Electronic Voting article in eWeek (Ziff-Davis)

[RobertSeattle]

What's With All The Anti-eVoting Hysteria? (Article Title)
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1335156,00.asp

[RandomKoolzip]

1. Ha! Paper trails "more trouble than they're worth?" Ha!

Uh, I don't think so. THis guy is getting paid by somebody to spread this nonsense. How can the good outweigh the bad if there's money to be made in establishing the bad as the status quo, and the orders come from the top? BevHarris, take this punk to school, please.

[in_cog_ni_to]

2. Puhleeze!

Now I don't care for the idea of there being a record of every individual vote, since it makes it easier to determine how any one individual voted, although the proposed system can be set up with safeguards against this happening. I'm actually more comfortable with trustworthy machines and then trusting them to keep running tallies.


Oh, ya! This guy is f**cking nuts! I wonder how much money Diebold paid him to write that?

[DEMActivist]

3. Is this guy conflicted or what?

Seriously, I don't think HE knows where he stands on the issue.

How are we supposed to?

Bwahahahahahahhaahha, what a joke. Almost as bad as Atlanta's own Martha Ezzard.....

[shirlden]

4. This is a bluff piece

He obviously knows nothing at all about the issue. He went to Dr. Dills site and read a few lines, then agreed with Dill and moved on. Just trying to fill some blank paper.
Not worth the time and energy to send a response

:kick:

[JoAnnSimon]

5. Electronic Touch Screen Voting

The problem with touch screen voting is that there is no paper record of the votes, and that the machines can be easily hacked and manipulated.

A touch screen voter's vote goes out into the electronic world with no way to verify that vote and no way to recount Touch Screen Votes. Also the manufacturers of the touch screen machines have a clause in their contracts with various state organizations who buy their machines, that only they, the manufacturer can have access to the internal workings of the machines they provide.

Of course, that clause eliminates any control that locals might have over the machines or the vote, or it's accuracy.

And only three compainies have these touch screen voter machines out there, and all of them have contributed heavily to GWBush and the Republican Party and are eager to have the vote go in favor of the favor of GWBush and his administration, who put these companies in power through contribution pay back.

[Eloriel]

6. There's something VERY interesting about this column

Look at this excerpt:

Organizations have formed around the issue. VerifiedVoting.org is run by a computer science professor, David Dill of Stanford .. VerifiedVoting.org has a number of polemical FAQs along with good background on the issue.

The site also offers an online petition of sorts where people can endorse several technical goals, including a paper trail that gives a voter a sense of confirmation that their vote was actually registered. Dill is very big on this idea that the voter should have some sort of physical confirmation that their vote was counted. This paper trail would also enable a recount from every individual vote.

Here's how the system would work: The voting machine tabulates nothing. You vote on the touch screen, or whatever the interface is provided, and the machine prints out the ballot. The ballot lists out everything you voted for in text as well as a machine-readable section that encodes the same data. When you are satisfied that the ballot says what you want it to, you then take it out of the voting booth to the Board of Elections people (soon to be called Board of eLections) and they scan the ballot with some separate device. I'm not sure if there is a practical way to encode write-in votes, or if there needs to be a manual entry process for such ballots.

(snip)...Let's imagine that the machine has somehow been compromised. With either the VerifiedVoting.org proposal or my own....

-----------------

This guy thinks Dill endorses VoteHere's "solution." Maybe he does, despite his recent reassurances to the contrary. I haven't been to his site recently to look at that.

In any case, this is exactly what some of us have been concerned about when Dill promised to host that "Technology Review" on his site, a review which so far is just a showcase for VoteHere marketing materials.

There's got to be a name for this in the PR/advertising world, this "soft advertising" while appearing to remain neutral or objective. LOL -- stealth marketing would be my choice.

And if Dill still wants to claim he is neutral and objective, this article seems ample proof that that's not the way he's being perceived -- and not just by me.

Eloriel

[Eloriel]

7. I'm going to kick this once

Wish I'd have noticed my slash key stuck and I didn't turn off the bold. Oh well. Not the first time.

:kick:

Eloriel