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Banned
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Originally Posted by cybersharp
Come on, if a few members of your party was saying something irrational would you want the rest of us to judge you baised on their actions? Im pretty damn liberal but logicaly I dont support any of that sarcastic bs you just said was a liberal point of view. Please dont judge me by what other people in my political party try to do, otherwise I will end up judging all of you by the worst idea's your partys have thrown out over the years, and since dems and reps have been around a LONG time I wager I could find a lot.   |
cybersharp, I can accept that I have no chance of influencing <b>timalkin</b>, if his last post is an indication of his capacity to minimize or ignore all of the information that I posted to make the case that the notion that "fair" elections in any number of voting districts (or in whole states) in the U.S., after what has been reported about the integrity of Diebold, it's former CEO, and it's vote tabulation software are indicators, or for that matter, the demonstrated integrity (or the lack of it....) of some public officials responsible for supervising a "fair" and widely, publicly accessible voting process.
timalkin posted that, <b>"It looks to me like a certain group of people are pissed off that they haven't won an election in a long time. "</b> I didn't respond because, especially when I considered that he made his comments without countering my prior postings of well documented points that make the case that "fair" election results are no longer a "given", his statement amounted to nothing more than a "troll", lacking even a rudimentary effort to advance a thoughtful or content rich POV.
My reaction to timalkin was, "what's the use", as he showed no inclination to debate or to advance discussion.
I am, however, extremely disappointed by your response. You did not challenge timalkin....instead....you appealed to him....not to lump you in with the rest of us. You claim to be an openminded individual, presumably aligned with some of the quality candidates who ran for political office in the last few years, and who lost elections under contested voting circumstances....at least in your appeal to timalkin. Cybersharp. do you really believe that "fair" elections are "given"....and that the reason that so many democratic candidates "haven't won an election in a long time"?
Did nothing that I posted sway you to at least consider that timalkin's blind faith in the superiority of the ideology of his candidates, in the eyes of the majority of voters, in one election contest after another, is the reason that they "win" so consistantly?
If you, as someone who says that he is a democrat believes that, consider the following news report. (It is a news article...not an op-ed.) ....and....would you like to know more about a bridge that I have for sale....it's in lower Manhattan, on the East river. I hate my avatar, but I have a feeling....in a losing effort to try to influence even "open minded" fellow readers, that I won't be able to change it for a while....yet!
Did I let it slip that a post like yours frustrates me to the point that I have to ask....if recent Florida and California elections were FUCKING secure (and "fair"), why do hackers continue to successfully hack Diebold voting machine software, and why did Florida state voting officials RELUCTANTLY (as in...after much resistance to the IDEA...) <h3>"abruptly ordered new security measures for all 67 counties"</h3>?
Quote:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald...printstory.jsp
Posted on Sat, Mar. 04, 2006
ELECTIONS
Voting bosses must boost security
Despite downplaying a threat to the security of voting machines last year, state officials ordered new security measures for all election supervisors.
BY GARY FINEOUT
gfineout@MiamiHerald.com
TALLAHASSEE - Florida's top elections officials, who in December dismissed a report that computer experts had hacked into a Leon County voting system, on Friday abruptly ordered new security measures for all 67 counties.
The decision comes on the heels of a Feb. 14 report in which California experts concluded security flaws exposed in Florida were ''a real threat.'' The Republican secretary of state in California then ordered changes to have Diebold machines certified for the 2006 elections in that state.
Twenty-nine counties in Florida, including Monroe, use different versions of paper-ballot voting systems manufactured by Diebold, a leading manufacturer of security systems and voting machines. One county uses Diebold touch-screens.
The security changes, which were ordered ''immediately'' by Florida Division of Elections Chief Dawn Roberts, require that election supervisors counties keep an inventory of all memory cards used inside voting machines and that the cards are never left with just one person.
`VINDICATED'
''We feel vindicated,'' said Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho.
An outside group that had Sancho's permission to test his machines' security was able to hack them. When Sancho made the results public, he came under fire from both the Florida Department of State and Diebold.
''The basis on which they are issuing [the new rules] is Leon County's test, yet not one word of congratulations,'' Sancho said. ``How petty.''
Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Sue Cobb, tried to downplay the role of Sancho's test, saying the new rules were based on a continuing evaluation of standards. Still, she acknowledged, Sancho's test was ''a factor.'' Nash also said many election supervisors already follow the new standards but that the new requirements were ordered to ensure that all counties had ``a uniform application.''
Sancho moved to switch away from the Diebold machines after a Finnish computer expert was able to hack into one, alter voting results and leave no trace of tampering. State officials initially said they were not concerned about the security breach the test exposed.
But an independent panel put together by California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson concluded in a February report that the ''attack does work'' and the results of the hack cannot be detected without ``paper ballots.''
The panel said much of the problem could be easily corrected. McPherson certified Diebold machines last month for this year's elections, but only after requiring counties to upgrade their security procedures and getting Diebold to agree to upgrade its software.
Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Lester Sola was not surprised by the state's push Friday to make voting security procedures more stringent, though he said the changes will have little effect in Miami-Dade.
County elections employees are never alone with voting machines or any other equipment, he said. The department also has numerous tracking devices, such as bar codes, to maintain an inventory.
The state is also mandating that elections equipment be stored with tamper-resistant seals -- a process already done in Miami-Dade, Sola said.
''Recognizing we have been under a lot of scrutiny for the integrity of our elections, we already follow these procedures,'' he said. ``I think the issue is going to be in raising the bar.''
Broward Supervisor of Election Brenda Snipes said she hadn't yet seen the memo, so she wasn't aware of the specific security overhauls the state is ordering.
However, she said there is never a time when just one person has access to ballots or other sensitive information that could effect election results. When the cartridges containing election results are transported, they try to find two people of differing political parties to take them. And when large amounts of absentee ballots go to the post office or are retrieved, they have a police escort.
''No one person is ever involved with a ballot without someone else being there,'' Snipes said.
AWARE AND CONCERNED
Snipes said she was aware and concerned about some of the issues Sancho raised and wants to take a close look at her own security procedures.
''Now that this issue has been raised, I'd like to sit down with the staff and look through our procedures to see if there's anything we ought to be doing better,'' she said. ``I don't have a problem looking to see where gaps might exist. I think we'll go back and just take another look at it.''
Miami Herald staff writers Jennifer Mooney Piedra, Erika Bolstad and Marc Caputo contributed to this report.
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and........
Quote:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060223/...florida_voting
By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writer Thu Feb 23, 3:53 PM ET
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - An examination of Palm Beach County's electronic voting machine records from the 2004 election found possible tampering and tens of thousands of malfunctions and errors, a watchdog group said Thursday.
Bev Harris, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, said the findings call into question the outcome of the presidential race. But county officials and the maker of the electronic voting machines strongly disputed that and took issue with the findings.
Voting problems would have had to have been widespread across the state to make a difference.
President Bush won Florida — and its 27 electoral votes — by 381,000 votes in 2004. Overall, he defeated
John Kerry by 286 to 252 electoral votes, with 270 needed for victory.
BlackBoxVoting.org, which describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit citizens group, said it found 70,000 instances in Palm Beach County of cards getting stuck in the paperless ATM-like machines and that the computers logged about 100,000 errors, including memory failures.
Also, the hard drives crashed on some of the machines made by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, some machines apparently had to be rebooted over and over, and 1,475 re-calibrations were performed on Election Day on more than 4,300 units, Harris said. Re-calibrations are done when a machine is malfunctioning, she said.
"I actually think there's enough votes in play in Florida that it's anybody's guess who actually won the presidential race," Harris added. "But with that said, there's no way to tell who the votes should have gone to."...........
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Quote:
http://www.local6.com/news/3879408/detail.html
13,000 Ballots Rushed From Voting Site, Must Be Recounted
Memory Card On Optical Scan Machine Fails
UPDATED: 7:06 am EST November 2, 2004
A glitch in a voting machine at an early polling place in Volusia County, Fla., is forcing election officials to recount about 13,000 ballots, according to Local 6 News.
The ballots were removed from the City Island Library in Daytona Beach and transported to a secure vault in Deland after an optical scan machine failed.
A computer error is to blame for the failure of the memory card which records the voting data, Local 6 News reported.
The thousands of ballots will have to be resubmitted through voting machines Tuesday, according to Local 6 News.
The problem includes every ballot cast during the last several weeks at the library.
When the error was discovered Monday, representatives from both parties were notified.
Members of each political party and the canvassing board must witness the recount process Tuesday.
Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.
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Quote:
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache...s&ct=clnk&cd=2
Watchdog group requests Volusia vote tallies
By CHRISTINE GIRARDIN
Staff Writer
Last update: November 18, 2004
DELAND -- An activist group investigating possible irregularities in the Nov. 2 election requested copies of all Volusia County voter tallies Wednesday.
It took county elections employees most of the day to complete the job, started at the request of Bev Harris of Black Box Voting.
The watchdog organization, based in Seattle, is gathering similar records from at least three other counties around Florida -- information that may lead to an election challenge, Harris said.
Harris also wants to examine each ballot from up to 50 precincts in Volusia County, to see whether election totals match voter tallies on polling place tapes.
It is these receipt-like documents that Harris sought copies of Wednesday. However, by 6 p.m., after the office had closed, Harris had not returned to pick up the copies, Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe said.
The documents show a printed record of each ballot fed into 179 optical scanning machines used in the election.
Harris went to the Department of Elections' warehouse on State Road 44 in DeLand on Tuesday to inspect original Nov. 2 polling place tapes, after being given a set of reprints dated Nov. 15. While there, Harris saw Nov. 2 polling place tapes in a garbage bag, heightening her concern about the integrity of voting records.
Lowe confirmed Wednesday some backup copies of tapes from the Nov. 2 election were destined for the shredder. She added that originals were still available for Harris, or anyone else, to see. It is those polling place tapes that were copied and provided Wednesday to Black Box Voting for about $125.
'She's not wanting to listen to an explanation. She has her own ideas," Lowe said of Harris.
Lowe said to provide a backup voting record, she routinely asks poll workers to print two polling place tapes on election night. One tape is delivered in one car along with the ballots and a memory card. The backup tape is delivered to the elections office in a second car. Poll workers sign both copies of the tapes, Lowe said.
Harris said she's concerned the tallies might not match up with voter ballots or the memory cards used in the optical scanning machines. She declined to identify which precinct ballots she wants to examine and what led her to choose those precincts, but said many appear to be in minority-dominated precincts.
"I won't give out everything until I've documented it, and with other sources," said Harris, a long-standing critic of electronic voting systems and author of a book about the role they played in the 2000 election. She said her group is looking at election results nationwide.
Harris said she chose to pull records in Volusia County, in part, due to an Election Office computer glitch in 2000 that subtracted 16,000 votes from Democratic candidate Al Gore..........
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Quote:
http://www.news-journalonline.com/Ne...1POL022406.htm
February 24, 2006
<b>Frustrated council gets voting machines but no paper trail</b>
By JOHN BOZZO
Staff Writer
DELAND -- Voters will see the familiar paper ballots in precincts at the next election, along with something new -- an electronic touch-screen voting machine for the disabled.
After months of meetings and hours of discussions, Volusia County Council members found themselves back at square one. They got better voting access for the disabled, but didn't get the paper ballot copy of electronic votes they wanted.
"It's a sad day for the state of Florida and Volusia County," said County Council Chair Frank Bruno.
Bruno led the fight in December with a 4-3 decision to scrap the current voting system in favor of a $2.5 million contract with Election Systems and Software Inc., which promised disabled-accessible equipment with a printed ballot. That equipment never was verified by the state, however, and Bruno on Thursday asked to back out of that deal and supplement the current system with 210 touch-screen machines, enough to put one in every precinct as an option for disabled voters.
Council members agreed unanimously to spend $782,185 for the touch-screen machines from Diebold Election System.
A parade of speakers questioned the security of the touch-screen machines.
<b>"There are no winners here," Spencer Lane said. "We are all Americans and we all lost."</b>
Other speakers, such as Irene Moses, an advocate for the disabled, called the criticism of the Diebold system "scary stories." She defended the accuracy and security of the county's current voting system.
Councilman Carl Persis suggested delaying the vote until the Election Systems and Software system is tested again March 6.
"I'd be willing not to throw in the towel at this point," he said.
But Bruno said he did not expect the Election System and Software system to pass muster in time for the election on Sept. 5. The county must get voting machines accessible to those with disabilities to comply with the Help America Vote Act.
"The very first day the state certifies election equipment that has accessible voting and verifiable paper ballots, I would be first to agenda this for consideration," he said.............
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Quote:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmate...ews/ci_3526049
<b>Diebold machines get state approval
Decision is likely to set off a buying spree for as many as 21 counties</b>
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
After almost three years, Diebold Election Systems won approval Friday to sell its latest voting machines in California, despite findings by computer scientists that the software inside is probably illegal and has security holes found in earlier Diebold products.
The scientists advised Secretary of State Bruce McPherson this week that those risks were "manageable" and could be "mitigated" by tightening security around Diebold's voting machines.
McPherson gave conditional approval to Diebold's latest touch-screen voting machines and optical scanners Friday, while his staff ordered the McKinney, Texas-based company to get rid of the security holes as quickly as possible.
"After rigorous scrutiny, I have determined that these Diebold systems can be used for the 2006 elections," McPherson said in a statement.
The decision is likely to set off a buying spree for as many as 21 counties, more than a third of the state, as local elections officials rush to acquire one of only two voting systems approved for use in the 2006 elections. Registrars and clerks prefer having voting systems for at least six months before conducting a statewide primary like the one in June, partly because it is California's most complicated and error-prone type of election.
"It's really late in the game, and you have to have your star play in place. And if Diebold is your star play, this is good news," said Contra Costa County elections chief Steve Weir, vice president of the California Association of Clerks and Elections Officers.
At least three other voting-machine manufacturers still are being evaluated by state officials. For word of approval on their products, Weir said, "you're going to wait until mid-March, and for a lot of entities, it's too late."
McPherson's approval comes just in time for San Diego County, which bought the new machines in 2003, used them once in 2004, then saw the state's approval withdrawn.
The county has been warehousing 10,000 Diebold AccuVote TSx touch screens for more than two years and withholding its $35 million payment to Diebold until approval. Now, with an election set for early April to replace Rep. Duke Cunningham, San Diego can use those machines. In June, so could San Joaquin County, which also bought and has been storing the new touch screens trusting on approval.
Lining up as possible new buyers are Alameda, Marin, Humboldt, Alpine, Butte, Eldorado and nearly a dozen other counties.
<h3>State Sen. Debra Bowen, who chairs the Senate elections committee and is running for the Democratic nomination to challenge McPherson as secretary of state, criticized the approval as contrary to state and federal law.
Part of the software running in Diebold's touch screens and optical scanners is what computer scientists call "interpreted code" that is loaded by memory cards or PC cards just before an election. That changes the software that private testing labs and states had tested and approved, and for that reason interpreted code is prohibited by federal 2002 voting system standards. .........</h3>
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Read the preceding "bold character" paragraph!!!!!!!
I feel sometimes like I'm losing my fucking mind....Diebold admitted in court in California in November, 2004 (I posted the excerpt in another post on this thread) that it would pay California $2.6 million because Diebold could not defend against the memo from it's Jones Day lawyers that it's software was not disclosed to be in violation of the law. Now....they're buying new machines from Diebold....in California...while officials take Diebold's word that they will bring their software code into legal compliance.
Volusia County, Florida just voted to buy more new E-vote machines from Election Systems and Software Inc., that do not print paper ballots or receipts. I first obtained an ATM card (Diebold's core business is manufacture of ATM machines) and did a transaction at my bank in the spring of fucking 1980 !!!!!!!!!!! That 1980 machine spit out a printed receipt. 26 fucking years later, and Americans allow their elected and politcally appointed officials to buy E-voting machines that allegedly cannot provide printed ballots or receipts. They allow officials to buy machines from Diebold, a little more than a year after the company paid a multi-million dollar civil court settlement for it's voting software fraud/deception....before the company can demonstrate software that is legal, in compliance, and hack resistant enough to be deemed secure.
What-the Fuck???? I want to <h3>Scream !!!</h3> Why am I surrounded by so many complacent sheep??? Aggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!
Last edited by host; 03-04-2006 at 02:08 PM..
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