the cause. Voting is not subjective.
So in Oregon we have no e-vote machines. We have no chads. We have no polling places. Every vote is a paper trail.
Our country would be well served if the other 49 states would adopt this type of system.
Thanks for the explanation, our son is in Astoria at least away from a rural area, we lived in the rural area in Michigan for 14 years moved back to the Detroit area and know the differences between living in a rural area and a city. Now we came back to not only the mix of blacks and whites which I sorely missed living in an all white area, but 14 years and now we have an Arab American exposure as well as African American, and quite frankly I love it all. Doctors,dentists and just the mixture of different people now.
“A Big middle finger” to every PRO machine people!
Sylvia Hayes #2
Please see: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/ to see the voting systems used by different state/counties, including Indiana, of course.
OregonVoter #4
With all due respect to the processes that OR uses, much of that is in place only due to your good SoS Bradbury. Should he leave, many of his processes are not statutory, and could create some huge problems.
Furthermore, you (accidentally) mislead folks by saying there are no e-voting systems in use in Oregon.
Those counts, which come out differently each time, are likely due to the fact that op-scan systems are notoriously inaccurate, and don’t necessarily count the same ballot twice.
Furthermore, vote-by-mail has all kinds of problems, beginning with the sale of those votes around the kitchen table (if one wishes), to the black hole the ballots get dropped into when you give them to the post office and hope they arrive and get counted, to the black hole they get counted in, without all of the folks watching on Election Night as in other states.
Security is also a big issue with VBM.
I hope to be doing a piece here (if ever I can find the time!) called “The Trouble with Vote-by-Mail” to help spell out some of the many concerns about that system.
Thanks loads Brad,
We used to go to Chicago when we lived in West Michigan 12 Miles from Lake Michigan. We would drive through the upper west corner of Indiana. We are trying to figure out what we are seeing in the maps right now. One of the red counties there LaPorte they had their county court house and they had a museum in the old section, which was moved before we left the area, at any rate it was a really fascinating museum, real small but packed with all kinds of artifacts from the region. One of the last time we went to LaPorte we noticed them building a new building right next to the old section. We stared up at what was going up and began to figure out what we were seeing, it was cubicles of future jail cells. They are probably holding cells for the prisoners. It gave me such a weird feeling.
Your link is totally great thank you,