Today when you get out and vote (if you haven’t voted already), remember that you don’t have to trust the electronic voting machine with your vote!
In the State of Utah you can walk up to the election worker and ask to vote on a paper ballot, if they are ignorant to the law and tell you some “misinformation” about not having paper ballots respond with “Oh, I meant a ‘Provisional Ballot.’” They’ll point you to another desk where you verify your identity and place of residence, then state your reason for voting on a provisional ballot.
Guess what? “I don’t trust the electronic voting machines” is a legitimate and perfectly legal reason to vote via provisional ballot! If they give you a hard time pull out some statistics about the Diebold voting machines: how Utah got them “cheap” because other states found them to be too insecure and outlawed their use; how a person with tools available at an office supply store (a motherboard USB header, a thumb drive, an MS Access database, a drawer key, and a set of headphones) can “hack” the results on the machine in under 3 minutes; about how the Lt. Governor won’t respond to citizens’ questions or concerns regarding the background or insecurity of machines, nor what the policies he’s put in place to validate the votes are – or even if there are any “validation measures” in place.
Provisional Ballots are easy to use (fill in the oval next to the person that you’re voting for, repeat for each office) and — in my experience – every bit as fast and convenient as the insecure electronic machines.
And remember, don’t vote for (or against) someone just because they are a member of a particular party. YOU ARE NOT VOTING FOR A PARTY! YOU ARE VOTING FOR A PERSON! Don’t let a party or a stereotype tell you how to vote. Use your brain and exercise your independence from the mass media and the “two-party system.”
