Tag: electronic voting

On the day before leaving for Netroots Nation, I voted for Jim Martin for U.S. Senate in the July 15 General Primary Election here in Georgia.  

At the polling place I was the only voter but there were a dozen or so poll workers.  After voting (on one of those damned Diebold machines) I asked if I’d get a receipt.  In lieu of one I was given a cute little sticker with a graphic of a Georgia Peach with ‘I’m a Georgia Voter’ printed on it.  I laughed and said that makes me feel better…there were some chuckles.  

I said I wanted a receipt for my vote.  This is what they gave me.

Any time anybody gives me a marching order, without any reasons why, my first instinct is to ask “why?”

When that person responds “Because I said so,” it tends to rub me the wrong way to say the least.

That approach doesn’t even work with my five year old, and it sure as heck doesn’t work with anybody but authority-lovers like Fundie Christians.

Yet that’s what we’re supposed to swallow from the likes of Kos and his little bully “enforcer” DHinMI over at Dailykos.

“Oppose a recount in New Hampshire BECAUSEE WE SAID SO” is what they’re saying over there.  Do they really think that’s gonna work?

And the reason it’s really suspect:  Why would you oppose something that would ultimately PROVE THAT YOU ARE RIGHT?

It’s nice to know that there are still Progressive Dems out there who actually do live up to their 2006 campaign promises.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen has filed suit against Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) for nearly $15 million after a four-month investigation revealed the company had repeatedly violated state law.

Bowen, who unseated incumbent Bruce McPherson in 2006 by a narrow 3% (officially), campaigned on a Progressive platform whose centerpiece called for cleaning up the California voting system.  True to her word, she is now aggressively pursuing claims of eVote fraud.

Secretary Bowen is suing ES&S for $9.72 million in penalties for selling 972 machines that contained hardware changes that were never submitted to, or reviewed by, the Secretary of State. Furthermore, she is seeking nearly $5 million to reimburse the five counties that bought the machines believing they were buying certified voting equipment.

“ES&S ignored the law over and over and over again, and it got caught,” said Bowen, the state’s top elections officer. “California law is very clear on this issue. I am not going to stand on the sidelines and watch a voting system vendor come into this state, ignore the laws, and make millions of dollars from California’s taxpayers in the process.”

Bowen claims ES&S fraudulently substituted almost a thousand rigged boxes in five northern California counties, including San Francisco County:      

The sales in question involve ES&S’s AutoMARK ballot-marking devices that 14 California counties use to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requirement that voters with disabilities have a way to cast ballots privately and independently. Unlike direct recording electronic (DRE) devices, the AutoMARK prints a voted ballot that is counted by an optical scanner along with other paper ballots.

   In July 2007, Secretary Bowen learned that ES&S had sold AutoMARK A200s – a version of the AutoMARK A100 that had been altered without authorization from the Secretary of State – to five counties in 2006. The counties collectively spent about $5 million for the equipment: Colusa bought 20 machines, Marin bought 130, Merced bought 104, San Francisco bought 558, and Solano bought 160. Elections officials in the five counties believed they were purchasing the certified AutoMARK A100s when, in fact, they had purchased AutoMARK A200s.

Bowen has also gone after ES&S in Los Angeles, where she decertified the company’s InkaVote boxes that had been scheduled for use in February’s Presidential primary/electoral college referendum:

Both of these actions have come as a result of an an unprecedented top to bottom review of California voting systems.

This is exactly what she promised to do as Secretary of State and she is delivering in a big way. Echoing language she used on the campaign trail last year, she said in a statement (PDF):

   

“California voters are entitled to have their votes counted exactly as they were cast. This top-to-bottom review is designed with one goal in mind: to ensure that California’s voters cast their ballots on voting systems that are secure, accurate, reliable, and accessible.“

Thank you, Secretary Bowen, for keeping your promise.

I was just in Paris and talked to quite a few bartenders and so forth.  Suffice to say the American dollar is barely worth the paper it’s printed on, so we may have spent most of our time in the more dodgy areas of town.

That said, I believe we interviewed quite a cross-section, in our pidgeonish Franglais.  I was repeatedly told variants of the following:

1. Bush and Sarko (Sarkozy) are the same.  (usually followed by an obscene gesture)

2. Sarko won because a weak candidate ran against him.  (followed by a warning not to do the same in US)

3. Diebold voting machines are stealthily and gradually being installed in France.  (followed usually by the comment, “We don’t want to happen in France what happened in US” = stolen election(s).

4. Unions are getting weaker and demonstrations and strikes are ignored in US and France and anywhere else they’re tried, because of globalization. 

There were Chinese products everywhere, and a few suspected sweatshops, lots of immigrants “sans papiers” (& a demonstration planned to try to get preschool services for their children).  Alot of things seemed familiar (though we are still having “reverse culture shock” upon returning to America).

We were staying in the area of Paris that was formerly known for incidents such as the “storming of the Bastille,” which was inspiring, but I have no doubt that something of the like needs to be done periodically, whenever the rich get too uppity.