Posted on 01/04/2007 4:47:08 AM PST by lifelong_republican
"A laboratory that has tested most of the nation's electronic voting systems has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after federal officials found that it was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests."
(Excerpt) Read more at timesunion.com ...
In other words, the 'Rats can continue to bus in all those voters from local cemeteries, bribe the homeless with cigarettes and what-not, and they can do it all electronically!
This is all in preparation to go back to the old style vote stealing that pleases the dems no end.
The defective 'voting' equipment will provide ease and secrecy for the corrupt Democrats, exactly as intended.
We owe it to the founders of our great country, to ourselves, and above all to our children and grandchildren to preserve representation in government in the USA.
The old way made it far more difficult to tamper with votes and more likely to be caught at it.
The electronics make it quick, easy, and undetectable.
Drudge exposed the truth about voting during the mid-term elections of '98--how quickly we forget???
How so?
That shows incredible incompetence and negligence, if not fraud, on the part of the elections officials who should have been overseeing these contracts.
It's good that this company has been decertified, but the real question that needs to be asked is how they became certified in the first place without the proper procedures in place.
Despite the attention problems with voting machines have gotten, the number of problems has been relatively small, but still unacceptable.
The reports of the problems have generally tried to suggest that the relatively small number of problems represent are representative of the electronic voting systems.
What these problems have really shown is that the elections officials the people elect in these areas are incompetent.
It should surprise no one that there are people out there who will sell crappy elections systems if someone will buy them.
What should surprise people or at least appall them is that our elections officials will buy those systems with little to no testing, and in some cases use them even after they have shown to be faulty and unreliable.
While local precincts may not have the expertise or the money to properly evaluate these systems, the States should be able to provide the funds and the skills required to properly oversee the testing of these systems. I wouldn't expect the officials to do the testing themselves, but they should definitely be able to find competent people who can, and hire people with the competence to make sure they are tested properly.
Unless the precincts are simply making decisions on their own without consulting the State government, which in many places they appear to have the authority to do, voters need to come down hard on the Secretary of State in those states and demand that proper oversight be used in the validation and approval of these systems.
The American taxpayers have been defrauded and robbed, and the perpetrators are racketeers, by definition.
If there is collusion between the makers of the bad systems and those who are improperly certifying the systems, then I agree it is racketeering and should be prosecuted as such.
However, it's more likely that the problem can be traced to government officials going with the lowest bidder or a bidder with the proper contacts, while not providing the proper oversight to ensure that taxpayers are getting what they are paying for.
It is those government officials responsibility to ensure that the taxpayers are getting what they are paying for, and the one that haven't been living up to that responsibility need to very quickly fix that or get thrown out.
If should also go without saying that companies that aren't providing quality services and products should no longer be used and if they misrepresented those products or services they should be facing civil and possibly criminal penalties.
Good point.
Are you familiar with computers and their security issues? The 'voting' equipment isn't subjected to sufficient testing to know what it is doing, and it can be rigged as early on in the process as the design and manufacturing phases. Computer science experts have shown that it is quick and easy to manipulate vote totals, without risk of detection, subject to implementation, too.
Here's more information on this issue:
http://www.wanttoknow.info/060527electionsvotesmanipulations
You have really said it. You make excellent points. The vendors of the systems knew they weren't any good, and they have been caught lying about them and threatening officials into buying them anyway. Other officials have violated state laws to force voters to give up their ballots. We know that there have been problems with the systems, but we can't really know the full extent of those problems because of the total lack of auditability involved.
I thank you for expressing your profound insights here.
Actually, yes.
Your link references a Newsweek article in which someone changes the code in a voting machine and declares it defective. No mention of intrusion detection mechanisms in the voting machines, which would log such an event. Do you know if voting machines have them?
What's so hard about all this? We did it for 180 years. It's not rocket science.
Shouldn't we know what's running on the 'voting' systems, rather than being expected to guess, or, even worse, to just trust them without any basis for such confidence?
"Go back to paper ballots. Count them individually in each precinct. Forward the results to the Secretary of State. Wait a few more hours for the final results, instead of rushing to declare the race 10 seconds after the polls close. Maintain the ballot "paper trail". Recount manually as necessary.
What's so hard about all this? We did it for 180 years. It's not rocket science."
It really isn't too difficult, and it is more important to have auditability than hasty inaccurate results. Americans can handle the effort and it is one of our most important duties.
So, back to my original question: do you know if voting machines have intrusion detection mechanisms? I'm not trying to fool you--it's just a legitimate question.
How could the mechanisms be known when they're kept secret? How would you confirm that the system information presented would match that implemented in the field?
The mechanisms are physical. For instance, chassis intrusion switches are mounted within the device. Also, critical removable components (the "pc cards" noted in your article) can be evidence taped to detect removal.
Obviously people have access to these machines (otherwise the Newsweek article is made up) and can inspect their security features (or lack of) and report on them.
Can you cite an instance of any comprehensive independent examination of any of these systems?
Yes I can--every time they go to a lab for verification/certification. That's what this whole article is about--one of these labs wasn't doing its job.
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