Upside Down in Georgia - GOP SOS candidates FOR paper trail

Paper trail for voting wins praise
GOP secretary of state hopefuls tackle issues

By CARLOS CAMPOS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 06/06/06

Georgia's electronic voting machines need to produce paper proof of a voter's intent, three Republican candidates for Georgia secretary of state said Monday during a Cobb County debate.

But the candidates — Fulton County Commission Chairman Karen Handel, Marietta businessman Charlie Bailey and state Sen. Bill Stephens (R-Canton) — agreed on little else at the event sponsored by the Cobb County Republican Party at the Kennesaw State University Center....

verified paper trail — which allows voters to make sure their choices on the screen match their intent. Each vowed to pursue either new machines or retrofitting the current machines with such capability.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/0606debate.html

Meanwhile, Democratic SOS Cathy Cox not worried, she will run for governor on her
own machines.

Wow

Stephens (as majority leader in the Georgia legislature) had ALL THE POWER NEEDED to get legislation passed both last year and this year that would have mandated voter verified paper ballots for Georgia's paperless electronic voting system.

So what did this man do, the one who is campaigning on bringing verified voting to GA? In 2005 he did nothing, let bills die that called for paper, and promised to form a commission to study the issue in the summer of 2005, which, funny thing, he didn't happen to do.

Then this year, he and Cathy Cox got together and wrote legislation (SB500) that called for a paper trail, told everyone that's what they were doing. Then, next thing we know, the paper part has been stripped out of the bill (although the public thought it was left in), turning the bill into a "pilot" study in 3 precincts of 3 counties for 2006 testing the Diebold toilet paper roll (bad technology), paying $50,000 of the state's money to Diebold for the machines to use to test the worthless technology (worthless in terms of being a viable way to audit an election because the paper is all on a big roll that would have to be cut apart and is a nightmare to use; also, the anonymity of the vote is lost...).

Soooo, both Cox and Stephens are full of it, just playing the people of Georgia for fools, pretending they care about democracy. Nothing is being done at all about the fact that our voting system has that built in security hole that was found in the Harry Hursti hack (and in the RABBA report).

Not only that, but Cox refused to resign as chair of the Board of Elections, even though it means she's in charge of counting the votes for her bid for the governor's seat.

The last thing we want in Georgia is for any of the republicans to get that SOS position or for Cox to become governor. God help us then.

It's not as black and white as people have thought.

This is not just a democrat issue. It is a democratic issue.

Lets hope Cox catches a lot of heat for her paperless vote flushing. It ought to really burn her ass.

We are members of the Democratic party.

I wish we lived in a democratic country.