Reply #13: Here are some of the findings of the report... [View All]

The story concludes by saying that, "Lawsuits have been filed in at least six states to block the purchase or use of computerized machines," that, "Election officials in California and Pennsylvania recently issued urgent warnings to local polling supervisors about potential software problems in touch-screen voting machines after a test in Utah uncovered vulnerabilities in machines made by Diebold Election Systems," and then lists these findings:

• Using corrupt software to switch votes from one candidate to another is the easiest way to attack all three systems. A would-be hacker would have to overcome many hurdles to do this, the report says, but none "is insurmountable."

• The most vulnerable voting machines use wireless components open to attack by "virtually any member of the public with some knowledge and a personal digital assistant." Only New York, Minnesota and California ban wireless components.

• Even electronic systems that use voter-verified paper records are subject to attack unless they are regularly audited.

• Most states have not implemented election procedures or countermeasures to detect software attacks.


The news article ends with this statement, "The report said state election officials could improve voting-machine security if they conduct routine audits comparing voter- verified paper trails to the electronic record and ban wireless components in voting machines, and a quote from Rep. Rush Holt, D-NJ, a chief sponsor of a bill to improve electronic-voting security: "A voting system that is not auditable contains the seeds of destruction for a democracy."

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Now I ask you: WHAT ARE WE *DOING* WITH AN ELECTION SYSTEM THAT IS *THIS* VULNERABLE TO TAMPERING???!!!

How did it happen? How many "elections" are now QUESTIONABLE because of it? And why aren't we GETTING RID OF IT?

Apologists for electronic voting--including Russ Holt, whose bill LEGITIMIZES electronic voting with more security patches--NEVER ASK the right questions? The questions that zero in on the truth. It's NOT that these systems are egregiously insecure. It's WHY they are egregiously insecure! It's WHO designed them that way--and WHY. It's WHO pushed them on us, and WHY.

Transparent elections are not difficult. People vote, and you count their votes in public view.

The people who wrote HAVA, who pushed electronic voting upon the states prior to the 2004 election, who fought against a paper trail, who permitted TRADE SECRET programming of the machines, who permitted secret industry "testing" of the machines, who permitted lavish lobbying and all the rest, DID NOT WANT A TRANSPARENT ELECTION IN 2004 OR EVER AGAIN!

And you don't fix that with security patches and paper trails. You fix that by throwing their whole goddamned election theft scam OUT, and starting over.