Free Republic

Florida's Elections Published: March 26, 2004 To the Editor: A March 14 [NYT] editorial makes references to our elections process that hold Florida to a different and, in one case, impossible standard. You say, "There is still time before the November vote to put printers in place." In fact, no manufacturer has submitted printers for required certification, and the manufacturers of the Florida equipment have testified it would not be ready. Your insistence that Florida employ printers when no other state has ever provided a voter-verified paper trail sets an unfair standard. But when such new technology is fully developed,...

Two Democratic senators often mentioned as possible candidates for the vice presidential spot on the 2004 ticket talked voting Wednesday - but not for themselves. Sens. Bob Graham of Florida and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York are pushing legislation that would ensure a printed receipt of votes cast on new touch-screen computer terminals, arguing it will restore voter confidence in the election process. They both insisted the move had nothing to do with future political aspirations - and everything to do with past political confusion. "We can't ever go through what we went through in 2000," said Clinton, referring...

Voting machines become a US election issue Financial Times [FT.com] By Henry Hamman in Miami, Florida Published: March 2 2004 21:12 | Last Updated: March 2 2004 21:12 When voters in the 10 Super Tuesday states went to the polls on Tuesday, they were not only picking who they wanted to take on President George W. Bush in November. They were also engaging in the first important test of the US's retooling of its voting system since the debacle of the 2000 presidential election. The new system was highly contentious long before this year's primary season began. At the core...

It is Election Night 2004. The presidential tally stalls in a near-tie. All eyes turn to a pivotal state, a rich source of electoral votes, where election supervisors scrutinize ballots. Punch-card ballots. Yes, punch-card ballots, the much maligned voting system -- dimpled chad, hanging chad, pregnant chad -- that symbolized Florida's botched election four years ago, politically paralyzed the nation for 37 days and altered the course of electoral history. Punch cards may be gone in Florida, but chads still thrive elsewhere and are actually gaining favor in some quarters. As many as 32 million voters in 307 counties in...

Hello. I’m the webmaster of www.verifiedvoting.org. I’m a Democrat, and you folks presumably will want to flame me on that point alone. But if you would bear with me, perhaps we could avoid that. I need to talk about an issue that affects all of us, and I am not here to pick a fight. I need your help. VerifiedVoting.org is NOT about conspiracy theory. We are NOT about screaming about “Wally O’Dell delivering the votes to GWB”, but I do have to admit that his remarks were about as ill-conceived as they might have possibly been, and have made...

Computer Experts Fear Recall Voter Fraud Mon Oct 6, 2:43 PM ET By RACHEL KONRAD, Associated Press Writer SAN JOSE, Calif. - Punch-card ballots from Tuesday's historic recall election are sure to get a going-over by political activists, but some computer scientists think touch-screen voting machines deserve just as much scrutiny. AP Photo Reuters Slideshow: Calif. Recall Election Latest news, photos, video While punch-card ballots caused headaches for Florida election officials with their "hanging" and "pregnant" chads, nearly one in 10 California voters will be using touch-screen machines, which don't produce printouts voters can see. And no paper printouts,...

The research and activism arm of BlackBox Voting.com   CONTENTSIntroductionPart 1 - Can the votes be changed?Part 2 - Can the password be bypassed?Part 3 ? Can the audit log be altered? ************* Introduction According to election industry officials, electronic voting systems are absolutely secure, because they are protected by passwords and tamperproof audit logs. But the passwords can easily be bypassed, and in fact the audit logs can be altered. Worse, the votes can be changed without anyone knowing, even the County Election Supervisor who runs the election system. The computer programs that tell electronic voting machines how...

<p>15:05 PST (AP) -- Scattered problems, a few serious but most described as hiccups, marred the debut of touchscreens and other high-tech voting machines Tuesday, including in all of Georgia and in Florida's most election-challenged counties.</p> <p>The most serious appeared in two Georgia counties where officials said they could result in contested elections and lawsuits. The state has the nation's largest deployment: 19,000 touchscreens.</p>

The Miami Herald reported Saturday, "In an increasingly eerie replay of the 2000 presidential election in Florida, former attorney general Janet Reno today demanded a statewide, manual recount of the votes in Tuesday's Democratic gubernatorial primary." By Sunday, Janet Reno was denied a recount, since McBride won by at least 8000 votes. This seems to be a replay of the 2000-voting debacle in Florida. There, if you remember, a "butterfly ballot," created by a Democrat, was the fault somehow of Governor Jeb Bush. Now, we hear, from the Reno camp that the newest voting debacle in Florida "could be...

<p>WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Elections officials in Palm Beach County, where voters were confused by a controversial "butterfly" ballot in the hotly contested 2000 U.S. presidential election, declared a test of new touch-screen voting machines a success on Sunday.</p> <p>The electronic voting machines were put before voters at 21 sites on Saturday. Elections officials said 3,810 people used them to cast votes in a mock election that asked voters to choose their favorite patriotic landmark, patriotic song and to decide whether the words "under God" should be in the Pledge of Allegiance.</p>