The Alvin Greene fiasco in SC has prompted a new concern over the voting machines--finally! Here's a comment from one poster:

There has never been a "problem" before Greene because the candidates who won were the ones the establishment wanted to win. The fix was in for them, so no problem. These machines are a disgrace. They need to be replaced with ones that create a paper trail, whatever that takes. Other states have started mailing out paper "absentee" ballots before the election, and most people find that more safe and secure. It also eliminates the problem of people who have to work for a living not having time to go to the polls on election day and stand in line sometimes for hours. Get rid of these machines no matter what it costs! Our elections are the only thing we have to keep our democracy...

Read more: http://www.thesunnews.com/2010/10/19/176....

It's funny because it's true. There have been many claims and even proof of how easy it is to hack voting machines. I don't trust them for a second; not that it really matters - Would there have been any real difference if McCain was in office?

I have always hated voting machines. Also the mail-in ballot is also easy for fraud. I don't mind sending out ballots only that when they are turned in, in person only to the county courthouse (before or on election day) or at an election site on election day, and that a county poll worker has to see Identification, State Id or Passport - Nothing else.

If it doesn't meet the above criteria then massive fraud is occuring.

How do deployed soldiers vote in your scenario?

Any programmer will tell you that there are a myriad ways to cheat with electronic voting machines.

If a programmer tells you to not use a computer for something, you better heed the advice...

(exception being a voting machine with a paper trail that gets deposit in a normal ballot box)

Probably they need to apply a few service packs to get the counting algorithms all sorted out..

As Rbarriera said above - there ought to be a paper receipt that the machine generates which you can read and see that it recorded your vote as you cast it - then you hand that ballot in. That bunch of papers can be checked against the electronic numbers if there is any question. That this isn't done is a travesty.

Hamburglar--Don't deployed soldiers already get absentee ballots? Aren't they verified as registered voters by their CO and all mailed in together? That's what I thought was happening in Florida in the 2000 election. Anyway, it shouldn't be a problem...

The things I have heard about voting machine programming have been horrific. From a design standpoint, an election app really isn't difficult to do, so I can only assume the poor quality programming and abysmal (where they exist at all) security standards are deliberate.

Quote:

I can only assume the poor quality programming and abysmal (where they exist at all) security standards are deliberate.

Absolutely!
These things are fundamentally not that different than a typical Bank ATM machine. How often do those things screw up? NOT OFTEN! You also get a receipt from an ATM with the details of the transaction. Why not with a voting machine?

This whole thing is an intentional scam!

Observe a chimpanzee hacking a voting machine. This is real.



Yeah, nothing to worry about, clearly. In any election that is within a few percentage points and uses electronic voting, I don't trust the results. In that situation, whoever has the fewest moral scruples (or, probably, the backing of TPTB) wins, wishes of the voters be damned.

Just another way our "democratic" Republic is becoming a joke.

Gizmo, the races are thrown long before the "big" races, in most cases well over a year before, when "unwanted" contenders are kept off the ballots.

It doesn't matter if the votes are counted correctly, when the counts are stored in rewritable memory that can be changed at will.

A printed paper ballot is the only way to make this secure (and by secure I mean, as secure as paper voting)...