Voting glitches haunt statistician

Here's a great article about a hero and patriot in Madison fighting the fight. I wouldn't be surprised if Joiner posts here on DU.


by Rob Zaleski
Brian Joiner wishes he could "just get over it."

He wishes he could ignore the thousands of reported voting irregularities that occurred in the Nov. 2 election, accept the fact that George W. is going to be around another four years and just hope that we haven't created even more enemies or fallen even deeper into debt by the time 2008 rolls around.

"I'm sure the Republicans would like me to forget all that stuff, just like they wanted everyone to forget all the strange things that happened in the 2000 election," the retired 67-year-old UW-Madison statistics professor said this week.

Well, sorry guys, but he can't.


http://www.madison.com/tct/news/index.php?ntid=30826&ntpid=1

another respected academic concerned about e-voting and not afraid to say something about it.
???? Don't you HOPE we could achieve this by 2006:

(excerpt)
"O'Dell says US Count Votes wants to develop "a single database of nation-wide precinct-level election results, along with matching U.S. Census demographic information and the type of voting equipment in use."

Its ultimate goal "is to be able to gather and analyze data as it comes in on election night, and to spot vote counting problems in time for candidates to request an investigation or recount - before they concede. And it hopes to have such a system in place by 2006."

They really need funds to build their very important project.

See uscountvotes.org.

Or, if you want to assist in their work in other ways, go to garybeck's site:
solarbus.org/election

and take a look at the volunteer page.

Publicly vetted polling models designed to pick winners & losers to 2 standard deviations with citizen volunteer pollsters and public access to the results.

without independently conducted public access exit polling. A good Q for them.

My president was stolen from me. My entire life has changed, for the worse, because of it. My anxiety level is at level orange, and remains there as long as the drooling nitwit is in the White House.

If I "get over it," I might as well lie down on Karl Rove's front porch and be the doormat that the Repubs expect the Dems to be. No effin' way.

...everywhere else. Send thank you's to the writer and the paper, and to Joiner!

Article writer's email: rzaleski@madison.com

The Capital Times editorial page (letters to ed): TCTVoice@madison.com

Dear Editor:

Thank you for the article by Rob Zaleski, “Voting Glitches Haunt Statistician” (3/4/05). I’ve read the report that Dr. Joiner helped write, with eight other Ph.D. co-authors, for USCountVotes.org, and the other reports he mentions, and I agree with Dr. Joiner’s grave concern about our election system. What to do now? We must achieve a transparent, auditable voting system, where peoples’ votes don’t just disappear into the electronic ether. It’s doubtful that we can achieve that with the current electronic voting machines, which are extremely insecure. Please see Republican hacker Chuck Herrin’s easy demo on how insecure these machines are, at http://www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevote.htm.

At the very least, we need open source code and a “Voter Verified Paper Ballot” (an official record of the vote to use in recounts and audits)--and mandatory audits. The idea that our voting machines are run on secret, proprietary source code, owned and controlled by major partisans of the Bush regime is seriously alarming. And that many Democratic leaders seem to have gone along with this—an inherently fraud-prone voting system—is also deeply troubling.

I think vote counting should be seeable by human eyes, and occur at human speed, and everybody should be able to understand how it’s done—not just experts. If we can’t make this electronic voting system transparent, we need to go back to a paper ballot/hand counting system.

XXXX

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Note: I wanted to get this out quickly, so I didn't mention the OTHER issue that Dr. Joiner brings up--the blackout on this story in the news media. Very important. Someone else here should cover it.

and the numerous Ph.D.'s and other experts writing about it--gets almost no press, so when a newspaper or news organization publishes a piece like this, WE SHOULD REALLY LET THEM HEAR OUR PRAISE!

Come on, Duers, get ON this!