"When I returned the equipment back to the drop-off point I reported this discrepancy to the officials there. They were jubilant at these results because they said as long as the actual 'people count' and the 'machine count' was within a 10% discrepancy that they had a successful election.
Take hypothetically 1 million voters times 10% you get 100 thousand votes. Now since we have no way to determine who the voters actually voted for because there is no paper trail and it is a felony to audit these systems, there is no public recourse to challenge any election.
"There have been many reports in Broward for example, when voters tried to vote for McBride the machine kept on checking Bush. No matter how many times the ballot was cancelled, the same result happened. It is clear to me the default was set for Bush. Just look at the 104 thousand votes that popped up 2 days after the election, supposedly due to a disc error.
"These were early voting machines that had programmed to shut off when the number of votes exceeded the programmed precinct limit. In other words it wasn't set to accept the thousands more that came to vote. In the Reno case the state prematurely certified the election because 2 weeks later 8,500 new votes turned up in predominately African-American precincts in Miami.
"Over a year ago when the Broward Commission and the Oliphant were touring the county with the new voter systems the people overwhelmingly requested a system with a paper trail. I and others submitted recommendations and I am told that these were all thrown out in lieu of the lobbyists and so called lobbyist experts. I had been asked by the Broward Commission to find out what the criteria for certification was. I spoke with the only manufacturer who had a paper trail and Mike Lindsey who worked for Harris and Roberts in the Division of elections.
"He slipped-- in the conversation-- to tell me that the state did not want to certify any touch screen system that had a paper trail and/or receipt, claiming it was unconstitutional. He had claimed the hard drive had to certified by a laboratory in Huntsville Alabama. The manufacturer was stalled for months and never was able to get the certification from the state to be in the running due to the fact that the state wanted a system that would only optically scan the absentee ballots and incorporate the totals in the touch screen totals.
"I had filed an affidavit about this in Alachua county in September by the deadline to have in writing these facts in the time allotted for the September primary deadline. I would be glad to give you the web site so that you can see this affidavit.
"Also the state of Georgia used touch screen systems as well. The same problems could have occurred there as well."
.....
"All My Respect and Best, Ellen H. Brodsky"
E-Mail From A Florida Poll Worker
Posted on the Independent Newswire on 14 November 2002.
Ref: www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=217171
