East Bronx History Forum highlights
Horse Drawn Rail Coach to Old Wooden Bartow Station 1903. Photo courtesy of the East Bronx History Forum
BRONX TIMES REPORTER, O 102 CTOBER 11-17, 2019 BTR
Action
Association
The East Bronx History
Forum will hold its 142nd
meeting on Wednesday, October
16 at the Huntington Free
Library at 7:30 p.m.
In the 19th century, the
Pelham Bay area was an idyllic,
rural, and bucolic region
that attracted fi nanciers, artists,
wealthy merchants, and
others who sought an escape
from the growing metropolis
nearby.
At the end of 1873, the New
York, New Haven & Hartford
Railroad opened its branch
line passenger service from
the Harlem River to New
Rochelle. The line included
a station stop at the newly
constructed Bartow Station,
which is located along today’s
Shore Road between
Bartow-Pell Circle and the
intersection with City Island
Road. (The 1907 Cass Gilbert
designed station is currently
in ruin.)
Maria Lorillard Bartow,
widow of Robert Bartow who
built the Bartow-Pell Mansion,
developed plans to subdivide
portions of the Bartow
estate for a new subdivision
named Bartow. She planned
to cash in on the rampant
land speculation under way
at the time. Maria Bartow’s
timing was awful. Her plans
failed.
Town of Pelham Historian
Blake Bell has written many
articles, blogs and made presentations
of the Pelham
Bay Park environs. This entertaining
presentation will
cover the neighboring country
estates and mansions
near the Bartow’s, using rare
images and maps.
Join us at 9 Westchester
Square. The library is next
to the Apple Bank and street
parking is free after 7 p.m.
All meetings are free and open
to the public. Please view the
East Bronx History Forum
web page at BronxNYC.com,
or follow us on Facebook
BY FRANK VERNUCCIO
One of the most signifi -
cant threats to the integrity
of the 2020 election can be
wholly avoided.
In July, the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence
stressed that there was an
immediate need to secure
America’s voting systems. Its
key recommendations were
that states replace outdated
and vulnerable voting systems
with a voter-verifi ed paper
trail and use statistically
sound audits.
In August, the Brennan
Center reported that:
“The lifespan of electronic
voting machines can vary, but
experts agree that systems
over a decade old are more
likely to need to be replaced
for security and reliability
reasons. We estimate that in
November 2018, 34 percent
of all local election jurisdictions
were using voting machines
that were at least ten
years old as their primary
polling place equipment (or
as their primary tabulation
equipment in all vote-by-mail
jurisdictions). This number
includes counties and towns
in 41 states…11 states use
paperless machines as their
primary polling place equipment
in at least some counties
and towns… As both the
Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence and National
Academy of Sciences have
noted, we should replace antiquated
equipment, and paperless
equipment in particular,
as soon as possible.”
There is a salient question.
American democracy
did quite well before the advent
of electronic voting machines.
Why was there a sudden
rush to ‘fi x’ a system that
wasn’t broken, indeed, was
actually the envy of every
free nation on Earth?
Steve Levy, writing for
Fox News, offers one explanation
why states rushed to
electronic voting. “A cottage
industry of electronic
voting machine manufacturers
swooped in on every state
capitol, with ample campaign
contributions in tow. Before
you knew it, it wasn’t a question
of whether states would
purchase these machines,
but which bells-and-whistles
version they would choose…
Why would we jeopardize
the integrity of our electoral
process for no valid reason?
Electronic machines were
not enough for the tech set.
Online voting would revolutionize
the franchise, they
said. Amazingly, 32 states to
this day permit some form
of online balloting, despite
warnings the systems are
not secure. An analysis by
Silicon Valley executives
warned that “potential criminal
electronic attacks on
computer software, such as
destructive ‘viruses’ or ‘Trojan
Horse’ software, create a
serious threat to Internet voting.”
In 2004, the Pentagon
canceled a proposed Internet
voting program for overseas
military personnel due concerns
about hacking. And in
2010, a University of Michigan
professor answered a
challenge made by the Board
of Elections in Washington,
D.C., which was testing a new
Internet voting device in a
mock election. The professor
hacked it within 36 hours.”
In a study, Election Defsense.
org explained that
“The use of computers prevents
observation and makes
elections vulnerable to fraud
in new and profound ways
compared to older technologies…
When technicians
handle systems for non-technical
staff, this opens the
door to fraud… Eelectronic
vote systems are easily corrupted.
“Computerized elections
are a political problem. The
Resolution on Electronic Voting,
endorsed by thousands
of computer technologists,
says ‘Computerized voting
equipment is inherently subject
to programming error,
equipment malfunction, and
malicious tampering.’ Every
study of electronic voting has
said that systems from the
major vendors are insecure
and of poor quality.
“In spite of all this, few
government offi cials with responsibility
for elections are
heeding the constant stream
of warnings about electronic
voting, and the expressed
distrust of voters. The major
media and many offi cials
are still urging us to convert
to electronic voting. In
2004 Americans witnessed
an overwhelming incidence
of dirty tricks and failures of
our election infrastructure,
and the use of unverifi able
and unverifi ed computers is
part of this failure.”
A Stanford University examination
of the problem
provides information that
concurs with Election Defense.
“Opponents of electronic
voting do not feel that the
voting basics can be maintained
in an electronic voting
system. The arguments
have been divided into three
general categories of complaints:
issues with the technology,
vast possibilities of
fraud, and protection of voters
and their votes.
“As Bruce Schneier describes
it, technology adds
more steps to the process and
thus increases the possibility
of error with each additional
step, all of which are
largely unseen by the voter.
Put Murphy’s Law of ‘whatever
can go wrong, will go
wrong’ into play, and one can
surmise that technology will
most likely falter. Not only
does the technology create
more errors in the electronic
workings, but the voters can
also commit mistakes due to
confusion with the user interface.
The terminology is confusing,
different machines
produce different interfaces,
and even the audio guides to
help the disabled may prove
more confusing than helpful.
With the advent of electronic
machine voting also
comes the higher possibilities
of fraudulent machines
and practices.”
Election Defense Suggests
returning to lever machines
with paper backups, paper
ballots and precinct-count
optical scanners.
/BronxNYC.com
