Interview on revotes and election fraud

[Land Shark]

This is the first of a two-part interview with Paul Lehto regarding Touch Screen voting machines (DRE's) and documenting voting irregularities with the DRE's in Snohomish County, WA. The full interview is at:

http://washblog.typepad.com/

In a nutshell, the people do not need to prove that an election was unfair to demand something better. Rather, the government owes us fair elections that are open and transparent, and ones that show themselves to be duly fair and open. Government must also respond to the people’s request to prove the elections fair and open.


In this regard, the Republican lawsuit for a revote does have some appeal. The problem however, is that they do not propose to fix any of the problems before having a revote. The same flawed systems would be used. Therefore, it appears to be a political request rather than a sincere effort to right any election wrongs.

In the final analysis, when we design elections we don’t know who will be the winners of the future and who the losers, so we should all join in designing a system that is fair to both winners and losers.

[ottozen]

1. Let the count determine the actual vote.

What is so complicated about that?

[Land Shark]

4. It's also credible to say that the hand count, tho a statistical tie

is also an authorized tie-breaking procedure, so even if the candidate searches for enough "illegal" votes to raise a question, the process is still final.

The problem I have is Democrats taking the position that the elections are flawless. They spend some credibility in doing so, and hurt the national vote fraud efforts, when there are other ways to resist the revote.

[marions ghost]

2. cant find the interview

can u post some snips

[Land Shark]

3. The link above works, but the title is "Activism at its Best"

the part about the interview doesn't start til you get to the inside link of the story. First part is the author's experience on election day in Nevada.

[marions ghost]

5. OK found it

SEE THIS PAGE:
http://washblog.typepad.com/main/2005/02/activism_at_its.html#more

ALSO *** From the interview: Cost of DREs

Q: HOW CAN COUNTIES LIKE SNOHOMISH ARGUE DREs ARE COST-EFFECTIVE?!?

--snip--
WB: Please breakdown the cost requirements of having DRE's in Snohomish County.

PL: The hardware cost $5 million. One million was reimbursed by a Bush administration federal grant under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Now some people think that HAVA is really helping people vote, in a way that shouldn’t be, but again if the machines malfunction it matters little whether it is malfunction or intentional cheating for purposes of the integrity of the election. Such intent does matter a lot of course, for certain political and possible criminal charges, but those go beyond the main scope of our concern which is the integrity of our democracy.

For the $5 million, the county received just about 950 or so machines, which ended up processing only 32% of the county’s vote. Thus, in a way the only way Snohomish county, even with $5 million dollars can afford to have touch screens is because we DON’T have touch screens being used for the majority of voting.

There is also a software licensing fee of $30,000 per year that is payable. The above cost quotes do not include the cost of the service contract, personnel to service the machines, or the cost to run the elections themselves