If you voted on a Diebold machine this year, WE WARNED YOU...

[derby378]

Same goes for those who voted on Sequoia and ES&S machines.

Your vote is sacred. Your vote is capable of changing how things are done in America.

But if you voted on a touchscreen machine, you may have thrown your vote away. If you're not watching HBO, turn it on right now. The documentary Hacking Democracy is on. Ignore at your own peril.

[demobabe]

1. See, this kind of hype is bad.

So what is going on? This movie is timed exactly before the election, and the net result is it is likely to discourage voters - especially Democrats from voting. Just because your state uses electronic voting (even touchscreen machines) DOES NOT MEAN you should avoid voting.

Not all electronic voting machines WILL be compromised, and we need as many people voting on election day as possible.

Provisional and absentee ballots are not the answer either, they don't always get counted.

[derby378]

6. Who's saying "Don't vote?" I'm saying "Don't vote on a Diebold touchscreen"

It's your vote - don't throw it away.

[demobabe]

10. If the only option you have in your polling district is a Diebold screen

...then you're telling people not to vote.

AND, if you're telling them to vote on provisional ballots, that may not be counted, either.

I voted once in California on a provisional ballot, and I found out later that they only counted the provisionals if there was enough of a percentage where those votes would make a difference.

The message here is VOTE, period. AND find out if your vote counts, how you know it counts...

If that means voting on Diebold machine, then that means vote on the machine.

Diebold isn't the only corp that makes these machines by the way - and there are problems with all of them as well. Even Optiscan machines can be hacked, too, so don't fool yourself into thinking the touchscreen machines are the only problems here.

Voter intimidation and limiting how many machines are in districts where you want to discourage the vote are other VERY effective forms of vote fraud.

[Marie26]

2. Used an ES&S machine to vote

It had a receipt, and I could watch it printing out each vote from the touchscreen. It really wasn't that bad. I think if the evoting machines include an official paper receipt, they're probably OK. Though I still don't see why we need a 200,000 dollar machine to mark a ballot.

[demobabe]

3. Question about the "receipt"

Was that "receipt" a piece of paper you took home, or was it a printed ballot record that was kept at the polling place in case the votes needed to be recounted?

[Marie26]

7. Kept at the polling place

I couldn't take the receipt home, or touch it. The receipt was contained in a large glass covering next to the evoting screen. As you selected each candidate, the machine printed each choice on a long "ATM receipt". The glass covering was large enough that you could review most of the ballot at one time. Even though I didn't get the receipt, it was sort of comforting to actually see my votes in black & white.

BTW, out of curiousity, I did ask the poll worker if they had paper ballots, & she looked at me like I was crazy. She hadn't heard about the controversy, Lou Dobbs' coverage, or any reason why people wouldn't want a e-voting machine. People who want paper ballots have to fill out the provisional ballots at Board of Election HQ; it's definitely not encouraged.

[mongo]

5. and did the receipt have a BAR CODE on the bottom?

What do you think will get counted if the recount is done from those "receipts"? They will read the bar code on all the ballots. How hard would it be to print the correct info in english and encode whatever the hell you wanted on the bar code. Can you read bar codes?

[Marie26]

8. And they can toss bins of paper ballots, too.

As has been done in many elections. IMO paper ballots aren't necessarily any safer than electronic voting systems if the people counting the votes decide to cheat. The important thing is to have safeguards to prevent any form of election fraud. I have no idea if bar codes, or the voting record, is used in a hand recount. But I would assume that people would review the actual selections, not just the electronic bar code. Do you have a link that says that only the bar codes are looked at in a recount?

[Lex]

11. Yes, people forget that boxes of paper ballots have been

trashed or hidden in elections by people intent on fraud. Very sad.

[Rick Myers]

4. I think we should have paper ballots or mechanical systems.

Just my 2 cents, adjusted for inflation.

[Fitzgibbon]

9. You Yanks are too much in love with technology

When's the last time someone hacked a paper ballot? The Canadian federal election about the same time was decided on election day using paper ballots across the country and with recounts (where required) being a breeze. The States? Didn't it take you a month and God knows how many billable hours before you got the government your Supreme Court wanted?

Sometimes, these electronic doodads are a step backwards.

[Lex]

12. Paper ballots can be destroyed or altered too.

Best thing is to have actual, in person, oversight at every step by the political parties involved.

[Fitzgibbon]

13. Which is what happens here

Each party has scrutineers at the polling stations to oversee the counting of the ballots. Destroying or altering ballots would be just a little more difficult than fiddling electrons.