Category Archives: voting technology

Courier-Journal: “As Kentucky Democrats make a last-minute push to allow U.S. military personnel overseas to vote online, Florida is reporting what appears to be the first case of someone trying to manipulate U.S. voting through the Internet.”

Let me be clear (and for reasons I’ve spelled out in The Voting Wars).  This country is not ready—and not close to ready–for secure Internet voting. This would be a huge mistake.

See here.

Joe Hall:

Maria: Which of the voting ‘conspiracy theorists’ are doing the most harm, in your view, and how?

Joe: Well, Fitrakis and Bello really seem to be getting widespread play this year for some reason. I can’t tell you how many otherwise smart and discerning people have asked me about both their two recent stories on “Romney owns voting machines in Ohio” and this new “scary last-minute software update” one. The frustrating part is that in other times of the year people like myself would have time to carefully debunk this well-manufactured drivel, but at the moment I’m too concerned with real issues, like making sure voters on election day and volunteers in the field have the information they need, however mundane or technical, to make sure all registered, eligible voters can cast a ballot. Luckily, in the case of the “Romney owns voting machines” story, the reliable fact-checking site Snopes.com has really hit it out of the park.

As to who’s doing the most damage… chalk up Naomi Wolf in that category as she seems to think that getting rid of the secret ballot would solve all our problems.

What an amazingly stupid idea! She probably doesn’t know—why would she?—that voting before we instituted the secret ballot in the US (around 1900 for most states) was a payday for most voters, and that when we instituted the secret ballot voter turnout dropped like a rock since vote buyers could no longer be assured that they were getting what they paid for.

Also, I’m not a big fan of the Brad Blog, as he can be very sensational and ego-driven. However, he often has good facts and original analysis, so while I don’t visit his site, I don’t immediately write-off what he has to say, just his tone and likely his policy recommendations.

News from Nevada.

NPR reports. I expect Tamara Keith, the reporter on this story, is going to get the same tin-foiled hate mail that I’ve been getting for rejecting the left-wing election truthers who are convinced that the voting machines are rigged for Romney.

Today’s “To the Point:”

Could Voting Machines Steal the Election? (1:07PM)

In the year 2000, “hanging chads” on Florida’s paper ballots put the presidential election in doubt. Two years later, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, which provided federal subsidies for states to buy electronic voting machines that don’t use paper at all. Dispute is raging over what it could mean for the integrity of next week’s election. Both campaigns and many political pundits say Ohio could decide the election.  How secure are its voting machines?

Guests:

• Victoria Collier: writer and election integrity activist, @Votescam
• Steven Rosenfeld: AlterNet, @srose14
• Dan Tokaji: Ohio State University
• Ion Sancho: Leon County Elections Division

Links:

• Collier on how to rig an election (Harper’s)
• Rosenfeld on voting machine activists are scaring people unnecessarily
• Rosenfeld’s ‘Count My Vote: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting’

Absolute must-read from Steven Rosenfeld, as a counter to the left’s election truthers.

USA Today reports.

News from Colorado.

This item in the Wall Street Journal begins:

A decade after Dana Debeauvoir helped change Travis County, Texas to an all-electronic voting system she still expects to be falsely accused of fixing the coming election, just as she had in the last two presidential races. The clerk, who has administered voting for 25 years in the county that includes Austin, says the public has remained mistrustful of the ballot system, where voters pick candidates directly from a computer screen, without marking a piece of paper. “There have been so many hard feelings,” says Debeauvoir. “You get people saying ‘I know you have been flipping votes.’”

Chapter 6 of The Voting Wars discusses the fights over voting technology.