quantummushroom asked, "1) What about the ballot card? ... It's what gets dropped in the ballot box. What if the voting machine records and the cards' records don't match?"

That's not how it works. Much like your car key, the smart card grants you the ability to use a voting machine. The only thing that card does is signify that you may vote. Before it is ejected from the machine, each smart card is marked as invalid so you can't vote twice. In the normal course of events, the voter returns the used card to a poll worker, who can mark the voter card as valid again and hand to the next voter. [1] Wash, rinse, repeat.

The only record of your vote is on the machine itself. There are no records that have to match up. You, the voter, get no receipt. If the machine catches fire, several hundred or thousand votes may be lost. [2] Gee, it sure would suck if a one or several machines suddenly had amnesia at the end of the day.

One point that I'll mention briefly now and come back to later: Normal voters do *not* get a printed receipt. The internal printer is only used for initial and final tallies [3].

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quantummushroom stated, "2) That sure is a lot of sneakernet work to infect thousands of machines, one at a time." and "3) Where I live, an armed deputy is assigned to almost every polling place."

The machines run Windows CE [4]. They're vulnerable to viruses. [5] All you need to do to infect a machine is to open the side door, "secured" by what amounts to a desk-drawer lock, insert your our memory card, and reboot. [6] This can be accomplished in under a minute. You certainly won't raise eyes until you've used a voting machine for over twenty.

Let's look at two ways to infect thousands of machines:

First, if you already know which machine will act as the accumulator, you don't have to infect thousands of machines. At the end of the night, the memory cards are pulled from every machine and fed to one that adds all of the cards up. Just infect that machine. And then, if that card is taken to the next polling station for accumulation of several polling stations, even more results can be manipulated. [7]

Second, I quote: "A poll worker, election official, technician, or other person who had private access to a machine for as little as one minute could use these methods without detection. Poll workers often do have such access; for instance, in a widespread practice called “sleepovers,” machines are sent home with poll workers the night before the election [8]."

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quantummushroom stated: "4) If a victicrat wins any election in a time of war, I'd certainly suspect fraud."

Strawman argument that has no bearing on Diebold machine security.

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quantummushroom stated: "5) theo47 is correct. Eternal vigilance is the price for liberty."

There's no way to be vigilant while voting with one of these machines because there's no paper trail and no way to guarantee that you voted the way you voted. If the machines break, your vote is lost.

Consider a different model of electronic voting that does offer these things: first off, the voting machine doesn't record any votes. All it does it help you pick candidates. When you're done, hit the print button, which will print out a two-part receipt, of which you keep half. It should be time-stamped, include a way to identify the voter but not reveal their name, and the votes in plain text.

A voter can read it, verify it, put the submission in a ballot box to be scanned later, and take the receipt home. The receipt is a backup, if you will, that could be used if, for example, the ballot box caught fire.

A final thought: Diebold makes ATM's. Do you think they would they use a lock that can be picked in 10 seconds by an amateur [9] on those?

[1] http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ts-paper.pdf 3.3.2 Voting
[2] ibid. 2.1.2 Denial-of-Service Attacks
[3] ibid. 3.1 Hardware
[4] ibid. 3.1 Hardware
[5] ibid. 4.3 Demonstration Voting Machine Virus
[6] ibid. 2.2.1 Direction Installation
[7] ibid. 4.4 Demonstration Denial-of-Service Attack
[8] Marc Songini. E-voting security under fire in San Diego lawsuit. Computerworld, August 2006.
[9] http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ts-paper.pdf 2.2.1 Direct Installation

pickle, depends on your state.

Some states require valid reasons for absentee. I think HAVA might have tried to make this more standard. Anyways, absentee at least in Ohio is done with mail in punchcard ballots. They have to verify your name and address before they open the inner envelope, so sometimes they will purge your vote before it goes into the pile. While I think this might be generally more probable that you vote is indeed counted, it's not a sure thing.

For one, you have the hanging chad problem, where the more times they recount, the less valid votes you get. For another, they probably are using candidate rotation on the ballots, and often times they can play games with the tabulator header card. (ie. one ballot has A,B,C and the other goes C,A,B) (the tabulator has to be pre-primed to know what order to tally votes, and this card can be wrongly applied so votes for A in this case go to B)

Another problem with this is cost will go up, and they will make this process more restrictive. Plus there are mailing errors, and Republicans are challenging addresses to purge you based on letters not being returned confirming correct address. The issue with electronic machines also won't go away. And most people vote on machines.

One idea is to write in a candidate for a pre-decided office. If enough people voted for "Paper Ballot" as a write-in.. It would be hard for them to hide this result, and you'd have some idea how many votes are being lost. I personally think "Fuck Diebold" would be the best candidate.

Ok, first of all Diebold just bought the voting machine business in 2002, so don't compare the ATM bulls^#@$. Global Election Systems changed its name to Diebold Election Systems, Inc.

"Jeff Dean, Senior Vice-President and Senior Programmer at Global Election Systems (GES), the company purchased by Diebold in 2002 which became Diebold Election Systems, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft for planting back doors in software he created for ATMs using, according to court documents, a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years"

So yes, worry about using your ATM.

"Voter advocate Bev Harris alleged Tuesday that managers of a subsidiary of Diebold Inc., one of the country's largest voting equipment vendors, included a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions, and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records. "

The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

here's something else to consider. diebold doesn't just make voting machines. they also happen to make ATM machines. if diebold is very possibly a 'corrupt' company, i'm not so sure anymore how comfortable i feel with using the ATM.

What is worse than these machines is this joke of a VVPB (Voter Verified Paper records).
People will *feel* safe about their vote, but it really is not that way.

The ES&S printout is not one whole ballot that you can verify. It is a printout that follows your vote as you vote on different candidates. So if you change your vote, it will show up. Or if you voted for Candidate A then Issue 1 then changed your vote to Candidate B.. YOu'll get A.. Y on 1.. B

The point is that you can NEVER do a recount by hand, using those VVPB. What ES&S and Diebold does.. is provides a convenient barcode at the end of each voter. They also sell are barcode reader that is used.. which goes through the SAME tabulator as the electronic DREs.

By law (in most states) during a recount, you can only view the Issue or Office up for recount, and not the whole ballot. So, recount for VVPB is no longer possible.

You have to count on the software that hacked the DRE reading, does not also hack the barcodes.

Check out baxter the chimp hacking a diebold machine:

http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=1362