Verified Voting Organizations
Black Box Voting
New Yorkers For
Verified Voting
Verified Voting
Voters Unite
Where's The Paper? |
News Flash: New Yorkers for Verified Voting Releases Voting
Machine Cost Comparison
Optical Scan
System More Reliable and Secure, and Will Cost NY State $100 Million Less!
See their press
release here. Download the
comparison document
here.
Who's Counting Your Votes?
We need a national
standard for voting regulations and equipment, that will ensure accuracy in
counting and prevent election fraud. But, we probably won't get one without
a fight. Therefore, we will need voting activists nationwide to prevent the
adoption of voting machines that can be manipulated and don't provide paper
receipts at the local and statewide levels.
The Critical Question The
Mass Media Don't Seem Willing To Ask!
If ATM machines
can accurately record hundreds of millions of transactions daily without
errors and without being hacked, why shouldn't our boards of elections
nationwide expect similar accuracy and security when they purchase voting
systems?
The Importance of Local
Involvement
Help us report on
local efforts to highlight and fight this critical issue. Email reports and
commentary to David Kogelman at
DKogelman@FreedomStrategies.org. Please include the URL to the original
story page, so we can link to it. This way, we can show people the original
source material online.
April 2, 2005
by David Kogelman
New York is poised to make a
decision in the next month on what kind of voting machines we will use in
the future, electronic touch screen voting machines that produce a voter
verifiable paper trail or easy to use paper ballots with a precinct based
optical scan reader to count the ballots.
Many problems with electronic touch screen voting machines were reported
wherever they were in use during the presidential election, including lost
votes and having George Bush's name light up when touching the screen for
John Kerry. And, the manufacturer's proprietary software and willful
refusal to produce a voter verifiable paper trail made a meaningful audit or
recount impossible.
Nevertheless, the voting machines bill recently passed by the State Senate
provides for the use of these machines without meaningful controls to
prevent their misuse, and makes no mention of systems using paper ballots
with an optical scan reader. In contrast, the Assembly bill allows for both
types of machines to be adopted.
The reason for the Senate basically giving the electronic touch screen
machine manufacturers a pass on meaningful oversight and audit capability
remains shrouded in mystery, but may well have something to do with the
hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars spent on lobbyists by the
machine manufacturers.
They have also strived to keep the legislators in the dark about the cheaper
and more reliable optical scan systems, even though some of these same
manufacturers also make optical scan systems. There have been reports that
representatives of these manufacturers have been saying that New York is an
electronic touch screen state (much to the surprise of one legislator who
didn't remember deciding anything like that), and causing one optical scan
demonstration to be terminated.
As reported in the New York Times, one of the software manufacturers for the
electronic voting machines has even given a $120,000 per year contract to
Roberto Ramirez, chief political advisor to mayoral candidate Fernando
Ferrer, not to promote their software but to lobby state lawmakers to block
passage of legislation in New York that would require the use of paper
ballots.
Optical scan systems have the virtue of simplicity since they use a paper
ballot that is a permanent record of the vote. And, the ballot is read and
counted by the optical scanner, which is the same type of system that has
been used for decades to score such standardized tests at the SATs, with
near 100% accuracy.
Despite the manufacturers' efforts, awareness and acceptance of optical scan
systems and their benefits has been growing thanks to the extensive
education and lobbying efforts in Albany led by upstate grassroots activists
committed to democracy, including a local chapter of Democracy for New York,
and Bo Lipari, the tireless founder of New Yorkers for Verified Voting
http://www.nyvv.org. In
the last two weeks the editorial page of the New York Times and the League
of Women Voters have both come out in favor of the optical scan based
systems, as have several others.
I have been working on a local telephone lobbying effort through Democracy
for New York City (DFNYC), Three Parks and a coalition of other local groups
that has targeted key members of the Legislature and Governor Pataki to
express our opposition to the use of electronic voting machines and our
preference for the statewide adoption of paper ballots with precinct based
optical scanners.
Our efforts in this area are ongoing, so anybody interested in making some
phone calls or otherwise working on this issue can email me at
DKogelman@FreedomStrategies.org.
The Assembly is firmly behind the optical scan based system, but Republican
members of the State Senate, as well as some Democratic Senators, appear to
be digging in their heels. We are continuing to try to persuade them that
optical scan systems are the only choice if we are to use the most
trustworthy and accurate system, and be confident that every vote is counted
and counted accurately.
Several leaders who are knowledgeable about what is going on this area
believe that the legislators may end up splitting the difference by allowing
both types of systems to be purchased, leaving it to the State Board of
Elections to approve the systems generally. It would then be left to the
County Boards of Election to determination locally what type of voting
system to purchase.
But, this would not be a good idea because the local Boards tend to lack the
technical expertise to determine what type of system works best, and they
could easily succumb to the heavy lobbying pressure engaged in by the
manufacturers.
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