Reply #4: No they can't...

[DubyaSux]

This type of hysteria only contributes to not getting accurate votes. I think Avi Ruben and Bev Harris are truly the spawn of Satan for getting people to beleive this crap.

It would take a conspiracy of democrats AND republicans beyond imagination to get evoting to purposely alter votes. Even if they figured out a machine that would favor republicans, they would need to get it through random election mode audits at the various evoting companies (diebold isn't the only game in town), past election official audits, and random audits for certification (where they pull them out of production and audit the results).

Every "shortcoming" found with evoting resulted from no election commission control - every freaking one of them. In fact the SAIC stated in it's report for Maryland:

"Indeed, Professor Rubin states repeatedly in his paper that he does not know how the system operates in an election and he further identifies the assumptions that he used to reach his conclusions. In those cases where these assumptions concerning operational or management controls were incorrect, the resultant conclusions were, unsurprisingly, also incorrect"

It's much easier to get an unskilled person to stuff a ballot box or discard votes than find highly skilled engineers and technicians to become part of some improbable conspiracy.

I don't have any problem holding evoting to the highest standards. But it's completely disingenuous to hold them to a standard you won't hold to existing methods because you think it's a freeper conspiracy.

How come it's ok to hate Diebold because the CEO contributed to the RNC, but ignore the fact that Avi Rubin was on the board of VoteHere.com, a Diebold competitor when he wrote his report?

God, I hate republicans. But I hate political driven paranoia more because it creates more damage in spite of itself.