Beware of Microsoft
One reason I’m proud to live in New York is that we have the most secure voting system in the nation. We’re the only state to make all the suggests made by the Federal Elections Commission into law, the only state that defied HAVA (Help America Vote Act), and we still use good old fashioned levered voting machines. Now eventually, we’re going to have to change to electronic ones, but New York has refused to so far, because none of the machines on offer can match those standards.
Long story short, electronic voting machines are usually bad, especially Direct Recording ones, and notoriously Diebold’s. We’ve escaped a lot of trouble by staying out of the electronic election machine game. California, for example, bought theirs early, and now have to replace them all because they are criminally insecure.
Today is the last day of the Albany Legislative Session, (aka Oh, Shit Day) and therefore, according to Phillip Anderson (Lipris), the Most Dangerous Day of the Year in Albany, since this is the time when both good bills and bad get rushed through without proper scrutiny.
One of the forces trying to slip through some harmful legislation is Microsoft. They want to criminally weaken our election law, because that’s the only way their operating system will be allowed anywhere near our voting booths. If I understand correctly, they’ve already tried to add their nefarious amendment to a bill to change the date of the presidential primary, but the forces of good caught them in time.
You can read the full story here.
I caught this story a bit too late, but if you have time, please call your senator and/or assemblycritter and tell them not to weaken NYS escrow and review requirements.
So be proud of our strong election laws, but watch out for any sorts of shadowy legislation coming out of Albany today.
Related posts:
Excellent post.