[Sosfbay-discuss] Dan Rather: E-Voting Quality Control Unbelievably Shoddy: Entirely Unreliable, Unauditable

[JamBoi at Greens.org]

Revelation: Dan Rather discovered a large part of the problem in Florida
2000 was actually the use of substandard quality paper for the punch card
ballots.

Further Rather found that even the Philippines (where ES&S's machines were
manufactured) rejected the amazingly unreliable eminently crackable M$
Windoze-based vote stealing machines and went with a state of the art
system -- auditable paper!!!  Incredibly he discovered the company's
quality control measures consisted of literally shaking the machines and
passing them if there was no rattling heard!!!  And *these* private
corporation are what we're entrusting our precious democracy too!  Even
the Philippines were more discerning than we've been.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/dan-rather-inve.html
12-minute clip from the show here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1826549866685179676&hl=en


Green is Earth Wisdom!

Drew

______

http://www.miamiherald.com/358/story/202374.html
Those hanging chads just won't go away
Posted on Tue, Aug. 14, 2007

For stand-up comedians and investigative reporters, Florida's performance
in the 2000 election is the gift that just keeps on giving. Latest among
the latter to weigh in is Dan Rather, whose HDNet show tonight offers yet
another theory about what went wrong: crummy paper in the punch-card
ballots, which led to all those hanging you-know-whats.

''We talked to people at the company that made the ballots -- some
workers, some management,'' Rather says. ''They say they were making
quality punch cards for a long while and proud of it. But starting around
1999, the cards were made from what they felt was inferior paper. They
raised concerns about it, but the company's management had them under
pressure to get the ballots out.'' As the expression hanging chad turned
into a national punch line, the workers told Rather they were ordered to
destroy evidence of the poor paper.

The material about the ballots is part of a larger Dan Rather Reports
investigation of voting machines. Most of the show -- which will run 10 to
20 minutes longer than its normal hour -- focuses on the so-called
paperless voting machines that many jurisdictions ordered after the 2000
election problems. Workers at the plants where they were made say the
manufacture was shoddy, quality control nonexistent. The fun gets under
way at 8 p.m.

-- GLENN GARVIN



______

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/dan-rather-inve.html
Dan Rather Investigates Voting Machines -- Uncovers New Surprises About
ES&S Touch-Screens
By Kim Zetter August 13, 2007 | 9:19:17 PM
Categories: E-Voting, Election '08, Glitches and Bugs
Who would have thought that Manila sweatshops would figure prominently in
the manufacture of U.S. voting machines?

It turns out that Election Systems & Software, one of the top voting
machine companies in the country, has its machines assembled in a
Philippines sweatshop. The $3,000 computerized machines at the heart of
America's democratic system are assembled in a factory where workers earn
between $2.15 and $2.50 a day, and the temperature sometimes soars above
90 degrees. This, and other surprising information, was uncovered by
producers of Dan Rather Reports for an hour-long special that broadcasts
tomorrow night on HD Net at 8pm ET and again at 11pm ET (and several other
dates and times after this).

Although an HDNet spokeswoman had planned to send me the entire show
today, she was only able to provide me with a 12-minute clip so far. But
judging by that small preview, the show will be worth watching.

According to the program, ES&S contracts the production of its voting
machines to two companies. The touch-screens themselves are made in the
U.S. by Minnesota-based Bergquist before they're sent to Manila to be
assembled with other parts made in Taiwan and Mainland China at Teletech
(above and below right), a sweatshop factory that is connected to Pivot
International. The latter is a contract engineering firm based in Kansas
that is controlled by the Ching family, a Filipino family with "strong
connections in top political circles" that has been investigated for
suspect business practices and possible tax evasion, Rather reports.

Filipino workers in the Teletech sweatshop told Rather's producers that
they rushed production of the ES&S machines to meet quotas and that the
only testing they conducted on machines was a "vibration" test – which
involved shaking the machines by hand (presumably to determine if there
were any loose parts inside). Even then, only a fraction of the machines
underwent this crude test.

Rather's producers also spoke with an American manufacturing expert who
was hired by Pivot to manage the Manila factory. The expert told Rather
that the touch-screens caused numerous problems and that in 2001 they were
rejecting 30-40 percent of the screens that arrived from Bergquist.

Anyone who has been reading the e-voting posts here will know that ES&S
machines are at the heart of a 2006 election dispute in Sarasota, Florida,
where some 18,000 ballots cast on the company's touch-screen voting
machines showed no vote cast in a congressional race. A memo sent by ES&S
to Florida election officials three months before last November's election
disclosed that the company was aware of problems with some of its
touch-screen machines not responding to touch.

In a story published earlier this year I disclosed that Sarasota officials
failed to post a sign at the polls warning voters that they might have to
press the machines for several seconds to register their selections. I
also examined incident reports filed by poll workers on Election Day
showing that numerous voters reported having problems getting the machines
to register their selection. Ess_calibration_problem Rather's report picks
up on some of this previously reported information and reveals new
information about the machines -- such as the fact that election
administrators in Lee County, Florida, had such serious calibration
problems with their ES&S touch screens in 2003 that they sent 1,800
machines back to ES&S for replacement. When testers touched one candidate
on the screen, the machines registered a vote for a different candidate
(see image at right for demonstration of problem).

If you don't have high-def TV, don't fret. You'll also be able to watch
the show online (an HDNet spokeswoman says they'll post the program online
in full either in advance of tomorrow night's broadcast or shortly
thereafter). Until then, you can watch a 12-minute clip from the show
here. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1826549866685179676&hl=en


-- 

JamBoi
http://www.greencommons.org/blog/63
"Peaceable: the ability to interact peacefully.  A skill set similar to
social or emotional intelligence that is unfortunately rare in America,
but can be developed by all.  The Green Parties need to lead the way in
Peaceableness."