Voting Machine, Voting Machines Quotes
Diebold was the manufacturer of Computerized Voting Machines which had more than 130,000 in service by 2006 serving millions of voters. The University of Maryland and others had done studies on the Diebold machines and demonstrated that there were a number of different ways that the vote count could be tampered with by someone wishing to control the vote results. Although not illegal for a voting machine manufacturer with knowledge of how to rig their voting machines, this quotation was used by the many people who opposed computerized voting machines generically and many who suspected a strong partisan vote rigging capability to support their positions.
Without a paper trail, there is no way to audit an election to prove that there ahs not been any tamering with the vote counting, the machines that do the counting or the processes of aggregating the results of all the machines in a state ort other election district. Without a hard copy paper trail, there is no way to be certain that some of the voting or aggregating machines had not been hacked and manipualted.
At the time most legislatures never had recorded votes but instead often depended on voice votes and other methods. Edison’s invention was a huge failure. Transparency was not a popular concept amongst politicians as it still is not, but some standards have changed.
The voting problems we have had are managerially and technology solvable but politically each solution is perceived as favoring one of the political parties in the particular jurisdiction and therefore there is resistance to the change.
More than 80 voting machines in Detroit malfunctioned on Election Day resulting in ballot discrepancies in 59% of precincts that raise questions about the reliability of the 2016 Presidential Vote in Michigan. The state of Michigan, like many other states, would not approprate sufficient funds toi keep election equipment properly maintained. What was an irony about the 2016 Election errors in Detroit, the Michican State Law actually forbade doing manual recounts. Polioticans throughout America during that decade had been passing all kinds of legislation to prevent voting by people why were ineligible (a problem which was almsot non existant) and would do very little to get their own election commissions the equipment and personnel that they needed to avoid vote counting errors.
