Flaws in voting exposed

Flaws in voting exposed

October 21, 2003

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse! The touch-screen voting machines are rife with major problems. Besides inaccurate counting of votes, they lack means of verifying the count; no paper trail. There is no way to check if one's vote was accurately recorded.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University reported that votes could be altered on the spot or by remote access.

In Dallas, Texas, early voters discovered that when they tried to vote for Democrats, the button pressed only brought up the Republican name.

The top three manufacturers are substantial Republican campaign donors, and one CEO (Diebold) wrote to Republican supporters that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver the electoral votes to the president next year."

In Georgia, there were serious malfunctions in the software including hundreds of security flaws and loss of 67 voting cards in the Democratic stronghold of central Atlanta.

The vote count was not done by state election officials but by the private voting machine company. And the state is disallowed from examining the equipment because of the company's "trade-secrecy" laws.

The corporations that buy our politicians can now elect them! Bush won't have to worry about winning the next election.

?-Paula Hunt

Salem, Statesman Journal