Olá,
A confusão na apuração dos votos na Flórida em 2000, foi o estopim para
a lei federal americana "Ajude a America votar" que estimulou a compra
de máquinas de votar eletrônicas pelos Estados.
Atualmente 35 estados americanos adotam máquinas de votar que emitem o
voto impresso conferido pelo eleitor para viabilizar recontagens.
Apenas 15 estados americanos ainda adotavam máquinas de votar que não
usam a materialização do voto digital, do mesmo tipo das urnas-e
brasileiras, entre eles a Flórida.
Mas o governador da Flórida acaba de anunciar que vai abandonar todas as
urnas-e sem voto impresso (similares às urnas-e brasileiras) e migrar
para máquinas de votar com leitura óptica do voto (do tipo das nossas
máquinas de loteria esportiva).
O motivo alegado é que ficou comprovado que máquinas de voto puramente
digital, como as brasileiras, sempre poderão ser fraudadas em larga
escala e a comprovação da fraude pode ser muito difícil.
Aqui no Brasil o TSE continua impedindo que sejam feitos testes de
penetração para verificar a sua alegada invulnerabilidade. Veja em:
http://www.votoseguro.org/textos/penetracao1.htm
A notícia sobre a Flórida foi publicada no New York Timee e seu texto
está abaixo.
[ ]s
Eng. Amilcar Brunazo Filho - Santos, SP
===
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/us/02voting.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
February 2, 2007
*Florida Shifting to Voting System With Paper Trail *
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
<http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=ABBY%20GOODNOUGH&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=ABBY%20GOODNOUGH&inline=nyt-per>
and CHRISTOPHER DREW
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/christopher_drew/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
DELRAY BEACH, Fla., Feb. 1 Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans on
Thursday to abandon the touch-screen voting machines that many of
Florida
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/florida/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>?s
counties installed after the disputed 2000 presidential election. The
state will instead adopt a system of casting paper ballots counted by
scanning machines in time for the 2008 presidential election.
Voting experts said Florida?s move, coupled with new federal voting
legislation expected to pass this year, could be the death knell for the
paperless electronic touch-screen machines. If as expected the Florida
Legislature approves the $32.5 million cost of the change, it would be
the nation?s biggest repudiation yet of touch-screen voting, which was
widely embraced after the 2000 recount as a state-of-the-art means of
restoring confidence that every vote would count.
Several counties around the country, including Cuyahoga in Ohio and
Sarasota in Florida, are moving toward exchanging touch-screen machines
for ones that provide a paper trail. But Florida could become the first
state that invested heavily in the recent rush to touch screens to
reject them so sweepingly.
?Florida is like a synonym for election problems; it?s the Bermuda
Triangle of elections,? said Warren Stewart, policy director of
VoteTrust USA, a nonprofit group that says optical scanners are more
reliable than touch screens. ?For Florida to be clearly contemplating
moving away from touch screens to the greatest extent possible is
truly significant.?
Other states that rushed to buy the touch-screen machines are also
abandoning them. Earlier this week, the Virginia Senate passed a bill
that would phase out the machines as they wore out, and replace them
with optical scanners. The Maryland legislature also seems determined to
order a switch from the paperless touch screens, though it is not clear
yet if it will require the use of optical scanners or just allow paper
printers to be added to the touch screens.
On Monday, Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, plans to
introduce a bill in Congress that would require all voting machines
nationwide to produce paper records through which voters can verify that
their ballots were recorded correctly. A majority of House members have
endorsed the proposal, and the changes have strong support among Senate
Democrats. Mr. Holt?s bill would also substantially toughen the
requirements for the touch-screen machines that have printers, and
experts say this could give even more impetus to the shift toward the
optical scanning systems.
Mr. Crist, a Republican
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
at times drew whoops and applause when he announced his plan at the
South County Civic Center in Palm Beach County, the epicenter of the
2000 election standoff and home of the infamous ?butterfly ballot? that
confused many voters. The touch screens had replaced the punch-card
systems that caused widespread problems that year.
?You should, when you go vote, be able to have a record of it,? Mr.
Crist told a few hundred mostly older citizens at the civic center, in
Delray Beach, where many residents said they accidentally voted for
Patrick J. Buchanan
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/patrick_j_buchanan/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
in 2000 instead of Al Gore
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/al_gore/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
because of the confusing ballot design. ?That?s all we?re proposing
today. It?s not very complicated; it is in fact common sense. Most
importantly, it is the right thing to do.?
Mr. Crist?s renunciation of touch-screen voting one month after he
replaced Jeb Bush
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/jeb_bush/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
as governor of the nation?s fourth-most-populous state, suggested that
the fight for paper voting records, long a pet project of Democrats,
might become more bipartisan. Mr. Crist made the announcement with
Representative Robert Wexler, a Democrat from Delray Beach who has
ardently led the movement for a paper trail and has attacked Republicans
along the way.
?I support this plan 100 percent,? Mr. Wexler said before introducing
Mr. Crist. ?This governor means what he says, and he?s coming to
Tallahassee and he?s spreading the message throughout Florida that
this isn?t about Republican or Democrat, it?s not about this ideology or
that; it?s about unifying people and doing what?s right for the people
of Florida.?
The 15 Florida counties that have adopted touch-screen voting in recent
years, including Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Hillsborough, would
move to optical-scan voting under the proposal before the presidential
election of 2008. The plan would give them the option, however, of using
touch-screen machines during the state?s two-week early voting period
that precedes Election Day, if the machines are modified to provide a
paper trail. Those counties represent 54 percent of the state?s
registered voters. Broward County alone has bought about 6,000
touch-screen machines in recent years, and Palm Beach County has about
4,500.
Mr. Crist said county election supervisors would explore how to make
optical-scan voting easier for blind people and for those who speak
foreign languages. In some cases, they have been able to vote without
assistance on the touch-screen machines.
Asked how he felt about discarding tens of millions of dollars worth of
touch-screen machines just years after they were acquired, Mr. Crist
said, ?The price of freedom is not cheap. The importance of a democratic
system of voting that we can trust, that we can have confidence in, is
incredibly important.?
Election experts estimate that paperless electronic machines were used
by about 30 percent of voters nationwide in 2006. But their reliability
has increasingly come under scrutiny, as has the difficulty of doing
recounts without a paper trail. Federal technology experts concluded
late last year that paperless touch-screen machines could not be secured
from tampering.
Some states had bought early versions of the paperless machines before
the 2000 recount, and one of them, New Mexico, switched last year to
optical scanners. But most of the machines in other states were
purchased with federal money provided under a 2002 law that required
states to upgrade from old punch-card and lever systems.
New York is planning to buy either screens with printers or optical
scanners, New Jersey is adding paper trails to its touch screens and
Connecticut is buying the optical scanners. A recent survey by Election
Data Services, a Washington consulting firm, estimated that 36 percent
of the nation?s counties have bought electronic machines, including some
with printers attached, while 56 percent have the optical scan systems.
Mr. Holt said his bill would require the return to paper ballots by
next year?s presidential primaries, and it would authorize $300 million
in federal money to upgrade the machines. Some state and county election
officials say it could be difficult to make such sweeping changes by then.
But, Mr. Holt said, ?it depends on how badly we want to do it. The
public is getting very impatient here.?
In Sarasota County last November, more than 18,000 voters who used
touch-screen machines did not have their votes recorded in the close
Congressional race between Vern Buchanan, the Republican, and Christine
Jennings, the Democrat. Mr. Buchanan took office last month after a
recount gave him a 369-vote victory, but Ms. Jennings has sued.
Former Governor Bush, President Bush?s younger brother, generally
defended touch-screen voting during his tenure and said skeptics had
fallen prey to ?conspiracy theories.? But leading up to the 2004
presidential election, the Republican Party of Florida sent out fliers
urging voters to use absentee ballots because of the absence of a paper
trail.
Experts say the optical scanners are less expensive than the
touch-screen systems. But Kimball W. Brace, the president of Election
Data Services, said optical scanning systems had had a slightly higher
rate of voter error than touch screens.
Abby Goodnough reported from Delray Beach, Fla., and Christopher Drew
from New York.
__._,_.___
______________________________________________________________
O texto acima e' de inteira e exclusiva responsabilidade de seu
autor, conforme identificado no campo "remetente", e nao
representa necessariamente o ponto de vista do Forum do Voto-E
O Forum do Voto-E visa debater a confibilidade dos sistemas
eleitorais informatizados, em especial o brasileiro, e dos
sistemas de assinatura digital e infraestrutura de chaves publicas.
__________________________________________________
Pagina, Jornal e Forum do Voto Eletronico
http://www.votoseguro.org
__________________________________________________
