by dugoboy » Fri Sep 22, 2006 7:54 pm
link:<!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11717105/robert_f_kennedy_jr__will_the_next_election_be_hacked" target="top"><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Will The Next Election Be Hacked?</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> </a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>Fresh disasters at the polls -- and new evidence from an industry insider -- prove that electronic voting machines can't be trusted. <br><br>ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.<br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://i.realone.com/assets/rn/img/9/7/9/5/11755979-11755982-slarge.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>The debacle of the 2000 presidential election made it all too apparent to most Americans that our electoral system is broken. And private-sector entrepreneurs were quick to offer a fix: Touch-screen voting machines, promised the industry and its lobbyists, would make voting as easy and reliable as withdrawing cash from an ATM. Congress, always ready with funds for needy industries, swiftly authorized $3.9 billion to upgrade the nation's election systems - with much of the money devoted to installing electronic voting machines in each of America's 180,000 precincts. But as midterm elections approach this November, electronic voting machines are making things worse instead of better. Studies have demonstrated that hackers can easily rig the technology to fix an election - and across the country this year, faulty equipment and lax security have repeatedly undermined election primaries. In Tarrant County, Texas, electronic machines counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were actually cast. In San Diego, poll workers took machines home for unsupervised "sleepovers" before the vote, leaving the equipment vulnerable to tampering. And in Ohio - where, as I recently reported in "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" [RS 1002], dirty tricks may have cost John Kerry the presidency - a government report uncovered large and unexplained discrepancies in vote totals recorded by machines in Cuyahoga County. <p>___________________________________________<br>"BushCo aren't incompetent...they are Complicit!" -Me<br><br>"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act" -George Orwell<br><br>"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it - always." -Mahatma Gandhi</p><i></i>
