Comments on: NY is set to miss the mark again http://polhudson.lohudblogs.com/2008/07/28/ny-is-set-to-miss-the-mark-again/ Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:00:17 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Andrea Novick, Esq. http://polhudson.lohudblogs.com/2008/07/28/ny-is-set-to-miss-the-mark-again/comment-page-1/#comment-36205 Andrea Novick, Esq. Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:48:15 +0000 http://polhudson.lohudblogs.com/2008/07/28/ny-is-set-to-miss-the-mark-again/#comment-36205 While NYS’s Legislature and the voting vendors may be missing the mark- the voters of New York are not, assuming the mark we are looking to achieve is a secure, transparent, reliable voting system. New York’s citizens still enjoy the benefit of their time-tested theft-deterring, accurate lever voting system. The plan to switch to computerized optical scanners or DREs is unconstitutional. It will disenfranchise the citizens of New York. Software-driven voting systems have been proven to be vulnerable to undetectable tampering. They are incapable of producing accurate, dependable election results. That’s why the Legislature has required that we hand count a small portion of the ballots in the new law: the machine count cannot be relied on. But counting some of the ballots after the fact, after the election is over, after the press has announced the winner, after the ballots have been exposed to increased opportunities to post-election tampering, is the worst way to run an election. Why in the world would we switch to such a voting system? The answer is that the Legislature thought it had to switch to computers in 2005 when it changed the law, because our levers were not accessible to those voters with special needs. But now that we are supplying each poll site with a ballot marking device for the 2008 election, our levers are HAVA-compliant. See Clearing the Air for more on the facts, http://re-mediaetc.blogspot.com/2008/07/facts-myths-about-voting-in-new-york.html. We should not be working to certify computers to count our votes when we know that no amount of testing certification will change the fact that the optical scanner or the DRE can be rigged without detection on the day of election, regardless of how it tested before the election. We should be insisting that we keep our lever voting system, which can provide us with accurate, election night results. See The Fight to Hold on to Our HAVA-Compliant Lever Voting System, http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Fight-to-Hold-on-to-Ou-by-andi-novick-080728-948.html and sign this PETITION TO SAVE OUR LEVERS, http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/save_ny_levers. Andrea Novick, Esq. Re-Media Election Transparency Coalition Legal Coordinator, Election Defense Alliance While NYS’s Legislature and the voting vendors may be missing the mark- the voters of New York are not, assuming the mark we are looking to achieve is a secure, transparent, reliable voting system. New York’s citizens still enjoy the benefit of their time-tested theft-deterring, accurate lever voting system. The plan to switch to computerized optical scanners or DREs is unconstitutional. It will disenfranchise the citizens of New York.

Software-driven voting systems have been proven to be vulnerable to undetectable tampering. They are incapable of producing accurate, dependable election results. That’s why the Legislature has required that we hand count a small portion of the ballots in the new law: the machine count cannot be relied on. But counting some of the ballots after the fact, after the election is over, after the press has announced the winner, after the ballots have been exposed to increased opportunities to post-election tampering, is the worst way to run an election. Why in the world would we switch to such a voting system?

The answer is that the Legislature thought it had to switch to computers in 2005 when it changed the law, because our levers were not accessible to those voters with special needs. But now that we are supplying each poll site with a ballot marking device for the 2008 election, our levers are HAVA-compliant. See Clearing the Air for more on the facts, http://re-mediaetc.blogspot.com/2008/07/facts-myths-about-voting-in-new-york.html. We should not be working to certify computers to count our votes when we know that no amount of testing certification will change the fact that the optical scanner or the DRE can be rigged without detection on the day of election, regardless of how it tested before the election. We should be insisting that we keep our lever voting system, which can provide us with accurate, election night results. See The Fight to Hold on to Our HAVA-Compliant Lever Voting System, http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Fight-to-Hold-on-to-Ou-by-andi-novick-080728-948.html and sign this PETITION TO SAVE OUR LEVERS, http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/save_ny_levers.

Andrea Novick, Esq.

Re-Media Election Transparency Coalition
Legal Coordinator, Election Defense Alliance

]]>