It's an EMERGENCY re: touchscreens this letter convinced me

This account of voting machine error convinces me- on top of anecdotes from the Florida 2002 Bush-McBride race, that we have a full fledged emergency coming up in November:

"On March 9, I voted in a relatively affluent area of Florida using a touch-screen machine. It failed to record my vote properly, but being a reasonably intelligent person, I made efforts to correct the problem. I failed.

I then called over an election official, who didn't begin to know the answer. He got his supervisor, who finally figured it out several minutes later.

The experience caused me to shudder, thinking of the election this November and the possibility of this happening to others less persistent or argumentative than I.

Why no paper trail? Is Glenda Hood, the Florida secretary of state, trying to out-Katherine-Harris Katherine Harris?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/opinion/L17VOTE.html?pagewanted=print&position=

but make sure you put the absentee ballot in a ballot box at a polling place. The mail can be a hazard. Here we have felons sorting the incoming ballots.

there needs to be validation~safeguards that 'the vote actually cast' is what prints out on paper, and not corrupted via any modem- or whatever means-tampered data.

I fear that election night 2004 will make 2000 pale in comparison ... fearing discrepancies and voting irregularities across country; once again, leaving the outcome in a mess.

Had you had confidence in BBV e-voting up to now?

also exit polls to determine if you're within margins of error.

This is a common misunderstanding, one that seems to be "encouraged" by most of the voting industry.

The whole point of printing the ballot out on paper is so the voter can verify it. ANYTHING that does not allow the voter to verify what's on the paper is not a voter verified paper ballot.

That voter verified paper ballot is the insurance that we can recount true voter intent- which the machine may or may not have recorded correctly internally.

Yes, we need more, much more. But the fundamental need is for the documentation to refer to- the voter verified paper ballot.

Remember- The whole point is the voter verified paper ballot. You get to look at that to confirm it as correct.

If people who are registered actually VOTED on Election day then absentee ballots cannot be misused.

OK you are registered - make sure you vote or your NON-VOTE will be used without your knowledge !

I recomend mail-in your vote before election day and screw the machines.

Link below for each state absentee ballot application instructions

http://www.politicsnationwide.com/docs.asp?ID=32

No electronic voting system has been certified to even the lowest level of security standards.

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In Comal County Texas, an uncanny coincidence resulted in three Republican candidates winning by exactly 18,181 votes each. Two other Republican candidates outside Texas also won by exactly 18,181 votes.

Diebold software keeps not one, but two Microsoft Access data tables of voting results.The software uses the first table for on-demand reports which might uncover alteration of the data -- such as spot checks of results from individual polling stations.

The second of the two tables is the one used to determine the election result.. But the second table can be hacked and altered to produce fake election totals without affecting spot check reports derived from the first table."

All the voting machines used in the United States come from just three companies. The Presidents of two of them have been convicted of vote fraud and yet all state governments continue to do business. No audit trail anywhere.

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http://forums.delphiforums.com/2004election/start