Government's Primary Responsibility Is to Secure and Protect Our Rights: So Why Is New York State Still Considering Purchasing Voting Machines Which Have Been Exposed as Incapable of Securing a Fair Election?
The Legislature in New York has declared2 that government is the public's business and indeed it is. A business that is about to spend millions of tax payers dollars on computer equipment and permit the public's elections to be run on the computer equipment it buys, must at a minimum educate itself as customers and potential users of computer technology. As the last state in the Union to have determined what our next electoral system should be, the state's failure to recognize the grave errors committed by those public officials who trusted that the vendors knew what they were doing and left it to them to decide, amounts to misfeasance. So who in NY is making these decisions and what do they know?
This Is No Way to Run a Business – Especially Our Business
Our legislators and appointed county election commissioners have heard the vendors assure them of the integrity of their products, but have failed to look at the evidence of these products' abysmal performance record. The vendors have misrepresented their voting systems across the country. In six short years they have peddled their shoddy voting systems throughout the nation leaving in their wake millions of disenfranchised Americans. How many of New York's decision-makers know the thousands of examples in which these electronic voting machines failed to count votes, failed to tally the votes correctly, broke down during elections, switched votes, counted votes that were never cast, reversed election outcomes? How many appreciate the budget-breaking consequence owning these machines will have on taxpayers after the first year?
This abdication of responsibility and abuse of the public trust must not be tolerated. What will it take to stop New York from playing the fool and purchasing the same inferior, shoddy, insecure equipment that caused Secretary of State Bowen to remark, "Things were worse than I thought. There were far too many ways that people with ill intentions could compromise the voting systems without detection" and Avi Rubin, Professor of computer science at John Hopkins, to proclaim, "The studies show that these machines are basically poison". As the last state to make a decision about our electoral system, New York can not say it did not know!
New York Law Prohibits the State from Entering into Contracts with "Non-responsible" Vendors
Not only does New York lack the plausible deniability the rest of the nation may assert as the litigation for fraud and breach of contract against the voting vendors mushrooms, but New York is also on notice that these vendors are ineligible to do business in New York. The evidence of the vendors' flagrantly "irresponsible" conduct and record of failed voting equipment is contained at http://www.votersunite.org/info/VendorsProhibited.pdf , http://www.votersunite.org/info/IrresponsibleVendors.pdf and http://www.votersunite.org/info/UpdatedVendorIrresponsibility807.pdf. Non-responsible vendors include a vendor whose committed a crime, been indicted for a crime, committed ethical violations, exhibited failed past performance on other contracts, etc. The list of "non-responsibility" for the voting vendors New York is proposing to do business with is a virtual who's who of non-responsibility. Who in New York is paying attention? Who is going to take responsibility, look at the evidence and enforce the law, enjoining these vendors from conducting business in New York?Who is going to implement New York's law, which requires that the state's machines be capable of demonstrating their "integrity and security" by being able to "demonstrate an accurate tally"3. None of the machines New York is considering purchasing can do that. Secretary Bowen has already told us of all of these machines' "inadequa[cy] to ensure accuracy and integrity of the election results". New York could choose to disregard her findings- in which case I bet I know where we could pick up some equipment at fire sale prices. Or is someone in a position of responsibility in New York going to step up and ensure New Yorkers that they will not be trading in their lever machines for these electronic voting systems now publicly revealed to be not merely snake oil, but the antithesis of what is required for a secure, transparent, reliable electoral system?
Why Computerized Voting Systems are so Much worse than Our Lever Machines4
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