E-voting Push Started With HAVA

[helderheid]

October 23, 2006 (Computerworld) -- The push for states to quickly adopt electronic voting systems can be traced to passage of the Help America Vote Act in October 2002.

The legislation was written as part of an effort to avoid problems with older voting systems, including the so-called dimpled ballots that caused significant strife in Florida in particular and the U.S. in general following the contested 2000 presidential race.

The act left all 50 states scrambling to comply with its mandates, including a requirement that manual voting systems, such as lever-activated machines and punch cards, be replaced with electronic voting machines. It also stipulates that every voting precinct in the country must have a handicapped-accessible voting machine and that each state must create a comprehensive database of all voters.

The legislation also provided $3 billion in funding to help state and local elections agencies buy e-voting machines and train poll workers.

The law required that all states comply with the mandates by January 2006. At least one state, New York, was sued by the U.S. Department of Justice for noncompliance. New York election officials say they are still in the process of procuring e-voting machines to replace lever systems long used in the state.

Several state officials said that the law provides inadequate federal funding to implement widespread e-voting.

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[helderheid]

1. .

[Peace Patriot]

2. There is a lot of disinformation in this apparently objective article.

HAVA does *NOT* require or mandate electronic voting. That is a MYTH.

See "MythBreakers" www.votersunite.org ( easy primer on electronic voting.)

I believe it was $3.9 billion (not $3 billion), and the money was not to help anybody vote. The money was to pour into the pockets of Bushite electronic voting corporations, through the fingers of local/state officials, to thoroughly corrupt our voting system, and remove all transparency and verifiability from the counting of our votes, prior to the 2004 election. These extremely insecure and insider hackable voting systems were fast-tracked by corruptive power of the money, and by the corporations' lavish lobbying; they were never properly tested or vetted, and most election officials bought them not having clue as to how they worked, and yielded like dumbasses to the corporations' demand that our voting system must be run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls.

All this was engineered by the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney, abetted by corporatist 'Democrats' like Christopher Dodd. And the chief beneficiaries were...

DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer," right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004"; and

ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things). Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship; they are run by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich.

These are the people who "counted" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy.

Also, SEQUOIA: The third major election theft industry player, which hired Republican Bill Jones, former Calif Secretary of State, and his chief aide, Alfie Charles, to peddle their machines--in an outstanding example of one of the highly corrupt practices that HAVA fosters-- "revolving door" employment--in addition to lavish lobbying, corporate secrecy, corporate lawyers writing our laws, and the heady power of multi-million dollar electronics contracts in government.

[helderheid]

3. you are absolutely right. I testified at local hearings about this.