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Throwing Away the DRE eVOTE Machines

The foundation of any democracy has to be free and fair election. I have written considerably about the danger the over-priced, insecure and non-verifiable DRE eVote machines are. By now you'd think the evidence was more than enough to kill any interest any state might have in these machines.

To me one of the deciding factors should be the fact that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has advocated the decertification of these machines because:

According to an NIST paper to be discussed at a meeting of election regulators at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., on Dec. 4 and 5, DRE vote totals cannot be audited because the machines are not software independent.

In other words, there is no means of verifying vote tallies other than by relying on the software that tabulated the results to begin with.

The machines currently in use are "more vulnerable to undetected programming errors or malicious code," according to the paper.

The NIST paper also noted that, "potentially, a single programmer could 'rig' a major election."

But there recently is yet more evidence that the DRE machines suck. Florida under Jeb Bush was a state that embraced the DRE machines early. Perhaps Jeb should have waited. DRE machines are probably responsible for an 18,000 vote undercount in Florida's FL-13 Congressional race in 2006 which more or less made those election results a farce.

Florida's new governor probably also wishes Jeb Bush had waited before buying all those extremely expensive DRE machines, because he now wants to throw out the DRE machines and buy the main alternative technology, PB/OS (Paper Ballot/Optical Scan) machines. Now PB/OS machines also have problems, but ultimately they do have a paper trail that is verifiable, they are cheaper and more reliable than the DRE machines.

What about YOUR state? Is YOUR state learning from the lesson of Florida? Or is your state considering buying the over-priced, easily hackable, unrelaible pieces of crap called DRE eVote machines? Go to Verified Voting.org and find out.

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Words to live by

Poverty is an act of love and liberation. It has a redemptive value. If the ultimate cause of human exploitation and alienation is selfishness, the deepest reason for voluntary poverty is love of neighbor. Christian poverty has meaning only as a commitment of solidarity with the poor, with those who suffer misery and injustice. The commitment is to witness to the evil which as resulted from sin and is a breach of communion. It is not a question of idealizing poverty, but rather of taking it on as it is-an evil-to protest against it and to struggle to abolish it. As Ricoeur says, you cannot really be with the poor unless you are struggling against poverty. Because of this solidarity- which manifest itself in specific action, a style of life, a break with one%u2019s social class- one can also help the poor and exploitated to become aware of their exploitation and seek liberation from it. Christian poverty, and expression of love, is solidarity with the poor and is a protest against poverty. (Fn46) This is the concrete, contemporary meaning of the witness of poverty. It is a poverty lived not for its own sake, but rather as an authentic imitation of Christ; it is a poverty which means taking on the sinful human condition to liberate humankind from sin and all its consequences.

— Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation