BadGimp

THIS IS HOW YOU WIN AN ELECTION GOP STYLE

Vote count at mercy of clandestine testing
Monday, August 23, 2004 Posted: 1440 GMT (2240 HKT)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama (AP) -- The three companies that certify the nation's voting technologies operate in secrecy, and refuse to discuss flaws in the ATM-like machines to be used by nearly one in three voters in November. ..

"I find it grotesque that an organization charged with such a heavy responsibility feels no obligation to explain to anyone what it is doing," Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist and electronic voting expert, told lawmakers in Washington, D.C.

The system for "testing and certifying voting equipment in this country is not only broken, but is virtually nonexistent," Shamos added.

Although up to 50 million Americans are expected to vote on touchscreen machines on November 2, federal regulators have virtually no oversight over testing of the technology. The certification process, in part because the voting machine companies pay for it, is described as obsolete by those charged with overseeing it. ..

But critics led by Stanford University computer science professor David Dill say it's an outrage that the world's most powerful democracy doesn't already have an election system so transparent its citizens know it can be trusted.

"Suppose you had a situation where ballots were handed to a private company that counted them behind a closed door and burned the results," said Dill, founder of VerifiedVoting.org. "Nobody but an idiot would accept a system like that. We've got something that is almost as bad with electronic voting."
condt......

You have to hand it to the GOP. They have managed to make is such that we do not even have the right to know how our votes are being counted and the machines that count them are certified. It's all fucking secret.

So shut the fuck up people and watch them work.

posted by BadGimp @ 12:56 PM