Will Election Results be Controlled? Meeting 8:30 Jan.31
Well, we won a battle 8am Friday, but the struggle continues.
The Allegheny County Election Board recessed until 8:30 am Tuesday morning, in Conference Room 1, Court House. They postponed until then a decision whether to buy Diebold voting machines to replace all our lever machines. Over a dozen people showed up on less than 24 hours notice, and asked questions to which Allegheny County Administrative Services didn’t have definite answers.
So the Election Board recessed until Tuesday.
Will we choose voting machines which give Diebold the power to
determine the results in Allegheny County in any election? Maybe!
Why is this decision being made in such haste? Friday we heard a lot of vague talk about state and national deadlines - and we need to contract for new machines in a matter of wee4ks. But the Jan. 31 deadline is DIEBOLD’S. That is the expiration of THEIR option to buy machines at a discount.
Is this savings real? With Diebold, all their equipment and supplies are “proprietary” - so if we need a replacement, we have to buy from them.
Much worse, the computer code is “proprietary,” so nobody can review it. We have no way to know if the computer has been programmed to reduce a candidate’s vote totals in every district by 5%or 10%. We have to trust Diebold’s integrity.
There is also no paper record that can be audited if there is a challenge.
The Allegheny County Administrative Services and the Allegheny County Election Board will meet at 8:30 am Tuesday Jan 31, in Conference Room 1, Court House. The meeting is open to the public. The agenda is a final decision on
selection of new electronic voting machines for every poll in Allegheny
County. As of Friday, there were only two companies under consideration -
Diebold and ES&S.
Diebold made all the machines in Ohio, and the head of Diebold
openly boasted that he would deliver Ohio to George Bush. (He is also
a major financial contributor.) ES&S is owned by his brother.
The computer codes for both companies’ machines are “proprietary,” meaning no one can review the codes. That means that there is no way to tell if the
machines, or some of them, are programmed to reduce the vote count of
certain candidates by five or ten per cent.
Come to the public meeting 8:30 am Tuesday and demand machines with “OPEN SOURCE” codes — computer codes which can be reviewed by the public. Why should we have elections if Diebold can control the results?
CALL members the three members of the Eldction Board Monday - that’s County Executive Dan Onorato, 350-6500, and the two at-large members of County Council, John DeFazio (D), 350-6516, and Dave Fawcett (R), 350-6520. Or e-mail at dfawcett@county.allegheny.pa.us
jdefazio@county.allegheny.pa.us
executive@county.allegheny.pa.us
Demand “Open Source” coding.
More information about this danger to our elections can be seen on the web at www.votergate.tv
I’m sorry about this late notice. The decision to meet Tudsday was made Friday morning.
Love and Peace,
Jonathan Robison