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How To Lose An Election
smooth wombat writes "CNN has posted a story to their site about electronic votes from Miami-Dade County's first widespread use of touchscreen voting machines that were lost due to a computer crash.: 'The malfunction was made public after the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, a citizen's group, requested all data from the 2002 gubernatorial primary between Democratic candidates Janet Reno and Bill McBride.' Other groups are challenging a state rule preventing counties that use the machines from conducting manual recounts from them." Reader fatwater adds a link to the New York Times' coverage.
That is true, however they have no jurisdiction since it is the state supervisor of elections and the republican majority that is precluding the use of a paper trail of touchscreen voting machines.
So the systematic purging of likely Democratic voters from the 2000 Florida roles was an accident?
The attempt to repeat this same action in 2004 was also an accident?
When the same accident happens over and over, I get suspicious.
It was the Republican senate. But if you look at it, it makes sense. it says a "manual recount may not be conducted of undervotes on touch-screen machines".
You cannot recount undervotes with a computer system, even if you print out receipts. An undervote is when the total number of votes for a race are less than the number of ballots cast. In punch card or other manual voting methods, the electronic system can miss a mark or a punch that is obviously a vote to a human eye.
However, there is no way for a human to look for an uncounted vote. If they user pressed the button on the computer it will be recorded. If they do not, it will warn them that they have not voted for races that they did not pick a candidate for. If it prints out a paper, the paper will not have the vote either. No stray marks, no hanging chads.
What does have a paper trail is the precinct by precinct totals. So each ballot location prints a summary from their machines which they verify and turn in. The summaries can be compared to the electronic totals.
I would promote a receipt system for the voter. The voter should be able to take a small receipt with some type of unidentifiable hash result on it. If there is an accusation of tampering or lost votes it could be compared to the records in the database to make sure it was counted appropriately. In order to prevent people from being held accountable by nefarious entities for their voting decisions, it should not be able to be reversed into a proof of voting.
In fact they could get one and leave one in a box for auditing of the computer system. Technically this is not a recount. When you check a manual count against a computer record, it is an audit, since there was no "counting" done in the first place.
I don't think it would be all that difficult to employ without corruption. Actually, it's a great idea for a double-check:
Joe Sixpack presses onscreen button for Candidate X and gets a printed receipt of his vote. He reads it, makes sure that it says Candidate X and not Candidate W (not so subtle, I know). Then presses the, "Yes, that is my final answer" button and then he deposits his receipt (e.g. via a mechanism similar to check deposits) back into the machine. That way you have the e-votes PLUS the paper trail.
Of course, it's worthy to that Democrats recently gave away free beer if you registered to vote at their booth.
Q J4_news.shtml
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/news/0618SM4K
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Leftie had a good list. He did leave out a string of corrupt dictators the U.S. proped up in South Vietnam during the war. A key reason South Vietnam fell was because the governments the U.S. was propping up were so corrupt and so unpopular they served to fuel the Viet Cong's success.
As for Mao its noteworthy that he is dead. But his party still runs China, but for some reason you didn't list Jiang Zemin or Wen Jiabao. They've moderated since Mao but they are still basically the same party and a repressive dictatorship for all practical purposes. The only thing thats changed is they now allow private ownership of capital and a lot of rich American business men and multinationals are making a pretty penny there so right wingers don't bad mouth them anymore.
I think Muammar is the best friends of the Bush administration now, since he turned over his WMD's, WMD's I wager he bought some just so he could turn them over and get the sanctions lifted. They like him because they can claim him as proof their "get tough" policy in Iraq worked though that is a dubious claim. I'm pretty sure Cheney/Halliburton and the rest of the U.S. oil and gas industry are chomping at the bit to do business with Muammar and get back in to his oil fields. Again as long as there is money to be made the U.S. LOVES dictators.
Hugo Chavez is democratically elected. He is a socialist and the Republican's hate him with a passion, he hates them too, but he was still elected. The Bush administration has tried to overthrow him at least once, and if they succeed that would probably lead to a dictatorship, but Venezuala isn't under one now.
Khomeini, well that one is interesting. He came to power because the U.S. toppled the elected government of Iran when they nationalized their oil fields taking control of them from their former colonial masters the British, who were taking the lions share of the profits. The U.S. installed the Shah of Iran who was a brutal repressive dictator. The Iranians turned to Khomeni because they hated the Shah more, and hate the U.S. to this day for inflicting him on them.
@de_machina
We prefer to arrest people AFTER THEY HAVE COMMITTED A CRIME. I know, it's all new fangled, and hard to wrap your head around, but it is the way we do things 'round here. Y'all got that?
Arrested by who? The guy who just stole the election?
Prosecuted by who? The D.A. who was just installed by a corrupt political machine?
At least the judge, who was _surely_ elected in a fair and reasonable manner, will give him a fair trial...
Do the math. When you have voting corruption, it's no longer reasonable to assume that people will be arrested and prosecuted for crimes they commit. Especially when their crimes benefit the corrupt powers.
normal(adj)- people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots [DECS]
Remove the computer, give the voter a felt tip pen and have them check the appropriate box (on a machine readable form) and you have the same system without the computer costs or failures.
In fact, I live in MN and thats how I've been voting for the last 7 years. The machines that read the ballot are even smart enough to detect common mistakes like two votes in the area and spit the ballot back out to be destoyed. The nice elderly person manageing the machine examines the old ballot, tells you what you did wrong, gives you a new ballot and sends you back to start again. The old ballot is shredded into another locked box.
This is not rocket science people, there is no need to use a computer to make a small mark on a piece of paper. What was Ockums Razor again? The simple solution tends to be correct.
Apple free since 1990!
"We prefer to arrest people AFTER THEY HAVE COMMITTED A CRIME. I know, it's all new fangled, and hard to wrap your head around, but it is the way we do things 'round here. Y'all got that"
I must of missed something. Have they arrested anyone in the White House for exposing the identity of a CIA agent. That was a felony, there are a few people in the White House who know who did it and in fact no on has been arrested "AFTER THEY COMMITTED A CRIME", a felony punishable by I think 10 years in the federal pen.
Sorry but in this country we only arrest some people who commit crimes, others get off scot free especially if they have money or connections. We often frame people for crimes they didn't commit, especially if they are poor minorities, for example the governor of Illinois had to take everyone off death row after it became apparent Illinois police and DA's were time after time framing poor minorities for crimes they didn't commit and the frames were falling apart thanks to DNA testing.
All in all the U.S. isn't the bastion of perfection in "Freedom and Deomcracy" you seem to think it is.
The other obvious problem with relying on local police to enforce election law is its not uncommon for the police to be involved in the election rigging. Mayor's and elected county sherrifs have in the past frequently been involved in vote rigging. There were accusations police in Florida were obstructing access to polls in poor black areas in the 2000 elections.
Another tangential example, a number of people in Afghanistan have been killed recently because they were carrying papers showing they had registered to vote. The remnants of the Taliban and local war lords who are opposed to the elections are killing people for registering. All in all, voters carrying around slips of paper is not a good idea. I see today Doctors Without Borders has decided Afghanistan is so dangerous today they are pulling out after 24 years. Kind of undercuts the Bush administration of what a showcase of success the new Afghanistan is.
@de_machina
This actually happened in my hometown (Jacksonville) at my university (UNF). *shivers*
It was reported in the folio weekly. Unfortunately they don't have an online version.
An interesting note in the story was the lady that discovered it and went to the Democratic Party headquarters in town was a republican. Who would have guessed?