(Image is in the Public Domain)

Here's a heartwarming tale. Forida decides that the e-voting was a mistake and goes back to optical votes:

Rumor has it that Florida governor Charlie Crist will announce tomorrow that his state plans to scrap tens of millions of dollars worth of touchscreen voting equipment and move to a system based completely on optical scan ballots. The Miami Herald claims that the total tab for overhauling the state's electoral system could be as high as $35 million.

They made a mistake and now they're paying for it. Hopefully, the cost will make them think twice before adopting a voting system that was proven again and again to be worthless.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

According to EFF:

Colorado-based Ciber, Inc., the largest laboratory that tests software used in U.S. voting systems, has been temporarily banned from approving new systems following problems discovered last summer by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

The EAC found that Ciber was not following proper quality- control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests. Ciber's renewed petition for accreditation is currently under EAC review.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is recommending that the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines.

In the article, they explain how NIST has found that the machines have no paper trail, and that a single programmer could rig an entire election. Uh…hello? This is not news, this was well know for a long time before now. Hopefully now that NIST has said it, someone in congress will pay attention.

Also, for brilliant social commentary on the issue, please see this: Diebold Accidentally Releases Results of 2008 Election Early. Tags: Diebold, Evoting

Our most fundamental right as American citizens is being denied in Maryland. I went to the polls to vote today and explained that I wanted to vote, but would only use a paper ballot. While the check-in people suggested a "provisional ballot", the supervisor nixed that and showed me this nice large sign.

Barred from voting in Maryland

Why did I insist on a paper ballot? Perhaps it's because of the Princeton University Study proving the lousy security of this system (with instructional video).

For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities — a voting-machine virus. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab.

Or it could be because of this study done by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

All of the most commonly purchased electronic voting systems have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities. All three systems are equally vulnerable to an attack involving the insertion of corrupt software or other software attack programs designed to take over a voting machine.

If you protest the e-voting, be prepared to give up your right to vote.

But that aside, forget studies and look at our own state's history:

As reported by the Baltimore Sun many poll workers did not show up for work this morning and when they did they many had no idea how to operate new voting technology called "e-poll books" which are a necessary part of the voting process in Maryland and many other Diebold states. The workers were not trained to use that technology because Diebold did not provide the technology to the state until it was too late to properly train the pollworkers.

It's clear that the e-voting system is unstable and NOT READY. The accounting and security, both hardware and software is heavily suspect and it's much safer to rely on the traditional method of voting rather than on the video-poker-like machines they forced on us. But if you try, you may be barred from voting as I was.