Me: Brunner wants to centralize the vote counting in the countiesAnd my, on central electronic tabulators which ALSO contain 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations. Central tabulators is where I think much of the fraud, nationwide in 2004, took place.
Touchscreens are like torture and illegal, heinous war, and no-bid military contracts to Bush cronies. The fascists assert the worst, more horrible things they can get away with, then the 'Democrats' look like "liberals" for taking what, on a real political spectrum, would be a rightwing position: In the matter of the above issues, for instance, Democrats okay MIND-BOGGLINGLY BIG military expenditures, most of it to private contractors, and unnecessry for our "defense," as long as the contracting is cleaner. The position that we should cut the war budget by 90%, to a true defensive posture (no more wars to choice!), is 'OFF THE TABLE.' Or, don't torture prisoners (or don't get caught), but detention without trial is okay.
And in the case of our election system, it's okay for rightwing corporations to be running our election system with 'TRADE SECRET' code, and okay to keep larding them with billions of taxpayer dollars to steal our elections, as long as we get rid of these bad-old touchscreens.
THIS is the peril of Brunner's current recommendations. Getting rid of touchscreens is not enough. We must get rid to ALL TRADE SECRET CODE in the counting of our votes. And my person opinion is that we should de-charter these electronic voting corporations, and investigate and prosecute them for fraud, and for their dreadful assault on our democracy.
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Bradblog:
Could New Recommendations Lead to Still More Trouble?
Brunner's recommendation, and failure to decertify the most dangerous of the voting systems, could lead to even more trouble ahead for Ohio.
Voting system and security experts have previously argued that decentralized precinct-based counting was more secure than central, county-based counting since results could be both counted, and posted at the polling place on election night, prior to transport of ballots, and vulnerable recording media to county offices.
During the 2004 election, investigators have maintained, chicanery occurred at the county level on election night. One such now-infamous incident occurred in Warren County, one of the last to announce results for the November 2004 election, when a supposed terrorist threat led county officials to shut the public and media out of the counting room. The unprecedented action still remains unexplained to this day. Nobody at either the FBI or Dept. of Homeland Security has admitted to giving such a warning to Warren County, and the officials in Warren who claimed they did have never offered the names of any such individuals.
Neither Brunner nor Dann have investigated the disturbing allegations surrounding that incident either, to our knowledge.
Central tabulators which process paper-based optical-scan ballots are notoriously vulnerable to hacking as well. Though, in theory, proper audits of paper ballots might reveal tampering in the event that a tabulator is hacked, decentralized counting and posting of results is generally acknowledged by experts to make such tampering far more difficult to accomplish without detection.
Brunner's statement admits that "the researchers commented that with the lack of technical measures in voting system design, its integrity 'is provided purely by the integrity and honesty of election officials.'" Such officials would still be responsible for overseeing all tabulation at the county level under Brunner's new recommendations.
A recent report from Houston, earlier this month, highlighted the ease by which a single individual could change the results for an entire county election with just the push of a few keystrokes on a county-based central tabulator. (MORE)
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5443