I live in a small South Western Pennsylvania community with a population of around 2300. I have been here all of my life, well all but the years I spent in college.
Now out of the 2300 roughly 40% vote in the national elections and around 45% in local elections. The reason I bring this up is now that the HAVA is in affect, we get to use the infamous Diebold voting machines. They are easy enough to use, there is a demo on the Washington County web site, Washington County or you can go directly to the practice page, Vote Here. Read on. >>>
Now what is disturbing about this at least to me, is the fact that we are going from a punch card system that has some drawbacks [Being slow with returns], to a system that is know to have major security flaws. In fact, a recent article points out they have found even more glitches with these machines. Morning Call
Alerted late Tuesday that new electronic voting machines that many counties bought are vulnerable to tampering, election officials in Schuylkill and Carbon counties say they will keep the equipment locked up tight until the May 16 primary.
A ''potential security vulnerability'' in machines sold by Diebold Election Systems Inc. of McKinney, Texas, could let ''unauthorized software to be loaded on to the system,'' Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortez said in a warning issued to the counties.
Last night a friend pointed out that if he could get the source code he would just vote from his laptop at home. From what I see with the new machines (new to us) there is still not a paper trail.
I was asked a question yesterday by my next store neighbor as to why they just don't stick to the old way of voting in our county? I tried to answer the best way I could with what I know of the situation.
From what I understand that under the Help America Vote Act, all voting must be done on some type of electronic voting device for all federal elections. No lever machines or paper ballots can be used as they cause too much confusion.
Any state, county, or municipality that does not adhere to the regulations of the Act will be subject to fines, and could lose their reimbursement for the machines they purchased. As I said, this is what I have read and picked up of the local news.
Allegheny County run into some sort of problem with their new machines and felt that they would not be ready for the May 16th primaries, so they ask to use their old leaver machines and were turned down on the federal level. As far as I know it is still in court, they will be fined if the electronic machines are not in place this coming Tuesday.
Counties bought the machines to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act, passed in 2002 after voting problems in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. The law forbids counties nationwide from using lever machines or paper ballots to conduct federal elections because they are deemed unreliable.
Talk about Unreliable
Observer/Reporter
On April 26, 2006, the Washington League of Women Voters were set to give a demonstration of the machines that will be used in the county, and the Diebold AccuVote TSx touch-screen voting machine would not let them access the machine.
Susan Ruether, president of the League of Women Voters and a local election board member who has trained in the use of the machine, announced at the beginning of the forum in the Chartiers Township building that the demonstrator model wasn't cooperating.
"The encoder will not let us get into the machine," an embarrassed Ruether told the crowd of the card system that is part of the touch-screen machine.
And although a league member tried repeatedly to activate the device as Democrats Paul Walsh and Jesse White and Republican Paul Snatchko spoke during the hour-long forum, the machine, which was not equipped with a power cord, eventually succumbed to a dead battery.
Not a good showing for the future of voting, in our country, state, county, or my small town. ABA