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"In repeated tests, the changes made to the database that was actually read from to obtain the results were neither recorded in logs nor reported in the other database"
In repeated tests, nothing which actually happens in reality is ever used in the test.
Please, for the love of whichever higher power you might prefer, understand this: Elections cannot work, no matter how it is done, without controls.
Without the system we have now, which includes the election commission and very specific procedures, there would be nothing stopping anyone - regardless of party affiliation - from modifying election results. Again, what is easier? To hire 100's of highly skilled engineers and technicians to perpetuate a complicated felonious conspiracy, or lure a bunch of 8 year olds that can't go to jail with a box of M&M's to stuff ballot boxes?
And the same with all these "tests" and "flaws" found. Nobody has been able to replicate what they've "discovered" under the watchful eye of a polling place with responsible republicans AND democrats managing the process.
This has been one of the biggest problems evoting has had - training and following procedures (as if they never existed with newer paper ballot systems). Diebold apologized for a voting problem and everybody jumped up and down going, "SEE? SEE? I TOLD YOU SO!!!".
But what was the real problem? The poll workers did not turn the machines on in time so that they could warm up, self-test, and validate before running. So, they got started late and Diebold got blamed for "not counting votes". The machines themselves worked fine.
Other problems? Election officials did not change the default password on some systems as required. These people should not be in control of ANY type of voting system if they can't handle that important of a detail.
These are problems, but only different types of problems from the ones we typically have with paper systems. Except with paper systems, fraud is much, much easier.
Lastly, how about a little common sense? Let's assume that the CEO of Diebold is in complete control of all voting systems, his competitors, and could actually "bring votes from Ohio" or wherever. Meaning, he would be in the driver seat when his republican candidate got elected.
To do so, he and his competitors are investing billions into this technology to make it a standard way of voting. But like with any great conspiracy, they get found out. The lose their billions in investments and sales with their jobs. What kind of sense does that make?
As far as SCOTUS: That's a separate debate having nothing to do with this current news. Many Floridians could not have their vote counting because of paper ballot problems. That is relevent to the evoting issue. Besides, SCOTUS stopped the recount because 100 different people were doing it 100 different ways. Agree or disagree, those are the facts. I don't want Bush mining for votes in Texas if this next election is close with his administration changing the standards (hanging chads, pregnant chads, terrorist chads, etc) as to how they are recounted. This works both ways.
As far as Open Source, I think that is not a bad idea, but might be difficult to maintain as better hardware becomes available. I think this is the most reasonable approach to security concerns. But again, there are republican and democrat programmers. This would assume both would contribute to nefarious source code in the first place. Plus, I'm not sure it would make Avi Rubin happy. He claims C++ is inherently unsafe. Speaking as a C++ developer, he's a nutjob.
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