BBV: Poll Perils (Ithaca Times NY)

New York State is shopping for new voting machines. The new $7,000 electronic voting machines which are currently being considered would cost the state $140 million and may not be as accurate as the old ones they will replace, according to computer programmer Bo Lipari.

Lipari, a member of the Finger Lakes 2004 Election Committee gave a presentation about the proposed voting machines in the Borg Warner Room of the Tompkins County Library on Monday evening.
At the very least the new machines require the voting software to be flawless, he said.
"Any computer professional will tell you that is impossible to achieve," Lipari said. "I'll let you all in on a dirty little secret every programmer knows. All software programs ship with bugs."

A company called Diebold manufactures a paperless DRE that has a magnetic card slot. At the polling place voters are handed a magnetic "smartcard." Lipari, said that it would be easy for someone with limited experience to hack the cards. If they did they could vote more than once or even gain administrator access to the voting machines.
Lipari demonstrated to the audience that the machines also fail because they keep several lists of voting records. Computers are capable of keeping several lists in memory and thus presenting misleading results. Paper ballots insure a verifiable record of the voter's choice, Lipari said.

more...

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=10250054&BRD=1395&PAG=461&dept_id=216620&rfi=6

for the NY DUers. :kick:

nt

Here's something from out of Ohio -

SAIC dropped from Ohio contract

- snip -

Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell said he dropped Science Applications International Corp. after learning of the conflict. The company had a business relationship with Hart Intercivic, one of four vendors qualified to sell voting machines to Ohio counties, Blackwell said. A SAIC subsidiary has committed to investing $5 million in a venture capital fund that holds a 12 percent interest in Hart Intercivic, Blackwell said. He replaced SAIC with Compuware Corp. of Detroit.

Kick!

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20031002-9999_1b2calbrfs.html - you can find it in the center of the page.

Thanks, RedEagle, sorry I forgot - I need more mental ram! :)