"States throw out costly electronic voting machines"

Associated Press ^ | 19 August 2008 | Deborah Hastings

[lifelong_republican]

"...vanishing votes, breakdowns, malfunctions and increasing evidence that the devices were vulnerable to hackers..."

[lifelong_republican]

The unreliability factor alone makes electronic 'voting' systems a taxpayer ripoff. The Optical scan devices are also hackable.

Civic minded elementary school children could do the counting in front of the public with superior affordability, reliability, security, and accuracy.

Representation in government is THAT important.

[teletech]

Holy Hanging Chads Batman!

[Dilbert San Diego]

After what happened in Florida in 2000 with the hanging chads with computer punch card voting, so many places were eager to go to electronic voting. Now we see that there are problems with those machines too.

There has never been a perfect vote count in any election. The punch cards probably were the best that we can do, as far as accuracy, plus having a ready made audit trail available in case of re-counts. How do you do a re-count of electronic voting where there is no paper trail?

[FlingWingFlyer]

Now if we can only convince “concerned voters” to wake up, get out of bed, clean themselves up, go to the polls, show an I.D. and complete a paper ballot ON ELECTION DAY, we’d be getting somewhere. All this electronic and mail-in crap is nothing but voter fraud. If they care about America, make them exert at least a little energy and effort when we are deciding who is going to run this country.

[SeeSharp]

If those voters are too stupid to operate hole punch what on earth made anyone think they could operate a computer?

Texas is keeping its electronic voting machines. I don't think we've had any complaints.

[lifelong_republican]

The problem with the “hanging chads”
was real, but the problems with the
electronic blackboxes are orders of
magnitude worse.

[Dawn531]

I’m in Florida, the money we’ve wasted since the 2000 election, all because of the chads, is unbelievable.

First we had to do away with the punch card system that had worked well for years...before Gore decided to throw a hissy fit. (I told my husband that night...there will never again be a “normal” election because of this...always accusations of cheating.)

So we bought the electronic in our county, now the electronic are out, and we’re moving to optical scanners. Big bucks for a heavily populated county and betcha dollar to a donut, one day the punch cards will be back.

[DaveArk]

Our electronic machines have a paper print out that you can verify prints what you chose on the touch screen. Works great.

[lifelong_republican]

FlingWingFlyer you make a great point
about encouraging voters to go to the
polls, preferably informed. Even the
voters who are physically disabled
should be represented in government.
Some people are working their two or
three jobs and some employers don’t
offer sufficient time off to vote.

[lifelong_republican]

Dawn531 you are right about the Florida
fiasco being inexcusable. It boils down
to voters being prevented from voting.
The optical scan devices are hackable.

[lifelong_republican]

A printout doesn’t actually have to
correlate with a transmitted tally.

[NonValueAdded]

Optical might be hackable but it is still auditable and recountable.

Our Florida county had optical equipment in 2000 and our recounts were consistently accurate. Our Supervisor of Elections was very good, well respected throughout the state but his advice fell on deaf ears in the RAT counties anxious to spend OPM on the flashy stuff. As a taxpayer I'm outraged.

[kms61]

everybody gets a specially marked marble as they enter the polling place. You go into the booth and drop the marble into the box of the candidate you want to vote for. The one who has the most marbles in his box wins.

[lifelong_republican]

Optical is definitely hackable
(one example is the Hursti Hack).
You’re right about the possibility
of audits or recounts, but they are
not done sufficiently often. You’re
also right about the Democrats being
outrageous abusers of the voters and
the taxpayers forcing the defective
systems on the public. They broke
a lot of elections laws to deny
voters real ballots, especially
in such states as Pennsylvania.

[bluedressman]

the stories about hackable electronic devices are myths being propogated by the people who’d rather not see technology applied here. the people who’d rather be able to manipulate a stack of handrwitten ballots.

we’ve had ATM machines for decades, direct deposit for some time, electronic filing.

over 99% of money exchanged is done electronically.

we can’t figure out how to count votes without widespread fraud? give me a break.

[MartinStyles]

At the last city I was in, they had electronic ones and I loved it. Just put in the card, hit 2 or 3 touch screen buttons and hand back the card.

Simple and fast.

Here you have to make marks on paper which takes awhile and then put them in a scanner which electronically records it anyway.

I prefer the visual feedback from the touch screen. You put the paper in this other type thing and all it says is ‘vote recorded’.

[calex59]

the stories about hackable electronic devices are myths being propogated by the people who’d rather not see technology applied here. the people who’d rather be able to manipulate a stack of handrwitten ballots. we’ve had ATM machines for decades, direct deposit for some time, electronic filing. over 99% of money exchanged is done electronically. we can’t figure out how to count votes without widespread fraud? give me a break.

Excellent point. I was about to post a similar comment then read yours. I do most of my banking online, and have never been "hacked". As an ex-computer expert(retired) I would rather place my faith in a computerized voting machine then in paper ballots that can suddenly be "found" to add to the recount, which happened in 2000 and again in 2006 in Washington state.

[Doctor Raoul]

In 2000, the whining, emotional, unthinking liberals demanded those voting machins that worked just like ATMs...

And it was evidence of racism that the poor and minority communities “Dodn’t Have Them” which was a big joke because a study by two university profs found that rich white suburbs were the most likely users of “inferior” punch card machines.

Now they have a new whine...about the problem they created. HOW LIBERAL!

[lifelong_republican]

It’s the computer scientists and security experts
who’ve pointed out the flaws and vulnerabilities
in the voting systems.

The ‘voting’ systems are inferior to the ATM systems,
and the ATM systems have had numerous problems, too.

There is a lot of good information out there if you
take the time to look for it.

[Nick Danger]

Civic minded elementary school children could do the counting in front of the public with superior affordability, reliability, security, and accuracy.

Republicans who think that humans can count more reliably than machines remind me of Democrats who think that wind can power the United States. The disconnect between the science and the reality is so great that the mind boggles.

Most humans can't correctly count the number of times the letter 'F' appears in a sentence.