According to Massachusetts election integrity groups, Galvin’s office sent out requests for proposals to voting machine companies only last fall, and narrowed the choices down to three for serious consideration. For most of this year, anxious town clerks who have asked the elections division what machines they may need to by, have been told that these three options are still being evaluated. They are: the AutoMARK, the Hart InterCivic eSlate, and the Diebold AccuVote TSX touchscreen voting machine!
John Bonifaz would not consider bringing proprietary Diebold touchscreen voting to Massachusetts. In his Voters’ Bill of Rights he writes,
1. Count every vote
The right to vote includes the right to have our votes properly counted.
We must ensure that every citizen’s vote will be counted. This includes a guarantee of open and transparent elections with verified voting, paper trails, hand-recorded paper ballots, and access to the source codes for, and random audits of, electronic voting machines. It also includes a guarantee that we the people, through our government, will control our voting machines not private companies.
- Hand-recorded paper ballots.
- Open access to the source code and data in the machines
- Full public ownership of voting machines.
Instead of considering whether it’s okay to give up paper ballots, let’s make sure we keep them, and demand #2 and #3 too. Count every vote!
(I am John Bonifaz’s campaign blogger. I’ve been increasingly distressed through much of this year that our elections division was still considering the Diebold touchscreen voting machine, and half-expected Galvin to issue some statement rejecting that option long before now. But election day is here and he still hasn’t.)
I’d love to recommend this post, but I can’t.
<
p>
Good stuff as always, Cos.
Now I can…. Weird.
Recommend buttons have been appearing and disappearing apparently at random, recently.