BEV I have a ?- I talked to the elections mngr of San Mateo country.

[Room101]

My reason for calling was to find out when the county would migrate to touch screen. By 2005 according to federal law was the answer I got.

He was well aware of the John Hopkins study, and other security and computer scientist concerns. He played the middle ground regarding the possible flaws (His sentiments) and is waiting to see how it plays out with the company’s responses. He said that there has been no known incident documented in the nation, were a election was overturned as a result of paper-less touch screen. Is this true BEV? Sorry my free time has left no room to be informed about Blackboxvoting. That is changing now!

I asked his position on HR 2239 and he was very animated in his support for the bill.
San Mateo County will be forced to buy touch screen voting machines by 2005, even if they don’t remedy the known flaws and implement the suggestions from security and computer scientists. WTF!


edit spelling

[punpirate]

1. Regarding his statement...

... about documented problems, there's no known way to do that without a paper trail to audit, if there's no clear indication of machine failure. Of course, there's been no election result overturned without evidence of machine failure, because the only way to check results is with the votes stored in the machine. If those votes were incorrectly tallied, a recount simply adds up the same votes.

On edit, there have been instances, as in the last election where election officials were sure that the results were incorrect, presumed it to be equipment failure (some reporters have called it a "chip" failure, but I think they mean the flash card on which the operating system program is stored), had new equipment flown in, and it reversed the results of some elections, but I'd have to look for the links.

Cheers.

[Room101]

2. That is a scary point....

And should amplify the need for a paper audit trail.

[ConsAreLiars]

3. A good overview

with adequate documentation and depth, but not toooo long:
http://www.opednews.com/hartmann_theft_of_your_vote_just_a_chip.htm