Electronic Voting Machines

Electronic voting machines in 43 states are at least a decade old, "perilously close to the end of most systems' expected lifespan," and could pose a risk to the 2016 election, a new study from the the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law finds.

After a 10 month probe that included interviews with over 100 election officials and experts in every state, the investigators concluded that the threat also extends to "significant percentages of machines" in swing states including Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.

Entitled America's Voting Machines at Risk, the study warns: "Old voting equipment increases the risk of failures and crashes—which can lead to long lines and lost votes on Election Day—and problems only get worse the longer we wait."

The warning evokes the "hanging chads" scandal that swept George W. Bush into the presidency in 2000 despite the fact that he lost the nationwide popular vote. While the debacle prompted Congress to appropriate $2 billion towards electronic voting systems, that equipment is now quickly becoming outdated, the report warns.

"Technology has changed dramatically in the last decade," said Christopher Famighetti, co-author of the report, in a statement. "Several recent innovations show it’s possible to move toward more affordable and flexible voting machines. States must develop plans to deal with aging machines before 2016, and invest in the next generation of machines for future elections to come."

Common Dreams

In my early days at PP, I remember numerous articles about voting machine irregularities, particularly in Florida and South Carolina.

Perhaps you remember like I do, the testimony of Clinton Eugene Curtis. Click here for a video of his testimony.  

This from Truth-Out which was used in PP on 22/01/2012

…And now we come to the "First-in-the-South" Republican primary in South Carolina, whereall evidence of how voters vote disappears entirely as the voters will be forced across the entire state to vote on easily-manipulated, oft-failed, 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems made by the nation’s largest voting machine company, ES&S. When the machine-reported results are announced tomorrow night they will either be accurate or not. Either way, there will never be a way for anybody to know one way or the other as there will be nothing to prove how voters voted and nothing to "recount", even if anybody wanted to.

Appropriately enough, perhaps, Saturday’s primary in the Palmetto State will offer100% "faith-based" voting, since it will be scientifically impossible to prove that even a single vote for any candidate on the ballot has been recorded accurately by the ES&S iVotronic touch-screens as per any voter’s intent. Known [sic] what we mean, Alvin Greene?…

The machines that will be in use on Saturday in South Carolina are the very same ones that reported an unknown, unemployed, seemingly-illiterate man named Alvin Greene — who had done no campaigning, had no campaign staff, had no campaign money and no campaign website — had unverifiably defeated Vic Rawl, a four-term state legislator and circuit court judge who had campaigned and raised money across the entire state, for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in 2010.

They are the same brand and model of machines (some of them, quite literally, the very same physical machines!) that were used in Florida’s contested Congressional District 13 race for the U.S. Congress in 2006 when they inexplicably lost some 18,000 votes in a race ultimately awarded to the Republican candidate Vern Buchanan over Democrat Christine Jennings by just 369 votes…

I commented then and I stand by it now:

"And those damned voting machines!  Let them use the whitewash versions that allow more election fraud in the state and local contests if they really want to, but this is yet another reason that in federal elections, there should be consistency and transparency.  States rights be damned when it comes to federal elections.  To ensure some modicum of fairness, the system in every state, the rules, the procedures, the machines used should all be the same.  After all, this is the whole US that we are talking about, a country that has in the past be thought of as the bastion of democracy.  If the US can’t have consistency, fairness and transparency in their own elections, then how can they monitor those of other countries."

 

Regardless whether you vote with electronic voting machines or mail in ballots like Oregon, you need to be REGISTERED!

National Voter Registration Day is Tuesday, 22 September 2015. 

With many US jurisdictions having November elections with registration deadlines in advance of the election, it is imperative to register or update your registration if you have moved.  If you have questions about your registration, please contact the League of Women Voters .

Once you are registered, make sure that you