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Computer Problems Already Affecting Florida Voters
TAGmclaren writes "The Sun-Sentinel is reporting on computer glitches already affecting the election in - you guessed it - Florida. Of the 14 early voting sites that opened in Broward County on Monday morning, 9 were reporting problems. In Orlando County, the touch screens crashed. More generally, SFgate.com is keeping track of all voting issues across the country - including lawsuits and other ballot problems." Update: 10/19 03:38 GMT by T : Thanks to reader Dale J. Russell for pointing out that "there is no Orlando County. The city of Orlando, Florida resides in Orange County."
Orlando is in Orange county.
Was that I was watching the local news (Washington, DC) and they were discussing electronic voting machines and some of the concerns surrounding them. Then, the reporter ends his report basically blowing the concerns off and saying it was just people were afraid of computers raising a fuss. What? It seems to me that the more people know about computers and know about the systems, the more concerned they are. It's not people afraid of computers and to be dismissed like that simply blows my mind.
The problem from the article has to do with the poll workers being able to connect to a database housing registration lists. While it might slow things down, it's not really a significant problem. The paper lists always seem to work fine and didn't slow things down much, not sure why they can't use those. Plus you could verify the signature on the spot.
What?
In Orlando County, the touch screens crashed.
Well, at least we know the red and green phosphors are safe!
There is no "Orlando county"
Lemme guess, the voting machines are running Windows and Jeb Bush installed them...
I feel a Deja-vu coming....
What would you do without a monitor? Sit and look stupid behind a keyboard and a mouse
Oopsie, I mean this: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/14/14 43225&tid=226&tid=103&tid=17
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNew s/1098121671320_93530871/?hub=World
"And in Orange County, voting ground to a halt after the touch-screen voting system crashed for about 10 minutes.
A senior deputy elections supervisor could not explain the brief outage, but speculated a faulty Internet connection may have been to blame."
Yeeeehaw! Let the games begin.
A bit of self fufilling prophecy. We've had 4 years to sit around wringing our hands and worrying, of course we're gonna have problems.
And we'll have the inevitable lawsuits, recounts and when someones declared the winner, the losers will yell about how it was stolen.
They're just better organized now. It used to be on a local level with party bosses in the area doing the rigging, now the entire party leadership (BOTH major parties) work at it.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"Of the 14 early voting sites that opened in Broward County on Monday morning, 9 were reporting problems."
Upon contacting their support center, the issue was resolved shortly after the operators were instructed to turn the power ON.
Only me? Oh - ok...
*fits tin-foil hat more securely*
Gosh, which side are you backing???
Aliens must look down at the US electoral process, and regard it in a similar way as the US has regarded other countries electoral systems - IE; Broken and unsatisafactory.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
I am trying to think of what the arguments will be...
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
There is a simple solution to Florida's dilemma about how to determine which ex-felons are permitted to vote: get rid of the state's shameful felony disenfranchisement laws.
It is more than ironic that as the United States ostensibly seeks to promote democracy overseas, hundreds of thousands of tax-paying Florida residents are forced to stand mute on election day.
Florida is one of only 7 states that permanently deny all ex-offenders access to the voting booth. The consequences there are stark: some 600,000 Floridians are unable to vote, including more than 17 percent of the state's black male adults.
Some legislators raise bogus arguments about virtue being a prerequisite to voting--as though all those who have the franchise have led blemish-free lives. Underneath such pious sentiments are calculated partisan politics. Simply put, Republicans fear Democrats would benefit if Florida became a state that honored the fundamental precept of a free nation: the right to vote.
Five years ago, Human Rights Watch documented the outrageous consequences nationwide of felony disenfranchisement laws, including those in Florida. At the time, few Americans were even aware that nearly one and a half million ex-felons in this country were denied voting rights even long after they completed their criminal sentences. Somewhat naively perhaps, we assumed that once this fact became known, legislators across the country would promptly step up to make the necessary legislative fix.
There has been some progress--but not in Florida. Despite legislative debates and lawsuits, Florida stubbornly retains the law denying ex-felons the vote for life. An eighteen-year-old convicted of a single drug offense can never vote no matter how exemplary her subsequent life. The only option is to navigate the frustrating and cumbersome process of seeking a pardon or restoration of civil rights from the governor--and this is not much of an option. The current backlog of people seeking to have the vote restored is estimated to be more than 40,000.
The right to vote is a fundamental human right. It can be frustrated by hanging chads and butterfly ballots.
But Florida's felony disenfranchisement laws keep far more Florida residents from choosing their elected officials than these infamous--but not legislatively mandated--problems.
saru mo ki kara ochiru
See, nothing is perfect.
Nobody said it would be perfect. Right now this is good enough, and we'll just have to take that.
And besides, it's not like we're voting for the queen.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
I guess John Titor was right. Here comes the beginning of WWIII. See you guys in 2036!
Um, 2000 anyone? Bad sign. This just confirms my believe that Kerry will lose and Bush will win (unfairly). Time to pack for Canada.
Is it me or does anyone else find it hard to believe that all of the so called voting irregularities suddenly started in 2000?
I realize that it's popular these days to point out that these irregularities contributed to the last election outcome, but isn't also somewhat obvious that those same irregularities (or similar ones) have existed since the dawn of voting itself, I mean those punch machines of yore were around quite a while before 2000.
If we are complaining about them now, mabye we should have started when Jimmy Carter was elected. When are we going to stop the madness and realize that the only ones profiting here are lawyers not people. There isn't and will never be a perfect system for everyone.
The NYTimes (free reg, blah blah blah) also has an article on the recent problems in FL: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/18/politics/campaig n/18CND-VOTE.html
The Times also ran has an article about how closely scrutinized voting will be by both sides, particularly in the swing states: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/18/politics/campaig n/18monitor.html
Interesting to see how nearly everyone seems to be showing their partisan colors. It almost seems that people don't want a fair election so much as they want a *legal* election that their side wins.
Here's to hoping good things can emerge when a bunch of greedy agents interact...
You should become a reporter. Really, with your unbiased reporting style, you could be the next anchor on CBS.
This makes me seriously concerned for a number of reasons.
First, these computer problems were blamed on the Internet connection used to access the registered-voter database. No voting system, even if it uses a VPN, should be connected to the Internet. If remote data is necessary, do it over a telephone connection. That's worked for credit card companies for many, many years.
Second, the article references the general apathy of workers running the poll stations. It seems that democracy may end in this country, or at least in Florida, from this more than from any of our elected leaders.
Third, and most speculatively, what happens if a more serious error occurs on Election Day and a large portion of ballots get lost? Four years ago, we could go back and read hanging chads. What will the courts decide this year if an entire state's ballots go missing?
By all accounts, this election could be more dangerous to the future of the nation than 2000.
Personally, I see the whole mess as a good thing. Get as many kinks out now as possible. Yeah, it's screwing up a couple hundred thousand people's day-to-day lives, but at least it won't affect millions next month.
It's not the touch screen crashing that is the problem. It's what happens underneath that is the big concern.
These systems have been made so complex and closed source that there is no audit trail.
I get these images of a huge casino with electronic slot machines - whoever put them in did so with a view to making profit out of them. If you're the end user, you have no idea what they're doing under that screen - but you can be well assured you can't take them at face value. So if casino machines can statistically determine when or if they should pay out depending on the bank balance of the casino, what the heck are these voting machines doing?
In Australia we mark numbers on sheets of watermarked paper.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
It's more sinister. Sweet dreams.
At least voter registration and turnout is going up. The 2000 election problems were apparently good for something after all! Seriously, considering how were always complaining about low voter turn out, this is turning into a very good thing.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
I am not sure about the 10 minute statement. Our local news reported a 2 hour delay in taking votes because of this problem. I will try to find that in print.
If you look at the history of presidential elections, I think you'll find that this recent unpleasantness (VERY close percentages) has not characterized past elections. Reagan won all but 1 (yes, that's right, ONE) state's electoral votes when he was up for re-election.
Don't take my word for it. BBCNews has a nice little applet which lets you look at all of the past electoral college breakdowns for our past elections.
Now, the election counting definitely worries me, and I agree with a past poster that the more you know about computers, the more you worry that they control the receipt, storage, and counting of our votes. If you ask me, democracy is already easy enough to steal with money. Why we're making it easier to steal with simple computer hacking is beyond me. At least we all know politicians are dishonest. Until now, we probably had SOME faith in the voting system, as such.
Electronic voting machines are the new tool for rigging elections. Instead of insisting manufacturers build in safeguards like printers to ensure that recounts are possible, the governor pushed to have Florida election law changed to not require recounts any longer.
You watch this issue. It'll be a nasty fight. The record number of people registering to vote aren't flocking to the county seat because they're happy: people in this country are apathetic when things are going the way they like. I don't see how Bush can win legally with the massive number of people turning out to register for the first time.
I'll put mine down now...
George W Bush by a landslide (and move votes than there are voters!)
When the USA was formed, it was created by the coalescing of thirteen separate countries. The founding fathers were far more concerned about he equality and rights of these separate states than they were about the equality and rights of the individual citizens. That concern survives to this day. Senate power is allocated equally to the various states. This means a citizen is a small state such as Rhode Island has more voting power than a citizen in a large state like California. You could assign senators by state population the way the house works, but then the senate would keep expanding. Perhaps it would be better to give each senator as many votes in the senate as there are voters in his state.
The founding fathers were also concerned that every region had a say in the running of the country. This means that a citizen living in a sparsely populated part of the country such as Utah has more voting power in the House Of Representatives than a citizen in a densely populated state like New Jersey.
The founding fathers did not believe in democracy as we know it today. They did not trust the "mob" to govern. They wanted a republic where well-educated elected representatives made all the decisions. The masses should never be permitted to directly make any decision. There were no national newspapers, no TV, and no Internet. The average citizen did not even know the names of the candidates. So the founding fathers set up an indirect system called the electoral college to elect the president. A group of impartial, non-party-affiliated, educated men, who were familiar with the presidential candidates, made the selection. In the constitution, the electors are not even required to vote for the candidate they are pledged to. 27 states have laws to bind them, but these laws may be unconstitutional. The penalty is typically a $100 fine, and being kicked out of the party. The constitution even made provision for a state legislature to select these electors in any way it saw fit. Legally the state legislature need not even hold an election to choose the college of electors. This harks back to the days when the states were nervously considering the possibility of union, and wanted to retain every possible power to themselves. The state legislatures originally directly chose the electors for president, without holding an election.
Further, in most states there is a winner-take-all-the-electors rule, which leads occasionally to the strange anomaly that the president chosen is the one with the fewest popular votes.
Modern Americans may consider these founding fathers' notions in violation of the democratic principles of "all men are born equal" and "one man; one vote". However, as Jimmy Carter pointed out, these rules are almost impossible to change because they are burned into the constitution. They require 38 states to agree before they can be changed. Small states and sparsely populated regions are not about to give up their privileged positions, even if they recognise that privilege is unfair.
Jimmy Carter said the most we can hope for is an abandonment of the winner-take-all-rule, because that change does not require a constitutional amendment, and because it can be done a state at a time. If states apportioned presidential electors in proportion to votes, most of the probability the anomaly of the winner in the electoral college getting the fewest popular votes would disappear.
saru mo ki kara ochiru
The first time I read it.
for news junkies. This is going to be one hell of an interesting election.
Anyone know any sites similar to drudgereport.com?
It's bad enough these fargin machine don't work right, but the courts there just ruled provisional ballots invalid. Meanwhile, states like Ohio rules them completely legal.
I don't feel so confident on the election results when there seems to be no way that we'll even know for sue what the true ballot count is. Hell, we can't even agree on where the ballots can come from.
Jesus Christ, people.
UPDATE tVotes set (cPolitician1) = cPolitician + 1
I don't respond to AC's.
They can type in DubyaDubyaDubya.mycrookedbrotherRulzHere.com
(link)
Greg Palast was one of the first to look into voter fraud in Florida, and reported it on the BBC.
The New York Times is echoing the sentiment in an op ed by Paul Krugman.
Perhaps the reporter is overcompensating for their own fears about computers?
The voting machine I used had this friendly purple gorilla on it that helped me decide who to vote for!
They are still having problems here in New Zealand with the local elections, results should have been out last week but the 'software' that was going to count the votes didn't work... I think they should have just done this: select winner from votes order by number_of_votes I'm sure they will have problems in the US elections, it's only a couple of weeks away and I have read far too much about the problems, mind you of Jeb has his way half of his state won't be able to vote ;)
info on the NZ problems...
"Ten days after the local body elections, the make-up of seven city and district councils and 18 of 23 district health boards is still unknown, with both companies involved in the fiasco - Christchurch election services company Electionz.com and NZ Post subsidiary Datamail - unwilling to predict when final results will be out.
Though officials had said the problem, traced to Datamail software, would be resolved at the weekend, checks by the Audit Office and audit company KPMG are still being carried out......"
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3068912a11,00. html
What type of programmers do they have for these machines?
There have been numerous security flaws, tons of counting errors, and more for such a simple machine.
It should be as simple as "votes_for_kerry++;" and "votes_for_bush++;", or, if they want to make it even more "hi-tech", they could have it communicate to a server via socket programming (which is one of the easiest things in the world...), and then have the SERVER do "votes_for_kerry++;" and "votes_for_bush++;".
As for the touchpads, just buy them from a reputable company, rather than "Touchpads, Inc., part of the Claria Network".
Suppose there is massive fraud involving electronic voting machines, either through rewriting votes, having machines in democratic (or republican) areas just not work...
Then what?
The Supreme Court seems to have made it's feelings clear last time around... what's the smart plan?
I'd like to suggest that a certified open source voting system - completely minimal, based on some kind of well secured version of the OS, vetted by independent auditors, distributed as a CD with a known checksum, might be a useful thing to have done after the last election, but I don't know of any such project.
I guess if the chaos repeats, perhaps we'll have one ready for the next election?
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
They appear to have a 100% working system. Why aren't we using their system?
It's a wire story. Yes, Salon publishes a lot of original material on the election-- sometimes with so much partisan zeal that it pisses off subscribers who expect and pay for a "quality read"-- but it also reprints straight AP copy, which can be read at most any free news service.
BOTH parties you say? Nonsense. Show me anything even close to what the Republicans are currently doing.
The facts are (just a brief snippet really)
SPROUL & ASSOCIATES is directly financed by the RNC. Nathan Sproul is reported as the director of the Arizona Christian Coalitition.
The Charlston Gazette reported on 8/20 Sproul & Associates in West Virginia started a voter registration campaign where ONLY republicans were registered -- not Democrats -- apparently in violation of the West Virginia law. (The article is reported here).
There have been reports posted on the internet from Pennsylvania (on September 17) and Maryland (on September 16) of the the same organization -- Sproul & Associates -- pretending to be workers from the non-partisan America Votes, and registering ONLY Republicans. To obtain locations to set up shop, Sproul and Associates apparently lied to puiblic librarians about being non-partisan. (The internet postings, that took place on a librarian network, are reported here.
On September 22, Sproul and Associates did the same thing in Oregon. This is a plain violation of Oregon law, according to Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury in an interview with Northwest Cable News. See here. It also appears that another Republican group engaged in "bait and switch registration", at least according to the Daily Vanguard.
A few days ago, CBS reported that an organization in Nevada called Voters Outreach America was THROWING OUT registration forms filled out by people trying to register to vote as Democrats. The American Prospect has reported that Voters Outreach America is under contract with Sproul & Associates.
And then, of course, there is the widely-reported story from South Dakota, where the nephew of Thune, the Republican challenger to Tom Daschle, has been caught fraudulently obtaining absentee ballots for Republicans. A criminal investigation is pending. Top Republicans have been forced to resign.
What it appears here is that there are reliable reports of GOP operatives in at least SIX states engaging in sytematic and repeated attempts at voter fraud. From only registering republicans, to falsifying absentee ballot requests, to destroying democratic voter applications, this appears to be a coordinated effort at all levels to swing the election illegally to the Republicans. In fact, things are so bad that former SD goveror Janklow has issued a public statement saying that the national GOP is encouraging voter fraud.
So, sorry, it's not both parties. It's the Republicans. Show me anything comparable done by Democrats, and I'll eat my own shit and vote shit, err... Bush.
wtf is a sig?
His name is George..
he skated by on his father's influence and his grandfather's name without accomplishing anything that didn't involve extorting the public at large.
supports increasing the tax burden of those people outside of his personal sphere.
likes to fight wars across oceans both out of concern for his image, and for economic reasons.
thinks he deserves nearly unlimited police powers.
he believes he rules with the sanction of God and that God speaks through him.
he believes that anyone who is critical of him, in any way, for any reason, has betrayed the nation.
he believes that the proceedings of the government should be kept secret from the people.
he believes that the interests of the people should be represented exclusively by representatives of industry who stand to profit not the public but at the expense of the public.
he also enjoys a life of leisure, and month long vacations.
if he doesn't like what you're wearing, he'll have the police haul you off.
Ummm....
The founding fathers were also concerned that every region had a say in the running of the country. This means that a citizen living in a sparsely populated part of the country such as Utah has more voting power in the House Of Representatives than a citizen in a densely populated state like New Jersey.
I think you mean Senate, Not the House.
You could assign senators by state population the way the house works, but then the senate would keep expanding.
And here the founding fathers gave set the Senators at two per state to specifically insure that the large states could not overule the smaller states. They were worried about the "Tyrany of the Majority". Thats why every state has the same number of votes in the senate and why the House is assigned by population.
And next time write something yourself instead of copying it off of some website whos facts are wrong.
http://mindprod.com/election.html
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Why anyone sane would use e-voting in the first place is just beyond me. I just cannot understand why people are so obsessed with e-everything. Could anyone please tell me what is wrong with pen and paper? I have been asking this question since this stupid idea of e-voting was first introduced and I have got absolutely no serious answers. This is not a rhetorical question. I would really like to know.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
The CEO of Diebold is a fundraiser for Bush & Co?
wtf is a sig?
Sorry folks, the issues in 2000 weren't technical.
To have a democracy, you need a critical mass of basically decent people. People who are prepared to lose, if need be. People who are prepared to agree to rules before the election, and stick with them, not swirl around in post-modern uncertainty.
Absent that, forget it. Why bother? If you're going to demand a perfection that is not of this world, you will never get it. And you'll obsess about the supposed illegitimacy of your opponents when they win. And you'll work yourself into a froth and decide that anything goes to oppose them.
Forget trying to "fix" elections with technology. Just reclaim decency. Stop assuming that your opponents are three-headed monsters that eat babies for breakfast. Stop accusing everybody of cheating. Just work hard and persuade lots of people to agree with you. Win by a big enough margin that none of this crap matters. And accept that it might not work, and that you might lose.
"Since when did correcting inaccurate information become karma whoring? "
I believe that's one of the seven unoriginal sins.
From the article:
"All 14 of the branch offices had problems with the database connection. Many of the sites had numerous voters lined up to cast their ballots.
A work-around was created by calling in each voter's name to the main Election's Office in Fort Lauderdale. Two office workers were assigned to each phone, Salas said, for a slowed verification process. The workers would plug into the database, and verify that the voter in one of the branch sites was indeed registered to vote."
Incredible that something was so poorly validated and still made it into the field. My precinct gets voter validation printed out from Motor Voter records. The DMV uses a pretty solid, fully computerized system (IBM) that has worked well for more than five years. Total time to verify I am registered? About a minute. I never wait (and I live in a densely urbanized area), step with up to the lever voting machine and my vote is recorded and verifiable.
How did places like FL fall for this sham? Being a beta user for software that was released before it was ready is one thing when it is a text document, but for VOTING? Jeezoz H. Keerist.
I've also done work in a Federal government office with purchasing power. I can see how cluster f$%^s like this can happen, because there is no ultimate responsibility and accountability for incompetence. If the sales pitch looks good and the vendor "demonstrates" the reliability of the product, no public "servant" will be held accountable. The vendor also likely got paid upon delivery and there is no recourse for going after them. The vendor, rather than getting blacklisted by the contracting office, will get to explain what when wrong and why it was God's Will or somebody else's fault.
.... don't know the election is rigged?
You'd think with the monkey hacking diebold and murphy formula articles along with other article regarding diebold voting machine troubles and the persistance on using them.....
So who is now up for jury duty just because they wanted to vote Bush out and thought their vote counted?
I'd like to suggest that a certified open source voting system - completely minimal, based on some kind of well secured version of the OS, vetted by independent auditors, distributed as a CD with a known checksum, might be a useful thing to have done after the last election, but I don't know of any such project.
I think you're talking largely about the MIT/Caltech Voting Project.
As I understand it they're developing standards and a reference implementation. Many implementations is the goal. Yours is a good idea - a LiveCD could be run on the computers in the schools' computer labs where voting is most often held.
Now, it'll probably take some work to get the Federal Elections Commission to mandate the use of the developed XML standards. Fortunately labels like "MIT" and "Caltech" might help. Probably depends on how good Diebold's lawyers are.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
While working today, I had two different clients, both with remote offices in Florida loose their VPN connections from the East coast to Florida. For about 4 hours this morning all my IPSEC tunnels in or out of that state stopped responding, coincidence? Anyone else have a problem?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Right in the link... "Expanding on his new documentary "Bush Family Fortunes" which is a compilation of Palast's BBC investigative reports on voter fraud and other wrongdoing, the Harper's article documents how:"
I dont think anyone could deny voting problems in FL. Making up claims like 4 to 1 votes uncounted will be democratic is kinda lame though.
There's no mention of illegal registrations(registrations of deceased people) in this article. Democrat illegal registrations are about 80% of the total, so 80% democrat "voters" getting cut out sounds about right too.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
" At least voter registration and turnout is going up. "
I'm more interested in what happens AFTER the elections. Remember civic duty doesn't start and end at the polling place.
The scantron and other optical scanning systems have been used in the United States since the 1960s for all sorts of standardized tests and forms ranging from college entrance exams to state lotteries. Why not simply have the touch screen voting system print the voter's choices on a perfectly printed scantron card which can then be inserted physically into the ballot box. Then the ballots could be either machine counted or hand counted with a very high degree of accuracy and certainty (no hanging chads...no disagreement about which bubbles were marked). This solution is obvious and combines the best of both worlds. Why has such a system not been implemented?
The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy strikes again!
After the election is done, counted, recounted, and the lawsuits are settled, let's take all these Diebold machines and send them over to Iraq.
They've got some elections to do at the end of January, and certainly a generous donation of several thousand voting machines would help them along. No, they're not perfect, but they might be good enough. (does NT4 do Arabic?)
When they're done with their election they can keep them or bury them in the desert as they see fit. No return-address labels required.
We'll have a fresh start and four years to get something reasonable in place.
If there's a silver lining in this it's that the current machines will not be viable os/software wise in 4 years and the hardware will probably be kaput by that point as well.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You raise some interesting points, but seem to have entirely forgotten about the house of representatives.
Also, how many times has the popular vote and electoral college vote not been in alignment over the past 200 years?
I'm smart, opinionated and consistent, and can't bring myself to vote _for_ either candidate, so I'm going to vote _against_ both of them by writing my own name in (the real one has a few more vowels). No dangling chads or the-computer-ate-my-vote with a write-in candidate. Hand my real name on a real piece of paper to a real person, or put it in a sealed box like the Romans used to do. Problem solved; next issue please! /.er? I run my own website for fun and edit raw HTML with a bloody text editor! I do 90% of my job with 10-yr-old Norton File Manager (Explorer, both kinds, are teh suX0rz), UltraEdit/32 and a green-colored CLI! I once had a license plate proclaiming LOVE for an Operating SyStem, and it wasn't Windows! I have the 1995 Linux Developer's Kit on 5 CDs! GUIs are for wimps; vote for me!
I was writing up my open letter/manifesto/whateva on the train - not finished yet or I'd post it. Just wondering how many people are voting _for_ John Kerry, as opposed to voting _against_ GW. I figure a plastic ficus tree would receive the same number of votes as John Kerry, and would be equally reliable on all issues (think 'swaying in the breeze of public opinion').
I was in the city of Boston in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts earlier this year, and a lady next to me at the bar asked, 'What do you think of our Senator (Kerry)?' I told her I didn't know where he stood on critical issues, and she replied 'He's our senator, and neither do we!'. As Stan Lee/Marvel Comics would say: 'Nuff said.
I'm a smart guy (just took Mensa test Saturday - left four blank and guessed on two); I'm barely old enough, and I'm thinking of resurrecting Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party of which I've actually been a member for nearly 20 years. My political leanings are generally conservative without the religious overtones; I think same-sex civil unions will be viewed in 50 years with the same what-were-they-thinking openmindedness that we currently use to look at the 3/5 vote issue with African-Americans or Women's Suffrage; I think the whole Iraq thing was the right thing to do, done in the wrong way at the wrong time. Got tons of other opinions, and I will write them all down and stand by what I wrote. Any takers?
I mean, how cool would it be to have a POTUS who's a
(test for echo)
Please don't google/slashdot my ID/website; I need my feeble ADSL bandwidth for downloading.
;-)
We have been using a version of Scantron here for years. Big paper ballot and all you have to do is complete the arrow next to your choice with a black magic marker. Any partial reads and the ballot is cancelled. It has to be all the way across. Simple and easy. But knowing the political process, I am sure that they could come up with a phrase, "a hanging mark". On an aside, did anyone ever come up with a parody on the "hanging chad" determination and which hanger-on counted or not. This would be similar to diagram for which screw goes into which hole gag? Time to pop back a cold 807 and tune into the 2004 edition of "The Voting Follies".
The problem with democracy in today's world is that nearly everyone is uninformed. Since anyone's public comments, if they are the least bit contraversial (or even sound slightly contraversial when taken out of context), will no doubt be seen by a large portion of the population.
The result is that most polititions do their best to avoid revealing any information to the public about what they are doing. With polititions doing their best to hide what is really going on, from the public aswell as from opposing parties, how can anyone be expected to make an informed decision?
Before anyone says that e-voting is needed because the United States presidential elections are too big to process and count manually using pen and paper, please don't forget about the recent 2004 European Parliament election, when 343,657,800 people were eligible to vote, the second-largest democratic electorate in the world after India. It was the biggest transnational direct election in history and ten new member states elected MEPs for the very first time. With total turnout 45.5% it means 156,364,299 people have voted, 48% more than in the 2000 US presidential election.
What I mean is that we all talk about e-voting essentially taking it for granted. But has anyone ever answered what is wrong with pen and paper? Is e-voting better because it is high tech? Because it is supposedly faster? Is it? Even if it is, does it justify much less transparency and security? Could anything justify any unreliability in the very process of election, the most essential fundament of democracy?
Was there anything wrong in June 13, 2004, when 156 million people voting with pen and paper elected 732 Members of the European Parliament to represents 450 million citizens? I quote those numbers to menonstrate that simple pen and paper can scale enormously. I don't think that Americans are less skilled than Europeans and cannot count paper ballots in an election on much lower scale such as the US presidential election.
These are all very important questions to answer before we start to talk about improvements to the e-voting status quo. The first question we need to ask is not "how" but "why."
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Be careful what you say here.. having a different opinion than other people on slashdot (not liking kerry..or not hating bush) will get you modded down.
but, seriously. I think a lot of supposedly pro-kerry people (esp. younger ones) are only that way so they are not isolated from the rest of the MTV crowd.
For politics geeks (like me) that are looking for a faster news injection than politics.slashdot gives us, I just came across The Regular which is a politics site that's slashdot style. When one politics news item a day isn't enough...
Rock The Vote!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The thing is that *if* we did go to a purely popular vote system, then you would see the rule of the country go to those who live in LA, NYC, Chicago. A state such as Wyoming (population 501,424 from the US Census 2003 est) wouldn't even be a blip on the radar in terms of representation. Do you even think a presidential canidate would even bother traveling to Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montanna, Rhode Island, Nevada, or New Mexico? Do you think that a Senator from such states would have any say at all? Take a look at the issue of Yucca Mountain, or some similar unpopular project. "Hey it's not in LA so why should the senate care".
./'ers compilain about being M$ forcing a once size fits all solution)
While the current system isn't perfect, at least it does try to protect some minority populations from the majority rule. (And
It is pretty ironic that the some of the same people who are supposedly into free speech and open thought are so derisive about people with opposing viewpoints, even when those points are expressed in a friendly manner.
I started thinking about that when my roommate got back from one of those "Rock The Vote" type events at a punk rock show. He was laughing about how all of the republican/independents (basically != democrats) where treated like the shit they where. Of course, he didn't see the hypocrisy (considering the genre of the music is supposed to be about thinking for ones self/fighting the machine/blah blah)
The person who designed the hanging chad icon for the screens must feel proud that many voters will see his/her handi-work.
Table-ized A.I.
Why does "vote rigging" always get translated into "computer problems"?
Please flee in terror in an orderly manner.
Efficient? By which you mean faster? Cheaper? Is it cheaper and faster? Even if it is, does it justify the lack of reliability? Does it justify the lack of transparency? Could anything justify it?
We are talking about democracy. The transparency and reliability of democratic election is something infinitely more important than any kind of efficiency could ever be, for without transparent and reliable election there can be no democracy.
Besides, what exactly is inefficient in using pen and paper? Please read my other post before you reply.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
In a computer age like this it is MUCH too hard for people to check a box with a pencil!
To Hell with Florida's votes. It's not like they're gonna make a difference, be it because it's gonna be a tie (= difference in ballot count inferior to error margin), or because of fraud reports / accusations.
Besides, John titor already predicted it back in November 2000:
(Q: Are you here to monitor the elections ?)
A: I would use the word "elections" a bit cautiously. Perhaps it's easier now to see a civil war in your future?
[...]
I am here for personal reasons. For a few months now, I have been trying to alert anyone that would listen to the possibility of a civil war in the United States in 2005. Does that seem more likely now? Actually it's quite amazing to see what's happening. I have been trying to get people to pay attention for the last few months but to see it unfold is very interesting. Before I leave, I'll try and post my report.
I am curious... will anyone be upset if Florida's votes are not counted in the Electoral College because of the current "confusion"?
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I don't understand some days. Software can be written great. It can be written flawlessly. And how fucking hard is it to say 1+1 = 2? Ok so you may have to keep track of each vote. Thats where a database comes in. But seriously people, how fucking hard is it to write a piece of software with a touch screen that breaks? Ok... lets see touch screen passes point on screen to software. Software translates point into multiple different regions representing the intended vote. Software then confirms vote with voter. Voter leaves booth. Voter enters booth, voter touches screen a few times, voter leaves booth. I mean no shit, I could design using PC hardware and a touch screen, a pretty unbreakable, unproblematic voting machine. And you know how long it would take me to do it... 6 months. The first month is all planning. The second month is design. Third month is redesign/replanning. Fourth final design. Month Five, guess what fixing small bugs, which shouldn't be a big problem with the proper planning. Month Six, taking the machine out on the public and letting them try to break it. Find elderly people at a retirement home let them test it for ease of use and understanding. Take it to corporate america and let them see if it will let them vote fast enough.
Now here is the kicker... using fiber optic cabling, port security enabled on switch, and 5 redundant counting mechanism on 3 different machines, two machines which are off site. Oh and guess what... all I need to communicate between the site and the servers offsite is a 56k modem. Why so small bandwidth? Because passing votes around doesn't require much bandwidth... its not a movie or even streaming audio, its text, that would of course be encrypted using massive shared keys. So phone tapping won't work, shit, I will go ahead and implement an error checking mechanism ontop of the already existing modem error checking. Why can companies no do simple things simply. I bet a good portion of those machines are running windows... why because windows sounds good. Hell, I can remember a touch screen on Apple IIe computers, we can use one of them for our clients. They had modems for those... We can do some rudimentary encryption and error checking on them.... whats wrong? Afraid of using older simpler hardware to do a simple task.
Oh well, I got to rant, now I wonder if this will be modded troll or interesting.
The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.
And I thought that day was November 2nd. Why are people voting now?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I'm a college student in Orange County right now (at the University of Central Florida, right outside of Orlando), and home is a few hundred miles south of here, in Broward County. The governer of the state is a -little- biased and the changes that were made after the last election are not enough. I know people (and family) working with the voting, and they concur that the things that were done are not the things that needed doing. I opted to do my voting via absentee ballot and I am taking advantage of a new reciept program, that proves that my vote is counted. This isn't an easy problem, and the people will, once again, fail to be heard.
First, the EoL for NT is after the election, so that's not really a concern. Also, the fact that they haven't upgraded doesn't mean they don't have a clear upgrade path. It's perfectly clear.
Wether or not it's a good path is a seperate debate, and this being slashdot I can imagine how that debate would go, but that's not the point.
There are enough problems with computerized voting, no need for the extra FUD.
Where's a good activist judge when you need one? Electronic voting, as it's currently implemented, is obviously flawed and will likely disenfranchise many voters. Since the executive and legislative powers seem entirely incapable and unwilling to intervene, court intervention appears to be the last hope. Sure, there's been a lot of talk recently about courts overstepping their constitutional boundaries, but who else is defending it to begin with? From my pessimistic perspective, the judicial branch is the last stronghold of sensibility in the American government (there are, of course, some exceptions). It's an unfortunate situation (the endless flow of lawsuits), but it seems like the only way to make significant changes for the better (occasionally for the worse) in our country.
To really screw people, you need a computer. Is the 2004 election already over, and the rigged machines won?
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make install -not war
They forget an integral part of the software, the "disconnect routine", and you still have confidence that they were thorough in their security approach?!?
That's like saying, "I just got this new Ford Mustang, and it's the sweetest car I've ever driven. They forgot the brake system when they designed it, but I'm pretty confident in the air bag system, so I'll be fine. Sweet car, d00d."
Unreal.
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
Easy solution: Florida doesn't get to vote anymore.
this is my sig
Now that we know they can't count, what makes you think they can find the any key?
Believe me, if I started murdering people, there would be none of you left.
Do you know about the recent estimates that 27,000 votes will be lost by highly predictable computer errors in mostly black precincts?
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make install -not war
It should be said that even with proportionally divided state electoral votes, the popular vote determination may differ from the electoral vote.
That said, I'm still in favor of proportional electoral vote casting.
You might get your mind blown back the other way after watching the 13 minutes of John Stewart (_The Daily Show_) on Crossfire. He calls "Conservative" Tucker Carlson a dick without increasing his sneer, while Carlson's token "Liberal" opposite just bobbles his head while included in the same condemnation. These mediadroids are thinking only about working within the conventional wisdom from their corporate producers, not even whether an intelligent, real person is denouncing their lies and deranged harm to America, right in their faces, on camera. They are purely formal apparatchiks; the content is irrelevant to their buzzword sniffers. Viewers of any intelligence at all can only be appalled.
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make install -not war
Very well said. I usually don't post "mod parent up" comments but this is really +5, Insightful.
Apparently the business is more important than democracy. And this is the country which is supposedly the model of democracy. Sad. Very sad. Discussions like this one are really depressing so I won't repeat anything which I've already said. Please see my other posts in this discussion.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I'm posting this message from a Florida Voting machine. Browsing under IE is great! Had to download and install flash plugin for a few sites, though. I have no idea why all these posters are saying this electronic voting system is insecure. Everytime these popup windows appear telling me they need to confirm my credit card information, the numbers are displayed as asterisks (*) when I type it in. This voting machine seems plenty secure to me.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
So I log onto Yahoo! news and see the headline Few Glitches Reported in Early Florida Voting. Then I come to Slashdot and see Computer Problems Already Affecting Florida Voters.
Is it just me, or do all the Slashdot voting headlines sound overly pessimistic? Who says spin isn't alive and well?
They wanted a republic where well-educated elected representatives made all the decisions.
One thing to note is that the "elite" had even more power in the early US as Senators were not selected by the people, but rather the state legislatures (until IIRC the 17th amendment)
Of course one of the ironies under the old system is Al Gore would be vice president, given the electors were to vote for the "top two" most qualified individuals and the one receiving the most votes would be president, the second vice president.
If states apportioned presidential electors in proportion to votes, most of the probability the anomaly of the winner in the electoral college getting the fewest popular votes would disappear.
That system could become an even worse nightmare for litigation. All sorts of "rounding" rules and one candidate might fight for a recount in all the states where 1% move could get them 1 extra electoral vote. Not to mention increasing the odds of runoff elections, since a 3rd party candidate could more easily prevent the 50+1 majority needed by the constitution.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A ID=/20041018/BREAKINGNEWS/%20%2041018011
the Political Inquirer
Status quo== time thus. The incumbent wins when there is not a reason to get out and vote. Look at Florida, where my brother lives and got quad-whalloped by the hurricanes this year. When John Kerry visited Florida, it was a campaign stop. When George W. Bush visited Florida, it was the POTUS on an emergency declaration visit.
I just bought a paper yesterday that accuses both sides of fraud - Republican-hired ballot collection agencies throwing out Democratic absentee/voter registration forms, etc.
I think the worst thing that could happen to this country is to elect Pr. GW Bush or Sen. Kerry as POTUS. That'll be just like the 'official' end of the War Between the States; the shooting may have stopped but the feudin' sure ain't. Southern men are gentlemen, and gentlemen do not surrender to no one.
If I am elected President, I will be the peacemaker between all sides on all issues. And I will carry a replica Colt Peacemaker at my side as a symbol of that duty and privilege. Speak softly and carry a big stick, which I do and have and my former wife will attest to.
Lets hope all this gets worked out. It would be a shame if the Supreme Court had to select the president again :(
Isn't some celebrity getting divorced/married/pregnant?
I'm very impressed. GO SF GATE!!!
that's the real news, we all knew touch screens would break.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
The machines aren't too fancy -- certainly not fancy enough to run bloatware like Windows. However, they follow a simple low-tech protocol that works and shut down if tampered with. And, as with all things India, they cost $200 a pop, compared to $3000 per machines in the U.S.
The U.S. election authorities can learn a lot from India's last election. Read all about it here.
LOL!
Iraq, etc., is not about democracy. I'm not 100% sure *what* it's about, exactly, but democracy it is not. The modern GOP is primarily concerned with maintaining power, not democracy, or liberty, or justice in any meaningful sense.
It's the same old "cool people that I like" versus "uncool people I dislike" sort of thing you see in a lot of fandoms. And a lot of people treat politics about the same way as they would a sports rivalry or Trekkies vs Trekkers, but more bitter.
There's very little more human than saying your friends deserve special consideration and your enemies don't. Double standards are pretty deeply wired into us all.
This year it seems that the political equivalent of the soccer hooligans have been out in greater force than usual on both sides.
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In what part of that article, or any other article, does it say the touchscreens crashed? And how does a non-networked system have a mass crash? Read the article, or any other for that matter. The problem was with their VOTER REGISTRATION SYSTEM!
Prescott Bush financed the Nazi war machine in the 30s.
... oh, you know ...
George HW Bush was in Dallas when JFK was shot.
George W Bush is a coked out idiot driven to start a thermonuclear theocracy.
Paul Wellstone was killed in an unexplained helecopter crash.
The Chairmen of Diebold made a speech
The choice is ours: Get guns or buy more beer.
Are the soccer hooligans' activities coordinated by the owners and the management of the soccer teams?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
( ) Republican
( ) Democratic
Try not to let all of these options confuse you!
Old news...
#1 The data link was down. Just for your knowledge these e-voting machines are not connected to the internet, therefore cannot be hacked.
#2. SFgate.com is a liberal site which will tell you that the black vote is being suppressed by the republicans even though the democrats were and are still racists (remember THE DEMOCRATES were the former fucking slave owners) and continue to pursue "affirmative action" for the "inferior" black Americans.
#3 This will be modded down because political facts scare the liberal mods (when I'm not fucking moderating!)
#4 Vote libertarian and don't believe this liberal/socialist horseshit!
The U.S. didn't go to war for democracy -- that's just the Claim of the Day. The U.S. went to war for money and power. And the elections are basically being rigged for money and power. Funny how the motives are so consistent -- it's almost as if the same people were involved. Oh, wait...
(And yes, the Democrats are no different, because the people who are really behind all this, those who run the megacorporations in the U.S., control both parties and use that control to give the appearance of a choice to the voters).
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
On a serious note, it's perhaps a very good thing that Florida DOES have early voting. They've got a few days leeway to fix problems, although it does mean that they have absolutely no f*ing clue whether the data they have is any good or not. It also means that, since voting is anonymous, the voters have no f*ing clue as to whether any of their votes have meant anything.
(Florida doesn't do printouts, so they can't exactly compare the computer data with hardcopy.)
If they can fix the problems quickly (yeah, right!) their best bet might be to null all the votes that have been cast so far and start over. AFAICT, that might be the only way they can be sure of getting anything useful.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
That nifty applet you provided shows that in 1984, Reagan won 49 states with 54M votes, and Mondale won 1 state with 38M votes. That's a 98:2% electoral win representing 59:41% popular win. Certainly not as close as 2000, but obviously a rigged system that creates a national "landslide" out of even a election that's close across the whole country.
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make install -not war
While I sadly realise that you are right, I think it sounds a lot like the reality described in Franchise by Isaac Asimov. I don't know if it is available anywhere on-line but it is certainly worth buying and reading because this little half a century old story disturbingly keeps getting less and less unimaginable. I believe it is better to read it while it is still science fiction for the entertaining value if nothing else.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I don't live in California, I live in Georgia, a state which is also ignored, despite basically being the economic base of the entire South. We get ignored, and Florida gets courted, when, in reality, Florida is almost completely unimportant by an objective standard, consisting almost entirely of old people, vacationers, and escaped Cubans, while Georgia remains grows and transports huge amounts of food, and is really, still, the transportation hub of the entire bottom right quarter of the country. (Hartfield is still the busiest airport in the world.)
If you were to magically remove the entire contents of Florida, almost no one would notice. If you were to magically remove the entire contents of Georgia, the South would fall apart.
But ignoring California is just so completely absurd I used that as an example. If you were to magically remove the entire contents of California, the US would fall apart.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
where the fuck is my registration card? i registered in palm beach county like 4 weeks ago...
Y'know, maybe the US should outsource their elections to India as well. The Indians seem to be able to do elections even if they can't do Tech Support.
Please mod the parent post up, it should be Score:5, Insightful. For those who don't know, India is the largest democratic electorate in the world.
In Orlando County, the touch screens crashed.
The officials must have misunderestimated the problem. Those machines run Windows!!
deep..deep.deep..deep.deep
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Quick! Get those nice Cuban democracy educators over to oversee the Florida elections, as they offered in 2000!
Or maybe the Zimbabwe guys. I think they offered to help too.
http://board.iexbeta.com/index.php?showtopic=47688
Just twice: in 1876 and in 2000.
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
The college allowed slave states to represent not the number of voters, but the number of voters plus 3/5 the number of slaves. This ensured, at least for the first 80 years or so of the republic, that free states could not force abolition on the country.
Buggy as compared to the chads?
.MDB files. Election Day hasn't even arrived yet and already people have been busy introducing systematic error into the pool of registered voters. Even if the 2004 election involves pretty blinking lights, and is the most precise ever, it will undoubtedly be a less accurate measurement of the desires of the electorate than the election we had in 2000. This is what Stalin meant when he said that those who cast the votes decide nothing, and those who count the votes determine everything.
What are you talking about? The punch card system proved itself to be a very accurate method of vote counting, even under the extreme condition of a tie- to a precision of several hundred votes. Much attention was paid to the relatively few cards that had chads hanging, but the vast majority of the cards were quite unambiguous in their representation of the voter's intent. Unfortunately they occurred in equal numbers for both candidates. The entire system was at least as auditable as any vote counting system can possibly be.
People don't understand the difference between precision and accuracy. Precision means that, given a measurable X, your measurements are sharply defined. But that is not the same as accuracy- which implies that the measurements actually reflect the true value of X, and not the influences of other sources of systematic error- like air resistance, or the thermal expansion of the ruler you're using, or the political affiliation of the manufacturer of your measuring equipment. A measurement is only accurate if sources of systematic error have been minimized. Sources of random error- like hanging chads- merely degrade precision.
The outcry for computerized voting that followed the 2000 election- to "bring our elections into the 21st century" and similar nonsense- was most unfortunate. We are making the transition from an accurate but slightly imprecise system to a new system that promises only extreme precision with no guarantees of accuracy. What is worse, we are about to trade susceptibility to random error for something far worse- susceptibility to systematic error- which is fundamentally different from a human perspective since it introduces a huge motive for people to screw with the accuracy of the electoral process.
The 2000 election had its share of systematic error. There was that butterfly ballot, which confused both Gore and Bush voters alike, but had the effect of transforming Bush votes into Bush votes and Gore votes into Buchanan votes. There was the Florida felon purge, which knocked thousands of blacks but only dozens of Cubans off the rolls. The 2000 election is still bitterly disputed, but very few people still complain about the hanging chads, which were sources of random error with relatively nonpartisan effects. The sources of systematic error had a much more corrosive effect- they cast doubt on the very legitimacy of the outcome, since they gave the election the appearance of having been stolen.
I have no doubt that we have an ultraprecise election ahead of us- computers are good at being deterministic, after all- but as far as accuracy goes- we'll see. There are many who would love to insert some systematic error into those Access
It is impossible to change because it is against the interests of the Republican & Democrat parties to change it, and they have a deathgrip on the country, so it will never be changed, and no third party will ever be viable.
Just as well; imagine if Anheiser-Busch, Marlboro, Hailliburton and so forth had to give equal money to yet more presidential candidates. Wouldn't you feel sorry for them? Poor corporations.
Here you can find a nice and friendly video that fully explains these problems.
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Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
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Hi, you must be new to this democracy thing. Apparently, you don't appreciate it as much as we Americans do, so I'm going to give you some answers to your puzzlements and quanderies. See, in America, we are the first democracy to function continuously for 200 years. Not even Greece or Rome could do that. So we know a few things about what works and what doesn't.
It puzzles me how somebody who won the vote of less than 25% of the population can claim to be democratically elected.
In a democracy, you have the right to vote for whoever you want, and the right not to vote. Abstention is also a vote (like NULL is a value). It just so happens that around 50% of the people in the US eligible to vote decide not to. They don't bother themselves with that burden. I wish they would educate themselves and get out and vote, but they'd rather do other things and thus give me twice as much voice as I would normally. I guess they trust me a lot.
If you want to change that you have two options: (1) Make it a law that you have to vote, or (2) Eliminate the non-voting half of the population. Neither of these options are satisfactory. And frankly, when they get re-engaged, it's usually for a good reason. (See, whether Bush or Kerry gets elected, it isn't going to make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things. I mean, if Kerry gets elected, I'm not going to find myself in a gulag.)
Better yet - can claim a mandate as the leader of the "democratic free world". Hey, if the US president wants to be the leader of the democratic free world, let's open the election up to the rest of the free world...using a sensible electoral process.
Oh, you want to join the US? Here's how to do it. Have your government or the people pass a resolution to join the US. If the congress accepts, you will become a territory and we will appoint a governor for your state, who will control the police, the military, the finances, and the elections. (Governor = mini King, accountable to congress.) Next step is to set up a form of government satisfactory to our constitution. This means you need to adopt a constitution with three seperate branches of government with checks and balances. When enough time has passed, and you've proven that this whole thing isn't beyond your country's capability, you submit to the federal government that you want to become a state. Upon acceptance, all citizens of the state become eligible voters, and you get 2 senators and at least 1 representative.
That's how it's done. We're accepting applications right now, so go ahead and get your nation to apply. I heard Jordan offered once, but it was the king that wanted it and not the people, so we politely declined. Besides, it takes a while to go from a king to a democracy - at least 2 or 3 generations.
BTW - now that Iraq has been "liberated", shouldn't they also be allowed to participate in the election of the "leader of the democratic free world"?
No, you're confusing two things. We conquered Iraq, but we turned it over to Allawi. You remember, June 28, 2004? Yeah, there were headlines all over the papers about it. Iraq is no longer our territory. We no longer appoint governors to run Iraq. We have an ambassador there. We are invited guests there now. If Allawi says leave, we have two options: Reconquer Iraq and try again, or leave.
I am sure that if Iraq wanted to become the 51st state, that we would be happy to oblige. I wouldn't mind have the United States of the Middle East. But they don't want it, so we won't impose.
BTW, we're looking forward to the US of Europe - you call it the EU over there, but we know what you are doing. (Hint: Limited federal governments are better than strong federal governments. Don't ask me how I know this.) It'll be great only having to send one ambassador to Europe to tell you how degenerate you are for not supporting us in the Iraq war.
If the US presidential candidates don't want to open the ballots to the rest of the world, they should s
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
"Voting in the US is likely to be close again this time round as it was last. "
... the popular vote DONT EVER COUNT in your country ...
:
Nope last time bush won by 6 electoral college votes
Listen up moron for the last time
the only vote that count are Electoral college votes
that "applet" was done in flash, not java.
A campaign built mostly on lies and deception will not get you elected.
If that statement were true, then we would have next to no elected officials.
The truth shall set you free!
It's a fair question.
The advantages include making secret ballots possible for blind people, easy updating of ballot choices when candidates withdraw or die, and the elimination of ambiguous votes.
There's a hope of avoiding the trauma of Florida where the entire election depended on divining whether a dimpled chad was a vote or not, and where heavily Jewish districts turned in votes for Pat Buchanan.
Less nobly, the suppliers of pen and paper are not treating election officials to expensive parties.
Your next questions are likely to be "Are those alleged advantages worth the expense and risk?", and "Will e-voting really work any better than paper?". Those are even better questions. Computer security professionals tend to answer them "No".
I believe if you open your history books a few facts will become clear; close and contested eletions have happened before, they will happen again, you shouldn't think the world will end, the world still goes on even after we lose presidents.
;)
That is quite an interesting applet from the BBC, it is to bad that they didn't go all the way back because they would have seen alot more. Lets start with some interesting stuff that Moderns overlook. There have been 42 presidents, of them 4 died in office and 4 more were killed in office. Consulting my trusty calculator that means 9.52380% of presidents are killed in office in addition to 9.52380% who die naturally. The grand total of 8 dead presidents means that 19.0476% of our presidents have died in office, without counting close calls like Reagan.
The important part that really pertains to your "it's not normal" remark, is that 4 out of 42 or 9.52380% of Presidents are elected without a majority of the electorate. That doesn't count close ones like the 1960 election, when Nixon was advised by some people to contest and ask for a recount against Kennedy.
While were on the subject of votes. Your vote counts less in California than in Montana, get over it. How many other times does Montana really seem that special, unless your refering to a certain quarterback. Big states have certain privilages and small states have theirs, this is known as FEDERALISM. Now I don't claim to be the expert on this matter, but everywhere you look recently people don't know their place. Some of our problems include; states rights verses continued creep of the Federal government, judges over reaching, state attorney generals doing the SEC's job, local school boards being told what to do by national politicans, just recently the Supreme Court began using foreign court rulings as precedent in cases about our constitution.
We all would be better off to read up on FEDERALISM and the Federalist Papers would be a good place to start. Remember that Franklin when ask about what our new government was, responded "A Republic, if we can keep it." Sorry for being so long, just had to get that out into cyberspace.
Pull up a couch and some sugary snacks and let the games begin!
The U.S. didn't go to war for democracy -- that's just the Claim of the Day.
Did anybody even claim that? I thought the _claim_ was that the US went to war for it's own security -- a claim that now appears false but was never exactly idealistic in the first place.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
. . . why not just vote via absentee ballot? I'm a Florida resident and I did. You've still got plenty of time.
Also, I think some credit is due to Florida for wisely giving people a chance to vote early. It's more convenient for the voting public, and allows officials to use the equipment with real votes before November 2, which is just not the same as testing stuff in a lab. This is the first time that electronic voting has ever been offered in many parts of our state. Instead of constant bitching, whining, and criticism, acknowledge that there are problems and things will be difficult the first few times, and have a little faith in people to fix the problems with the machines. The folks in the trenches fixing the problems are most likely not part of some evil Republican conspiracy to delete Kerry votes or change them to Nader votes -- they're probably just hardworking IT guys and girls like you who take pride in their jobs and just want to see things go smoothly.
You actually thought that they would use some secure, reliable, and small piece of code, just for doing the voting.
But I guess M$:s influence is everywhere these days...
I'm confused by this flip flop mantra that republicans keep chanting. Surely changing your position on an issue in the face of new evidence is a "Good Thing". It implies an open mind and critical thinking, whereas sticking doggedly to a position that has since been shown to be wrong is just stupid.
For example, on the Iraq war vote, Kerry voted for the war on the basis of the evidence made available by Bush. We now know that the evidence for war was wrong, incomplete and selectively chosen by a broken system. If you believed the evidence that was presented at the time then voting for war was the only option (as it happens I didn't believe the evidence, but that is a freedom a popularly elected official doesn't really have if he wants to be re-elected). In the light of new evidence it appears that the case for war was not based in fact, but speculation (if you're feeling generous towards Bush), or greed (if you're being less generous). Faced with the new information I would be deeply concerned if someone did not change their point of view. It is a deeply valid thing to do.
Making a decision on the best available information is a good thing. Making a decision on ideological grounds and the selecting evidence to support your position is not a good thing.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
This is very important indeed, but first of all I'm not quite sure how are the touch-screen machines supposed to help making secret ballots possible for blind people, and second of all blind people don't need computers to cast a vote. Probably the cheapest and simplest idea would be to provide wooden plates with holes in them cut in the places where the mark should go, to put over a ballot. Don't tell me that the current e-voting machines are easier to operate secretely and alone by blind people. Even putting candidate names in Braille alphabet on every ballot in print, which would be ideal, would be cheaper than an e-voting machine with Braille terminal or headphones and speech synthesis in every polling station, while at the same time it would much easier and would give a blind person a much better confidence how it works, and thus would be better from the point of view of casting a vote.
It is not hard to mark a candidate as no longer valid when everything is done manually by at least few people looking at every ballot given to every voter.
It eliminates ambiguous votes because after the election they are only a number in a database, a fairly unambiguous one, even if not correct. Yes, it means that after the election there are no votes which are uncertain. But how many ambiguous votes there usually are using pen and paper? Putting a mark next to your candidate is not a rocket science.
But a dimpled chad is an artifact of mechanical voting, not pen and paper. After you put a mark on your ballot you can veirfy how does it look like and whether you didn't make a mistake before you cast it in a box, and possibly request a new ballot if you did. And most importantly, there are more people who can understand how does a paper ballot work than those who can understand how does an e-voting machine work, even if it is open source and completely documented. Seriously, I cannot imagine a simpler process of casting a vote than using pen and paper.
Now, that is a good point.
Indeed. I cannot, however, understand one thing. Even if said computer security professionals tended to answer "yes," even if everything was open source, publicly available and audited, with every piece of system written redundantly in five copies by five independant teams led by Donald Knuth, Norman Hardy, Bruce Schneier, Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds, stopping the election when any one of those redundant modules gives an answer different then others, everything worked on mainframes, communicating using quantum cryptography fiber links, etc., I would still expect the general public to refuse using e-voting, because they simply cannot understand the underlying technology as much as they can understand how does the paper work in the interaction with a pen. People would never agree to have a paper election with secret counting done by some company because they wouldn't trust it, and yet they agree to have much less transparency with e-voting. I seriously cannot understand it.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Of course the idea behind moving the US to electronic voting is to make it easier and less labor-intensive to falsify results, with no real audit trail.
and the winner is.... Bob Dole! oh wait, nevermind we need to re-check the diebolds again. Meanwhile Bob Dole will be President.
But the war was not about democracy, it was about weapons of mass destruction able to destroy america and the world in less than 15 minutes. Oh, wait, it was about removing a terrorist threat! No, wait, that wasn't it either....
Let's face it, the war was a colonial conquest of an oil ressource.
The sooner the US citizens rise up and overthrow their corrupt, fascist government, the better.
I cut my office off from the Internet because we were constantly getting viruses and spyware. Now we have a separate room that has 3 or so computers that ARE connected to the Internet, which are NOT on the office LAN. These machines have DVD Burners in them for transporting necessary data to the office LAN.
We also ripped all of the optical drives out of production PCs, and only the IT guy has one so he can check out software before putting it on the network.
I'll tell you, since cutting everyone off from the web, which we did a bit over a year ago, productivity is up 19% from 12 months ago. The consultants aren't sure, however, how much of that is attributable to the removal of the Internet and how much is attributable to removing Solitaire from all of the PCs.
What Pan says is worth being repeated:
- We are talking about democracy. The transparency and reliability of democratic election is something infinitely more important than any kind of efficiency could ever be, for without transparent and reliable election there can be no democracy.
Besides, what exactly is inefficient in using pen and paper? Please read my other post before you reply.
These e-systems have no "write-only" visually verifiable audit trails that can be seen and observed by the general population.For all doubters, apologists and naysayers:
People mess with elections in lesser nations, what makes you think there aren't people in this nation that aren't inclined to do that also?! Potential perpetrators here will be even more ingenious and skilled in going about doing this.
Many crimes are crimes of opportunity, this opportunity has to be kept at a minimum.
The American system is good, but it's not based on trust, it's based on checks and balances.
When I think of trust systems I think of systems that are not open to criticism and change by those that "trust" the "entrusted". That is not what we want.
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
I've actually implemented automated activation of this feature , from an order entry system, on a Lucent 5ESS switch before, IIRC the feature is called hotline. I would have to go back and read the Lucent docs to provide more detail, as it's been about a year since I worked on that. But basically what happens is that as soon as the receiver is picked up, the number to connect to is set on the switch, so it rings the other line immediately, no dialing, think the bat phone. So I could see how this would be useful for the scenario described. Not sure if this is the same as a dedicated pair, as I didn't hear it called that.
Not sure if these are used here, but this is an article on issues with the Diebold voting systems:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/?q=node/view/78
-- Tom Stoppard
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Somebody pretty friggin please explain at least one thing:
...it is not like somebody convinced a bunch of simpletons to join into the next pyramidal scheme fraud, it's convincing millions of people with at least a k12 education that NO NO NO you know how to read you know how to write but, NOOO you don't know how to make a cross and recognize a name or symbol!
Just tell me how did somebody manage to have millions people believe they can't make a friggin cross with a permanent marker on a piece of paper, yet they surely are able enough to own and hold a gun, drive a car and use a TV remote.
It is so staggering it's not even funny
Not only that, but the same people were told that it's important ooohh so important to have a computer count votes , that it is safer and better and faster..yet the same people know they have problems operating a VCR properly but think it is safe to have their whole friggin democracy at mercy of machines they have 0.0000001 clue about.
That makes tinfoil hat people look sane in comparison.
Hey all,
Orange County, Florida - Orlando and some of its suburbs - doesn't use touchscreen systems. We use optical ballot readers, just like we've done since 1992. What happened on Monday morning (right when the early voting polls opened) was that the system used by poll volunteers to keep track of ballot issuings crashed for about twenty minutes. The downtown server that crashed was a Sun machine running an Oracle database, and the local machines were laptops running W2K and a custom-written app.
As the woman said, it was almost certainly a network problem. And no, it's not on the public Internet.. it's on the county intranet. The people doing this in Orange County (one of the counties *not* to have problems in 2000) aren't stupid, though spokespeople may not be up to speed on their networking terminology.
The ballots themselves are paper, marked with pen, read by 15-year-old optical readers, and physically dropped into big blue bins by poll volunteers. Associated Press got it wrong calling it touch screen, and other news agencies picked it up.
I know because I was one of the people who *installed* the system, and one of those who dealt with the problem (not to mention the lawyers and the voters). Aside from that twenty-minute hangup when we brought the systems up, the rest of the day was busy and smooth.
If anyone cares to verify, a quick call to the Supervisor of Elections office in Orange County will confirm everything I'm saying here.
http://www.ocfelections.com
-R.
Not sure if this is the same as a dedicated pair, as I didn't hear it called that.
If it rings, it's not a dedicated pair. The Telco does not provide local loop current or ring signals on a dedicated pair. It can be treated like a long cat3 cable. Due to the length, modems designed to work without local loop voltage are used for data.
Here is some data on a leased line modem. Of important note are.
unattended operation. unit reconnects without operator intervention after a power interuption or data interuption. In a nutshell, these modems simply extend an RS232 signal over a twisted pair. There is no dialing or configuring used. If it has power and sees the other modem on the other end of the wire, it just connects. They won't answer a ringing line. They never hang up.
Link here
http://www.data-linc.com/engspecs/dlm4000l.htm
The truth shall set you free!
We screwed things up big time when the Constitution was modified to allow direct election of the Senators.
In addition to guarding against the tyranny of the majority, the Senate was also supposed to guard against the tyranny of the Federal Government.
We would not have the Federal government blackmailing the States if the Senators were chosen by the State Legislators as the Constitution was designed.
Bob
I suppose this could become big news on a Tuesday in November. But if they're voting right now in Florida then it's just for practice.
Things like this electronic voting, early voting, dead people voting and having the UN, of all organizations, do election inspections has really made a big joke of our democracy. The only ones who take it serious anymore are people like Bush and Kerry.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
URL:http://wearabledissent.com/101/floridavote.htm l
but rather a stonewalling of any challenge to the system that does not have transparency and verifiability. It's not that these voting systems CAN'T be configured to ensure that tampering is difficult, and easily detected; it's that both the vendors and the state governments in many battleground states (including one governed by the President's brother) ACTIVELY OPPOSE such changes.
I dont even understand why they would even need a platform as powerful as this. they should be using the K.I.S.S. method when it comes to these things.
I live in Mercer Co. Pennsylvania, and we went from ancient 7 foot voting machines to a electronic system. The systems appear to be running some sort of simple low power propritery system on a simple and inexpensive black and white passive lcd display which most likely saves the vote data to flash memory. You basicially just walk up, press the screen and your done. afterwards it prints out the results on standard ribbon paper that an adding machine uses.
In fact they had a crash in 2003 with one of the boxes in one of the precincts, but the paper tape backup was more than adaquate to verify the results.
Basicially, a computer system equivelent to a first generation palmpilot could handle Evoting in a reliable manner.
All an evoting machine needs is:
* An inexpensive but mission critical reliable low speed system (ie: 386 class speed or even less if the OS is super efficient)
* a reliable, small, efficient, and simple mission critical OS dedicated only for evoting programmed in flash rom on the motherboard (almost BIOS like in design)
* use SD or CompactFlash flash memory to obtain the ballot data for the OS to display the voting issues and store results (32-64MB with a super efficient os should be enough for any voting situation you can possibly imagine let alone 128-512MB)
* use a simple cheap and inexpensive black and white backlit touch screen LCD display
* have an internal thermal printer to print a result that can later be interperted into a vote and if the paper runs out or an error occurs with the printer, it will disable the machine until the problem is fixed.
* Optional, but design the syetm to drive multiple LCD screens or drive terminal based LCD systems through a Local area network (not internet or wireless, we're talking 10baseT here) to a local equally simple server to consolidate all the vote gathering terminals from one precinct into one box.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
This is what made Florida 2000 so close:
>Some 46,000 New Yorkers are registered to vote in both the city and Florida
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:EhobV-aKfqM J: www.nydailynews.com/front/story/224449p-192807c.ht ml+dual+voter+registration+florida&hl=en
With debate over the 2000 election still raging, thousands of people illegally register in both New York City and Florida, which could swing an election.
By RUSS BUETTNER
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Some 46,000 New Yorkers are registered to vote in both the city and Florida, a shocking finding that exposes both states to potential abuses that could alter the outcome of elections, a Daily News investigation shows.
Registering in two places is illegal in both states, but the massive snowbird scandal goes undetected because election officials don't check rolls across state lines.
The finding is even more stunning given the pivotal role Florida played in the 2000 presidential election, when a margin there of 537 votes tipped a victory to George W. Bush.
Computer records analyzed by The News don't allow for an exact count of how many people vote in both places, because millions of names are regularly purged between elections.
But The News found that between 400 and 1,000 registered voters have voted twice in at least one election, a federal offense punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
One was Norman Siegel, 84, who is registered as a Republican in both Pinellas Park, Fla., and Briarwood, Queens. Siegel has voted twice in seven elections, including the last four presidential races, records show.
Officials in both states acknowledge that voting in multiple states is something of a perfect crime, one officials don't have the means to catch.
"I can't imagine how the supervisors would have access to that information," said Jenny Nash, spokeswoman for the Florida secretary of state. "As far as I know, cross-state registry has not been discussed."
The News' investigation also found:
# Of the 46,000 registered in both states, 68% are Democrats, 12% are Republicans and 16% didn't claim a party.
# Nearly 1,700 of those registered in both states requested that absentee ballots be mailed to their home in the other state, where they are also registered. But that doesn't raise red flags with officials in either place.
Efforts to prevent people from registering and voting in more than one state rely mostly on the honor system.
New registrants are required to supply a prior address, which kicks in a notification process to election officials in the other jurisdiction. Officials also cross-check change-of-address records from the U.S. Postal Service.
Both procedures largely count on the honesty of the person registering. And neither would catch people who have homes in both places - including the thousands of snowbirds, the term for Northerners who winter in southern climes.
"There's no extensive investigation normally on a voter registration form," said Steven Richman, general counsel for the city Board of Elections. "We accept it at its face value."
Eliminating the potential to vote in multiple states would require creating a national voter registration system with federally assigned voter ID numbers, said Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington and a voting rights expert.
"I don't think the country is ready for that," Lichtman said. "It may well be that a few hundred people spilling over and voting twice may be an inevitable friction within the system."
Florida election officials were widely criticized after the 2000 election for instituting policies that resulted in thousands of African-Americans, who tend to vote Democratic, being turned away at the polls.
Republican officials are battling similar charges in this year's election.
Glenda Hood, the Florida secretary of state appointed by
over at msnbc they mention that Broward county has 152 different ballto styles, how the hell can 1 county have that many different ballots, aren't they all voting on the same election. and don't get me started on different languages ok so there should be at version of the ballot in braille but thats it!, if you can't comprehend the language our Constitution and laws are writen in you shouldn't be voting, and probably shouldn't be in the country for anything more than a vacation.
Tell it to Boss Tweed. "Stop them damned pictures. I don't care so much what the papers say about me. My constituents can't read. But, damn it, they can see pictures!"
Now most people don't even look at the pictures. Pitiful, ain't it?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
When you have this guy up there in the debates whining about how much the war costs, then telling people that we aren't "giving our boys" enough money for body armor, you have someone who doesn't understand how things work.
Either you are for giving more funding to the troops, or you are against it. Kerry voted against it, but then during the debates he seemed pissed that we didn't give them enough. This was before he was pissed that we spent too much (though he overstated the figure by $80 billion).
Don't get me wrong, Bush isn't perfect either. Just don't pretend that this flip flopping thing is without merit. Sometimes I think the guy would get a sex change operation if it would sway some female voters. He tactically stays on the fence on as many issues as he can so as to garner support from both sides.
Can you not read the "URLs" on the posting page?
w s/1098121671320_93530871/?hub=World
Stupid Canadians.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNe
Actually, the original poster is correct, it's the house as well as the senate.
e ge.html The table link has the actual ratio of people per electoral vote. Wyoming has 1 per 165,101, California 1 per 616,924.
From http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/electoral-coll
Many criticisms have been leveled at this 18th Century system. First, why have electoral votes at all? Why not just elect the president by popular vote? The reason this system has never changed is simple: politics. States with many buffalo and few people, like Wyoming, benefit from it and are not keen on changing it. Since every state gets at least three electors, low-population states have proportionally far more political power than they would have in a direct election system. The number of voters per elector is about four times smaller in the three-elector states than in the most-populous states, as shown in this table http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/states.html. The fact that nearly all the low-population states are heavily Republican adds to the difficulties of changing the system. Direct election of the president would eliminate the current bias in favor of the Republicans.
Bush has already won. This "voting" thing is just so the rubes think they have a say.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I'm not voting for either of them. You are the one blinded by your ideology because you refuse to believe what's right in front of you. The example I gave was right in front of you on live TV. I didn't read it on Fox News or some neo-con website, I observed it myself. Quit interpreting a dissent for one politician as an endorsement for the other.
I never understood what was so hard about the code used in voting machines.
if (vote == 'Kerry') kerry++; else bush+=2;See? Simple.
The original claim was that Saddam's government presented a clear and present danger to the continental US. This eventually got amended to Saddam's government engaged in looking into the possiblity of presenting a clear and present danger to the US. Then to he was talking to people who might present a clear and present danger and finally, where we are today: he's Arab or Muslim or something.
we use touch screens. They run win2k.
the blu-hairs running the polling places don't really know the first thing to do should they break.
They're using their grammar skills there.
.....depends on ahhnold and whether or not they can get the law changed to run a foreign born person. He looks like their current poster boy for the future more than anyone else, IMO.
Basically, both major parties have a dearth of any inspiring or credible candidates. All I see are yawners and media puppets. Thinkers are not wanted in those parties.
Guiliani scares me the most, I got an instant dislike to him way back when he was prosecutor. Serious poser, media whore and law n order loony. I also think he knows what's up with some of the finer details of 9-11 and is part of the coverup going down. Untrustworthy in other words. Also, he knows absolutely *nothing* about the nation or it's people outside of an extremely specialised niche of NYC, which although important, is not even close to being repesentative of the rest of the nation. He thinks (*like the NYC based network newsies mostly) that if you have barbed wire on your property it means you live at a "compound", that's the impression I get. Mr. Artificial Priveleged Living, out to lunch.
Hillary scares me the most next down the list, because she knows what's up, but still pushes some incredibly wacky themes, and is highly non-constitutional in many matters and has no concept of what nationalism is or what borders are for. She also has anecdotal street cred of being an insufferable neo royal wannabe, an elitists elitist.
I also think she's a serial crook, her past biz deals show that, even though she managed to skate on some of the allegations.
And Ron Brown and Vince Foster are still realities....She just might be a scosh worse than just a serial thief....
It can go both ways in the house. Your electoral vote example is confused, since it includes senators. Actual numbers (voters per house seat):
.5) representatives than they should. States like Delaware, Montana, and South Dakota get screwed out of influence by this system.
California: 640,203
Delaware: 785,068
Wyoming: 495,304
US: 646,946
Note that California *benefits* slightly from the fact that House districts do not cross state lines. They actually have more (about
The electoral college was never intended to give the same result as a direct popular election. If they had wanted that, they could have had the same system except not counting the senators (i.e. 435 or 436 electoral votes instead of 535 or 538). They chose not to do so. It deliberately gives more weight to preferences by states. It is also worth noting that the amendment process which would be needed to change it also deliberately gives more weight to preferences by state.
AP--
Shuffleboard County voters registered shock and dismayed awe when they found out today that their new and improved resurrected pencil and paper and locked wooden box voting systems kept failing, to the point that voting officials had to suspend voting for the day.
"I don't get it" complained one voter, Ima Schnook, "we had those old trusty reliable computerised voting systems, always worked fine" she said.
Voting officials complained of delays brought on by the advanced technology, just normal glitches to be expected. "Yes" said Bob N. Apple, local registrar, "the new techniques have had some problems. First we had to bring out of retirement some "carpenters" who then had to recreate concepts like "hinges" for the box, and "screws" to hold it together", "not to mention" he said "paper disappeared back in '04, we had to go to a natural history museum to see how they used to make it, it was *harrrd work*, had to come in on saturday, real *harrrd work*".
Officials promise that the new "voting machine boxes and paper ballots" would have the wrinkles ironed out of them by wednesdays special elections, even if it was "hard work and we need to find better experts to implement the new design changes".
I dunno about Arnold being the Republican party's next pick. He's already distanced himself by allocating funds towards cloning in California, a day or so ago I believe. At that, he holds countering opinions on abortion and gay marriage. (Outspokenly pro-abortion and he recently made a U-turn [flip-flop?] on his position regarding gay marriage, saying that if it's Ok with the voters, it's OK with him) Lastly, he supports gun control. Even apart from the citizenship issue, I'm not sure how long he'll be a "poster boy" for the Republican Party as you say.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
That is yet another example of his contradictory positions. He didn't feel that way until he realized he was losing ground in the Democratic primaries to Dean and his total opposition to the war. What's more is that he has proven that even if a grand coalition exists, he will still vote against it. Even though many nations condoned the action during Desert Storm, Kerry voted against it. His argument about needing a coalition is bogus because his past shows that he doesn't really believe it. He is anti-war, period.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1 963&e=12&u=/ap/20041019/ap_on_el_pr/registration_s cam
Mary Poppins registered to vote in Defiance, Ohio. A radio luggage ad had a lady who used to say, "There's no BOATS in OHIO!", but SOMEbody's in a boatload of trouble for messing with the voting process.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Bush cheated.
of BU__ SH__ voting as we know it.
As for dual-county registration, consider this: When you drive across state lines, many if not virtually all law enforcement agencies have near-time or real-time access to DL or citizen information, thanks to crimes that preceded 9/11. If a cop in Arkansas can make DL information determinations on Nevada resident, then that can work at the polls, too.
Just station a radio/computer-equipeed squad car at each voting location (if there are too many, then consolidate them). Mag-swipe each card at the car as the voter arrives. Just plug in a special swipe reader and hang it out the door on a mount like at the drive-ins, where speakers hang from the the window.
Here is how to deal with the problem, in more detail:
-Voter arrives to poll location
-ID OR DL is swiped
-Photo of voter is taken, only to be used if a dual-vote attempt is detected where dual voting is not permitted
-Name/DL/SSN are checked for previous county votes for the cycle in question
-Police officer at voting location arrests any attempting-duplicate voters, matches the photos, and books the person, pending clarification. This'll frighten other abusers. After clarification clears the suspect, the booking should be purged. If the person is undertaking a bona-fide illegal-vote attempt, let the booking stand once the other violated state forwards its polls or DL or ResID info
-Cleared voters are given a token to drop into voting machine
-Token sets up process
-Voter votes
-Token is removed and reused and token-drops are counted later and tallied against total votes to ensure 1:1
AT NO POINT should the voter identifying information be used to correlate to the vote. This ensures privacy and allows for a voter registered in one party to change his or her mind at the last minute and vote for opposing candidates without having to reregister (if that normally is the process...)
Motor-Voter is not the answer. Resident-Voter is the answer. Just because one is issued a license doesn't mean entitlement to register to vote is conferred. The person issued a Resident Card can have it as a supplement to their DL, or have them combined, if desired, but it should be a voter/resident choice. The DL need not carry any voter party affiliation information, just allow for cross-state lines checking.
And, as for no more BU__ SH__ lost-votes in the mop closet, NO candidate takes office if sufficient collusion and corruption like 2000 ever happens again. In that case, the country should be run according to rules of succession, except no one party will be allowed to dominate.
Actually let's put an end to the BU__ SH__ like this:
--Two or more candidates politick for Prez
--One wins
--The looser is the VP
--Alternately, each cabinet position is filled by members of SEVERAL parties
This BULLSHIT of one dominant party trying to represent the whole country MUST END. It is disingenuous, deceitful, rampantly corrupt, and insulting. Liars who spin the best lies win, and then we, the populace suffer for a liar, the liar's campaign, and the liar's party's constituents.
=========
If bush wins, it'll likely be BU__ SH__, and then world will react accordingly: NEGATIVELY.
Better a new devil who has screwed us less than the same devil who knows our butts, wallets, and more.
Aside from the emotions stuff I injected below the equal signs, I think the stuff above that line could pass, if parties pull their heads out of their ASSES and stop treating our political system like it's an orgiastic bone-breaking football game!
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Oops... In "resident", I meant, "Citizenship".
However, if our government allows someone to:
--immigrate
--join the service
--die for a corrupt president (of any party)
--pay taxes
--lose relatives or friends to wonky gun leniency
--lose relatives or friends to drug importation
--pay assloads of taxes to porkbarrel political district defense and city/county construction projects
--add your item to the list
THEN said resident or citizen should be eligible to vote.
MAYBE, just maybe, conferring voting status to an immigrant permitted by Immigration would solve some influx problems. Or, it will permit voters to vote without having to pledge allegiance to some flag, or sing "My country tis of thee.. land where my fathers die... let freedom ring." When their relatives likely were never even BORN here.
Forcing immigrants to pledge is going too far, is draconian, and is oppressive. It does very little to instill pride, other than serving as a "barrier" or hurdle to make the process seem hellish, but well-fought for.
An immigrant who arrives, only to find a morass of red tape, cultural insensitivity, racism, rifts between wealthy and rich, and those two on onside of the gulf with the poor (put the thinning "middle class" here, too), is one who is not all that far from comparing the heavy-handed communist dictators from our "legally-SEE-lected" leadership which rather than taxing you by gunpoint does to buy tax code, garnishment of wages, jail time, ostracization, or other methods.
Coercion is Coercion, whether by gun or by pen, by bullet or by codified law.
A person BORN here, such as myself, only has to take an oath "to support the constitution and the president of the United States" if joining a police agency, some special area of government, or if joining the military. Yep, I know officers' oath is different from enlisteds, but they both basically coerce the same affirmation, particularly during war.
Also, why is it that TEACHERS have to take that oath? Why? Well, after 9/11 I made my own observations and made some scathing, possibly seditious or uncouth or similar remarks about the current cadge/cabal sullying the Oval Office, and the two girls at the table in the coffee shop CRINGED! I found out they were teachers before that, and my comment was that, were I a teacher, I'd tell students to use their OWN brains, read books OUTSIDE the school districts acquisition program, and to NOT believe everything coming out of Washington as being the truth; I'd explain how Natives were decimated, murdered, in cold, non-euphemistic terms.
Man, these teachers CRINGED! It then dawned on me around 2002 or 2003 when another teacher didn't hide the "Oath to the President of the United States and Defense of the US Constitution" letter she had to sign before even getting the job. THAT took my mind back to 9/2001 or 10/2001, or maybe it was early 2002 when I astounded those two teachers who probably feared me or thought I was a mole testing their oaths. They were immigrants of Asian ancestry. I think they were terrified.
But, some teachers are HOPPING EFFING MAD that their continued or new employment hinged on taking that oath. I guess it's because "they're the front line of our way of life", being around the kids and all. Well, whomever wrote that doc can, like Popeye says, "Well, BLOW me NOW", or was that "Blow me DOWN"? Metaphoricaly, ehphemistically, or acoustically, either works.
I am sure many teachers coerced into signing those docs will vote for no more BU__SH__ in our Oval Office.
If I am mistaken about the imposition of the oath doc for teachers, KINDLY tell me. But, as far as I found out by happenstance/random chance, it was foisted upon them AFTER 9/11.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Recall that CA did pass a law requiring computer voting systems to produce a paper trail, and allow the voter to confirm via this paper trail that their vote was cast as they intended.
Note, however, that this won't go into effect until the 2006 election.
CA has a LOT of electoral votes, so this is significant for the election next Nov 2.
Why do we insist that voters be 18 years of age if we have to make the system simple enough for someone with a 4th grade education?
Who still can't vote right....
And claims voter intimidation/racism/sexism/elitism when someone tells him (or her) how much dumber than a bag of hammers he (or she) is.....
And that person has registered to vote 45 times....
Yet is a felon....
convicted of vote fraud....
in multiple previous elections....
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
Ron Suskind wrote an illuminating article in this issue about how GWB's religious faith drives his deliberations (or lack thereof). Well worth a read.
Many evangelicals think that God is in the West Wing. For them, making and changing decisions based on "reality" is inferior to a buring certainty and righteously. The $200 billion questions is whether GWB believes that he's channeling God himself or that he is MERELY pandering to the evangelicals.
You decide!
Either way, look for big changes in the courts if GWB is re-elected: more church services in schools, etc..
"In Orlando County, the touch screens crashed."
Nowhere in the article did it say that touch-screen units ceased to function... I don't know where this information came from, but that's what the majority of the posts I've read are quoting.
The article stated "workers had problems connecting with a live database that is used to verify that a voter is properly registered in the county"... this does not mean that the voting units stopped working. The actual voting units aren't even supposed to contain voter-specific information, just internal ballot numbers. In fact, the actual voting consoles don't even connect to the internet for any reason and probably aren't even networked, but the laptops that are used to verify a voter's registration probably are.
It was the online database connection that failed to work for whatever reason ("Salas said it was not yet known what went wrong to cause the glitch."). And "In Orange County, the computers went down for about 10 minutes shortly after voting began, said Margaret Dunn, the senior deputy elections supervisor. She said she did not know what caused the problem, but speculated a faulty Internet connection may have been to blame." doesn't specify anything (beyond suspicious timing) because far too many people (some even in computer-related fields) assume "a network" is the same as "the internet", and thus don't try make any differentiation between the two, not to mention the fact that the often misleading term "speculated" was used (denoting an assumption), instead of "stated" (which would have denoted the information came from some form of expertise or other knowledgeable information source).
The thing that frightens me the most is the apparent willingness that so many people seem to have to want to accept such offhand and baseless connections, all because it's all in the same article, or the article tends to promote a sense of urgency or panic (it's News people, if you're not panicking or getting the warm-fuzzies, the ratings/readership might disappear). It's so often the progression of "there were problems with a part of the new process" becomes "people don't like the new process" becomes "the whole idea of the new process is flawed and therefore should be scrapped or avoided".
In this case, apparently there was a problem with the connection(s) between the registration database server(s) and some of the laptops used to access them, this brings about a comment of "Sally Zwanger, a poll watcher for the Kerry campaign, claimed the problems reflected the inability of Gov. Jeb Bush's administration to fix voting problems left over from the 2000 election" -- who apparently happens to be the only 'honest' person there because "She also said waiting voters were told at 8:30 a.m. that every voting location in Broward County was closed. But she found out after calling the Broward County Elections Office headquarters that the Plantation location and four others were still open." (you'd think that there would be a list of negligent Officials who were spreading the information, which there is, suspiciously, no mention of) -- sparked off a statement by an apparent voter (""They had all the time from when they said the voting machines will be used, all the time to perfect them, and here we are, up the creek,""... as though the voting machines themselves were at fault... she apparently didn't even get that far due to the initial issue) which started a bunch of other voter comments about the situation being ridiculous and frustrating. This in turn rolls into complaints of incomplete absentee ballots being handed out (see http://election.dos.state.fl.us/absenteevoting.sht ml for more information on Florida absentee voting procedures) when voters don't want to use the touch-screen machines. Next comes a list of other states allowing early voting, and even a comment on the ease of us
You were on solid ground when you basically said that you don't know what is going on. Unfortunately you ventured forward and inadvertently proved it, and not to your credit I might add.
Here's the scary thought - what if it's not just blowing stuff up, but screwing with the election itself. The race is close enough that you wouldn't need to mess with that many votes that neither candidate could claim legitimacy. For example, hack the machines in perhaps two or three contested states - give a ridiculous number of votes (say 100,000,000) to Nader, two votes to Bush and one to Kerry. That would completely invalidate those states being able to send delegates to the constitional convention. Result - massive crisis.
"The time is always now" - Victor
We all live in America,
America, ist wunderbar,
We all live in America,
America, America.
Wenn getanzt wird will ich führen
(When we dance, I will lead)
Auch wenn ihr euch alleine dreht
(Even if you can turn alone)
Lasst euch ein wenig kontrollieren
(Just let us control you a bit)
Ich zeige euch wie's richtig geht
(We'll show you the right way)
Wir bilden einen lieben Reigen
(We're building a circle of love)
Die Freiheit spielt auf allen Geigen
(Freedom plays on all the violins)
Musik kommt aus dem Weißen Haus
(Music comes out of the White House (And "software" to vote correctly!))
Und vor Paris steht Mickey Maus
(And Micky Mouse stands in front of Paris)
Am I the only one who feels this is a valid representation of the current state of the US government?
I mean, really. They've given up just bombing the crap out of a country around election time. (Been there, tried that, got the T-Shirt). Now they have to electronically rig their elections.
For shame.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
It's interesting that the title of this article, in combination with the recent history of voting debaucle in Florida makes us think that the whole show messed up already. The truth could be that a 5 year old tripped over a cord and shut down 3 machines. The report we get is that the Florida voting system is crippled and riddled with incident. The knee jerk reaction of the reader is that Florida is causing democracy to fail and that we need to call in the national guard. Not that I believe everything I read...but seeds of information quickly grow into journalistic weeds...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If I don't want to vote on November 2, dammit, I don't want to vote. Who's to tell me what I have to do and when I have to do it? I can see it now. US passes law: "All eligible voters must vote or be imprisoned."
I'm an Australian, so I'll explain how it works in over here in practice. You have to show up to the polling booth and have your name marked off, but you don't have to actually pick up a ballot and vote. If you do take a ballot, but don't like any of the candidates, you can vote informally by just sticking a blank ballot in the box.
If you don't get your name marked off, they send you a letter asking you for an excuse. Any excuse will do -- if you write "I felt sick" in crayon, that's fine. If you do ignore the letter they fine you $50 of our worthless plastic money. There's no gaol time. If you complain about the fine (providing an excuse in the process), you don't have to pay it.
So, you don't have to vote, you don't even have to leave the house, you just have to have your name marked off. I can see how one might consider that an infringement of freedoms, but I think on the whole that I feel better living in a country where giving a fuck one way or the other is a requirement of citizenship.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
So, you think the government can't regulate morality? On what basis does the government feel itself able to regulate theft, , , DUII, assult, underage smoking, public indecency, etc, etc, etc? The majority of the population has determined these activities to be bad for society, and so has charged the government with the the prevention of these acts. That's what government's for, for crying out loud!!!
They're also harmful to other individuals that did not choose to partake in that activity.
Okay, I say the government can regular morality, and we'll use my morals to do it. I'm a Baptist with standard Baptist moral decisions... so, no drinking and no gambling allowed. After all, it's not good for society.