State shuns printout backup of ballots (Florida)

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Fri, Feb. 20, 2004

ELECTIONS


State shuns printout backup of ballots

Florida voters shouldn't expect to see a paper copy of ballots cast on touch-screen machines in the November election, the secretary of state tells lawmakers.

BY MICHAEL VASQUEZ

[e-mail]


TALLAHASSEE - It is ''extremely unlikely'' that Florida voters in November will be able to check their machine-vote ballots against a paper printout before leaving the polls, the head of the state's election process told the Legislature on Wednesday.

But the official, Secretary of State Glenda Hood, insisted that voters have every reason to remain confident in electronic voting machines, despite rising worries across the nation that such machines are susceptible to computer hackers who could possibly alter the outcome of an election.

''Florida is no longer haunted by those ghosts of 2000,'' Hood said, referring to the state's infamous chad-filled recount. ``We have every confidence that the machines we have certified are secure against tampering.''

Hood's comments to the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee were followed by a presentation by one of the companies supplying touch-screen computers to Florida, Sequoia Voting Systems.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/7994128.htm

[KissMyAsscroft]

1. Bullshit!

Total fucking bullshit!

[asjr]

2. Ditto

We can wave goodbye to Fla.

[aquart]

4. I thought you understood that going in.

Florida isn't on the table. Put it in Bush's column with a note to prosecute later.

Congress, however, IS on the table.

Let's go get us a few seats and sit down and eat.

[dusty64]

10. That was exactly

what I was thinking. Its pretty obvious the extreme right is terrified of free and fair elections and most officials are more than willing to make sure that doesn't happen. This year will be the LAST chance to boot these fascists before the placement of these bogus voting methods is complete and the margin of victory is going to have to be large enough to overcome rigging.

[xchrom]

3. what a surpise!?!?

why would anyone in the state of florida want a print out of the votes?
i can't imagine.

[countmyvote4real]

6. wink

That 2000 debacle was way over blown. By now, I'm sure they've learned from their mistakes.

Alert to Florida Dem voters: vote absentee (and make a copy).

[bullimiami]

32. ??

i dont see how you can say the 2000 debacle was overblown. if anything it was seriously underblown gore should have won florida by 50,000 votes. thats serious fraud my friend.

and yes absentee for florida dems.
it leaves a paper trail.

we will be having massive absentee get out the vote efforts here.

[Occulus]

33. it was sarcasm

[leftchick]

5. Lots of time to prepare those lawsuits....

that should by flying the day after the election. I hope to see Ms. Hood's ass in the slammer shortly there after.....

[pocoloco]

11. I do not understand this reasoning,

I would rather see lawsuits filed before the election!

[Florida_Geek]

7. Absentee Ballot is the ONLY way to vote

in florida. get the word out.

[Ganja Ninja]

12. As a Florida resident that's how I intend to vote.

It's the only way to be sure your vote is re countable.

[bluedog]

20. my family and friends

also will be voting absentee ballots....there is no other way around this....

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. Who ever thought someone could be worse than

Katherine Harris. But then I didn't think anyone could be worse than Sandra Mortheim. At least those two got elected. Now Jeb gets to appoint the Sec. of State, nice trick ha?

The other day this piece of work was on NPR claiming that the machines to provide a paper print out hadn't even been manufactured yet, no less certified, therefore it would be impossible to do anything about it in time for the 2004 election. First of all, Florida has only had 4 years since the 2000 fiasco to straighten this mess out and instead they have made it worse. Second, seems that Hood has never heard of the computer printer? Maybe someone should take her to the closest office supply or home electronics store, they are full of these magical devices that can be hooked up to almost any computer and would easily solve the problem.

[NoSunWithoutShadow]

9. They need accurate exit polling. eom

:dem:

[newyawker99]

30. Hi AnybodyButBush!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[farmbo]

13. No pesky chads or butterfly ballots...and no plans for a close election!

Hereafter, the trains will run on time!

Welcome to the machine

[Robb]

14. They're absolutely terrified.

The numbers in the Dem caucuses and primaries are staggeringly up. They won't be squeaking by, they're going to get trounced unless they can mess with the works.

[The Backlash Cometh]

15. Republican counties in Florida already had touchscreens with paper

ballots. They're hypocrites. It's the Democratic counties which got the new machines without the paper trail.

[Fla_Dem]

22. Bullshit.

I'm in a republican county, one of the largest ones, there is no paper receipt.

[The Backlash Cometh]

34. I beg to differ.

My county has had touch screen computers that issued paper ballots which were then fed through a ballot reader. It has been this way for as long as I've lived here, which has been about ten years. This county is at least 55% Republican. It has a large and affluent Republican base.

In addition, after the Gore v. Bush fiasco, the newspapers pointed out that the majority of the counties that had the old punch card technology with the high rate of error, were Democratic. The ones that had the touch screen technology with paper ballots, were Republican. Perhaps you live in the one county in this state which is the exception, but like it or not, I'm not the only one who has noticed the difference in technology, despite the Supreme Court ruling in 2000.

[salin]

16. What is almost shocking to me... is the level of arrogance to which

the GOP has risen. Here there is a demonstratable problem where the results did not match the number of folks voting in a special election for a state representive race... only one issue on the ballot - so not likely to have a big number of voters who go vote but don't vote on that office (why go vote?) - where the number of votes by which the race was won, was less than the number of votes "off" by the machine... but in which there could be no recount due to nothing to check the results against.

Given that situation, in Florida, within the last two months... the gall that it takes to claim this ... is utterly amazing.

Floridians - please write a letter to the editor today to your local paper, and if you live where there are smaller community weeklys write one to those as well... Include this statement, and the details on the special election... coordinate letters with friends so that for a week (or in the case of weeklies for a month) letters appear... force a little bit of a public buzz around this issue... including an illease at the idea that some republicans seem to be working (and you can use the term "unintentionally or intentionally" - if you want to be generous AND get the attention of republican readers who might also start to get uncomfortable with what is going on) - to prevent democracy from working...

[Fla_Dem]

17. Would someone please explain to me

Exactly what good would a paper receipt do ?

If anyone was going to reprogram the machines to "give" an election to a candidate, would they not also just program the machine to print the actual votes on the receipt, but count the votes different ?

[salin]

18. there would be a paper trail that could be counted

and something that could be compared to the machines' results. Ideally the printer makes two (identical) copies - one for the voter and one that gets stored for a recount. In most precincts, in most states, there are representatives of both parties present to verify no tinkering - thus there would be folks there to report if something funny was going on with the printed receipts.

I still find it hard to believe that we have moved to these machines when the much more reliable and verifiable optical scan machines could be used instead. Hard to mess up ala the butterfly ballot (draw a straight line across for the office to the specific candidate)... and the hard ballot (that one draws the line across) gets scanned - and then saved by the machine. No problem recounting, no problem detecting the intended vote, and no problem with verifiable votes (the hard copies are with the machine).

[FlaGranny]

19. You wouldn't be able to get away with that so easy

because the physical paper ballots/receipts are there to be counted. If the machine count doesn't match the paper count, the paper count wins out.

[Fla_Dem]

21. Except the time the paper ballots will be compared to the machine

ones would be during a recount, which will only happen if there is less than a 1% difference between candidates. Unless you plan on filing a lawsuit and try to force one.

Simple FACT is, there is nothing than people make, that people can not hack into and manipulate. There is NO 100% totally reliable method for voting.

[salin]

23. but there are methods that are much more reliable

than others - I, for one, prefer the optical scan machines.

[Fla_Dem]

24. Scan machines, again, easy to manupulate the program

to record whatever you want the outcome to be and nobody would know any different unless a recount was called.

[salin]

25. They are easier to manipulate than touch voting screens

not so sure. You are correct about the recount mechanism needing to be triggered, but with the touch screen's even if triggered - then there is NO recount possible. Give me the optical scanners any day over the touch screen voting machines.

[Paulie]

29. Unless you count the paper too, how would you know?

I know the optical scanner that read my punch card vote in 2002 said I correctly voted when I intentionally UNDER-VOTED.

Unless there are Mark I scanners (eyeballs) looking at a paper BALLOT (not receipt, BALLOT), then I'll never trust the counts. PERIOD.

[warrior1]

26. Why

hasn't everyone gone absentee? Tell your friends a family, hell mail them the forms. It's a hell of a lot easier to vote in you own home.

[FlaGranny]

27. One of the ways to make sure that things

are on the up and up is to take a percentage of the votes - a randomly chosen sample and compare them (electronic and paper). If this were done in each election, the chances of catching any cheating would be greatly improved. Of course, I agree there is no 100% reliable method.

[soup]

28. every reason to remain confident

A related article I read this morning blames the voters, mentions the 36 day revelry?! in 2000 and Hood's new public service announcements. The writer of the article doesn't think much of a 'Get Out the Vote' campaign - asking if we'd have better roads with more cars, or if a musician plays better for an audience of 50,000 as opposed to 5,000.

-----------------------------------------------------
>snip<
"Make Freedom Count" is the campaign's upbeat slogan.

"You could screw up an anvil, couldn't you?" might be more honest.

The impolite fact is that voting isn't all that hard if you pay even minimal attention and the county does its part. If the equipment doesn't work, or the poll workers can't answer easy questions and they run out of ballots, the voters have a right to be angry. Other than that, if you give voting the thought you'd give a new scratch-off lottery game, you ought to be able to figure it out.

And it's important. A recent special election for the state House in Broward and Palm Beach counties was decided by 12 votes, out of 10,845 cast. There were 137 ballots with no candidates selected on them - indicating those people people either got in the voting space and didn't like any of the seven candidates or, more likely, thought they'd voted but somehow erased their ballots on the new touch-screen equipment.

But, whatever they did, they did it with their own hands.

------------
the article ends with this little gem:
------------

If voters take a few minutes to familiarize themselves with candidates and ballot issues - that is, take a little personal responsibility - they should have no problem at the polls. But if the first time they see a ballot is Nov. 2, there's only one person to blame if they disqualify their own votes.

Well, she's gone to Congress now, so they'll blame Jeb Bush.

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/politics/7983367.htm

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

from the article:

----
"more likely, thought they'd voted but somehow erased their ballots on the new touch-screen equipment.

But, whatever they did, they did it with their own hands."
----

thought they'd voted, but somehow erased their ballots.


No problems here.


I spoke with a woman at the county Supervisor of Elections office last week about the release of the proposed changes in election law that was supposed to be released statewide last Friday. The public has 21 days to comment. (still haven't found anything out on that - nobody seems to know anything about it)

Got to talking about the electronic voting and how 'there haven't been any problems with the machines themselves'. I brought up the 130 some people who recently went to vote in the one issue election, but didn't.

She had a rather interesting take on the 137 no-votes in that special election and the things that people do. "What if they did it on purpose to create a problem where none exists?"


Nope, no problems here.

[Bandit]

31. No such thing as a Recount ever again.

No Way No How. We Trust The Machines not the People. People should not be allowed to count the ballots. Only Machines should be allowed and we KNOW the machines can never fail. Once the ballots have been counted by the machines it's a done deal. Everyone knows that machines are infallible.