Good for you Brad... keep blowing the horn about this.

On Monday, Greenville SC Channel 4 reported that the State Election Commission said this in the face of Rawl's official protest:

"The system is protected, the system is secure, and most importantly, the system is accurate. We are confident in the system’s ability to perform..."

Here in Pennsylvania we've heard these same lines time and time again from officials talking about the SAME PAPERLESS VOTING MACHINES. We've even heard officials call printouts of the DRE results "paper records" and watched counties foolishly try to conduct so-called recounts by comparing two printouts of the same data out of a DRE.

Enough of this. It's long past time. We all need to wake up and finally protect every vote nationally with a basic voter-verified paper ballot and an audit of every election. Then we can move on and improve from there.

In the meantime, what readers everywhere can and should do right now is jump in to the discussion about this situation in SC wherever possible. Add comments on every article, blog, talk show, etc that you can, urging full investigation and removal of these DREs, and support software independent paper-based voting.

Let's all NOT let them push these DRE shenanigans under the rug again.

The new motto for Rawls may have to be:

Vox Populi not Vox Machina
Let voters select Democatic Nominees

The saddest thing is that with the burden of proof being that evidence-less machines left behind evidence, it only confirms Dr. Shamos's oft-quoted line:

There is no EVIDENCE of election machines being hacked.

"The system has been used in thousands of elections since its implementation in 2004 and has always functioned as it is designed to function."
- Chris Whitmire, SC Election Commission

Well, he's not lying--the system was designed to elect Republicans.

- Tom

SC is a gift that keeps on giving as the MSM loves to interview Greene. Kinda' like putting up Tiger's newest mistress every few days. Looks bad for the black guy in the WH. Sometimes the best laid plans go awry.(sp?)

Anyway, they went too far in their belief that the MSM and justice dept. would continue to cover for them. Some things are just too weird for even the most gullible to believe.

Maybe Greene can do what all the activists couldn't . Bring attention to the US phony voting system.

Not sure what you're trying to say John, there's plenty of evidence that the machine count was invalid. And the system can be audited, it's a cheap sloppy windows box running an access database.

Trouble is, ES&S hide behind the "Trade Secrets" shield and government is unwilling, thus far, to challenge this shield. So, the underlying code has never been fully analyzed.

but the electronic ballot and the database themselves can and should be analyzed as quickly as possible.

And these machines removed from service permanently.

A patriot like yourself should be able to appreciate the verifiable simplicity of paper ballots. No?

I want to clarify, when I say audit, I am NOT referring to an audit of the votes. I am referring to a line by line audit of the database and the source code....

The votes that thing has stored are meaningless.

Faith based voting is an insult to democracy.

"The voting machines have been used in thousands of elections since 2004"

really? the USA has had THOUSANDS of seperate elections since 2004?

where was I? and how come the whole citizenry of the USA are not flat on their backs from voter fatigue?

Perhaps our disagreement stems from the word "evidence" I was think of evidence in the sense of something you could bring to court or present to a skeptic to persuade him to your point of view.

With the unverifiable DRE's currently on the market the machines provide not evidence which allows an election official or an election critic to support and of the following statements of faith:
1) I believe the machines captured, encoded, records, and counted the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
2) I believe the machines encountered a malfunction and, thus, failed to capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
3) I believe the machines programming contained a mistake which caused the machine(s) to incorrectly capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
4) I believe the machines were maliciously manipulated in way which caused the machine(s) to incorrectly capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.

The paper trails are not evidence which support or refute any of the statements above.
The audit logs (windows or ES&S) not evidence which support or refute any of the statements above. Though I would believe the windows event s logs more than the ES&S event and audit logs. Still this is thin gruel from an evidentiary stand point
The line by line source code review is not evidence which support or refute any of the statements above because there is a unique executable for ever jurisdiction / ballot style administered by the machine. How do you know the examined executable is the one which ran on election day?
The row by row review of the database entries is not evidence which support or refute any of the statements above.
The main reason none of this is evidence is that all were produce from the same poisoned well: the un-reviewed and untested software which ran on the machinery on election night and which (because there is no chain of custody) may or may not exist today. The execution of software is a fundamentally unobservable process. Watching a CPU be warm is not the same a observing the votes it is supposedly counting.
Yes, voter marked ballots would be software-independent evidence which could support any of the the statements of faith above. In SC though a large chunk of the election records are/were generated under software control. Because of that the best you can prove is the software generated records are consistent not that the software generated records are correct or accurate.

Consider the these consistent electronic records:
I read the BradBlog everi day.
I read the BradBlog everi day.
I read the BradBlog everi day.

Consistent, but not correct.

I stand by the statement there is no evidence.

1) There is no evidence the machines captured, encoded, records, and counted the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
2) There is no evidence the machines encountered a malfunction and, thus, failed to capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
3) There is no evidence the machines programming contained a mistake which caused the machine(s) to incorrectly capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
4) There is no evidence the machines were maliciously manipulated in way which caused the machine(s) to incorrectly capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.

This is the most dangerous aspect of these machines. Even people of good will and honest can disagree about the performance of the election machines and there is no evidence available to support or refute the claims. Because of this the disagreement the body politic is wounded and the wound festers because there is no Truth or Facts with which to clean the wound. There is only persistent uncertainly.

Vox Machina. The machines have spoken in SC as the Onion predicted the machines would.

2) There is no evidence the machines encountered a malfunction and, thus, failed to capture, encode, record, or count the votes of an elector correctly and accurately for one or more electors.
........

however there is evidence the machine failed to capture,encode,record,or ACCURATELY count the votes...assuming brads earlier reporting is correct and 25 precincts turned in more votes than voters..because we know that is physically impossible

To karenfromillinois:

Yes, but it is evidence you could bring to court or which would help persuade a skeptic to your point of view.

Maybe the second,but not the first.

so results that are physically impossible could not be introduced as evidence that a system simply does not work....why not?