Technology:
It's time to ditch touch-screen voting
for paper ballots Dec. 30, 2006 - Baltimore Sun, By Mike Himowitz
Maryland made headlines by committing $106 million to a voting system based on thousands of Diebold touch-screen electronic terminals. They run a stripped-down version of Windows, but it wouldn't matter if they ran Linux or some other system. Computers shouldn't be responsible for recording and counting votes without a verifiable backup.
APPEAL LIKELY Judge rules against Jennings, Democrats to seat Buchanan Dec. 29. 2006 - Associated Press
A judge ruled Friday that congressional aspirant Christine Jennings has no right to examine the programming source code that runs the electronic voting machines at the center of a disputed Southwest Florida congressional race.... that Jennings' arguments about the possibility of lost votes were "conjecture," and didn't warrant overriding the trade secrets of the voting machine company.
Paper Jams Hamper Electronic Voting Dec. 21, 2006 - The Associated Press, by Stephen Manning
These machines produce continuous rolls of thermally-printed paper. They are difficult to load, difficult to handle after they are removed from the machines and extremely difficult to read and tally. They bear almost no relationship to the ordinary individual paper ballots of the past.
Changes Are Expected in Voting by 2008 Election Dec. 8, 2006 - New York Times, By IAN URBINA and CHRISTOPHER DREW
By the 2008 presidential election, voters around the country are likely to see sweeping changes in how they cast their ballots and how those ballots are counted, including an end to the use of most electronic voting machines without a paper trail, federal voting officials and legislators say.
Security Matters: Did Your Vote Get Counted? Nov. 13, 2006, Forbes.com, by Bruce Schneier Electronic voting machines represent a grave threat to fair and accurate elections, a threat that every American--Republican, Democrat or independent--should be concerned about. Because they're computer-based, the deliberate or accidental actions of a few can swing an entire election. The solution: Paper ballots, which can be verified by voters and recounted if necessary.
How to Steal an Election by Hacking the Vote Oct. 24, 2006 - by Jon "Hannibal" Stokes
"...a party that can use these techniques to gain control of the government can also use them to maintain control in perpetuity," writes Stokes in his important overview of e-voting vulnerabilities.
One bad apple...
E-voting 101: touch-screen machines and optical scanners
Narrowing the focus: the Diebold AccuVote TS
Wholesale fraud on the AccuVote TS
(Mis)counting the vote
The bad apple chart
Conclusions: take-home points and parting thoughts
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