Lever Voting Not Illegal (Yet…)
The State Board of Elections is going to advise local BOEs that they can continue to use lever machines.
In the D&C today:
Because the Legislature has not acted to extend a now-unworkable deadline in New York law, the state Board of Elections will draft an opinion advising counties that they can continue using lever voting machines, officials decided Thursday.
Obviously it’s crucial to democracy that votes be counted accurately. Yet the short history of electronic voting has numerous examples of spectacular failure.
Remember when Walden O’Dell, the CEO of Diebold said this?
“I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president.”
Here in NY, lobbyists from Microsoft, Inc. have been pushing Albany to re-work our state law to suit their corporate interests. They want to be able to install secret computer source codes on the machines.
From New Yorkers for Verified Voting
…lobbyists for the voting machine vendors are pushing a back door amendment drafted by Microsoft attorneys that would effectively gut the source code review protections.
The only way to ensure totally honest voting is through open, verifiable, public source code.
The danger is not so much a large-scale conspiracy to steal an election, but small-scale effort by low-level party hacks to swing the vote in their precincts. In a close race, a couple of hundred votes in the right place can be a very big deal.
It’s a good thing to proceed cautiously on this. Our current machines (invented in Rochester over 110 years ago) work perfectly well and could serve us for many more years. Says Bo Lipari, of NYVV: “…we have a system that works and we know how to use it.”
Once we (NY) invests in a system, we’re stuck. It’s imperative that we get it right the first time.
For more information, go to blackboxvoting.org
This is great news!
Also, you might want to check out the website of NYVV, or New Yorkers for Verified Voting:
http://www.nyvv.org/