Reply #4: Nope, TX has one of the weakest certification procedures [View All]

I know a little bit about this ChicanoPwr, because a few of us DUers here in Austin have been working Texas Safe Voting. http://www.safevoting.org and we've been to several forums with both the SOS people, our local registrar and computer experts like Dan Wallach and Adina Levin. Wallach and Levin by the way absolutely say the certification process is suspect. In fact they have a lawsuit currently against the SOS for certifying these DREs in secrecy. And our own DU expert Bev Harris also came to Texas to campaign for verified paper ballots this year. Ask Bev Harris what an Independent Testing Authority means. Or better yet go read about ITAs at http://www.blackboxvoting.org Read down to where the picture of Shawn Southworth from Alabama is shown. Bev and Andy call tell you real live first person stories about the bullshit that certification means.

And an audit log is just simply software code. If the code is malicious i.e. unsafe and is written to say for every 2 votes to candidate x (Dem) subtract one and add to candidate (y) instead. What is the audit log going to prove? All it essentially produces is the number of votes for candidate X and candidate Y. It can not produce a real audit. For example let's say there were unique voting number, you would think you should be able to reproduce that ballot on screen exactly by that specific voting code number. Hart Intercivic who produces e-slate and was there for both of the forums, said it was not possible. Pretty lame huh?

I'll give you even more bullshit on "hardship" rules that the state uses for partisan means. I went to a Latino voting conference recently and the representative for the SOS basically was lying to cover for the office. They had $5.5M in unspent education HAVA monies sitting in the bank on Nov. 3rd. A coalition of organizations helping minority churches are suing them for failure to provide training materials to them this year. They repeatedly asked in writing for brochures they could pass out in their churches to show voters how to use these machines. The SOS filed a HAVA hardship rule saying they needed to hold back the money to distribute more in 2006. These coalition of organizations represented about 50,000 people and they only wanted at least one brochure per church to post in their lobbies. They asked for 1,500 the SOS office gave them 15. That's right just fifteen. They did a FOIA request and found out that SOS printed 25,000 sometime in August but just didn't have any left in Sept.

Do I think the new SOS is going to be better than Geoffrey Conner? Hell no, he'll be worse. He's only interested in further promoting the repuke party. He's a fundraiser. Laws, when do they respect the law if they can subvert it to their goals?

Sonia