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Los Alamos Reconsiders Touch Screen Voting
goombah99 writes "Los Alamos county, which boasts the highest geek PhD per capita in the world and considerable clout in secure computing, has voted to rescind its previous plans to purchase Touch Screen voting systems and will ask the New Mexico's secretary of state to address its concerns regarding an imminent state-wide purchase. They may get forced by the Clerk's office to use them anyway if the state makes its bulk purchase of Sequoia AvcEdge touch screen systems with a Windows-based WinEDS database. The Los Alamos position is welcome news since it casts the rejection of these systems in a more sober light; widespread right-wing conspiracy theories have done great harm by galvanizing election officials to be dismissive of re-opening their consideration of the issue. What won the day was convincing the county they had until 2006 to comply with HAVA, and that better machines with voter verifiable audit trails and even open source, were on the way. There is also more in the local newspapers."
And the only reason they have any traction is because the voting machines don't have a voter, human readable, verifiable audit trail to track the votes. Thus you open up all sorts of conspiracy theories because theres no way to prove to a reasonable person that the votes have not been tampered with either through error or design.
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Governments want traceability and backups in case the something goes wrong.
What I think the government wants varies according to how paranoid I'm feeling on any particular day. As a voter however, I want traceability and backups so I can be assured that the vote wasn't tampered with.
I read the CBS News article in the included link, and I don't see the "great harm" anywhere in that article. I'm wondering if the submitter is showing a bias by his comments.
I am not aware of any solid proof that the right-wing has used electronic voting machines to ensure election, but it stands to reason that it has and will happen. Why? Because politicians on both sides have tampered with election results and methods for decades (centuries, millenia). So it would be quite naive to think that the right-wing wouldn't try to use whatever advantage it had. The left-wing too, when they are in power, would do the same thing. Power corrupts.
This is a non-partisan problem. Either side is likely to try to use closed-source technology to their favor. It is short-sided to think this is only a right-wing problem -- it's not. Whoever is in power will use whatever means are accesible to maintain that power. Therefore it is imperative that the voting method being used does not give them an obvious tool to corrupt in maintaining that power. Diebold (and other manufacturer) machines are bad news, no matter which side you are on. Elections are stolen routinely throughout human history. Don't give them another tool to do the job, for they will most assuredly use them.
Think about it: Do you really want to give politicians a method to hide voting result confirmations? To be able to say, "Here are the results and, hey whaddya know? I won!" and have no possible way to verify that? That's called power without accountability, and we all know where that leads.
The very fact that the officials have signed contracts that forbid any investigation of the equipment and that there are no verifiable audit trails makes me think that there is some truth in these "conspiracy theories".
When government is not open and transparent it is usually because those people who make up the government are trying to hide something, usually fixing things in their own self interest.
Would you trust your money to a bank that had no audit trail and whose systems and accounts were not open to independant audit?
I just don't see why the voting machine folks can't get the message. Simply include a cash register tape, just like most stores have!
Everywhere across the country, hundreds of millions of people get paper receipts with their purchases at the store. This happens, because Republican (and Democratic) store owners "Don't trust" the electronic tabulations in the machines and demand a verifiable "paper trail" from each of their cash registers. If store owners don't trust a $0.99 purchase to be recorded electronicly, why should we trust voting machines. It's simple, effective, and not expensive either. It happens HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF TIMES PER DAY.
Why can't everyone simply get a printout of their votes?...Why the foot-dragging...other than proving the conspiricy theories!.... To the voting machine folks, just add a paper tape, just like an ATM or cash register!....It's the right thing to do.
The fact that these machines are designed so carelessly and without regard for security is a danger, not to Liberals because of a vast right-wing conspiracy but to us all. These machines were designed by people with little regard for Democracy. The Diebold Memos more than show that. What endangers the sanctity of Democracy hurts us all.
Something intelligent here.
As far as I know there was a crackdown on Enron as a company.
ROTFLMAO!!!
Yeah, Kenny Boy is doing his 10 years at Leavenworth, even as we speak!
NOT!
Who would it benefit if the executives were thrown in prison for life and told to pay billions in damages (which they'd never be able to do)?
How about all the victims to come from the next set of CEO/thieves who will do whatever they want secure in the knowledge that if they get caught nothing really bad will happen to them?
One of the reasons we put people in prison is to discourage others from committing the same crimes.
Using your logic, we should be freeing all sorts of criminals.
(of course, if we are talking about non-violent drug offenders who never hurt anybody then I would wholeheartedly agree.)
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?