Resolution Introduced to Keep NY's Lever Voting Machines

[Wilms]

Dutchess County: Resolution Introduced to Keep NY's Lever Voting Machines

November 9, 2008

Dutchess County Legislator Joel Tyner (D-Rhinebeck/Clinton) has introduced a resolution to allow Dutchess County and the State of New York to continue to use lever voting machines and not be forced to replace them with insecure and unreliable electronic vote counting systems based on software.

"As Andi Novick, Joanne Lukacher, and many others have accurately pointed out, optical scan voting machines can be hacked into just about as easily as touchscreen voting machines," Tyner said. "The Help America Vote Act does not mandate a switch here in New York State from the lever machines we've long used with few problems.

~snip~

http://re-mediaetc.blogspot.com/2008/11/dutchess-county-resolution-introduced.html

[Captain Hilts]

1. Hear hear!!!

Official Poster Girl of the Lever Machine Movement:

ER: I'll vote for that!

[gloriasoso]

12. Times are changing!

My how times have changed. I think this she is a great poster girl!

Samantha
Catering Manager,
LA and New York Hotels

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

13. after what we've seen with computerized voting

it makes levers look good.

There isn't a full audit trail with levers but there is a limit to the amount
of damage one machine can do. (999 votes per machine).

But with any sort of computer, one keystroke can change everything.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. I would support that.

[kster]

3. Good Luck

"As Andi Novick, Joanne Lukacher, and many others have accurately pointed out, optical scan voting machines can be hacked into just about as easily as touchscreen voting machines,"


You are not able to recount lever machines, why can't you recount lever machnes because they are paperless and a Clone of the touchscreens.

The people are on to the BULLSHIT, but yet you keep trying sell paperless lever machines?




Transparent Ballot Box, for 500 - 800 Paper Ballots, with Deposit Trap and Counter
Easy to use, sturdy and stackable. Lockable with two individual locks. Deposit trap is operated using a lever which is coupled with the counter. Can be safely stored in the reusable protective box.



Good luck to you, . K AND R..............

[tbyg52]

4. Based on what I know about them, it's OK with me, FWIW

You can't "recount" them, true, but you can physically see the count represented. And they're hard to hack.

[Festivito]

5. Those machines "shave" votes. Nope to those, we need paper.

The back of the machines used to be opened and the lever controls were shaved so as to occasionally drop a voter's decision. We have the same problem with optical, and we have worse problems with touch-screen.

Machines do not count better than humans, they count worse and MUST be corroborated by human counts -- always.

[Wilms]

6. Exactly. "...occasionally drop a voter's decision."

"...same problem with optical, and we have worse problems with touch-screen"? No. It's much worse, and about equally so with both DREs AND Op Scan.

HCPB. I like them a lot. But the fraud possible with them is what gave rise to lever machines in the first place.

And did you hear about all the people in NY clamoring to go back to HCPB?

OK. Neither did I.

[clear eye]

7. Way to go.

Agreeing to switch to optical scanners was a compromise forced on NY activists by a Republican Majority NY Senate and the demands of the Bush Administration DOJ, who sued NY in 2006 to force the implementation of electronic machines they claimed is required by HAVA. A new Democratic majority in both Houses of the Legislature could change the equation.

The next step would be an effort to get NYS election law amended to allow continued use of the lever machines. Passage of such an amendment, if it were not vetoed, would inevitably force the issue into the courts. A clash between NYS law and U.S. law would land the case in the Supreme Court. I can't say I like our chances with the current makeup of the Court.

The 2008 Dem Party Platform calls for a mandatory paper trail, essential for any sort of oversight of results from electronic machines but absent and unnecessary in the mechanical levers, so reforms might outlaw the lever machines. But maybe if we study and study the issue, as Gov. Paterson is requiring http://www.longislandpress.com/articles/news/541/ , and just drag our feet long enough...

[Wilms]

8. Now I know why your user name is Clear Eye.

;)

Just don't worry too much about the 2008 Dem Party Platform.

[clear eye]

9. Aww, shucks. n/t

[Bill Bored]

10. The Dems don't get it. They are still traumatized over FL 2000!

If only we could have had that elusive recount, prohibited by SCOTUS, Gore would have been President. But the reason we needed that recount in the first place was because of e-vote counting. Gore would have won handily on lever machines in FL 2000 because lever machines do NOT allow overvotes! And they don't switch votes or count backwards either! You need computers to make that happen!

So Congress decided they needed HAVA to make a law to inform voters about the effect of casting overvotes -- with COMPUTERS or voter education. Meanwhile, levers haven't allowed overvotes for at least half a century, and maybe a lot longer than that.

Now we have to use all kinds of new complex methods to see what the software is doing: Paper ballots, VVPATs, "audits", statistical sudits, risk-based statistical audits. But no one is serious about this stuff. If they were it would have happened decades ago when the punch cards started replacing the levers. We've had mostly unaudited elections ever since.

Now in NY, there have NEVER been recounts allowed of any ballots cast at polling places because recounts provided the greatest opportunity for fraud. In NY, the election law states that the count must be completed on election night, or nobody goes home.

Now voting systems are SO unreliable that even recounts appear to be an improvement.

I have nothing against checking software with human counts, but I'd rather not have the software counting the votes in the first place. There are only 2 other ways:
HCPB, which has a snowball's chance in hell in the Tammany Hall State; and
Lever voting machines which is how we count the votes today.

I wouldn't necessarily count on the Dems to bail us out of this though. Some of them don't read the election law any better than the Repubs do! That's why there will be a lawsuit about this. Then the Legislature will be forced to act. Meanwhile I think it's pretty obvious that they have not banned lever machines with any enthusiasm, and since 2007, there is no deadline in the NY Election Law by which lever machines must be replaced.

[Bill Bored]

11. kick nt

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

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[Bill Bored]

15. .