"Unsecured Memory Card" Prompts Election Fraud Investigation In Georgia (ajc.com)

McGruber writes: On Tuesday, there was an election in Dekalb County, Georgia. An area of the county known as LaVista Hills voted on a referendum on whether they should incorporate into a brand-new city or whether they should remain an unincorporated part of the county. The referendum failed by a mere 136 votes, less than 1 percent of all votes cast. The second in command at DeKalb County's office of elections is now alleging there were very serious irregularities regarding the LaVista Hills cityhood vote. Piazza says voters were turned away at their polling places, voter material wasn't properly secured, and that "there was a memory card that collects citizen votes loose in the office." Piazza's allegations have prompted Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to open an investigation. Local Atlanta television stations are reporting that Piazza first reported the irregularities to his boss in Dekalb County and that she responded by putting him on leave. One TV station is also broadcasting footage of state investigators removing election equipment from Dekalb County offices. (Those reports are not yet posted on their websites.)

Comments

Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is more voter ID laws and closing DMV offices in poorer/blacker areas.

Re:Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

mentioning what GA has actually done isnt trolling.

It's off topic for the article-- clearly, this is not the solution-- and seems to have been posted in order to get a reaction.

Posting shit in order to get a reaction is trolling.

The ruling stands.

revolutionary technology

[beckett]

canada has pencils and paper they use for voting. when the voting is done, the ballot boxes stay in the room, and designated counters stay there with observers until the count is complete. we got our election results within 4 hours of the last poll closing in our last federal election. the scrutiny, traceability, and physical counts of paper ballots makes it difficult to do the type of election tampering described in the article. There is no need for electronic voting machines.

Re:revolutionary technology

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes too much sense. It would never work here in the US.

Re:revolutionary technology

[TWX]

We had pencils and punch cards once, when democracy was hanging by a chad.

That kind of voting was not based on marking a piece of paper with a writing implement. That kind of voting was based on pushing a mechanical button that had to make a physical change in the paper medium over which it was placed. That system was unsound because it required maintenance of equipment and was subject to the abuse that the average person could put on a mechanical device.

I do not have a problem with electronic-tabulated voting so long as the medium on which the voter casts the vote is human-readable and human-markable. That pretty much means optical scan, a technology that has been used for a couple of decades now. Optical scan means that the results can be tabulated as the voting occurs and be known as polls close, but in contests where there is a need to recount it's still possible for humans auditing the individual ballots to read the ballots with their eyes, without any special equipment at all.

Either way, human-tabulated from the outset or computer-tabulated and capable of being human-tabulated or human-audited, the process needs to allow for tabulation without any special equipment whatsoever.

Re:revolutionary technology

[PopeRatzo]

You want depressing? Here is the current GOP frontrunner in his own words:

My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain. Now all the archeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it. And I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain. And when you look at the way that the pyramids are made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they’d have to be that way for various reasons. And various of scientists have said, ‘well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that’s how-’ you know, it doesn’t require an alien being when God is with you.

Yes, Dr Carson, it's "the scientists" who are saying there were ancient aliens that built the pyramids, you ignoramus.

What good is having fraud-free elections when there are only frauds running for office? And don't get me started on Hillary. I'd rather see candidates picked at random from the phone book than what we're going to get next November.

Re:revolutionary technology

[dywolf]

Crossing every finger and toe for Bernie in the primaries.
Even changed my registration from I to D so can vote in the Primaries this time.
That said, Hillary is the fallback option.

She says the right things, but so did Bill. and the New Democrats (Obama included) are ultimately still only slightly less conservative than conservatives, and just as married to Wall Street. They're only truly different when it comes to social issues (and even there, tending to lag behind the rest of the world), and frankly, I'll take what I can get until we see a return to true Liberalism. And there is the off chance she may actually carry through and match a few actions to the words she's said to get elected, slim as it may be.

Re:Ethics reform passed

[sunderland56]

One more reason that the ethics reform initiative passed by greater than a 90% margin.

One reason it passed was that the ethics reform vote wasn't tabulated by voting machines.