There has been a conversation here and on Glass City Jungle over the voting machines. I get so frustrated over what some people say. You hear a group of national fear mongerers who live off of attacking the voting medium. It is sad. We voted without what they demand for many years, and we have shown it can work. Not everyone are used to the electronic voting machines, but they are unfairly targeted. The reality is they are no more secure or less secure than any other voting method. It is the process that matters.
You can read the op-ed piece I had published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution at:
http://swampbubbles.com/voter_verified_paper_audit_trail_vvpat_is_not_th...
You can read about more thoughts and ideas at my horribly out of date Web site at:
http://www.papertrailmyth.com
You can see some of the discussion at:
http://glasscityjungle.com/wordpress/?p=2438
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Joyce, Chris or Amanda. Do you actually live in Lucas County? If you do where were you for the last 30 years when we had the mechanical voting machines? If you don't live here, then how did we function without what you describe? Because we voted like that without a receipt and without people watching every record being counted. No one had a problem because we trusted the process.
Governments do not have the expertise to test the machines and I probably would not want them to begin specializing in it. So Chris, according to you we should all think the companies are part of the conspiracy. You don't make any sense because you are responding to what they actually found out. The thing is testing is important for any voting method. What should be done is that they should take the results and make them even stronger.
People keep talking about computer scientists, well computer scientists don't run elections. Of course any computer can be hacked, if the access is provided. Optical scan machines could be hacked too. The interesting thing is that when you look at Lotteries and Casinos in Vegas, they stick with what the computer says over what paper says because they know that paper can be faked. Maybe people should learn from the places that profit off of money how to use computers to keep track of votes.
Lisa, profit is making one dollar. The fact is Brad and a few others are using their fear mongering and living off of it. It does not mean he s doing it just to rake in more money, but I think it is sad that they do such a thing. Of course anyone could do damage to a particular voting method by living off of the pot shots they are taking. There is an unfair microscope now focused on this particular voting method and this method could be one of the most secure if it is developed. I am sure if there was someone living off of criticizing mechanical voting machines things would be different.
Will people come to their senses? No because the damage has been done. I ran for office 3 times on the machines, did not win and I don't doubt the results because I trust the process. If I ever run again, I would not be afraid of the voting machines to count my votes win or lose. So while we all focus on the voting method, the method is what is taken advantage of not the voting machine.
Also Amanda, the reason they don't give you a receipt is because of fears of vote buying. That is why no machine currently does that and no machine is allowed to do that.
It is the process that is flawed. You say that Brad Blog unfairly targets Diebold and touchscreens. The fact is that if Diebold gave a rat's ass about securing the voting machines from hacking, they would just STFU and do it! Instead of spending money on lobbyists and changing their name, why don't they develop a system that can be consistently tested to demonstrate the integrity of the machines?
Another thing that bothers me is why is there no true competition from other companies? How friggin hard is it to count a vote? It's not like you are measuring the speed of light or testing the theory of relativity or cracking the human genome. Every day, more and more people have computers and the first thing they usually learn, the hard way, is how vulnerable they are to viruses, hackers and identity thieves. Its natural for us to not trust computers where you can't see what happens after you make your choice and touch the screen.
Up to this point, Diebold has done a horrific job of instilling public confidence in their system. And there really is no excuse in my eyes other than their own incompetence. You can blame Brad et al, but I think the blame lies squarely with them. Along with the voter caging and purging of the voter rolls, Diebold is just another log on the fire.
Are flawed also.
There has been so much time, that the machines could have been vetted, people instructed and trial after trial after trial, could have and should have been conducted.
We went from a rather stable system of voting to one insecurity, in the machines and the people behind the machines.
There is a hodge podge of systems and with a national election fast approaching the same qualms rise to the surface again and we wonder why there is such low voter turn out.
Diebold's machines are junk...
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2507434&page=1
Princeton computer professor Edward W. Felten and two graduate students Ariel J. Feldman and J. Alex Halderman discussed a common Diebold machine. They showed that anyone who gets access to the machine and its memory card for literally a minute or two could easily install the group's invisible vote-stealing software on the machine. (Poll workers and others have unsupervised access for much longer periods.) Changing all logs, counters, and associated records to reflect the bogus vote count that it generates, the software installed by the infected memory card (similar to a floppy disk) would be undetectable.
Contrary to what the media and Democrats are trying to sell you, Diebold does not just make voting machines.
They are one of the WORLD LEADERS in making ATM machines for banks.
http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm#services
If you don't trust Diebold to simply count votes securly, then you should keep your money under your matress
Libs,
Diebold doesn't have the balls to mess with banks and their money. The fact that they manufacture ATM's makes their crappy voting machines look even more pathetic. It just proves they have the ability and knowhow, they just don't care enough to actually apply it. They'd rather just pay for lobbyists to keep winning them contracts than invest in making their voting machines more secure.