November Surprise BBV

[Joanne98]

Electronic Voting Machines Add Uncertainty to Close Election Race
by Stephen Miller, Special to Corpwatch
September 8th, 2004

Yesterday, Bill Lockyer, Attorney General of California, joined Alameda county in a False Claims Act case against Diebold Election Systems seeking damages and guarantees for future performance on over $13 million worth of voting terminals purchased by the county. Last week, the Secretary of State of California, Kevin Shelley re-affirmed a ban on four California counties planning to use brand-new Diebold machines that failed to meet certification requirements in time for the November elections. At the same time, Shelley allowed 11 California counties, including Alameda, to re-certify their touch screen voting systems after meeting 23 new security requirements. This is only part of a flurry of activity across the country, as dozens of election commissions, county clerks and voting registrars scramble to maintain public confidence in an election system shaken by the 2000 Presidential election and worries about failures by hi-tech electronic solutions.

These worries are exacerbated by the fact that touch screen voting machines will tally approximately 30% of the votes cast in the U.S. elections this November. In the swing states, where the election is expected to be close, 14 of 20 states (representing over 200 electoral votes) will have at least one county using electronic voting, many for the first time. (See swing state maps.)
Following the 2000 presidential election and the Florida hanging chads debacle, Congress passed the "Helping America Vote Act (HAVA)" allocating $3.86 billion in federal matching funds to overhaul America's voting infrastructure. With state matching funds, the total spent on preventing "another Florida" has been estimated as high as $5 billion through this election cycle, according to The Wall Street Journal. Each state has taken its own approach to meeting the congressional requirements, but no application of this money has been more controversial than states purchasing direct-recording-electronic voting systems (DREs), which generally do not create a paper trail, to replace punch card and lever-operated voting systems.

Almost 30 percent of registered voters now live in jurisdictions that use DREs, rising from just 13 percent in the 2000 election, according to Electionline.org, a Pew Charitable trust sponsored non-partisan election research institute. The Federal Election Commission states that 19 companies produce DREs, but the market is dominated by just four: Election Systems and Software (ES&S), Diebold Election Systems, Sequoia Voting Systems, and Hart Intercivic. Between DREs and other voting technologies, machines of these four companies will tally nearly 100 million votes this Election Day, the vast majority of those cast. Furthermore, nearly 50 percent of precincts will use machines created by ES&S.

While this private oligopoly on the voting machine market is troubling in itself, these concerns have been exacerbated by a litany of poor security, conflicts of interest, and a lack of planning for the future of the machines purchased.


http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11518

[nodictators]

1. Will the presidential election be a "demonstration" election?

If so, then Bush has already "won" and he is campaigning just to keep it close enough to be a plausible "victory."

The two recent polls by Time and Newsweek had an incredible 11% "winning" margin for Bush. It seems their methodology included polling many more Repubs than Dems and/or purging many registered voters who favored Kerry by claiming they were unlikely to vote on Nov. 2.

Heck, why don't they just take their next polls at the RNC.

Don't give up. Vote on Nov. 2!