corrente

Well! That should dispose of the recount problem, eh? And heck, they're computers! Running proprietary software, just like Windows! I mean, I've certainly never lost any data from my computer —and even if I had, I always keep backups.

[Pause for hysterical laughter.]

And it seems like our electronic voting system—despite the billions of dollars thrown at it, and despite the best efforts of all those Republican-donor electronic voting machine companies (back) are, from a systems, perspective, about as well put together as the network of the average home PC.

In other words, the vote in the 2004 election is irretrievably hosed. Aleady. Another Republican clusterfuck that will, somehow, mysteriously, end up paying off for Republicans. Just like the electronic voting machine clusterfuck in Alabama already did, when a "glitch" swung an election from a Democrat to a Republican (back).

Read the following. As always, it's the details that kill:

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP)A dispute over a razor-thin election [in Riverside County, CA] suggests that important electronic data might not exist, making accurate recounts impossible in many states.

Linda Soubirous, a candidate for the Riverside County board of supervisors, lost a chance to stage a runoff by fewer than 50 votes. When Soubirous asked to look at the computer disks and other electronic records kept during the election, county officials refused.

Undocumented software glitches, hackers, mechanical errors or deleted ballots in only a few counties could have huge implications in a presidential election likely to be a cliffhanger. More than 100,000 paperless terminals have been installed across the nation, particularly in California, Maryland, Georgia and the battleground states of Florida, New Mexico and Nevada.

Soubirous' case is prompting demands for more transparency into election software. Like other manufacturers, Sequoia Voting Systems Inc., (back) which sold $14 million in equipment to Riverside in 1999, uses proprietary software and operates with little federal oversight.

The case, scheduled to go before a judge in Indio, Calif., Sept. 8, comes less than two months after Florida elections officials revealed that audit logs from the contested 2002 gubernatorial primary were lost in computer crashes. Officials in Miami-Dade County said later that backup copies of the data were simply misplaced, but the mishap stoked suspicion coast to coast.

Right. This was the Florida, um, "mishap" when the data was, um, "found" with a rep from the voting machine vendor right in the room (back)

"Right now, there's basically no way to know how accurate an election was, and that's not good enough for a public office," said Jeremiah Akin, 29, a Riverside computer programmer. "We should all be very skeptical."

Soubirous' case hinges on vote tallies that began arriving in stacks of absentee ballots and computer memory cartridges in Riverside's central counting office the evening of March 2. Traditionally, the registrar publishes results on printouts and online, continuously updating them as new data arrive.

The moral: Absentee ballots may guarantee that your vote will be counted. But they in no way guarantee the integrity of the voting process, and that is what is at issue.

In the first printout, at 8:13 p.m., three-term incumbent Bob Buster had 47 percent of the vote - shy of the majority needed to avoid a runoff.

Updates from the Sequoia AVC Edge touchscreens then stalled for more than an hour. During that time, Soubirous supporter Art Cassel spotted two Sequoia employees typing on a county computer.

Leave the parties out of it. If, during a paper-based voting process, you saw anybody opening up the ballot box, would you be concerned? Of course you would. And computers should be different why?

When updates resumed about 9:15 p.m., Buster's lead had widened to 50.2 percent of the vote. After 49,196 votes were logged, Buster finished by 49 votes above 50 percent, narrowly avoiding a runoff.

Sequoia spokesman Alfie Charles said the Sequoia employees were given identification badges and access to the computers on Election Day simply to ensure that the vote tabulation proceeded smoothly. The original vote count was accurate, he said.

Right. And my confidence is in no way undermined when (a) the voting machine companies, and the companies that certify them, are heavy Republican contributors (back) or (b) hire felons who have been convicted of computer fraud (Diebold, back). Nope. Not in any way. Not at all.

Soubirous, a registered nurse, paid more than $1,600 for a recount - but says she didn't get her money's worth. A re-examination of paper absentee ballots found 276 more votes, narrowing the margin for avoiding a runoff to 36 votes. But most of the voting took place electronically, and Townsend reproduced only the vote total delivered by each machine.

Soubirous demanded to see audit logs, computer diskettes, internal memory cards, surveillance tapes from polling stations and other data Townsend touted as "checks and balances" that ensured the accuracy of paperless systems.

Attorneys representing Townsend responded that most of the items requested - including some electronic data from the voting machines and tabulation software - "do not exist" or "do not constitute 'relevant materials'" according to California election law. The registrar handed over only paper provisional ballots and some absentee ballots and envelopes.

"I'm not saying we don't want to open the books, but I need to learn why that information was preserved in the past before I make a recommendation about how we move forward," Dunmore said.

The March election wasn't the first to raise concerns about vote fraud among county residents.

"We get more paperwork with a carryout order at McDonald's than when we go to the polls," said Weber, whose case was eventually dismissed.
(via AP)

So, let's assume that Bush wins with a razor thin majority.

Given the above, and given what we already know about Florida 2004, can someone give me a reason why we should regard the result as legitimate? Readers?