] On its own, Allen's experience seems easy to dismiss, but ] it's part of a pattern, the voting activists say, that ] reveals the voting industry's desire to keep people off. ] The worst transgression, one that almost everyone ] interviewed pointed to, occurred in a conference call on ] Sept. 16. The agenda for that meeting was sent to ] participants before the call, and it clearly states that ] the first order of business would be to approve new ] members, after which the committee would decide whether ] or not the draft standard was ready to be approved. The ] new members up for approval that day were Jim Adler, ] Alice Allen, Chuck Corry, David Dill, G.D. Miller, Ted ] Selker and Barbara Simons -- many of whom are in favor of ] verifiable audit trails in voting machines. ] ] But when people got on the phone that day, Vern Williams, ] a voting security expert at SAIC, an information ] technology consulting firm, suggested that the agenda be ] switched so that new members were approved after the ] committee voted on the draft standard -- a move that ] would ensure that the new members would have no say on ] the proposed standard. Williams' motion passed. Then the ] committee decided to open the draft standard for voting. ] And after that, the new members were approved. ] ] The activists were outraged at this maneuver. "I kept ] saying, 'We've been disenfranchised!'" says Simons, a ] computer scientist who worries about the security of ] electronic voting systems. Simons and others tried to ] reopen the vote on the standard, but one of the committee ] leaders then proposed a motion to adjourn the meeting. ] According to Roberts Rules of Order, an adjournment ] motion takes precedence over other motions. The motion ] won by one vote, and the meeting was adjourned. This situation concerns me.. Another case of electronic vote-tampering? |