Rage Against the New Machines (NOT Levers!)

http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/Rage_against_the_new_machines/4466.html

Rage against the new machines

by patrick arden / metro new york

SEP 13, 2006

LOWER MANHATTAN — While polls had long predicted most of the winners in yesterday’s voting, this election was still historic: Voters cast their last primary ballots on the 800-pound mechanical voting machines that have served the city since 1962.

When John O’Grady started at the Board of Elections 15 years ago, he was supposed to help implement an electronic voting system. Now he oversees the city’s 7,700 lever machines, which are supposed to go out of service after November’s general election. Over the years, O’Grady’s come to respect the old warhorses.

“We’ve never had problems with accuracy,” he said. “If the machine jams or breaks, the counters don’t break. Everybody makes fun of the lever machines because they’re big and gray. They got some dents from being shipped around, but they function. You can leave a mechanical voting machine in its spot for 100 years, and it would still work.”

-snip-

For the last year and a half, attorney Lawrence Norden has led a team evaluating various voting machines for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU’s law school. “HAVA has had this transformative effect,” Norden said. “We’ve moved to some form of electronic voting almost everywhere in the country except New York. We’re probably going to live with this for the next 20 years. We should be very careful about what we’re doing.”

DON'T fix it. Stay with the tried and true. Trust the way things have always been done. Conservatism in voting systems is a virtue. And extreme conservatism in defense of democracy, and against corporate-controlled, electronic vote "tabulation," featuring TRADE SECRET PROPRIETARY programming code, is no vice--and, is, indeed, the height of virtue and patriotic altruism.

It's easier to catch fraud, and it can't be wide-spread with the old machines.

Making election theft MORE difficult, not easier, should've been a part of HAVA.

But as one DU Election Fraud member once said, HAVA really stands for "Hack America's Vote Act".

I put in the 16 hours working election day, and when we opened up the machine to count the votes, I found one vote where there was no choice. I was outside checking signs when we opened and didn't bother to ask if anyone checked inside before the poll opened, but the thing should have started with all zeros.

And, lever machines should be checked before each election to see if the gears are worn. A worn gear can drop one or more votes out of every 10. Mechanics have been paid to file gears in the past, but that's probably not a huge problem now-- it's still a lot easier to cheat on most electronic machines.

"To comply with the federal Help America Vote Act, the state must modernize its election technology. The old lever machines don’t accommodate disabled voters".

HAVA, same as:

Al Capone, ordering the saloon owners" that they must buy his beer.


"By December, the city will adopt one of two methods: The direct-recording electronic system, where voters use a touch screen and receive a paper printout, or the optical-scan system, in which voters fill in paper ballots and are then told — before their votes are counted — whether they had made any errors".

Both systems count your votes in secret and are easily hackable, YES America you are not allowed to see the votes being counted. NEVER, no matter which system NY picks, the votes will be counted inside of a machine that no Democrat OR Republican voter can see, or question how the votes get counted.

Heres one of NY choices, that was was proven by Harri Hurst to be hackable:

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=798&Itemid=51

and your second choice, which was proven to be hackable and also counts the votes in secret, by Princeton University, Watch the video here

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6590793631232799613&hl=en

"The solution is to have a paper record of the voting, a sampling of which the state would then audit to make sure votes match the tally".

They are full of sh*t, The solution is to Hand Count the Paper Ballots (period) NEVER and I repeat NEVER let the state do the audit We the people have to get off our asses and audit these "make believe election machines" by HAND COUNTING the OPTISCANNED PAPER BALLOTS. If there is no paper ballot or they will not let us hand count the ballots, then it is nothing more than a "MAKE BELIEVE ELECTION"

My two cents.

http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/Rage_against_the_new_machines/4466.html

That's what we have.