Is there any logical reasoning behind mistrusting electronic voting machines?

Question

I just don't seem to get the paranoia. Why shouldn't they be able to handle all our elections and save us the mess of Florida-style hand counts?

Answer 1

Attempts were made to examine the code used in the machines in Florida.  The attempt

was blocked in the courts by the GOP citing "proprietary/trade secrecy" protections under law.  Upshot is that the

DNC could not ascertain how the machines tabulated votes and how accurately.  As mentioned above: it is easy to

write code to alter tabulations in any number of ways.  A scary thought:  why did VNS suddenly fail to release exit

poll data?

The machines have been taken home for the week-end...WTF

Answer 2

no. McCain needs all the help he can get

Mc Cain and Palin will win with 48 % of the vote..so the fix is in

Yes, we need the Dieboldt...but after this election you will see their

use 100%

Answer 3

People are technophobes. They probably just watched the Transformers movie, and are afraid Starscream will get the election if we vote on a machine.

Answer 4

If the firmware in them was open source, I'd trust them.

Answer 5

Well, Diebold systems have been proven to be hackable and the votes changed and Sequia Systems is owned by a company ran by Hugo chavez and venezuelan businessmen, so maybe

Answer 6

it has been shown that they can be hacked .That is why some people have virus protection, and  odd that we do no require  paper back-up

Answer 7

  Yes, At the end of the evening all votes from the machine must be counted and accounted for, so first you check machine for votes, then the number of voting cards handed out must match, then number of people voted must match get it, here is the mistrust you can alter the numbers from the machines manually, or if some one say this  is were they are suppose to vote you write them in , you can write in as many as you want to and you can manually change who was voted for on the voting machine, you can when you are handed the voters info card change who they want before they vote it will throw off the count therefore you have to match them up manually and you could have already changed the vote so when then number don't match you make them match manually.   On the other hand if start out manually you end manually meaning no one but the voter handles the voting sheet worker only can count them and by the way if your vote got change before you voted and the counts don't match your vote don't count and you'll never know it.

Answer 8

For some reason Democrats are complaining that Diebold won't reveal the source code.  DUH!  Revealing the source code would only allow people to corrupt it!  The less people that know that code the more likely a legitimate election will occur.

Answer 9

There is no way to audit most of them.  There's no way to know if they've been manipulated or if they're counting accurately.  That's not paranoia - the Republicans have shown an iron will when it comes to interfering with the ability of people, particularly poor people or minorities, to vote.  They cannot be trusted with a technology that allows the vote to be manipulated by will.

You can call me paranoid if you like.  I say the current state of the voter rolls, and which group of people is most likely to be the target of lies concerning election day, speak for themselves.

Answer 10

Undoubtedly they can be made safe and fraud free.

On the other hand if things go wrong it is likely to go very wrong indeed.

I have this reoccurring nightmare of the People that program and run Yahoo answers being in charge of the voting machines.

You'd enter your vote, but fall into the middle of a coffee break to wake up next morning to find out Ronnie Reagan was re- elected as president .

( or Bart Simpson as a surprise choice ).