- People with disabilities had not been meaningfully involved in the process, as stated passionately last Wednesday by Mike Huckaby of the National Federation of the Blind of Wisconsin.
- The Board ignored the wishes of two of its OWN committees, Judiciary and Information Systems, to hold a real public hearing with demonstrations of all State Elections Board approved technologies.
- The Board never heard from an expert on voting equipment technology to gain an understanding of the security flaws inherent in the Diebold TSx.
In my remarks I asked the Board to consider the fact that when each of them goes to vote and is faced with the choice of the optical scan machine or the TSx, they will all choose to vote with the optical scan. Why? Because the optical scan has a hard copy, voter marked ballot to return to in case of recount, and because of the doubts associated with the TSx. No one in their right mind, given the choice, would choose the TSx. So, if a non-disabled person wouldn't choose the TSx, why would they vote to dump it on people with disabilities? The 28 violated the 21st century election technology golden rule: "Vote on a technology for others as you would have have them vote for you."
See Babblemur's coverage of Supervisor Donna Lohry's courageous remarks at the meeting. Donna was the only supervisor to cut through the crap and chide the clerks for continuing to insist on the TSx in spite of the mountain of evidence suggeting it is a lemon not worth the risk.
Local voting rights activists now must decide whether to seek court action to prevent these machines from entering Winnebago County polling places. Stay tuned.
4 comments:
Tony,
I was originally planning on trying to organize a boycott of the use of the touch screens, once implemented, but now I am tempted to vote on the touch screen for the primary on the Green Party ballot. Do you think the Diebold touchscreens will be able to handle a green party primary ballot? Will there even be one?
On the one hand, for the public good the touch screens should be avoided like the plague and do what someone claimed and sit in the corner collecting dust. But on the other hand, maybe they should be put to the stress test during a less important election such as the primaries.
What's your take?
Babs,
Legally there must be a Green primary ballot, so I am assuming the touch screen will have it. The Lautenschlager - Falk Democratic primary, however, in which many Greens will be voting, makes it unlikely that there will be enough Green primary voters to seriously test the system. Unfortunately as you know, Wisconsin does not allow crossover voting on primary day, so you can't vote for Lautenschlager and then vote for Mike LaForest (Green) for Secretary of State, for example.
In the absence of an attempt to use the courts to block the use of hte machines, I think the boycott strategy makes much sense. --Tony
Responsible,
I could be wrong but I don't think Weber changed his vote. On May 16th he expressed many concerns about the technology, but I think he still ended up siding with the clerks that night.
S.B., a front page story on this for the first issue of the AT in fall would be a good place to start. --Tony
I congratulate all of the people who made sure their voces were heard on this issue and to the Supervisors who took courageous stands. As disappointing and as serious as the implications of this vote are, it wasn't all that long ago that this may have not become such a public issue. Perhaps that, itself, is type of victory.
How well has Frank hit the nail on the head here?
Kay
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