This isn't news to any of us here, but what can be done about it?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/19/Dobbs.Sept20/index.html

Dobbs: Voting machines put U.S. democracy at risk

By Lou Dobbs
CNN

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Democrats and Republicans are desperately trying to nationalize the midterm elections, now only 48 days away.

Democrats are seeking to focus voter attention on President Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq, while Republicans are trying to convince voters that the president and all Republicans should be given credit for the conduct of the war on terror, and the fact that there has not been a terrorist attack on U.S. soil since September 11, 2001.

And voters will also choose which party to support on a host of other issues, local and national: illegal immigration, border security, the state of the economy, the escalating cost of health care, failing public schools, record budget and trade deficits, and the declining standard of living for the middle class.

Voters will be deciding whether the promise of challengers or the performance of incumbents merits their votes. The most recent polls reveal a national public mood that is now more supportive of a still unpopular president and about evenly divided over their preferences for, or tolerance of, congressional Republicans and Democrats. In other words, less than seven weeks before we go to the polls, there is every indication that the partisan quest for power on Capitol Hill will be close.

But there is additional uncertainty about the outcome of our elections that is intolerable and inexcusable, and which could make the contested 2000 presidential election look orderly by comparison. As of right now, there is little assurance your vote will count. As we've been reporting almost nightly on my broadcast for more than a year, electronic voting machines are placing our democracy at risk.

Across the nation, eight out of every 10 voters will be casting their ballots this November on electronic voting machines. And these machines time and again have been demonstrated to be extremely vulnerable to tampering and error, and many of them have no voter-verified paper trail.

There is simply no way in which election officials and their staffs of thousands of volunteers with limited experience and often poor training can possibly carry out reliable recounts.

Only 27 states have laws requiring the use of voter-verified paper trails in electronic machines. Eight more states utilize a paper trail in their machines but don't require it, leaving 15 states with no mandated requirements for safeguarding your vote. But with no national law in place, our midterm elections are being threatened by a system lacking any real regulation and standards.

The problems with electronic voting aren't necessarily new, yet we're still not ready for the midterms. During the 2004 presidential election, one voting machine in a Columbus, Ohio, suburb reportedly added nearly 3,900 additional votes to Bush's total. Officials caught the machine's error because only 638 voters cast presidential ballots at that precinct, but in a heavily populated district, can we really be sure the votes will be counted correctly?

The May primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, was nothing less than a complete debacle. A report from the Election Science Institute found the electronic voting machines' four sources of vote totals -- individual ballots, paper trail summary, election archives and memory cards -- didn't even match up. The totals were all different, and the report concluded that relying on the current system for Cuyahoga County's more than 1.3 million people should be viewed as "a calculated risk." Are we really willing to risk our democracy?

This problem is obviously not limited to Ohio. During Illinois' March primary, Cook County delayed the results of its crucial county board elections for a week as a result of human and mechanical problems at hundreds of sites with the new voting machines.

The recent primary elections in Montgomery County, Maryland, also highlighted just how unprepared many polling places are for the midterms. The state election administrator is demanding to know what went wrong after election workers did not receive access cards to operate the Diebold voting machines for the county's 238 precincts on time, forcing as many as 12,000 voters to use provisional paper ballots that ran out quickly. Some were simply told to come back later and vote.

There are four main manufacturers of electronic voting systems, none of which has been demonstrated to be more secure than the others. Diebold is the most well-known, but a new Princeton University study concerning Diebold's AccuVote-TS machine found that hackers can easily tamper with electronic voting machines by installing a virus to disable machines and change the vote totals.

Princeton researchers found that "malicious software" running on a single voting machine can steal votes with little, if any, risk of detection, and that anyone with access can install the software. The study also suggests these machines are susceptible to voting-machine viruses. Diebold says the unit used in the test was two generations old and to its knowledge is not used anywhere in the country.

A 2005 Government Accountability Office report on electronic voting confirmed the worst fears of watchdog groups and election officials. That report said, "There is evidence that some of these concerns have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."

That is simply unacceptable. Congress and the White House need to immediately take steps to assure the integrity of electronic voting with paper trails that could be audited in any recount, or provisions must be made for paper ballots if the reliability of e-voting cannot be assured before November 7.

When voters lose confidence in our elected representatives, we can vote the bums out. But what is the recourse if American voters lose confidence in our electoral system?

I'm with Lou on this one. The Fed, specifically Congress, Must enact legislation to make all voting uniform. If it's going to be a machine then there has to be a way of verifying the votes with some sort of paper trail. A marked ballot then let the machine do all the work is my idea. But it must be uniform whatever is preferred. I know there are those out there that talk about STATES rights and the FED can not interfere in the way votes are counted. Well I just think that A UNIFORM system would muster a SCOTUS test.

WE must stop the hanky panky that is going on to turn elections results another way.

This issue of states' rights and federal intervention is complex when it comes to a national election, IMO. Did the SCOTUS pay any attention to states' rights in 2000 when the Florida Supreme Court ruled to continue the recount? No. The Feds intervened BIG TIME and installed little Georgie as king.

Either we respect states' rights or we don't. If we don't, then the Feds can intervene again and tell a state how to handle its election results. I don't much like the idea of that, particularly given what we witnessed in 2000, as mentioned above.

But in a national election, with 50 states and thousands of counties within those 50 states, it seems to me that some uniform standard would be a good thing. Not just uniform voting methods (i.e., paper ballots vs. electronic voting machines vs. punch-cards, etc.), but laws that apply to the counting and recounting of votes. Part of the reason we ended up in the mess we did in 2000 is that Florida's laws were different from other states' laws, thereby allowing the SCOTUS to rule that it was unfair to apply a different standard for counting chads, etc. in Florida since no uniform standard existed.

It makes sense, then, to enact legislation making a uniform standard for counting and recounting votes, one that would apply to all 50 states. In a national election, this seems to me to be the only fair way to do things. But it does usurp the rights of a state to make its own laws, and I'm not sure how that issue could be resolved.

Not being a constitutional scholor, I get all conflicted with the nuances of interpretation of our many individual rights as well as states rights.

Of course our Atty Gen says the Bill of Rights is "quaint", so I guess I needn't study; it will soon be abolished...

But as to the national election and standards for vote counting

If a national election were an actual popular-vote election, then it would be a slam dunk.
States "rights" would be moot, because the federal govt would need a completely uniform process to count its votes.

But in actuality (now this IS quaint) we elect electors at the state level. THEY then go vote. So even though we all know it is a national election, technically it isn't. Senators, representatives, and "electors" all represent the people of their state. So the decision on how to choose them belongs there.

On the other hand, the voting rights act negated local practices of requiring literacy tests to weed out blacks, etc. So if the Fed can say "you have to let blacks and women vote" (of course there are Constitutional amendments to that effect) I guess it should also be able to say "be sure you count them - accurately." But does that get down to specifiying exactly how? I tend to think not. If the voters of a state want to elect officials who choose some odd, unreliable means of counting votes, where should the fed be able to override? Nat'l Guard was sent into Ala to tell Wallace he had to let the kids into U of A. Once again, enforcement of specific Constitutional mandates, not federal laws. So could a federal law banning electronic machines, or requiring a paper trail, really be enforceable? If you really want to split hairs and stick to the letter of the Constitution, I think (bush's edict to the contrary) that probably the only legitimate beef anyone had in 2000 was the people of Florida vs their own officials. And their supreme court decided that, and it should never have gone further. If the people wanted to say - "oh, wait, we realize chads are an issue and our hirelings didn't empty the boxes; we want a do-over" they should have been allowed it. Their Governor and Sect State should have been impeached for riding roughshod over them. Unless their constitution says specifically no revotes, or something.

Anyway, if you subscribe to this logic, can you then say a federal law shoud be able to tell them how to interpret dimpled chads? If the answer is no, then it also cannot tell them not to use electronics w/o paper. If the answer is yes, then such a law would be constitutional, would have jurisdiction, and the SCOTUS did have authority in 2000.

Solution? Constitutional amendment "federalizing" election of Pres/Veep, by popular vote, and mandating strict controls on counting. Then "the Florida vote" or "the Ohio vote" become meaningless. The people across the river in Danville Kentucky become equally as important as the ones in Cincinatti.

We all know the rather lame excuse that the electoral college is needed so the low-population states will still get attention. Balderdash! They don't get any attention now! The winner-take-all electoral college GUARANTEES all the focus is on divvying up the few big ev states. And the minority voters in heavily-red (or blue) states are totally disenfranchised.

This would also diminish somewhat the incentive for fraud, since there would not be an identifiable handful of "key" precincts in "key" states to focus the chicanery on.

I would also institute a "stop order" policy whereby some specified level of "probable cause" in complaints of fraud would immediately embargo the votes of the precinct, not allow any counting to continue, nor numbers to be released. It could happen in the middle of the day on election day. Give people a national 800 number to call (make the penalty for false claims heavy), dispatch someone to investigate (prob need a rep and a dem) and if there is sufficient finding, they "ground" the precinct. And the penalty on THEM for not acting responsibly is REALLY heavy.

If, on the day after, the embargoed precincts have enough potential to sway the election, then you schedule do-overs, with Nat guard present if necessary.

Sounds heavy-handed, but dammit, they are stealing our most fundamental right - to have our vote count. Treat it like the precious commodity it is, and perhaps some more people will actually exercise it. They will know that it is only one vote, but it will show up in the total for their guy. We don't even know that, now.

I don't want to see the feds get involved in elections, but it does seem to me that you need uniform standards for counting dimpled chads vs. hanging chads, overvotes, etc. Otherwise you end up with the mess we had in Florida in 2000. It's the lack of uniformity and the inconsistencies that open the door for corruption within the system. And truthfully--how should one count a dimpled or hanging chad? Can we honestly say that we can determin the intent of the voter from such a ballot? Perhaps the dimple is there because the person started to vote for that person and then changed his/her mind. Perhaps the hanging chad is there because the ballot was mishandled. The answer to this one seems pretty clear to me: Do away with punch ballots. It's an antiquated system anyway. They had their place when computers could only read punch cards, but those days are long gone.

In my town, we use electronic voting machines. They replaced the ones with the little levers you had to pull. The touch screens are nice, but I've never understood why a paper record isn't kept along with the electronic one. Still, would a paper record solve the problem? If someone got in and tampered with the software, every third vote for a Dem. could be registered as a vote for a Rep., and who'd be the wiser?

But the issue of states' rights transcends the electoral college debate. Even if you did away with that antiquated system (and it's high time), you will never get uniformity among all the states, or even all the counties within a state, regarding voting methods and laws for counting. That means the feds can always intervene when there are questions of how to count votes.

I don't really see why a Senate subcommittee can't put together a set of rules for voting and counting (and recounting) votes. Once the legislation passes, all states are bound by those rules. Disputes and problems can still be handled by individual states, but at least they'll be using the same standards from county to county and state to state. In Florida in 2000, one of the problems was that there was nothing on the books allowing for a statewide recount. Only certain counties could be recounted. Well, duh . . . which counties would you choose to recount under those circumstances? And hence the accusations of "foul play" that led the state supreme court and ultimately the feds to get involved.

I obviously don't have the answer to the problem, but someone needs to do something. With the country as polarized as it is, elections will probably continue to be very close for a long time to come. And it's close elections that magnify the problems inherit in our electoral system. Someone needs to do something.

Nothing new, but

VERY INTERESTING VIDEO ABOUT ELECTRONIC VOTING FROM

Conyers Hearing


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5...election+stolen

No, nothing new, but still somehow shocking to hear. <_<