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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."
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'
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.
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
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!
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
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.
WTF. Sarcasm?? You're upset that someone is trying to independently validate the election?
What will your response be when their request is denied?
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.
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.
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
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
Really, really poor taste? Yep. Probably a fucking stupid thing to say when you're CEO of a company that makes electronic voting machines?
I'd go farther than that. I'd say that having made such a comment should either make Diebold ineligible for the election, or should make him lose his job. That's the kind of thing you don't joke about when you're in a position of power.
It would be like the Supreme Court justices joking that they would make sure that Bush got elected before rendering their 2000 decision.
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.
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.
If only I had mod points. I think in some circles they would call a statement like that 'motive', and the position he was in 'means'.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
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."
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.
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
My response when it's denied will be "Good riddance to badd rubbish!" We don't need any post-election social engineering interfering with the painstaking pre-election tampering!
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.
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!
Damn. Did you just say that the only way for something to be independent was for it to be a federal agency? I think you're misunderstanding something.
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 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.
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
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.
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