Friday, February 26, 2010

Voting Monolopy?

yes, if the Justice Department allows Election Systems and Software (ESS)to acquire Diebold's election division. If this acquisition goes through 70% of all of American electronic voting machines will be made/ controlled/ serviced by one company.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 [(HAVA) for more information go to www.fec.gov/hava/hava.htm ] which was supposed to help alleviate hanging chads and mismarked votes by upgrading voting machines.
Not only are electronic voting machine's technology (and programming) considered propreitary information, thus, the public (government) will not have access to the code to check reliability or verify votes and the machines are a computer hacker's dream. Here is a collection of NYT editorials on the problems with electronic voting from 2004-6:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/making-votes-count.html?pagewanted=all

There is also a fear that with ESS holding 0-% of the market it will be harder for election jurisdictions to negotiate a fair and equal price. Thus, today's NYT's editorial is about the Justice Department using its antitrust powers to ensure that public interest is served.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/opinion/26fri3.html?ref=todayspaper


Here is the web page with contacts for AG Holder at the Justice Department:
http://www.justice.gov/contact-us.html
email: AskDOJ at usdoj.gov

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