Fingers Crossed That Voting Machines Work

Experts Hold Their Breath As 4 Out Of 5 Voters Cast Electronic Ballots For the First Time

(CBS)  Although he downplays the likelihood of this happening in an active polling precinct, even the EAC’s DeGregorio concedes, “If you're able to get into a bank vault and take the money out, you're able to get into a voting system to hack it. It can be done.”

Troubling to some experts is how voting machine vendors – including ES&S and Sequoia, each supplying more than 15 states — chose and pay so-called Independent Testing Agencies to certify their machines. Only three labs do most of testing – Systest in Colorado, Ciber and Wyle, both in Alabama – to determine whether machines satisfy government standards.

"I think that our current testing model is all wrong. We have some standards that have been produced that are not adequate enough to have a secure system," Rubin says.

10 Percent Failure Rate?

Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Michael Shamos says the federal standards are too low, for example permitting a “mean time between failure” of only 162 hours. Under that standard, you could expect 10 percent of the electronic voting machines to fail, Shamos says.

Next year, the EAC plans to impose tougher standards. Chairman DeGregorio says he is far more worried about human errors than mechanical ones. Counties have been holding a plethora of classes to make sure the nation’s 1.4 million poll workers, whose average age is a very un-computer generation 70, are properly trained to manage the machines.

“The concern with new technology is not so much whether the machines work, but whether the people operating them can make them work,” Chapin says. “We've seen problems across the country with poll workers have trouble getting machines started, getting results out of them at the end of the day, with voters having trouble making their selections or verifying that their selections are correct.”

Some elections officials admit glitches –either computer or human – often go unreported.

"Folks are scared about letting you know what happened. It is very public process." Alice Miller, Executive Director, Washington, D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics told a recent EAC hearing. "They don't want their mistakes to be out in a public forum."

Not helping matters is the sheer hodgepodge of voting machines in state after state. Only a handful deploy the same machine model statewide. California, Pennsylvania, and Virginia use six different types of machines.

“The learning curve is very high,” says Lehigh County, Penn. Elections chief Stacy Sterner. And so is the scrutiny, with thousands of partisans and self-appointed watchdogs some armed with video cameras, signing up to be poll observers. “I worry about people coming in and trying to catch them in a mistake,” Sterner says.

“A lot of people don’t like change,” says retiree Dee Hauze, a Pennsylvania poll worker. “Once everybody gets used to it, it’s gonna be very good, because you can’t make a mistake, and if you do, you can erase it.”

In bellwether Ohio, where law dictates the paper trail carries the day in a recount, 47 of the 88 counties contract with Diebold. Stark County is confident the machines will work, having conducted five recounts since it began using the machines.

“We’ve had to count the paper audit trail and compare it to machine tallies, and not once has a single vote varied,” says board of elections director Jeffrey Matthews. “People need to take a deep breath and rely on the professionalism of election officials.”

Diebold’s Radke admits he’ll be holding his breath on Election Day. “Me and a lot of politicians.” he says.

[kaliveotin]

Most of the Bill of Rights has already been dismantled, Now the right to a free and fair election where individual voters can have faith in the outcome, has also suddenly disappeared.
The only question left is Will the American people let this injustice stand?

[bluestardad]

Be Ever Vigilant. Bush and Rove will do anything to stay in power up to an including flooding key districts with fake absentee ballots tampering with electronic voting machines, and bussing in voters who are not from the districts to vote, or even starting another war with and suspending civil liberties postponing the mid term vote. There is a great possibility for this administration to tamper with the electronic voting machines to the point that very subtle differences will take place in Key races just enough to tip the vote in their favor but not enough to cause a full scale American Revolution leaving some doubt, but just enough to throw key races in the Republican Favor. Watch out for this election coup.

[long_rider]

The introduction of such a radical change in our voting system has to be questioned. I would like to have seen a test conducted in a state such as New Mexico or Arizona. To launch a new suspect system at such a critical time is sure to cause problems, especially if voters feel the results do not reflect their ballots. I don't know came up with this brain storm, but it really stinks of political trickery, and could have far reaching ramifications.

The American people don't trust big business, so why do we permit these machines to be used in the first place, and Americans don't trust our government, the ones who came up with this idea. I guess we will have to suffer the fate lazy people often face, just let someone else dictate everything, there is little I can do about it, and live with the scraps they give us.

These machines are clearly an attempt to negate the influence of the American vote. If we let them get away with this charade our vote will be just as meaningless as our Representatives in Washington DC.

%u201CAnd the American sheep keep grazing%u201D

[radiob-2009]

The electronic voting machines should give the voter and the polling place a printout of their vote.The voter can immediately check it for errors and report it.If the race is close the voters from all respective parties can then make copies of their votes and submit them to their party,it is a common knowledge that polling workers are biased and there counts cannot be trusted so the parties could then tabulate the votes and see if there is an actual discrepancy.Checks and balances like banks should be prevalent in voting.

[mrwhitey3]

I agree with pakaal completely. It is insane what we have put up with here in the US. When Jimmy Carter was asked if he would oversee the US elections, he stated that that he could not. US elections do not even meet the bare minimum of a free and fair election.

There is not a dimes worth of difference between republicans and democrates. They work together to keep the congress divided 50/50. A house divided paralizes the people while the Zionist bankers, oil men, big pharma, etc. all get their way. We should smash these machines to dust and go to paper ballots like Kucinich says. Then we can smash the machine that exploits us.

[mh4cbs1]

I hope our Diebold machines work as planned!

The backdoor security holes we left in the software are the only chance left to make sure that the NeoCon regime remains in complete control of our government. If the Republicans aren't helped out with our machines its all over for them The American people seem to finally be figuring it out -- that all the Bush tough-guy talk was just hot air and lies...

[pakaal]

"'I think we need to replace them and not use systems that are requiring trust in software that can never be trusted,' says John Hopkins University computer scientist Avi Rubin...."

I've got a much better idea. Nationalize control and manufacture of the machines and place the process under bipartisan or outside review. We don't allow private control over health, education, welfare, defense, etc., how is it that we allow private control over the very process that's supposed to determine who runs the government?