No Secret Ballot for Military Personnel?

belmolis writes "According to this editorial in today's New York Times, US military personnel for whom regular absentee ballot procedures are inconvenient are being provided with a questionable alternative, the Electronic Transmission Service, run by a private contractor, Omega Technologies. According to the NYT, the secrecy of ballots could be breached when they are faxed or emailed from the field, when they are in the hands of Omega Technologies, or when they are in the hands of local officials. The NYT was unable to obtain any information on security procedures from the company or from the Pentagon. A manual describing the system can be downloaded here [pdf document]. Like Diebold, Omega is far from non-partisan. Omega President and CEO Patricia Williams has donated $6,600 in this election cycle to the National Republican Congressional Committee and is a member of its Business Advisory Council."

Comments

Compromised ballots?

[davejenkins]

Ballots *could* be compromised at all sorts of places along the chain. The NYT article seems to be making political hay out of the fact that there happen to be some additional points along that chain for overseas military ballots.

Ballots could be compromised by the electioneers at your local library/fire station/place of baloting-- that was never the real check. The check on ballot tampering has always been:
- statistical anomalies to spot possible tampering
- ballot counting to verify/disprove tampering.

This may seem simpleton, but it's how things have been done for the length of the republic. I don't see how adding some more stages (with the same checks at each stage) would fundamentally alter that-- unless you're a newspaper trying to raise the spectre of a rigged election 2 months before voting starts...

That is only one corruption of thousands.

[Futurepower(R)]

There are many, many situations of this nature. See Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government

why voting anonymous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

This begs the question why is voting anonymous anyway? Am i somehow under threat if i vote for kerry or bush or even the communist party candidate and gasp someone finds out :o ....it seems to me that if it was simply published then we could actaully see if the sytem is fucked....ie hanging chads and all that. I think our democracy is more threatened by the possibity of faulty even intentional voteing fraud created having an anonymous voting proceedure then some proceeved unknown risk of having each vote stamped with a name.

stendec@gmail.com

Re:why voting anonymous anyway

[Superjhemp]

Am i somehow under threat if i vote for kerry or bush or even the communist party candidate and gasp someone finds out :o

Maybe not you, but lots of other people might feel uncomfortable to vote Democrat if their boss votes Republican. A threat doesn't need to be a threat to your health and lifelyhood; a threat to your career is more than enough.

And then, there's the specter of "vote buying". If ballots are secret, it's much more difficult to buy votes, because you cannot be sure that they guy whose vote you bought really voted the way he promised ;-)

And then, the special case of the armed forces. Even if Joe the Soldier is brave enough to vote Democrat (knowing full well that his hierarchy would prefer Republican), and does not care that his might lead to his removal from the armed forces, we still have a problem: Now suddenly the Republicans have an army at their disposal which they know that they can trust. No risk of the army siding with the people, if ordered to commit unconstitutional acts, because the Republicans will have "weeded out" the untrustworthy elements before.

Re:Your rights and freedoms are being thrown away

[centipetalforce]

Those of us who take an interest in the state of the US watch in sorrow and some concern at the rate at which your cherished rights and freedoms are being stamped on by this administration. Bush only got in after some very suspicious vote counting. The Republicans aren't too bothered what it takes to keep him there

Trust me it hurts much more to watch it happening to my own country. Now that Bush apparently has a double digit lead, It is begginning to become obvious that not only will BU__SH__ probably win, he may even win by getting the popular vote this time.
I can only hope that the rest of the world realizes there are still some people in america who are AGAINST Bush and everything he stands for.

A couple of points

[ErichTheWebGuy]

First of all, it's kind of lame that the company would not give any information about its security procedures, while another source (it would seem) was readily available that details the whole thing.

Second, the Business Advisory Council is (in my opinion) a total crock of shit. I used to work for a company whose CEO won the Business Advisory Council's "Businessman of the Year" award. Let me tell you, the award is (in my opinion) pretty much given to people who donate large sums to the party. Oh did I mention that the company mentioned above is now under the control of a receiver, and is also under investigation by the IRS Criminal Investigvation Division? Oh, did I mention the grand jury preceedings? But I digress......

Remember, you cannot trust anyone, the whole damned system is corrupt, and all parts biased, one way or the other. (The "in my opinion" statements above are merely a CYA thing)

Ummm...

[The Tyro]

That wouldn't put a huge dent in the military, which tends to vote republican 80+ percent of the time (I saw a statistic at one time that showed military officers voted republican 8 to 1 over democrat... Here's an article about the Duke Study ).

I'd have to say from my own experience (former military officer talking here) that the percentage is probably higher than they think. I can count on one hand the number of real liberal democrats I encountered during all my years in the military.

Bush is respected by almost all the current and former US military personnel I know, in distinct contrast to Bill Clinton. When I was in the service, many officers and enlisted so despised Clinton that they refused to display any certificates, awards, decorations, citations, etc with his signature on them. Despite the prohibition on using "contemptuous words" against the commander-in-chief and elected officials, most guys were (privately) very frank about how they felt... The level of enmity was really remarkable.

Re: Ummm...

[The Tyro]

On the off chance that you really don't know, I'll try to offer some context.

Much of the ill will regarding clinton came from his history. He stated that he "loathed the military", and subsequently dodged the draft. Despite this, he still managed to get himself elected commander in chief... that really rankled the older vietnam-era guys that were still around... some of them couldn't say Clinton's name without spitting. They resented very much having to salute and take orders from him (the younger guys resented Clinton for the same reasons, but it was really palpable among the older guys).

Clinton's sexual indiscretions were also a huge liability. Military members can be prosecuted under the UCMJ for adultery alone; sexual indiscretions with a subordinate (ie. Miss Lewinsky) are even worse. Many active duty members felt that Clinton, as commander in chief, should be held to the same standard. It's a pretty terrible example to set when the commander gets off for something that would earn a lowly Sergeant a court-martial...

Note: we haven't even started talking about his politics.

Anyway, that'll get you started... I'm sure some others in this forum can add some additional thoughts.

Re:Ummm...

[intnsred]

only to be surprised by just how many of my fellow servicemen are not Bush supporters at all.

And I think it's safe to say that there are significant elements of the top brass that are not Bush/Rumsfeld supporters.

This was most clearly illustrated when Gen. Shinseki, the-then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, was forced into retirement for publicly stating that he would need "hundreds of thousands" of troops to secure Iraq.

When the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff job opened up -- the wet dream job for every general in the military -- no general stepped forward. Rumsfeld had to call one of his cronies out of retirement to take the position. That speaks volumes! The generals know that Bush/Rumsfeld threw out the "Powell Doctrine" so painfully learned after Vietnam, and they don't like it.

but I question OIF being part of the GWOT myself.

Why, just because "Operation Iraqi Freedom"[sic] was planned well before 9/11?

Do people forget Bush's hand-picked Treasury Secretary, lifelong Republican Paul O'Neill -- one of the highest officials in the US gov't, going on TV on "60 Minutes" showing a map of Iraq carved up among American and British/western oil companies and saying that the map was made long before 9/11 and the plan to attack Iraq started as soon as Bush took office?

My question is: why do you have questions?! The answer is as solid as you're going to get!

What pissed off the military last time...

[MyNameIsFred]

I know several people in the military, who were absolutely enraged with the last election because their absentee ballots were'nt counted. See this for example. They were far more angry that their vote was usurped, then they were concerned about someone seeing their vote.

Paranoia

[jkonrad]

Let's try not to make too much of the fact that organizations outside the gov't having to do with voting (Diebold, Omega, et al) support conservatives moreso than liberals, politically.

This is largely because the right is much more pro-business and -capitalism than the left, who are typically seen to increasingly resent the wealth builders and creators with the more wealth they build and create.

If some organization seemed intent on taxing and regulating me out of business, I probably wouldn't support them much, either.

What party a business supports in a moot point, regardless. If someone is paranoid enough to have visions of conspiracy by right-supporting businesses, then the same untrustworthiness must therefore be assumed about all left-supporing organizations as well. While I don't understand paranoia all that well, maybe in the minds of those so afflicted, these two opposing conspiracies would cancel each other out...?

There's no substitute for thinking.

Re:Gain control over the military first

[Mr. Slippery]

Whether the democrats like it or not the majority of military is behind their Command-In-Chief and will in all likelyhood vote for him again.

Actually I've discussed the question with a few military people, and none planned to vote for Bush. Indeed, one Army officer pointed out to me that, given the "backdoor draft" going on, members of the Guard and Reserves "would be idiots" (his words) to vote for Bush. (Of course, I live in a pretty solid "blue" state.)

I can also tell you first hand, that if your knowledge of the events in Afghanistan and Iraq is from the news media then you are basically ignorant of reality. The vast majority of the Iraqs' and Afghanistans' citizens are very glad the US stepped in and helped...Someday the true events will be revealed and you guy's will be amazed at how totally clueless you were.

Right, I'm going to take the word of an Anonymous Coward on this. As if all the bombing and shooting was actually just an old Iraqi way of greating visitors.