The real issue from the Iowa straw polls - ongoing voting machine difficulties

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/08/ames_a_partial_recount_confirm.php

 

A sampling of the less-loony and more relevant comments from The Atlantic's recent posts about the straw poll:

 

 

Bizarre... those electronic voting machines are a farce. (Counting votes shouldn't be that hard.)

Did anyone else say "WTF" that it would cost $184,000 for a full paper recount (of 14,000 ballots?)

Ten people could do that in 15 minutes...

 

Three volunteers can count and record one vote every 2 seconds (One to count, one to record, one to oversee). If you had five stations where this was going on, that's just 15 volunteers counting 150 votes a minute, or 9000 votes an hour.

In just over 90 minutes, they could have hand counted, recorded, and verified all the PAPER votes cast at the straw poll without spending a dime.

And how much did those Diebold machines cost? I bet more than a dime.
And how faulty are they? Apparently, they have problems every single election—even in a straw poll.

 

 

I'm so glad California ditched Diebold.  Here are some details on that:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070729-california-voting-machine-security-tests-uncover-serious-vulnerabilities.html

(I get what Feinstein's saying, but this has been an issue for at least 7 years - if Congress hadn't been doing nothing for 6 years, maybe they wouldn't be so up against the wall now...)

 

http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/08/california_secr_1.html

Debra Bowen will definitely have my vote in 2010 (and I'll know it's been safely counted thanks to her).