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The man missed New Zealand then: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC0605/S00030.htm

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL9910/S00096.htm
"Phage Therapy: where communism succeeded and capitalism failed. Western capitalism has another kind of correctness that can be at least as disabling; a correctness based on profit, and an unwillingness to check the growth of an industry that is too lucrative to too many people. The story of antibiotics is becoming one of those stories. An elementary application of Evolution 101 tells us that bacteria evolve. In an antibiotic-rich environment, selective pressure favours those bacteria strains that are resistant to antibiotics. It's virtually a tautology. The wonder is that we have got away with abusing antibiotic therapy for so long. The antibiotic-resistant superbugs have now arrived. The use of antibiotics as a cure-all is more stupid than anything that happened in the name of Lysenko. Antibiotic therapy used as anything other than a backup medicine defies the basic laws of evolution. As a general means of treating bacterial infections (and as food additives), the use of antibiotics only makes sense in terms of creationist biology. In creation science, all species are fixed. Antibiotic A will cure disease A for all of the time that God grants us. ... It is embarrassing when western science is out-trumped, especially by the "communists". Usually, when out-trumped, we don't tell anyone. That's what happened here. Not only did we not have the nous to start a western programme in bacteriophage research; we looked the other way when the files of phials threatened to be destroyed following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and during the little reported civil war that engulfed Georgia a few years ago. So much for the knowledge economies of the west. How can such valuable knowledge be so cheap?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy

"Phage therapy is the therapeutic use of lytic bacteriophages to treat pathogenic bacterial infections. Bacteriophages, or "phages" are viruses that invade only bacterial cells and, in the case of lytic phages, cause the bacterium to burst and die, thus releasing more phages. Phage therapy is one of the viable alternatives to antibiotics, being developed for clinical use in the 21st century by many research groups in Europe and the US. After having been extensively used and developed mainly in former Soviet Union countries for about 90 years, phage therapy is now becoming more available in other countries such as USA for a variety of bacterial and poly-microbial biofilm infections.[1] Phage therapy has many applications in human medicine as well as dentistry, veterinary science and agriculture."

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0706/S00317.htm

When Hamas gunmen stormed the Fatah security compounds in Gaza last week they found huge supplies of American-made weaponry including 7,400 M-16 assault rifles, dozens of mounted machine guns, rocket launchers, 7 armored military jeeps, 800,000 rounds of bullets and 18 US-made armored personnel carriers. They also discovered something far more valuable--- CIA files which purportedly contain "information about the collaboration between Fatah and the Israeli and American security organizations; CIA methods on how to prevent attacks, chase and follow after cells of Hamas and the Committees; plans about Fatah assassinations of members of Hamas and other organizations; and American studies on the security situation in Gaza." (Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily.com) ...
"the files contain, among other information, details of CIA networks in the Middle East" ...

stopped criminals from defrauding the 2004 presidential campaign... Given the recent recount-fraud convictions in ohio (see here, here, and here) it doesn't look like he succeeded.

Been there, done that. Next you'll be telling us the the first controlled flight took place in America.

will not be pleased if the only thing to come out of the House in the next two years is a bunch of investigations and impeachment hearings.
...
Now that the Dems control the House, and will have a solid say in what happens in the Senate (regardless of outcome in Montana and Virginia), I want to see some action on real issues.

Well, in some cases action on real issues is about investigation. I (for one) am concerned about:

• War profiteering and torture. There are a lot of issues about how Iraq war is handled and what private contractors (Halliburton, mercenary companies) are doing. Did you know, for instance, that there were private, non-Army interrogators in Abu Ghraib, not bound by US Military Code of Justice (I highly recommend watching "Iraq for sale" movie, BTW) ? Then there are CIA secret prisons. I definitely want that investigated.
• Illegal wiretaps. I have my 4th ammendment rights and I want to know if government was violating them.
• Reasons we got into war. 2839 Americans and about 600,000 Iraqis are dead. Somehow no one even got fired for that. I don't like the idea of politician being able to murder more than half a million people and just simply get away with it.
• Corruption. Well, I don't have high hopes for that, because all politicians are corrupt and they won't put themselves in jail. Still, this needs to be investigated.
  

For the record, Diebold has only been in the election machine business since 2001. They only make direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines, and have never produced paper ballot readers or any other equipment other than electronic machines and electronic pollbooks. Here is a good historical overview of Diebold's election activities.

There are a number of points that are completely missed or misunderstood in the discussion of election hardware, and why so many jurisdictions have moved to such questionable devices. The story of what has happened is a case study in how the federal government creates a royal mess from good intentions.

After the debacle of Florida 2000 Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was designed to prevent such a thing from happening again. Of course the problems in Florida were not caused by faulty election equipment but by poorly designed ballots.

Of all the parts to the eqatuation in FL 2000 (voting machines, ballots, election process, registration, administration, etc) it was the ballots that were at fault, and the administration of the resulting dispute that created the big issue. I still believe that if Al Gore had accepted (or insisted upon) a statewide recount of Florida rather than trying to game county-level results he would have won Florida, and the presidency.

Instead the POTUS (President of the US) was effectively elected by the Supreme Court. And that led rather directly to HAVA -- a federal law wherein the federal government assumes authoritah over the states on issues concerning election procedures, quite contrary to strict readings of the Constitution.

The Constitution clearly gives the states power to handle their own electoral affairs, but at the same time gives the federal government power to distribute funds, and to set requirements on the distribution. Through HAVA, Washington pledges a ton of money to each state and local jusrisdiction to upgrade their election hardware to something that is compliant with HAVA, but the requirements only apply to election for federal office -- ie President and Congress. But since it's too much trouble to maintain separate election system for fedreal and local offices, and too much money to ignore, all states are scrambling towards HAVA compliance.

Diebold comes in because of a rather ill-thought clause in HAVA -- Section 301. This requires that HAVA-compliant hardware meet the needs of blind voters in allowing them to 1) cast a ballot without assistance, and 2) to review and change ballot selections before casting the ballot.

As of 2000, blind voters cast ballots with the assistance of two election judges (in jurisdictions that did not require Braille ballots). HAVA requires that all blind voters have audio ballots. Which means many effective and accurate voting systems and procedures are no longer valid.

Once HAVA was passed, Diebold saw a business opportunity in US election systems (they had previously sold electyion hardware to Brazil). Diebold could certainly deliver counting machines with audio capability, and naturally they theough that security requirements for ATMs were analogous to those for election systems.

The points of this whole rant are 1) Diebold gets a lot of deserved blame for producing faulty hardware, and a lot of undeserved blame for commiting mass electoral fraud (remember that they didn't have any election hardware in 2000); 2) All DRE machines (with or without paper trail) are subject to problems and errors; and 3) the voting process is sound, even if the equipment has flaws.

Make sure you vote on November 7, make sure if you're using a DRE machine that your vote is properly recorded, and make sure you have some sympathy for the sorely undertrained and underpaid election judges at your precinct.

And don't complain if you don't vote.

There is ample evidence of a) the ease in which Diebold voting machines can be patched and b) votes being switched to Republican candidates. Diebolds CEO vowed to deliver the 2004 presidential election to Mr. Bush.

Concerns are already mounting in Texas and Arkansas that votes are being flipped in early 2006 voting.

It's not a conspiracy when so many municipalities conclude that Diebold machines are not fit for elections.

Slashdot alone has run numerous stories that make it clear that U.S. elections are regularly stolen. We will never have a real presidental election again. Because of human nature, people are oblivous to this and will deny the problem until it is too late.

I don't have time to put up all the stories about election fraud now, but I'll give you my favorite: Gore's negative vote tally in one county. What are your favorite voter fraud stories?

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0310/S00211.htm

I'm no statistician, but if the problems with electronic voting machines were simply crap software, and not intentional election rigging, wouldn't there be more evidence of errors in favor of Democratic candidates? Seeing everything always thrown to the GOP seems to be good signs of a conspiracy, factored with the CEOs of the voting machine companies promising to deliver votes to the GOP or getting elected by their machines.

So let's see how our resident liberals react when the shoe is on the other foot. Quick to attack Diebold as "obviously" fixing the election... will we get the same presumption of guilt for Mr Chavez, or will it be dismissed out of hand?

And will the Republican sock-puppets suddenly admit that there's a chance that Diebold machines can be corrupt, now that there are accusations about Sequoia?

Anyway, there have already been many complaints about Sequoia, I don't see why they should change now: Bev Harris: Inside Sequoia's Vote Counting Program

Does a left wing CEO make his whole company left wing as well? Be fair. I bet you defend CNN as not liberal.

"All your post proves is that the Diebold CEO is a right winger. Bet he's never written a line of code in his life."

Our electoral system should be set up in such a way that its integrity shouldn't depend on the honesty of any one company or individual.

Besides taking the effort to install invisible vote-stealing software, one can just open the MS Access database and edit the values: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0307/S00065.htm#v otes

Can anyone comment on how this is related (if at all) to a recent announcement in New Zealand about a new ability to "store and execute computer programmes within a microscopic DNA Pharmaceutical crystal"? [1] [2]. Supposedly (according to radio reports) the New Zealand group has been working for 20 years in secret (or something) until the press release in the past day or so.

I'm wondering if it's a case of one group having announced in a rush so as not to be overshadowed by another group that's been working on the same thing.

Quit worrying about your political party affiliation and look at the damn information. YES the election results were ALL skewed for the GOP where it counted. That is why the bad-bush is in office. Quit bitching about the dems and the reps and go check out the damn facts. The voting system is a complete joke and if you think we are not getting screwed by it then you aren't paying attention or you're just ignorant about the facts. Maybe you just haven't noticed that the currnet administration transparently lies about shit all the time. The voting machines have been *simple* to tamper with and there wasn't a way to verify the votes from the e-voting either. If the system is tampered with they have NO LOG or AUDIT TRAIL on the machines either. Would you let you bank do this? Maybe they should just send you bills without a log and you can pay those as well. WAKE UP ALREADY! Diebold is a corrupt influence and is in the President's pocket. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0411/S00142.htm

Greg Palast is now facing federal criminal charges for doing a story on Katrina evacuees in a camp near an Exxon refinery.

There are numerous other examples of reporters (in the west) either getting jail time or being threatened with it for various coverage. It goes way back in US hisotry. In the civil war and the first world war a lot of newspapers were closed and editors were jailed or threatened with jailing. Lincon imprisoned a lot, we had the "alien and sedition act" thing as well.

Scoop has an article about a zogby poll commissioned to look at US voters impressions of computerised/blackbox voting.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0608/S00220.htm

One of the larger issues they found was the high level of people unaware of any of the risks. Which is understandable because of the paucity of national coverage. We have a lot of smaller local coverage reports, but it doesn't move upstream to hit the big broadcasters, etc, near as much as it should.

This is the same ES&S who's chairman got into trouble with the Senate Ethics Committee because he failed to disclose his involvement with the company when he, as virtual an unknown in his first bid for public office, ran for and won a Senate seat against two well known and popular opponents in what was widely called "a surprise upset" -- in an election which was counted exclusively on machines manufactured by ES&S. Subsequently, the law in his state was changed to prohibit election workers from looking at the ballots, and outlaw hand recounts. The only recounts permitted by law are on machines manufactured by ES&S.

In case that helps put this in perspective.

--MarkusQ

I have mod points, but I'd rather reply to this...

The people in this country have something to say about the current state of things but have yet to act upon what the morals that govern them. They talk about how wrong the President is but yet they vote him into office again. They shout " I don't want my phone tapped," but they do it in the comfort of their home where they can't be arrested. They say "let us be moral and leaders of the free world," yet they think "a little bit of torture never hurt anyone as long as its in Cuba." And here we are - you and I paying our taxes and showing our teeth like its all okay.

Just what am I supposed to do? Go and protest at one of GWB's speeches and get arrested? How will that change anything? How will that help? Will my being in prison make other people more free?

I could perhaps donate a little money to the ACLU or EFF - I think they're great causes - but their court actions are subject to a judiciary which is increasingly neo-conservative (aka fascist).

AFAIK, the most effective thing I can do is vote for democrats in the 2006 and 2008 elections. But everyone here at /. knows that recent elections were corrupt. I never voted for Bush in the first place, and that's true of approximately (or perhaps at least?) 50% of American voters. But the opinions of those voters are ignored by the present administration, and I suspect that some of their votes are ignored as well.

Personally, I believe that the current administration is led by criminals who should be impeached, tried, convicted, and imprisoned for a very long time. Their crimes are many and egregious. But what can I do about it? I'm not wealthy enough to buy a congresscritter.

So go ahead and mod me down or call me a troll because I don't care. Someone needs to tell America the truth and stand up for whats right. I'm moving to Maine...

Yeah, I'll bet you're going to move to another state just because of a slashdot story. Riiiiight...

Does this mean next time they want to pull a 9/11 move, it will be easier or harder? These criminals need to go to jail. I don't think we should be shutting down our sky coordination system under the current regime. Is regime the right word for when there isn't a valid election?

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0310/S00211.htm
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?Channe lID=31
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboa rd.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1108892&mes g_id=1127482

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040731 213239607
http://www.vote.org/911/
http://standdown.net/

So, um, yeah, back on subject:

Hurray!

Anyone who has a glimmer of hope about this, forget it. Here's a little summary of a comparable establishment, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I was astonished, but wikipedia is strangely neutral about their existence:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Indian_Affa irs

But here is some of the truth behind them. They were established to placate the Native population and to ensure that they are permanently marginalized.

They have stolen revenue from them,
http://www.earthportals.com/Portal_Messenger/bia.h tml

they are incompetent and their existence is a keep-your-enemies-closer solution to future American-Native American relations. Just ask anyone who has contracted with them.

You know the what if Microsoft built cars joke? Here's the equivalent BIA joke:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0304/S00127.htm

Lastly, note that the name of the agency still reflects an old way of thinking - It ain't the Bureau of Native American Affiars, a symptom of what little regard is given to the North American Natives.

A Civil Liberties appointee will bear some painful resemblences and be used more for turning to the population and placating them about the administration rather than speaking on behalf of the population to the President.

This is business-as-usual.

Here's a link

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0102/S00127.htm

You are right actually in that I was conflating Volusia and Leon counties.

But as to your question about sources. Diebold's internal memos disclosed the problem as well as other reporting. You can see a report on the subject here.

Yes they were using scantron ballots, they were Diebold scanners. Crucially for this hack they were using a Diebold-made central tabulator system which is where the problem lay.

Their internal e-mails (now leaked) confirm what I said:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0310/S00211.htm

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0603/S00118.htm Ernest Partridge: An Appearance of Guilt Thursday, 9 March 2006, 11:15 am Opinion: Ernest Partridge An Appearance of Guilt By Ernest Partridge Co-Editor The Crisis Papers March 7, 2006 The accumulated weight of evidence of election fraud - statistical, circumstantial, and anecdotal - has failed to move the mainstream media to report or investigate this evidence, or the Democratic party to acknowledge and protest the apparent Republican control of our elections. This essay is not yet another account of that evidence, which I have spelled out extensively and which I firmly believe to be compelling. Instead, I wish to deal with another indicator that our national elections no longer represent the will of the voters, but rather are manipulated to produce the outcome desired by the "winning" candidates and party. This indicator is the behavior of those who manufacture, program, and operate the paperless, unauditable machines (direct recording electronic: "DRE"), and those who benefit from this technology. Perhaps this new electronic voting technology is as honest and reliable as the private election industry and the winning candidates tell us it is. However, they simply do not behave as if this were the case. My contention might be illustrated by this parable: Suppose that a drug-sniffing dog at an airport identifies a suspicious piece of luggage. The customs officer then locates the individual whose name is on the tag, and orders him to open it. Now suppose further that this person then proceeds to do one or more of the following: a) He denies that the luggage is his. b) He calls his lawyer who presents an injunction against further inspection of the luggage. c) He claims that he is a diplomat, and thus not subject to luggage inspection. d) He offers a bribe to the inspector if he will "forget the whole thing." Might one not suspect that the traveler was trying to hide something? The dog then gets back to work, and soon identifies another bag, and the owner of this parcel is identified and ordered to open the luggage for inspection. He does so willingly and without qualm, having packed the bag himself and thus knowing that there is no contraband therein. He is also aware that the dog has a record of 30% false positives. Which of these two responses more closely resembles the behavior of the DRE manufacturers (Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia), of the Republican Congress, and of the Republican National Committee? Are the DRE manufacturers and the Republicans acting in a manner consistent with their claims that "e-voting" is both honest and accurate? Or are they behaving as if they have something to hide? Here are a few indicators. Because there are so many, I will be brief. For details and documentation, follow the links: First and foremost: DRE machines use secret software and produce no separate record of the voting to allow auditing and validation of the votes. Thus, by design, it is impossible either to prove or disprove directly the accuracy of the vote totals of a DRE machine or the neutrality of the software. (However, there is abundant indirect evidence of e-voting fraud: statistical, anecdotal and circumstantial evidence. But that's another topic). The manufacturers and programmers of DREs (all of whom have close ties with the Republican Party) insist that their software ("source codes") must be kept secret - for no apparent and defensible reason. (They claim to be concerned about copyright infringement. But music, essays, fiction, drama, etc., all are public by nature, and yet all are protected by copyright). The e-voting manufacturers also make ATM machines and automated gas pumps, both of which produce paper receipts. Yet they steadfastly resist demands that their "touch screen" voting machines produce printouts, which might then serve to validate the accuracy of the votes. DRE manufacturers will not allow "test hacks" of randomly selected machines. (Unauthorized hacks have proven DREs

This is hardly a troll.

Optical scanner machines are a huge part of the problem, as is the central tabulator these scanners feed. They both are wide open for hacking and vote fixing.

Here's an article on how the optical scan machines can be hacked:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0505/S00381.htm

Believe me, our Government doesn't need this kind of thing to look foolish. Take a look at http://scoop.co.nz/ any day of the week and you'll see what I mean ...

So are you saying that we shouldn't develop a system that is auditable and verifyable? that it isn't possible? Diebold said the logistics and cost of having a paper trail kept it out of the design. Funny thing is, as long as I can remember, I've gotten a reciept from the grocery store even when I buy a stick of gum. In fact, I believe reciepts for purchases have been around for a while now. So we can provide a verifyable paper trail and auditable sales record for my stick of gum, but not for my vote? Maybe we should have the IRS run the election. The fact they would make an outrageous claim that a paper trail was unfeasable should pretty much point to some type of malfeasance or at least incompetence. Either way, we don't want them running our vote then. To make matters worse, the largest vote counter, ES&S, has Diebold presidents brother as their vice president. (Bob Urosevich was the president of Diebold. Todd, vice president of ES&S.) These two companies count roughly 80 percent of the votes in the ENTIRE COUNTRY. Even if you don't want to believe fraud of this magnitude could exist in the United States, wouldn't it still be prudent to not put all our eggs in one basket? Especially when the basket is easily broken and constructed so shoddily. Ahhh...what am I thinking....we can trust our government and big business...they haven't lied to us ever. They never make decisions based on whats in their or their friends best interest. Bah ha ha ha ha ha. Enjoy the apathy.

Not to mention gay prostitute Jeff Gannon as official media plant.

Aside from not being allowed to own firearms, lack of free speech and rampant Internet censorship, riots caused by unchecked immigration, and Crocodile Dundee; sure, sounds like a great place! I'll just pack my bags.

Here is a great article relating to the security of Diebold's vote counting system

The correct drum to bang is the civil disobedience drum. It's prevalent throughout American history.
Of course, you could just blindly follow every unjust, immoral, poorly written law and hope that your corrupt government officals get around to fixing it. Or you can do something about it and make people think.

why ... A digital Strategy initiative was presented in Parliament and one of the Green Politicians commented on it http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0505/S00385.htm

also where have you seen the NZ Green Party discuss Union Labour ?

Read the above article and you will see the motivation.

Bigger news on this front would be the Nuclear Fusion reactor Being built in France, and China announcing the next day that they will also be building a Fusion reactor. Clean energy? Not for at least another decade..

Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program
Tampering with Election Machine Software

Right, so this japanese ship is heading out to sea with large metal poles on board. Think they want to punch holes in the sea bed? Nah, they're aiming to blow holes in something else.

Oh the irony, a spammer asking slashdot for help, and getting it before someone spots the obvious.

*tries to recover quickly.*

Hey, original poster, if you're out hiking in a stormy region and looking for a great satellite pager, you can't beat the reception on this model.

You might want to ask someone from Afganistan. The representative might be stable, but there are still daily incidents. Outside of Kandahar, the country is not peaceful at all. The German Foreign Service keeps issuing travel warnings for Afganistan because the security is still very poor. Israel is not a good comparison, because they're basically committing a Holocaust there. I'm really worried about the refugee camps there - they remind me of the concentration camps of the German Nazi Party in Germany in the 3rd Reich.

Number two is a misrepresentation of the facts. Please explain to me how Bush will stop Islamic fascists from killing and destroying. It's what they do. The only way to make them stop trying is to kill them all. The left won't allow that. We do need help getting the Iraqi government's security forces, which is why Bush just had a conference with European leaders. Been watching the news lately?

Yes, I've been watching the news lately. People from countries without military presence in Iraq run the risk of getting killed in a bomb blast there, but so do the Iraqi people themselves, while people from countries with a military presence risk getting abducted. Israel keeps getting hit by suicide bombers because they keep "mistreating" the Palestinean people. The difference between the suicide bombers and Israeli settlers just grabbing whatever they want is the latter not making the news. (Did you hear about the protests of Israeli settlers/farmers not wanting to leave their farms to comply with the treaty Israel signed?)
See here and here

Number three -- who cares? No one ever looked up to the USA except those who agreed with what we do. And Germany has NOT been a close ally. West Germany was, but now we have a large contingent of the reunified communists still dragging Germany back into the mire of socialism.

That's mostly crap. Germany supported *justified* action all the way, up to and including a change in our constitution to allow out military to operate internationally in more than just self defense to enable the campaign in Afganistan. AFAIK, Germany is today one of the most involved countries in the reconstruction of Afganistan.

The "reunified communists" did themselves shake off the yoke of communism, at risk to their lives - do you really think they want it back? Germany didn't support the invasion in Iraq because it was not sanctioned by the UN and there still is controversy if there really ever were WMDs there.

Yes, I am from Germany, but I think your post is slightly ridiculous...

Regards, Ulli

Funny, Deibold seems to get the money I order out of the ATM rights *EVERY TIME* and I've never had a problem with my bank balance - *EVER*.

So you never had a problem with your piddly little bank balance. This is relevant how? I know a mechanic who lives up the street and fixes my car's water pump and AC all the time. He never screws up, so I'm letting him install a stint in my aorta next week.

Banks insist on proper security features from Diebold. After all, with an ATM, money is involved. If our election commissioners were as demanding as banks, Diebold's voting machines would print the same internal paper receipt that is produced internally by their ATM machines. Diebold saves some money by not including those things. Not only does the printer cost money, it means you have to be able to reconcile the paper receipt with the audit log in the Microsoft Access .mdb file! That costs real money, especially when you're relying on election workers to fix problems in the back end by directly editing the audit log.

Stop making stuff up.

In the first pre-emptive lawsuit against voting machines filed by a candidate, Andy Stephenson -- a candidate for Washington Secretary of State -- has filed for an injunction to decertify Diebold GEMS central count software used in four Washington counties. The suit alleges that current Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed improperly certified the voting system. Stephenson is also suing King County over the use of uncertified optical scan software.

I'm not saying that his detention is a good thing, but this Jose Padilla fellow sounds like a menace to society, if you read up on his past. Anyone who was a member of a gang, shot somebody in a road rage incident, and has been implicated in a gangland murder is someone I have a hard time feeling sorry for.

I've read a few news sources (like this one) stating that any US citizen at any time could be arrested and thrown in jail with no access to a lawyer just like this guy, but Padilla has, in general, been a nuisance and has travelled to Afghanistan. Not that travelling to Afghanistan is a bad thing, but statistically, very few American have made that trip, so this case is being blown out of proportion quite a bit.

Once again, I'm not saying that ignoring due process was ok in this case, I'm just saying that the number of people this could happen to is extremely small. The vast majority of Americans (so far, all but 1, I think) have nothing to worry about.

Last week in an analysis of a similar, but incomplete set of data, Dr Stephen F. Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania calculated that the odds of just three of the major swing states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania all swinging as far as they did against their respective exit polls were 250 milllion to 1
. . .
[the incomplete data sidenote:]
However as we also have a set of data from around midnight with which to compare this data, we can tell that the final exit poll results were not that far different than these early results. This in itself tends to suggest that the polling system did not have a systemic bias in its early data as suggested by some commentators in early reports on this puzzle.

Kerry weighs in at the last moment.

Voting machine code should obviously be open sourced, but I'm preaching to the choir on that one. In the meantime, the code in place on 11/2 must be examined to determine if there was foul play in the election.

The general consensus of this thread seems to be that there is no evidence of fraud in the 11/2 elections, and yet there is an abundance of fishy exit poll data.. AND it almost all points in one direction (that would be to the right). The few states that didn't experience exit poll 'Red Shift' are basically irrelevant states. http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227 .htm

Look at the numbers... we have the most suspicious/inconsistent exit poll results in the history of exit polls in this country, and the best our media can do is question the validity of exit polls? Our govenment is simultaneously alledging fraud in Ukraine, almost exclusively because of inconsistent exit polls. Is anyone paying attention here? When we 'monitor' a third world election, guess what our monitoring weapon of choice is? That's right, exit polls. There IS a safety net in place against this sort of thing, and it DID do it's job.... but we're not doing ours, as citizens.

If it was rigged and you called for an "inspection and disassembly of all the voting machine code" as suggested do you think the code you or 'the authorities' recieved would actually be the dodgy version? All traces of the modified code would have probably been destroyed by now.

Personally I think the difference between exit poll results and the 'official tally' speak far more clearly about the honesty of the election. check out The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy (PDF)

(I thought the quote from Republican Dick Morris on Fox news that starts "Exit polls are almost never wrong" was quite ironic)

danheskett wrote:
>
> It was one CEO making a fundrasing pitch in a letter!

When a rabidly Republican CEO of one of the largest voting machine pledges he is " committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year " you don't smell election fraud?

The fact that he made the pledge in a letter asking for money is all the more suspicious.

> And, oh, the company in question makes about 1% of
> its profit from voting machines, is very transparent and publically traded

Being publically traded didn't stop Enron from commiting massive fraud. And what does how little money this company makes from voting machines have to do with its capacity for fraud?

> [Black box voting] is a very old problem for our country

But it just got about a billion times easier and virtually untraceable since the introduction of electronic voting machines, and electronic vote tabulating machines.

> I urge you to find me one article or study that
> can prove that electronic voting machines -
> flawed as they are - are anything short of the
> most accurate and secure voting system we have.

Here's Johns Hopkins Computer Science professor Avi Rubin's study where he states:

"We show that voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal software"

And read about Diebold while you're at it:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00081 .htm

Electronic voting, while a neat idea to speed up the vote counting process, seems to have run into a number of glitches (over 1100 nationwide) this November 2nd. In addition to seemingly random problems in Florida [1, 2], Ohio [1], and North Carolina [1], there are allegations of systematic fraud based on statistical comparison of exit polls to final results in precincts with audit trails and those without. It is also interesting that in Florida, the voting patterns do not match the voter registration patterns as they do nationwide. This has attracted the attention of numerous civil rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation that has filed at least two lawsuits since election day, and BlackboxVoting.org that has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain computer logs and documents from 3000 counties and districts across the US. Equally disturbing is the fact that CNN has (since Nov 2) changed its exit polling results to reflect the actual results. This has attracted the attention of Congressmen John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida who have jointly requested that the GAO immediately investigate the efficacy of e-voting machines.

In case you are thinking that this is just sour grapes from Democrats who lost the election, think again. BlackboxVoting.org has been investigating e-voting fraud for years. Likewise, the CEO of Diebold, one of the e-voting machine manufacturers has been quoted as saying "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." And if that's not conflict of interest enough for you, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (now resigned) is an owner of the largest e-voting machine company ES&S.

Other numerous problems have been found with the machines from nearly every company in the past [1, 2, 3]. Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, has been investigating such machines on his own and has found a number of security issues. Swarthmore students stood up to Diebold in November of 2003 after discovering

Electronic voting, while a neat idea to speed up the vote counting process, seems to have run into a number of glitches (over 1100 nationwide) this November 2nd. In addition to seemingly random problems in Florida [1, 2], Ohio [1], and North Carolina [1], there are allegations of systematic fraud based on statistical comparison of exit polls to final results in precincts with audit trails and those without. It is also interesting that in Florida, the voting patterns do not match the voter registration patterns as they do nationwide. This has attracted the attention of numerous civil rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation that has filed at least two lawsuits since election day, and BlackboxVoting.org that has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain computer logs and documents from 3000 counties and districts across the US. Equally disturbing is the fact that CNN has (since Nov 2) changed its exit polling results to reflect the actual results. This has attracted the attention of Congressmen John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida who have jointly requested that the GAO immediately investigate the efficacy of e-voting machines.

In case you are thinking that this is just sour grapes from Democrats who lost the election, think again. BlackboxVoting.org has been investigating e-voting fraud for years. Likewise, the CEO of Diebold, one of the e-voting machine manufacturers has been quoted as saying "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." And if that's not conflict of interest enough for you, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (now resigned) is an owner of the largest e-voting machine company ES&S.

Other numerous problems have been found with the machines from nearly every company in the past [1, 2, 3]. Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, has been investigating such machines on his own and has found a number of security issues. Swarthmore students stood up to Diebold in November of 2003 after discovering

"And as you point out, the idea of 3 separate, _competing_ companies collaborating together to defraud the Florida electorate is pretty much completely laughable."

Considering that the top two vendors are run by two brothers, and the third was formerly owned by Republican Senator Hagel, the former Senate Ethics Director, who then resigned after admitting that he owned Election Systems & Software, I don't find it unreasonable that this was rigged at a very high level to send a few votes here, a few votes there. Just enough to be undetectable.

The best way to flag fraud is to note when the exit polls are substantially out of line with actual returns, and particularly if they are out of line in a systematic (and unpredicted) way.

You mean like these?

Wisconsin
Bush had 4% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 223 elections

Pennnsylvannia
Bush had 5% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 1838 elections

Ohio
Bush had 4% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 223 elections

Florida
Bush had 7% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 500,000 elections

Minnesota
Bush had 7% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 500,000 elections

New Hampshire
Bush had 15% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 10^22 elections

North Carolina
Bush had 9% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 500,000,000 elections

Reference, probabilities calculated with SD=1.53 for 95% certainty level at +-3%.

This is more than cause for alarm, it's a wake-up call that the voice of the people was overwritten by fraud in this election. Contact your local media, contact your congressmen, tell your friends and family, and force people to pay attention to this.