BradBlog: Howard Dean on Electronic Voting Machines, Diebold and Otherwise

[Wilms]

Howard Dean on Electronic Voting Machines, Diebold and Otherwise...

by Brad

4/22/2006

"These machines are a problem. This is not some Internet conspiracy; this is a serious problem that faces American democracy. These machines are not reliable and they shouldn't be used. We should not be using machines in this country where the results of the vote can't be verified after the fact. Period. Any machines."-- DNC Chair, Gov. Howard Dean, 4/19/06

David Grossman (formerly of MediaMatters.org, currently of PoliticsTV.com) attended a breakfast with Howard Dean the other day. He asked Dean about his concern over Electronic Voting Machines. Dean's answer was interesting (transcript of complete answer is below.)

While I'm encouraged somewhat by Dean's response -- he seems to have a general grasp of the concerns -- it seems to me that he's still vastly "misunderestimating" the disastrous situation now afoot in the country in the wake of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). He just doesn't yet seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation and the extent of the problems and dangers posed to our democracy.

snip

Dean also speaks, in his full response, about his experience a year or so ago hacking a Diebold GEMS central tabulator with "someone" on "live TV". That "someone" was Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org and the live TV was a CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown which Dean was Guest Hosting. The clip of him hacking the machines with Harris is right here. He added, in his response, that he didn't know for sure, but it "could have been a program that was elaborately programmed to fool me into thinking I was doing something I really wasn't doing."

snip/link to transcript

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002722.htm

[kansasblue]

1. I'm glad..

he's talking about it. When he was in Kansas we asked him about it. He said we had to elect Dem Sec of State. Of course that begs the second question which is how do you elect a good SOS if the systems that elects them is broken.

I remember seeing the Dean/Harris video and knew he knows.

[Amaryllis]

9. Cathy Cox is a Dem SOS who brought statewide paperless Diebold

machines to GA. He is very ignorant if he thinks Dems are not involved in the corruption here.

Then there is Linda Lamone, Dem director of elections in MD
who keeps defending Diebold while the republican governor is calling for paper ballots and saying MD's electoral system cannot be trusted to be fair and accurate, and the Dem senator in MD who was the tie breaker that kept MD from going to all paper ballots after the bill passed unanomously in the MD house; senate bill had 23 co-sponsors out of 47, and can't remember her name but it was a Dem senator who broke the tie in favor of Diebold. Dean is both ignorant and naive if he thinks getting Dems in office will solve the problem. MD would be all paper now if not for Dems.

[Wilms]

10. Don't forget Cortez, the Dem SoS in PA.

I'm sure there are more, particularly as you get down to the local level.

It's just one more way in which election reform is a bi-partisan issue. :grr:

[Amaryllis]

12. Which is why we need to frame it that way; Dean would be well

advised to talk about it in terms of it being an AMERICAN issue that both parties need to get behind. He is very ignorant if he reallly thinks that just getting rid of republican SOS's will fix it. Ortez who is the Dem running agaisnt Bowen is either clueless or complicit about all the e-vtoing problems.

[Stevepol]

2. Maybe I over-estimated Dean's awareness. I'd very much like to believe

but maybe it's wishful thinking.

Dean knows to a certain extent about the dangers but only to a certain extent. Until people really "get it," that is until people realize that the machines are not only "hackable" and capable of being fraudulently programmed but that THEY HAVE BEEN SO PROGRAMMED AND ARE CONTINUTING TO BE SO PROGRAMMED AND HACKED, until that realization comes, we are nowhere near the point we have to be at just in order to "begin" finding a way to restore democracy.

Bradblog is seldom wrong about these things.

You have to wonder what has happened to Dems' brains. Something happens I know when you get out in front and have to lead, but at some point, somebody has got to see what's happening and really crusade for the truth here. I'd hoped it would be Dean. Maybe that was a false hope.

[glitch]

4. A lot of people get hacking, but they don't yet comprehend RIGGING.

Or at least they can't state their fears in public. Fear of lawsuit maybe.
I fear the much bigger threat of rigging than I do of hacking. In some respects hacking is a red herring, directing away from the culpability of the voting machine corporations and their "proprietary" code.

[BeFree]

6. You mean it's not just a glitch?

Good point about hacking/rigging. Hacking would be an outside influence and easily averted/dismissed. Rigging the machines from the inside is much harder to swallow: "They wouldn't do that!"

[glitch]

7. Exactly! Plus if anyone points it out they would probably be subjected

to what Oprah went through when she said she wouldn't eat meat anymore.

[BeFree]

8. Speaking truth to power

Has always been dangerous.

So what? Many a soldier has shed blood for my rights, and if I have too, I will too. But let us hope it doesn't come to that.

[glitch]

11. So what? Exactly! We dishonor our ancestors by caving so easily. nt

[Amaryllis]

13. Or code built in at the vendor level before the BOE even gets the machines

[Slit Skirt]

3. I wonder if this is the "credible person"

Mark Crispin Miller was referring to when he said a credible person would be speaking out soon.

[Boredtodeath]

5. Just an example

of how untrustworthy Bev Harris is.

She can't be trusted to tell the truth because she's told so many lies.