OMG They Murdered the Inventor of TruVote

[LibertyorDeath]

This is what TruVote does

TruVote, provides two separate voting receipts. The first is shown under plexiglass, and displays the choices made by a vote on the touch screen. This copy falls into a lockbox after the voter approves it. The second is provided to the voter. TruVote is already attracting fans, among them Brooks Thomas, Tennessee's Coordinator of Elections. "I've not seen anything that compares to TruVote validation system

http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html


The subject line on yesterday’s email read: “Another mysterious accident solves a Bush problem. Athan Gibbs dead, Diebold lives.” The attached news story briefly described the untimely Friday, March 12th death of perhaps America’s most influential advocate of a verified voting paper trail in the era of touch screen computer voting. Gibbs, an accountant for more than 30 years and the inventor of the TruVote system, died when his vehicle collided with an 18-wheeled truck which rolled his Chevy Blazer several times and forced it over the highway retaining wall where it came to rest on its roof.

Gibbs’ death bears heightened scrutiny because of the way he lived his life after the 2000 Florida election debacle. I interviewed Athan Gibbs in January of this year. “I’ve been an accountant, an auditor, for more than thirty years. Electronic voting machines that don’t supply a paper trail go against every principle of accounting and auditing that’s being taught in American business schools,” he insisted.

“These machines are set up to provide paper trails. No business in America would buy a machine that didn’t provide a paper trail to audit and verify its transaction. Now, they want the people to purchase machines that you can’t audit? It’s absurd.”

MORE

http://civilliberty.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/853

[Tsiyu]

1. Hey Republicans resemble that remark! n/t

[ethereal]

2. yes.

when i read this several months ago, my blood ran cold and i began to fear in earnest for our future.


well, the future is here.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

3. But it doesn't need this one guy. The idea is simple and good.

It's the same idea I came up with independently a day or so before the election (I hadn't heard about TruVote).

My idea--have electronic voting machine. Enter your choices. At the end, after reviewing everything, the machine generates a paper ballot for you. The ballot might even have nice features like being color coded by party, or print pictures of the faces of the candidates or donkey/elephant whatever on it. You review that, make sure you're happy, and drop it into the lock box.

The key: An independent, nonpartisan group, audits the election and randomly shows up and audits a certain percentage of the sites after the votes have been totalled. They count the paper ballots and compare against the e-vote total. Any significant irregulaties triggers mandatory statewide recount and suspends the state's results.

Really, we should have this kind of auditing even if it's only paper ballots. It only makes sense, and gives people some confidence in the results.

AND ALL SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE DESIGN IS OPEN SOURCE, PUBLISHED.

But it would require America as a country to acknowledge that there are problems with our elections and to submit to the authority of inspection and auditing by a nonpartisan third party (international would be thebest). I don't forsee that happening until we start having problems like Great Depressions and WWIII's for real, to get enough fat happy Americans out of their "comfort zone".

[ethereal]

4. Mayberry

Whatever happened to his family? In the articles I read, they swore they were going to uphold his dream and get his machine in use if it was the last thing they did.


You're absolutely right--until we get rid of voting fraud, it won't make a damned bit of difference who we run, what our message is, or how actively we GOTV. We must all focus on this issue.

I agree with your last sentence--until the fat, complacent incurious people have to experience the consequences of their surface-only values, they won't listen to the facts. Unfortunately, unless we're prepared for the worst, we'll hae to experience those difficult times right along with them.

[Tsiyu]

5. Kick n/t

[AP]

7. There are vote machines that are all hardware -- no software.

I think that should be a legal mandate for vote counting machines too.

[AP]

6. My instict is that this was just an accident. I believe his son still runs

the company.

SUV's are dangerous. 18 wheelers are dangerous. This guy was a victim of something that is going seriously wrong in America, but it has to do with how we protect society on the roads, and not in the ballot booth.