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Evoting Problems in Ohio
deus_X_machina writes "The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that a computer error involving one voting-machine cartridge gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct. Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, says the cartridge was retested yesterday and there were no problems. He couldn't explain why the computer reader malfunctioned."
As the article says, that's why election-night results are unofficial. They don't just count these things once and then throw them away. It's already been corrected, so it's not even a problem. blah blah blah well what if it wasn't detected blah blah blah. That is a valid concern, but posting this article on slashdot is just flaimbait.
I don't think the article is really concerned with WHO the extra votes were for, it is just indicating that there are problems with a electronic voting system that does not include paper trails to provide a more reliable count. The article is trying to indicate that we should not just blindly trust electronic machines, and I agree with them. Whether the extra votes were for Bush or Kerry is beside the point really.
--David
Yeah, whatever - Fox news would have been all over a story about Kerry getting extra votes, so don't fucking call the media "liberal" because there is more than one media outlet, and they slant both ways.
but that requires intent, not just incompetence.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Personally, I would love to be a diebold programmer who was tasked with stealing this election.
My statement would go into a pair of safe deposit boxes controlled by attorneys with secret instructions to open the contents and make them public if they don't hear from me in 180 days.
I'd have Diebold by the balls.
This is why it would be stupid to try to steal the election this way. It's too hard to keep secret.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What really happened is that fear won. Fear of terrorism, fear of gay marriage, fear of a lot of things. Most of the people I talked to that voted for Bush didn't do so because they thought he was good, they did it because he wasn't Kerry. And vice versa. On top of that only about 30% of eligible voter voted for Bush and if Kerry had won it would have been a similar percentage.
On another topic, what happened to "no taxation without representation"? How easily we forget.
A blog about stuff.
someone--anyone--
On the total reversal, if Kerry had won, a Replublican STILL wouldn't have tipped a reporter off.. at least in my opinion. This is simply because, as Democrat friends of mine have said, "Democrats are whiners.".
If that Republican gave a shit about democracy and the sanctity of the election system, then he damn well should start talking since that's the only way the problems will get fixed.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
...would account for GWB's entire lead in Ohio. Keep an eye out, folks.
These errors do not change the election result! Bush won by too big of a margin in Ohio and Florida, any assumption that the machines threw it for Bush would mean that those counties would have had to vote in tremendous numbers for Kerry (like 70%), which is impossible. But that does NOT mean we should not investigate them. In fact it means it is the BEST time to investigate them!
Unfortunately I see way too many Republicans saying "it's those sore loser Democrats trying to cause trouble". And quite a few Democrats saying "this proves the election was wrong"
We MUST investigate these machines. This is the best time to do so, there is now tons of proof that they are screwed up, but the investigation can be just into the machines themselves and the people behind them, without any threat to the stability of our government.
But as long as people keep whining about "sore loser Democrats" or "election was wrong" then it will discourage any investigaton. This is BAD, BAD BAD!! These machines may throw the NEXT election. And Republicans had better realize that a single wild hippie Liberal in the wrong place could use them to throw it toward the left, this is NOT a partisian issue! Everybody should be in agreement that these machines need to be gotten rid of NOW. Don't blow our best chance by making this a partisian mess.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a glitch occurred with software designed for the city's new "ranked-choice voting," in which voters list their top three choices for municipal offices. If no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes outright, voters' second and third-place preferences are then distributed among candidates who weren't eliminated in the first round.
When the San Francisco Department of Elections tried a test run on Wednesday of the program that does the redistribution, some of the votes didn't get counted and skewed the results, director John Arntz said.
"All the information is there," Arntz said. "It's just not arriving the way it was supposed to."
A technician from the Omaha, Neb. company that designed the software, Election Systems & Software Inc., was working to diagnose and fix the problem.
I'msure this is only the first of many, many such stories we wil hear.... No paper audit trail in many places. fun fun fun
I'm sure that for each of these stories reported, 5 or more go unreported/undiscovered.
6 out of 10 voters to my precinct were not listed in the roll book at the polling place. Many of these people were long time voters, all were given provisional ballots. Their names and signatures were on the master list, but magically never made it to the polling place. The reason? A "mistake," and in a predominately Democratic area, by a predominately Republican elections board. Hmmm. Maybe I'm reading too much into that, my name was on the list, although I'm not registered as a Democrat...
Hey, but what does it matter at this point? Election's over, and there's a few countries to run. With Republicans in charge of everything, America should be on track to Bush's ideal. Let the good times roll!
Here come da fudge!
You want Democrats to do better in the South? You might want to try not-labeling southerners as slave-owners, racists, and bigots, just because they don't vote your way. Not every southerner owns a pickup truck with the confederate flag painted on the hood, and not everyone who disagrees with you does so out of ignorance or malice.
Insofar as you turn this into a political flame war, you're just distracting people from the real issue-- the use of electronic voting either needs to be reformed or ended.
The Diebold machines have told us that President Bush won the election. Why can't the Democrats be satisfied with that? I mean, the integrity of the votes was secured by a Microsoft Access database, which as we all know has *password protection*. The only way someone could have tampered with the results would be if the designers were somehow partisan and wanted to promise the election to a particular candidate.
And as if the people in the USA would stand for their black box voting machines to be designed by a pro-Bush partisan. It's just not realistic, so stop doubting and Praise Jesus. God Bless America.
501 Not Implemented
For instance, Hollywood is one of the primary conduits from which liberal attitudes are broadcast to the nation. Almost invariably, Christianity is portrayed in a negative light in films and on television. Christians are pyschopaths, cult members, rapists, murders, etc. Last night I watched "Drawn Together" on Comedy Central. At one point a character was talking about how gullible the princess character was, that she would believe anything you tell her. Then it cuts to a scene of the princess reading a Bible, and she says, "So, he died on the cross for our sins? Okay, I can believe that!" I'm sure there will be no outcry about that. However, can you imagine what would happen if instead she had been reading the Koran, and said, "So, there's no God but Allah? Sure, I can believe that!" There would be lawsuits, FCC fines and congressional hearings. This is just one of many examples. Democrats need to treat Christianity with the same respect they treat Judaism and Islam. When Mel Gibson actually comes out with a movie that glorifies Christ, he is scorned and attacked.
I would have laughed my ass off if they made a joke about the Qoran, but alas they didn't. My main reason for being antagonistic towards Christians is that they are antagonistic towards me. I've been called a baby killer because I am pro-choice, I have been called evil because I'm an atheist. The damn Christians just won't leave me alone, they want to teach creationism in our schools, they want people to pledge their allegence to their god etc.
I honestly feel like going on a crusade against all religions. Fundamentalist Islam is very violent, but go back about 7 centuries or so and you will find Christianity was very violent and Islam was tolerant. The lesson? Any religion can be abused for political gain, and the more false promises you make to people about heaven and martrydom, the more feverent they become.
Religion was a quanit little idea, a way to attempt to explain the universe around us before the invention of microscopes and telescopes. However, it is completely useless in modern days, and just halts the progress of humanity. I yearn for the day when there are no churches, no mosques, no Hindu temples, no Buddhist shrines, no sinogogues, just people, people who realize that we are only around here for a short time and the best way to get through that is to help everyone out. Until then I will be indignant towards Christians, Jews, Muslims etc, esp. if they feel it's their duty to tell me what a horrible human being I am for not believing in their version of "Truth"
Monstar L
Religion was a quanit little idea, a way to attempt to explain the universe around us before the invention of microscopes and telescopes.
And that is why the democratic party will never win those red states back. QED. You completely dismiss as quaint and backwards something that is a fundamental part of someone else's life...and then you want them to give you their support. It won't happen.
Bush likes to talk about "reaching out" to those who disagree with him. That's what the democrats need to do if they're going to attract Christians. They need to reach out to them, without the antagonization and without condescension, and find common ground. There are Christians who believe in a progressive tax system. There are MANY Christians who are pascifists and believe America's foreign policy is on the wrong track. Bring these people to your table by compromising with them on religion.
Next time you encounter a Christian who votes for Bush because of moral values, sit down with them and have this conversion. Say, "I respect your faith although I do not share it. We have values common to all Americans, which stem from the faith of the Founders. These are values like freedom, fair play, and basic human rights. The teachings of Jesus bear these out. We in the democratic party have ideas and plans that can help make America and the world a better place. They include our plans for health care, the environment, the economy, and a more diplomatic foreign policy. However, in order to accomplish these things to help you, we need to come to an understanding about the place of religion in government. Look at the way Jesus interacted with the Roman government. He didn't. He never tried to lobby the Roman senate to reshape their laws to his vision. In the same way, Christians must understand that is not the place of government to foster Christianity...it is the place of Christians to foster Christianity. Now let's come together on the things on which we agree in order to accomplish our mutual goals."
An attitude like that can turn red states blue. However, this will not happen. The elites in the Democratic party are openly hostile to Christianity. Christians are not as dumb as you think...they can spot a liar. So unless Democrats can actually put their anti-Christian bigotry behind them, they will never attract Christians to their cause. It will take time, but it can be done. For instance, before the civil rights movement, the Democratic party was just as racist and intollerant of blacks as the Republican party, but they spent a decade throwing rascists out of their party and embracing minorities in urban centers and the south. The democratic party purged themselves of their anti-black bigotry, where the Republican party did not. Only in the last two decades or so have the Republicans attempted to do the same thing, and that's why Republicans are making strong inroads with minority voters, as well. Unless the Democratic party can acknowledge and eliminate their anti-Christian bigotry with the same zeal they did their anti-black bigotry in the 50's and 60's, the democrats will never be a national party again, but will stay relagated to urban centers only.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
We need to do more than just reorganize; we need to restrategize.
And while you restrategize, you really do need to pay attention to what trb0001 is saying. You're not going to win the 2008 election by insulting the 51% of the people who voted for Bush. If you continue insulting Christians, rural inhabitants, and blue collar workers, you will lose the next election. If you want to win you need to be the party of egalitarian inclusion, not elitist exclusion.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
You seem to have missed my point entirely. Most Christians I meet are anti-non-Christian bigots(hell, a lot of them are anti-everyone but those in my denomination-bigots. I tried coming to a consesus with them and I fail miserably. Why? Because they believe in absolutes, and coming together with an infidel is not part of their ideal for the government. They call it a Christian nation and want to make baptisms a part of the requirement to be a citizen, George Bush the elder said he doesn't even think that atheists are patriots. How am I supposed to react to such bigotry?
Please, Christians in this country love to play the victim, while the persecute those who do not agree with them. I'm sorry, but I am just plain tired of Christians, I'm plain tired of, "Oh, Islam isn't a violent religion, just a few extremists" BS(The extremists are going to a mosque somewhere, and if these muslims aren't complicit they are complacent). I'm just so fucking sick and tired of preachers who say that because I'm a "liberal atheist", HItler and Mother Theresa are equivalent to me. When Christians stop persecuting atheists, when muslims stop blowing themselves up, when Jews stop shooting children in Palestine, when Hindus stop going on rampages murdering people simply because they are of a lower caste, then maybe I will start to "tolerate" religion.
Monstar L
Franklin is the only Ohio county to use Danaher Controls Inc.'s ELECTronic 1242, an older-style touchscreen voting system. Danaher did not immediately return a message for comment.
Okay, turned on the news wondering what kind of spin CNN would have on this. Didn't come up. So I started doing searches....
CNN
Foxnews
BBC
CBC
Aljzeera's search engine is not working properly today; oh well.
Ohio News Now
Anyone care to tell me why this simply isn't being reported at all? I've never heard of the Columbus Dispatch. Nor have I heard of the Washington Dispatch (one other place I've seen run the story).
Is it too new to be picked up?
Is it not considered newsworthy as just correcting a routine error?
Is it being censored? And if so then why by every news company including those outside of US juristiction?
Forgive me for being a bit skeptical on this story, but I do tend to assume that vote talliers can spot an order of magnitude error.
This needs to be said at the top of this thread because noone reads the articles:
Source - Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush's total should have been recorded as 365.
Franklin is the only Ohio county to use Danaher Controls Inc.'s ELECTronic 1242, an older-style touchscreen voting system. Danaher did not immediately return a message for comment.
The elites in the Democratic party are openly hostile to Christianity.
You're getting way off track.
I'm a proud independent agnostic liberal. I do not hate Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc. I don't even distinguish between them. I see people, not religions.
What gets my goat is when the fundamentalists in the said religions use their religion as a justification for their political beliefs. When you invoke God(s), you are effectively saying that if you are not for my policies, you are against God(s).
See, its okay if I strap a bomb on to myself and kill civilians; GOD WANTS ME TO DO IT. Its okay if I deny good people rights based on their sexual orientation; GOD WANTS ME TO DO IT. Its okay if I kill doctors who perform abortions; GOD WANTS ME TO DO IT.
When you invoke the supposed creator of the universe, its hard to argue against that viewpoint. Religion can make people do insane things, which is why it isn't a good idea to base one's politics on it.
If there is a God(s), I highly doubt he (they) wants to be basis of American politics.
I.
Wall Street has volume in the hundreds of millions per hour. Every transaction must be documented and has a paper trail (or backup report) somewhere, and every participant can be held accountable. Failure to comply with the law can and does result in jail time for offenders.
II.
We have a world-wide network of ATM machines. Each produces a paper receipt, often with an internal duplicate copy for auditing purposes. Each customer has a unique network ID and a secret PIN. Many systems automatically detects fraud-like activity automatically notify customers via cell-phone within one minute of transaction being completed. Again: hundreds-of-thousands, even millions, of transactions happening hourly.
III.
The Federal Reserve processes millions of "paper ballots" (cheques) daily. Each "ballot" is optically scanned and routed to the correct party, with errors approaching zero. Fair system: errors totaling 0.01 dollars or greater are penalized with a monetary fine. 100% accuracy rate built-in and required by law.
Even during the 9/11 terrorist attack, the New York Federal Reserve - one block from WTC - managed move their operation to New Jersey and complete day's "ballot" processing.
Conclusion #1
"Help" America Vote Act is Orwellian double-speak at its finest. Federal Elections demand a Federal Employees, Federal Training, Federal Standard. We can have separate elections with their own method for local/state/federal offices. State/Local constitutions can easily be amended to this end - should be uncontroversial.
Federal elections should be fully staffed and trained, just like the TSA (Transportaion Security Administration). Some will argue that Federal Government is wrong solution for problem and will advocate private corporations as a solution. Some people are morons. TSA is many magnitudes superior to pre-existing private security (equivalent: Diebold), which allowed 9/11 slaughter. At the very least, system can be audited without resorting to lawsuit.
Conclusion #2
As with securities exchange, ATM, Federal Reserve examples cited above, electoral process can & should have accuracy approaching 100% accuracy and same-day efficiency. Primary obstacle is lack of incentive. All examples cited involve monetary transactions, which Americans are notorious for valuing above Liberty.
Ergo, values of average politician/American must change to value liberty. Of course, the only party that can change things is the party in power, and as long as they are in power "the system works" (Note: not a cut at any particular party, as this cuts both ways).
Real change will only occur after nation-destroying election scandal and ensuing violent revolution. Call me an optimist.
Unfortunately, many choose ruminate about voter irregularities as being part of a imperfect, but practical, system. We often hear these folks, when confronted with vote tally irregularies, shake their head and sigh "perhaps we'll never know for sure."
This attitude is completely unacceptable when elections are being decided by 1,000 votes out of 2 million.
Consider:
If my employer's Daily Statement of Condition was off by $1,000 out of $2MM, and I told our Controller that "perhaps we'll never know" why the difference existed, I would be fired immediately.
It's mind-blowing that certain parties feel this is acceptable standard for United States electoral system.
Problem: how to make voting analogous to monetary transactions?
A MODEST PROPOSAL
Make the election a lottery. Ten lucky voters get $10,000,000 tax-free. Winning chances would be better than "Powerball," which has far more than 100,000,000 tickets and odds of winning approaching zero. Turnout would easily top 60% each election, and voters would demand election integrity to ensure their chance for jackpot.
This is a no-brainer proposition that will never become reality in current America. Sometimes genius isn't a