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Dave Barry on Electronic Voting
eggoeater writes "With the general interest Slashdot has with electronic voting machines, I thought we'd all enjoy reviewing Dave Barry's take on touch-screen voting machines and debating the merits of police officers carrying lightsabers."
Maybe this will give Pork Barrel budgets a new meaning?
hello!
props to gabe, mtn. dew, fozzy [pro], linuxdave, marrried ponch.
KANSAS IS CAMPING WITH PHIL!!!11one
I probably haven't been paying attention, but is this really true ? I really can't imagine hacking something using a gameboy... anyone has an article about this? Wasn't able to find it with google...
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
Internal changing of values happened in Las Vegas. Gurantee it'd happen in voting. www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
God spoke to me.
Actually, the best thing about the article was visualizing all three of the candidates standing on lawns with biting ants. Hmmm... wonder if I can get some
Jason Feeblehonker 2004
bumperstickers printed up?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Brazil has been using eletronic voting devices for about 6 years. Next month we will have elections sessions for municipal mayors, and we are going to use the eletronic voting system. This system is very reliable.
This Java applet simulates the Brazilian eletronic voting system we use (it is in portuguese).
... I just can't tell anymore whether I'm supposed to be laughing WITH or AT people.
It works better than expected; in fact, without electronic voting we would never have guessed that nobody votes against the incumbent candidates. Its really interesting how people love our leaders so much that not a single vote is cast against them.
Back with messy paper, the vote was much closer. Now we know that vote is and was wrong.
Hokey religions and ancient punch-cards are no match for a good electronic voting machine in your booth.
I'm going to join the police. I mean, the tasers were always cool, but ... lightsabers? Dude, sign me up!
Who paid Yoda for all that jedi training?
I'll bet he gets at least a few letters complaining about the sugar beet intelligence comparison - from sugar beets.
All forms of electronic voting should be banned. We've seen what can happen with the diebold machines, and we all know ow easy it is to manipulate data. Count all votes three times by three different groups of people and all discrepencies accounted for. This is our right, a democraticaly voted government. Fuck the costs.
I find it ironic that /. the home of let's network our toasters and have them run linux is against modernizing voting.
I bet if Diebold used Linux you'd be all for it.
RTFA. Really, do. It's funny. You'll like it. And if you're not a slashdot regular, probably it will be your first introduction to the fact that electronic voting is an issue that you should be concerned about. Of course, its not very informative, but it will at least lead you to think about hackers as a concern for e-voting. And you'll be participating in a modern American phenomenon -- using comedians as a major source of information about current issues. Yay USA!
Ok, so there's two checkboxes for excluding Politics in the preferences, neither of them seems to work and as long a these stories get posted on the front page, there's no way to avoid them.
So a small plea to the editors; please keep politics in their own Section until someone fixes the Exclusion? Please?
...to figure out a simple ballot.
And because of that we have all these fscking problems.
One person with a hankerchief filled with super nasty germs...
I can see someone sueing the state over the health issues.
Besides, I believe in the sanctity of something called a paper trail. I do not know if the Brazilian system supplies a paper trail, but somehow I do not think that American Officials would want to use something invented in Brazil, even if it is really really good. The horror of it all.
Not that the Diebold has a paper trail or is unreliable or anything.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
How long before we demand direct democracy.
Seems like something that could be really useful in politically backwards countries like the U.S.
Not about the electronic voting or anything, but that is pretty dang funny.
...
I think he's got some points being funny though. I mean, how many people do you know who becoome so obsessed with this election, that even a mention of "a different" canidate will get you a glare?
Peopel need to tone it down a bit. Stuff like that really provides some needed comedy, when it's really needed too.
I walk down the hall talking to some people, and they say that this year is going to end up sucking. "Why's that?" I ask. "Because I've got several massive projects due in the start of December, my grandma is on the verge of death, and to top it all off, Bush might get re-elected."
This guy isn't even of legal age to vote, and he was literally thinking that Bush being re-elected is by far worse than anything else at the moment.
Come on people, live a little, joke a little. Rock on Dave Barry.
Does anybody else get the impression that he's some really annoying guy trying desperately to impress you while reading the article? I really don't like Barry's writing.
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
Just use the polls on slashdot for voting. Somehow I suspect this would result in CowboyNeal becoming president.
Yep. Just what we need. Someone making fun of a very, very serious issue.
Why am I very uneasy about this, and extremely doubtful it will do anything to help, instead making concerns about voting machines seem to the average person more like paranoia?
Please help metamoderate.
When you touch this screen, tiny pieces of electricity called ''electrons'' go shooting into your finger, through your arm and into your brain, where they whiz around until they locate the name of the candidate you wish to vote for; they then transmit this information to Central Voting Command (located in India) along with any legally questionable thoughts you may have regarding terrorism, tax evasion or sexual fantasies featuring an armadillo and Wayne Newton.
Well, comedians seem to know about it. Now if we could just get the politicians and the general public to know about it...
$ whatis themeaningoflife
themeaningoflife: not found
When he went on about nose picking in the booth, how many of you started picking their noses?
I for one welcome our new teenage hacker overlords.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
And that person probably thinks he's smarter than average.
Just goes to show that idiots are too dumb to know they're idiots.
The Republican Party is now telling voters in areas with electronic voting machines to vote using a paper absentee ballot. All voters would do well to follow this advice.
You _are_ voting, aren't you?
That problem right there could be eliminated by loading instructions into rom at a factory. Good luck clobbering that.
My opinion is that if electronic voting is to be implemented you're going to have to treat it as a super-critical system, and some of the problems will probably require some custom hardware.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
We've seen what can happen with the diebold machines
Yeah, but have you seen this? Don't even need a Gameboy to hack the election...
this stuff is unbreakable, & wwworks on several (more than 3) dimensions.
you likely will not need a degree in corepirate nazi felon MiSaccouNTing, to be able to detect the direction of the newclear powered winds of change?
consult with/trust in yOUR creators... straightening out the 'books', since until forever. see you there?
tell 'em robbIE?
Nothing is 100% secure, right? I mean what stops someone from taking all paper votes from a particular state and burning them and just tossing in a few million of forged papers?
How do we *know* that the computers used in voting are not tampered with? I mean how do we really know that noone switched the good tested machines with their own versions? Oh, but the central processor should in principle be able to identify a PGP encrypted signature of a specific machine that has the machines' Intel processor ID in it as well as an authentication number, the key should be sent to the central processor and the processor ID should be requested seperately to authenticate the machine or some such, and the process should be transparent etc. etc. But there will always be people with too much access, the people wearing all black, who can make police shut the hell up, the people who can drive to the machines at night, switch them with their own versions of hardware, the people who have physical access to the central processor, the people who are on in it with the Man.
So bring back the punch cards + receipts, I say.
Why is it that when you buy something in a store they give you a receipt of a merchandize but during an election you don't get one? Aren't you buying something for your tax money, a governor or a senator or a president?
2 thin cardboard cards stuck together in a fassion that allows to perforate both of them simultaneously with names printed on both and with perforated contours of holes to be punched out by the voter. The voter then punches the hole corresponding to the name they choose and give the face (top) portion of the card to a processing person, who runs the card through a simple card reader and then throws the card with into a sealed box. The bottom portion remains with the voter.
Now, how about that recount? Recount the top portions of the cards in the box and allow people to come in with their portions of the cards and run them through a card reader.
You can't handle the truth.
Politics has always been kind of an ugly business, but I don't remember a campaign in my lifetime that was so bitter, petty, angry, divisive and deliberately misleading. We have collectively sunk to the ethical level of Karl Rove.
Not only do we not deserve a leadership position in the world, we are becoming ugly and pathetic. We are in real danger of turning into the richest third world country on the planet.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Police will have lightsabres in 3000, as well as funky robots.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
this does a couple of things. one, it confirms your choice. (no more florida issues). and two, it automatically counts the vote. when the polls close, the total is uploaded to the central 'counting' station, and within minutes they have totals. the only timme we get into recounts is when the margin is so close that it triggers one.. in which case they manually count them.
seems to work. paper & technolgy together . just a thought but there's no reason to get all weird about improving the voting system.
one other thing i'd say is that having ONE voting system accross the entire system is not a bad idea. votind districts don't control it, the cheif electoral officer (municipal, provincial, or federal depending on the election) decides what system to use. that way if it's buggered up, it's buggered for everyone.
now if we could only get rid of first past the post we'd be laughing.
So can someone explain to me how Dave Barry has a better grasp on e-voting than anyone involved in buying these machines? I mean he's Dave Barry for god's sake, if his column doesn't have a poop/fart joke he thinks he's failed us all.
It just goes to show you. Our religious extremists are just as crazy as their religious extremists.
Jews like Wolfowitz, who planned the Iraq attack, want the U.S. in as many wars in the Middle East as possible, so that U.S. taxpayers will pay to defend Israel.
A lot of Bush's followers think he is Christian. In reality, recovered alcoholics are still a lot like alcoholics. They often say whatever lie is necessary to get people to like them. Alcohol-influenced people often have a very likable side.
Those Christians, the seriously fundamental ones, read their bible in such a way that they believe that all Jews will eventually be converted to Christianity, or be killed. They want intervention in the Middle East because they think defending Israel is foretold in the bible. Problem with this: "Convert to Christianity, or be killed" is code for "killed". The "Christians" want all the Jews killed. They blame them for killing Christ. By far the best way to get all the Jews killed is to encourage the 14,000,000 Jews in the world to battle 330,000,000 Arabs and 1,100,000,000 Muslims.
So, Bush can be re-elected because he has put together a coalition of the crazy.
... but why not do this nowdays: give me some "cookie" number when I vote and let me see later (via INet most probably) how have you really counted my voice. Can be done like this: I pull my voting blank from a pool of those (like in a lottery), there's an unique number on it that no-one knows but me. I can write it down to my notebook/PDA if I wish and you - when counting the votes - store to some DB that a given cookie number is registered as a vote for this or that candidate. You can also give me some kind of receipt so that if I find my vote has been messed up somehow I have something to proove it.
I wasn't saying that ROM is going to fix everything, that's stupid. I'm just saying it is possible to engineer a good electronic voting system, and ROM is an answer to the problem presented.
Now allow me to elaborate on my vision. Obviously these voting machines are going to have to be validated. Several third parties should be involved in testing the system's reliability, security, etc. To which you could respond what if they're all being bought off. Well screw that, you're just going to have to assume you'll get at least one trustable firm. Don't forget that engineering companies have reputations, and releasing flawed critical systems is a good way to ruin it.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
The part I liked best was his rif on 30 second commercial spots. They do nothing to inform the voters, yet they are often the thing that swings the election. They are a primary reason money has become such a huge corrupting influence in politics. Like those Swift Boat Vet adds. They have been completely discredited, but many people will never learn that part of it and only remember the adds themselves. This is why I urge people to do a few google news searches and inform yourselves of the issues before going in the voting booth.
The Bolachek Journals
Why settle for the lesser of two evils?
-- "You can lead a yak to water, but you can't teach an old dog to make a silk purse out of a pig in a poke" - Opus
that they whine about an 'intellectual elite' while calling everyone but themselves stupid.
Remember, you can't love America if you hate Americans.
Say you have 10 candidates. So you set up 100,000 voting stations across the country (I am not an American). At each station you have 100 (10 rolls x ten booths to allow 10 people to vote at the same time) extremely large rolls of paper tape encased into a transparent plastic cover. The paper rolls are of different color. The paper tape has candidate's name printed on it over and over again on the face side. On the other side of the name there is a number printed as a bar code binary format and in a decimal format, this is a sequential number that identifies the paper roll, and the position of this number within the roll.
As a person enters a booth, (s)he sees 10 buttons, of which only one can be pressed at once and once a button is pressed the other buttons are deactivated until the next person enters the booth. Once a button is pressed, the voter can see a candidate's name cut off from a corresponding tape, the piece of paper falls into a box.
So now by the end of election with this particular setup you have the following:
1. 100 boxes with papers on them in each voting location.
2. 100 tape enclosures with some tape left on them.
So now to count just look at the end of the tape, the last sequential number must tell you how many votes were cast for this particular candidate.
The boxes and the tapes must be stored seperately for a recount purposes.
-----
Here is how to make counting of the totals possible:
Have a website where the people doing the local counts login into and post their numbers against their voting location.
These numbers must be accessible by all, the person who just submitted them will see them on the site and if something funny happens to them (like they change one way or another) then have the local news notified.
This website should be well secured though. Please.
You can't handle the truth.
All systems, electronic or otherwise need validation. When you vote conventionally, how can you confirm that the ballot is lined up correctly, or the counters are properly calibrated? You have to trust that the current system and that someone went around and made sure all the ducks are in a row.
The analog of this process the in the electronic voting systems would be much more complex. This isn't just validation making sure the systems can't be tampered with. This also includes making sure it doesn't have a logical hiccup and forget your vote, or what if the power dies in the middle of your ballet.
Just because you personally can't imagine a valid solution to this problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Although the design of this theoretical system is fraught with difficulties, I've produced solutions to all of the issues you've brought up.
Comparing a service like paypal to the uptight, anal assed stand-alone systems I'm describing is very flawed logic. Try again.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
"You can lead a geek to water, but you can't make 'em take a bath!"
But they haven't been completely discredited.
And since you didn't offer any proof of your assertion, I won't either. nyah nyah.
Several of the original swift boat vets for thruth members have recanted their stories. Other vets have come forward saying they were interviewed by the organization, but their testimony was not used becuase it confirmed John Kerry's story (which matches official Navy records). There is even video footage of one of the swift boat vets for truth completely contradicting his current story; eight years ago he praised Kerry and described Kerry's heroism under enemy fire. Rather than reproduce all the sources here, I will refer you to the great work done at FactCheck.org. They have a well researched and footnoted analysis of the swiftboat claims:
Fact Check looks into Swift Vets.
There has also been huge amounts of evidence that the sift boat vets for thruth have direct ties to the Bush campaign (a violation of campaign finance law if true). The web off connections has been document in the New Your Times as well as various web sites.
Cheers,
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
SPEAKER: . . . and THAT, my fellow Democrats, is why we must defeat this lying fascist criminal war-mongering scum-sucking vermin toad, who, in the interest of remaining positive, I am not going to mention by name.
This explains why electronic voting is not a good idea right now. Diebold is in bed with a lying fascist criminal war-mongering president. I hope the international observers (plus Jimmy Carter) can catch him on some election irregularities--then other countries would be justified in not recognizing Bush's government after January.
During the entire administration we have not been given a straight asnwer about anything.
During the entire administration we have literally been lied to about just about everything.
We should have more than a single voting method on 'the day'
There should be a mandatory independent (even foreign) prescience (which luckily there will be).
I wish someone could show me my vote was counted correctly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
A window user's cry for help?
Open Source Sushi
This is the worst argument against reciepts I've ever heard. Unfortunately, it is also the most common, and also the "offical" objection. Let's drive a stake through it right now, shall we?
On the one hand, if we give receipts, someone might buy some votes. Now, in order to have this effect the ellection, they have to let people know about it before they vote. Otherwise they are just paying people to vote for X when they would have (and did) vote for X anyway. They would just be wasting their money. Likewise, they'd have to let their offer to buy votes for X be known to people who wouldn't have otherwise voted for X--just telling the faithful doesn't help. And to make any difference they would have to tell a large enough number of people to swing the vote--and they don't know beforehand how close it will be, so they'll have to err on the side of "caution" and tell lots of people.
On the other hand, without receipts, an electronic election can by twisted any which way by just fudging the data in the system--with closed source software, this could be done by a single individual or a very small group of people, with no need to tell anyone who isn't already commited.
So, on the one hand, we have the possibility of a conspiracy that can only work if it is announced beforehand to a large number of people at least some of whom probably don't agree with its goals, and on the other hand the possibility of a conspiracy that can be carried out in secret by a very small group of insiders.
Which would you be more worried about?
-- MarkusQ
It might have something to do with the slight difference in population between Canada and the United States?
After all the entire population of Canada is about the same as metro Tokyo...
(Still, I personally prefer marking a paper ballot to trusting current touch-screen machines. There is a much better trail left.)
--
Tomas
I like shiny new things as much as the next Slashdotter, but, give me a break. We love shiny things because they're cool to toy with.
Elections are something you don't toy with.
It's all about being trustworthy. When there is a recount, you damned better well be able to take a hand count of the votes observed by both canidates. With an electronic system, you're left with what the machine says, and thats it. Thats just not acceptable.
It might not be kosher to say, lets step back to something not bleeding edge, and full of buzz words.. Here in Wisconsin we use optical scan machines and they work excellent. The elector gets their ballot, and for every office theres the list of canidates. To select one, they just complete the aarow on the side of their name. They slide the ballot into the tabulator, and the tabulator counts (or kicks it back if its an undervoted or overvoted ballot). There is a permenant record of their vote--the actual ballot they filled out. In the case of a recount, its very hard to argue that the voters intent lies elsewhere.
What don't you like? Are you saying Wolfowitz is not Jewish? Are you saying Jews don't want the U.S. government on their side, as they kill Palestinians? (Guess who paid for those Israeli Blackhawk helicopters that shoot at Palestinians on the ground: You, if you are an American taxpayer.)
If you are saying that Christian fundamentalists don't think that all Jews will be converted during the "end time", you are very out of touch with people who are less educated than you. If you think that most Jews will actually be converted, rather than killed, you don't know Jewish or fundamentalist Christian culture.
If you think that encouraging Jews to fight Arabs and Muslims is good for Jews, you don't know how violence works.
A lot of people who plan to vote for Bush are very poorly informed about what is actually happening.
There's dirty politics in every country, and has been for hundreds of years, and the US is no exception.
Some notable election thefts prior to the 2000 election, some of them much more blatant:
John F. Kennedy won the 1960 election largely due to ballot stuffing and double-voting organized by the Democratic Party political machines in several major cities.
John Quincy Adams, as 2nd-place finisher, won the 1824 election by basically buying the electoral votes of Henry Clay (the 4th-place finisher) in return for giving him a position in his government, thus propelling him ahead of Andrew Jackson (the 1st-place, but less-than-50%-majority, finisher).
Mayor Daley 1 and Mayor Daley 2 have collectively been mayors of Chicago for eons. Not all those elections were won fairly, as you might expect.
Etc.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It was Democrat grandstanding that started the UN observation, there wasn't a need, just some way to further throw a barb at the Republicans.
Be truthful, Rove is no more decietful or dangerous than Terry McAuliffe. Both parties are very well versed in the art of racking the other. I find it humorous how the left always try to imply that its the right who does all the underhanded moves.
At least the right doesn't resort to race baiting tactics like the left, given Kerry's very recent quote "We are not going to stand by and allow another million African American votes to go uncounted in this election,"
Y'know, they both are slime, but to consistently imply that the other side will on the basis of race prevent another from voting is the lowest form of slime in the world.
Electronic voting will take over as soon as either or both parties figure out how to abuse it as much they have with paper voting. Never forget the fact that our elections have a damning amount of fraud in them already, fancy voting machines just mean they have to spend time find a new method.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Why is it that when you buy something in a store they give you a receipt of a merchandize but during an election you don't get one?
Because a reciept that you take with you out of the voting both is an invitation to corruption. It only take one field operative per district handing out 20 dollar bills in exchange for a receipt for Candidate X.
And whoever modded you funny falls all the way down to anencephalic.
to make it impossible for someone to run a program that just rotates through one roll of paper and fills up a box with Bush's name on it,
Why do you think it's bad for someone to do this for Bush but completely okay for someone to commit fraud for your candidate? Election fraud overwhelmingly favors Democrats. It's been estimated that 20% of all votes for Democratic candidates in national elections are fraudelent (i.e. dead people voting, pets voting, multiple registrations for one person, etc); I'd say it's not the Republicans we need to be worried about.
what's wrong with you? I am not an American citizen and I don't live in the states and besides I just gave it as an example. Didn't you understand that I suggested a system that would be more or less temper proof no matter who the candidates are?
You can't handle the truth.
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040828_139 8.html
An upcoming event will discuss this issue in depth.
c fm?EventRecord=4566
Technology, Society, and Public Policy Lecture Series:
Electronic Voting and Accountable Voting Systems
Panel Discusion
Sept. 16, 2004 at 6:00 PM
http://bakerinstitute.org/Resource/UpEvents.htm
cosponsored by the Computer and Information Technology Institute at Rice University.
http://dacnet.rice.edu/depts/citi/calendar/index.
The event will be webcast by the University at
http://www.rice.edu/webcast
There were two ads. One that attacked his combat record and one that attacked his congressional testimony. Only the first has been discredited, the second still stands as a genuine political issue.
9 8.html.
Anyone who served in the military in any capacity deserves respect. Anyone who served one day in combat deserves additional respect. That said, don't be so quick to attack all of the swiftboard vets disputing Kerry's recollection. Combat memories are not reliable, they change, stories heard from one another get "integrated, etc. See http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040828_13
Now some of Kerry critics as lashing out over his 1971(?) congressional testimony. They may be overdoing it but they do have a valid point. He gave innaccurate testimony that gave aid to the "enemy" and perpetuated a false stereotype of US soldiers. It is entirely legitimate to bring this to the attention of the voters.
Not sure who he as voted for be he is registered Libertarian.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
You got a bumper sticker for that?
Rather unbalanced ticket, wouldn't you say? I haven't done my research on Cthulu, but I've read the Harry Potter books, and Voldemort is the wimpiest ultra-villian I've ever encountered.
Of course, if it were the Democratic ticket, it would be Voldemort/Cthulu, given the Dems' propensity toward putting the wrong bozo at the top. To wit: Bentsen/Dukakis or Ferraro/Mondale might have had a chance.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
What's fishy about it? Wasn't that the policy for everyone, 3 purple hearts and go home? Are you saying Kerry got some sort of special dispensation?
While we're on the subject of event 30+ years ago, don't you think it's more than a little fishy that while 200+ peers and superiors are speaking out on Kerry's service (even contradicting their own previous statements and service records), you cant PAY someone to remember Bush's service with the Alabama national guard?
It's not a major stretch to think no body remembers seeing Bush--and a few remember not seeing him--because he never fulfilled his commitment to his country. Maybe he got some special treatment.
Nice censorship via moderation.
First, yes, I think that Bush has made the situation worse. He has tried to do *some* of the right things, but he has also tried to do many of the wrong things. On the ballance his failure with the Roadmap for Israel and Palestine and the systematic nature of the Abu Garaib (sp?) scandel have made things worse. Honestly, I don't think he is that much worse than Clinton really, with regard to Israel (Clinton was unconditionally on Barak's side which probably more than anything lead to the failures at Camp David--- at least Bush has his own opinions).
However, Bush has done far more damage than Clinton did. This is because his strengths don't include diplomacy. Therefore, he has sown resentment across the Muslim world, among our traditional allies of France and Germany, and even among our neighbors such as Mexico and Canada!
The war on terror cannot be fought with the entire Middle Eastern population any more than Israel will obtain security by fighting the entire Palestinian population. That hasn';t worked yet in their 50 years of history as the modern State of Israel. That under current demographic trends, Israel will not long remain a Jewish state does put additional pressure on the situation, but is beside the point.
We need to separate in our mind the aspirations of those that might be pursuaded to sympathize with the terrorists from the terrorists themselves. We should try with all our might to bring the terrorists to justice and expose to their compatriots the level of harm and suffering they have caused, but if we are to win, we must win by depriving them of moral and material support. This can only be completely done by dealing with the issues and injustices which cause many individuals to sympathize with the terrorists and later support or join such organizations.
Its a known fact that not all Muslims are terrorist. But in the same respect, nearly all terrorists are Muslims.
Really? Define "Nearly all." How many members does the FARC (secular/Marxist) or the Tamil Tigers (Buddhist) have? I would think that these organizations which are clearly terrorist probably are larger than most Islamic terror groups...
Then you have the right-wing terrorists in Columbia (Catholic) which also have large numbers, and there are other large leftist groups besides the FARC.
If nearly all terrorists are Muslim, perhaps you would like to go on a nice vacation to Columbia? After all there can't be many terrorists in a Catholic country, can there? Or perhaps Sri Lanka? Historic examples also include the IRA (British Ireland and later Northern Ireland) and the Shining Path (Peru).
This isn't a matter of standing idly by. This is a matter of trying to fight on political as well as law-enforcement fronts.
And yes, invading Iraq has made us MUCH less safe.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
But Bush is certainly not a fiscal conservative anyway; he's spending money hand over fist on his War On Dislikable People Who Weren't Terrorists At The Time and ignoring the actual terrorists. When Reagan was promising to cut the taxes while raising military spending, Bush the Elder called it "Voodoo Economics". Bush the Lesser is practicing it, and because he's pumping much more money into the military than Reagan ever did, and is running a set of attacks on the Middle East to make oil prices go up rather than down, he's racking up debt far faster than even Reagan ever did, while increasing the size of government as well.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Originally, Cthulu picked Galactus, but he's not evil; just hungry. Plus he might eat the Earth he's trying to rule. Sauron has a bad war record and Lex Luther has no hair, so he went with Voldemort because of the whole "no muggles" vision thing. Read Call of Cthulu by H.P. Lovecraft. Good short story; it really captures the "awakened ancient evil" feeling quite well.
-- "You can lead a yak to water, but you can't teach an old dog to make a silk purse out of a pig in a poke" - Opus
Well, election results aren't 20% off from opinion polls, so does that mean those evil democrats get their corpses and pets to vote in opinion polls as well? "Hold on Mr. Gallup, Fluffy wants to give his opinion too..."