Comments on: Testing Diebold in Pocahontas: Touchscreens http://iowavoters.org/2006/05/26/testing-diebold-in-pocahontas-touchscreens/ for Open and Transparent Elections Fri, 18 May 2012 15:07:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0 by: tekel http://iowavoters.org/2006/05/26/testing-diebold-in-pocahontas-touchscreens/#comment-18111 Sat, 15 Dec 2007 06:03:40 +0000 http://iowavoters.org/2006/05/26/testing-diebold-in-pocahontas-touchscreens/#comment-18111 Your account of the testing process makes me physically ill. I can't believe this is still happening! How can we pretend that our democracy is intact if people can't trust that their votes are being counted? California has banned all DREs. Ohio's Secretary of State has called for a state-wide ban on Diebold machines. The guy who wrote the federal HAVA statute is in jail, because he took bribes to let Diebold write the law. The whole thing is rotten, top to bottom and start to finish. I simply can't believe that conscientious Iowans would allow an election to go forward using technology that is simply unnecessary to accomplish the people's interests in holding elections. I'm in Oregon, so perhaps I'm biased, but damn it's easy for me to vote. They mail a ballot to my house. I mark it in black pen. I put it in a different envelope and mail it back. On election day, they open all the envelopes and feed them through optical count machines in a room with glass walls, where everyone can see the ballots and watch how each ballot effects the totals for each candidate. And then when you need to do a re-count, you have a big pile of PAPER BALLOTS to count. No memory cards, no shady companies running "security tests," no chain-of-custody problems... sigh. Thanks for standing up at the meeting you went to, but unless you have better news to report since this article, your vote has already been cast for you. Think about it this way: if they can cheat, they WILL cheat, because the stakes are too high to leave it up to chance. The only way to stop them from cheating is to make sure that everything is open and public. Open and public elections with electronic voting machines are simply impossible. Your account of the testing process makes me physically ill. I can’t believe this is still happening! How can we pretend that our democracy is intact if people can’t trust that their votes are being counted?

California has banned all DREs. Ohio’s Secretary of State has called for a state-wide ban on Diebold machines. The guy who wrote the federal HAVA statute is in jail, because he took bribes to let Diebold write the law. The whole thing is rotten, top to bottom and start to finish. I simply can’t believe that conscientious Iowans would allow an election to go forward using technology that is simply unnecessary to accomplish the people’s interests in holding elections.

I’m in Oregon, so perhaps I’m biased, but damn it’s easy for me to vote. They mail a ballot to my house. I mark it in black pen. I put it in a different envelope and mail it back. On election day, they open all the envelopes and feed them through optical count machines in a room with glass walls, where everyone can see the ballots and watch how each ballot effects the totals for each candidate.

And then when you need to do a re-count, you have a big pile of PAPER BALLOTS to count. No memory cards, no shady companies running “security tests,” no chain-of-custody problems…

sigh. Thanks for standing up at the meeting you went to, but unless you have better news to report since this article, your vote has already been cast for you. Think about it this way: if they can cheat, they WILL cheat, because the stakes are too high to leave it up to chance. The only way to stop them from cheating is to make sure that everything is open and public. Open and public elections with electronic voting machines are simply impossible.

]]> by: Pam Smith http://iowavoters.org/2006/05/26/testing-diebold-in-pocahontas-touchscreens/#comment-750 Thu, 01 Jun 2006 14:48:41 +0000 http://iowavoters.org/2006/05/26/testing-diebold-in-pocahontas-touchscreens/#comment-750 Jerry - "111111" is a huge advance over what they had before... before it was just "1111" so the complexity added by the additional digits, well, that will make it a much much much harder code to break! (/sarcasm) Thanks for your work on participating in, observing and reporting about the testing. Jerry - “111111″ is a huge advance over what they had before… before it was just “1111″ so the complexity added by the additional digits, well, that will make it a much much much harder code to break! (/sarcasm) Thanks for your work on participating in, observing and reporting about the testing.

]]> by: Jerry Depew http://iowavoters.org/2006/05/26/testing-diebold-in-pocahontas-touchscreens/#comment-667 Sat, 27 May 2006 04:12:53 +0000 http://iowavoters.org/2006/05/26/testing-diebold-in-pocahontas-touchscreens/#comment-667 Another thing I forgot to mention. At the start of voting on the touchscreen the machine required the operator to enter the PIN number. This number prevents unauthorized entry to the administrative functions of the computer. Diebold is famous for sending all its equipment out with the same PIN number, making it useless for security unless changed by the local staff. They send out the PIN as "111111" . Easy to remember! At Pocahontas the PIN being entered by the testing team was . . . ."111111" Maybe they plan to change the PIN after the public test. But it could have been reassuring that they were thinking about security if they at least had not let me observe as they typed in the PIN. Another thing I forgot to mention. At the start of voting on the touchscreen the machine required the operator to enter the PIN number. This number prevents unauthorized entry to the administrative functions of the computer.

Diebold is famous for sending all its equipment out with the same PIN number, making it useless for security unless changed by the local staff. They send out the PIN as “111111″ . Easy to remember!

At Pocahontas the PIN being entered by the testing team was . . . .”111111″ Maybe they plan to change the PIN after the public test. But it could have been reassuring that they were thinking about security if they at least had not let me observe as they typed in the PIN.

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