I want to post some more information on the voting machine problem. One thing to mention before getting into this is that we have been using computer scanners for decades to count our ballots. There have been many problems with the scanners over the years. As this article states here is who or what has been doing the counting, Two voting companies & two brothers will count 80 percent of U.S. election using both scanners & touch screens. In Bev Harris' book, linked on the right, in chapter 14 she goes through how they count votes in France. I know it's France and I also know it is very idealistic but it's a fool proof and may be the only way to insure every vote gets counted correctly.

It's time to rethink our public policies for voting. We took away transparency, and look what happened: We got bit. Now we need to bring transparency back.

The Declaration of Independence does not say, "Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the computer programmers." Unless ordinary citizens with no computer expertise can see with their own eyes that votes are being counted accurately, the audit system must be considered a failure. In a democracy like ours, you don't need to be a lawyer to sit on a jury. You shouldn't need to be a computer programmer to count a vote.

The "many eyes" method simply means that we let as many independent parties as possible view the vote-counting. I spoke with Christopher Bollyn, a reporter who has written several articles about the erosion in integrity of our voting system as it migrated to computerized counting. He described an election he witnessed in France: When it comes time to count, as many citizens as can fit in the room are allowed to come in and watch the counting. Sworn election officials, some from each party in the election, in front of all the observers, count the ballots into piles of 100. Each set of ballots is placed in a bag. Then, one bag at a time, the election officials count the ballots, announcing each one. They tally up one bag and
move to the next, until all are done.

It takes a relatively short time to count 1,000 votes, and by having many election precincts throughout the country, all of France can be counted in a matter of hours, in front of thousands of eyes. In the U.S., we complain that our citizens don't think their vote matters. Here's a concept: Let people see their vote. Not a video representation of a vote hiding in a black box, but the actual vote. Count votes before they leave the neighborhood. Invite people in to watch the counting. And add a 21st Century twist: Install a Web camera, so citizens can watch the vote-counting live, on the Internet. If we want people to care about voting, we musn't take the people out of "we, the people."

I had a discussion with a women about a year ago about voting machines. When I had her cornered about the problems with the voting machines she looked at me and said, "sooner or later you have to trust someone to count the votes". Oh no you don't. So who do you trust to count your vote?
- posted by Mom/Dad @ 10:06 AM