In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
You can take away my vote,
when you pry it out of my cold Dead Hands
Or you could live in Georgia or Maryland (or many other places unfortunately) where you can just pretend to vote, but never know what your actual vote was.
It's like a democracy but with out that bothersome citizen participation part.
Maryland: Touch-screen display hits snagSen. Barbara A. Mikulski gained first-hand knowledge yesterday of potential glitches that haunt Maryland's costly and embattled electronic voting system.
Working the crowd at the Takoma Park Folk Festival, Mikulski encountered a demonstration of the touch-screen voting system, which gets its first statewide general-election roll-out in less than two months. She decided to give the AccuVote TS manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems a try, with troubling results.
On a referendum question that is part of the sample ballot on the machine, Mikulski pressed the screen to vote "no." But her vote was displayed as a "yes."
...
Activists in Maryland are seeking a similar requirement here. The Campaign for Verifiable Voting and others have sued the Maryland State Board of Elections, asking that voters who don't trust the touch-screen machines be allowed to vote on paper. A lower court has rejected the argument, but an appeal is pending before the state's highest court.
Despite growing discomfort with the electronic machines, Maryland has become one of the first states in the nation to convert to touch-screen voting technology. A new $55 million system was used statewide in the March primaries, largely without incident. Election officials say the machines are safe and reliable.
However, security flaws identified by computer researchers from the Johns Hopkins University and elsewhere show that Diebold's underlying software is vulnerable to hackers.
A pro-paper trail group, TrueVote Maryland, is attempting to gain permission for its poll watchers to record problems with the machines on Election Day. Linda Schade, a coordinator with the group, said she hoped Mikulski's experience at the festival would persuade her to assist in that effort.
Georgia: State gets 'F-minus' on voting machinesWASHINGTON — With Election Day less than two months away, a conservative group rated Georgia's paperless touch-screen voting system the worst in the nation, with Florida and several other states not far ahead.
The Free Congress Foundation, a longtime fixture of the political right, warns in a new report that if the Nov. 2 vote totals are contested, the result could be a "fiasco," since so many states have installed electronic systems that have no paper ballots that can be recounted.
Georgia, the first state to install a paperless system in all counties, was graded "F-minus" based on the reliability of the equipment and its capacity for a "verifiable recount."
- rob 4:04 PM - [PermaLink] -
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"To announce that there must be no criticism of the
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- Teddy Roosevelt
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- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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- John F. Kennedy
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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