> Ivan, > > in Florida, perhaps? In Leon Country, where I live, we have optically scanned paper ballots. Very reliable and accurate, and it leaves a paper trail. So recounts are possible.
In other Florida counties there were strange, suspicious election results. Such as 70%+ votes for Bush in counties where 60% of the voters are registered as Democrats. But I think it may have been caused by the oldest trick (or mistake) in the book: not resetting the vote count to zero when setting up the voting machines. Since many of the voting machines were new, it's possible they may have been shipped with a non-zero vote count, from QA testing. And the poll workers, not being familiar with the new machines, didn't know how to zero them, or may have assumed they were already at zero because they were new machines. Now, I'm not being a sore loser about the election. In fact, my guy won. But I do think there are numerous occurrences of voting problems, some of which are accidental and some of which are downright fraudulent. If my guy is going to win, I want him to win fair and square. What I do know is that voting without a paper trail makes a recount impossible. Florida's Secretary of State, Glenda Hood, went on TV with ads about Florida's new touch screen voting machines and how wonderful they are. Later, on a news show, she was asked about the inability of the new machines to produce a paper trail for recount purposes. Instead of answering the question, she gushed on about how great the new voting technology is, and that it is "secure". How does she know? Where did she get her software training and engineering degree? Has she inspected the source code to the voting software? No, she is repeating what marketeers and lobbyists have told her. There was a lot of hysteria about voting in this last election. Lots of folks thought they might not get a chance to vote on election day, so they voted early. I guess if you have a big voting precinct, lines might be long. But not so here in Leon County. Nevertheless, there were panicked voters waiting in lines for 3 hours on Sunday, 1 week before election day. Later that Sunday afternoon, I was at a cafe down the street from the early voting station. The folks at the table next to me had just come from there. I asked them why they voted early, they said they wanted to make sure they got the chance. I said I was going to wait until election day, since there is rarely a line then. They thought I was being risky to chance it. I told them that the reason they had to wait in line 3 hours is because to do early voting, you have to go to *one* place to do it - the Leon County courthouse. But on election day, you go to your voting precinct, which covers only a few hundred or thousand people. I was right - when election day came, I went to my precinct, cast my ballot, and was done in 10 minutes. Those poor panicky voters waited 3 hours to cast their votes! If electronic voting evolves en masse toward non-paper-trail methods, our elections will lose all legitimacy. There will be no ability to prevent fraud. Anyone with sufficient technical knowledge could hack or bias the vote counts, and no one would be able to detect it or prove it. And equipment and software failures will destroy votes, with no possibility to recover those votes. Best regards, Ivan Baggett Bagotronix Inc. website: www.bagotronix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Igor Gmitrovic" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Bagotronix Tech Support" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Protel EDA Discussion List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 5:06 PM Subject: RE: [PEDA] Cannot locate server initialization file:, Answer2053 > Ivan, > > in Florida, perhaps? > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of Bagotronix Tech Support > Sent: Saturday, 4 December 2004 8:16 AM > To: Protel EDA Discussion List > Subject: Re: [PEDA] Cannot locate server initialization file:, > Answer2053 > > BTW, this "incrementing as an unsigned integer, but treating as a signed > integer" was the cause of some electronic voting machines counting up to > 32767 votes, and the next vote cast set the count back to -32768. Since > there was no paper ballot as a backup, there was no way to recount. > Wonderful, eh? > > Best regards, > Ivan Baggett > Bagotronix Inc. > website: www.bagotronix.com > > ____________________________________________________________ > You are subscribed to the PEDA discussion forum > > To Post messages: > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Unsubscribe and Other Options: > http://techservinc.com/mailman/listinfo/peda_techservinc.com > > Browse or Search Old Archives (2001-2004): > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] > > Browse or Search Current Archives (2004-Current): > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] > > > _____________________________________________________________________ > This e-mail has been scanned for viruses by MCI's Internet Managed > Scanning Services - powered by MessageLabs. For further information > visit http://www.mci.com > > > ____________________________________________________________ > You are subscribed to the PEDA discussion forum > > To Post messages: > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Unsubscribe and Other Options: > http://techservinc.com/mailman/listinfo/peda_techservinc.com > > Browse or Search Old Archives (2001-2004): > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] > > Browse or Search Current Archives (2004-Current): > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] > ____________________________________________________________ You are subscribed to the OT discussion forum To Post messages: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe and Other Options: http://techservinc.com/mailman/listinfo/ot_techservinc.com Browse or Search Old Archives (2001-2004): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] Browse or Search Current Archives (2004-Current): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
