Guest Blogged by John Gideon
Regular readers will remember the last time we discussed Summit County, Ohio and the failure of their E-Voting vendor, Elections Systems and Software (ES&S), to get anything right. First they discovered that 30% of the memory cards, which store vote totals and other vital information, had completely failed. Later, they were able to get the number down to 10%. And then, as reported by THE BRAD BLOG the Director of the Board of Elections, Brian Williams, had announced that he had no confidence in ES&S and was predicting failures in the primary election that will be held next Tuesday, May 2.
Bad enough? Not for Train Wreck ’06!
Today the county announced that they have completed all testing of their ES&S optical-scan voting machines and another 17 memory cards suddenly failed. These are cards that had previously been tested over and over again with no problems.
But never fear. If there are problems on Election Day, ES&S has a plan!
They’ve now announced that their technical team for on-the-ground assistance will be made-up of 19 university students from the University of Akron. The students will get training on Saturday. Yes, one day of training and they will be expected to represent ES&S for all technical matters in Tuesday’s primary.
And, on top of all of that, two-thirds of the ballots needed for primary day have still not been received from the printer, an ES&S hired contractor.
Full speed ahead!
Am I missing something?
Consumer Protection Laws should apply to the electronic voting machine companies … should they not?
Where would any company be if they handled PC’s this way?
The Attornies General of the various states would come down on them as if they were tobacco companies.
What gives here? If it is not a conspiracy to make junk out of American elections via the Train Wreck coming … what is it?
I mean, terrorists could not hit all of our voting precincts … it takes election officials to destroy our democracy thru hideous negligence?
dredd, i stopped trying to make "sense" of the evoting horrorshow years ago. if anyone at any level were applying it, this madness would’ve been stopped long ago.
no, we live in a nation run by ratfucking criminals, and operated by incompetent, uninformed lackeys just stupid enough to get us all killed, by the time the republicans are done. the evoting story is just littered with too many examples of why slovenly, apathetic amurka is going to get what it deserves.
sorry, one of those mornings.
It’s now less than a week before the election here in NE Ohio. We have not received the voting machine instruction guides that just got to the board of elections last week. Given the vagaries of bulk mail, I don’t expect them for up to six weeks from now. I look forward to walking around the corner to our voting station (school) to see the fun. I’ll keep you posted during the day. It promises to be interesting, as in the Chinese curse.
With the train wreck coming, we all need to prepare to make sure we have video, audio, mediabites and art. We need to make a big effort to take all of the "train wreck" stuff and send it to our local media. Maybe a local young (as in too young to be vested in the corrupt old media system…) producer/reporter/editor type wants to make a name for him/herself! There’s certainly plenty of story there!
So do all you can to let everybody know it’s coming and be there speedy-quick to present the evidence once the explosion occurs.
shw
Everyone,
Step #1
Please go to this link
http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=191987-1
and buy a copy of the C-span DVD of Mark Crispin Miller.
Step #2
Show it to every one in your state, especially election officials
Step #3
Demand paper ballots of record and a ban on secret software.
Step #4
Get off the tracks before the train wreck! Go grab your camcorder and capture the disasters and chaos in Nov. ’06
Step #5
Get up, dust off, rinse, and repeat until ’08.
I predict that this will be noticed in the MSM after this years elections and then get broad attention right before the 2008 elections, giving the White House crooks a perfect excuse to cancel the elections and stay in power.
I really hope I’m wrong.
And what will these technical teams be doing for on-the-ground assistance?
Inserting new memory cards?
Hmmmmm!
Choo Choo!
Ever get the feeling that our lives have become one big, long sitcom! When the hell is Ricky going to get home and fix these damn voting machines!