The attempt to have a public hearing on the issue of touch screen voting technology in Winnebago County has taken a turn for the worse. After the full Board could not muster up enough votes to accept voting machine grant money, County Board Chair David Albrecht asked the Judiciary Committee to discuss the issue. Then it was announced that the Judiciary and Information Systems Committees would hold a public hearing on June 14th at the Coughlin Center at 6 p.m.; then the meeting was moved to the County Courthouse as a full county board meeting.
Today we read that the meeting now begins at 5 p.m., with the county supervisors having the opportunity from 5-6 to test the Diebold machine in question. No other vendor has been invited to the meeting. I assume the public can speak at 6 p.m. See Jef Hall's perspective on this.
Having supervisors practice using the machine will prove nothing, of course. The issue here is not how the Diebold machine performs during PR demonstrations. The issue is whether the Help America Vote Act requires states and localities to purchase voting technology that comes with well documented security flaws.
In Colorado, a Denver law firm is planning a lawsuit to block nine counties and the state from purchasing electronic voting machines. Citizens in other states are pursuing similar actions. If Wisconsin election officials continue to ignore the mountain of evidence indicating that electronic voting systems are not yet ready for prime time elections, lawsuits will be filed here too.
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