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News: Elections & Legislation |
Things You Can Do About Black Box Voting
by Sam
Email: kcimc2004 (at) yahoo.com (unverified!) |
Current rating: 3
11 Dec 2003 |
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The Help America Vote Act was supposed to right the wrongs that handed the presidency to the unelected fool squatting in Al's House.
Instead it provided millions that are being channeled into Republican-friendly companies such as Diebold that build unaccountable -- easily tampered with -- voting machines.
But people are waking up ... and fighting back. Visit Operation Enduring vote to learn what you can do to ensure the vote counts next time. |
See also:
http://www.gardenearth.com/OperationEnduringVote.pdf
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Commentary: Elections & Legislation |
Re: Things You Can Do About Black Box Voting
by tk
Email: fairtrader2002 (at) aol.com (unverified!) |
Current rating: 0
14 Dec 2003 |
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From the Longmont Colorado Times-Call
http://www.longmontfyi.com/regionstate.htm
(linked story changes daily, so entire article posted below)
County punches out of old system
By Trevor Hughes
The Daily Times-Call
BOULDER — County voters in the 2004 presidential election will cast their ballots on new equipment intended to prevent a repeat of the 2000 Florida election punch-card debacle.
Meeting Friday, a 20-member citizens group organized by County Clerk Linda Salas recommended that the county acquire an optical-scan voting system for 2004. According to Salas’ office, she had made the same decision Thursday evening.
Boulder County has been ordered by the federal government to replace its antiquated punch-card voting system, which is similar to the one that failed so spectacularly Florida in 2000.
The decision accepted by Salas on Friday came exactly three years to the day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that George Bush had beaten Al Gore for the presidency.
“We really need to have, above everything else, voter confidence,” Salas said. “As I’ve always said, it’s very important to have buy-in from the community.”
The ballots voters will cast in 2004 will resemble the ones used in this year’s mail-in election. Voters will darken circles to indicate their choices, then the paper ballots will be counted by an optical computer scanner.
Nationwide, however, there is a push on for elections officials to acquire so-called direct recording equipment, or DREs. And under federal law, counties must provide by 2006 a system allowing disabled voters to cast their ballots unaided. Computer-based DREs are seen by many experts as the future for both handicapped voters and the public at large.
But in Boulder County, a vocal group of skeptics warned that DREs are untrustworthy for all the same reasons that personal computers crash, fill up with spam or get hacked.
DREs work similar to ATMs.
Friday, Salas agreed that the Boulder-based Citizens for Verifiable Voting had raised sufficient questions about the current quality of DREs to wait. Salas had hoped to move all voting to DREs in 2004 due to cost and ease-of-use considerations.
“We’re pretty happy,” said Longmont resident and CVV member Paul Tiger.
Like Salas, Tiger said he believes the public will eventually come to trust DREs once guidelines are created by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
NIST is deciding standards ranging from how the DREs look to whether they print out a ballot, a summary receipt or don’t print anything at all.
“I think people will have that confidence level once NIST establishes those standards,” Salas said. “There has to be some sort of happy medium.”
Salas said she will spend the next month deciding which system to acquire, and whether to buy or lease it.
The Boulder County Commissioners, who have already indicated their support for an optical system, will make the final decision in mid-January.
Trevor Hughes can be reached at 303-7762244, Ext. 220, or by e-mail at thughes (at) times-call.com. |
