Reply #18: Early and often: When voting machines need fixing by DAVID SWANSON

[Mnemosyne]

ESSAY- Early and often: When voting machines need fixing

by DAVID SWANSON, published February 14, 2008

We voted in primaries on February 12. How can we be sure our votes were properly counted? We can trust and hope, but we cannot be certain.

Charlottesville uses DRE (directly recording electronic) voting machines. While the city brags that these are not touch-screen machines, because we turn a dial instead of touching a screen, the problems are the same. The machines we use have produced noticeable errors in some places around the country, such as on the final page for confirmation, displaying different selections from those the voter had made.

But the major danger lies in the unnoticeable.

Voters use the same machines in Houston, where a Rice University professor asked half his class to hack into one and leave no trace, and the other half to try to detect the hacking. About half the time, the changes to the software were able to shift the results without being detected. And there's no way for any precinct that uses these machines to know that they haven't been hacked.

http://www.readthehook.com/stories/2008/02/21/ESSAY-howdYourVoteGetCounted-swanson-A.rtf.aspx

Is this our David Swanson?