that does not mean that the state has accurately vetted or tested them, merely that they were able to get government approval

No Bryan, you are incorrect. Do you honestly think that a state will just randomly place voting machines for the public to use without independently verifying their operation and security complies with standards such as FISMA and NIST publications? I know you understand risk assessments and procedures and how they work.

You say that people do not trust voting machines because they fear it has more to do with government kickbacks than IA risk assessments and compliance? I wonder if that’s because hysterical bloggers post pieces that undermine the confidence in the voting process?

Well, the Democrat recount is over. Nothing changed. Differences in the results were very minuscule, and well below the expected variance of the voting machines.

I do not see how the point of the recount is to undermine the confidence of the voting public, for two reasons; first, the confidence of the voting public in electronic voting machines has already been undermined for years and a recount in this election does not undermine it nearly as much as multiple computer experts testifying under oath about the fact that the machines are both easy to tamper with and not tamper-evident.

Second, if Kucinich and Howard were trying to undermine the confidence of the voting public in the accuracy of the voting machines, wouldn’t it make more sense for them to do merely imply the machines are inaccurate, instead of putting up tons of funds to find out whether or not they actually are? After all, as I said, it’s likely that the vote totals will be similar to the first count, but that doesn’t seem to be the point.

The real point of the recount is to undermine the confidence of the voting public by candidates disputing the accuracy of the voting machines.

The kooks need to stop raising a stink over machines that have been confidently accredited by the best agencies out there. Its bad for elections and its bad for democracy.

The recount is to ensure that there is no fraud in the NH primaries involving the electronic voting machines.

You’re absolutely right, no one has yet to prove fraud in any election involving electronic voting machines, but that is partially because the electronic voting machines are neither tamper-proof nor tamper-evident. (While it is accepted that paper ballots certainly are not tamper-proof, they do tend to be tamper-evident)

In layman’s term, with touchscreen voting machines, there is no way to verify the information.

The New Hampshire Recount is particularly important because New Hampshire uses electronic machines to -count- the votes, but there remains a paper trail. Essentially, the Accuvote-OS acts like a big scantron machine, scanning in votes. I happen to like optical scanning machines as they can save time and effort but I do not think they should be the be-all and end-all, and a recount ensures that the Accuvote-OS, which is not tamper-proof, hasn’t been tampered with.

I highly suspect that the number of votes for each candidate will not change with this recount, that said, it’s still a good idea to verify the accuracy of the vote.

And no one has yet to prove fraud in any election involving electronic voting machines.

Each primary determines the number of delegates sent to the national conventions of the parties. In other words, the results from primaries, such as the one from New Hampshire, determines who gets to be the nominee for President of the United States.

Oh, well. I suppose you’ve got to survive / do business, but what a shame. Very sorry to hear it.