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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."
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
I wouldn't be so quick to call this an inconsistency. It is simply a glitch that would have been corrected by the normal operating procedure had someone not noticed it. The count was unofficial for a reason. They verify the count for a reason - to catch mistakes like this. If every part of the system was infallible then checks would not be necessary and the preliminary count would be official. I don't care for Bush, but I'm not about to cry about every little mistake in the procedure. The system is designed to correct these mistakes.
That is a valid concern, but posting this article on slashdot is just flaimbait.
Hell, posting anything on slashdot is flamebait.
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.
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.
someone--anyone--
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.
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!
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
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!
glitch, inconsistency, what fuckin' ever...
regardless of who you voted for, this is fucking serious and your downplaying it really bothers me.
most of these voting machines were built by the lowest bidder using off the shelf hardware running WinCE and access. that's fine for a kiosk display or even an ATM with insured transactions but when we are talking about democracy, the fundamental decision making process of our government, we deserve something more secure and advanced. we deserve nothing less than an open-source solution, peer-reviewed and tested.
it makes me want to bring my stun gun to the polls and see how the machine registers a vote for 500,000 volts...
fear is the mind killer
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.
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.
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