Dangers of HAVA

One of the changes that came out of the Republican controlled Congress after the fiasco of the Butterfly Ballot is the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). It sounds like an excellent thing! Unfortunately, it is like many of the bills Republicans pass with Orwellian names.
This legislation has forced New York State (along with the rest of the nation) to abandon the mechanical machines which are efficent and tamper proof for computerized machines.
The reason mechanical machines have worked so well is that they are set up and repaired by a member of each party. They cannot be rigged by one party. Every vote moves the counter forward by one. At the end of the day members from each party remove a paper record from the machine and lock it up. The machine can be double checked against that paper record. This part of the process is tamper proof.
We are abandoning this for computers. We can't provide enough people with the exepertise from each party to adequately supervise these computerized polls. What many localities are forced to resort to is allowing the manufacturer to "certify". This process is very open to tampering!! For more information read Assemblywoman Lifton's testimony to the Board of Elections.