Read this if you're going to vote!

[TheDeuce]

ALERT: This must get out to EVERY
Democratic voter by November 2nd

Chain-Mail News ALERT!, October 31, 2004

ALERT: EVERY DEMOCRATIC VOTER NEEDS TO KNOW THIS BY
NOVEMBER 2ND!!!:

PROTECT YOUR VOTE!

In view of the possibility electronic voting
machines contain malicious
code favoring Republicans:

DO NOT SELECT THE "Vote Democratic Slate*" OPTION
WHEN IT IS OFFERED.

The Reason: If pro-Republican malicious code exists
in the electronic
voting machines, that code is likely triggered by or
tied to this "Vote
Democratic Slate" function. To be safe, do NOT
identify your vote as
Democratic to the machines' program. Instead, select
each Democratic
candidate individually.

PROTECT YOUR VOTE AND SPREAD THE WORD:

SEND THIS EMAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW AND TO EVERY
NEWS OUTLET YOU USE!


What follows is a post by UserName, Syndicalist, who
wrote on 2004-10-29
12:01:00, describing the danger:

Here's an important heads up ...

Yesterday a friend voted early at a polling
location in Austin. She
voted straight Democratic.
When she did the final check, lo and behold every
vote was for the
Democratic candidates except
that it showed she had voted for Bush/Cheney for
president/vice pres.

She immediately got a poll official. On her vote,
it was corrected.

She called the Travis County Democratic
headquarters. They took all
her information, and told her that
she wasn't the first to report a similar incident
and that they are
looking into it. So check before
you leave the polling booth, and if anything is
wrong, get it
corrected immediately. Report any irregularities
to your local Democratic headquarters. Make sure
you pass this along
to your friends ... hopefully this is all
over the airwaves by tomorrow ...

The Texas voting fraud is for real. I called the
Austin office (Dem.
Nat. Comm.) 512-637-1737 and they said
that it has been happening a lot. They don't know
why but the machines
seem more "sensitive" this year and that
every voter MUST check their summary as the
presidential choice often
rolls over to the republican choice
if you vote straight democrat.

Original Posting:

http://www.livejournal.com/community...2674#t4102674:


http://www.livejournal.com/community...2674#t4102674:>


IMPORTANT: If you vote on electronic voting
machines,
DO NOT SELECT "Vote Democratic Slate*" OPTION WHEN
OFFERED!
*or similar

PROTECT YOUR VOTE AND SPREAD THE WORD:

SEND THIS EMAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW AND TO EVERY
NEWS OUTLET YOU USE!


Regards,
Cybersapian
http://www.cybersapian.com/


(THE PURPOSE OF THIS EMAIL IS TO DISSEMINATE
IMPORTANT NEWS TO THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE: NEWS MOST AMERICANS WILL NEITHER
HEAR NOR READ FROM
AMERICA'S MAJOR MEDIA OUTLETS; NEWS THIS PERSON
BELIEVES IS IMPORTANT
FOR ALL AMERICANS TO KNOW)


(DO NOT SEPARATE THE PRECEEDING TEXT FROM ANY
IDENTIFYING COPYRIGHT
INFORMATION CONTAINED THEREIN)

The eVoting machine used in Travis County Texas,
home to the incident
cited above is the

user posted image

Hart Intercivic eSlate

Here are more incidents from

TRAVIS COUNTY - Election Incident Reporting System:
1-866-OUR-VOTE as of
10/31/2004:

QUOTE
014216 10/22/04, 3:38 PM Machine problem Austin,
Travis County,
Texas Ms. Jones heard a number of reports on the
radio in Austin that
people who are voting on the e-Slate machines and
are voting a straight
democratic ticket have 2 problems: for a few, it
registers as a vote for
Bush; and for all of them, a vote on a referendum
about light rail is
not on the "slate" and does not register on the
straight-ticket vote.
She would like this addressed. There is no paper
trail on the voting.
The election officials appear to be saying that the
Bush-instead
of-Kerry incidents are isolated and few.

014754 10/25/04, 11:32 AM Machine problem
Travis County, Texas
Machines are confusing, if you straight Dem, then go
back to review or
change, a vote for Kerry is changed to a vote for
Bush. But there is no
paper receipt to verify the problem or if the vote
was actually cast for
Bush. Voter just received a warning from her
precinct chair to that
effect.

015252 10/26/04, 9:32 AM Machine problem Travis
County, Texas
Caller reported that she knew of 4 people that voted
a straight
democratice ballot. When they went to reivew their
ballot at the end it
showed that they had voted for Bush. No return phone
call needed, just
wanted to make us aware of problem.

015336 10/26/04, 11:29 AM Machine problem
austin, travis County,
Texas when you vote straight democratic at the end
you have to press
"enter" or "cast ballot" some were pressing enter in
order to see if
there was another page --but when press enter get
Bush as your choice-
so if you press cast ballot at that point you will
then have voted for
Bush. Can be fixed if you notice what has happened
but may not
REVIEW YOUR VOTE BEFORE YOU PRESS THE "VOTE" BUTTON!

[DeviousJ]

This is actually kinda true

http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/travis.asp

But it seems to be down to bad programming rather than malicious code. Good to know they thoroughly tested these things though - not like it's important or anything. How difficult is it to write a multiple choice menu system?

I'd hope everyone checks their vote at the end anyway