(US) 5/06 - So Why Am I Posting These...

Author Message   V. Kurt Bellman Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Formerelecdir Post Number: 174 Registered: 04-2006 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 1 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, May 5, 2006 - 10:14 am:        All, You may be asking yourself why am I, a person who has used a DRE system that I think is pretty okay, posting these articles critical of DRE's? Simple. Because this (HAVA) process is a DEEPLY flawed process. There HAS been paperless electronic voting for over 20 years, as Dr. Shamos has said. My county has used it for 17 years. I ran it for 4 of those 17 years. But before HAVA came to pass, any county that wanted to institute DRE's could take their time, choose carefully the equipment that met their particular needs, physically and legally, and take sufficient time for training of workers and voters. They had the ability to make vendors perform because the jurisdiction (county usually, but not always) had the power. The vendor needed them, not the other way around. The VAST majority of DRE's being installed in all these states had never been used in an actual election until recently. The few vendors that HAD other systems that had been used didn't have the capacity to service the whole country, nor should they have. The new vendors, with their new products that were little more than hastily assembled prototypes, lied their butts off. Every time anyone asked, "Can you do X?", the answer was "Sure, no problem!" Well now it's a big bloody problem, okay? Congress never had any darned business mandating what is essentially a large scale IT project. Large scale IT projects fail over 25% of the time, and this one is failing BIG TIME. And not just DRE's, either. Most statewide voter registries are junk, too. Dear Congress, keep your fingers to yourself and forget about elections, if you can't get it right, which you apparently can't. Let citizens and their local governments figure out how to run elections, because they have the experience and half a clue. Just because you're a Congressman and have demonstrated the ability to GET votes, doesn't mean you know squat about running elections. Look around. I'd say, "Q.E.D." V. Kurt Bellman (and proud to sign it)   John Washburn Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Johnwashburn Post Number: 96 Registered: 02-2006 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, May 5, 2006 - 11:01 am:        Excellent points Kurt. I would only say 25% is too low a failure rate. Here is an excellent overview of several differenct studies on failure rates of IT projects. http://www.it-cortex.com/Stat_Failure_Rate.htm Which of the IT failure factors listed here: http://www.ethix.org/7%20factors.pdf, has HAVA missed?   V. Kurt Bellman Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Formerelecdir Post Number: 178 Registered: 04-2006 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, May 5, 2006 - 11:34 am:        John, I read the page on ethix.org. HAVA's mandates rate a 7 for 7. They hit every one of the reasons why IT projects fail. Impressive batting average, no?   John Washburn Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Johnwashburn Post Number: 97 Registered: 02-2006 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, May 5, 2006 - 1:14 pm:        Yes. Seven for Seven.

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