Here are a couple of articles on the fraud of electronic voting, but first a piece about the struggle, that continues, to be able to vote.

Freedom Summer and 2004

Today at the Los Angeles Convention Center, I registered 78 voters at a swearing-in ceremony for newly naturalized American citizens. There was a singer from Namibia, a dressmaker from Myanmar, a mathematician from Egypt, a lawyer from Argentina, a nurse from Iran, a professional poker player from Guatemala, a chemist from Korea, a laborer from the Philippines, a computer programmer from Sri Lanka, a student from Romania, a mechanic from Lebanon, a homemaker from Honduras, a taxi driver from Eritrea. As I looked at the colorful diversity of Americans in the queue in front of our table, I began thinking about the first time I registered voters. It was Freedom Summer in Mississippi, 40 years ago in June.

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Death of a patriot: No more

The subject line on yesterday’s email read: “Another mysterious accident solves a Bush problem. Athan Gibbs dead, Diebold lives.” The attached news story briefly described the untimely Friday, March 12th death of perhaps America’s most influential advocate of a verified voting paper trail in the era of touch screen computer voting. Gibbs, an accountant for more than 30 years and the inventor of the TruVote system, died when his vehicle collided with an 18-wheeled truck which rolled his Chevy Blazer several times and forced it over the highway retaining wall where it came to rest on its roof.

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  thanks to Yolanda Flanagan

Video clips of secret meetings

Texas Safe Voting reviewed the videotapes of the January 2004 closed meetings used to review voting systems for certification (the videos were acquired by open records requests). What we saw may shock you. Here's a two minute clip, in Windows and Quicktime format. The clips show how the state of Texas examines voting machines for certification. A group of examiners reviews voting systems, and makes certification recommendations to the Secretary of State. You might think that these examiners would conduct a comprehensive testing process, assessing the voting machines against a set of detailed critieria and discussing the underlying code. But there was nothing on the videotapes that resembled a testing process. The examiners didn't start with a set of criteria to test against. They didn't even start with a comparison the new machines to the older versions. Instead, the Diebold representatives gave a demo. Reviewers voted on the machines and looked at the final output. A few of the committee members watched closely, while others chatted together. The examiners found out, apparently by accident, that using Diebold’s provisional voting system, it was possible for two voters to vote using the same ID number -- or for one voter to vote multiple times. In practice, the Diebold representative explained, they give out paper stickers to make sure that each person votes only once.

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  thanks to The Agonist