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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (30088)	10/15/2003 10:17:28 AM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 89467

Looking forward to complete BIG BROTHER control now.....won't need the Supremes next election Fears of More U.S. Electoral Chaos After Flaws are Discovered in Ballot Computers By Andrew Gumbel Independent UK Tuesday 14 October 2003 Next year's US presidential election may be compromised by newvoting machines that computer scientists believe are unreliable, poorly programmed and prone to tampering. An investigation published in today's Independent reveals tens of thousands of touch screen voting machinesmay be less reliable than the old punchcards, which famously stalled the presidential election in Florida in 2000, leaving the whole election open to international ridicule. The machines are said to offer no independent verification of individual voting choices, making recounts impossible, and the software is shielded from public scrutiny by trade secrecy agreements. The shortcomings have appeared in two academic studies and have prompted calls for urgent oversight legislation. They have also cast doubt on the accuracy of last November's mid-term election results, especially in Georgia, the first state to switch to touch screen voting. David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University, said: "These machines do not allow the voters to check that their votes are accurately and permanently recorded. No one can prove that the machines are trustworthy." The three leading voting machine manufacturers are substantial Republican campaign donors, and one of their chief executives, Walden O'Dell of Diebold, in Ohio, wrote a letter to Republican supporters saying he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year". That raised serious concerns of bias. "The rush towards computerisation is very dubious," Rebecca Mercuri, a research fellow at Harvard University, said. "It takes away the checks and balances of a democratic society." In Georgia, citizens were alarmed at apparent anomalies in the election results forgovernor and one of the state's two Senate seats. Both offices were won by Republicans in last-minute voting swings away from Democrats. Causes for alarm included a serious malfunction in the voting software, discovered after the machines were packaged for shipment, which had to be repaired with a programming "patch", and the fact that the patch showed up on an open-access internet page. Hundreds of security flaws were identified in subsequent follow-up studies. There were also several election day glitches, including the loss of 67 voting memory cards in the Democrat stronghold of central Atlanta. CC