Vin Suprynowicz on Electronic Voting Machines

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Wasn't this taken care of 10 years ago?

The older machines won't be retrofitted with the new printers -- Or will the machines be replaced entirely? Whichever costs more, I presume -- until after Nov. 2, see, when Diebold will try to use its electronic machines in other states to throw the election to George Bush.

(The New York Times revealed this winter that Bev Harris, who's writing a book on voting machines, found Diebold proprietary software on an unprotected server, where anyone could download it. "This in itself was an incredible breach of security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the machines both the information and the opportunity to do so," Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote in early March. "An analysis of Diebold software by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice Universities found it both unreliable and subject to abuse. ..." The software Ms. Harris found was in a folder named "rob-Georgia.zip." Diebold machines were used to record the unusual Republican upset election victories in Georgia last year. Diebold's CEO has publicly vowed to help George Bush win re-election.)

Vin Suprynowicz is a libertarian columnist for the Review-Journal, here in Las Vegas. I don't know if his column is syndicated, but you may have heard of him because he has written several books. Even though I am a left-wing liberal, I enjoy reading his columns, because I find myself agreeing with him on many issues.

Even though Nevada law has required for ten years that electronic voting machines produce a hard-copy paper trail, the machines we vote on in November will not have that capability. WTF?

Why is it that most of the people concerned with electronic voting machine fraud are Democrats? Maybe it's because the Republican Party has close ties to the top management of the three major electronic voting companies -- Diebold, Sequoia Pacific, and Elections Systems and Software.

There have been many documented cases of electronic voting machine malfunctions in several states. Millions of votes are going to be cast in November on machines which provide no hard-copy printout, therefore no capability for audit or recount.

Yet it seems only Democrats are concerned about this problem. The Republicans seem to be laughing and saying, "Hey, no problem." I think the fix is in, and this election is going to be stolen by Bush and the Republicans in a way that will be untraceable.

I am glad to hear a conservative libertarian like Suprynowicz expressing concern. I would like to hear some real concern from Republicans.

If electronic voting is compromised with no ability to validate the count, why bother going to the polls. The talking head can just spout off some numbers when the polls close and we can all go to bed early putting our faith in the almighty, always perfect DIEBOLD, the voting god. No need to study character or those nasty old issues.
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