Milford's New Voting Gizmo's Suspect.

About two months ago I was on the phone speaking with the voter registrars office regarding the new voting gizmo's coming to Milford. These were a particular concern of mine because Moveon.org all but has condemned electronic voting all together.

Quite happily I felt very comfortable to know that our authorities at the voter registrars office have the up most confidence in these new voting machines. Not only are they electronic calculators, but they are backed with a paper receipt making the system pretty much a two tier fail safe unit. So that is what I, and you have been all told.

Just last week, in my mailbox came a little postcard with instructions on how to use this new little voting wonder, and for the first time I learned its name. The unit aptly dubbed the "Diebold optical scan" (see photo) requires us, the voters, to mark a card that we feed through a scanner that then reads our card and records our vote into memory. Eventually, after we have all voted and the polls close, the gizmo publishes the electronic results announcing the winners.


This is the part that gets a bit slippery, because it entails my skepticism and distrust of technology all together. Also, being that I am the CEO of Computerfox Inc., I can expertly speak to the fact that these Diebold machines are not only prone to error, but are about as reliable as your basic home computer. Computers that my company fixes by the thousands in CT.

My paranoia of these "diabolical" machines, as of yesterday became a grim reality. What I suspected of them is appallingly true they do not work reliably. The Daytona beach news journal in Fla. the "capitol state" of voting disasters, all but condemned these machines exposing defects in their memory cards, and unacceptable failure rates that cannot be checked unless the proper manpower is used to supervise these units. This too is difficult because, its designers refuse to give up the computer code. Diabold alleges that despite the integrity of the electoral system, election auditors or computer programmers have no right to look at the computer code. This code is the computer language that is written inside the unit. There is already evidence (see the video below) that this programming language can be tampered with to throw an election.



Diebold indicated, however, that they are committed to examining any problems, but to do so with reticence, in other words someone would have to force them into action. Immediately after learning about this problem I placed a "Diary" at dailykos.com. This is what 17 people said: SEE THE COMMENTS

The overwhelming majority response was shocking and not what I expected, and now once again I find myself challenging the Voter Registrar, and election commission here in our state as should you. Please help voice your opinion to local leaders, to restore trust in our electoral process.

This is the news link to the Daytona Paper. Daytona News on Diebold Fiasco