More questions on the reliability of voting machines

Sequoia voting machines has been troubled by allegations of vote irregularities before. (see here, here and here for typical examples). Now Slashdot is reporting that a new analysis of the computer code used by these machines indicates there is probably some truth to the allegations.

The existence of such code appears to violate Federal voting law: "Sequoia blew it on a public records response. ... They appear... to have just vandalized the data as valid databases by stripping the MS-SQL header data off, assuming that would stop us cold. They were wrong. The Linux 'strings' command was able to peel it apart. Nedit was able to digest 800-MB text files. What was revealed was thousands of lines of MS-SQL source code that appears to control or at least influence the logical flow of the election, in violation of a bunch of clauses in the FEC voting system rulebook banning interpreted code, machine modified code and mandating hash checks of voting system code."
Of course, this barely rises to the level of news in the formerly democratic USA.

Continue ReadingMore questions on the reliability of voting machines

Rachel Maddow on the abhorrent new “poll tax”

Rachel Maddow is so very very right about the new "poll tax." There is now excuse why people should be standing in line for 2, 4 or 8 hours, waiting to exercise their fundamental right to vote.  Time is money, and the de facto system in place in many parts…

Continue ReadingRachel Maddow on the abhorrent new “poll tax”