This past weekend, hackers gathered in Las Vegas with a simple mission: break into America’s electronic voting machines and take control. Within minutes, some had already succeeded – but that’s a good thing. These hackers were part of a workshop held to identify vulnerabilities so they can be fixed well before any Americans cast actual votes next election. This exercise underscores the very real danger posed by outdated and insecure voting-machine software – as well as the important mission our government must continue undertaking to close these vulnerabilities and safeguard our elections.
However, in their FY2018 funding proposal, Republicans are going after the small but highly successful agency that protects the integrity of our voting systems: the Election Assistance Commission. In June, House Republicans included a provision in their Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill that would abolish the Election Assistance Commission.
Many Americans may not have heard of the Election Assistance Commission, a four-member bipartisan agency that Congress established in 2002 as part of the Help America Vote Act, but nonetheless they benefit greatly from its work. Created to address the flaws in our nation’s voting infrastructure, which contributed to the dispute surrounding the 2000 presidential election, the Election Assistance Commission protects Americans’ votes by helping to ensure that state and local authorities adopt best practices and uphold the highest standards of security for voting technology.
Literally the ONLY reason that the Republicans would vote to abolish this commission is because they do not want the the voting machine vulnerabilities to be identified and fixed.
And the only reason I can think of for that is because they need them to remain vulnerable.
Anybody have an alternate theory?
how about simply abandoning these electronic voting machines and go back to the good old mechanical ones we knew from our youth?
ReplyDeleteWhile the mechanical ones were not subject to hacking, they were maintenance nightmares.
DeleteThe best system is a hybrid:
-- Paper ballots that are
-- Fed into a digital scanner that counts the votes.
With paper ballots and a scanner -- scanner technology is proven and unhackable -- there are paper ballots that can be hand-counted in case of machine failure or questions about the outcome.
Scanners are not hackable -- they are not connected to anything except the power cords and they have no wireless capability.
The EAC decertified a whole class of "touch-screen" machines that counted votes without a detailed tabulation. Now, localities are moving to paper ballots and scanners, supplemented by handicapped accessible touch-screen machines that do not count votes -- they print a paper ballot for the voter to review and feed into the scanner.
The attack on the EAC is real and unnecessary.
I'm the secretary of my county's electoral board. We have already spoken directly to our Repuboican Congressman about this -- he has pledged to support the EAC and I am certain he will.'
In fact, every electoral board in Virginia has met with their Congresscritters to elicit from them pledges of support for the EAC.
I suggest you contact your local general registrar. Print the HuffPost article, take it to the registrar, ask what you can do to support the EAC. Your registrar likely will appreciate the support.
Your locality no doubt has an electoral board . . . show them the HuffPost article and ask them to get after the local Congressional representative. That's what we did and it spread like wildfire through every registrar and electoral board in the state.
Yeah. The paper ones, so we can have a COPY of HOW we voted.
DeleteI think we should use paper ballots. I'm willing to wait a few more hours for final totals to come out. And it would cost television networks a bundle not to have to come up with their glitzy sets and ominous theme music every two years or so. We can all just wait for the election results, like people used to do.
DeleteLast November my immediate reaction when I heard that Pennsylvania and Michigan had gone to Trump was what was done to the vote tallies. I still don't believe that the results were honestly arrived at.
I also firmly believe that, after an election, if one party wants a recount, it should be automatically done and paid for by the state in which the recount was requested. It might discourage vote tampering at the counting level. Too many bizarre things have happened in recent elections since the advent of computerized voting and tallying.
Beaglemom
Agree 100% with Old Recheck. We have that type in New York State. Only thing I wish they would do different - is have the machine spit out a printed receipt the voter can keep. We get printed receipts at retail outlets, at the bank, even at the car wash - should be a no-brainer to get a printed receipt when you vote.
Deletehow about simply abandoning these hackable electronic machines and returning to the old mechanical ones from our youth?
ReplyDeletewho cares if it takes longer to report and tabulate the results. i am sure we can sustain our curiosity until the next morning, while feeling more secure in the integrity of the results.
Al Gore? John Kerry? Hillary Rodham? Where is the election protection from insane toxic so called republican LIARS?
ReplyDeleteFix the machines but you will still have corruption and bribes in the electoral vote, republican gerrymandering and Russia. SO NO russian visas, no Russian tv, no Russian banks, no property owners, spies or internet from Russia in the usa and this should be part of the sanctions.
ReplyDeleteThis seems very short-sighted of the Republicans. At some point the youth of this nation will decide that the system is so corrupt, they'll say "screw it" and then you'll have a whole lot of silicon valley whiz kids from California hacking the elections for the guy that they want. And guess how those guys vote?
ReplyDeleteI used to be a Republican.......they were the party of fiscal responsibility and wholesomeness. Now they are the party of corruption and hypocrisy. They literally do not care if they have to cheat to win. They are disgusting.
The Republican party got so desperate because they knew their party was on the verge of becoming obsolete that they began cheating 30 to 40 years ago.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to be an all boys club with nothing but white men and have to let others in on the party.
They try, but the few minority they let in are only token.
I never saw a bunch of cowards who are afraid to moving along. Control freaks.
Now they are messing with one of the sacred ways we vote in a country that is suppose to honor people's choice. They know we don't want them so they force themselves on us.