As we've been trrying to tell you here for years, electronic voting machines cannot be trusted.
Recent official reports indicate there is no longer any reasonable basis or reason
for voters, public officials, or candidates to rely upon vulnerable computer/printer
combinations (Direct Recording Electronic voting machines) in conducting elections.
Any party or person interested in honest elections should support either locally
programmed optical scan machines with results counted and posted at each precinct
election night or paper ballots hand counted in public view with results posted at
each precinct election night (in either case, used under stringent procedural
restrictions).
The reports requested by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen (dated July
27, 2007): overview, diebold, hart, sequoia.
See also, University of Connecticut report on voting machine fraud (July 16, 2007),
Contrary to the misrepresentation fed by industry officials in light of the
California reports to (and published by) The New York Times (July 28, 2007, page
A11, Scientists' Tests Hack Into Electronic Voting Machines in California and
Elsewhere by Christopher Drew): "Industry executives said that the tests had not
been conducted in a realistic environment and that no machine was known to have
been hacked in an election," there is proof that the industry executives' allegation
is incorrect.
In fact, as previously noted by PSACOT, the first and only documented article or
report establishing actual electronic fraud in the certified results for the 2004
Presidential election in Ohio ("Official States Electronic Voting System Added Vote
Never Cast In 2004 Presidential Election; Audit Log Missing," The Free Press,
November 1, 2006, by Peter Peckarsky, Ron Baiman, and Robert Fitrakis).
"An electronic vote counting system included votes never cast in the total vote
count reported for the 2004 Presidential election according to an official directly
in charge of conducting the election, the Republican Director of the Miami County
(Ohio) Board of Elections. The audit log for the system is missing all information
for the 2004 Presidential election."
As far as can be determined from "Democracy At Risk: The 2004 Election In Ohio,"
issued by the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute on June 22,
2005, the Democratic National Committee panel never sought, reviewed, or considered
the appropriate documentation (upon which the article revealing electronic voting
fraud in Ohio was based) from Miami County (Ohio) or similar data from anywhere else
in the state. Unsurprisingly, after failing to seek or find the key documents (all
of which were legally available to the public at 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday, November 3,
2004 (the morning after the election and well before Democratic candidate John Kerry
conceded)), the DNC panel (a number of whom were responsible for trying to win Ohio
for the Democrats in 2004) concluded "there is no evidence from our survey" that
Kerry won Ohio.