BuzzFlash Reader Contribution

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In ATMs, Not Votes, We Trust

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

Ms Applebaum,

I have been a poll worker in Los Angeles County and have voted on a Diebold e-vote machine. Your comparison to ATM's is somewhat inaccurate as you receive a bank statement each month so you can confirm that the bank is not stealing from you. That is not the case with e-voting.

Diebold produces other machines besides e-voting machines, ATMs, cash registers and subway ticket machines. They have one thing in common, they all have printers. Why would a company design a new technology that relies on a fallible computer code and then have no automatic, built-in way to check the accuracy of the machines? They can be programmed to record votes in a number of ways so that in testing mode everything appears fine but on election day every fifth vote for John Q. Public actually gets recorded for Joe Schmo. A Voter Verified record is the only way to insure the security of e-voting.

Please do some research on this. Professor Rebecca Mercuri who is an expert at computer security has an excellent site and has spoken on CNN of the problems with these machines. Her site is http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html Also please see Bev Harris' site blackboxvoting.org for more revelations.

I don't know if there was any manipulation of the vote electronically but there is an increasing mountain of inconsistencies that are being uncovered in Florida and Ohio and other places as well. That we should privatize our most sacred duty in a democracy and allow the voting procedure to be taken over by a private company with proprietary software that citizens cannot examine sets off alarm bells for many of us. The VOTING is supposed to be secret, the counting is not. We should have a totally transparent counting of the vote. If it were up to me, I would use paper ballots. Poll workers and citizens of all parties would publicly count the votes in each precinct and post the results ON the ballot box so that any changes after that counting would not be possible. It is done that way in Canada and they have results within 24 hours for national elections. It is low tech and infallible.

Just because you cannot imagine stealing votes to achieve a desired outcome doesn't mean there aren't others who would steal an election. With e-voting we have made it way too easy.

Sincerely,

Leslie Crabtree

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION