VOTING ALERT!!

[athelind]

California Pollworkers Told to Withhold Information from Voters

Attention, California Voters!

By mandate of the California Secretary of State, you have the legal right to request a paper ballot if you are concerned about the reliability of electronic voting machines. They must provide these ballots.

However, pollworkers in Santa Clara County -- that's San Jose, and the place where a goodly number of you out there in LJ land live -- are being unstructed specifically not to mention this to voters, and to provide paper ballots only upon specific request.

The rights you save could be your own!

Comments

[hydra-velsen.livejournal.com]

What's wrong with electronic voting? Seems like a great idea to me. Saves TONS of money on paper printing costs and its instantaneous.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

http://www.blackboxvoting.org

[bfdragon.livejournal.com]

The short of it is, accountability and paper trail. A way to look back and find where problems may have arisen somewhere, whether in human error in programming, or human error someplace else in the chain.

For some reason I this keeps getting bogged down in partisanship, and I don't know why. All we want is a way to go back and check on things if there was some sort of problem, no matter what the source.

Personally, I'm a fan of a human readable printout from the voting station to go along with the live data, that can be optically scanned should the need arise. So that there is a paper backup should there be some sort of failure. There is a paper trail for that bag of groceries you bought, why not for your vote?

Thoroughness is not paranoia.

[hedgegoth.livejournal.com]

What I love is that the people screaming the most against electronic voting are those of us who make a living with computers, it's not a luddite response like some try to spin.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

Exactly. The technologists know what can be done with data once it's inside a computer, how infinitely malleable it is and how hard it can be to detect that things have been changed (assuming a professional did the work), and how hard it can be to track such changes back to the entity that desired them. Computers do what they're told to do with the data they're given, and they do it without question, whether the orders are ethical or not.

[hedgegoth.livejournal.com]

Oh hell, I'm not even going that far. I just know how quickly and easily little things break inside without even bringing malignant forces into the picture.

Not to mention that people can't even use ATMs properly and they expect them to do touch screen voting...

[araquan.livejournal.com]

*grin* Yes, there's that too. Coding errors, communication problems, and most of these things seem to be running Windows as their operating system. @.@

While I think the interface to most voting systems is actually pretty clear, I've never ceased to be amazed at how some folks' minds seem to switch off when you put a computerized device in front of them- even very, very smart people. That's one reason I like the system we have where I live- mark a ballot with a special marker (special mostly in that it can sit around all day with the cap off and still mark properly) then feed it into the computer reader. You feed it in yourself, and it stays in a locked container inside the machine once read. So no computer interface to confuse, and all the benefits of computer tallying- with the guaranteed ability to perform a genuine paper hand recount if necessary.

Still, I think the 2000 elections showed that there are forces out there with less than honorable intentions... Imagine what they could do with access to the computer.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

DAVID: "Is this a game, or is it real?"
JOSHUA: "WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?"
-- WarGames

[kolchis.livejournal.com]

Especially when the owner of the Diebold Company, who makes voting machines, has declared he's going to 'deliver Ohio for Bush'.

The sheer amount of skullduggery these people will stoop to to retain power is amazing...

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

No, what's amazing is how blatant they've gotten. I mean, on the one hand, I'm thrilled that the enemies of liberty are being so open about their goals; on the other hand, I'm more than a bit disturbed that there's so little outrage.

But, dear gods, the hue and cry I hear over that horrid, wicked ambulance chaser, John Edwards...

But that's another rant for another day.

[archteryx.livejournal.com]

And that is exactly why I'm working as an Election Protection volunteer. Poll workers told not to tell voters what they have a right to know? We hand out Voter's Bill of Rights that explain just what they are, and let the voters take it from there.

The organization is www.electionprotectionvolunteer.org.

-- ArchTeryx