Help! My county votes Monday on switch to MicroVote Infinity

[guruoo]

Anyone have the lowdown on this machine?
Story: http://theleafchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060210/NEWS01/602100343/1002&template=printart


Greg Williamson/The Leaf-Chronicle
IN WITH THE NEW — Vickie Koelamn, Montgomery County Administrator
of Elections, holds a voting machine the county is considering buying.
The MicroVote Infinity machine fits in a small case and weighs 28 pounds.


Greg Williamson/The Leaf-Chronicle
OUT WITH THE OLD? — Koelman opens an older election machine.
The new voting machine is at her right.

[sasha031]

1. I am sorry, I don't trust voting machines period

Mark Crispen Miller has a website, I would contact him...
http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/

also Bradblog http://www.bradblog.com/

HAVA has been the beginning to the end of our Democracy x(

[phoebe]

2. here are the people involved

http://www.microvote.com/contacts.htm


iisw.cerias.purdue.edu/calendar/details.php?event=137878&.../index.php
snip

James Ries, President and Chief Operating Officer, MicroVote General Corporation

James M. Ries, President and Chief Operating Officer, MicroVote General Corp., is a 1983 Graduate of Purdue University's Krannert School of Business. MicroVote General Corporation, founded in 1982, is an industry leader in developing and manufacturing of Direct Record Electronic (D.R.E.) voting systems. The founding partner, James Ries Sr. (Purdue Graduate 1958), has been directly involved in the election industry for nearly 40 years and designed one of the first D.R.E. devices with future needs in mind. Since the first installation in 1985 (Noble County, IN), MicroVote has sold close to 200 municipalities nationwide and continues to provide the most advance voting solutions. Currently, there are thirty-six (36) counties utilizing MicroVote products and services in the state of Indiana.

http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=767
apparently Mr. Ries has close ties to Richardson, a Republican and has donated to her campaigns.

snip

Top state election officials tend to work closely with the vendors of voting equipment. Republican Kathy Richardson, an Indiana State Representative who was Indiana's Hamilton County Clerk, purchased $1.3 million worth of electronic voting equipment from MicroVote, and says she plans to purchase $700,000 more. She told WISH-TV, “When you work with a vendor, you develop a relationship.” She works closely indeed. MicroVote's president, James Ries Jr., has donated to Richardson's campaign. Apparently, voting equipment companies don't see that as a conflict.

Wendy Orange, who recently resigned her job as project manager at ES&S (another voting equipment company), was working with Indiana election officials, with her office inside the election board's warehouse. She stated that voting equipment companies say “trust us,” and they have been trusted for years. But has that trust been earned? Can voters really “trust” the products and the companies who make them?

When Ries, the MicroVote President, was asked how a citizen could know if his/her voted counted, he replied, “It's one of those areas of a leap of faith. You really do have to have a faith in your local jurisdiction, that they are conducting equitable elections in the best faith of the voters. The security for the voter, once again, is the acceptance of good judgment by a local board. Quite frankly, it's very difficult to convince somebody how do I know my vote counted…. There is no way to link that individual ballot back to that individual voter.”

more

http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647598&nav=0Ra7JXq2

I-Team: We have records that show, Jim (Sr.), that you made political contributions to State Representative Kathy Richardson, a Republican who first began purchasing MicroVote equipment in 1990 when she was Hamilton County clerk. We understand she also serves as Hamilton County Election Administrator and plans to purchase more MicroVote equipment.

Ries Sr.: I've known Kathy forever. The purchase was there already. She's a long-time friend. Back when she was county clerk I knew her. And I don't hesitate if she asks or if her party asks me to donate to her re-election, I'd like to help her out.

(According to Federal Election Commission records, the senior Ries also made a $1,000 donation to Republican John R. Price’s 1997 campaign run for the U.S. Senate. Price was MicroVote’s attorney for the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, lawsuit and appeal.)

I-Team: Tell us about Mecklenberg County, North Carolina, a federal investigation and federal indictments against the county’s election administrator and MicroVote salesman Ed O’Day. He was convicted of bribery and kickbacks made over a seven-year period, according to stories in the Charlotte Observer.

Ries Jr.: Ed O'Day was an independent agent of MicroVote – not a direct employee but a manufacturer's representative for our product in North and South Carolina. He was convicted of bribing a public official, something we had no knowledge of, nor did we have any input. Unfortunately he's still out selling equipment to election officials, which surprised us all.

I-Team: What about Gary Greenhalgh, a former Federal Election Commission official who was your national sales director. You sued him in 1997. Why?

Ries Jr.: Gary Greenhalgh, on the other hand, was a direct employee. Trade secret violations there. Probably the most damaging, he was actually selling the equipment being released from Montgomery County to our customers on the side. And it violated his working contract with us that he was selling outside of MicroVote's jurisdiction.

I-Team: A Los Angeles Times news story says Greenhalgh told an audience in 1993 that, in writing bids for almost 30 government contracts over two years as national sales director for MicroVote, not one election director asked about protecting ballots from tampering or about how to audit vote counts – matters looming large in Florida. He said influence is more important than a quality product in his industry. How do you respond to that?

Ries Jr.: Influence can mean good selling skills. Influence doesn't have to mean bribery or kickbacks. He’s a bit of a loose cannon…

(Think that just about says it all..)

I-Team: How does the voter know that his or her vote is counted correctly?

Ries Jr.: It's one of those areas of a leap of faith. That you really do have to have a faith in your local jurisdiction, that they are conducting equitable elections in the best faith of the voters. The security for the voter, once again, is the acceptance of good judgment by a local board. Quite frankly it's very difficult to convince somebody how do I know my vote counted.

I-Team: How do they know that when they voted for Candidate X that their vote for Candidate X was recorded?

Ries Jr.: Well, because of identity or lack of identity with records, there's really no way that I could prove to a voter, post tally, that their vote exactly counted the way that they voted it. Even in a paper-based system, that identity leaves the voter once that envelope is opened and the ballot is counted. There is no way to link that individual ballot back to that individual voter. And I understand some of the scrutiny towards the security and certainly the question asked, “How do I know my vote counts.” We do need to have some measure available to show them it does count.

[guruoo]

3. Thanks! MicroVote claims their machine is "impenetrable", because...

it's not connected to any network. And they also say
a hard copy (paper trail) record is available as an option.
At least that what they told Warren County N.C. ...

http://www.hendersondispatch.com/articles/2004/04/09/news/news05.txt
<snip>
'The MicroVote technology is reliable, he said, and has been on the market for nearly two decades. The second-generation Infinity panels, which Warren owns, were first produced in 1998.

Only someone with intimate knowledge of the way the MicroVote Infinity is programmed and manufactured could taint the voting tally, McFadyen said.

"This board or this department does not have the ability to tamper with those machines," he said.

He described MicroVote Infinity security as impenetrable because the machines are not connected to a network.

The panels do not provide paper receipts to voters, although they could do so if required by legislation. Elections officials can print audit trails and vote tallies with the machines.'
<snip>

[Stevepol]

4. Micro-Vote is used in Sedgwick County KS and I've written LTTEs

about it. Recently, I wrote a LTTE and mentioned a couple fx about the MV machine: that it miscounted badly in Boone County IN in 2003, registering about 140,000 votes in a county with 19,000 registered voters (something like that). I also noted that Montgomery County PA had sued MV for $1M because the machines miscounted and malfunctioned and the county won and the settlement was upheld in 2003. My feeling when I wrote the LTTE was that MV was just a small player and probably on the up and up. However, the machine does not have a VVPBT. It has a scroll on the inside of the machine, which the voter can't see, that is supposed to record the vote and be useable in case of contested elections. Of course, there's no assurance that the scroll has any meaningful relationship to the way the voter purportedly casts his/her vote, so any recount shows nothing.

In any case, after I published the letter (I tried as usual to get in something about the exit polls and the other polls that indicate pretty consistently and clearly that electronic voting machines are counting fraudulently, but the newspapers won't allow that in), the editor of the paper, wrote me several anxious, even frantic emails it seemed to me, saying I needed to call some guy from MV who wanted to talk to me. I considered taping the conversation and now wish I had. My feeling now after talking to the MV sales rep is that this company is just as fraudulent as the others, at least in their sales and marketing practices and certainly in the technology of their machines.

Anyway, as soon as he got on he accused me of defaming the company and demanded my address etc., as if he was going to sue me for this letter. I'm sure this was the attitude he pulled on the editor and explains the editors frantic emails. The guy proceeded to lie repeatedly about what had happened in Montgomery County PA, saying the court issue had nothing to do with the miscounting and that the machines had been OK and used later, etc. even tho I had the article right on the desk in front of me as I talked from the law firm that had won the case. The article about Boone County has even showed up in Reader's Digest, and the guy brought that up in our conversation. "Why don't you sue the Reader's Digest, then?" I asked him.

Anyway, you can find all the info you want about MV on the internet. Some guy from DU, I forget who sent me the info I used but I'm sure if you google microvote and the above fx you'll find all you need to know about the quality of their machine and the aims of the company. They've even produced a video (in which a couple words are misspelled) purporting to show how superior machines without paper traisl are to thos with a paper trail.

All hogwash of course. By the way, the machines in Montgomery Cty PA were actually used again in Mecklenburg NC where they again badly malfunctioned in 04 and the guy who bought the used machines was indicted for taking a bribe from a MV salesman who's now head of some sort of electronic voting thing in GA or was not too long ago. In other wds, this company, tho it denies it, is just as corrupt as any of the others. I'd hoped that wasn't true, but I think now it is.

[guruoo]

5. In other words, I might as well

give up on this, dig a bunker and begin stacking ammo?