CT Reverses! No E-Voting Machines! Announces Move BACK to 'Lever' System!

ANOTHER STATE REVERSAL! Connecticut Announces It's Ditching Electronic Voting Machine Plans for 2006!
Feds Said to Approve Return to Lever-Style Voting Equipment!

Great news! Just in from WTHN.com in Connecticut...

"There likely will not be a high-tech voting machine in your future this year. After announcing late last year that Connecticut's 3,300 mechanical, lever-style voting machines could no longer be used, the secretary of the state reversed herself. It's all about a big foul-up by companies bidding for Connecticut's business"...

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002234.htm

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Cogs can be shaved, levers altered, etc. There is NO need for machines in order to vote. None. Paper can be used in all circumstances.

I'm all for a return to PAPER BALLOTS nationwide.

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In other words the machine leaves a trail of forensic evidence behind. Also the cheat must be physically done to each machine in each location. So there fore it is suitable for using in statewide and national elections (just not local one-precinct-only races.)

Therefore paper ballots are better. Why would you promote an inferior system? Don't you want the votes to be correct and verifiable? Why would you want to allow alterabls machines to take the vote when paper ballots are superior, cost less and are superior for verification? What do you have to gain from promoting machines?

votes are retrevable as much as plain paper.

How hard can it be? We've had this system in Canada ever since the turn of the century.

Fast, accurate, simple. Recounts? No problem. By definition a verifiable voter trail.

Everything is counted within hours. No communication delays, breakdowns, operator errors or tampering possible. Results in time for the 11:00 News.

Done.

:)

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:hi:

A few tidbits of info on the machines and how they work. They are very, very secure.

1) The night before election, an election maintenance rep (aka mechanic) sets up the machines. This process is open to the public so long as you don't touch anything. I have stood there and watched this process. Its boring. The machines are validated to all be set to 0. Each lever is tested once to be sure it properly registers a vote. It is then zeroed out again and re-verified to be set to 0. The machine is locked, and the public counters are recorded. The public counters are two numbers visible on the outside of the machine, behind plexiglass. The first counter is the current counter, and therefore is zeroed out. The second counter is the lifetime permanent counter for the lifetime of that machine. Each machine has a unique ID number. The machine ID and the lifetime counter are recorded as the machine is locked by the mechanic. Mechanics serve on a rotating basis around the towns and counties they live in, and never really know which machines they will need to setup ahead of time. Each town stores its own machines, so machines and mechanics are not interrelated.

2) The following morning, the morning of the polls, the chief election officials are the only ones with the key to the machines, which is delivered by the mechanic that morning, in person. (the mechanic has the keys overnight, NOT the Repub and Dem officials). There are always two officials, 1 Dem and 1 Repub. Neither one is allowed to open the machine without the other present.

3) After the polls close, the location is sealed from the general public, and only the officials, and any town committee members from either party (i.e. public) are allowed in the room. The machines are opened one at a time, the machine ID is read off, the local counter is read off, and the lifetime counter is read off. The lifetime counter is verified to be equal to its previous nights value + the value of the local counter. i.e. if last night it had 10,000 lifetime votes on it, and today's election recorded 2400 new votes, then the local counter would read 2400 and the lifetime counter would now read 12400.) Then, both officials, Dem + Repub, read off each register in order, A1, A2, A3, A4, etc... B1, B2, B3, B4, etc... until they are all read off. The secretary that records the numbers re-validates each number back to the two officials as its read, for verbal validation. Anyone can look at the machine and look at what the secretary is recording to be sure the numbers match. We are also allowed to record the numbers ourselves in our notebooks, which of course, we do.

Hope that helps explain things about the mechanical lever machines.

Why would anyone defend machines that can be gamed?

Check this out:

http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/pictures/

Unfortunately, the mechanism of a lever voting machine maintains no independent record of each voter's ballot. Instead, the only record of a vote is the count maintained on the mechanical register behind each voting lever, where each register has a mechanism comparable to the odometer in a car. Not only is this vulnerable to tampering by the technicians who maintain the machine, but it means that the machine has an immense number of moving parts that are subject to wear and very difficult to completely test.

Roy G. Saltman has noted that the number 99 shows up in the vote totals on lever machines significantly more frequently than would be expected if vote totals were randomly distributed -- that is, the number of 99's is noticably different from the number of 98's or 100's. The probable explanation is that it takes more force to turn the vote counting wheels in a lever machine from 99 to 100, and therefore, if the counter is going to jam, it is more likely to jam at 99. The fact that this is a frequent occurance in vote totals reported from lever machines is empirical evidence that the lever machines that have been used in real elections are, in fact, inadequately maintained and that this results in the loss of a significant number of votes. Exhaustive pre-election testing would be expected to detect these jams, but exhaustive testing of a mechanism as complex as a lever voting machine is very time consuming, and performing such tests on every voting machine prior to every election would be prohibitively expensive.

Once more, a system that uses only paper ballots that are kept in the same room where they are both cast and counted is safe. All other methods are open to gaming, and once gamed, whether tampering can be proven or not, they cannot retrieve a true vote count. Paper ballots can. Simple as that.

Can't they just trust the secret code of the machines is on the up and up? :sarcasm:

I'm glad CT lawmakers decided to end the bid to purchase electronic voting machines.

I'm all for paper but would rather have lever then electronic.

Lever are INTRINSICALLY less subject to alteration.

that CT will not end up with electronic voting machines. This line from an article in the Hartford Courant makes me uneasy:

"Bysiewicz said she hopes that new electronic voting machines will be in place for the 2007 election."

Full article:

http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-ap-voting-machines-0104,0,3213743.story?coll=hc-headlines-local

However, this is still great news since it gives Secretary of State Bysiewicz more time to consider other technologies.

that they may still consider using electronic in the future.
But like you, I am glad they will wait and weigh their options.

I have contacts with a good dem in the legislature - member of the extended family. I sent him the GAO pdf on evote fraud and he said he'd bring it up with Bysiewicz. Send me a PM.

to help them get it right... I hope NY keeps their levers for one more election....

I don't think lever machines are subject to *massive* election fraud. A machine may be shaved, etc. at one location but it's only one location and there is evidence. From what I understand, electronic voting machine systems can alter a statewide election in a few keystrokes, with no evidence.

This is a good development. Not perfect, but much better than what was there.

WOOOHOOOOOO! They won't steal my vote, the bastards!

Cool CT. It must have been all my letters denouncing the automatic electronic voting machines.

ANY system can be manipulated. But the electronic one was the worst.

How do I know? Because it gave us the Worst. President. Ever.

Thanks for more good news Brad!

I like their offer of $100,000 to Abramoff to spill the beans on election fraud.

:-)