Here we see the beauty of the Help America Vote Act: it’s an utter sham:
Wired News: Did Florida Foul Another Ballot?
The machines, critics say, may have lost more than 18,000 votes cast in Sarasota County last week for a congressional seat that Republican candidate Vern Buchanan seized by a margin of fewer than 400 votes. That’s because 18,382 ballots recorded no vote for either Buchanan or his Democratic opponent, Christine Jennings, in the 13th Congressional District — a House seat that previously belonged to Katherine Harris, the former Florida secretary of state who played a pivotal role in the 2000 presidential recount.
I guess I’m going to need to write an article for the Tech section soon about this. There needs to be a definable national standard for voting machines. They don’t all need to be made by the same manufacturer, they don’t necessarily even have to look the same. But they do need to have a defined set of characteristics such as the encryption method used for data storage, the mechanism by which votes are counted and reported, and of course they’ve all gotta have receipts. Not just receipts for the voter (let’s face it, many of us will lose them or use them to get a free drink at Tipsie McStagger’s), but also a receipt method that stays on the system somewhere.
And of course, any geeks that read this site already know I’m going to say that it needs to be an open standard.
Technorati Tags: Florida, Recount, Fraud, Election
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