When cries of vote fraud were heard after the election of Hugo Chavez (which used electronic voting machines)a paper audit trail allowed the vote to be recounted. In the end, even the opposition had to admit the election was fair. So if Venezuela can safeguard the integrity of an electronic ballot, why can't we?

Dude, with such CUTTING wit, you must bring them all to their knees...

laughing

at you...

regardless, I usually take a personal attack as proof that you ain't got shit to say, but plenty to spew...

have a nice day!

I am in double shock. I just got through watching the bizarre spectical of Hitchens making sense on CNN and now Manjoo says there may be vote fraud in 2006. No kidding Sherlock! You might want to take another look at RFK Jr. article. You know the one you did a hatchett job on. There can be not doubt this time. If Republicans don't get slaughtered at the polls there is no explanation other than fraud.

Man- as soon as you started with the "you guys" generalizations you lost me. Try and use your brain and formulate an opinion that wasn't spoon fed to you by the GOP talking point committee. I'll type slow here so you can keep up- I never said the previous elections were hacked, I said stolen. Supression, votes not counted, the abuses were widespread and well documented. Typing in caps doesn't add any weight to a weak argument. You want to impress me, don't hide behind a fake name and keyboard courage.

The reason we know the 2000 election was stolen was because of Manjoo and Palast and tiny handful of others who had actual, concrete proof, that the election had been fraudulent. Manjoo was one of the first to write about Deibold and other manufacturers, when you were still carping about Kate Harris.

Here in California, Bank of America has begun replacing its old ATM keypads (which worked just fine) with Diebold touchpads. Guess what? The replacements work so poorly that my local B of A branch has been inundated with complaints. When I told the branch employee the Diebold keypad sucked, I was given a business card with a customer service number to call. I asked how many complaints he'd received and he responded, "Too many to count, really."

And in five days, in the freest country on earth, millions of Americans will be forced to use the same crappy touchpads to record their votes. Laugh or cry, this is politics today in the City on a Hill.

Vote fraud has indeed always taken place. However, it usually balanced itself out. While Kennedy was stuffing ballots in Chicago, Nixon was doing the same in Texas. However, what we have now is something new. In the first place the potential scale of fraud is exponentially greater than ever before. Secondly the fraud is now solely on one side so the potential to skew elections away from the will of the people is ever so much greater. If you dismiss this by saying "fraud has always happened" then you are willingly consigning US Democracy to the dustbin of history and shame on you for that.

If electronic voting machines are susceptible to hacking -- and this notion is so widely accepted that it can now be considered as fact -- then why would anyone imagine that the electronic process which produces a "voter-veriified paper trail" can't be hacked also? It would be simple to hack the machine so that it produces a printout of a result corresponding to the screen and the the voter's choice, but internally stores a different result. Yes, this might be uncovered in a recount, but a carefully engineered hacked election could be brought in beneath the recount threshhold.

It's time to stop the madness, abandon electronic voting, and convert to the efficient Canadian system of paaper ballots.

Impressing you is top of my list, Casey - I really hope I CAN. Regardless, you GUYS have absolutely not proven that the election was stolen - you've only proven (particularly with that bullshit about Republican talking points), that you're a partisan hack uninterested in truth. As to courage, I'd say the exact same thing if you were sitting right here in front of me - I didn't realize that political intercourse was fighting words, nor did I realize that posting your so-called real name showed courage - to me it shows nothing but foolishness, particularly if you, like me, are posting from work. Regardless, oh brave soldier for truth, how do you know my name ain't Man, as in Thomas, drop an N?

idiot...

Mr. Mann,

I would refer you to the comprehensive evidence of fraud presented by RFK jr. in RS magazine. If you are unwilling to accept this evidence, thats your choice. But don't pretend it does not exist.

Nothing proves a point like name calling, you're clearly out of ammo. How do you have time to post from work and still ask the customers if they want fries with their order? I'm done here.

I'm a "Touchscreen Inspector" for a precinct in San Diego County, a hotbed of intrigue and lawsuits as a result of the practice of allowing poll workers to take home voting machines prior to the elections (http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3685). To convince myself of the accuracy and honesty of the process I volunteered to assist at my local polling place.

The system used for voting here is the Diebold AccuVote TSX with printer (there is a demo of this device on the Diebold site at http://tinyurl.com/ybb9mq).

I currently have 4 of the Diebold touchscreens sitting on my living room floor and I've had them for 2 weeks. I received them after taking a 4 hour training class from the Registar's office. My ID was verified by the Registrar before the training and I was sworn in during the class.

The touchscreens are sealed in 3 places - the cover has a plastic seal and there are paper seals over the memory slot and power-on slot. I don't have the key for the memory/power cover (this will be provided on election day with the paper ballots).

Once the system has been setup and powered on it can only be enabled with a supervisor card that is provided on the day of the election. Once enabled it can only be closed down by the supervisor card as well. This cycle (enable/disable) can only be done ONCE and then Registrar needs to reset the machine.

1 of the machines will be the master system and the other 3 are for balloting. 1 of the 3 balloting systems has a keypad for handicapped use. With that one exception they are physically identical. On election day we use the supervisor card once to make one system the “master” that will be used exclusively for creating SmartCard reprogrammable voting cards to give to voters after their identities are verified. 2 SmartCard cards per machine are provided on election day.

The master system is behind the volunteer table and inaccessible to the voters. When a voter comes in a new card is programmed and then the voter uses the card to vote at one of the 3 polling machines. The card is only usable ONCE before it needs to be reinserted in the master system and enabled again. The card is returned to the poll workers after the voter uses it so it can be reprogrammed for the next user.

When the systems are initially connected, powered on and enabled the first voter to show up is asked to look at each touchscreen and verify the vote count is 0 (this number is always displayed on the bottom of the screen as well as the cumulative total of ALL votes cast on this machine from this and all previous elections).

The touchscreen itself seems very easy to use. A printer on the side of the machine prints out your choices once you've committed your ballot (the paper goes into the machine in a sealed canister, not to the voter). Rolls of used paper tape from the balloting machine are sealed and labeled with the serial number of the machine that created it as well as the roll number.

When the polls close the supervisor card is used to shut down each machine. 3 paper summary tapes (cumulative totals only) are printed from each machine - one for the sealed packet that goes back to the Registrar, one that feeds into the canister on the machine and one that is posted on the door outside the polling place. After that the seal is broken on the memory slot and the PCMCIA card is removed from the machine. These go in the sealed packet for the Registrar along with the summary tapes, all broken seals and the supervisor/voter SmartCards. Once sealed this bag is retrieved by the Registrar at then end of the evening along with the voting machines.

Here are the potential problems I see with this system:

1) Poll workers can create voter cards and vote without a voter being there. Obviously the numbers wouldn't match - that is, the number of voters reported would be greater than the number on the tally sheet done at the end of the day so the error would be detectable. The question I asked of the Registrar workers is, given that situation, how could you tell which votes were valid and which weren't? And since we are using 3 machines they couldn't even tell WHICH machine had the invalid votes. What then? Are all the results from that polling place thrown out? None of them knew the answer to the question.

2) The voter isn't given a paper tape of his vote and the window that showed who/what they voted for is very small. Given the large number of items on the ballot the voter can't verify all of their votes.

3) ALL the balloting machines have their power daisy chained together. That is, machine 1 is connected to the outlet, machine 1 is connected to machine 2 and so on. What if I kick out the power cord? What if a system has a power supply malfunction? Conceivably I could take down an entire voting location. Do the machines just reboot? Is there some step required to restart voting? We weren't told.

4) Its unknown (to me anyway) how the votes are actually counted. Apparently there is a GEMS (Global Election Management System) that Diebold sells that is used to tabulate and report the election results at the Registrar’s office. Information about this on the Diebold website is a one page document that is remarkable in its lack of specifics. The lack of transparency about this part is extremely alarming to me.

Finally, on the plus side anyone can insist on a paper ballot, but only a limited number is given to each polling place and workers are discouraged from giving them to voters, although each polling station is able to completely run from paper ballots if required.