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Blackboxvoting.org Raises Vote-Audit FOIA Request
aacool writes "Blackboxvoting.org has raised the largest Freedom of Information request in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit. Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting systems -- optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal records request for internal audit logs, polling place results slips, modem transmission logs, and computer trouble slips."
just when we thought the election was over... hopefully everything was computed properly...
Get your torrents...
I understand made use of electronic voting machines manufactured by Diebold. Their CEO pledged to do whatever was in his power to swing the election towards George. Interesting... Plus the exit polls seemed to suggest a different winner.
So much for that....
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Blackboxvoting.org is a non-profit supported by donations. Screw the FSF and the EFF. Give your money now to these guys and shine the light on the roaches.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Assuming that enough fraud is uncovered that it could have swung the election the other way, what recourse is there? Would we have to rehold the election? Or could the current winner be undone?
Out of curiosity, can anyone expect to process and audit that data in a reasonable timeframe? Especially on a volunteer basis?
I'm glad someone's on this. The scariest thing about all these new voting technologies is the idea that if something were to go wrong, intentionally or otherwise, we wouldn't even find out about it.
A most... daring move, I have to say. The very perspective and magnitude of task such as doing independant audit of complete US presidential elections is... staggeringly humongous. I am afraid that the blackboxvoting.org does not posess facilities, technology and manpower to handle the avalanche of raw data that might hit them as the result of this request - obviously, to do a proper audit, they'd need to start from individual ballots... all 110+ million of them, plus all the disqualified ballots, duplicate ballots, questionable ballots?
:). But I'm afraid it'll be a wasted effort.
In the aftermath, I am afraid that, if the audit indicates there are irregularities or foul play involved in the elections, reply might simply be 'It is counting error on your end, you don't have capacities for competently performing an audit of this size.' Besides, I just might think not enough of Americans will actually care.
Bottom line... I sure do hope the audit works out. I sure do hope it proves elections were rigged (being from a former communist eastern european state myself, I saw a number of those
'...computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons...' Popular Mechanics, 03/49'
The only people who would question the authenticity of the United States of America's election process via the "e-voting" method are those are support the ending of freedom and the resurgence of terror!
Why wouldn't you just trust the results you see in the media? Why must you map the tunnels that carry our infastructure only a terrorist would need that information!
Remember 10 out of 10 terrorists support John Kerry! If you are questioning the election results you must not support Bush and thus you must be a terrorist.
I'm only 52% kidding.
Every Slashdot reader knew going into this election that the Diebold machines were unaccountable, had no unalterable audit logs, no paper to subpoena, no WORM media to recount from. They are rewriteable and they are in the hands of the GOP. Now, suddenly, only two states have a vote count which is wildly divergent from the exit polling. Those states are Ohio and Florida. They were polled entirely by Diebold machines.
There is no accountability, no log, no going back. And it's OUR fault. We knew, and we didn't take action. We KNEW this would come.
It's not about who votes. It's about who counts them.
Although I am against Bush, I would prefer him winning the vote in a straight way, I can live with that. I can't live with the fact that he might have stolen the election for a second time.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
they could find all the evidence they need of record tampering... of votes being miscast... of these machines being totally unfit for the democratic process....
and you would never see anything about it in the mainstream media....
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Yep. Get ready for the Diebold conspiracy wackos to crawl out of the woodwork, because Diebold's chairman said in his capacity as a Republican party backer that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Really, really poor taste? Yep. Probably a fucking stupid thing to say when you're CEO of a company that makes electronic voting machines? For the *state* about which you're making those comments, no less? Yep. But don't forget one thing: the exit polls exactly and perfectly describe the 2% Bush margin. That's one thing you'll never see the Diebold conspiracy blogs mention. They'll just fantasize about how a 13,000 person company secretly rigged the election, and that somehow, the mainstream media is "hiding" the story because it's in bed with Bush. Ahh, conspiracy theorists. Gotta love 'em.
Interestingly, they showed footage on NBC's TODAY show of some of the polling places using electronic equipment in Ohio; some polling places had waits of over 9 hours with the last people voting at shortly before 4AM local time. Voting officials offered the alternative of paper ballots to move people through more quickly. Ironically, students and other members of the line were yelling "Do not use the paper ballots! Wait to use the machines!" explaining later that they felt their votes wouldn't be counted if they voted on paper...
And no, the exit polls didn't indicate a different winner.
The audit of the unprecedented use of electronic voting would be a pretty good learning experience for us as a potential nation of future electronic voters.
However, I wonder what the potential political repercussions of an audit would be should the audit find inconsistencies or possible voter problems that skewed a state to the candidate that lost after the fact. Would Kerry renounce his concession?
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
It seems fishy to me that the two states with computerized balloting and no paper trail, had Kerry winning in the exit polls, but the outcome was decidedly different. In fact these two states had the highest discrepancy in exit poll vs. final poll numbers.
I don't think it should be legal to concede. Screw checking out the voting machines, and have all the uncounted voters sue Kerry, Bush, and whomever else. By conceding the race and not counting those votes, it's effectively denying the right to vote for those individuals. This includes overseas (military and civilian), uncounted provisional votes, and absentee ballots. Every vote counts, so count every vote!
Hopefully everyone will comply with this order.
There are too many questions about electronic voting, and the legitimacy of the election in question. If these requests are not filled, it will really help to calm down the cries of voting fraud.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Public Records Request - November 2, 2004
From: Black Box Voting
To: Elections division
Pursuant to public records law and the spirit of fair, trustworthy, transparent elections, we request the following documents.
We are requesting these as a nonprofit, noncommercial group acting in the capacity of a news and consumer interest organization, and ask that if possible, the fees be waived for this request. If this is not possible, please let us know which records will be provided and the cost. Please provide records in electronic form, by e-mail, if possible - crew@blackboxvoting.org.
We realize you are very, very busy with the elections canvass. To the extent possible, we do ask that you expedite this request, since we are conducting consumer audits and time is of the essence.
We request the following records.
Item 1. All notes, emails, memos, and other communications pertaining to any and all problems experienced with the voting system, ballots, voter registration, or any component of your elections process, beginning October 12, through November 3, 2004.
Item 2. Copies of the results slips from all polling places for the Nov. 2, 2004 election. If you have more than one copy, we would like the copy that is signed by your poll workers and/or election judges.
Item 3: The internal audit log for each of your Unity, GEMS, WinEds, Hart Intercivic or other central tabulating machine. Because different manufacturers call this program by different names, for purposes of clarification we mean the programs that tally the composite of votes from all locations.
Item 4: If you are in the special category of having Diebold equipment, or the VTS or GEMS tabulator, we request the following additional audit logs:
a. The transmission logs for all votes, whether sent by modem or uploaded directly. You will find these logs in the GEMS menu under "Accuvote OS Server" and/or "Accuvote TS Server"
b. The "audit log" referred to in Item 3 for Diebold is found in the GEMS menu and is called "Audit Log"
c. All "Poster logs". These can be found in the GEMS menu under "poster" and also in the GEMS directory under Program Files, GEMS, Data, as a text file. Simply print this out and provide it.
d. Also in the Data file directory under Program Files, GEMS, Data, please provide any and all logs titled "CCLog," "PosterLog", and Pserver Log, and any logs found within the "Download," "Log," "Poster" or "Results" directories.
e. We are also requesting the Election Night Statement of Votes Cast, as of the time you stopped uploading polling place memory cards for Nov. 2, 2004 election.
Item 5: We are requesting every iteration of every interim results report, from the time the polls close until 5 p.m. November 3.
Item 6: If you are in the special category of counties who have modems attached, whether or not they were used and whether or not they were turned on, we are requesting the following:
a. internal logs showing transmission times from each voting machine used in a polling place
b. The Windows Event Viewer log. You will find this in administrative tools, Event Viewer, and within that, print a copy of each log beginning October 12, 2004 through Nov. 3, 2004.
Item 7: All e-mails, letters, notes, and other correspondence between any employee of your elections division and any other person, pertaining to your voting system, any anomalies or problems with any component of the voting system, any written communications with vendors for any component of your voting system, and any records pertaining to upgrades, improvements, performance enhancement or any other changes to your voting system, between Oct. 12, 2004 and Nov. 3, 2004.
Item 8: So that we may efficiently clarify any questions pertaining to your specific county, please provide letterhead for the most recent non-confidential correspondence between your office and your county counsel, or, in lieu of this, just e-mail us the contact information for y
I wish them luck in their efforts to get this info. As another Slashdotter posted in the other election thread, it's amazing how no one in the media wants to talk about how the exit polls, which are normally quite accurate, showed Kerry strong in places where he eventually lost. I won't rehash all the Diebold issues, but in an election this close, some modest vote fraud, spread thinly enough, would be more than enough to sway the result.
I do wonder, though where they're gonna find the manpower to process all this data, if they do succeed. The recounts in a few Florida counties took days; this is a few orders of magnatude more work!
Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
First, no, the exit polls do not suggest that. They perfectly mirror the results.
Secondly, Diebold's CEO, Walden O'Dell, said that about only Ohio, because he lives and works in Ohio, and is a GOP backer.
Bad taste? Yes. "Interesting" that a CEO of a company is a Republican? Nope. Do I wish he would have had the scruples to stay out of politics since his company is making voting machines? Yep.
But please, take off your tinfoil hat. When he said he was committed to delivering Ohio to Bush, he meant that as a GOP campaigner, contributor, and backer. Not that he was going to secretly have a 13,000-employee company rig a presidential election.
Who are these people, requesting so much information?! They must be terrorists!
Do not anger the worm.
The election yesterday was my third experience with the new-improved voting machines. And for the third time, I walked out of the booth wondering if my vote would really be counted.
After tapping my choices with a stylus -not really that easy for a left-handed-choice-tapper on a right-handed machine, I had to re-do a lot of them- I pressed the vote button. And the screen flashed something like "vote recorded" and then it went blank.
There was nothing to drop in a ballot box, nothing to show me that the machine was really hooked to anything, and of course, nothing that anybody could re-count if there was a question of fraud.
The friendly octogenarian on duty assured my that the it was all run by computer and that we didn't need a paper trail, since they could recount the computer records if they needed to do a recount. And since it is impossible for hard drives to die and memory chips to fail...
Yeah, it probably worked this time but the empty feeling I had as I walked out of the polling station left me strangly envious of those days when I could look at my punch card to make sure that none of the chads were hanging.
I live in a country where 36.6 million people are registered as voters.
- sealed-urn ?
Every 5 years, we vote for our president and sometimes mayors / deputies as well.
It takes roughly 3 hours after the closing of the voting offices before we know the name of our president, without room for contestations over the regularity of the vote.
How come we can achieve that by using such a primitive method as ballot-paper-goes-into-ballot-enveloppe-goes-into
Don't be surprised when these requests are denied on the grounds that providing this information would compromise our ability to prevent vote fraud. (my head spins just typing that)
The radical right now control the White House, the Senate and the House. Some of the senators voted in last night make Barry Goldwater look like Ted Kennedy. This faction will not allow anyone to look behind the curtain.
Let the conspiracy theories begin...
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
4 MORE YEARS! Wait a minute, before you mark this troll or flamebait. I'm talking about 4 MORE YEARS OF SLASHDOT! Slashdot has been on the verge of death lately and probably couldn't survive a Kerry victory. With another 4 more years of Bush, Slashdot is virtually guaranteed an extra 2-5 stories per week that generate 1300+ comments and thus traffic and ad revenue. Look in the HOF, all the top stories are politically related. Thanks to Bush's victory, Slashdot will generate enough add revenue to continue. We should all be happy.
I just sent in my $100 donation. Put your money with your mouth is.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I don't read replies by ACs.
You don't think the Kerry campaign, and all the shitloads of people working for it, realizes this?
A $300M operation that's been going on for the better part of two years, for whom 55 million people voted and believe that the future of the country is at stake?
They're just going to roll over and say "Oh well" for no reason?
I have news for you: there is not wholesale or widespread fraud in the election. And what fraud (on BOTH sides), inappropriate behavior, etc., is statistically irrelevant in this election. If Kerry believed there was a way to win, believe me, they'd be doing it.
I hate to break it to you, but the geek community isn't "on to" something big, and everyone else just doesn't realize it. Electronic voting has problems. Big problems. We need transparency. Blackboxvoting is fighting for it.
But no one stole, or was handed, this election. Bush won it, with the largest number of votes in history, with an absolute majority, and with additional seats in the House and Senate to boot.
Face it. Bush won. Keep working on making electronic voting open and transparent.
And you know what? When you do, Republican candidates can and will still win.
Speaking as a Kerry supporter...
#1, The election results were statistically similar to the exit polls in Ohio and Florida.
#2, only 20 out of 88 counties in Ohio (IIRC, I may be fudgy on the exact number) used Diebold machines, the rest were punch card ballots.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
It's too bad that Kerry has conceded the race, as it seems reasonable and worthwhile to check the accuracy of the electronic votes. However, the U.S. has a deep anti-intellectual bias and it's not surprising to me that the idea of simple factchecking of an important race seems intolerable.
Not to sound like too much of a conspiracy freak, but I have to say that some of the numbers sound kinda flaky -- e.g. there was supposedly no change in turnout of young voters, but the news was *full* of anecdotal evidence of massive youth voter turnout... Also, the numbers from Florida just look a little... weird.
It's very, very good that these guys are doing this -- it's just too easy to imagine "election hacking" scenarios.
FYR: Some very good analysis of the problem, with resources, from Bruce Schneier: http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0312.html#9
can anyone expect to process and audit that data in a reasonable timeframe?
Not to affect this election but perhaps they will come up with valid criticisms which will result in improvements that contribute to enhancing the reliability of future electronic elections and not just in the USA but world wide. With a bit of luck the NeoCons of this world will eventually have to learn to live with something as 'communist' and disgustingly 'liberal' but eminently democratic as open source voting software/hardware and fully audited elections.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I also find it surprising that Florida was so clearly for Bush given how tight it was last time. (Maybe retirees care more about terrorism and Iraq than I thought?)
Much of Ohio uses Diebold voting machines, which leave no paper trail. Early in the campaign, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell, a GOP fundraiser, promised to deliver Ohio to Bush. :(
Question: If someone committed fraud, would it be better to make it a decisive victory in order to avoid scrutiny?
These guys should start with the big counties in states such as Florida and Ohio that seemed to turn out contrary to prediction.
If America is the greatest country in the world, with it's freedoms and the right to vote, why can't they decide on a consistent form of voting? It seems to be, watching from the outside, there were so many different ways to vote, depending on where you were, whether it was electronic voting machines (and each of those were from different vendors)or paper ballots. In addition, the whole confusion and legal challenges to "provisional" and "absentee" ballots just muddied the waters even further. I also find it scary that something so important as voting can be done using hap-hazard machinery which is unauditable and unreliable. Hearing some of the stories coming from the different news agencies (CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, etc.), it almost sounds like the voting system is a 3rd world style system.
What's needed is a voting system that's consistent across the country with checks and balances to ensure audit trails. I know that Americans take pride in the fact they vote for their government. Their system needs to be first class to ensure their vote doesn't become a circus. The American government need to ensure validity of the vote by ensuring voting is done in a consistent manner across the country, and if that is electronic voting, then they need to ensure the voting results are NOT subject to fraud or manipulation.
Please note this is not a "bashing America" rant, but the zaniness about electronic voting has to stop!
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
I was pretty excited to see that Virginia wasn't using Diebold machines in the voting booths. I was happy to see the WinVote machines. They looked slick, they worked fine and I had no complaints.
This morning I looked into the company and found out that it is run by 2 former Diebold executives.
I really don't like that too much.
We need a voter-verifiable paper receipt printed out by these machines that ensures manual recounts and spot-checks can occur without any hint of vote count fraud. The fact that there is any controversy in this area is indicative of just how sloppy we as a country have become in protecting our fundamental processes of government. We've put men on the moon, we have the expertise to put printers in voting machines.
Have you donated to the EFF lately?
My journal
From outside the United States "American democracy" is right up there with "jumbo shrimp" and "plastic glass".
There's a lot of people who are arguing that the election was 'stolen' by Diebold others who say that things are just fine...
The bottom line is -- until we look and until there's a paper trail we just don't know.
For all we know, Diebold could be sucking votes out of the system like a cancer sucking the life out of a body. Do we just turn our heads and not go to the doctor for a test? We do need to know what happened in an objective, non-partisan manner. Perhaps Bev Harris is the one to do that, maybe not, but it needs to be done.
Additionally, we need to fix the voting system. We need to form a true non-partisan grass roots effort to get accountability back into the system. I don't want people to ever question the results of an election. We need to have ballot initiatives lawsuits, whatever. I'm not an expert on how to force these changes on the voting system, but I'm willing to learn and it needs to be done.
By lying?
No, actually, I was up until 5AM ET.
And, uh, the networks didn't "revise" anything. The problem was that pre-election polling in states like Ohio made some people, like Zogby, pretty damned sure Ohio was a gimme for Kerry. But they were wrong. And the exit polling showed that.
Now let me get this straight: you're alleging that the major networks changed their exit polling figures, i.e., purposely falsified results, to make the exit poll numbers match the election outcome?
Wow. Do you use Reynolds or a generic brand for your hat?
I hate to tell you this, but I watched the AP returns on Ohio from the poll close to 100% precincts reporting, and the exit polls more or less mirrored the results the whole time.
But now people like Zogby are having to are having to eat their hats:
"We feel strongly that our pre-election polls were accurate on virtually every state. Our predictions on many of the key battleground states like Ohio and Florida were within the margin of error. I thought we captured a trend, but apparently that result didn't materialize."
I did a couple of searches on my own, and found this (old) article: http://slate.msn.com/id/2086455/.
It's basically about Diebold machines being flaky pieces of crap, but most notably, there's this quote:
Anyhow, I find it amusing that a pro OpenSource article is on a Microsoft site (kind of like finding a supremely pro Microsoft article on Slashdot..
- - - -
KickingDragon
So before you flame or mod me, read my post.
How many of you have a clue as to how an election is run? How many of you have a clue as to the repeatability of recount results? How many of you have taken the time to call the elections office before an election and sign up as a pollworker? How many of you have gone to the courthouse and witnessed the *public* logic and accuracy tests of the ballot counters before and after the elections. Never heard of such a thing? Doesn't surprise me.
I worked in the elections business for 3 years, and not for Diebold. I was project leader designing a high speed central count machine. I designed the read heads and the digital logic. I've been to probably 10-12 elections across the country and Canada. What I've seen consistantly is dedicated, hardworking and impartial people running the elections. These people bust their butt to do a fast and accurate job election night, and they continue the effort until the election results are certified, usually a couple weeks later. The results are accurate and repeatable. Most states have laws requiring manditory recounts in elections that are close. The ballot counting process is considerably more accurate than the recount threshold.
What blackboxvoting.org is doing will undoubtably (based on my observations) just result in a gigantic waste of time and effort. I can only imagine that it's a grandstanding effort to raise their visibility. It will ulimately result in questions as to their credibility.
If you have questions about the election process, by all means call your elections office and talk to the people there, go to the public equipment tests and ask questions. You will find out for yourself that you are dealing with people that do a good job and produce accurate results.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
There are no Federal elections in the United States; all elections occur at the State level or below. Since the Federal Government doesn't run elections, they won't have any documentmation about them.
As a matter of fact, it's a historical accident that the People vote for President at all:
Perhaps it would be better for everyone if the State legislatures just nominated the Electors themselves instead of leaving it to the People.
Which elector is this? I live in Colorado, and check the newspapers' websites daily, and have not heard of anything like this here. In West Virginia, yes, but not in Colorado. Could you cite a source, please?
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
(See my other post here)
So, are you, too, alleging that CNN falsified its exit polling numbers? Because that's what i get from your allegations.
Is it that hard to believe that polling might have indicated one thing in certain areas and another thing in others? The exit polling dipped and rose with the actual election returns, and there was always a ~+/-5% margin of error.
But the final, aggregated numbers more or less match the actual results. Are you saying that CNN has fudged these to match, i.e., lying about the numbers, meaning they are manufacturing artificial exit poll data? And if you are, what possible motivation would they have to do that?
If there was a big discrepancy, they'd (not to mention the $300 million Kerry campaign) want to be all the fuck over it...ESPECIALLY in the state that is deciding the election.
So I hate to break it to you, but Bush won, and there was nothing fishy to speak of going on.
(Disclaimer: I didn't vote for Bush.)
They just received a response:
Dear BlackBoxVoting.org,
Your name sounds very ominous. Are you a terrorist organization? No matter, we will soon find out.
Your request for audit logs and other miscellaneous data has been rejected. We feel that providing this information to the public would allow terrorists a clear view inside our political process, which they might then use to influence future elections. We cannot allow that to happen, therefore, the logs will be kept under lock and key until a time far in the future when no one today will be alive to be held accountable for any mistakes.
In addition, we feel your questioning of the voting process undermines the public's faith in our democratic system and we wouldn't want any facts or numbers to confuse people and cause them to lose faith, would we? We also feel that no one should ever question the government, because anyone who does so is obviously out to destroy America and that's just wrong. Who does that?
The FBI, CIA, NSA, DOD, IRS, SEC, DHS, AFSPC, ANG, ATF, BOP, CBIAC, CDC, and OSHA will all be paying you a visit to "straighten things out."
Thank you for your time.
Your Government.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
I'm OK with that. If the software is certified for a particular set of Windows + patches, then on election night I want it running on that exact platform - not that system +/- a few minor "adjustments".
and use RAS (Remote Access Server) to connect to the voting machines through telephone lines.
One detail left out: did it answer calls from every phone number in existence, or just the ones on an approved list?
I don't mean to imply that everything was hunky-dorey, but the facts you mentioned (on their own) don't necessarily mean that the system was compromised.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Watch them take 4 years to hand over all the requested information.
As a non-American, that is what boggles the mind.
With everything going on, the election is decided on "moral issues"? Me no understand...although, you gotta hand it to Bush's campaign people for realizing near the end that it was the only type of campaign they could win.
Reason why there is hope for the future generation #364:
"I wish my grass was emo so it could cut itself."
I'm not even so concerned with overturning a bush presidency (although I will admit that from my point of view that would be sweet)
Id just like to see america understand the nature of these machines... that they are not safe and reliable... that there are security holes and that there is no accountability in the long run.
thats all really...
they don't even have to find evidence of intentional fraud... hell they could even find that 100,000 kerry votes were invalid for all I care as long as it leads to an accountable voting system in the future.
but I don't hold out too much hope of that happening.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Take a look at Miami-Dade ... IIRC, they are using touch-screens there.
... though Diebold made sure to design their equipment to be impossible to audit, a deliberate design decision in stark contrast to the ATMs they manufacture as their core business.
... again, as a deliberate design decision, in contrast with other banking equipment Diebold manufactures.
... abdicating fully their position as our democracies watchdog and a check and balance on the government.
Miami-Dade was supposed to be incredibly Democratic and they only got a 54-46 margin.
Very suspect.
I agree with your conclusion, but not with your reason.
The Diebold touchscreens are a bit of a red herring. Yes, they are a concern and should be audited (and auditable)
The Diebold tabulators are the real concern. Like the touchscreen machines, they produce no paper trail and are difficult or impossible to audit
The tabulators are the big computers that collect millions of votes and tallies them up. They are used to count votes from touch screens, as well as from other precincts using everything from op-scan sheets to punch cards. A two digit back door code will let you change voting totals, with absolutely no evidence that you've done so.
In every other country, when exit polls differ significantly from the official results, it is generally considered a pretty strong indicator of voter fraud. In the United States, CNN simply changes their polling data to match the official result
I have no idea if the elections in Ohio and Florida were rigged, or if Bush won legitimately. I truly hope it is the latter. I don't expect the US to emerge from four more years with much intact in the way of its economy and influence in the world, much less with many of the social gains of the last quarter century still intact, but it would be far worse for America if Bush stole this election than if he won it legitimately.
The problem is, with machines that are designed to be impossible to audit, and with tabulators that have a software feature designed to facilitate fraud, we can't know.
Ever.
And that is terribly disturbing.
To any critically thinking mind, the legitimacy of this entire election is serious doubt, and would have been irrespective of who won. Using unauditable equipment in an election undermines the entire process at its most fundamental level, and does more to destabilize the political climate in America than a thousand bin Ladens could possibly ever achieve.
Diebold and others who produce similarly shoddy election equipment need to be put out of business, immediately and perminently.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Same thing here. Find and fix the problems now, when the race has been conceded, and the result isn't in doubt, so that, when we need to be able to count on the system to count every vote, we can.
Forget the whining Democrats who apparently can't campaign themselves out of a wet paper bag. Forget that Diebold's CEO is apparently an idiot. The point is, This is not a partisan issue, friends, its called basic Democracy. If we as a country can't trust our elections, there will eventually be serious, destabilizng consequences. - Very bad for business.
Bev Harris and BlackboxVoting are certainly doing great work in exposing fraud and corruption among DRE voting machine makers (and other types, for that matter).
But the real solution to the problem, long term, past the current election, is to get electronic voting machines based on open source code, and that produce voter-verifiable paper ballots. It just so happens that there's an organization for that purpose that could really use some assistance (financial and otherwise) right now: the Open Voting Consortium.
Just to be extra-sexy, our reference system uses Linux and Python :-).
BTW. Some readers will think: "What's wrong with plain old paper and pencil?" Actually, there's not so much wrong with that. I just used a pencil to vote in Massachusetts yesterday, and it worked great. Paper ballot. Zero line at the polls. Perfectly transparent. Great security (just look at that padlock on the ballot box).
But electronic machines do have a few good things, as long as their source code is open and the print out paper ballots after selections are made: Multi-lingual; blind accessible (using audio interface) and special interfaces for motor-impaired voters; large fonts for vision impaired voters; prevent overvotes and unintentional undervotes.
Buy Text Processing in Python
. . . if they would be doing this if Kerry had won. If so, then what they're doing is a laudible effort to vet the federal election system, point out where it can be improved, and help restore people's confidence in it.
If not, then it's nothing more than a petty attempt to make as many people (the folks that have to gather all the data for these requests. Remember them?) as possible just as miserable as possible for nothing more than a meaningless act of political revenge.
I voted for Senator Kerry, and I suspect I know how someone like him would react to something like this, supposedly done in his name.
Regards;
Here's the thing -- for the first time, it's possible that a single, clever hacker slightly altered the returns across the state of Florida to convincingly shift the outcome by a percent or two. I agree with you that most likely it didn't happen -- but damn, there's just no way of knowing, is there? The statement "there is not wholesale or widespread fraud in the election" is one that not you, nor anyone else can support right now. The only way to do that is to sniff around, check all the logs and records and whatever, and see if anything interesting pops up.
A better way to phrase it would be, "we'll never know if there was wholesale or widespread fraud in the election, but since it looks like he won, and it's certainly credible that he did, why don't we just go with it?"
That sentiment makes a lot of sense -- but I'm still glad they're checking into it as best they can.
There are two issues: were there e-voting shenanigans this time, and if not, was it because we were lucky and everyone played fair or was it because the systems are actually secure.
I'm thinking that there probably wasn't significant e-voting cheating, that the vote went slightly for Bush because far too many Americans are fearful and ignorant on both international and on domestic social issues and because the right has played better politics for the past decade or so.
But that the reason there weren't cheating wasn't because it was hard to cheat, and it's worth spending a lot of time and money to find the security problems before
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Pride/Hubris: A presumption of infallibility and complete denial of ever making a mistake.
Sloth: He has taken more vacations than any man has a right to. How much brush does he have on that ranch anyway and can't he hire someone to clear it for him? Heck, put on boots and jeans and pose in the rose garden with that chainsaw.
Greed: Lots of good old boys are going to cash in for ANOTHER 4 years for elevating a "C's get degrees" party boy to the top.
Anger: Ass kicking, shoot from the hip, drunk cowboy decision making.
It makes we want to spit when a moral bankrupt gang of liars and thieves spread their brand of the gospel.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Diebold and friends have in all likelihood stolen the most important election of our lifetime. We never know for certain, because the real results of the election may have deleted forever, with a few presses of a backspace key.
Others have already said the obvious: the exit polls don't match up to the Diebold tabulations. The record number of new voters all casting ballots for an embattled incumbent seems incredibly unlikely. In my mind, this portents a new era in American politics: the most cunning cheater always wins. And with the Republicans gaining more and more ground thanks to Diebold and other dirty tricks, they'll be the ones in the best position to cheat.
We can be certain that the Republican's new electronic apparatus will entrench itself further and grow in sophistication--unless it is stopped right now. Diebold will be emboldened by this victory, and the people Diebold put in power won't lift a finger to stop it. In few short years, even the Supreme Court will probably be stacked with men who essentially owe their jobs to Diebold.
The media is filled with cowards will we now shift to the right in response to the wind. If the Diebold story doesn't make huge headlines now, then it never will.
What difference does it make it you can get record number of people to the polls if an evil nazi-nerd can push a button and erase all those votes?
Reform of the election process should become everyone's #1 issue. Protests of epic proportions are needed, because as of right now, all the suffrage gained since the dawn of the Union is in peril.
Right now, no one aside from Diebold has the right to vote. Not even the white landowners.
www.georgewbush.com
www.georgebush.com
Are == no longer == accesible from outside of the United States.
Another very happy news are looming out
just few hours after the election.
According to Reuters U.S. strategic military petroleum reserves are being filled causing mayor drain in normal oil flow (and driving price of oil sky high) inspite the fact that every driller is sucking crude like crazy, Reuters is predicting that "commander in chief" will be pretty agressive in the middle east soon.
It is refresing to see some realistic responses from at least some Republicans and Democrats.
I voted for Kerry. HE LOST! And I know it.
I serioulsly distrust these machines because I have rudimentary knowledge of how computers work and are designed and programmed. Not because I think Kerry could have won, or that I want the election challenged, or because I am a terrorist bent on starting a civil war, or because I am a "bitter sore loser".
Unfortunately too many people are trying to squash any investigation of these machines by saying it is "sore loser Democrats who don't know when to give up" doing it. And it does not help that there are a some Democrats who are acting exactly this way. Reading some of the responses to this article, I count at least 25 (browing at +2) where Republicans are basically saying "this is sore-losers and conspiracy theorists" and 8 actual rabid Democrats saying "it was a conspiracy and the election should be challenged". Counter this with about maybe 1 Democrat agreeing with me (not counting responses) and your post which is the first Republican one that questions the machines. This is not good, the loud and illogical extremists on both sides are going to kill any support for real investigation of these machines, which incidentally can be fixed just as easily by a Democrat to deliver a Democrat victory as by a Republican. Maybe even easier, if Slashdot is any indication the people with the necessary knowledge to work for these companies and sneak in code seems to slant pretty far left!
I am hoping that there can be bi-partisan support of people who all agree "Kerry lost the election but that does not mean these machines work". Any idea how to get sensible claims out above all the noise?
Seems to me we could fairly easily do a pretty good job of verifying the vote. Here's how we'd handle a single vote for a single community of voters (whether a precinct or the whole country):
Here are some consequences:
There are a few problems with this; for one thing I don't know if whether a given person has voted is supposed to be public information; for another it would be hard to look for illegal voters. But I think this is a big improvement over the black box we have now!
Giving the voter proof of who they voted for defeats the purpose of secret ballots: you can coerce somebody to vote in a certain way and to present you with the proof that they did. It generally is public information whether or not a person voted in a given election. They check you off in a great big book, and if you're a politician and haven't voted, they hassle you for it.
Lying to pollsters would seem especially likely if one of the candidates has publicly declared that if you're not with him, you're with the terrorists. It's even more likely if that candidate's people have a record of hauling people off to camps for years without access to lawyers or trials.
I wasn't accosted by any exit pollster, but if I had been, I'd have been quite tempted to say that I'd voted for the non-terrorist candidate. After all, I don't really know who the supposed pollster is reporting to, or whether they might recognize me.
I'd think that any sensible person might be nervous about admitting to a stranger to being "with the terrorists", as our president would describe us.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I'm thinking of starting an open source project that does just this. Thinking of going the cheap route and doing it in linux. Unfortunatly I don't really know linux, so I have to put the system together with Visual Basic and VC++ and ask some open sourcers to port it.
Anyway, I see it printing out two copies of the ballot. One copy is kept by the voter, the other is given to the pollworker. The ballot is also xfered to an electronic 'ballot box' (aka local server)
When the polling place closes, the signed and PGPed electronic votes are sent to the master tabulator and the paper ballots are stored under lock and key.
In the event the electronic results are challanged, the paper ballots can be used.
In the event the paper ballots go missing, voters can be contacted usually by mail to send in a photocopy of their ballot.
All paper ballots will have a text version of the votes as well as a Code 39 barcode version with the text printed underneith.
The polling place will have a dedicated barcode scanner that can be used to make sure the barcode matches the text.
Keep in mind though that the code 39 font I will made for this system will include the symbol's letter undernieth the symbol. This is built into the font, not the program.
Any comment's suggestions?
This is totally doable in Visual Basic, but I have security concerns with windows.
This message brought to you by Jack Schitt's Previously Shat Shit
I find it amazing that a state like Mississippi which voted to ban gay marriage by huge majority still had a comparably close race for president. So it must be something else.
It's not inconsistent at all.
There are a number of issues that might be important to a voter. Potential voters are not a unified mass with identical opinions, or a collection of a small number of such masses of clones. Instead, each individual has a distinct opinion, and a distinct importance weighting, on each issue.
Once people have come out to vote, they will vote their opinion, not just on the issue that decided their presidential choice, but on every issue on which they have a preference, regardless of how strong the preference or how much importance they hang on the issue.
For a (possibly small) fraction of the voters the gay marriage thing is a very important issue. For some it would make the election important enough to go vote even if they otherwise would have skipped it. For others (probably far more) it would swing their vote to a candidate they would have opposed if the issue had not been in play and they'd decided on the next most important issue.
But there are a lot of people for whom their presidential choice was made on other issues - War, Economy, Taxes, Health Care, Education, Anti-terrorism, anti-anti-terrorism-side-effects, etc. - who also have an opinion on gay marriage. A lot of such people might have voted for Kerry for president but against gay marriage.
There aren't two sides to an issue. At the US federal level there are hundreds of millions to each of many issues. There may be a LOT of clustering. But to assume the voters are identical clones of a handfull of stereotypes is to make the same mistake as the Media make when they say, for instance, that ALL Boomers are drug-swilling hedonists and ALL gen-Xers are Punks in business suits, that ALL blacks are gangsters, and so on.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I get receipts from the gas pump, the ATM, and self serve checkouts. Why in the world can't an electronic voting machine produce 2 pieces of paper: one for me and one as a record for audit purposes? If nothing else, it seems Diebold is missing a revenue opportunity here. Make this an add on deluxe feature or something. There's a huge install base of these machines right now. If they don't do it someone else will.
We need to determine whether or not vote-rigging or ballot-stuffing has occurred, and obtain conditions for future elections so that election-rigging is not possible in the future.
I suspect that the only way to make that determination will be to obtain the design information (source code, memos, diagrams, schematic drawings, etc.) for the election machinery, and open them to expert examination. I suspect we could easily find a few hundred PhD's who would be willing to examine the designs. So what is needed is to get the machinery and the design information into a forum where it can be examined.
I'm not sure how that can be done. Perhaps, a suit could be filed alledging election-rigging. Then, the discovery process could be used to obtain the evidence.
Electronic voting fraud is more than possible, it's inevitable. Did it occur in this election? Unless a group with a lot of skill can get unlimited access to each sort of machine and acquire the source code used in the machines for this election (not the old Diebold source that was leaked), we will probably never know.
As for fraud, it wouldn't have to be a conspiracy at all. A conspiracy means a group of more than one. Yet in a case like this, a single coder with access to the voting machines, say, someone working for Diebold, could throw an entire national election.
If the code were self modifying and obfuscated it could be very difficult to detect. Especially as the Diebold code used in this election has never been publicly scrutinized and may never be. And as the system is running Windows, it will have nearly endless areas in which an illicit bit of code could be inserted.
This single hacker could write a very small bit of code with any number of tests and checks to insure it only ran during an actual election. It could also have tests to insure it only skewed votes in districts with little oversight. I've only given it a moment's thought, but I've come up with a few good tests, I'm sure a bit of thought and intimate knowledge of voting procedures could devise even better ones.
Most obviously, these systems certainly have clocks, so the illicit code could wait until November 2nd. Then it could check for very complex schedules of events that only occur during an actual election. For example, the machine being turned on for many hours, yet only being asked to record a vote once a minute or less, on average.
A simple test like that could get past most quality assurance testing efforts. Most tests would fail to activate the hidden application because QA testers usually run through a testing process much faster than actual users (voters) use the machines. The hidden application could combine those tests with a bunch of other tests.
The illicit code could be designed to only skew the voting when the votes for a certain candidate (Bush) were overwhelming. Meaning it would never skew results in the districts strongly the other way, or districts with close finishes. So the districts with most of the monitoring would never have their votes altered.
But in each strongly republican district, this sort of check would change the tally to give Bush just a slightly larger percentage of votes than were actually cast.. I suspect few people would give a moment's thought to Bush winning a strongly republican district by 65% instead of 60%.
Yet skewing results exclusively in strongly republican districts could shift state-wide election totals by a percentage point or more. A close election such as those seen in any number of states this year could be stolen by just such an effort.
The system could have further checks to insure it was never activated when being tested or monitored. It could wait to skew results until it was uploading data back to the source. That source machine could have an otherwise innocuous vendor setting that the illicit application would recognize as the trigger to skew results.
Such a system could even potentially print extra paper receipts to cover its tracks in the case of a cursory audit. But that would probably not even be necessary. Because recounts cost candidates a lot of money. And I can't imagine a democratic candidate paying for a recount in an uncontested, heavily republican district.
This is not some nightmare scenario, if it hasn't happened yet, it is bound to happen sometime. Only by returning to some sort of user fulfilled ballot can we prevent a single hacker from fixing a national election.
The problem is that giving receipts to the voter allows vote-buying, and even extortion of voters by companies/employers/etc. Historically, in some districts, each voter was given two tokens (one for each candidate). He put one in the box (as the vote for that candidate), and kept the other. The plantation-owner would just insist on receiving the other token (the one for the candidate that the plantation-owner opposed) as a condition of continued employment.
The encumbent President who
* lost the popular vote in 2000 (winning by a hair on the basis of some very sketchy events)
* started a War on false pretenses (WMDs?)
* sent over 1000 young Americans to their death.
* and many thousands more mamed and disabled.
* not to mention many thousands of dead innocent Iraqis.
* who's Vice President's (prior?) employer received gigantic government contracts on a silver platter.
* Putting the nation into the Largest Debt ever. (20% and 420 billion dollars over budget in 03!)
All the while...
* Millions of Illegal Aliens have flooded into the country --over 12 million now make up the general population.
* the nation's Economy lost more Jobs than it has in over 70 years. Hundreds of thousands!
* average Wages are down.
* the Stock Markets have stagnated.
* Education, Health Care and Energy costs have risen multiple times more than the normal inflation rate.
* and plenty of other nasties.
And now you're telling me that he honestly earned _more_ of the popular vote? Why?
* Because homosexuals want to get married?
* Becasue he gave you a few dollars back on your tax return --and a whole lot of YOUR dollars to _millionares_?
* Becuase scientists want to use unviable fertility clinic embryos (_not_ abortion embryos) in order to try to save lives like Chris Reeves?
* Because he'll protect us better? Funny I think two big buildings were blown up on _his_ watch.
Again, you're telling me this President got _more_ of the popular vote this time around?
In an election where
* _all_ the exit poles are 5-10% "wrong"?
* in which more of the youth voted --voters well known to lean to the left.
* a larger turn out translated into more Republican votes, which has _never_ happened in history.
* thousands of new unverifiable e-voting machines have been used in, guess what, mostly Democratic and Africa American strong holds. Huh, that's odd.
...
If you haven't realized by now that this election has been rigged again, even better than the last time, then you are a dope.
debunked almost immediately at dailykos.com and other places. There is an 'odometer' that lists how many times the machine was used; the poll workers assumed it was a vote count and freaked. See dailykos et al. for the followups which came within an hour of the original report.
It now appears CNN changed their exit poll numbers when it looked like they didn't match the vote counts. It also seems interesting that FL and OH were the states with the exit poll discrepancies... and they use the Diebold "blackbox" voting machines, the ones where vote totals can be changed without leaving a trace.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
I remember looking at the TV images on the night of September 11, and saying "I hope this doesn't mean the end of democracy in America". (What's left of it, that is). Now, I feel prescient. This election is the last nail in the coffin of democracy.
The use of absolutely unauditable machines is unconscionable. I expected the Bushites to steal this election, just like last time, only more effectively. Now they have.
I am convinced that this election has been stolen. I do not accept Bush as a legitimate president. I never will. And those who support the use of these untraceable machines are supporting the antithesis of democracy.
Welcome to the USA, prime banana republic.
SoCalDem has done a statistical analysis... ...on several swing states, and EVERY STATE that has EVoting but no paper trails has an unexplained advantage for Bush of around +5% when comparing exit polls to actual results.
In EVERY STATE that has paper audit trails on their EVoting, the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the margin of error.
So, we have MATCHING RESULTS for exit polls vs. voting with audits
vs.
A 5% unexplained advantage for Bush without audits.
For full report , see link
http://www.rense.com/general59/steI.HTM/
Speaking as a board member for Blackboxvoting.org:
This is indeed going to be a hell of a lot of data, but our resources are considerable.
We were going to do this no matter WHO won. Because it's not just about the top of the ticket: more money gets tied up in local bond measures, construction projects and the like than in the "top of ticket campaigns" in many states. Check out how much money went into the California propositions, for starters.
It's also not just about the races themselves: folks, there are legal standards for the use of electronic voting machines at both the Fed and State levels. The garbage put out by Deibold for sure and probably ES&S, Sequoia and others DO NOT meet those legal standards!
But we have to prove it. For that, we need data.
We've gotten one KEY piece already: proof that King County hacked into their audit log and destroyed three hours worth of records on election night during the WA state primaries.
The fact that they COULD (on a Diebold box) proves that the gear doesn't meet legal security standards. The remaining question is "why did they hack the log?". Two possible answers:
1) It's possible the vote tally box went massively wonky, it took 'em three hours to clean up, and they didn't want to admit it had puked so they edited the log. Still an illegal-as-hell destruction of records and the fact that it's even possible is a gross condemnation of the gear in question...
2) They actually rigged the race with some crude clueless technique that left an audit trail item - so they scrubbed the log.
------
Speaking generally, this sort of "broad net" approach to FOIAs that BBV.org is undertaking is a pain, but it's how you scoop up killer documents that blow the lid off. Go watch the mostly factual movie "Erin Brokavich" for a real-world example of this.
We have a new advantage in California - Prop59 just "supercharged" our version of the FOIA (California Public Records Act) by establishing a constitutional right to public records. That will have a positive effect on the California requests.
--------
Speaking personally, I'm pretty sure Bush won it fair overall. If I'm eventually proven wrong, I don't think it'll be in Ohio, it'll be in Florida.
Full disclosure: I'm a Libertarian-leaning Republican who supported Bush over Kerry despite reservations. But I'm also a flat-out enemy of concealed-source, zero-paper-trail voting systems.
Jim March
Otherwise, what's to stop a hacker from "doubling up" multiple voters onto a single index? You'd have to pair votes with a hash whose source included voter-specific information (full name and exact time of vote would probably be sufficient) along with a random number long enough to prevent anyone malicious from brute forcing it to find out who you voted for.
Any voter can verify that his vote was counted by looking it up with his index, and can prove his vote to a third party by using the signed copy
One word: cameraphone. It's no longer very expensive or obtrusive to take a short video of yourself casting your vote. Blackmailing or bribing someone into recording their vote isn't as obvious (or as cheap) a hole as getting them to reveal their receipt and key, but it's already there.
Compare the number of respondents between the two screenshots. Number one has 1963, number two has 2020, a difference of only 57 people. Yet somehow Kerry's percentage for all categories that can be seen dropped at least 3 percent, one of them by 5 percent. 3 percent is possible if EVERY SINGLE ONE of the 57 extra people said they voted for Bush, but we all know the chances of this are basically zero. And that still doesnt explain the 5 percent difference for the first figure listed (males).
Joseph?
The machines worked perfectly. The candidate who was supposed to get elected, did.
...and blackboxvoting.org were the ones to discover it, back in Late August:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/?q=node/view/78
Quotations from that article:
"The Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole":
Submitted by Bev Harris on Thu, 08/26/2004 - 11:43.
Investigations Issue: Manipulation technique found in the Diebold central tabulator -- 1,000 of these systems are in place, and they count up to two million votes at a time.
By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks.
This program is not "stupidity" or sloppiness. It was designed and tested over a series of a dozen version adjustments."
But I assume you all already knew this...
Just got off the phone with Bev. She confirms that the PRARs started getting mailed *before* we had any clue at all whether Bush or Kerry was winning. Like I said, this was planned months ago (I oughta know, I helped plan it) and it's NOT about "crying foul over specific results".
We're more interested in the machines.
Let's be clear what's going on with this effort:
An "audit", when done properly, means using multiple pieces of information and matching them up to make sure the pieces fit right - and if they don't, figure out why.
We have basically three sources of info on what really happened last night for any given county:
1) Media reports;
2) Eyewitness reports from various election observers;
3) The FOIA (or state-level equivelent) data.
As just one example: media reports say that a Volusia County memory card went blotto last night. Observers saw the flurry of activity that surrounded this. There are also supposed to be "help desk trouble tickets" generated for any such malfunction, and the runaround needed to recreate the data (this was an optical scan Diebold county thank GOD!) should leave an audit trail.
So we'll be looking at this case from ALL angles. Carefully. The media report says it was a dead memory card, based on interviews with county elections officials. OK, no problem if true - with optical scan, you can go back to paper and recover, by hand if necessary.
But remember that in 2000, we *know* somebody attempted an inept hack of one of these same memory cards (PCMCIA). They duplicated a card, probably in a laptop on the way back from the field to county HQ and hacked the duplicate so it registered 16,022 negative votes for Gore and 4,000ish for Bush, in a precinct with 900-something voters tops.
Sure, it got caught and fixed, and somebody let Gore know in time for him to cancel his concession phone call - but the perpetrators were never caught and the county still has egg on it's face from this.
Did the same morons try something similar?
Dunno. But we'll find out. Bet on it.
Jim
This audit needs to be done. A significant fraction of the US population is losing confidence that elections are being run fairly. The next step in this thought process is to decide that change can only come from methods outside the democratic process. Then we have bigger problems. Everyone, regardless of their political beliefs should be behind this.
You forget what else I am:
California Field Rep and state lobbyist for the Citizen's Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (yeah, I know, long org name - see also www.ccrkba.org).
I happen to believe there's such a thing as a personal civil right to self defense. So does Bush. Kerry doesn't.
*Dean* supports that civil right - he proved it as Vermont's governor same as Bush proved it as the governor in TX. And amazingly enough, so does John Edwards, or at least that's what he claimed back when he was trying for the Dem primaries - along with hunting and sporting, he listed "self defense" as a legitimate reason for gun ownership, the only Dem to do so outright.
I would have considered voting for either Dean or Edwards. But once Kerry got the nomination, the Bush bumper stickers went on my helmet, I volunteered at the Bush phone bank, etc.
Because Kerry is an absolute enemy of the entire concept of self defense, and has proven it going back 20+ years.
Jim
I'm wondering, do you respect Bush's intelligence? It seems odd to vote for him on this issue. You say you are a libertarian leaning republican right? If the government really wants to try to keep you from gun ownership that will be a direct violation of the constitution and an act of tyranny and you will fight that right? I'd say you would already have the guns(technically illegal in this scenario) and use them to fight the obviously gone mad government. I think the damage Bush has done to us in the diplomatic arena was a lot worse than somebody that has a belief that they can't really enforce(no changes to any gun law would've made it through congress even if Kerry were elected.)
The entire board of Blackboxvoting and its officers have been declaired enemy combatants, arrested, and moved to a Navy brig.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Jason, I don't *want* to have to shoot it out.
I know enough about unconventional warfare to want NO part of that.
Christ, that's why I got involved in this whole Diebold/voting situation: given 15+ years of corporate-hosed elections, it'll mean civil war. Inevitably.
The good news is, we can win this electronic voting issue and we can win the self defense issue too!
On guns: the first thing you need to know is that the courts are completely screwed up on the issue. The most blatant example is the most recent decision out of the Federal 9th Circuit in Silveira - all you need to know about THAT fiasco is here:
http://www.americanminutemen.org/reinhardt.htm
We need Bush to put in pro-self-defense US Supreme Court justices - several are about to croak and with lower-court decisions that bad, the USSC can't dodge the issue forever.
With the courts untrustworthy, so far we've have to work within the political process.
So we've been going to each state, getting a basic right to self defense put into law:
http://www.gun-nuttery.com/rtc.php
This is a series of maps showing how we've been kicking butt state by state getting at a minimum the right to pack a self defense handgun with a background check and training ("blue states" in these maps) or in two cases since 2003, with no prior gov't permission needed to pack.
Take the blue and green states, and compare with the Bush/Kerry red/blue maps. You'll find that wherever self defense is widely allowed, the state went Bush. Usually...most of the exceptions were in the midwest.
(Note: there's a mistake on the gun-rights maps. Minnesota did indeed pass a law supporting self defense (going "blue") but their courts immedately put a temp stop to it pending a review of how it passed. So at present it's a "yellow state", not blue.)
In these various states where self defense is common and legal, gun-grabber Kerry didn't go over real well. None of these states has had a problem with their millions of armed residents. Newspaper reports from these states (often after it's been in a year or so) often remark on the lack of "wild west syndrome" or "blood in the streets", and then gun control simply stops being an issue.
http://www.equalccw.com/ccweffects.html
Gun-grabber politicians in those states are in trouble. South Dakota is one, and booted Daschle for his gun-grabber ways in the Senate this year.
We now hold at least 35 such states by anybody's count, over 50% of the US population, over 50% of the electoral college votes.
You know what that means?
We've won. OK? Long term, legal self defense will become the norm in the US in the holdout states. The sooner the Dems get a clue and quit trying to disarm those "evil rednecks" as they misunderstand us, the better.
I will never, ever support a politician who doesn't trust me with my civil right to self defense.
----------------
As to how smart Bush is? See how Texas flipped from Red to Blue in the CCW maps in 1995?
That's because Bush took office on a pro-self-defense platform.
He's a damned sight smarter than Kerry.
Jim
Diebold (and Sequoia & suchl) must provide us with proof that the above is, indeed, an unsubstantiated allegation.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
Please, we're both in Wisconsin, so you can come over and see that I haven't donned a tin-foil hat since dressing as a robot at age 8.
Check out my page to see how CNN silently revised its exit poll results for Ohio between 12:24am and 1:41am. In order for their numbers to make sense, Kerry must have received negative votes in later exit polls.
No matter what the truth, no matter what you said before or how valid your position, the instant you say "300 years of opression" we stop listening and thinking about your position.
Talk about how things are today. Talk about how they must be better tomorrow. Give numbers. Provide passion. All of that is good, and it works. You'll at least have a chance of getting your message across.
But say "300 years" and it all flys out the window, you might as well have stayed home.
This is not a "racest position" this a statement of well understood cultural bias. I am comming right out and _telling_ _you_ what that alien thing is that seems to secretly unite white men of european dissent. This is what is happening in our minds behind that inscrutable and perplexing white-man-grin. That is what is passing between us when we do that glance-around as you are speaking. It's what is happening behind-the-scenes when you get that strange feeling that you are losing your audience. Honestly and truely.
I'm a pragmatic liberal white male, a truck-driving pusdo-redneck, a homosexual, and a European mongrel of the most pervasive kind. I am a prime example of one of your greatest potential allies in the white establishment(*), and even _I_ cannot force my self to keep listening when people talk about "historical injustice". I have been pre-programmed to tune that out, and that programming runs almost impossibly deep. What chance do you think you are going to have with an old-south good-old-boy.
For two thousand years "western culture", or the men in it anyway, have been weened on "suck it up" and "take it like a man." It's _engrained_ in our cultural psyche. Take. Own. Conquer. Belittle and discard the weak. We are raised to devalue *ANYONE* who compains about past injustice. Just watch any two white boys, age 12, pick on a third and you will get the picture.
Really.
I'm just trying to tell you something here.
Watch some "hick comedy" sometime. "(She|They) are talking about *that* again" is the gal-darn _refrain_ of every white male complaining about "them" no-matter _who_ "they" happen to be this time.
Most of the glass ceiling that women and minorities run into is simply a loss of audience. Like magic, there are certian things you can say or do that turn your words to "blah blah blah" _instantly_. When you do those things that make any particular people stop listening to you, you lose the power to influence those people. If you want to get anywhere with us, you have to cut that out.
Why do you think that the white-male media always trots out King's "I have a Dream" speach? It was by no measure the most intellegent or insightful thing he said. He was much deeper and more eloquent later in his mission. But it is a powerful image and it unremittingly looks forward. We are *programed* to respect that. Read a press release some time, any press release, but especially one from a company who has "had a bad last quarter."
I'm not telling you your wrong to _feel_ the ways you feel. I'm just trying to tell you that when you *say* it you are shooting yourself in the foot.
The word "injustice" is almost enough right there, but "historical injustice"? Please. You might as well put on floppy shoes and a clown nose. There has been virtually no _historical_ _justice_. The "injustice" is just background noise. Everybody, every ethnic people, every cultural group, every political class, was screwed for "their turn" in european/western history.
You will *NEVER*, no matter how you "[call] a spade a spade", find your ideas or solutions have fallen on fertile ears when you cast your argument in terms of reparations of *ANY* sort. The very mention of the idea _salts_ _the_ _earth_ you are trying to sow.
There has never, in all of recorded history, been a conclave of white european men gathered together discussing "reparations" for the socally injured, where that conversation did _NOT_ end in a chuckle of "yea, sure, any day
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
These are the guys who have massive experience in observing elections. Their report is due later today, but from what has leaked through, I expect it to be damning.
Some things the observers from OSCE said:
* In some areas, they (as official observers!) had less access to the polls than during the elections in Kasachstan.
* The computer systems in many places were less secured than in Venecuela.
* A polish observer said the polls in Serbia(!) were easier to watch and more transparent.
That's a bunch of slap-down from professionals with years of experience. The US has, election-wise, officially fallen to the standards of a third-world country.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
According to www.gregpalast.com there appears to major discrepencies and he is theorising that it comes down to ballots invalidated. Some quarter of a million to be exact. He is also arguing that the exit polls showed kerry way ahead and the exit polls were accurate everywhere except for Ohio and Florida.
Although Palast is definitely a Bush hater he is a respected journalist and he does check his facts.
The two most liberal counties in the state have the highest number of no-shows, and a turnout rate that was almost 10% lower than the state average? Hmm...I guess Dubya just didn't piss off the liberal city slickers enough to get them out to vote.
On the one hand, the rate of no-shows seems to correlate with population: the third highest number of no-shows was in the third most populous county (Hamilton). On the other hand, Hamilton had a higher-than-average turnout rate, and guess who they voted for? Hint: it's Cinncinati, which borders Kentucky.
This could be a completely legal, if unethical, tactic by Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell to suppress the vote: there simply weren't enough voting machines. I arrived at the polls at 6:30AM, when they opened, and had to wait an hour to vote. Many people waited much longer, and many people simply left when they saw how long the lines were, or after waiting in the rain for a few hours. Curiously, you didn't heat about these problems in the Republican-dominated suburbs. Remember, Blackwell is the guy who refused to accept new registrations that weren't printed on bond paper until the courts slapped his wrist. According to a poll worker, voting machines are allocated according to turnout in the previous election, which means that last-minute voter drives are going to result in longer waits, but if those liberal counties really did register hundreds of thousands of new voters, how come lines were so long if the turnout rate was actually lower in those counties?
Note the San Jose Mercury News http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/sp ecial_packages/election2004/10091977.htm/
headline: "Despite long lines, voter turnout in Ohio not record breaking". And from the article: "The county just didn't plan on having a whole college to vote," said Sussman, who waited 10 hours to cast his vote for Kerry at 9 p.m., two and a half hours after the polls closed.
This also puts into perspective Blackwell's successful battle in the days before the election to prevent provisional ballots from being cast outside of one's own precinct. I suspect Blackwell knew there weren't nearly enough voting machines in certain precincts, and wanted to prevent voters from simply trotting to the next precinct to vote. For instance, in Republican-dominated Worthington, 10 minutes north of my precinct, there were no lines. The most clever thing about it is that it's not illegal, just unfair.
Meanwhile, if half of those 670,000 voters did actually show up at the polls, and if their votes tracked the actual results in those counties (Cleveland 66% for Kerry, Columbus 54%), that would have swung the election, since the difference in Ohio was around 136,000 votes.
Brushing aside conspiracy theories, it seems that blackboxvoting.org would do well to at least question how voting machines were allocated in Ohio. It wouldn't be too hard to look at voter turnout in the last election, and compare that with actual voting machine allocations. Who will bet me $1 that left-leaning precincts were short-shrifted?