TOUCH SCREEN VOTING
Please Read Carefully.
I have heard a few times how votes are not tallied by the machines correctly. It’s your vote, please, take a few extra seconds to make sure it’s recorded correctly.
Thanks,
Todd
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I urge EVERYONE who is a: voter, election judge, poll watcher, candidate, political activist to do the following:
TELL EVERYONE WHO USES THE TOUCH SCREEN VOTING MACHINES TO GO TO THE
“CHECK VOTE/CHECK BALLOT” SCREEN BEFORE THEY HIT THE “CAST VOTE/VOTE” BUTTON!
I have never made it a secret that I DON’T TRUST THE TOUCH SCREEN VOTING MACHINES! Unlike the Optical Scanners, there is no independent voter verifiable audit trail that can be checked should the need arise when using the touch screen machines.
Using the Democrat-controlled Maryland State Board of Elections chosen voting equipment (i.e., the touch screen voting machines or the Direct Recording Electronic Devices – DRE) there is absolutely no way to verify that the machine is actually recording your vote AS YOU CAST IT.
I have never been alone in my skepticism about these “easy to use” computer voting machines. Computer scientists throughout the country have been skeptical. An in-depth study of the touch screen voting machines was done by the Information Technology Department of Princeton University. Should you be interested, you can view the Princeton University study on the Diebold Accu-Vote Touch Screen Machines, used in Maryland at http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ts-paper.pdf.
Following is a small excerpt from the Princeton University report: “Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably modifying all records, logs and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count which it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities — a voting machine virus.”
“Computer scientists have generally been skeptical of voting systems of this type, Direct Recording Electronic (DRE), which are essentially general-purpose computers running specialized election software. Experience with computer systems of all kinds shows that it is exceedingly difficult to ensure the reliability and security of complex software or to detect and diagnose problems when they do occur. Yet DREs rely fundamentally on the correct and secure operation of complex software programs. Simply put, many computer scientists doubt that paperless DREs can be made reliable and secure, and they expect that any failures of such systems would likely go undetected.”
Although checking your vote/reviewing your vote BEFORE you hit the “VOTE/CAST VOTE” button still does not insure that the machine is actually recording your vote as you cast it, it is the best we can do until we actually replace the touch screen voting machines with the Optical Scanners.
FYI, the Maryland General Assembly earlier voted to replace the touch screen machines with the Optical Scanners for the 2010 elections. Governor Martin O’Malley just couldn’t find the $10 million to replace them. (I believe we can all agree that if you are an embezzler it makes it so much easier to go undetected if you are able to “cook the books” so your “take from the till” goes undetected. Those who have made an art form of stealing elections are no different.) Are you surprised that the touch screen machines were not replaced in time to have the Optical Scanners in use for the 2010 elections? I’m not. ONLY the Optical Scanners provide an INDEPENDENT VOTER VERIFIABLE AUDIT TRAIL. An audit trail that makes it nearly impossible to steal an election — without being caught.
Filed in: EDUCATION, EVENTS, IN THE NEWS