SC League Of Women Voters Issue Critical Report On Electronic Voting

Coinciding with Eugene Platt’s efforts to draw attention to the failings of SC’s electronic voting machines comes a critical report from the South Carolina League of Women Voters.

The LWV found numerous examples of unaccountable overvotes and other alarming discrepancies in the audited returns from Richland County in the November 2010 election.  Authors Duncan A. Buell, Eleanor Hare, Frank Heindel and Chip Moore have produced an indictment of the electronic voting system that must be answered by the state.

The South Carolina Green Party is formally opposed to unverifiable electronic voting. The South Carolina State Election Commission’s use of the ES&S voting machines is an expensive boondoggle.

Electronic Voting. Flickr photo by Nathan Gibbs. Reproduced under Creative Commons License.

It is astounding that the State Election Commission is perfectly aware that there have been problems with the machines.  Yet prior to the 2008 elections SCSEC spokesman Gary Baum said:

“Other states have had problems, which have led to questions about our system; but things that apply to other states don’t apply to South Carolina.”

Baum’s attitude is typical of a self-satisfied politician, and is unworthy of a public servant.  South Carolinians deserve better.  We hope that other public officials will follow Platt’s lead and other councils will condemn the electronic voting machines and recommend verifiable voting alternatives.

As William Moredock of the Columbia City Paper reported on Feb 15:

In the Bluff precinct there were 772 votes not counted.  According to the report entire precincts were missing data,  “Gadsden and Riverside precincts (numbers 327 and 362, respectively) are entirely missing from both the event log and the vote image file.”

Not only are there cases of votes not being counted, in seven precincts there are more votes certified than were in the vote image file.

The article is here:  http://www.columbiacitypaper.com/2011/02/15/voting-machine-problems/

Read the report from the League of Women Voters here: http://lwvsc.org/files/richlandauditpaper.pdf

Read Columbia journalist William Moredock’s column on the dangers of electronic voting here: http://www.columbiacitypaper.com/2010/09/29/democracy-under-assault/

For United States Senate: Tom Clements

2010 South Carolina Green Party Candidate For United States Senate: Tom Clements

Tom Clements for United States Senate

Tom Clements is currently the Southeastern Nuclear Campaign Coordinator for the US branch of Friends of the Earth, a full-time position he has held since January 2008. Tom worked for 13 years as a nuclear campaigner with the Greenpeace International nuclear campaign and for three years was the director of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington, DC, where he worked on a host of issues related to proliferation of nuclear materials and technology. In the past, Tom has served as a volunteer with the Red Cross, Peace Brigades International, and with the Talking Books Program in Georgia. Tom has a Masters in Forest resources from the University of Georgia and a BA from Emory University. He is a sixth generation Georgian who was born in Savannah. In 2009, Tom won the Grassroots Activist of the Year award from the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (umbrella group of NGO’s working around Department Of Energy nuclear sites) and also won the Thunder and Lightning activist award from the S.C. Progressive Network in 2009.

Visit the Tom Clements for Senate Facebook page here.

Read about the rest of the SC Green Party candidates for state and federal office here:

SC Green Party 2010 Candidates