The Counting of the Votes

In the aftermath of the US American election there have been many questions raised about the validity of the vote totals. Not only did they vary widely from the exit polls, but they also are significantly different, depending on whether a county used a computer-aided voting mechanism or not. See the inconsistant error poll analysis done by eRiposte.



After a friend pointed me to Chuck Herrin's Hack the Vote page, I began to doubt the results of the election. If it is this easy to hack a Diebold machine (I mean, even a middle-aged computer science professor understands every detail of what one needs to do - open up Access, find the file, change the data, save it. Okay, hacking into the Intranet takes a little bit more effort, but it is easy to do), then I do not believe any results that are not independantely verifiable.



Bev Harris at BlackBoxVoting.org has filed suit against some of the counties in Florida. Rebecca Mercuri spells out some simple steps for making an electronic vote verifiable in her Statement on Electronic Voting. To make a long story short - the machines should print a slip with the votes that can be independently verified to match the machine totals.



Why is the American public not taking to the streets like the Ukrainians and demanding accountable voting machines? Why are they not protesting the results of the election? Are they too brainwashed with entertainment TV to care?



My friend Lilian Friedberg hat just posted her observations on all of this, chock full of good links: I Love the Smell of Cold Turkey in the Morning: A Week in the Life of America.