I appreciate your suggestion to give the FEC more teeth, but the problem is they don’t enforce the laws that are already on the books, so I doubt they will improve with more laws! What we are dealing with here is a totally broken system from top to bottom in our government, which has left the voting machine vendors, in collusion with the Congress, now in charge of our elections. Keep in mind that it was our Congress who quickly put through the “Help America Vote Act” in 2002 in order to get these machines in place all over the country and the voting machine companies made billions.

Don’t you see the conflict of interest involved here with Congress having all the say in the first place as to what voting system will be used in electing them into office? There was never any real debate which involved citizens being able to ask questions and get answers about these voting systems security and transparecy. There is none. They are protected by “propretary secret laws”, which is an outrage in and of itself. Business law trumps election law!!

We should never give away our power (our votes counted in a public and transparent way) to any agency or election official or voting system and simply trust that those in charge will “do the right thing.” Take a look around and see where our trust in our financial institutions and auto industry has put us. What’s missing is “checks and balances” and citizens are the best checks and balance when it comes to our elections and that’s exactly what has been taken away from us.

Elections should not be outsourced, they belong to us.

The Indian context was secondary to my main point which was that you needed honest brokers in an election commission (or any other body that administers elections) who by virtue of their responsibility would also make sure that the voting machines are what they should be.

Wait until you see the next one coming down the pike on voting – if it isn’t posted in time for tonight’s chat, it will be for next week’s chat. (Hope you’ll be able to join us again!)

Btw, “Wahoo, Wah!” My partner graduated from UVA, too!

It is like honor code (I am a UVA grad) — things can be corrupted but people don’t go there because of principles and convictions.

I wanted proof the votes in India counted, using machines.

Here is the web site of the Elections Commission of India, answering some questions about electronic voting. (I still see no mention of a paper receipt.)
http://eci.nic.in/faq/evm.asp

Here is another article, comparing and contrasting Diebold specs with the machines used in India.
http://techaos.blogspot.com/2004/05/indian-evm-compared-with-diebold.html

If people are interested in more info, they have to do their own research. Not my job to educate them.

I agree that cites are important to substantiate claims.

Like I said, I value your comments and your passion. It is important, though, to have these discussions in a way that invites more conversation.

And, I am sure pm317, as a computer scientist, does understand the inner workings of the electronic voting machine.

That is all to say, you know I value your opinion, jbjd, but the tone here might be ratcheted back just a bit. pm317 is on our side.

And you are ignorant of the fact that, these machines usually provide no paper verification to the voter as to how she voted, or how all voters voted, pointing to any discrepancy between votes cast and votes counted can be found.

It was my hope that not only would we raise awareness about the dire need for election reform, but that I, along with my colleague Vickie Karp, in alliance with the election reform organization in which we are members, “VoteRescue.org”, would be given a great opportunity to show those who visit this fantastic site that the only way to prevent election fraud “before” it happens and becomes impossible to undo, is through a citizen uprising demanding a return to hand counted paper ballots, at the precinct on election night — and to throw those blasted voting machines into Boston Harbor.

After 7 years of pursuing this issue and uncovering layer after layer of corruption at every level within our elections process, I am more convinced now than ever, that the corruption of the elections process had evolved over time by design, to ultimately give party leaders total control of our elections through these machines, corrupt election officials and a compliant Congress in cohoots with the voting machine lobby to make certain that they stay in power and ignore the will of the people.

As a result of these harsh realities, I believe we are at a cross roads in our nation’s history which demands that we no longer be satisfied to take baby steps nor continue to agree to compromise with a totally corrupt system. Instead, I believe it’s time to start a new government, because the old one ain’t working any more and the only way we can do this is by taking back our elections.

There are still many within the election reform community who are still convinced that we cannot achieve hand counts and that we must continue to find ways to compromise with this corrupt government to achieve incremental reform. I cannot and will not follow that strategy any longer because I believe it leads to a dead end.

I hope you all will join us tonight and next week to learn for yourselves why an all out effort must be taken by the American people to bring back the kind transparency and citizen oversight in our elections that only hand counts can provide.

It’s up to us. Our children are counting on us.