Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.
Brad Friedman at the Brad Blog has been keeping up on the latest too-real news about the nation’s voting machines and the people who sell, buy and operate them. Two recent postings send the outrage meter way into the red.
First is California’s continuing effort to clean up the mess it’s made over the last few years. It’s going to be harder than anyone imagined. As we learn in this post:
Even the audit log system on current versions of Premier Election Solutions’ (formerly Diebold’s) electronic voting and tabulating systems — used in some 34 states across the nation — fail to record the wholesale deletion of ballots. Even when ballots are deleted on the same day as an election. That’s the shocking admission heard today from Justin Bales, Premier’s Western Region manager, at a State of California public hearing on the possible decertification of Diebold/Premier’s tabulator system, GEMS v. 1.18.19.
Then there’s the incredible charges in Kentucky, where officials are said to have literally changed votes after the fact:
The Kentucky officials arrested and indicted today, “including the circuit court judge, the county clerk, and election officers” of Clay County, have been charged with “chang[ing] votes at the voting machine” and showing others how to do it!
It all makes you wonder if we’re ever going to have voting we can trust.