Will the election in Pennsylvania actually reflect the votes?

House GOP Leaders and White House Deliver Blow to Verifiable Election

After a year of consideration, the House today unexpectedly failed to pass in a streamlined process a bill that would have authorized funding for states to replace paperless electronic voting machines in time for the presidential election in November.

"Our voting systems are in shambles, and seven months before we choose our next president, the White House and House Republican leaders today delivered a blow to secure elections and the ability to conduct meaningful recounts," said Common Cause President Bob Edgar. "The United States is spending billions of dollars to build democracy overseas, yet our own Congress turned its back on the workings of our own democracy."

At stake is Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008. The bill had been placed on the House "suspension" calendar, meaning it needed two-thirds support to pass. Democrats and Republicans last week had reached agreement and passage was expected today.

Then the White House at the eleventh hour issued a statement urging the House to vote against the bill. And, in an unexpected move, Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI), the ranking member of the House Administration Committee, and Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), the minority whip, also came out against the bill.

Gee... could it be that if all the votes actually are counted, Republicans lose? Is that why they resort to all those illegal activities like ... oh, preventing people from actually voting as in caging, phone blocking, mocking women voters, losing voters' ballots, failures in programming and protection of the electronic voter machines, preventing recounts, declaring there was Democratic voter fraud when there was none (it's called projection)?

Remember what Paul Krugman said about Republicans:

The Republican Party’s adherence to an outdated ideology leaves it with big problems. It can’t offer domestic policies that respond to the public’s real needs. So how can it win elections?

The answer, for a while, was a combination of distraction and disenfranchisement.

Do you really think the Republicans are going to let the Democrats get their way this time?

Will they make sure it will be Hillary that runs against McCain because she might lose?

Remember what Greg Palast said:

BuzzFlash: You’re having incredible success with the new expanded paperback edition of Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans -- Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Of course, the electronic voting machines and how they function is a very significant issue, but your specialty has really been how the Bush/Rove GOP political machine keeps persons who are likely to vote Democratic or Independent from voting.

Greg Palast: Yes. People ask me: Are they going to steal the 2008 election? No, they’ve already stolen the 2008 election. We still have a chance of swiping it back, but the reason I’ve expanded and put out the new edition of Armed Madhouse is to tell you how they will steal in 2008, and what to do about it.

Just a heads up. Just because they've gutted the Treasury, ruined the economy, sunk us neck-deep into the quagmire of two un-winnable wars, destroyed the Constitution.. even with all that, these Republicans who hate government still think they should govern.

And they will continue to steal elections to prove it.


Update at Bradblog:

This Tuesday's crucial contest will be primarily run on 100% faith-based, Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen or push-button) e-voting machines across the state. There will be no way to determine after the election whether the computers have accurately recorded, or not, the intent of those voters who voted on them. As VerifiedVoting.org summarizes the crucial contest, it "will be essentially unrecountable, unverifiable, and unauditable."

crossposted at Rants from the Rookery

Curiouser and curiouser

Via Avedon Carol of the Sideshow, a very curious thing ...

More than a hundred computer chips containing voting machine software were lost or stolen during transit in California this week.

Two cardboard shipping tubes containing 174 EPROMs loaded with voting machine software were sent via Federal Express on December 13th from the secretary of state's office in Sacramento to election officials in San Diego County for use in optical-scan machines made by Diebold Election Systems. But on Monday, the two shipping tubes arrived empty.

One of the empty tubes arrived with no lid on the end of it to close the tube; the second tube had a lid, but it was loosely taped shut.

Nicole Winger, spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office, says that the California highway patrol and the Sacramento County sheriff's department are investigating whether the chips fell out of the tubes or were stolen.

The chips contained firmware to run the optical-scan equipment that San Diego uses in its central counting office.

According to Winger, chips with the new firmware were sent out to nineteen California counties that use the Diebold optical-scan voting machines. Only San Diego County reported not receiving the chips. The new firmware was being shipped to the counties because previous software had been changed following a top-to-bottom review of voting machine software and hardware that the state had recently completed.

Diebold, which recently changed its name to Premier Election Solutions, asked the secretary of state's office to observe the preparation, packaging and shipping of the chips. Winger says this was all done from the secretary of state's office, with both state staff and Diebold staff present. Winger says Federal Express is Diebold's preferred shipping method for delivering its product to counties. She said the state is currently working out plans to deliver new chips to San Diego and that preparations for the presidential primary election on February 5th will not be delayed by the mailing mishap.

I should note that San Diego filed suit against California Secretary of State Debra Bowen this week for a new requirement she has instituted that compels counties using voting machines to conduct hand recounts of 10 percent of randomly selected precincts in races in which the margin of victory is less than half of 1 percent. State law requires electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail, and California law already requires counties to conduct a hand count of 1 percent of randomly selected precincts after an election -- a move that, in the case of ballots cast on electronic voting machines, can help catch discrepancies between the digital votes and the paper records.

San Diego County's registrar of voters, Deborah Seiler, says the extra 10 percent requirement would cause more work for election staff and delay election results. She says Bowen overstepped her legislative authority in demanding the hand count and wants a court to exclude San Diego from the requirement.

The article ends with this stunner:

Seiler is a former sales representative for Diebold Election Systems.

Gee... do you think the heist of the computer chips will prevent the electronic voting machines from being used? No?

How very curious....

(crossposted at Rants from the Rookery)