It's bad enough we use voting machines...

[SHRED]

...but what is worse is that they are controlled by the private sector.
They are owned by corporations with little oversight.

We have privatised the heart of democracy...the vote count.

People of all political persuasions should be outraged by this.


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[KansDem]

1. I wondered the same thing

Why is our voting, which is very public, be controlled by private interests?

I say we go back to paper ballots counted in public view...

[SHRED]

2. each precincts to hand count with all interests present...

...in plain view.

That would be revolutionary but it does not serve the instant gratification based MSM very well.
Corporate America is in the driver's seat.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. I've never used a voting machine, there are none in my State at all.

I agree it is bad that YOU use voting machines, and I wish each State would stop doing so. This election will be the first in which Washington joins us in voting on paper, by mail, without your antique polling places with Tea Bag observers and bigots asking for ID.

[SHRED]

4. nice!

I wish every State had this:

http://oregonvotes.org/pages/voterresources/voteinoregon/vbm/index.html


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[Bluenorthwest]

5. As do I , which is why I always point out that 'we' don't all use such machines..

and that those who do have the ability to seek changes on a State level, no need to wait for DC, look to Washington, to Oregon, notice the larger turn outs and Democratic victories....

[SHRED]

7. Brad Friedman doesn't like "vote-by-mail"

Just found this:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6003

[ahlnord]

6. privatizing elections

You have put your finger on the fundamental problem undermining our democracy. We have allowed corporations to own and operate our elections. What was once a public function, carried out by citizens volunteering as election judges performing their civic duty (as we still do as jurors), is now another corporate profit-making business. It is no longer a transparent process overseen by equal members of both parties handcounting paper ballots. It is taken out of our hands and hidden in computer software -- proprietary information, not available or comprehensible to the public. But it is certainly paid for by the public.... in more ways than one. I used to count ballots, as a Republican election judge. It was a moving experience to have that responsibility. Now as an election judge (albeit today a Democratic one), it is a much different experience to sign off on the tally that a machine tabulator has spit out on a tape. It feels fraudulent when you sign off, because you cannot actually verify that the machine tabulation is in fact accurate. You cannot in any real way vouch for the result. It has been taken out of our hands. Other modern societies (such as Germany) refuse to allow machine or computer voting because it is so vulnerable to corruption and cannot be vouchsafed. Handcounting paper ballots is doable, secure (in addition to hacking, what about power outages -- caused by nature or terrorism?) and should be restored as the foundation of our elections. It is the ultimate step in "taking our country back."

[bkkyosemite]

8. Yes I'm in Oregon too but I also talked to election official

about their tabulators for our votes. I told her of a youtube I saw last election I think maybe Brad Blog had it. It showed how an election official swore their tabulator could not make errors so about six people voted to test and it was wrong. The tabulator can be corrupted or just out of whack. The official here said they test and re-test the tabulator for accuracy. I hope so. Last election Obama won by just a few votes in this county a very red county.

Oh and we should all on this site get together and make sure that Obama recieves from us the demand that our votes be protected by paper ballots that are publically counted. Also those exit polls should be allowing those who leave the polls right now with the e vote machines, to mark an x for Romney or Obama and their Congress or Senate choice. Six boxes checking three on their way out of the voting place to have a definite way of making sure that the e vote machine owners do not cheat our vote.

[JackN415]

9. Are the machines really owned by those companies and leased to the states?

I surmise machine integrity must be written in the contracts between the states and company. But the states must have total control over these machines for the voting process, and there must be built-in mechanism to record and store the voting independently off-sites so the it can be verified.

Perhaps I have too much expectation for state officials?

[SHRED]

10. I have read that...

...the software code that does the counting is proprietary so in essence a "trade secret" that even our government can't view.

[RC]

11. You have read correctly.

That software should be posted in the internet and freely down loadable. The software must also have a security hash number included, so that it will be known if it is modified and used in a machine.
The software and the machines need to be standardize everywhere.
And this is just for starts.

That said, I would like to see the machines scrapped and go back to hand counted paper ballots. Other countries can hand count many millions in a couple of days. Why can't we. Probably for the same reason Exit polls aren't 'reliable' any more because they don't agree with the machine count.

[JackN415]

12. This is absolutely stupid and scandalous if there is no independent mechanism...

and process to cross-check and verify.

Just subcontract it to Google, Microsoft, or allow an open source software consortium, people will come up a software that is very difficult to hack that can run on an ordinary laptop (secured), and the vote shall be recorded in multiple data centers for cross checking.

Sad for a country with such digital tech prowess having its democracy at the mercy of these third-rate companies, Diebold and the like with questionable ownership and potential conflict of interest.

[JackN415]

13. It's fair to have trade secrets, so that competitors cannot copy...

But there must be independent mechanism to check. But I bet that these software are simple and stupid, like just a counter. Even a freshman computer science can write a java or c++ code to do this trivial vote counting thing.

The key issue is where the data is stored?

It should NOT be just locally on the machine, but should be stored in the "cloud" (cloud storage), which is data center that can be at multiple sites in the US, using major cloud service companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple.

Unfortunately, the repubs might be up in arm, because all these companies have somewhat slightly Democratic tilt