|
Edited on Wed Mar-03-04 02:04 AM by SoCalDem
It's really too late.. The fall election is 8 months off, and most states have already voted in and paid for these "machines".. The companies that make them cannot(will not) refund the money.. The time for reflection and testing and reviewing was BEFORE they jumped the gun and BOUGHT them..
The voting legislation passed too easily, and I was suspicious then but in retrospect, this works perfectly for the repubes.. WEe said they screwed us on the 2000 election..Bush rushes in to "save the day" by making sure that states got rid of those "old" machines.. We played right into his hands..
Instead of rushing to do away with the older machines, all we needed to have done was to insist that there was a nationwide "standard" for recounts, and to standardize the ballots for presidential years..
We used a shotgun to kill a mosquito..
What we have ended up with is cash-strapped states that have spent a bundle for stuff we "said we needed", and no we don't really want it..When we complain about the fact that these machines are anything but secure, they say.. "Hey, YOU wanted these machines..we gave them to you"...
Now that a real recount will be next to impossible, look for states to start eliminating the recount feature completely.. and even a paper trail will not solve the problem completely, since the verification slip could have all the correct data, but the machines could be rigged to "flip" 500 votes on every 50th "transaction"..
Unless every precinct was required to have those slips, AND have them as an audit for the machines, it's useless to even have them
If a precinct has 800 people, and a candidate got 600 according to the paper trail, but the machines registered 750, there would have to be a remedy BEFORE any votes were cast.. They cannot have every precinct in a state trying to figure out what to do at the last minute..
It would have been so much simpler to just have plain old paper and markers..with optical scanners to eliminate over votes.. There should NEVER be an undervote.. There should always be a "none of the above" option.. That way there is no way for someone to "miss" a category..
|