On Sat, 1 May 2004 16:38:06 +0000, Alberto Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> You [the USA] are so paranoid. Fraud in elections were > reduced to a minimum after we introduced voting > machines in Brazil Four e-voting lawsuits are now in play; two states are looking into criminal conduct on Diebold and ES&S; one state, and three countries, have decided to jettison their voting systems. In Ireland - "The Commission on Electronic Voting's report prompted the Government to pull the plug on e-voting after it found the system's reliability could not be established to its satisfaction. In a severe blow to the minister's endorsement of the system, the commission also said testing identified a software error that could lead to incorrect results and that it was easy to bypass security measures to manipulate the count. "...The minister was reckless, arrogant, dismissive, abusive, he misled the D�il repeatedly, he wouldn't consult and he wouldn't listen. This is nothing short of gross negligence," he said. Venezuela - After chaotic elections with ES&S, so problematic that at one point Venezuela had to delay an election (ES&S flew technicians there on an emergency mission -- they ended up hiding in the embassy as angry citizens shouted "Gringos get out!") -- well now, Venezuela has decided to scrap their Election Systems and Software (ES&S) voting system. Philippines - In Manila, the Supreme Court (SC) nullified a �contract that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) awarded to a private consortium in April last year to provide automated ballot counting machines for the May 10 elections. The High Court rules that the Comelec violated the law and its own bidding rules in order to award the contract to a non-existent consortium for the supply of automated counting machines, "which turn out to be highly defective and vulnerable to election fraud on a massive scale..." California - �just decertified ALL touch screen machines, but some can try to get recertified, only after they prove that they will follow a lengthy set of security upgrades. The California secretary of state endorsed the voting panels recommendation to pursue criminal charges against Diebold for fraud. (Some of the many causes of why California is going to sue Diebold - they falsely claimed their software was certified, machines malfunctioned, would not set up, thousands of voters did not get to vote,and some machines awarded votes to the wrong candidate.) Florida - lawsuit filed because you can't recount a touch screen. Maryland - �because the Diebold touch screens misfired in Maryland in the March election Now, in addition to those countries and states with problems here are some reasons I might be paranoid. 1) All touch screen voting machines in the US are manufactured by companies that are big supporters of one political party, - with one official promising the President in addition to delivering over $100,000 for his campaign he would do everything to ensure a victory. 2) Analysing the leaked Diebold software it was keeping three sets of totals - one to print out precinct totals, one for all totals, one for unknown purposes. �This prevented cross checking results - all the precincts would give vote totals which did not have to agree with the results for total votes. �An audit system to automatically number changes made in the vote database was implemented with its default status of on converted to off. �This would have enabled someone to determine if anyone made unauthorized changes. �After testing by changing vote totals the software did not record the audit trial of the changes (but did change the votes.) It did �keep an audit trial of normal functions. 3.) The patterns of lies and cover ups by the companies making the software. 4) There is no way to determine if the machines accurately recorded a vote. �This applies at the individual machine level and the central machines that totals all the voting machines. I am an election judge and I know there is no way to tell if the votes are being counted accurately except to trust machines built by companies that have proven themselves partisan and untrustworthy. I am also concerned about the recent suggestion that the secret service and FBI are investigating the major critics of the machines. It is not all machines that I am paranoid about - just the ones without open software and without paper trials. #1 on google for liberal news. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
