Posted on 11/29/2006 11:14:22 AM PST by lifelong_republican
"...These machines must go. There is no way to know if one's vote is accurately accounted for..."
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
"The difference is that the manufacturers of ATMs and associated equipment are responsible to the banks for any problems that may arise. They, and the banks, have a very strong financial incentive to ensure that their sytems are secure and reliable. Plus, of course, if something does go wrong the bank will (eventually) take care of it for you. Is any of this true of voting machines? "
You make a truly excellent point. Thank you.
"The number one source of vote fraud is people voting multiple times and ineligible people voting"
You are right that those things must be stopped, but with the electronics you won't have any way of knowing that votes or voters were legitimate.
"I am a software engineer.
Any competent software engineer can make any computer say anthing they want it to say regardless of what the user inputs.
I can make the computer say global warming is happening, and give you the results to 10 decimal places.
I can make it give any vote totals I want no matter what actual voters input.
Trusting voting to computers is a ridiculous idea. About the only thing worse would be internet voting."
You are absolutely right. Thank you for weighing in so eloquently.
Thank you so much for the links! I will be looking at them quite a lot, I'm sure.
You said that there were a state check on the systems of some sort. Are you aware that they don't really check?
The 'voting' machines are much worse than ATMs. With ATMs there isn't just a receipt-printing system (those were outlawed on 'voting' systems in PA), there is also a complete and independently audited record system of currency, checks, and deposit slips.
You are right about challenging outcomes being an important option, and with electronics, there are no recounts.
Altering/discarding paper ballots is far more physically demanding, far more localized, and much harder to hide than software or firmware manipulations of computing equipment.
...as I theorized.
LOL!
I have considered the subject.
You haven't at all.
If you had, you would not be posting empty, newsless links to letters from paranoid lunatics.
All voting systems are inherently vulnerable, unreliable and expensive.
Various elections have been stolen using analog machinery acquired at ridiculous cost.
You have as many ways of knowing (more actually) than you do with paper systems.
Whether the system is paper or electronic is immaterial - what is of prime importance is that honest pollworkers visually match each voter with a valid photo ID checked against a valid list of registered voters.
If you don't have that, it doesn't matter.
Shure you do Jeb...
I am glad that you mark your own ballot and hope that the counting of that ballot would also be observed.
There are many Republicans objecting to the vulnerability of the electronics. For one example, the machines were switching votes from Senator Rick Santorum to his opponent in many instances which were reported to officials. There are abuses of the systems by crooks hiding within all parties. The security of the vote is a non-partisan issue.
It's a voter obligation to not only cast a vote accurately, but insist that it be counted and recounted accurately.
The corrupt Democrats of the Rendell administration have been refusing perfectly legal citizen petitions requiring them by law to have the systems analyzed by independent qualified investigators, too.
Yeah, yeah, that's it...we lost because the Dems used the electronic voting machines to steal the election. Yeah, yeah...that's the ticket.
Correction: intended to lose, switch, and fake votes.
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