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Touch Screen Voting Industry Circling Wagons
bhoman writes "Salon has an interesting article/interview with the author of a forthcoming book, Black Box Voting, by Bev Harris, that looks at electronic voting machines, especially Diebold touchscreens. The story includes incriminating internal memos, cease and desist orders from Diebold, transcripts of an industry teleconference where Harris Miller of the ITAA brags of his lobbying experience, and documentation of a backdoor via an Access MDB with no password. This is for software currently being used in 37 states. "
Did I mention I was molested? I'm pretty sure I did, once or twice, but you did not offer to discuss the matter with me. Let's have a nice quiet dinner and have a frank discussion about my dad's dong and how he put it in my mouth and ass now and then. Anyway, I'm clearly the victim here and that's why I don't suck dick. I hope you understand.
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using the name "dubya" just makes you look like an idiot.
and these machines were implemented prior to our current President. but of course, since the problems came to light after bill left office it all must be bush's fault.
get a grip on reality
(and not i was not saying Clinton was to blame for this)
How come these types of F.U.D. campaigns were all but unheard of when the Democrats were in power?
The chads, finger prints, election fraud etc., aren't a new phenom...
Vote once, and vote often...
Think what you will, say what you will - but the disgrace of the Florida elections gave the Powers that Be a mandate to update the voting machines. This is ochestrated to allow vast subtle changes to the voting system that will go unnoticed. For the most part, I bet the Powers that Be will use it to take a 77% vote and turn it into a 89% vote, and so on, to help build their case for Radical Change.
This new system is a perfect example of how Bush will steal the 2004 election.
I, for one, don't welcome our New Imperial Overlords, they can kiss my ass.
Okay, hate to say it, but...
Write-in (type-in?) vote: Osama BinLaden. Maybe he won't hate the place once he's running it, and anything is better than the Repubs in office now!
Sure, he flew a few planes through a few buildings and all, but c'mon, if he's elected pres, he'll come out of hiding. Then we can ignore him while he's in office, and hell, I wonder of that dead-or-alive prize will still be on his head when he's pres? I mean c'mon. You know there'd be assasination attempts like crazy! Talk about entertainment! While he's distracted by the red dots floating around his face, we can take our country back!
Error 666 - Satanic SCO code found in your Linux kernel.
... is for someone to hack a major election. By setting 100% of the vote to some obscure candidate, a very clear message about the validity and security of these voting machines will be made crystal clear. hmm... do they use these in California?
As a matter of fact, yes I *do* trust the government to count the ballots in Florida. They counted them once, and Bush won. They counted them a second time, and Bush still won. Furthermore, this whole myth that Bush lost the popular vote is a bunch of hogwash, since many states simply stopped counting votes once a sufficient victory margin was reached (lead > votes remaining). The goal is to reach a majority vote on the state level so votes can be counted on the electorate level; national counts are irrelevant to winning.
What people forget is that there is a "margin of error" in every election, sort of like a general adder that accounts for the inherhant dishonesty of the vote carriers & counters, and flaws in the voting material itself. For punchcard paper ballots, this works out to about 2.6% error.
That's normally a very good margin, when your candidates win by 15-20% victories, everyone looks the other way at the errors, because they don't matter. In close elections, that's when all the "dirty laundry" comes out, because each candidate needs to scrap together all the votes he or she can.
Many people are calling for a conversion to electronic recording systems, not realizing that there is error in these systems also. I've heard figures anywhere from 2 to 2.4% error, due to vote records "mysteriously" not delivered to be counted in the official ottals, plus interface errors leading to miscast votes. Then there's the issues in voting on "closed" systems -- some states have found voting machines that aren't even programmed correctly. Not exactly the end all solution there.
Then we have the California election on hold because opponents are calling for the installation of electronic balloting systems because a study shows votes will be miscounted... when a few days later, it turns out that the financial backers of the study are the electronic voting manufacturers... jeez, no impropriety here!
Finally, some sanity on this issue on /. of all places. No surprise somebody modded you troll. And I'm not a Bush fan. I don't agree with many of his policies and I think he is taking the country in the wrong direction, but I think he was a better choice than Bore.
Time to rant a little. I'm sure I'll get modded troll, but I've got karma to burn.
We've heard the "Bush lost the popular vote" mantra for years and years now. Borrowing a Clintonism, he didn't but even if he did, there's this little thing called the electoral college. Oh, you didn't learn about that in your socialist government school? I'll keep that in mind the next time they come poor-mouthing to me for their next levy (which goes to hire bureaucrats at the head shed and never makes it to the classroom, but I digress.)
The fact is, there is no problem with punch card ballots. They elected Gray-Out Davis and they can and will be used to recall him. I voted with the butterfly ballot for years and I would always check my ballot before leaving the polling place. And remember what Gore, et al, wanted - for the ballot to count if the intent of the voter can be ascertained from a dimple in the chad! How asinine!
Another thing you never hear - Bob Butterworth, the Florida attorney general, was Gore's Florida campaign manager. When the issue went to the Florida courts, did he back up Katherine Harris, as he was legally obliged to do? No, he wrote an amicus brief for the Gore campaign. That is like having an attorney represent you in a case and saying, "no, judge, my guy is wrong and should lose." In the real world, that usually equals swift disbarment.