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Mar

18

Ohio crime bureau seizes Franklin County BOE voting machines


From Ars Techica:

At the request of election officials, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation has seized voting machines for forensic analysis and has launched a criminal investigation into the Franklin County Board of Elections.

The investigation was launched after Jennifer Brunner, Ohio’s Secretary of State and chief election official, found that a candidate’s name was marked as withdrawn on the electronic voting machine that she used during the recent primaries, an irregularity that was also reported by voters in other precincts. The state attorney general is now working with a team of computer forensic consultants to determine if there was any tampering.

Preliminary analysis conducted by specialists from SysTest Labs indicates that the internal audit capability of the Franklin County voting machines had been manually disabled by county election board programmers last year, making it almost impossible to tell if any nefarious changes have been made to the systems. SysTest also discovered that the election board had failed to adhere to routine machine testing standards and had tested only one machine in each precinct rather than all of the machines.

Anyone feel like Daffy Duck saying, “Oh no. Not t’again”?

Now what?

According to WHIOTV, which conducted a television interview with Brunner, the state will consider dumping the faulty touch-screen voting machines and switching to more reliable optical scanners that read votes from conventional paper ballots. Rep. Kevin DeWine, a state legislator and deputy chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, vehemently opposes returning to paper ballots because doing so would likely cost the state an estimated $64 million. His arguments seem dubious in the face of the growing costs associated with cleaning up the messes created by the defective touch-screen voting systems [that were brought in under former Secretary of State and GOP gubernatorial loser Ken Blackwell - my additon and emphasis].

Ah yes, money before integrity and helping boost and ensure voter confidence, especially in an election year that is seeing record turn-out (with way more Democrats than Republicans in the mix) in Ohio.  Love the priorities.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:28 pm March 18th, 2008 in Elections, Law, Ohio, Politics, Primary, Tech, Voting 

Comments

3 Responses to “Ohio crime bureau seizes Franklin County BOE voting machines”

  1. 1 Joe Amschlinger on March 18th, 2008 12:35 pm

    This whole thing is corrupted through and through. Brunner wants paper, fine, but make sure they all actually are county, which I do not beleive was the case this time in Cuyahoga County. We NEVER had these problems with punch ballots. Thank you to old buzzards in Palm Beach for screwing this up. Lets go back to the lever machines. Low tech and worked!

  2. 2 mr.ed on March 18th, 2008 12:38 pm

    For the best voting machine coverage, go to bradblog.com, which had this months ago.
    At our polling place in Cuyahoga county, several arthritics cursed the tiny (regular) pens and the effort it took to mark the little ovals properly. I had to help them, with both partys’ judges looking over our shoulders.
    P.S. Your vehicle and other stuff you use everyday is designed by people who have no knowledge that there are some not as agile as they are. That includes the new light blue against silver instrument panels.

  3. 3 JAMES RUGGIERO on March 18th, 2008 3:15 pm

    My I also suggest reading this.

    Story behind the 2004 Election lockdown
    http://www.linkto-it.com/ohiovote

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