more on (wiith comments by djf) NYTimes.com Article: Why We Fear the Digital Ballot

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

While I see benefits to do all we can to assure accurate tallies, I 
think it is a lot more important to assure that voters are allowed to 
register and get to the polls. That is not the case in many parts of 
our country. Also  endlessly telling the public that it is a waste of 
time to believe that their votes will be accurately counted does not 
inspire people to go to the polls.

At this date lets devote our energy to getting out the voters.

Dave

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Date: September 27, 2004 7:10:08 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] (wiith comments by djf) NYTimes.com Article: Why We 
Fear the Digital Ballot

I agree with you 100%, but what your comment and the article miss, is 
that
at least the Diabold voting machines and the associated GEMS management
software are just plain bad. They have known  back doors, the data can 
be
manipulated with plain Windows computers with MS Access software, have 
no
public review of the code (other than the code that was found on their 
FTP
site which got some very bad reviews) and they have a CEO who is 
blatantly
pro Republican.

The first step, that needs to be done BEFORE Nov 2nd is public review 
of the
software and paper printouts suitable for manual reconciliation on all
electronic voting machines. Anything less will mean that there can be no
trust in the vote done by these devices.

Then we can do as you suggest and get it right (or at least orders of
magnitude closer to "right").

Rob

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