So that information was widely known, and yet not only were those f'ing things used the following November, States still continue to buy them now.
Maybe it's this attitude:
http://democrats.sen.ca.gov/templates/SDCTemplate.asp?a=4269&z=69&cp=PressRelease&pg=article&fpg=senpressreleases&sln=Bowen&sdn=28Governor Signs A Pair Of Bowen Election Reform Measures And Vetoes Two Others
2005/10/11
SACRAMENTO – “People need and deserve to know their votes have been counted accurately, and the best way to ensure that happens is to use the paper printout that the voter has already verified as being accurate and check it against the results tallied by the electronic machine.”
That’s how Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach), the chairwoman of the Senate Elections, Reapportionment & Constitutional Amendments Committee responded to the Governor’s decision to sign SB 370 into law tonight.
“I don’t see how the Secretary of State, who led the opposition to the bill, could say with straight face that he’s for fair elections, he’s for having a paper trail on electronic voting machines, yet he’s against using that paper trail to ensure the accuracy of the vote count,” said Bowen.
California law requires all electronic voting machines to be equipped with an accessible voter-verified paper audit trail (AVVPAT) as of January 1, 2006. Under a separate 40-year-old California law, elections officials are required to conduct a public manual tally of the ballots cast in at least 1% of the precincts chosen at random to check the accuracy of votes tabulated by an electronic or mechanical voting system. SB 370 requires elections officials to use the AVVPAT to comply with California’s 1% manual law and to use the AVVPAT it in the event of a recount.
The California Association of Clerks & Elections Officials opposed SB 370 even though it noted that the “. . . the possibility exists that the internal audit trail . . . could be programmed to print different results.”
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And:
http://democrats.sen.ca.gov/templates/SDCTemplate.asp?a=3263&z=69&cp=PressRelease&pg=article&fpg=senpressreleases&sln=Bowen&sdn=28Bowen Effort To Restore Confidence In The Secretary Of State's Office Shot Down In Assembly Elections Committee
2005/07/05
SACRAMENTO – Ensuring the Secretary of State is focused solely on the integrity of the electoral process and preventing voting machine vendors from contributing to political campaigns was the goal of SB 11 by Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach), which was killed in the Assembly Elections & Redistricting Committee late today on a 3-3 vote.
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SB 11 also would have prevented voting equipment manufacturers and vendors from making campaign contributions to candidates for state office, mayor, city council, board of supervisors, or any election official and precluded candidates from accepting such contributions. Under the bill, accepting a donation would be a violation of the Political Reform Act, which could lead to a fine of up to $5,000, a possible civil suit, and the potential for a criminal misdemeanor prosecution.
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“Voting technology isn’t just about counting pieces of paper with the names of candidates on them any longer, it’s a giant, multi-billion dollar industry that creates winners and losers when a state or a county decides to go with one company instead of another,” continued Bowen. “Contracting for voting equipment isn’t like contracting for paper clips or copy machine repair work because the stakes are exponentially higher. If the copy machine isn’t working right, you know it immediately, but if a voting machine malfunctions or has been tampered with, people may never know whether their votes were recorded accurately or if they were recorded at all.”
According to an August 2004 report from electionline.org, the main electronic voting equipment manufacturers (Diebold, ES&S, Hart InterCivic, and Sequoia) contributed over $650,000 between 2001 and 2003 to candidates running for office across the country, including four candidates for Secretary of State. In California, Sequoia donated $8,000 to candidates for state office in 2001-02, while ES&S made $10,000 in contributions to candidates for state office in 2001-02.
That committee is said to be comprised of 4 Dems and 2 Repugs.
So we have The California Association of Clerks & Elections Officials plus DINOS on the take from these criminal enterprises.
I don't know if smelling salts can fix this mess.