Reply #42: Absolutely! (See, this guy Bernie really gets it!) [View All]

[Bill Bored]

First from the introduction:

"Our team has analyzed the effectiveness of the various voting machines
used in Ohio and has strong recommendations favoring precinct-count
optical scan machines, assuming they can be improved to accommodate
disabled voters."

(I'd insert something about the Automark at this point.)

"Current DRE voting systems, in addition to being extremely expensive to
procure and maintain, are vulnerable to fraud. Existing standards and
practices for certification of voting systems are insufficient to
provide security for existing DRE systems, and significant effort will
be required to remedy these deficiencies in the future."

"Public elections – if they are to work, must be transparent. Private
secrets have no place in public elections and, in fact, engender a
system that is vulnerable to tampering, covert manipulation and fraud.
Voting machine vendors should be required by law to disclose equipment
designs to the public. Paper trail audits offer an improvement over
current DRE systems that provide no paper trail but they do not guard
against tampering, improper equipment calibration and faulty aggregation
of the votes cast. The only way to ensure every vote cast is properly
registered and counted is through a transparent system that is
verifiable by the public (not just the vendor) at every stage of the
voting process."

"...The use of existing DRE machines must be discontinued unless or
until they are perfected. A transparent system for aggregating votes
cast at the precinct, county, state and national level must be developed
in order to ensure that every vote cast is counted."

And that's just the introduction! Maybe it could have been written by Land Shark, but I don't want to put words in his jaws!

Then read sections VII and VIII and especially her conclusions in section XII.

http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/06/democracy_at_ri.php

There is plenty of meat in here for party loyalists and even Republicans who want free and fair elections. I think we should take the tack that all Dems should at least sign on to this. If not, then THEY and not WE are out of the mainstream!

The NAYSAYERS will just complain that she didn't say Ohio was STOLEN. But as I said in another thread, we have to use the cards we've been dealt and this puts the issues into the mainstream where they belong!