E-voting machines rejected
State says Diebold failures in massive mock election could translate
to problems at polls
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

After possibly the most extensive testing ever on a voting system,
California has rejected Diebold's flagship electronic voting machine
because of printer jams and screen freezes, sending local elections
officials scrambling for other means of voting.
"There was a failure rate of about 10 percent, and that's not good
enough for the voters of California and not good enough for me,"
Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said.

If the machines had been used in an election, the result could have
been frustration for poll workers and long lines for thousands of
voters, elections officials and voter advocates said Thursday.

"We certainly can't take any kind of risk like that with this kind of
device on California voters," McPherson said.

Rejection of the TSx by California, the nation's largest voting-system
market, could influence local elections officials from Utah,
Mississippi and Ohio, home of Diebold corporate headquarters, where
dozens of counties are poised to purchase the latest Diebold touch
screens.State elections officials in Ohio say they still have
confidence in the machines.


But McPherson's decision did send California counties from San Diego
to Alameda to Humboldt hunting for potential alternatives to their
plans to use the TSx.

By January 2006, every polling place nationwide must offer at least
one handicapped-accessible voting machine — touch screens are one
example — and all California touch screens must offer a countable
paper record so voters and election officials can verify the accuracy
of electronic votes. So far, no voting system has been state approved
that meets both requirements.

"This is a muddle because there is no certified system right now,"
said Elaine Ginnold, acting registrar of voters in Alameda County. "We
have to look at all of the nonoptions."

McPherson denied approval of the TSx after a series of failed tests,
culminating in a massive, mock election conducted on 96 of the
machines in a San Joaquin County warehouse. San Joaquin is one of
three California counties that purchased a total of 13,000 TSx
machines in 2003 for more than $40 million and have paid to warehouse
them ever since.

For eight hours July 20, four dozen local elections officials and
contractors stood at tables and tapped votes into the machines to
replicate a California primary, one of the most complex elections in
the nation. State officials watched as paper jams cropped up 10 times,
and several machines froze up, requiring a full reboot for voting to
continue.

Diebold Election Systems Inc. plans to fix the problems and reapply
for California's approval within 30 days, company spokesman David Bear
said.

"They had 10,000 ballots and 10 paper jams. Obviously that needs to be
looked at and addressed, and it will be," he said. "But it needs to be
put into perspective."

Elections officials and voting activists said they
had never heard of more extensive testing for a single voting system,
outside of an actual election. Kim Alexander, president of the
Davis-based California Voter Foundation, said McPherson deserves
credit for ordering rigorous testing.
"It's the first ever conducted in the state and, to my knowledge, in
the country that simulated a real-world experience with these machines
in a voting booth," she said.

Ordinarily, states and the National Association of State Elections
Directors approve voting systems after labs hired by the manufacturers
perform tests on a handful of machines. The Diebold TSx managed to get
through those tests — twice. But none of the testing standards
addresses printers on electronic voting machines, even though more
than 20 states either require a so-called paper trail or are debating
such a requirement.

For years, voters have reported frozen screens and other glitches in
the polling place.

"It's always been the voters' word against election officials' and the
vendors'," Alexander said. "Now we have real proof right before the
eyes of state elections officials."

Reliable voting equipment has been a problem before for Diebold in
California. In the weeks before the March 2004 presidential primary,
the firm rushed a new device called a voter-card encoder through
assembly, testing and temporary state approval. Hundreds of the
devices broke down on election day. Without the devices, thousands of
voters in two of California's largest counties, San Diego and Alameda,
could not vote on Diebold's touch screens. Lines developed, and
hundreds walked away without voting.

California withdrew approval for some Diebold voting systems, and
company stock sagged. Elections experts said McPherson's decision
probably saved the company from a repeat.

"Diebold for some is sort of teetering on the public-relations edge,
and so something like this, with 10 percent of the voters potentially
affected, that would be a pretty big PR issue for Diebold," said Sean
Greene, research director for Electionline.org, a nonpartisan
voting-reform clearinghouse.

In the Bay Area, Alameda and San Joaquin counties had planned to use
all TSx machines in the 2006 elections, and Marin County planned to
put at least one machine in each of its polling places.


Contact Ian Hoffman at .

David wrote:

E-voting machines rejected
State says Diebold failures in massive mock election could translate
to problems at polls
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER


Thanks for the test results. The two owners of the two largest voting machine
distributors seem to be BROTHERS..and they both donate funds to the Republican
party. That sure doesn't seem like an honest situation.


http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=...Search &meta=






mike

On Sat, 30 Jul 2005 01:15:29 GMT, m II wrote:

David wrote:

E-voting machines rejected
State says Diebold failures in massive mock election could translate
to problems at polls
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER


Thanks for the test results. The two owners of the two largest voting machine
distributors seem to be BROTHERS..and they both donate funds to the Republican
party. That sure doesn't seem like an honest situation.


http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=...Search &meta=






mike
Not only that, they're totally psychotic Dominionists.

http://tsuredzuregusa.blogspot.com/2...ote-often.html