Sunday, July 23, 2006

Electronic voting comes to Louisiana. Welcome back dirty politics.

We had a minor election in Lafayette last week. It was the first to use new Sequoia voting machines, and similar machines will soon be used all over Louisiana. The machines are cool, electronic, easy to use, but have one very big flaw. They leave no voter verifiable audit trait (vvat). Without such a trail it will be impossible for anyone to determine whether vote counts have been fraudulently altered. And it's frighteningly easy to alter vote counts on electronic voting machines, and numerous tests have shown. There is no federal mandate that these machines have a VVAT or that they be tested. Companies claim that their machines and software are proprietary secrets. Viceo games have better security, and there is no way for citizens to check on the validity of the vote.
If this story is new to you, the link below provides an excellent, short view of the problems inherent in electronic voting.

San Angelo Standard-Times: Opinion Viewpoints:
"Computerized voting was supposed to be the cure for ballot fiascos such as occurred during the 2000 presidential election, but activist groups say it has only worsened the problem, and they've gone to court across the country to ban the new machines."

1 comment:

Al-Ozarka said...

The Dems will have fun manipulating things now!