To My Readers,

In Suffolk County, NY they will be holding a mock election as you will read below.  I received this email from Kara Hahn and below her email to me, is a letter sent out to many Democratic leaders within our county.  Suffolk County is presently under Democratic control and for the life of me; I cannot understand why they are even entertaining the use of these machines given the results of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.  As we all know, both elections were stolen through the help of these computerized voting machines.

Best Regards,

Mary!

 

From:   Legislator Lou D'Amaro

Date:    June 29, 2006

Re:       HAVA Compliance Public Hearing/Special Meeting of the Ways & Means Committee

 

Please be advised that there will be a public meeting at the William H. Rogers Legislative Building on Thursday, July 27th from 4:00pm to 8:00pm.  A public hearing regarding compliance with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) will take place.  In addition, there will be six voting machine companies in attendance with the intent to hold a "mock election" to test the different machine options.   All elected officials are welcome to attend.

 

Please contact my office with any questions you may have.  Thank you.

 

 

Kara Hahn

Presiding Officer William J. Lindsay's Office

Suffolk County Legislature

 

Dear Fellow Democrats,

 

Do you want to know why I have absolutely no faith in these computerized voting machines?  I am going to send you links to two Lou Dobbs programs as well as the one in which Catherine Crier angrily spoke out against them.  Finally, the main stream media is waking up to the fact that these machines are not reliable, can be rigged and we only have to look at the 2000 and the 2004 presidential elections to know this to be true.  For the life of me, I cannot understand why we are even entertaining the use of these machines when our party suffered two blows in both elections.  As a result, you will see the harm that has come upon us all by this Bush regime.  By and large we have had clean elections without the fraud that goes with it in using our lever machines.  By switching over to these computerized voting machines and as reported by Lou Dobb’s the cost will be past onto the taxpayers.  Here is a neat idea, let us just keep the lever machines in order to save money and keep the integrity of our voting process intact here in Suffolk County.  Why take the chance?

 

Please watch this Lou Dobb's video

Now watch this Lou Dobb's video in which they speak of a ‘Trojan Horse’ that anyone can come to a polling place and hack into a machine.  As reported in this feed even various electronic games are more secure than these electronic voting machines.

 

Now, here is the link to Catherine Crier's report, in which she also states that these computerized voting machines are highly hackable.  Once again, Diebold is mentioned.

 

Do you wish to read an alarming article; I suggest you read this one called, Hacking Democracy. I remember printing this out and handing it to an aid working for Congressman Tim Bishop.  I never heard back from the congressman concerning the use of these machines.

But, one of the most damning articles that I have read is Electronic Voting Machines Exposed.  This is what Aviel D. Rubin, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins and technical director of ISI had to say of these machines, “The most fundamental problem with such a voting system is that the entire election hinges on the correctness, robustness, and security of the software within the voting terminal,” the report said. “The model where individual vendors write proprietary code to run our elections appears to be unreliable, and if we do not change the process of designing our voting systems, we will have no confidence that our election results will reflect the will of the electorate.” I would call that alarming.  Wouldn’t you?

When the federal government that is controlled by the Republican Party forces the use of these machines upon us, you know that we are in trouble and yes, democracy is at risk.  I can tell you from listening to many grass roots Democrats around the country that they have lost faith in the electoral process due to the use of these machines.  Many have come away saying, "Why vote?" when they feel that the Republicans will just steal yet another election.

 

I am serious when I say that when we do switch over to these machines, I will either vote by paper ballot or not at all.  To me the only good electronic voting machine is a broken one.

 

Sincerely,

Mary MacElveen

 

PS:  Please pass this on to everyone you know.