We Georgians have already spent over $100 million on a voting system that has been proven over and over to be faulty, yet they want us to spent more. The $54 million dollar figure cited by Cathy Cox office is a lie. Given the costs of programming, ballot creation and new purchases the cost to Georgia voters exceeds $116 million dollars. And there is NO legislative oversight. Any public forums are shut down as soon as the questions start.
Dr. Brit Williams is the chief consultant from Kennesaw State University who performed the certification test on the Diebold touchscreen machines used for the state of Georgia. At the March 9, 2005 meeting of The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Technical Guidelines Development Committee, Williams said "right now the primary use of wireless technology in a voting system is to program voting stations. Because if I have got 3,000 voting stations and I have to load those with pc cards, then I have got to sit down and manufacture 3,000 pc cards, and keep them separated by precinct. Whereas if I could sit in my warehouse and load those ballot images wirelessly, there is a tremendous advantage." (6)
Our vote is sacred -- the centrality of honest, transparent vote tallying to the necessary level of trust that underlies the basic contract between the people and their government. Who does Cathy Cox work for? The citizens of Georgia or the shareholders of Diebold? I personally think the answer is quite obvious.
All Contract Amendments: http://www.countthevote.org/gacontract/list.htm
(1) http://www.countthevote.org/cynthia2005/list.htm
(2) http:///www.eac.gov/election_resources/vss.html
(3) http://www.countthevote.org/gacontract/list.htm
(4) Verbal testimony by Senator Stephens at SLOGO hearing
(5) http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/insider/1004a/102804.html
(6) http://vote.nist.gov/tgdc0309finalmin.pdf
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