Election commission is challenged to explain voting machine accuracy

July 17, 2008Recommend (1)

By Bill Mego


"With all the mechanical improvements they have in the way of adding machines, and counting machines, they can't seem to invent anything to take the place of the old Political mode of counting - two for me and one for you. More people have been elected between Sundown and Sunup, than ever were elected between Sunup and Sundown." Indeed, when Will Rogers wrote that, we could not mechanize vote fraud. But now that we have things like Premier/ Diebold touch screen voting machines, votes can be stolen whether it's night or day.



Of course, it's not the machine that steals them.



Diebold machines are, as our election commission proclaims, fairly accurate. And we do not, in fact, know that any votes have ever been stolen electronically in DuPage County. All we know is that they have been stolen in other places and that, if they were to be stolen here, the design of the machines guarantees that the theft would be absolutely undetectable.



The criticisms that have been leveled at the DuPage County Election Commission have had more to do with the appearance of impropriety. They've been about some members' close personal relationships with both the manufacturer and distributor of the voting machines, for example, and the kind of cross fertilization that, frankly, is not unusual in "old boy" networks.



There's nothing in the commission's charter, however, that mandates objectivity or that forbids doing business with cronies. The commission simply certifies election judges, registers voters, and redistricts precincts. In short, it conducts elections, and its only responsibility to the people of DuPage County is to ensure that every vote is counted, and counted fairly.



Were we using only paper ballots that could be kept indefinitely, so they could be sampled after the election, or if the state Legislature had mandated touch screen voting machines with open source software, nobody would have to worry about his or her vote.



http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/news/mego/1060604,6_4_NA17_MEGOCOLUMN_S1.article

Bill Mego's column is published each Thursday. Contact him at bill.mego@sbcglobal.net.

:kick:

that's it? the home of henry hyde is getting the once over, dupage stinking county, and all i get is one tiny kick?

But where is the 5th. :(


Good article except this graph...



Yikes!

If people think VVPAT is a waste of time they oughtta be really concerned about th open software idea.

nobody really has any idea what they are talking about most of the time when it comes to voting machinery. :nuke:

:nuke: :(

let's give er another kick, then.