NY -- Now there's a whole Vapor DRE!

Vapor ballots aren't good enough! Now there's a vapor DRE!
You heard it here first!:

New Yorkers for Verified Voting
NYS League of Women Voters
NYPIRG
Common Cause / NY

NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

Monday, December 5, 2005



Civic Groups Outraged at NYS Board of Elections Action
Certification Testing of Incomplete Voting Systems
a Betrayal of the Public Trust

Groups call for the Legislature to convene oversight hearings on Board actions



A coalition of civic groups today condemned the State Board of Election's decision to begin preliminary certification testing of the Liberty DRE computerized voting machine this week, even though the prototype still has no voter verified paper ballot or full accessibility features as required by law. The groups found out about the move through a letter received on Friday by members of the HAVA Citizens Advisory Committee.



“The Board has consistently misrepresented the machine selection process to the public, and continues to operate in near secrecy despite a need for full visibility and transparency in the machine selection and certification process” said Aimee Allaud, Elections/Government Specialist of the League of Women Voters of New York State. “The pre-emption of the public review process of the proposed Draft Voting System Standards is a slap in the public's face. It is a subversion of the process which the public comment period is designed to accomplish.”

“Computer engineers know that it is technically naïve to believe that a partial system can be adequately tested.” said Bo Lipari, Executive Director of New Yorkers for Verified Voting. “Testing a voting system when some of its parts do not yet exist is fundamentally an exercise in futility. A voting system includes hardware and software with many interdependent parts. In particular, a voter verified paper ballot printer and accessibility interfaces are not simple add-ons.”

"In their decision to start the certification process for a voting machine that isn't fully built yet, the Board of Elections is acting like nincompoops. They're not only putting the cart before the horse, they're putting political expediency before a public and thorough testing of one of the foundations of our electoral system." said Neal Rosenstein, Government Reform Coordinator of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

“This adds insult to injury to New York voters. Revamping our voting systems has to happen, but the process has been mishandled since day one by our leaders and the NYS Board of Elections. Now as we run out of time, the real threat is we will approve systems that are not completed and have voters serving as guinea pigs in the next election. Voters deserve a thorough and deliberative process as we decide how New Yorkers will vote for years to come. It is indefensible to cut corners and be secretive and unaccountable when our democracy is at stake,” stated Rachel Leon, Executive Director, Common Cause/NY.



The groups called on the Board of Elections to stop the certification process of any incomplete machines and for the New York State Legislature to swiftly convene oversight hearings on the Board’s actions to date.


Comment: Well, I guess there are always those good old mechanical LEVER machines!
Failure rate: 0.3%, Source: John Ravitz, Exec. Dir. of the NYC Board of Elections
DRE Failure rate: >10%, Source: California testing and Michael Shamos, PhD, JD.

And I love that paper trail the lever machines leave behind when the bi-partisan poll workers write down those totals by hand! It's HAVA compliant, so eat it Senator Dodd!

It's going to be a wild ride as we near the HAVA deadline.

I just posted this on the VoteTrustUSA site.

http://www.votetrustusa.org

That is the only solution. They are a highly corrupting influence--in addition to everything else (shoddy, "lemon" machines sold to the public for VOTING, Bush partisans running the companies, 'TRADE SECRET" PROPRIETARY software!, massive evidence of fiddled elections*, and on and on).

When are we going to get the point? They DON'T CARE about our right to vote. They WANT to have hackable voting machines, and we know why. And they robbing us of billions of dollars for this crap!

ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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* Four ELECTION REFORM initiatives in Ohio flipped over, from a pre-election prediction of a 60/40 win, to a 60/40 LOSS on election day! Bob Koehler article...

http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?custid=67&catid=1824

what we should be focusing on. Do you think that the Defense Department should be making voting machines? They are the ones that actually build electronics (see the huge facility at Ft. Meade). There is also the Energy Department facilities but they can not keep secrets very well (see Los Alamos).

That congress has the key to ending this madness. HR 550 would have stopped this crap before it started.

The movement is going to have to come together, real soon, and get congress to lay down the law.

Let's put our heads together and figure out how to get Holt's 550 passed.

I can't believe anyone takes them seriously. People act like computers are magic, and that all they need to do is cast the right sort of legal spells and somehow the truthfulness of the machines will be assured.

A computer can be programmed to do anything with numbers. ANYTHING. There is no way to see what is going on inside a DRE voting machine as the votes are collected. This makes these machines entirely unsuitable for the purpose of collecting votes. If the machine does not produce a paper ballot, or if the paper ballot is ignored, then there is no substantial evidence that the machine properly reported your vote.

Didn't NY pass a paper trail law a couple months ago?