Miami-Dade E-voting machines won't have printers

for the November election. And why not?

The reason the county cannot install the printers onto the touch-screen technology is because the state has not certified any printers for such use.

iVotronic vendors must wait for specifications from federal and state election officials before they can proceed with a prototype.

''They have to set standards and tell us what they want,'' said Meghan McCormick, spokeswoman for Election Systems & Software, the Nebraska-based makers of the iVotronic. ''They have to decide things like the size and weight of the paper used for the receipt, in what languages it will be printed, what would be on it,'' she said. Any such printer would first need to be certified by Florida, as required by law.

''Even if things would happen quickly, I doubt the printers could be available before early next year,'' McCormick said.

This is April. There's still May... June... July... August... September... and October. OK, that gives us 6 months to decide on the "size and weight of the paper" (uh, how about some standard size and weight, like that associated with ATM printed receipts, so you can use a standard printer?), what languages the receipt will be printed in (gee, let's see... how about English and Spanish?), what will be on it (uh, how about the time, date and place of the voting, and the votes?). Oh, and there's the certification process... that could take months, I guess.

Printers are trivial beasts, and so is programming them (I know: in a past life, I had a job programming cash registers... including cash register receipts). This sounds like a big scam, especially once you know (see this post for details) that the major e-voting corporations are incestuously connected and were funded by a right-wing Christian conservative:

For example, at Diebold whose corporate chief, Wally O'Dell, a top Bush fundraiser, has publicly committed himself to "delivering" his home state's votes to Bush next year, the election division is run by Bob Urosevich. Bob's brother, Todd, is a top executive at "rival" ES&S. The brothers were originally staked in the vote-count business by Howard Ahmanson, a member of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing "steering group" stacked with Bushist faithful. [...] [T]he brothers Urosevich, originally funded by the far Right, figure in the counting of approximately 80% of electronic voting in the United States.

Anyone want to take bets on how that Miami-Dade election is going to turn out?

Visit verifiedvoting.org to take action... we at least have to try to prevent this election's also being stolen.

UPDATE: From Malice Aforethought, this link to Bruce Shneier's discussion of how little it would take to swing an election.

UPDATE 2: From Body and Soul, looks like Diebold is going to be "decertified" (that is, disallowed) in various California counties. Check out Bob Urosevich, mentioned above, as he apologizes... for getting caught.