Rummy was booted, Noe's going to prison for 20 years, and the powers that be gave us a Democratic sweep.[1] In exchange, the election integrity movement is being told it must accept audits of the machines, if one is to gauge the length and intensity of e-debate on the subject, or the campaign promises of public servants.
Ohio's next Secretary of State spoke with grassroots activists and party operatives last night, repeating her campaign mantra of "free, fair, open and honest elections." Jennifer Brunner also promised to "examine the machines."
Examine the machines? We are done examining the machines – the verdict is in. Under current election conditions, there is no basis for confidence in reported election results. The machines are only one part of the problem, and the easiest to remove. This is the first and most crucial step toward honest elections.
Better to examine the reports from the Dept. of Homeland Security, the Government Accountability Office, the National Science Foundation's ACCURATE Center, Princeton University or CompuWare Corporation. This year, even Rolling Stones did a succinct job covering the problem with electronic voting (coupled with voter suppression tactics). Citations for these reports appear at the end of this article under [2].
Lest Brunner misconstrue the position of hand-counted paper ballot (HCPB) advocates, I advised her we were going to have a "Boston D-R-E Party." The look of horror on her face revealed two things: 1) she knows the difference between Opti-Scan and DRE; and 2) she's unaware how deeply discredited are electronic voting results.
Trust must reconcile itself to transparency; a secretly run election is the antithesis of democracy. When votes are cast, printed or counted with software which, by its very nature, cannot be made secure, we have no basis for confidence in reported election results.
THE GAMED SYSTEM
Strengthening the HCPB argument, these machines continue to prove they've been hacked. We received reports, again, from around the country and within Ohio, that voter choices hopped to a different candidate or simply failed to register the vote. [3, 4]
It's simple. Computers only do what they're programmed to do. If the computer switches your vote from one candidate to another, it was programmed to do so. If the computer ignores your vote for a candidate, it was programmed to do so. Machines that exhibit these "glitches" should be immediately removed from use. They weren't. Garbage in; garbage out.
Further destroying credibility, election officials continue to fail to maintain chain of custody of memory cards, which now represent the ballot box. Over 70 memory cards went missing from Cuyahoga County's May primary and at least three precincts in Franklin County on failed to turn in their memory cards on November 7th.
No matter who were declared winners of the midterm elections, democracy advocates still insist on a transparent system in which we can form a basis for confidence in reported results.
MACHINES & AUDITS vs. HAND-COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS
Secretary of State-elect Brunner advised she would work closely with U.S. Rep Stephanie Tubbs Jones on national legislation addressing these issues. My heart sinks. Neither the Holt nor the Kucinich bill (HR 550 and HR 6200) is sufficient to restore trustworthy election conditions.
No matter what agreement public officials have made with private corporations to administer public elections, democracy advocates reject electronic voting. There are virtually limitless ways these machines can be hacked, without leaving a trace. This fact precludes giving HR 550 serious consideration, since it offers to audit the machines.
Ohio Boards of Election proved, in the 04 recount, they are incapable of performing legally-required "random" audits. In an Orwellian redefinition, Blackwell changed the meaning of random to "select" when auditing 3% of the precincts to determine if a full recount was needed. This redefinition violated Ohio law. The Ohio recount never legally occurred. Bush was handed another presidency.
In 2004, Rady Ananda began contributing to the Web, as part of the growing community of citizen journalists. Focusing mainly on elections, her blogs also address religious, gender, sexual and racial equality, as well as environmental issues; and are sprinkled with book and film reviews on various topics. She currently serves as a senior editor at OpEdNews.
All material offered here is the property of Rady Ananda, copyright 2006, 2007, 2008. Permission is granted to repost, with proper attribution including the original link.
"It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies." ~ Noam Chomsky http://www.wisdomquotes.com/001925.html
"You can't test quality into a product, you have to build it in," was the mantra we learned in the 1980's quality movement. The same holds for election integrity. Audits are nothing more than a flawed attempt of trying to test veracity into a corrupt election system. Our experience in Arizona, that the audit was made a farce by the re-elected Secretary of State, that the audit procedure itself can be manipulated such that well meaning people doing as they are told yield worthless results, is proof that auditing is just another venal strategy to keep electronic voting machines as a viable option. They are not!
No more electronic voting machines, ever! A return to hand counted paper ballots (HCPB) is the ONLY answer for the 2008 election. If the state wants to use an opti-scan system that uses paper ballots that can be hand counted to give an unofficial rapid results so be it. Just so long as the official ballot of record is from the hand count.
Secretary of State Brunner has a simple, albeit not simplistic, problem ahead of her. Her answer must address the legions of citizen election integrity activists who very much helped put her in office. She needs to understand that their allegience is not to her, but to election integrity. I trust she will choose wisely.
by
Mike Shelby (11 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 21 comments)
on Friday, November 24, 2006 at 9:00:00 PM
