Please join me in writing FL Sec of State and telling her she's a moron

[carols]

Vote machines reliable, accurate without printers - an op-ed by Little Miss Glenda Hood-wink
http://news-press.com/news/opinion/040228guestop.html
Here is her e-mail address:
[e-mail]
Here is my two cents:
Dear Ms. Hood,
With all due respect, your op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel is inaccurate at best and sheer, unmitigated b.s. at the worst. You clearly have no background in technology and should not venture opionions on things which are not in your area of expertise.

Many of the finest technological minds in the country have analyzed this software and pronounced it both unsafe and prone to fraud and manipulation. Anything that is run on MicroSoft Access is impossible to secure. That is why the corporation I work for - a Fortune 500 company, I might add - is removing any and all financial applications that utilize a MicroSoft Access database as a part of their efforts to make our company Sarbanes-Oxley compliant by June. If it isn't safe enough to ensure the sanctity of our bottom-line, I assure you it is not safe enough to contain our sacred vote.

As for their certification process, please be aware that having a machine boot up and display a message stating, "Hey, I am in perfect shape!" does not constitute certification. And any "patch" or "upgrade" applied to the machine after it has been certified, (as I understand happened in Georgia), necessitates - not suggests...necessitates - a complete regression test and re-certification of the system.

As to your assertion that the technology does not exist to attach a printer to the machines, I might humbly suggest that you must be listening to the software vendors again, and having been in the field for the last 20 years, I can tell you that they are about as trustworthy as snake-oil salesmen. They take advantage of the technically illiterate in order to sell their solution as the one, the only, the latest and the greatest. I believe you have been had, as the old saying goes. Please don't continue to propagate words from those nice, shiny brochures the vendor sends you. It discredits both your office and demeans the intelligence of the people whom you serve.

Carol

[lastknowngood]

1. UHH I think she knows that is depending on it to move her up

in the repug party

[RedEagle]

2. Never send just one letter

The secretary of state has a convenient filing "system" for unwanted letters.

But DO cc them to the newspapers, TV and radio stations, and your state legislators.

As a rule of thumb, you can't change the mind of one individual who doesn't want to go there. But you can change the minds of those who put them there, and those who report on the job they're doing.

cc'ing is a great thing! ;-)

[RedEagle]

3. Common Florida!

Kick!

[Florida_Geek]

4. Already emailed her as CC to

my list of Dems in Florida :)

[Kelvin Mace]

5. Dear Ms. Hood....

Could you please cite what credentials you possess that make you an expert in computer security? You are a bureaucrat. You are no more qualified to judge the reliability of computer hardware, than a hospital secretary is qualified to judge the reliability of a dialysis machine.

The only thing you seem to know how to do is to parrot the statements written for you by Diebold and ES&S.

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
http://www.plan9.org

[jpak]

6. This is exactly why I'm voting absentee this November

This will be worse than 2000 - wait and see.