In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
You too can make your state vote Republican for only $55.6 million
Voting Machine Study Divides Md. Officials, Experts (TechNews.com)
For some in Maryland, the report yesterday by Johns Hopkins University computer security experts that electronic voting machines could easily be hacked into set off alarm bells. But for others, including the state officials who recently signed a $55.6 million agreement to put the units in every voting precinct by March, the report is one more example of "technological hysteria."
To quote a faithful Maryland reader (and I will often in this post): Do determinations by Johns Hopkins University, Caltech and MIT constitute "'technological hysteria'"? It is meaningless that Diebold officials assure us that their system is safe. Microsoft officials assure us that Windows is being made safe, yet Windows vunerability problems are escalating daily.
Margaret A. Jurgensen, director of Montgomery County elections, says recent voters loved the new machines.
With regard to the "voters loved the machines" contention, that certainly does not include those registered Democrats at my precinct who in the primary had Republican options come up on the screen, and were told they could vote in the Republican primary or not at all.
The push was championed by then-Secretary of State John T. Willis, who dismissed the Hopkins report as "technological hysteria."
"To say I can duplicate a Smart Card, sure, you can postulate all kinds of things, but there are so many checks and balances," he said. "I have 100 years of election data. If someone would try to monkey around precinct by precinct with the vote results, I'd know."
With regard to the statement of former Secretary of State John T. Willis that "'I have 100 years of election data -- If someone would try to monkey around precinct by precinct with the vote results, I'd know'" I have a question: "So, the election is over, and you see an unusual voting pattern. What now?"
We know what happened in Florida when problems with the voting were discovered in Palm Beach County (butterfly ballots) and Duval County (two-page ballots that I suppose were similar): Nothing. It was determined to be impractical to hold a re-vote. If you carefully read the analysis of the Florida vote in the Washington Post ("Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush -- But Study Finds Gore Might Have Won Statewide Talley..." by Dan Keating and Dan Balz, November 12, 2001) and add the numbers, it becomes clear that if either Palm Beach County or Duval County had found it praticable to have a revote, Al Gore would be president of the United States today -- by a margin of over 5,000 Florida votes (well over 10,000 votes, maybe 15,000, if both counties voted again). It wouldn't be any more practical to have a revote after electronic voting concerns surface than after butterfly ballot concerns surface.
In 2001, four out of the five members of the technical group that was asked to recommend to the state which electronic voting system to buy instead recommended against buying any at all. The state ignored the advice.
"They didn't take us very seriously then," said Tom Iler, director of Information Technology for Baltimore County who served on the group. "I suppose it's not very surprising that they're not taking this study very seriously now."
And that explains why Bush won Maryland in 2004.
- rob 4:16 PM - [PermaLink] -
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