Washblog

For the viewing audience, Voters Unite has been fighting the HAVA disinformation campaign nationwide for some years now. Their Myth Busters literature is invaluable, thoroughly debunking the notion that anyone is required to have computerized touchscreen voting machines.

There was a short period when King Co Elections stopped claiming they were required to have the Diebold AccuVote TSx touchscreens. There are plenty of alternatives. This regression is disappointing.

The current excuses are

- none of the other systems are certified

However, this elections services is gungho to buy a completely new system which has been uncertified and untested and unused anywhere else.

- none of the other vendor's system permit counting of the ballots before election day

Alas, counting ballots before election day, which allows insiders access to early election results, is a horrible idea.

Like other jurisdictions, our elections officials have had plenty of time (years) to find a viable (accurate, reliable, compliant) alternative to the Diebold touchscreens. Hasn't happened.

Dear Mr. Huennekens and Ms. Huff,

A Washblog story reports that at a recent showing of a film about the rigging of the national 2004 elections Mr. Huennekens answered questions from the audience and, in this exchange, said that HAVA requires the use of touchscreens.  The report also says that Bobbie Eagan gave this information to a caller.  

HAVA doesn't require the use of touchscreens.  I don't understand why this incorrect information would be coming from your office.  It doesn't seem logical that Mr. Heunnekens wouldn't know that HAVA doesn't require touchscreens.  And I don't see where a misunderstanding from the audience could have come from -- as this was a simple statement that was made and there were many witnesses.  A clarification on Washblog would really help.  Comments can be left in the stories themselves.

There is no technical reason why a touchscreen interface could not be used to print out a paper ballot that could be opscanned or handcounted and that looked exactly like the other ballots.  It could be checked by a separate verifier machine if desired.

Diebold refuses to make them (and the ES&S which does do this with the Automark deliberately downplays its availability) because they are intent on forcing elections departments to accept DREs.

The problem is that elections departments refuse to act like regular commercial customers who set their own specifications for what they want in instruments that they would like to purchase, and the deal is off if the specs aren't met.  Instead, they passively accept whatever crap that voting machine manufacturers offer for sale.

In contrast, when Diebold is confronted by its banking customers, who insist that their financial data belongs to them and not to Diebold, Diebold's reaction is "Yessir!  Right away, sir!"  They proudly advertise their open source software for ATMs on their website, even.