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The State of Electronic Voting in Georgia
An anonymous reader writes "The AJC is reporting on the current state of electronic voting in Georgia. The article discusses both sides of the debate and mentions Bev Harris and her work at Black Box Voting. Is touch screen voting the best solution available or is a conspiracy afoot?"
When there's a choice between conspiracy or no conspiracy, always go with conspiracy. If it's true, you'll be right and prepared to overthrow the government. If you're wrong, oh well, no big deal, at least there wasn't a conspiracy.
I didn't realize working a paper and pen was so difficult. I mean, have we ever had a problem with that before?
*cough*
When I am king, you will be first against the wall
With your opinion which is of no consequence at all
The _State_ of Electronic Voting in Georgia. It says it right there, duh... ;)
Our country is doing quite well as it is, so why do we need this "voting" business? That sort of thing can only harm our unity and national security
well, the obvious argument for it is that its just the next step in the natural evolution of the voting process. oh, woops, cant say "evolution" in georgia.
Funny, because when I keep hearing this crap on the radio about 'Coup in Georgia's Government' and stuff, I keep thinking those hill-billies have ransacked Atlanta. Yes, I'm British and even I associate Georgia with the US. Heck, that Georgia place in the CIS probably didn't even exist before 1989?
Zogby for whatever reason underpolls Republicans. Zogby consistently reports lower approval ratings for President Bush than the other major poll agencies.
The only reason you think this election was "fixed" is because your side didn't win.
I've seen the security precautions and everything about the touchscreen voting myself. What makes you think that paper ballots are so much better? There are fail-safes in place all over the place with Touch Screens. You can't hack into them via the internet because they aren't even HOOKED to the internet, every malfunction has a recovery none of which involve adding votes and forgetting about it, security agencies have tested them and could not break into them. Sure, you can tamper with them, but I can guaruntee you that it won't go unnoticed. Once the machines are prepared for election, and something doesn't check out when they are opened on election day, the machine is not even used. When you download a file from an internet site that gives you an md5 checksum to check it's integrity by, if that doesn't calculate you know somethings not right, that it's been tampered with. If by law you were required to notify someone about that md5 checksum coming out wrong, and you didn't, the only way you'd get away with it is if you were by yourself, and even then, there are just too many people around for that to happen. It's roughly the same way with the voting machines. Everything is recorded about how the machines were prepaired pre-election and re-checked on election day, if those values don't match, red flags go up and everybody knows it.
Not only could we count these now - but any historical dispute arising up to 2500 years later as to the result of an election would be easily settled - pot shards from 500BC and earlier have been found, and with a bit of care we could even stretch the traceability to 35,000 years (the oldest known ceramics date from around this age).
OK - people have to mark their own pot shard, and it relies on the probity of the counting officials, but it's still a damn sight better than relying on dodgy software and potentially biased private vote counting.
Besides, the thought of the Supreme Court being deluged with shards of pottery in case of dispute is a nice image.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Wouldn't it be rather fun, if all the conspiracy nuts got together with all the hackers and gave ALL the votes in an election to the politicians who wants to introduce a paper trail in elections? If no such politician can be found, just make them all blank votes/write-in for 'Ficus'.
...
I mean, the other politicians can't really cry foul, because they said themselves "paper trails aren't nescesary" and in effect "we trust the effectiveness of the system"
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
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