Seven Days is the weekly newspaper based in Burlington Vermont. It is the largest weekly newspaper in the state and seen as "alternative." It's a free newspaper. I'm not sure of the distribution but there is a stack of free papers in nearly every store and they all get taken.
After much work, I convinced them to run a story on electronic voting. They hired a freelance writer to do the story. I am glad that the issue got coverage, but not completely thrilled with the article overall.
I was thrilled, however, that they put the story on the front page, and devoted 4 full pages of text.
I am drafting a response that they will hopefully print in next week's editition.
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Voting Machinations
Could electronic election fraud happen in Vermont?
by Kevin J. Kelley (03/01/06).
This Town Meeting Day in Burlington,
<snip>
At least one Vermont expert on election mechanics has a more fundamental concern, however. Richmond resident Gary Beckwith, a WebPages designer and IBM contractor, worries that returns in Burlington and many other places could be doctored by someone tampering with voting machines. To improve safeguards against electoral thievery, Beckwith is working to create a Vermont chapter of the national group United for Secure Elections, which sees a growing danger of vote fraud. (Check election. solarbus.org. for information on Beckwith's efforts.)
In 70 towns and cities, including Burlington, around the state, voters deposit their marked paper ballots in a type of optical scanner that has proven vulnerable to hacking. Beckwith cites a recent test of the scanner in Florida in which hackers were able to falsify the results of a mock election while leaving no trace of their treachery. They did it by manipulating the memory card contained in the same Diebold, Inc. brand of scanner that will count most of the votes cast in Vermont on Town Meeting Day.
"These machines can be hacked to turn election losers into winners and winners into losers," Beckwith says. "It's possible," he offers as an example, "that the result of Bernie Sanders' Senate race could be rigged without any sign of that having happened."
read the article:
http://www.sevendaysvt.com/features/2006/voting-machinations.htmlI will post my response shortly.
gb